di genova toensing bak

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NO MERRI SW TBL BOTTOM

CLETA?

OBAMAGATE SPYGATE VS RUSSIA-GATE?

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MMA

GOP lawyer Joe diGenova, now running Trump’s “Grand Conspiracy” probe, said Bondi had “nixed” him from the role

Fox News apparently banned diGenova six years ago

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 04/20/26

Joe diGenova, a GOP lawyer who represented President Donald Trump in his bogus election fraud cases in 2020 and a longtime fixture in right-wing media, complained in April that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi had “nixed” him from a role overseeing a planned investigation of Trump’s political enemies. Now, just weeks after her removal, he’s reportedly ensconced in that position.

The Trump Department of Justice, through grand juries in Florida, is targeting a wide array of Democratic political figures and law enforcement officials while sidestepping statutes of limitation by positing that the federal probes of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump’s theft of classified documents upon leaving office, and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, are all manifestations of a single “Grand Conspiracy.”

This absurd conspiracy theory unifies a decade of wild right-wing media fantasies under a single banner, and its proponents claim that it could lead to convictions of everyone from former President Barack Obama to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to former special counsel Jack Smith.

DiGenova, asked about Bondi’s replacement by her deputy Todd Blanche during an April 2 Newsmax appearance, argued that the president fired her because “the weaponization investigation cases in Florida have basically come to a standstill because Bondi got in the way.”

“She should have been gone the minute she interfered in the Florida investigations,” he added. “And I know that for a fact, because I was involved in that. I was going to be a prosecutor in that case, I was all ready to be hired to be the chief lead counsel, and Pam Bondi nixed it because she didn't want anybody with a name in the case.”

Video

Citation

From the April 2, 2026, edition of Newsmax's American Agenda

But on Friday, Maria Medetis Long, who was overseeing a portion of the probe focused on former CIA Director John Brennan, became the latest career federal prosecutor ousted after expressing skepticism about the strength of a case against a Trump foe. Her replacement is reportedly diGenova, who will also be overseeing the broader “Grand Conspiracy” probe and has the title of counselor to the attorney general.

DiGenova has presumably been selected for the role for the very reasons that would disqualify him under any normal circumstances. He is a fierce Republican partisan with close ties to Trump who has been involved, as either a pundit or a lawyer, in GOP scandalmongering efforts dating back to Bill Clinton’s presidency.

A key player in the Ukraine-focused disinformation plot targeting Joe Biden that led to Trump’s first impeachment, diGenova regularly appeared on Fox News in 2019 to promote that conspiracy theory — even as he and his wife, Virginia Toensing, represented pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, another participant in the scheme. An internal Fox research document, which The Daily Beast reported on in February 2020, questioned the credibility of diGenova and several other players in the effort.

DiGenova was apparently banned from Fox in late 2019 after smearing two Fox personalities on-air and then using a Fox Business appearance to deliver an antisemitic screed in which he argued that Jewish philanthropist George Soros “controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department,” has “corrupted FBI officials,” and is seeking to “run Ukraine.” (He last appeared on Fox News’ weekday programming on October 8, 2019, according to a search of Media Matters’ database.)

DiGenova has since been a fixture on Fox rival Newsmax, where he recently argued that Trump, as “chief law enforcement officer,” has every right to force the Justice Department to pay him hundreds of millions of dollars as compensation for its past efforts to prosecute him.

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4 26 ODDLY NO TALK?

Joseph diGenova - Wikipedia

Joseph diGenova (born February 22, 1945) is an American lawyer and political commentator who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1983 to 1988.^[1][2] He and his wife, Victoria Toensing, are partners in the Washington, D.C., law firm diGenova and Toensing.^[3][4] He is known for promoting conspiracy theories about the Department of Justice and the FBI.^[13] He and Toensing frequently appeared on Fox News and Fox Business channels, until diGenova used a November 2019 appearance to spread conspiracy theories about George Soros, leading to widespread calls for him to be banned from the network.^[14][15]

In March 2018, President Donald Trump announced that diGenova and Toensing would join his legal defense team during the Mueller investigation; the appointments were withdrawn days later, citing an unspecified conflict of interest, though Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow said they might assist in other legal matters.^[16] In July 2019, diGenova and Toensing began representing Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash to assist his efforts to avoid extradition to the United States under a federal indictment, as their associate and Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani sought information in Ukraine to damage Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.^[17][18][19] In November 2020, Trump named diGenova, Toensing, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis to join a legal team led by Giuliani to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in which Trump was defeated.^[20]

In April 2026, diGenova was selected by the Department of Justice to lead an inquiry "into whether former federal officials committed crimes in investigating President Trump".^[21]

Career in law and politics

DiGenova was an aide to Republican Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland, eventually serving as Mathias' legislative director. After Republicans won the U.S. Senate in the 1980 elections, diGenova was named chief counsel and staff director of the Senate Rules Committee and counsel to the Senate Judiciary, Governmental Affairs, and Select Intelligence committees.^[22][23]

U.S. attorney

As a U.S. attorney, diGenova led the prosecution of Jonathan Pollard, who pleaded guilty in 1987 to spying for Israel.^[22]

He also led investigations into corruption in the administration of Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry that led to convictions of 12 officials, including two deputy mayors.^[24][2]

Counsel investigations

DiGenova later served as Independent Counsel investigating the 1992 preelection search of then-candidate Bill Clinton's passport file by officials of the George H. W. Bush administration.^[25] DiGenova concluded that the passport search had been "stupid, dumb and partisan," but not illegal, and that the government should apologize to the officials who ordered the search.^[25]

DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, started their Washington law firm, diGenova & Toensing, in January 1996.^[4][26]

In 1997, diGenova was named Special Counsel to investigate the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; afterward he was named to an independent review board to monitor the Teamsters.^[23]

First Trump presidency

Scooter Libby

DiGenova called on President Trump to pardon Scooter Libby, adviser of Dick Cheney, who was found guilty of perjury in an investigation revolving around leaks of sensitive classified material.^[27] DiGenova is married to Libby's lawyer, Victoria Toensing.^[28] Trump pardoned Libby on April 13, 2018.^[29]

Russian interference in the 2016 election

Further information: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections

DiGenova, who frequently appears as a commentator on Fox News, has accused FBI officials of trying to "frame" President Donald Trump for "nonexistent" crimes.^[30] On March 19, 2018, he and his spouse, Victoria Toensing, were hired to serve on Trump's legal team for the Special Counsel investigation.^[6] However, Trump backtracked the hires several days later due to potential conflicts of interest.^[16] The president hoped diGenova could function as a stand-in for him on television and spearhead the attacks on Mueller and the investigation.^[31]

In April 2018, diGenova called for the firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, said that special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election were "legal terrorists" and called former FBI Director James Comey "a dirty cop".^[5] In May 2018 tweet, Trump quoted diGenova as saying "The recusal of Jeff Sessions was an unforced betrayal of the President of the United States."^[32]

On February 21, 2019, diGenova stated in Laura Ingraham's podcast that the US is in a civil war and that he advises friends to prepare for total war by voting and buying guns.^[33]

Kavanaugh appointment

On September 18, 2018, diGenova discounted charges that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, then 17 years old, had allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old Christine Blasey Ford at a party. The allegations referred to a time when Kavanaugh was attending Georgetown Preparatory School. On Fox News, diGenova said if Ford testified, "she's going to look like the loon that she is."^[34]

Ukraine investigations

Further information: Trump–Ukraine scandal

In July 2019, diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, were hired by the Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, to defend Firtash from extradition to the United States on corruption charges related to a mining permit in India.^[35][36][37] In 2017, the United States Justice Department described Firtash as an "upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime."^[38] As a middleman for the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom, Firtash was known for funneling money to campaigns of pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine^[39] and is also a onetime business partner of Paul Manafort, a Trump 2016 campaign chairman.^[40] When he was vice president, Joe Biden had urged the Ukrainian government to eliminate middlemen such as Firtash from the country's natural gas industry, and to reduce the country's reliance on imports of Russian natural gas.^[18]

In August 2019, diGenova and Toensing met with Attorney General William Barr to argue against the charges for Firtash.^[18] Prior to that meeting, Barr had been briefed in detail on the initial Trump–Ukraine scandal whistleblower complaint within the CIA that had been forwarded to the Justice Department, as well as on Giuliani's activities in Ukraine.^[18] Barr declined to intercede, according to sources who talked to The Washington Post.^[41]

In October 2019, Lev Parnas, a businessman who was working for diGenova and Toensing's firm as an interpreter in the Firtash case, was one of two men arrested at Dulles International Airport and accused by federal prosecutors of funneling foreign money into U.S. elections.^[42] The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation to hire diGenova and Toensing, with the proposition that Firtash could help to provide compromising information on Joe Biden, an arrangement Parnas's attorney Joseph Bondy described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter."^[18] In November 2019, Bondy told The Washington Post that Parnas had been part of "a group that met frequently in spring 2019 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Biden matter, among other topics.

The group, according to Bondy, was convened by Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, and included Parnas, his business associate Igor Fruman, as well as journalist John Solomon and the husband-and-wife legal team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing."^[43] After Firtash hired diGenova and Toensing, Giuliani acquired a statement^[44] from former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin that falsely alleged Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire him in an effort to cover up corruption by Biden and his son. Shokin's statement noted that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash."^[45][46] Giuliani had presented the Shokin statement during television appearances, and Bloomberg News reported that its sources told them Giuliani's publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo.^[17]

DiGenova and Toensing worked with Rudy Giuliani on opposition research from Ukraine to be used against the 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden, according to Fox News Sunday.^[47] All three were working off the books, outside the administration, according to Fox News. "The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump," Fox host Chris Wallace said.^[48] DiGenova called the story "categorically false."^[47]

DiGenova and Toensing are lawyers for John Solomon, a conservative columnist who has written stories favorable to Trump on scandals involving Ukraine and Russia. "John Solomon has been a client of our firm for a very long time," diGenova told Politico.^[49]

In November 2019, in an appearance on Fox News, diGenova claimed that George Soros "controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department" and "also controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for NGO's, work with NGO's. That was very evident in Ukraine."^[50] The Open Society Foundation, founded by Soros, described diGenova's claims as "beyond rhetorical ugliness, beyond fiction, beyond ludicrous" and requested that Fox News provide an on-air retraction of diGenova's claims, and stop providing diGenova with a platform.^[51] Although the network never publicly announced it had banned diGenova, as of September 2020, diGenova had not appeared on Fox following the incident.^[52] In September 2020, diGenova said, "I don't know what George Soros has on Suzanne Scott, the head of Fox, but the bottom line is this: that network is compromised when it comes to Soros."^[52]

False claims of fraud related to the 2020 presidential election

Further information: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election

In November 2020, President Donald Trump named diGenova, Toensing, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis to join a legal team led by Rudy Giuliani to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in which Trump was defeated.^[20]

On November 30, 2020, diGenova used an appearance on The Howie Carr Show (released on YouTube) to call for Chris Krebs to be "drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot". DiGenova's specific criticism was that Krebs "thinks the election went well". Krebs was the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for the United States Department of Homeland Security and had been fired by Trump earlier that month for contradicting Trump's false and baseless claims of widespread election fraud.^[53][54] On December 8 Krebs filed a civil lawsuit against diGenova, the Trump campaign, and Newsmax TV, accusing them of "defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, aiding and abetting, and civil conspiracy". He said that he has received "a barrage of threats and harassment" as a result of diGenova's comments and "faces a genuine risk of imminent harm."^[55]

DiGenova and his wife were among several Trump associates who were emailed by OANN anchor Christina Bobb on December 13, 2020, regarding efforts by Republicans in seven states to appoint false electors and create fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to be submitted to vice president Mike Pence for certification on January 6, 2021.^[56]

Second Trump presidency

JFK assassination documents release

Three days after entering office for the second time in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order to declassify the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy within 15 days.^[57] More than 60,000 documents were released two months later on March 18.^[58][59] The unredacted documents included the Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal data of former congressional staffers including diGenova. In response, diGenova announced his intent to sue the National Archives for violating the Privacy Act of 1974.^[60]

Investigating federal officials who investigated Trump

In April 2026, diGenova was selected by the Department of Justice to lead an inquiry "into whether former federal officials committed crimes in investigating President Trump".^[61]

References....

