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The so-called defensive briefing given to the President was nothing of the sort. They briefed the President for only 13 minutes on Russian efforts to subvert people. They went on for hours trying to get things on Trump, Flynn and Christie.
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I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett Kavanaugh -
"Newly declassified internal Federal Bureau of Investigation documents prove the top U.S. law enforcement agency used a so-called defensive briefing of the Trump campaign in 2016 to spy on and collect information about Donald Trump himself. The new documents, which are just the latest in a string of declassifications regarding the FBI operation to spy on the Trump campaign and later the Trump administration, detail the FBI’s attempts to use a briefing ostensibly meant to warn the Trump campaign about foreign intelligence threats to spy on the Trump campaign itself.
The documents were formally declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on July 23 then provided to Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
In one of the documents declassified and released on Wednesday, FBI supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka wrote that he deliberately used the briefing to “actively listen for topics or questions” from Trump “regarding the Russian Federation.” Rather than provide the Trump campaign a specific warning that certain campaign principals were being targeted by Russian intelligence, the FBI instead gave a general, non-specific warning that foreign intelligence services might eventually target the campaign.
Pientka’s written summary of the briefing noted that Trump, Michael Flynn, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were the only three Trump campaign members in attendance. Christie’s attendance had not previously been disclosed. The August 17, 2016 meeting came the day after the FBI opened a formal counterintelligence investigation against Flynn and just two days after FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok texted his former lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, about an “insurance policy” he had designed to keep Trump from becoming president.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy [McCabe]’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok texted Page on August 15, 2016. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40….”
The very next day Strzok opened an investigation of Flynn then used the pretext of a defensive intelligence briefing to collect intelligence on both Flynn and Trump on August 17.
Pientka’s notes on the meeting stated that it lasted for two hours, beginning at 3:55 p.m. and ending at 5:51 p.m. While Pientka spent only 13 minutes of the two-hour meeting warning Trump, Flynn, and Christie of foreign intelligence threats, he lamented in his notes that other intelligence officials didn’t have enough time to get through their material.
“Due to time constraints, not all ODNI briefers presented their material,” Pientka wrote. He did not say whether his use of the meeting as means of spying on and collecting information against Trump may have precluded other intelligence officials from presenting their material to the attendees.
..."I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett Kavanaugh -
Keep on Civin'
RIP rah, Tony Bogey & Baron OComment
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Fallout is a great new book by John Solomon.I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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So is Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Keep on Civin'
RIP rah, Tony Bogey & Baron OComment
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Brookings Institute has been connected to Steele. The president was texting back and forth with him during the hoax. The Brooking Institute is the leading center-left think tank in D.C.I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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"House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told “Sunday Morning Futures” in an exclusive interview that “we’ve now expanded our investigation, full-blown investigation, into the Brookings Institute.”
Nunes made the comment one day after the primary source for Christopher Steel’s unverified dossier had been revealed as a United States resident who once co-wrote a research paper showing Russian President Vladimir Putin plagiarized his dissertation.
Host Maria Bartiromo pointed out on Sunday that “Nunes was among the first lawmakers to question the Russian collusion hoax as then chairman of the House Intel committee.” She noted that three years ago he said “that the FBI engaged in a coup to take down a sitting president.”
She pointed to a Fox Business interview last week where Nunes first said that he believes there were “direct links between the Brookings Institute leadership and the creation, possibly, of the Steele dossier and the dissemination of the Steele dossier.”
On Sunday, Nunes provided an update after a lawyer for Igor Danchenko, 42, confirmed to The New York Times that his client – a former Brookings Institution senior research analyst in Washington, D.C., and not a "Russian-based" source – provided the information to Steele, the British former spy whose dossier was used by the FBI to obtain wiretaps of Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser.
The FBI knew who Danchenko was and interviewed him in 2017 about the information he provided for the Steele dossier that purported to show Trump campaign ties to the Russian government. Danchenko cooperated on the condition the FBI keep his identity secret so he could protect himself, the paper reported.
But that all changed when Attorney General William Barr directed the FBI to declassify the report about its three-day interview of Danchenko and turn it over to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whose Judiciary Committee has been investigating the origins of the Russia probe. Graham wanted the interview out because it further undercuts the credibility of the Steele dossier, he said.