- Prompted by a quote from actor Rob Schneider, Donald Trump Jr. argued that “we don't have a choice” and that the GOP will have to prosecute Trump critics as retribution. *Triggered*, [5/30/24]

- On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity lashed out at Judge Juan Merchan. *The Sean Hannity Show*, [5/30/24]

- Fox News guest Brett Tolman: “I really blame the judge.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [5/30/24]

- A Newsmax host made clear that Trump jurors can never go anywhere without being harassed. Newsmax, [5/30/24]

- Fox News reporter Shannon Bream hyped criticism of the judge’s jury instructions. Fox News, *Special Report*, [5/30/24]

- Laura Ingraham speculated that two attorneys on the jury steered the rest of the jury’s deliberations. Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [5/30/24]

- A Fox News guest called Trump’s conviction a result of a “show trial” and said it shows why presidents “need immunity from criminal prosecution to do their jobs.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [5/30/24]

- Newsmax guest Joseph di Genova warned jurors to be “very careful.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [5/30/24]

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-network/

after weeks of refusing to acknowledge or accept the outcome of the 2020 election, President Donald Trump's "alternative facts" news networks are clearly struggling with how to proceed. But with the meeting of the Electoral College, the reality of President-elect Joe Biden's win is creeping in. Newsmax is finally reporting the truth about Biden becoming the next president of the United States, while One America News Network has a slightly different stance.

The Washington Post reported that, unlike Newsmax, the smaller OANN downplayed the Electoral College in its television coverage. Nevertheless, the network quietly shared a retweet acknowledging the vote.

That tweet read: "BREAKING: Joe Biden has cleared the 270-electoral-vote mark to formalize his presidential victory with California's 55 votes. (Per AP)"...However, their site continues to publish pieces suggesting that widespread voter fraud is the reason for Biden's victory despite having no evidence to support those claims. The allegations of fraud are supported by misinterpretations of the facts, misunderstandings of the law, special pleading, and some outright lies.

Both conservative networks have been the main television sources airing Trump's unfounded grievances and unproven claims of voter fraud. Fox News, which played a significant role in initially calling the election for Biden, alienated many of its viewers with the truth, even as much of its coverage gave excessive credence to Trump's fraud claims.

No matter how outlandish the claim, Newsmax and OANN have enthusiastically reported the president's claims and refused to accept the outcome of the election.In fact, they have even advocated for Trump's attempts to overturn the outcome of the election. Conservative attorneys Victoria Toensinga and Joseph diGenova said on Newsmax still believe there will be more avenues to argue Trump's points.

"There will be a lot discussed about this over the next 24 hours," diGenova said, the Post reported. Toensing chimed in as she added, "Maybe only on Newsmax."

However, it appears NewsMax is generally turning a corner.The Post reported that one of the outlet's anchors tried to break the news of Biden's win gently to its audience.

"What I'm trying to do is manage everyone's expectations," host John Bachman said. "These judges don't seem to be taking up these cases. This is the reality. This is the motion set in place."

Meanwhile, the Newsmax homepage now highlights Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) remarks acknowledging Biden's win.

"Many of us had hoped the presidential election would yield a different result," McConnell said of Biden's win. "But our system of government has the processes to determine who will be sworn in on Jan. 20. The Electoral College has spoken."

Like the conservative networks and McConnell, a number of other Republican lawmakers have finally conceded that Trump will not be re-elected for a second term. Sen. John Thune (R-S.C) also another top-ranking Republican senator, admitted that there comes a time when you just have to move forward. For him, the official vote on Monday was a breaking point.

"At some point, you have to face the music," said Thune. "Once the Electoral College settles the issue today, it's time for everybody to move on."

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client:

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/09/giuliani-associate-sanctioned

the Treasury Department on Thursday sanctioned pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach over his alleged attempts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election by planting misleading accusations of corruption against Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Derkach is linked to the Kremlin and is the son of a former KGB officer. He worked with President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to supply conservative news outlets with dirt on Biden and his son, Hunter. Derkach also sent information about the former vice president to Senate Republicans investigating the Bidens, prompting U.S. intelligence officials to warn lawmakers not to participate in foreign influence campaigns.

Trump has insisted that Russia is not trying to boost his campaign, but multiple Trump administration agencies have said the opposite. The Treasury Department on Thursday labeled Derkach “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and indicated that he “waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives” to influence the upcoming 2020 election. The Treasury’s designation will freeze Derkach’s assets in the U.S.

Derkach publicly released edited tapes portraying a false narrative of conversations between Biden and former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko. As vice president, Biden threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine unless Poroshenko fired the nation’s top prosecutor whom Western nations criticized as being corrupt. Derkach also tried to spur “corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day,” according to the Treasury Department.

Trump appeared to bring up Derkach’s tape earlier this week at a Labor Day press conference at the White House, telling the press corps, “he’s right on tape and you don’t want to cover it. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

OpenSecrets’ Foreign Lobby Watch database sheds some light on Derkach’s foreign influence campaign. From February through July, Derkach contracted with a firm called Global Management Association Corp in an attempt to set up meetings with the White House and members of Congress.

derkach met with Giuliani and claims they “discussed available information on international corruption and the need to investigate it in the United States.” Planned activities in Justice Department records filed in April included “meeting with US officials” but the foreign agents did not disclose making any U.S. government contacts for Derkach before the contract ended, according to his most recent FARA filing on Aug. 15.

Giuliani, who spoke at the Republican National Convention last month, has reportedly come under scrutiny from federal prosecutors for failing to register as a foreign agent. He also worked with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to allegedly funnel foreign money to pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. Foreign influence laws aren’t often enforced, but in 2018 a jury convicted former Trump campaign official Paul Manafort for failing to register as a foreign agent of the Ukrainian government in 2018, among other charges.

The firm Derkach worked with, Global Management Association Corp., is little more than a rebranded shell company that served as a Russian-linked oil company’s foreign agent to buy Ukrainian polling data in 2019. Andrii Artemenko, an associate of Giuliani and business partner of Erik Prince who came under scrutiny during the Mueller probe, ran Global Management Association Corp using the name “Andy Victor Kuchma.”

Artemenko previously collaborated with Michael Cohen, Felix Sater and Michael Flynn to push for a plan to lift U.S. sanctions on Russia.Artemenko’s wife, Oksana Kuchma, who is listed as an officer on records for many of his companies, incorporated what appears to be a new company in Florida called K&D III LLC in 2019 but it has kept a low profile and its function is not yet clear. One of the officers on the new company is Sergey Knyazev, is the chairman of the Ukrainian National Police and who met with Trump in 2018.

House Democrats impeached Trump late last year over charges that he solicited foreign interference from Ukrainian officials to help his reelection bid. The Senate acquitted Trump on a near party line vote.

Former top Department of Homeland Security official Brian Murphy filed a whistleblower complaint Wednesday alleging that acting secretary Chad Wolf told him to stop providing assessments of Russian interference in the 2020 election. Murphy said those orders came from Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser

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wapo

http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=91a4cb4122de0af505cbbe73314de12ff4a01553c54fdcfce3c50363f29e427e43db487e53f170404e838b0408cc8f35c70243c7a77a7ddd

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/its-own-document-fox-news-rips-fox-news-host-sean-hannity/

ref $

no lnx

Opinions

In its own document, Fox News rips Fox News host Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity on the set of his show on Aug. 7, 2019. (Frank Franklin II/AP)

Erik Wemple

Media critic

Feb. 7, 2020 at 12:06 p.m. PST

Each night, Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity engage in some shallow blather during the “handoff” between their ratings-killing programs. In Thursday night’s version, Hannity told Carlson, “You know the deep-state story is even getting bigger. There’s a whole new one developing. I’ll tell you about it privately.”

Cute, Hannity....

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinions

In its own document, Fox News rips Fox News host Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity on the set of his show on Aug. 7, 2019. (Frank Franklin II/AP)

Erik Wemple

Media critic

February 7, 2020 at 3:06 PM EST

Cute, Hannity.

Just what could this “new” deep-state story be? A clue emerged from a strange sequence of events on Twitter. Marcus DiPaola, who formerly worked at Fox News, posted some tweets about his experience with the network, as well as the front page of an interesting internal document:

Here's the front page of the internal Fox News Trump-Ukraine timeline. I'll start tweeting some of the highlights shortly. pic.twitter.com/HWGX5sZUh8

— Marcus J. DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) February 6, 2020

That’s the title page of a dossier from the so-called Brain Room of Fox News, a long-standing research hive at the network. The full Ukrainian report, obtained by the Erik Wemple Blog, is a document of great candor and thoroughness, 162 pages of events and statements and indictments and hearings that detail every last wrinkle in the Trump-Ukraine story. Its timeline starts in February 2014 — when former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kyiv for Russia — and concludes in December 2019 — when Trump declared that his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, would write up a report about the findings of his Ukrainian investigation. “I hear he has found plenty,” said the president.

The Brain Room report bears the name of Bryan Murphy, a senior political affairs specialist at Fox News. It also bears this withering assessment of John Solomon, former opinion contributor for the Hill who is responsible for setting in motion faulty story lines regarding Ukraine: “John Solomon played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign.” Another part of the document provides this assessment of Solomon: “Focus on stories from disinformation campaign, non-disclosure of conflicts, use of unreliable sources, publishing false and misleading stories, misrepresentation of sources, and opaque coordination with involved parties.”

That says it all. Even as it levels that critique, the Brain Room document discloses that Solomon is a “Fox News contributor.” Indeed, though Solomon appeared as a guest frequently on “Hannity” throughout the Ukraine story, he left the Hill in fall 2019 and was hired as a contributor at Fox News in October.

Not only does the research paper pummel Solomon, it cites a statistic that Solomon, over six months in 2019, “published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which focused primarily on Ukraine." Where did that statistic come from?

Media Matters for America! Yes, Media Matters for America, the organization essentially built to take down Fox News. Media Matters for America, the organization routinely slammed on Fox News’s air. Media Matters for America, the organization that essentially forced Glenn Beck from Fox News.

It’s a stunning juxtaposition — one that speaks to the integrity of the Brain Room report. Other faces of the Ukraine issue that surface in the report include Giuliani, the ringleader of Trump’s effort to secure an announcement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of an investigation into the Bidens, who is described as having: “High susceptibility to disinformation” from key Ukrainian actors, according to the document. Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, a Trump-supporting husband-and-wife legal team, receive this evaluation: “Non-disclosure of financial motives and representation of [Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro] Firtash while spreading false and misleading stories.”

Note: Giuliani, diGenova and Toensing appeared on “Hannity” with regularity to take the president’s side on Ukraine. All that explains, perhaps, why Hannity is making noises about a “new” deep state.

Though Fox News isn’t exactly forthcoming about its internal operations, the Brain Room isn’t a state secret. Occasionally network hosts will reference its work, as did Jesse Watters last fall, when he saw a Washington Post headline that he didn’t believe was real: “When I saw the headline afterwards, I forwarded it to our Brain Room because I thought it was an Onion” story, said Watters. There’s a great reverence among employees for the work of the room, as reflected in this comment from former host Kimberly Guilfoyle in June 2017: “Here are some doughnut facts from our Brain Room, so [they] must be true.”

A 2011 story in Rolling Stone quoted a network insider as alleging that the Brain Room was where "the evil resides.” And a former network executive told Gabriel Sherman — for his biography of late Fox News chief Roger Ailes — that the room had a “Nixonian” air. That said, Sherman wrote that the “mystique” of the Brain Room faded over time as staffers realized that it was a professional operation designed to fact-check the news. It’s the Brain Room, for example, that feeds all those contextual facts that viewers see on their screens during congressional hearings and other political events.

There’s no absence of context in the Brain Room’s Ukraine magnum opus. It has everything, including key revelations and charges against Hannity. Here’s the timeline’s entry for March 26, 2019:

Melinda Haring, the editor of the UkraineAlert blog at the Atlantic Council and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes in the Washington Post: “The mechanics of the information operation that Poroshenko’s minions pulled off are obvious. Lutsenko used Solomon to get to Hannity to get to Trump, whose Twitter feed set thousands chattering about nonexistent collusion… If a bunch of obscure foreigners few Americans have ever heard of can play Trump so easily, and so obviously, what’s to stop others from doing the same?”

(387) David Holmes, Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, later said, “The barrage of allegations directed at Ambassador Yovanovitch, a career ambassador, is unlike any anything I have seen in my professional career.” (388)

Here’s another, absolutely devastating entry:

September 26, 2019: John Solomon, Toensing, and diGenova all appear on Hannity again to discuss Shokin’s affidavit, filed at the request of Firtash’s attorneys. At no time during the program does Hannity, Toensing, and diGenova mention who requested the statement nor do they discuss that they are Firtash’s attorneys. Solomon also doesn’t mention that he shares attorneys with Firtash. diGenova says “we’ve known from the very beginning that Mr. Shokin was not a corrupt prosecutor.” (856) Later that night, President Trump tweets a clip of diGenova from Hannity. (857)

More: In an entry for Oct. 9, 2019, the Brain Room document notes that Andriy Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, had made a specific allegation regarding corruption by former vice president Joe Biden. The Kyiv Post, notes the Brain Room report, called the charge “dubious.” “Hours later, Giuliani appeared on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News and parroted Derkach’s claim. (897).”

In an entry that footnotes reporting from the Erik Wemple Blog, the document even tosses shade on how Hannity introduces Solomon on his program:

May 14, 2018: The Hill’s editor-in-chief sent out a memo to staff stating that “effective immediately” John Solomon would no longer publish stories under the banner of news but instead would be an “opinion contributor.” (218) Solomon said that the choice to have his writing classified as opinion was his. During his TV appearances, Hannity has often continued to announce Solomon as an “investigative reporter” at The Hill.

What we have here is a journalistic blowout. It is a trouncing of Hannity and his treasured contributor, Solomon — written not by some mainstream media outlet or Media Matters for America, but by Fox News itself. Turns out the network is keeping its best reporting to itself.

In a statement to the Erik Wemple Blog, Mitchell Kweit, senior vice president of the Brain Room, said: “The research division of FOX News produces a briefing book for all major stories, which serves as a standing collection of extensive data on major topics for internal use by all those in editorial functions. The Ukraine briefing book is nothing more than a comprehensive chronological account of what every person involved in the Ukraine controversy was doing at any identifiable point in time, including tracking media appearances of major players who appeared on FOX News and in many other outlets. The 200 page document has thousands of data points and the vast majority have no relation to FOX News – instead it’s now being taken out of context and politicized to damage the network.”

In an interview with the Erik Wemple Blog, DiPaola commended Fox News for the separation between opinion shows and the so-called straight-news side, where he worked as a freelancer for a few months. “It did feel a lot like church and state,” he says. “They separate news from opinion pretty well.” As for the Brain Room timeline, DiPaola says, “I mean, it’s a Brain Room product, it’s meant to be unbiased. It’s evidence that Fox News Channel isn’t all bad. It’s evidence that there are honorable people working at Fox News all day.”

And it’s evidence that those honorable people understand the threat “Hannity” poses to any news organization.

Key Takeaways

Rudy Giuliani, working with con men and Trump cronies, pursued an “investigation” in Ukraine that he claimed showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.
In March, Giuliani sent the results of his investigation to the State Department to be investigated and to conservative columnist John Solomon.
The same month, Solomon began publishing a series of columns that mirrored the sourcing and claims Giuliani made in his State Department dossier.
Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which focused primarily on Ukraine.
During that same time period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times.
Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that deep state elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump.
On October 5, John Solomon landed a job at Fox.

Key players

Rudy Giuliani -- the president’s personal attorney who has traveled around the globe attempting to dig up dirt on Democrats and discredit the Russia investigation on Trump’s behalf.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two Soviet-born con men with ties to Ukraine who worked with Giuliani to concoct the disinformation campaign and to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired, reportedly in the hopes of advancing their business interests in the country. The two have since been arrested for campaign finance violations related to making allegedly illegal campaign donations to Republican candidates and committees, as well as a pro-Trump super PAC. They also reportedly worked for Dmitry Firtash.

Dmitry Firtash -- a Ukrainian pro-Russian oligarch and former businessassociate of Paul Manafort who is in Austria fighting extradition to the United States to face charges related to a bribery conspiracy. At the same time Parnas and Fruman were working with Giuliani, the two were reportedly also working on Firtash’s behalf to push for the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine as part of a plan to install new leadership at Ukraine’s Naftogaz gas company. Part of this plan reportedly would have included Naftogaz paying “Firtash a debt of more than $200 million that Firtash believes he is owed by the company.” NBC reported that while this was happening, Firtash “was playing a key role in the effort by Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani to hunt for dirt on Donald Trump's political opponents in Ukraine.”

Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova -- two attorneys closely tied to Trump who also worked with Giuliani to support his efforts in Ukraine. The duo are known for their role in bolstering conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation and at one point were considered to join Trump’s personal legal team. The two quietly represent Dmitry Firtash in fighting his extradition to the United States. They hired Parnas as an “interpreter” to work with them on the Firtash case while Parnas was also working with Giuliani.

John Solomon -- a conservative columnist who until recently was the executive vice president of The Hill. Solomon was the conduit through which Giuliani, Parnas, Toensing and diGenova planted their stories in order to spread their coordinated disinformation campaign through the media.

Sean Hannity -- Fox News host who is close to Trump and worked with Giuliani to make his show an integral part of their media strategy, providing a place where they could sow the seeds of the smear campaign against Biden. Giuliani and Hannity discussed this strategy in January, and Solomon became a staple on Hannity’s prime-time programming.

The plan

According to Parnas, his friendship with Giuliani began two years ago as they were running in similar political circles and attending the same events. In late 2018, Parnas and Fruman began connecting Giuliani to a network of disgraced former and current Ukrainian officials and prosecutors to dig up dirt on Biden and the 2016 election.

The conspiracy theory they concocted went like this: Ukrainian officials worked with Democrats to find dirt on Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to damage Trump. They did so, Giuliani claimed, by fabricating the “black ledger” that showed that Manafort had received millions of dollars from the former pro-Russia Ukrainian ruling party that had been recently overthrown. The revelation of this ledger helped force Manafort’s resignation from Trump’s campaign, and Manafort was eventually prosecuted and convicted of a wide range of crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 election.

In addition, according to Giuliani’s conspiracy theory, the Ukrainian Embassy was working with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and in return, the American Embassy and the Obama administration actively blocked investigations in Ukraine that Giuliani claims targeted Democrats’ political allies. As with most conspiracy theories on the right, George Soros is involved in this one too. The theory posits that a Ukrainian good governance, anti-corruption group -- the Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) -- was involved in framing Manafort and was corruptly tied to an FBI agent who was investigating Manafort. Giuliani also claims that an investigation into the group was shut down due to U.S. pressure and that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine provided Ukrainian officials with a “do not prosecute” list that included people linked to AntAC. As a bonus, through the “investigation,” Giuliani claims to have been presented with evidence that then-Vice President Biden acted corruptly by withholding U.S. aid to force the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son.

Nothing about this conspiracy theory is true. First, there’s no evidence that the infamous “black ledger” was fraudulent, and several payments listed in the document have been confirmed to be accurate. The Intercept reported: “Sergii Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist and reformist member of parliament who helped publicize the off-the-books payments” said that “Giuliani ‘is a liar’ for saying that the black ledger was a forgery. ‘It is a real document, with real signatures,’ Leshchenko said in a telephone interview, explaining that it had been examined by Ukrainian law enforcement experts.” Giuliani seems to have adopted the false claim about the ledger from Manafort, whose legal team has embraced it since 2017 and whom Guiliani has been meeting with to discuss the materials.

As for Giuliani’s claims that investigations into AntAC were dropped due to political pressure, the State Department has called claims of a so-called “do not prosecute” list “complete poppycock.” And an investigation into the group’s handling of foreign aid money was widely believed to be politically motivated retaliation for the group’s anti-corruption work. Finally, while Biden did pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was roundly criticized for blocking corruption investigations, there’s no evidence that he did so to benefit his son. In reality, the push to get the prosecutor in question, Viktor Shokin, fired was a part of an anti-corruption effort by advocates and international supporters of Ukraine. The United States’ well-established position was that ousting Shokin was a critical aspect of anti-corruption measures. The investigation into the energy company whose board included Hunter Biden was long dormant, and Hunter Biden was never the subject of the investigation.

Nonetheless, Giuliani says he completed his “investigation” in March and sent his findings to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the understanding that Pompeo would investigate. (NBCNews.com, however, reported: “A source with knowledge of the events said ... that Pompeo never promised Rudy Giuliani that he would investigate the contents of the envelope or anything related to Ukraine.”) Giuliani also sent the materials to Solomon.

NBCNews.com obtained a copy of the documents that Giuliani sent to the State Department in March and reported that they contained “a glimpse of an intricate media strategy to spread the story including segments being placed on Fox News.” NBC said the “documents also show that Giuliani, through conservative writer JohnSolomon’s columns in The Hill, attempted to tie former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to the liberal donor George Soros as part of a massive conspiracy to take down Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.” The materials Giuliani sent included interview notes from interviews he conducted with then-current and former Ukrainian prosecutors that “paint the picture of the narrative that Giuliani has been pushing involving the Bidens.”

The media strategy

Giuliani and associates feed story to Solomon

Around the same time Giuliani sent his packet of materials to the State Department, he also sent the materials to Solomon, who began reporting on its contents through the opinion pages of The Hill without identifying the materials as having originated with Giuliani. Solomon’s writing for some time had focused heavily around trying to discredit the Mueller investigation and the notion that Russia meddled into the 2016 elections to help Trump. On March 20, he published the first of many scoops specifically related to Ukraine’s involvement in this effort. Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which primarily focused on Ukraine.

In his reporting, Solomon spelled out Giuliani’s conspiracy theory in detail. For instance:

He reported that Ukrainian officials claimed to have “evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes,” at least some of it related to Biden.
Solomon reported that these officials tried to “deliver their evidence to Washington” but were unable because the American ambassador (Yovanovitch) “blocked” them “from obtaining a visa” to the U.S.
He weaved an elaborate story about Americans working with Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Trump’s one-time 2016 campaign manager Manafort, in order to damage Trump.
He claimed that the infamous “black ledger” that showed Manafort had received millions in undisclosed payments from Ukrainian officials was fabricated andreleased to damage Trump. He also suggested that in January 2016, Obama’s Department of Justice pressured Ukraine to help the department investigate Manafort in response to Trump’s rise in popularity in the Republican primary race (Manafort did not join the Trump campaign until March 2016).
He strongly suggested that the Obama State Department pressured Ukrainian officials to drop an investigation into a Ukrainian good governance group linked to Soros because Soros backed Clinton.
He also claimed the U.S. ambassador’s “do not prosecute” list included people related to this organization, and he strained to link the group to the Manafort investigation by claiming that an FBI agent involved in the investigation is tied to the same group.
And, of course, he claimedthat Biden withheld a billion dollars worth of U.S. aid to shut down an investigation into Burisma Holdings and Biden’s son Hunter through his position on the company’s board.

Solomon’s reporting relies heavily on the sources Giuliani fed him. In an interview with The Washington Post, Giuliani named three current and former Ukrainian prosecutors as persons he interviewed, specifically former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko, and Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of Ukraine’s Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. Giuliani is also known to have met with a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andrii Telizhenko and is linked to Kostiantyn Kulyk -- Lutsenko’s deputy who was indicted on corruption charges in 2016. Eight of the twelve columns Solomon wrote on the topic featured at least one of these five sources.

At least three of Solomon’s columns feature information meant to undermine the validity of the Russia investigation that may have been leaked from the Ukrainian pro-Russia oligarch Dmitry Firtash’s legal team, which included diGenova and Toensing. Toensing and diGenova have been working with Firtash since at least July -- and indeed Solomon published an entire column in July based exclusively off material and anonymous sources from Firtash’s legal team. They appear to have been involved with his case much earlier than July, though.

Included in the material Giuliani sent to the State Department is a March 26 email from Solomon -- titled “Fwd: Outline of Soros reporting, including embedded documents” -- in which Solomon forwarded a draft of his article before it was published to the same three people working with Giuliani who are also known to have been working with Firtash -- Parnas, Toensing, and diGenova. The column was the first of three that mentioned Firtash, and it attempted to tie AntAC -- and through it Soros -- “to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort.” Solomon repeated the suggestion in his August 7 column on Soros’ “secret 2016 access” to State Department officials. In a fourth column, Solomon reported on an affidavit of a former Ukrainian prosecutor that he exclusively received. The affidavit was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.”

Solomon brings the conspiracy theory to Fox

The next stage in the plan involved Solomon taking his “scoop” to Fox News, specifically to SeanHannity. From March 20 -- when Solomon published his first story on the Ukraine conspiracy theory -- through October 2, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times. Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that “deep state” elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump. Giuliani also appeared on those networks frequently, clocking in at least 64 appearances on Fox News and Fox Business during that time period. Toensing and diGenova appeared over 75 times on the two networks during this period.

The fact that they were working together on these stories, or -- in the case of Toensing and diGenova -- that they were legally representing Firtash, was certainly not transparent to viewers. In perhaps the most egregious example, on the September 26 episode of Hannity, Hannity hosted Solomon to report on an affidavit he obtained from the disgraced prosecutor Shokin, who claimed he was forced to resign to stop the investigation into the company connected to Hunter Biden. Hannity then hosted diGenova and Toensing to discuss it, and the two hailed the affidavit as proof of their conspiracy theory and declared it would “shoot a hole in” Biden’s defense.