Graham released the declassified documents July 17 that had redacted Danchenko's name and identifying information, but an online blog post titled “I found the Primary Subsource” pieced together clues and identified Danchekno. RT, a Kremlin-owned news site, then published an article also outing Danchenko's name.
Danchenko's identity further raises questions about the FBI renewing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Page. In the last two renewal applications to the FISA court, the FBI referred to the primary sub-source of the document as "truthful and cooperative" and "Russian-based," the Justice Department Inspector General report found.
But Danchenko lives in the United States, though he visited Moscow to gather information on Steele's behalf, the Times reported.
Nunes pointed to an interview he did with Bartiromo a couple of months ago where he “talked about that we were really looking at three Russians.”
“It ends up… the third one was actually not a Russian at all. He actually sounds like he lives here in America and the FBI led Congress to believe, and the media led Congress to believe and they led the American public to believe, that somehow Steele had this really super-secret source that nobody could know about,” he continued.
“Well it ends up he used to work for the Brookings Institute. It looks like there were a lot of connections to the Brookings Institute.”
He went on to explain that the Brookings Institute “is the prominent left-wing think tank here in our nation’s capital.”
Nunes noted that “we had these links earlier on.”
“People may remember the president of Brookings back in 2016, we know that he had given the dossier to a few people, we had that through testimony,” he said. “You also may remember that the State Department was involved and there were additional dossiers that weren’t the Steele dossiers, except that they mirrored the Steele dossiers.”
“And we think there is a connection between the president of Brookings and those dossiers that were given to the State Department that mirrored the Steele dossiers,” he continued...." -
"Nunes then explained what he believes “all of this” means.
“This was the Clinton campaign’s dossiers. It was the dirt. It was a phony story that they sold not only to the American people, but they sold it and corrupted our FBI, where it appears these dirty cops were more than willing to take this information to present it to the FISA court,” Nunes said.
He added, “We’ve now expanded our investigation, full-blown investigation, into the Brookings Institute and it really centers on two issues.”
“One is the IRS. This is a tax-exempt organization. They’re supposed to stay out of politics. They clearly have not done that. They’ve obstructed our investigation with propaganda for the last four years,” Nunes said. “It’s well-known that they’ve attacked our investigation for four years through this kind of phony legal group of fact-checkers that they set up. So we need to look in there to see if they’re involved in politics.”
Dean Patterson, an IRS spokesperson, told Fox News, “Federal law prohibits the IRS from discussing specific taxpayers.”
Nunes said the second issue is that the Brookings Institute allegedly accepts “foreign money from foreign countries and foreign governments.”
“We need to know what foreign governments were involved in this because, were they acting on behalf of a foreign power?” Nunes said.
“Everybody has questioned for all this time, if the Trump campaign, Republicans, were involved with Russians, well who was the Brookings Institute, who were their foreign donors? And are they doing all of this not just to help the Democratic Party, but also any foreign government?”"
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There maybe evidence of foreign power influence through Brookings Institute.I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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"Not only did the FBI lie to the FISA court. They lied to Congress, and that's a second crime."
- Senator GrahamI drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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I hope Durham wraps up soon, we deserve to know the extent of the coup before the election. Several people should be doing time, Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Brennan for starters.Comment
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The Atlantic Council and Joe Biden trashed Viktor Shokin as a corrupt prosecutor, Burisma's owner who hired Hunter Biden gave the Atlantic Council money. Shokin lost his job after raiding Burisma and getting court approval to continue investigating the money trail from western interests to Ukrainian allies. We were bribing Ukrainians, investigating corruption was not our goal.Comment
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Yes, we know that's not Russian disinformation because of the way Democrats reacted.I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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Keep on Civin'
RIP rah, Tony Bogey & Baron OComment
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Biden got a prosecutor fired that was investigating his son. Ukraine is obliged to investigate that by treaty.I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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Blah blah blah... keep trying
When Trump used his Power and Influence over the Ukraine... The Repug ass licking, no spine Senate just white washed it...
The facts were NEVER in dispute... His own transcripts showed what a pond scum he was. But the Senate decided it didn't have to do it's constitutional job and hold a real trial.Keep on Civin'
RIP rah, Tony Bogey & Baron OComment
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AG Barr just announced that a US attorney is investigating unmasking. This is not Durham. It is another US attorney.
I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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