However, the affidavit states that it was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.” In other words, diGenova and Toensing were part of the legal team that produced the affidavit that Solomon later exclusively obtained, wrote up, and then took to Hannity -- a fact not mentioned by any of them. Giuliani has since repeatedly referenced this affidavit in numerous media appearances to support his claims about Biden’s alleged corruption.

Hannity repeatedly gave clues suggesting he knew the full range of stories Solomon would be reporting. For instance, despite the fact that Solomon’s March 20 column did not mention Biden or corruption, Hannity teased on his radio show that day that “I just happen to have a little birdie telling me in my ear that, well, Joe Biden may have an issue here that is bigger than anything ever alleged about Donald Trump.” On September 23, Hannity and Giuliani admitted to having talked about the Biden Ukraine story as early as January.

The payoff

Giuliani repeatedly touted and praised Solomon’s “blockbuster” reporting. He has at least twice opined that Solomon should “get a Pulitzer Prize” and has taken to Twitter to sing Solomon’s praises:

Hannity, too, repeatedly praised Solomon’s “great reporting” as he hyped Solomon’s columns. He regularly described Solomon as a “friend” of the program and declared that mainstream news outlets, like The New York Times, “peddled lies, conspiracy theories and hoax[es]” about the Russia investigation whereas Solomon “was right” all along. On April 25, Hannity asked Trump about Solomon’s and others' reporting around the Russia investigation, and the president replied: “These are great reporters. … These are people that should be getting Pulitzers.” Trump added, “These are the ones that should be winning. It sounds like big stuff. It sounds very interesting with Ukraine.”

Solomon’s efforts paid off. On October 5, Fox News confirmed that John Solomon had joined the network as a contributor. During his first appearance on Hannity as an official Fox News employee, Hannity said: “John Solomon, welcome to the family. It’s been a long time coming, sir.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/giulianis-ukrainian-born-clients-arrested-on-campaign-finance-charges-dined-with-trump-in-the-white-house-after-showering-gop-campaign-committees-with-nearly-500000/

no lnx

Former Trump attorney John Dowd reveals men arrested on campaign finance charges ‘assisted’ Giuliani in his work representing the president

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement October 10, 2019

The former lead lawyer for President Donald Trump, representing him during the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia and Trump, John Dowd, is now representing the two Ukrainian-born men arrested overnight attempting to leave the country. The two men were arrested in relation to a campaign finance investigation on charges that include conspiracy, falsifying records, and falsifying records to the FEC.

The men also worked with Giuliani to help him try to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

The former lead lawyer for President Donald Trump, representing him during the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia and Trump, John Dowd, is now representing the two Ukrainian-born men arrested overnight attempting to leave the country. The two men were arrested in relation to a campaign finance investigation on charges that include conspiracy, falsifying records, and falsifying records to the FEC.

The men also worked with Giuliani to help him try to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

Dowd in a statement says his clients, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, “assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump.”

That’s huge, given the charges against them.

“Mr. Parnas and Mr. Furman,” Dowd continues, “have also been represented by Mr. Giuliani in connection with their personal and business affairs.”

“They also assisted Joseph DiGenova [sic] and Victoria Toensing in their law practice.”

Both diGenova and Toensing are Fox News regulars who defend Trump on-air. They were rumored to have been hired by the White House to assist Trump with his defense during the Mueller investigation but that appeared to have been thwarted by Trump himself.

Politico congressional reporter Kyle Cheney makes this important – and damning – observation:

@kyledcheney

IMPORTANT: Fruman and Parnas' lawyer (former Trump lawyer John Dowd) just laid out all of their connections to Trump world (in his famous Comic Sans letter).

It's not just Giuliani but DiGenova, Toensing -- and they even helped with Trump-related legal work. >>>

View image on Twitter

Kyle Cheney

@kyledcheney

If prosecutors are correct, this means two people who worked on legal matters for Trump were simultaneously running a straw donor scheme on behalf of foreign interests.

2,419

8:04 AM - Oct 10, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

1,055 people are talking about this

That, too, is huge.

Here’s Dowd’s statement, which was in the form of a letter sent to the House Intelligence Committee:

Kyle Cheney

@kyledcheney

IMPORTANT: Fruman and Parnas' lawyer (former Trump lawyer John Dowd) just laid out all of their connections to Trump world (in his famous Comic Sans letter).

It's not just Giuliani but DiGenova, Toensing -- and they even helped with Trump-related legal work. >>>

3/18

scrape the barrel to stock the swamp, booted, then recycled by rudy?

---

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/fox-news-outs-two-network-analysts-for-working-off-the-books-with-trump-and-giuliani-to-find-biden-dirt/

kos

Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace broke a bit of genuine news on Sunday morning when he reported that two of Fox News’ own frequent guests and Trump supporters may themselves be enmeshed in the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

Lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing have been working with Rudy Giuliani in his attempts to conduct opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden, said Wallace. “According to a top U.S. official, all three were working off the books apart from the administration. The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.” This is a significant nugget for several reasons. First, Rudy Giuliani is still flatly denying he worked with other lawyers to collect Biden “dirt”; the Fox News anchor is therefore calling Giuliani a liar. Well, even more of a liar.

And second, the top-of-the-program callout of two of the network’s own frequent guests and analysts for undisclosed, “off the books” involvement in one of the scandals the network has been hosting them to opine on is, regardless of the obvious conflict of interest, nearly unheard of. From Lou Dobbs to Sean Hannity, the network has taken a notably lax attitude when it comes to network mouths splitting their time between the network and the needs of the Trump administration. They normally wouldn’t so much as peep about overtly conflicted guests!

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/fox-news-host-laura-ingrahams-guest-says-the-country-is-in-a-civil-war-and-people-should-buy-guns/

On a disturbing episode of Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s “The Laura Ingraham Show Podcast” Thursday, guest Joe diGenova echoed the calls of some of the darkest parts of the far-right movement in the United States.

“We are in a civil war in this country,” diGenova, as first pointed out by Media Matters for America. “There’s two standards of justice, one for Democrats one for Republicans. The press is all Democrat, all liberal, all progressive, all left — they hate Republicans, they hate Trump. So the suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future in this country is over. It’s not going to be. It’s going to be total war. And as I say to my friends, I do two things-- I vote and i buy guns [video]

One particularly odd fact about his claims is that they seemed to come out of nowhere. Ingraham had just ended a diatribe about how liberals supposedly shifted attention away from discussions about the imperiled Democratic leadership in Virginia government to allegations of a hate crime made by actor Jussie Smollett, who has since been arrested on charges of filing a false police report. It was a bizarre and twisted theory, completely out of line with reality. but it had nothing to do with a supposed “civil war.”

But for many on the fringes of the far right, casual talk about political divisions in the United States easily slips into discussions of open warfare and violence.

President Donald Trump, it should be noted, once announced that he was hiring diGenova for his legal team, but he never came on board.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted on Twitter that a man prosecutors say was a domestic terrorist, Chris Hasson, had, according to a court filing, googled “civil war if Trump impeached.”

“Where could he possibly get such an insane idea?” Hayes asked — and then he linked to diGenova’s comments. “Oh.”

Hasson was also found with an apparent “hit list” of Democratic politicians and media figures, according to prosecutors — a list that included Hayes.

thug swarm pension plan ever trump:

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/06/08/fox-joe-digenova-celebrates-doj-seizing-new-york-times-reporters-records-they-should-go-after/220405

Trump this week seemed to hire controversial attorney Joseph diGenova, a regular Fox News guest who is known for spouting conspiracy theories about the “deep state” conspiring to frame the president for crimes.

However, CNN is now reporting that Trump isn’t sure diGenova and his wife, fellow lawyer and Fox News regular Victoria Toensing, are the right people for the job after meeting with them just once.

“The Thursday meeting was the first time the husband-and-wife legal team met with the President since the Monday announcement,” CNN reports. “One source said that while Trump liked their message, the President is not convinced they are right for the legal jobs.”

In particular, CNN’s sources say the Trump White House has concerns over whether “diGenova can reasonably claim a lack of conflict when his wife represents clients like Mark Corrallo, who has spoken to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team about how the President and his team responded to the revelations regarding the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting that Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign officials had with a group of Russians.”

On Thursday, top White House lawyer John Dowd resigned after he reportedly grew tired of Trump not listening to his legal advice. Were Trump to renege on his plans to hire diGenova, it would lead to even more chaos in his legal team as he prepares to face down special counsel Robert Mueller and his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

https://www.alternet.org/cornered-mueller-trump-hires-hatchet-man

With the hiring of talking head attorney Joseph diGenova for his legal team, President Trump signaled Monday how he plans to fend off special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation: with a conspiracy theory.

Trump’s previous defenses have been overwhelmed by an avalanche of facts. The president’s claim that the charges of collusion between his campaign and the Russian government are a “hoax” and “fake news” have been refuted by guilty pleas from three former top aides, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Richard Gates. All three have admitted making false statements to Mueller’s investigators.

The indictment of 13 Russians for interfering in the 2016 election is replete with references to collaborating Americans "known and unknown to the grand jury." In light of Mueller's recent subpoena for the records of the Trump Organization, those words elevate the threat to the White House.

By firing career FBI agent Andrew McCabe, denouncing Mueller's alleged "Witch Hunt" and hiring diGenova, Trump is doubling down on the theory that a cabal of liberal FBI agents and Justice Department officials have invented the charges against him. DiGenova will fill in the details.

Hatchet Man

DiGenova is a theatrical character. The son of an opera singer, he grew up fascinated by politics. He worked on the Church Committee, which investigated the CIA in the mid-1970s. He became chief of staff for Republican Senator Charles Mathias, a moderate, and then U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. In the 1980s, he launched the corruption investigations that would eventually ensnare D.C. Mayor Marion Barry.

“Barry didn’t understand that law enforcement is a continuum, and that there are a lot of people who care about corruption,” diGenova once said, an observation that also applies to his newest client.

DiGenova can’t help Trump and Co. much on the legal front. All the president’s men are learning that bleating “Benghazi" or “email server” may appeal to Fox News and Breitbart editors, but provides no protection from a subpoena or jail term. And so guilty pleas and cooperating witnesses are proliferating.

“The nation, in fact, could conceivably benefit from the indictment of a president. It would teach the valuable civics lesson that no one is above the law.”DiGenova first emerged as a partisan hatchet man during Bill Clinton’s presidency when he was deeply offended by the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. At that time, diGenova argued that a sitting U.S. president could be indicted. In the Wall Street Journal he wrote:

Since then diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, also an attorney, have built a law practice while forming a partisan attack team.

Toensing has been pushing the Uranium One conspiracy theory in order to undermine Mueller, talking about it no less than 18 times on Fox News. The Uranium One theory contends that Hillary Clinton approved the sale of America's uranium to Russia in order to pay back a Clinton Foundation crony.

Toensing's hobby horse is hobble by the facts: nine federal agencies approved the sale. Clinton was not involved in the decision, and no uranium left the United States. (See Politifact for the details.)

The beauty of this defense is that nobody in the Justice Department has found much evidence to support it. The texts, to which diGenova referred, have already leaked. While they disclosed some anti-Trump exchanges among FBI officials no longer involved in Mueller's investigation, they revealed no conspiring or violations of the law. The absence of evidence is cited by diGenova as proof that the Justice Department and the FBI are biased.DiGenova has already weaponized his conspiracy theory. In January, he told Fox News, “There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton, and if she didn't win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,” he said. “Everything we have seen from these texts, and from all the facts developing, shows that the FBI and senior DOJ officials conspired to violate the law, and deny Donald Trump his civil rights.”

Target: Wray

Now that Trump is no longer pretending to cooperate with Mueller, we can expect two themes to emerge from the White House defense team.

First, FBI director Christopher Wray will be subject to the McCabe treatment: vilification in the conservative media, followed by firing.

“Wray's performance has been extremely unimpressive, with regard to how to lead an agency during a time of crisis, how to respond publicly, how to respond to Congress, how to carry out your duties,” diGenova said. “It has been an abysmal performance by Director Wray. “

Just as firing McCabe was a way of testing if any important Republicans would object to Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department (answer: no), the smearing of Wray will measure if any influential Republicans will object to the firing of Mueller. (Answer: probably not.)

Second, we can expect to hear a chorus of demands, first from the right-wing media platforms that the Justice Department must appoint a special prosecutor or impanel a grand jury to look into the unsupported allegations of an anti-Trump conspiracy.

“We're long past the time when that should have been done,” diGenova said in January. “I hope they have. If they haven't I can't imagine they are not about to do so shortly."

When no such thing happens—because there is no evidence to justify it—Trump can claim that the "system is rigged” against him. Then he will have both the excuse to fire Mueller and an army of apologists who will say the Justice Department's “witch hunt” gave him no choice.

But Trump has tweeted about witch hunts before, with telling results.

In 2011, Trump said that sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain amounted to a “witch hunt." In fact, Cain had paid settlements to two women who accused him of sexual misconduct.

In 2015, Trump endorsed the idea that New York state’s investigation of the ripoff factory known as Trump University was a "Liberal Witch Hunt." In November 2016, he paid $25 million to settle the litigation.

When Trump and diGenova talk about a witch hunt, chances are the target is already in deep legal trouble.

hmmn, bs wacko

http://winsipcuster.blogspot.com/2016/10/james-comeys-feud-with-joseph-digenova.html

quote by digen]

An Interview with Lowell P. Wigglesworth

by Fabian Colbachi CPW News Service

The conservative Judicial Watch assembled a panel of five to review the recent developments in the Hillary Clinton email scandal.

Moderated by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, the panel included Paul Schweizer the author of Clinton Cash,Jerome Corsi,author of *Partners In Crime: The Clinton's Scheme to Monetize the White House for Personal Profit,

Christopher J. Farrell, a member of the OSS Societyand Investigative Reporters and Editorswhose 1996 debate between Gary Webb and the Washington Post's Jeff Leen was moderated by the University of Missouri's Professor Emeritus of Journalism, Steve Weinberg, attempted to skewer Webb's reporting for the San Jose Mercury Newsand his book Dark Alliance. Also on the panel was former U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. and founding partner of the K Street legal firm of DiGenova & Toensing, Joseph E. DiGenova.

The subject of the Clinton emails and their handling by a sitting and retired Secretary of State is a significant aspect of the 2016 Presidential campaign and ranks right up there with the 2000 and 2004 GWB Texas Air National Guard Memo story in this author's opinion. However, it now appears evident that not only are the concerned members of Judicial Watch correct in their assessment of the Clinton's criminality, but in their evaluation of a two-tiered legal and justice system that in the words of South Carolina Congressman, Trey Gowdy, is "suppose to be blind".

To better understand what is going on with respect to the Clinton email scandal historian Lowell P. Wigglesworth has agreed to be interviewed.

FC: Do you agree with Judicial Watch in their assessment of the Clintons?

LPW: Which part?

FC: Start where you'd like.

LPW: Are the Clinton's crooks? You'd have to be blind, deaf and really, really dumb not to so conclude. But the problem is bigger than Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. The Democratic National Convention invited to speak the granddaughter of the Nicaraguan dictator whose soldiers blew away the ABC newsman, Bill Stewart, in 1979 as he investigated Anastosio Samoza's relationship to the Contras, to Iran and probably to Samoza's partners in the banana business with GWB's Yale fraternity brothers, Linden and Neal Blue. The Blue brothers made their fortunes in uranium like that Hillary Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham, manages at UraniumOne a fuel and weapon that has helped make the British royal family's estate grow from $500 million to $14 billion. Fuel, depleted uranium weapons and the Blue's General Atomic Inc.'s, Predator and Reaper drones. The message was pretty obvious. The gloves are off. The RNC opens up with blood-sport cage-fighting entrepreneur, Dana White. The Democrats with wheelchair bound Anastasia Somoza in keeping with their more compassionate image. But wait! That's the family of the murderous Nicaraguan dictator that FDR called "a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch." The message? "You squeal on us and we'll squeal on you!" It was, from a Madison Avenue spin meister's viewpoint, a brilliant ploy. It sent a signal, a message to the despots that contribute to the Clinton Foundation...."you are welcome here. The U.S.A. is safe haven." On the other hand, it told the NeoCon's campfire sitters that they weren't doing anything that the Reagan/Bushies didn't do in Central America. We had only to remember LBJ's war in Vietnam and Obama's continuation of the Bush NeoCon's policies in the Middle East to know that. Of course, the DNC convention had other issues like Julian Assange's little bombshell that may show up again before November 8. This crap is what makes the election years in any nation a potential mine field not just for the informed, but for the innocent who happen to step into it.

The nation is on a precipice. I saw a homeless man at a Detroit intersection with a sign of a two-headed snake. On one snake head was "Trump" and other snake was "Hillary". Across the body was "2016". At the bottom it said "Help me, please! They won't!"

So when Joe DiGenova says that the nation is in trouble it's much broader, wider and deeper than he is saying. Hell, old Joe cut his teeth working in the Church Commission, with government's approach to the Teamsters whose Washington legal voice was Edward Bennett Williams whose client list on both sides of the political isle and $1000/hour fees dispels any nothing that justice is blind. Both Joe and EBW were dutiful Roman Catholic educated parochialists that remined me in some ways of Joseph McCarthy and Joseph P. Kennedy whose boys appeared to have left the reservation, or maybe not. It is hard to fathom how they ended up so far to the left of their father when he was recalled as British Ambassador during World War II for his Nazi sympathies while the British royals were, thanks to Wallis Simpson Windsor, the Godmother of Elizabeth Kauffman Bush, GHWB's sister-in-law and Senator Joseph McCarthy was the Godfather for one of the Kennedy boys, Bobby, I think....none of whom really resisted the image of Camelot in America....not exactly reconcilable to American democracy except for the image of a round table, but around which sat not freely elected leader but the military....the noblemen/oligarchical kingly appointed knights. You cannot find a NeoCon cause that these panelists didn't like in the 80's and 90's and by 2000 they were eating the NeoCon agenda up and spreading its agenda, all of the Judicial Watch panelists.... the repeal of Glass-Steagall and Bush's yellow cake bamboozle. They topped that yellow cake off with massive scoops of ice cream and put a cherry on top.....the evolution of new weaponry including eye-in-the-sky drone strikes that insured massive war profits and firing enriched depleted uranium shells that had an ungodly half-life.

FC:General Smedley Butler blew the whistle on a real business plot that was echoed in films like Dr. Strangelove or Seven Days In May,the plotters with clearly fascist leanings that would have aligned with Joseph P. Kennedy and Wallis Simpson Windsor's Nazi leanings. So you are saying that JFK and Bobby's emphasis on civil rights or ending the war in Vietnam would have been to jump their father's ship after he had negotiated JFK's 1960 victory with that celebrated deal with the Chicago underworld who promised to deliver the vote for Jack?

LPW:There are a number of celebrated cases of defiance by the children of major military industrialist insiders that sends shivers down the spines of their parents and friends. Take Jim Morrison, lead singer for the Doors whose Admiral father was in charge of the Gulf of Tonkin Affair. There's William Ayers, the Chicago Weather Underground member and bomber, friend of Obama, whose father was on the boards of a number of major defense contractors. Patty Hearst is often cited. There's Albert Maher the close friend of singer Bob Dylan who clearly jump the family reservation and organized a banned trip to Cuba at the height of the Cold War.

FC: Where is Obama in this mix?

LPW:He has essentially avoided talking about Glass-Steagall. He has continued the NeoCon agenda in the Middle East. Remember that Michelle and Barack met at the Springfield, Illinois law firm of Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln who was nearly mad after Abe's assassination, Sidley Austin, that merged in 2000 with the New York firm of Brown & Wood that was a leading law firm for National City Bank against which Smedly Butler rails in the his book War Is A Racket. Sidley Austin was a Republican law firm and the newly merged firm had moved into the World Trade Center in New York in 2000 with 600 employees only one of which died on 911. Remember, too, that the first Scottish Rite President of the United States was Andrew Johnson who was initiated in a ceremony by White House insider Benjamin Brown French, but into a monarchial tradition of Jacobite origins and not the York Rite Masonry of Washington and Franklin and the other Founding Fathers.

Of course, I have written extensively about the fact that public motives for the U.S. Civil War over which Lincoln presided were not the U.S. power elites' real motive. That motive was the rail route to the Pacific and the China Trade.

Today's endless war on terror is the prescription for the perpetual racket of war that brought forward Smedley Butler. It has been convincingly argued that when in the 1930's Lowell Thomas made a big tour of Britain with a film tour lionizing T.E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", for the English Speaking Union of the U.S. and Britain with significant support from William Howard Taft who joined his fathers' Cincinnati Scottish Rite temple in 1908, that they were prepping Lawrence and Britain for Butler's counter-part in England, a role that Lawrence, like Butler, refused. That would have meant that Rudolf Hess' midnight flight to the estate of Lord Hamilton, of whose family Lawrence was a part, was doomed and that Churchill's parliamentary democracy would not be a nut so easily cracked. Can you now see how Joe Kennedy would have been aligned in the U.S. with the business plotters who were tempting Butler and how he and Wallis Simpson who met her husband, Prince Edward Windsor of the German Saxe-Gotha-Coburg clan at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego, California near the USN base where Wallis' goddaughter, Elizabeth Kauffman Bush, sister-in-law of George Herbert Walker Bush trained as the USN's first "frogman"?

FC: So neither the Clinton Dems or Bush, now Trump, Reps are unbiased?

LPW: They are all involved in what DiGenova calls a Potemkin City cover-up. Neither side wants us Americans to know just how bad things have become, but for Christ's sake isn't it like, OBVIOUS!?

We have a 20 trillion dollar debt that can be hung on the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, the arrival of Bush in 2000, the war racketeering all of which both sides have now shown they endorse. It's one big slimy cluster fu......well, a cloistered, copulative assembly of smegma lathered criminals awash in the camouflaging suds hiding their co-equal deficiencies and each claiming that the other is not performing to expectations. We have both of the Bush and Clinton cabals promoting the wholesale disembowelment of the American middle-class with the giant sucking sound that Perot warned us was coming.....while, hell, Perot sold EDS to India and while Facebook imports from India workers to the USA to undercut those high tech jobs we were told would replace those lost to NAFTA and GATT.

Glass-Steagall was to the American middle class what a cactus thorn in the beak of a Darwin Finch was to its survival. It was an economic survival tool. A bank is suppose to be safe! Glass-Steagall was forged by two younger brothers whose legislation compartmentalized the bank the absence of which led to the Great Depression. It was to protect their hard earned deposits from criminals like we have seen with Wells Fargo's fraud and theft. If Glass and Steagal had been part of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, they would have been the first to axe the king's sleazy neck. Now, we see that Bank of America that bought with their bail out money Merrill Lynch, formerly Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith with its connections to Mrs. Barbara Pierce Bush. Merrill along with Wells Fargo were part of the too big to fail culture of U.S. banking that threatened our very existence and which Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt would have gladly flattened. The 1980's S&L crisis was the dress rehearsal for the 2008 sub-prime housing bubble and mixed in was the WorldCom and Enron debacles that sent to prison Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay, Bush's choice for Energy Secretary, like the CEO Chairman of the board of Wells Fargo should experience for his lawlessness and go to jail, too.

FC: That purchase of Merrill by Bank of America was forbidden under Glass-Steagall and Hank Paulson supposedly forced the money on BofA. These banks are connected to the Vatican and the old European monarchical, pyramidal and oligarchical models of government?

LPW: Decidedly so and never forget that Hitler's SS was modeled on the pyramidal authoritarianism of the Jesuits and that Allen and Avery Dulles were hooked at the hip with the Vatican for ratlines that delivered Nazis to the West after the war to help fight communism. Communism. Which time has taught us doesn't work, and which Anthony Sutton long argued was the left side of a bamboozling dialectic that the rich and powerful created to spawn worldwide conflict and managed like Thomas Edison did the plus and minus poles of a Dynamo.

FC: DiGenova says that Clinton is the problem. You say it's bigger than that. Just how big is it?

LPW: Well, let's start with DiGenova's statement that the FBI isn't trustworthy. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Federal. Let's consider that South Carolina's Congressman Trey Gowdy is absolutely dumfounded that such a bamboozling by Comey has come into his purview. But consider this. Gowdy graduated from Baylor University in Texas where the college President who investigated Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky and other debacles if not debaucheries, Kenneth Starr, formerly at Pepperdine, just became the focus of his own mismanagement of women's issues on the Baylor campus. Does anyone tell you of Starr's connections to Cornelius Vander Starr, founder of AIG? But there's a lot more than that. Waco is in McClennan County, home of the GWB Crawford White House and also of Buffalo Airlines which was owned by the major middleman in the Iran-Contra weapons shipments, rich Iranian mule, Farhad Azima. Mr. Azima is not only a major Clinton Foundation contributor, but his attorney was Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, God rest his deep-throated soul, and DiGenova and his wife not only saw the Iran-Contra affair as a small blip in U.S. diplomatic blunders, but DiGenova worked closely with Fred Thompson.

FC: Senator Fred Thompson the actor from the American Enterprise Institute, the Counsel on Foreign Relations and the T.V. series Law & Order?

*LPW: Lot of laws, not much order. In fact, you could say that we have planned disorder. Disorder is the name of the game. A nation built on life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, you would think....is a place of law and order. So why isn't it?

FC: I have my suspicions.

LPW: I have read your stuff. You have a lot more than that.

FC: I believe that Comey knows that if he takes a hard line he or his family is in danger. I believe that's why H. Ross Perot got out of U.S. politics altogether. I believe that there is a power behind the public curtain and that it does not want that curtain pulled back. Is that wrong?

LPW: That's right, but don't ask Noam Chomsky or the other Ivy League Delphians to direct you to the truth of the matter and to clearly define it. Dissent is allowed within limits. Anthony Sutton dissented by rebelling and leaving the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which by the way, owns the personal diaries of Joseph Goebbels, but they did everything in their power to sideline Sutton.

Col. Daniel Marvin dissented and in Trey Gowdy's home state of South Carolina Marvin, a warrior who refused to acquiesce to the CIA's command to depose Prince Norodom Sihanouk, not only survived to tell the story, but was sued by the U.S. Special Forces Association for slander and won his law suit. Bernie Sanders took Hillary Clinton to task for using Henry Kissinger as a serious foreign policy consultant while she was Secretary of State. Marvin's commanders to pull off the Cambodian job would have started with Kissinger. There are good people everywhere and some really slimy ones. You can't tell if Marvin's CIA handlers were pushing for regime change in Cambodia for the import of American-style shared governance, itself a lame brained idea hiding the real motive or because he sat on the edge of the Golden Triangle, the poppy plantation that evolved like the Columbian black-tar poppy plantations to compete with the Pakistani and Afghani stuff over which the British fought the Ottoman Empire for control.

FC: Trey Gowdy went to school in Waco, but that was a long time ago. Do you think he is aware of just how events there influenced the FBI's rank and file?

LPW: Are you thinking of the Davidians?

FC: Yes.

LPW: The Branch Davidians were there and running guns in a county where Farhad Azima was doing Iran-Contra. Meanwhile in Mena, Arkansas Clinton had to have been running cover for the same operation? The FBI was totally compromised in that deal, but hey, what about Ruby Ridge? What about the assent of William Sessions to the Director of the FBI over the body of murdered Texas Judge John Howland Wood, shot and killed by Woody Harrelson's father, Harrelson heading off to a Presbyterian College, Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana on a scholarship. Wood was a bigot, but a law and order, anti-drug bigot known as "Maximum John". Woody's father's "hit" money and actions were paid for by the Chagra Brothers from El Paso and Juarez? You'll have to read Gary Cartwright's book Dirty Dealing to understand that the Chagra's weren't Mexicans that Trump is so worried about, but Lebanese drug and weapons smugglers. Middle Easterners. The Southern border of the USA has been a porous gunpowder pumping point since before Spanish Hebrew, Jacob Di Cordova, made his 1849 map of Texas and before Bagdad was the port city at the mouth of the Rio Grand River on the early caravan route from what today is Brownsville to Baja on the Pacific with the Middle Eastern poppy fields of the Golden Crescent beyond just waiting to be dumped for other goodies in China. It was there in the other Baghdad, Iraq that the Sephardic Israelite, David Sassoon's opium route through Basra would feed the British lust for empire before the U.S.'s New England Brahmins took it over and with the Castillian's and French lusting after the same prizes.

FC: I'm glad Woody found a good home after all of that.

LPW: Hanover, you mean? That Presbyterian school was founded by folks from North Carolina which was a Jacobite and Tory stronghold during the American Revolution. Flora MacDonald who saved "Bonnie Prince Charlie" in Scotland and immigrated to North Carolina with her husband and both were Jacobite Presbyterians which meant that they favored a monarchy even if they had to accept Bonnie Prince Charlie the Roman Catholic interloper to the British throne which had been vacated unwillingly by Charles I thanks to Oliver Cromwell the anti-monarchial Congregationalist. They would have definitely been American Federalists and show just how, for example, CIA Director Alan Dulles and his cousin who converted from Presbyterianism, Avery Dulles, became the first Cardinal without first becoming a Roman Bishop. Not ironically, the Founding Fathers rejected primogeniture law upon which the British monarchy was based with its first-born favoritism and opted for gavelkind law. While academics like Professor Jonathan Turley, a self-avowed anti-Jeffersonian, Federalist who taught at Tulane in New Orleans where both Albert Pike and Jacob De Cordoba heavily influenced Jacobite sympathies within a receptive culture, Jefferson had, at the instructions of the First Continental Congress, written primogeniture, first-born, dynastic, pyramidal biases out of U.S. law. I cannot tell from an academic's positions on torture or the death penalty or Guantanamo or even free speech where they stand on this essential element in the U.S. model of governance. Blacks in America know what it's like to be late arrivers in a world where everyone was once a "later arriver" and that was essentially what the American colonists rebelled over....being dominated by the first arrivers, in England and Europe the kings, who always take the lions share of the resources which up until we codified their rebellion in law....had no chance of anything, but serfdom. Their wars with indigenous indian monarchs were basically battles over the same thing they left in Europe. No wonder Congress is so damn disillusioned and confused when standing as they are on the holy grail, but feel it fading beneath them to what? The past. The U.S. Congress is in essence the embodiment of shared governance as the Founders envisioned it and they are being neutered. Can a Federalist like Jonathan Turley....joined as he is by the likes of C. Boyden Gray and his father, Gordon Gray, who stripped J. Robert Oppenheimer of his national security clearance for wanting to democratize peaceful nuclear energy while the Grays were wealthy heirs of the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company that democratized lung cancer....renew the vision? Consider that that Gordon Gray's work of spreading cancer paralleled the criminal Pruitt-Igoe undisclosed radiation experiments in the 60's and 70's, built as Pruitt-Igoe was by Minoru Yamasaki the architect for the Bin Ladens and also the architect of the World Trade Center.

So Woody went to Hanover, but "Presbyterian" come from the Greek word Presbuteros which means "elder" and the whole pyramidal, monarchial and potentially despotic model was based on elder-worship. That is quite clear. Flora MacDonald's Presbyterianism claimed to have flatten the pyramid, but some Presbyterians didn't flatten it! Federalist claim that they are the leadership backbone of the republic and they are correct that the masses can, as with the Peasants Revolt in Europe, become bruts, but kings weren't? Same with all models in the Dark Ages including the Roman Catholicism of the Inquisition and Sharia models of government that are primogeniture biased and the Saudi royals like it that way. They don't have the Bible's "the first shall be last and last first" and as Mario Puzo did in his best selling book The Godfather with Michael Corleone being a last born and leader, like Israel's King David, leaders by default, but quite capable. There sat the inclusion that opened up through the Reformation and Enlightenment the shackled minds and hearts that created a new age. There is an irreconcilable difference between Sharia and the parallel primogeniture laws of Europe which in America is resurrected in family dynasties and corporate boardrooms....even the Presidency from time to time....Joe Kennedy practiced it like a Tudor king, Bush, too, and Trump if he's elected and the Judeo-Christian tradition of the Enlightment and Reformation gets cooked when this becomes the norm. Society turns in on itself as in the Dark Ages and I think in 2016 its getting darker by the day.

The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall by first-born Bill Clinton turned back the progress upon which American democracy was first built.

FC: I know that you have written extensively about this untaught part of our history. You say that this is part of the reason that our students aren't taught about two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner, General Smedley Darlington Butler, who said that most of our current history is based on the racket of war.

LPW: Not just Butler. Read C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite. Mills lived in Texas, taught at Columbia University in New York. Go listen to former NATO Commander, General Wesley Clark and his story on how he came to learn of the NeoCon's Middle East agenda at the Pentagon. One thing is clear. The American "arsenal of freedom" has become the "arsenic of freedom" and it is that freedom that is under assault. The FBI has been a part of the problem for a very long time, just like Michael Rupert said of the CIA at that Bill Clinton-called town meeting in South Central LA after Gary Webb's reporting shook the nation and the CIA Director, John Deutsch, showed up to calm nerves before he, like Colin Powell, David Petraeus and now, Hillary, walked off with classified information....which is sometimes difficult to know just which file to put it into. Ruppert, who claimed that Webb's two shots to the head were definitely a suicide also killed himself.

It was this FBI that was in place during the Tuskegee Experiment, the Pruitt-Igoe Experiment, which if you are unaware of that one you are in for a real eye-opener that remains untaught in our schools like Smedley Butler's story. This FBI was in place during the Rudy Ridge murder of Rebecca Weaver. It was murder. There's no way around it.

FC:Help me understand something. You said that Oppenheimer appeared before the Gordon Gray Committee and stripped of security for wanting to promote peaceful uses of nuclear energy. I have read that the key witnesses to that witch hunt were Rice University President Kenneth Pitzer and William Liscum Borden. That Pitzer was a chemist working for the fossil fuel industry in Houston and that Borden was a Yale grad who was working on the 1940 Yale Political Union debate led by William Gardiner "Ted" White who was opposed the America First Committee and the American Liberty League fascist isolationists who would have aligned with British Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. I also know that Al Qaeda was formed in Egypt with help from the Muslim Brotherhood and our CIA to create fighters against Russia in Afghanistan and that Houston's Joanne King Herrin lived there, her husband's name on buildings at Rice University and that he had created Houston Natural Gas that created Enron, god-bless its bleeding soul. Is that right?

LPW:Spot on. Now consider that when the 911 Commission's Hamilton Committee is laying out the Official 911 Report, a key player is from the U.S. State Department, David Rhodes, a Rice University Graduate who also worked on Iran nuclear agreement. He's also the brother of the President of CBS, David Rhodes, and CBS's Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, had in late 1999 and for sure in 2000 the GWB Ellington Field, Texas Air National Guard memo story that they waited to totally botch in 2004. Meanwhile, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN....they all follow the proper line, which is clearly improper on any other planet in the universe. David Rhodes will be the assistant to State Department manager and firewall of the Benghazi report to Congress. Something that sends Trey Gowdy, Jim Jordon and the other Republican Congressmen up the tree.

FC: Who was William Gardiner "Ted" White?

LPW: He was a Yale grad ahead of GHWB who having read the reporting of Louis Nizer opposed American isolationism that had the US companies like those being supplied by Hitler oil agent in Texas, William Rhodes Davis, who was buying oil for the Reich up until Pearl Harbor. Ted White was also the tailgunner on the Barbara II, the WWII torpedo bomber of GHWB when it went down at Chi Chi Jima in the South Pacific. White wasn't suppose to have been the tailgunner that day. It was a story refute by another tailgunner, Chester Magurski, before his death.

FC: What about FINCEN?

LPW: The big one!

FC: It's huge isn't it?

LPW: Enormous. Where to being? Let's start with Serpico.

FC: The movie? Al Pacino? The real Frank Serpico?

LPW: Frank. An honest NYPD cop. He reported the corruption in the narcotics division and runs it up the flagpole. The Knapp Commission was formed. Its prosecutor wasn't Trey Gowdy, obviously. It was a young Rudy Giuliani. The FBI liaison to the Knapp Commission wasn't Whitey Bolger's buddy, John Connolly, but it was Brian Bruh who would go on to be the FBI liaison for the FINCEN or Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

FC: But Giuliani cleaned up the NYPD.

LPW: Did he? His police commissioner who was touted as the next Director of Homeland Security by GWB, Bernie Kerik, went to jail for corruption. Frank Serpico was so sure that the clean up was complete that he moved to the mountains of Switzerland under an assumed name and now we have Hillary, Trump, Comey, Giuliani....and don't forget across the bridge in New Jersey, Chris Christi all ready to descend on Washington.

FC: And FINCEN?

LPW: You'll have to ask the NYFD fire fighters and their families what they think of Giuliani. FINCEN was commissioned to investigate Saudi influence peddling in America and in 1992 when it was focusing in on the roommate of GWB from his Texas Air National Guard days when the FBI stood down FINCEN. Why? Because it was getting too close to the agent in the USA for the Saudi royal family and their banker, Khalid Bin Mahfouz. Would that investigation have found money going to terrorists in the USA? You aren't suppose to ask that! You also aren't suppose to ask about whether it was Saudis that took down the WTC, either. You are to accept the fact. That's a wonderfully powerful sword blade to hold over the rich and powerful Saudi royal family's collective necks, isn't it?!

FC: The roommate was James R. Bath whose fuel company at Ellington Field, Houston was sold to the Carlyle Group? It was only a few miles from the Bin Laden owned Houston Gulf Manor Airport where the NASA astronauts parked their private planes. Both men were on the Iran-Contra bank board....BCCI....Bank of Commerce and Credit International....the one also known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals. And you wonder what Wells Fargo is up to with it banking history? Quit wondering!

LPW: Right, and 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and we invade Iraq.....if you can believe the official story which a growing and impressive list of skeptics....David Ray Griffin.....Morgan Reynolds and over three thousand Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth have questioned quite effectively.

FC: What is at stake in this battle between Clinton and Judicial Watch?

LPW: The Clintons are interlopers....hillbillies from Arkansas who saw an opening and invited themselves in. So long as they did the order's bidding they got their cut, but that's not what they or the order likes. They both want it all. But the ruling order is itself in jeopardy. It evolved out of the early American independence that was the irresistible force of the American experience, but they are coming up against an older immovable object of the old European top-down, pyramidal, autocratic, oligarchical elements of the old Hapsburg and Prussian empires reimagined who stood up in some ways together against the old Ottoman Empire whose opioids made empires and, eventually, in China Mao's Cultural Revolution. This was what H. Ross Perot was warning against and it was a lot bigger than a simple sucking sound of U.S. jobs leaving the country. They say that the problem with Christianity and the universal golden rule and as Ayn Rand counseled....."achievement without plunder" has never really been practiced. The world is waiting and the world is losing.

FC: So what can Americans do?

LPW: Don't do as the 49er's are doing and squat during the National Anthem. Stand up proudly and put your hand over your heart and hold with your left hand a flag that you carry with you always. A flipped flag. A flipped American flag the universal symbol of distress and cry for assistance. The American experiment was and is the best thing going anywhere. Embrace it. Clean it up, but don't abandon it. Share the governance. That'll scare the holy hell out of them and force them back under the rocks where they belong.

FC: Is Comey in danger?

LPW: The leading attorney for the most astounding array of criminals and Washington politicians has been Edward Bennett Williams. I'd put both Williams and DiGenova in the same circle. People died around Williams all the time. People die around Bill and Hillary, but they died around the Bush NeoCons, too. I believe that the U.S. is finding the traditions of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and the founding Fathers being assaulted by a resurrected Jacobite element in America that's as hard to kill off as a vampire. Good grief....that Jacobite element that was all about oligarchy found its way into the KKK, even into the Scottish Rite Masons through Albert Pike, through the Good Fellows with Jacob De Cordoba in Texas, and certainly through the history of the Roman Catholic Church, and even the Jacobite Presbyterians of which Flora MacDonald was one.....think about that when you think of Woody Harrelson who was cast in the Cormac McCarthy film No Country For Old Men opposite Anton Chigurh. Sound like Chagra who hired Woody's father? McCarthy knows and his apologist at Yale, Harold Bloom, has canonized McCarthy's book, Blood Meridian, as equal to Melville's Moby Dick. It's not of course. The Pequod went down with the captain's quarters. McCarthy affirms the current status quo, but offers the only solution....the 30 Years War solution...."War IS God!" he proclaims. Music to Alan Dulles ears or his cousin, Cardinal Avery Dulles. The Jesuits, by the way, find that one of their schools just hired Melissa Click the woman at the University of Missouri who was captured on camera shutting down the press and free speech outside of Steve Weinberg's office. Yes, Comey knows full well he is in danger. He's in the crossfire as any FBI agent can tell you "it's all a game....and a very deadly one!".*

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/19/trump-is-reportedly-hiring-a-conspiracy-theorist-for-his-legal-team-heres-what-joe-digenova-has-said/?utm_term=.57232fa973c4

Trump just hired a deep-state conspiracy theorist as his lawyer. Here’s what Joe diGenova has said.

By Aaron Blake March 19 at 2:55 PM Email the author

President Trump has stepped up his attacks on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation in recent days, and his lawyer even suggested that the inquiry should be shut down. And just in case the direction in which this whole thing is headed wasn't clear, Trump has now hired a lawyer who argues the president is being framed.

Trump's legal team on Monday announced the hiring of Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who served as an independent counsel and a special counsel in the 1990s and was later hired by the New York Senate to investigate Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D). The hiring was first reported by the New York Times.

DiGenova clearly has experience, but what may make him most attractive to Trump is his thoughts on this particular case. He told Fox News Channel in January that the investigation is “a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.”

“Make no mistake about it: A group of FBI and DOJ people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime,” diGenova said.

That interview was the most notable in a series of TV appearances that seem, in a way, to have been auditions for joining Trump's legal team. We know that Trump seems to like hiring people who say things he likes on cable TV, and diGenova has supplied no shortage of that. Much of diGenova's commentary has described a vast law-enforcement conspiracy to take down Trump.

As the many Russia investigations continue, President Trump has gathered a group of lawyers to represent him, from within the White House and outside it. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Here's a sampling:

Feb. 2: 'The largest law enforcement scandal in history'

“We are headed toward a very sad ending for the FBI and senior DOJ officials. ... I believe that several high FBI officials will be charged criminally. And it is conceivable that some DOJ people will also be charged criminally. ... I would consider this the largest law enforcement scandal in history for this reason. The activities of McCabe and others and Bruce Ohr and others were designed to subvert the Constitution and a national election, the most serious offense under our Constitution.” (“Hannity”)

March 15: Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe should be fired ...

“He's done a number of things worth punishment, including careening through obstruction of justice from the beginning of the Trump campaign, doing everything he could to exonerate Hillary Clinton in the email server case corruptly. ... He should be fired. He should have been fired a long time ago. And if he loses some of his benefits, that's good for the country. And it's the least that can be done to him.” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight”)

... and the people involved should be arrested

“It means that the system of equal justice has been rent asunder by the conduct of James Comey, America's best-known dirty cop, Andrew McCabe and others, including senior Obama administration Justice Department officials. This is a moment in history that has sullied the reputation of the FBI and the Department of Justice, and deservedly so. Every one of these people should be put in a wanted poster at a post office, even though they may never be arrested.” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight”)

Dec. 4: The raid at Paul Manafort’s home was a ‘disgusting display’

“Or show up at your house in the morning while you and your wife were in bed in order to frighten you like they did with Mr. Manafort. What a disgusting, awful display of raw political power. Not law enforcement power, political power.” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight”)

March 7: A federal grand jury should investigate the investigators

“This is why, Lou, the only way to get these answers, once the Nunes committee is done, is to have a federal grand jury force all of these State Department people, CIA, DNI people, FBI, DOJ senior people under oath in a grand jury. It's the only way we're ever going to get the full story. ... This is the single most important scandal of the last 50 years because senior DOJ and FBI officials engaged in conduct that was designed to corrupt an American presidential election. It wasn't the Russians who corrupted the presidential election; it was the American officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI.” (“Lou Dobbs Tonight”)

1:08

Trump takes aim at Mueller. Lawmakers were steadfast in response.

President Trump railed against special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation on March 18, prompting a swift response from lawmakers. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

Jan. 20: Loretta E. Lynch and Sally Yates broke the law

“We're going to discover that the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, her deputy Sally Yates, the head of the national security division, John Carlin, Bruce Ohr and other senior DOJ officials and, regrettably, line attorneys — people who were senior career civil servants — [allegedly] violated the law.” (Daily Caller)

Feb. 2: Attacks on FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein

“I have a lot of confidence in [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions ultimately doing the right thing. I have very little confidence in Rod Rosenstein, no confidence in Chris Wray.” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight”)

Jan. 23: Peter Strzok’s ‘secret society’ tweet was evidence of the plot against Trump

“It suggests, as we have said from the beginning, that there was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton, and if she didn't win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime. Everything that we've seen from these texts and from all the facts developing shows that the FBI and senior DOJ officials conspired to violate the law and to deny Donald Trump his civil rights.” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight”)

Feb. 1: Wray planted stories about threatening to resign

“Chris Wray planted these stories himself. He is trying to show the employees of the FBI and the former agents that he is brave. He is stalwart. He is standing up for them. This is nonsensical. If he offers to resign, the president should accept his resignation. This type of behavior by an FBI director is childish. It's immature.” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight”)

Aug. 4: Leakers are committing ‘regicide’

“They are encouraging these people to continue to leak and basically to commit regicide. I mean, they want to kill the president politically, and they'll do it any way they can.” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight”)

Jan. 30: Rosenstein's appointment of special counsel was illegal

“But Rod did something worse. He created a mandate for Mueller, which had no limitations of time, money, subject matter. He didn't even name a crime that was being investigated, which was a violation of the Department of Justice regulations. I think when all was said and done, Rod Rosenstein's memorandum and the appointment of a special counsel will go down in history as one of the worst decisions ever made by a Justice Department official.” (“Lou Dobbs Tonight”)

Dec. 1: Flynn’s transition actions didn’t break the law …

“All of Flynn's conversations with the ambassador to Russia were perfectly legal during the transition period and even before. It's not a crime to communicate with an ambassador of a foreign country about foreign policy when you are the foreign policy adviser to the incoming president. So, I don't know why he lied. It's inconceivable to me. If he had told the truth, there would be no crime.” (“Ingraham Angle”)

… and Jared Kushner may have done something wrong 10 to 15 years ago

“As far as Kushner goes, if there is anything with Kushner, it involves transactions involving real estate deals 10, 15 years ago.” (“Ingraham Angle”)

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-new-defense-attorney-burdened-controversial-past#break

Benen

It was just last week when we learned Donald Trump was eyeing an addition to his legal defense team. The New York Times reported that the president had already had discussions with Emmet Flood, a veteran D.C. attorney with an exceptional reputation who has exactly the right kind of background Trump needs given the seriousness of the Russia scandal.

The president insisted soon after, however, that the report was wrong and that he was “VERY happy” with his current lawyers. (My personal hunch is that Flood turned the president down.)

As it turns out, Trump has hired added a member to his legal defense team – but it’s not someone of Emmet Flood’s caliber.

President Trump has decided to hire the longtime Washington lawyer Joseph E. diGenova, who has pushed the theory on television that Mr. Trump was framed by F.B.I. and Justice Department officials, to bolster his legal team, according to three people told of the decision.

Mr. diGenova is not expected to take a lead role but will instead serve as a more aggressive player on the president’s legal team.

Though Trump hasn’t directly confirmed the news, Jay Sekulow, another member of the president’s defense team, told NBC News, “I have worked with Joe for many years and have full confidence that he will be a great asset in our representation of the president.”

At this point, I imagine some of you are asking, “Who’s Joe diGenova?” And I’m very glad you asked.

Recently, diGenova has been appearing on television quite a bit – remember, Trump’s TV remote dictates a little too much of his presidency – pushing a conspiracy theory about a cabal of FBI agents who manufactured the Russia scandal as part of an anti-Trump plot. This cabal, diGenova has said on Fox News, set out to “frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime.”

That’s obviously quite nutty given the total lack of evidence to support the claim, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who’ve followed diGenova’s career over the last couple of decades. Rachel noted on the show last year that diGenova became a prominent political figure during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, where he peddled all sorts of strange claims during hundreds of television appearances.

Years later, when the right was excited about Benghazi conspiracy theories, diGenova was once again on the airwaves, pushing unsubstantiated claims about the Obama administration intimidating witnesses. He soon after cited secret sources who told him Hillary Clinton would be indicted over her emails and was bound for prison.

More recently, diGenova was worked up about claims that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice ordered intelligence agencies to cooperate in some kind of illegal scheme involving Donald Trump’s communications with his staffers.

And against the backdrop of him getting one thing wrong after another, diGenova then started talking up an FBI conspiracy theory – which apparently helped him land a gig on the president’s legal team.

Obviously, diGenova’s track record of pushing strange, right-wing conspiracy theories on television makes it difficult to take him seriously, but because Donald Trump is Donald Trump, the opposite is true in the White House: this president loves those who push strange, right-wing conspiracy theories on television. The same qualities that make Joseph diGenova appear foolish in the eyes of the American mainstream are the very qualities that make him appealing to Trump.

For those who support the president and want him to succeed, none of this is good news. Trump is facing a serious scandal of historic significance, which may very well bring his presidency to a premature end. He needs the best legal defense possible.

I’m not sure he’s getting it. Trump – who already had to replace the former head of his legal team, who seemed completely out of his depth – has assembled a group of attorneys who haven’t necessarily served him especially well, and he’s now adding a conspiracy theorist whom the president probably saw on Fox News, peddling a strange tale with no basis in fact.

Those who want the best for Trump – those who want to see him benefit from a sound, responsible legal defense – have no reason to be pleased by these developments.

---

When a special prosecutor was needed to investigate if George Herbert Walker Bush had abused his office by having the State Department search through Bill Clinton's passport application during the 1992 campaign, Sentelle appointed the partisan Republican former prosecutor Joseph DiGenova (husband and law partner of the FOX talking point attorney, Victoria Toensing). DiGenova's job was, we assume, to clear Poppy Bush and everyone on his staff of any improprieties. Case Closed.

buzzflash

---

off bs

VICTORIA TOENSING, Op-Ed Pieces

What Alleged Illegality is Mueller Investigating? Trump Exercising Lawful Presidential Authority?

FOXNews.com, January 28, 2017

The Time for Kurdish Independence has Come

TheHill.com, October 1, 2017

Missing: The 'Frank' in Sen. Al Franken's Anti-Sessions Rant

TheHill.com, February 6, 2017

Jeff Sessions, Trump's Pick for Attorney General, is a Good and Decent Man

FOXNews.com, January 3, 2017

Benghazi Hearings: Three Truths Not Revealed During Clinton Questioning

FOXNews.com, October 23, 2015

The Truth About Hillary Clinton's Email Server and the Law

FOXNews.com, August 13, 2015

Hillary Clinton's Empty Excuses on Emailing Classified Info

NYPost.com, August 11, 2015

Libby Trial Shows Dangers of Political Prosecutions

TheHill.com, April 15, 2015

Doesn't Hillary Clinton Know the Law?

WSJ.com, June 17, 2014

Benghazi and the Smearing of Chris Stevens

WSJ.com, January 28, 2014

A** **'Rigorous and Unsparing' Review? ARB Report Full of Gaps, Unanswered Questions

FOXNews.com, September 17, 2013

Administration Relying on Shoddy Benghazi Report to Absolve Itself of Blame

WeeklyStandard.com, May 12, 2013

Pro-Choice Republicans Go Public

WashingtonPost.com, November 29, 2012

Troubling Questions in the Benghazi-Petraeus Mess

FOXNews.com, November 12, 2012

Obama Overloads a Tale of Equal Pay

WSJ.com, October 24, 2012

The Time Is Now for a Special Counsel

FOXNews.com, June 22, 2012

In Newt Gingrich's World Rules Do Not Apply to Him

TheDailyBeast.com, January 23, 2012

Are We Becoming An Uncivil Society?

Time.com, January 14, 2011

The Road to Wahhabism

National Review Online, September 13, 2010

K SM Deserves Military Justice

Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2010

The Case for Military Tribunals

The Weekly Standard, February 1, 2010

Trying Abdul Mutallab

National Review Online, January 5, 2010

Questions for Abdulmutallab

Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2009

What About the Next Time?

National Review Online, August 26, 2009

Is Obama Striking the Right Balance

The Washington Post, May 24, 2009

Critics Still Haven't Read the 'Torture' Memos

The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2009

Welcome, Businessmen, to Government Oversight

The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2009

Fitzgerald Should Keep His Opinions to Himself

The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2008

Pardon is only remedy

USATODAY.com, June, 2007

Letter to Gen. Hayden

VIA FACSIMILE, April 4, 2007

House Testimony before the Committee on Oversight on and Government Reform

March 16, 2007

Does the Libby Verdict Have Appeal?

NRO. March 6, 2007

Trial in Error

The Washington Post Outlook, Sunday February 18, 2007

What a Load of Armitage!

The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2006

Toensing vs David Corn

Blog

Leak Soup

The Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2006

Constitutional Surveillance

The Weekly Standard, March 6, 2006

Terrorists On Tap

Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2006

Investigate the CIA

Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2005

The White House's Legal Katrina

Human Events Online, October 18, 2005

:{_{[BRIEF AMICI CURIAEIN SUPPORT OF PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC OF :{APPELLANTS }:

JUDITH MILLER, MATTHEW COOPER AND TIME INC.](http://www.digenovatoensing.com/15_page_brief_by_Vt_&_BS.doc)

}_Washington, DC, March 23, 2005}:

The Plame Game: Was this a crime?

Washington Post, January 12, 2005

ACLU MisleadsNational Review Online, October 19, 2004

Oversee? More Like OverlookWashington Post, June 13, 2004

Safety in Athens

By Peter Spatharis/Victoria Toensing, May 10, 2004

‘We Need These Laws’

American Legion Magazine Interview, April 2004

Justice Is Blind, Not Deaf

Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2002

A National Need for Preventive Justice

Washington Post, September 23, 2002

NRO Symposium on September 11

National Review Online, September 11, 2002

Barbara Olson

Washington Times, September 11, 2002

Detainees Names Should Be Protected

National Review Online, August 12, 2002

Citizenship Doesn't Matter

USA Today, June 14, 2002.

In What Court?Policy and Precedent in the Abdullah al Mujahir Case.National Review Online, June 11, 2002

Charge Lindh with Treason

National Review Online, February 12, 2002

Policy Reasons for a Military Tribunal

Washington Times, December 16, 2001.

Subpoena to AP Reporter

Washington Post Outlook, September 6, 2001

Robert Ray's Decision

(Written for Washington Post Outlook but not published because of Clinton/Ray "plea bargain")

January 2001

Hoist by His Own…

National Review Online, December 1, 2000

To Get to the Truth, Senate Must Call Witnesses

San Diego Union Tribune, January 17, 1999

Actors & Their Roles

Washington Times, September 9, 1998

The Truth and Nothing But LiesWashington Times, February 8, 1998

Dick Morris, Moral Philosopher

New York Times, March 22, 1997

Paula Jones and Busy President Clinton

Washington Times, January 10, 1997

License to Lawyer

Washington Post Outlook, June 18, 1995

How the CIA Abuses its Code of Silence

Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1995

Cross-Examining Smith: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

American Lawyer, April 1992

Under Guidelines, Judges Become Corporate CEOs

Legal Times, February 12,1990

No Obstacles to a Fair Trail for Noriega

Wall Street Journal, February 6, 1990

Put a Price on Caving In to Terrorists

Newsday, May 29, 1989

Germany Needs Fortitude to Keep Hamadi

The Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1989

JOSEPH diGENOVA, Op-Ed Pieces

Federalist Society Speech

March 21, 2014

Benghazi Attack was About 400 SAM Missiles

FreeBeacon.com, August 13, 2013

Legends in the Law

DCBar.org, February 2013

Power and Corruption

Baltimore Sun, July 22, 2004

Indictments in the Executive BranchWall Street Journal, March 6, 1997

No Attorney-Client Privilege for Clinton

Wall Street Journal, December 20, 1995

Investigated to Death

New York Times, December 5, 1995

Yes, Noriega Can Be Successfully Prosecuted...

Washington Post, January 7, 1990

The Scope of Federal Criminal Law and the McNally CaseAmerican Criminal Law Review, Spring 1989

How to Stop the Murder

Washington Post, March 6, 1988

Victoria Toensing

From SourceWatch

Victoria Toensing, a founding partner with her husband, Joseph E. diGenova, in the law firm of diGenova & Toensing.

Toensing served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General during the Ronald Reagan (R) administration, Chief Counsel for Senator Barry Goldwater (R), and an Assistant U.S. Attorney during the Gerald R. Ford (R) and Jimmy Carter (D) administrations.

Contents[hide]

Observations on Toensing

Republican partisan

"Toensing is, of course, not only a pricey DC defense lawyer. She's also a professional Republican, one tightly connected with the DC GOP power structure, and someone you could find at pretty much any point in the late nineties as an anti-Clinton 'legal expert' on every chat show under the sun," Joshua Micah Marshall wrote January 1, 2004, at Talking Points Memo.

"Joe DiGenova (as well as his wife and law partner Victoria Toensing) is a part of the DC Republican establishment who is routinely put forward when legal opinions are needed which exculpate Republicans or inculpate Democrats.

"There's no other way to put it. Look at their public statements in the various Clinton 'scandals', the Fitzgerald investigation and now this case. In their voluminous public pronouncements they are both, in the clearest sense of the word, advocates. And their 'client' is the Republican party establishment in Washington, DC. That's fine, as far as it goes. But they should be identified as such, albeit perhaps in gentler terms, when they provide quotes in papers like the [Washington] Times," Marshall wrote November 25, 2005, at Talking Points Memo.

trial of Scooter Libby

"Just days before the perjury/obstruction trial of former White House aide I. Lewis Scooter Libby goes to the jury, the Washington Post's 'Outlook' section published a bizarre front-page article by right-wing legal expert Victoria Toensing suggesting that the prosecutor and one of the chief victims in the case should be put on trial," Robert Parry wrote February 19, 2007, at Consortiumnews.

Affiliations

American Center for Democracy, Advisory Countil
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Senior Fellow
Republican National Lawyers Association, Member [1]

Employment History

Private Practice, 1988-Present
Special Counsel to U.S. House of Representatives Teamsters Investigation, 1997-1998
Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 1984-1988
Chief Counsel, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington, D.C., 1981-1984
Assistant U.S. Attorney, 1976 - 1981
Law Clerk, Michigan Court of Appeals, 1975-1976
Admitted to bar, 1975, Michigan; 1980, District of Columbia.
Prior to law school, teacher of high school English.

Education

University of Detroit (J.D., cum laude, 1975)
Indiana University (B.S.Ed., 1962)

Contact Information

diGenova & Toensing

Suite 430

901 15th Street NW

Washington, DC 20005-2327

Related SourceWatch Resources

Valerie Plame

External links

Profiles

Bio: Victoria Toensing, diGenova & Toensing.
Victoria Toensing in the Wikipedia.
Profile: Victoria Toensing, NNDB.com.
Victoria Toensing, NameBase.org.

Litigation Record

The Litigation Record for Victoria Toensing, Thompson Legal Record / West Law / FindLaw.com.

Testimony by / Interviews with Toensing

Testimony of Ms. Victoria Toensing, Attorney diGenova & Toensing, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, "DOJ Oversight: Preserving Our Freedoms While Defending Against Terrorism", December 4, 2001.
Transcript: "Law Protects Confidential CIA Agents," American Morning/CNN, October 3, 2003.

Articles by Toensing

"Dick Morris, Moral Philosopher," New York Times (diGenovaToensing.com), March 22, 1997.
"In What Court? Policy and precedent in the Abdullah al Mujahir case," National Review Online, June 11, 2002.
Opinion: "Citizenship doesn't matter," USA TODAY, June 13, 2002.
"Justice is Blind, Not Deaf," FrontPageMag.com, November 24, 2002.
"ACLU Misleads. We are not all suspects," National Review Online, October 19, 2004.
With Bruce W. Sanford, "The Plame Game: Was This a Crime?" Washington Post, January 12, 2005.
"The White House’s Legal Katrina," Human Events Online, October 18, 2005.
"Investigate the CIA. An 'outing' was the result of either incompetence or an effort to undermine the White House," WSJ OpinionJournal, November 6, 2005.
"Terrorists on Tap. Do Al Gore and other Democrats really want to keep the government from finding al Qaeda agents in the U.S.?" WSJ OpinionJournal, January 22, 2006.
"What a Load of Armitage! What did Patrick Fitzgerald know, and when did he know it?" WSJ OpinionJournal, September 15, 2006.
"Hubris. Responding to David Corn responding to me," National Review Online, September 17, 2006.
"Trial in Error. If You're Going to Charge Scooter, Then What About These Guys?" Washington Post, February 18, 2007.
"Does the Libby Verdict Have Appeal? Making sense of legal nonsense," National Review Online, March 6, 2007.

Articles about Toensing

Howard Kurtz, "The Power Couple at Scandal's Vortex," Washington Post, February 17, 1998.
Jacob Weisberg, "Worse Than Drudge. What game is Joe diGenova playing?" Slate, February 28, 1998.
Howard Kurtz, "DiGenova & Toensing, Partners At Jaw," Washington Post, April 20, 1998.
Joshua Micah Marshall, "Mike, Mike, Mike ... just when you were doing so well!" Talking Points Memo, January 1, 2004.
John W. Dean, "Why Did Attorney General Ashcroft Remove Himself From The Valerie Plame Wilson Leak Investigation? Signs that a Key Witness May Have Come Forward," FindLaw's Writ, January 6, 2004.
Mary Jacoby, "The operative," Salon, October 1, 2004: "White House water-carrier Robert Novak, infamous for exposing Valerie Plame, has been flacking for the Swift Boat Veterans book -- not bothering to disclose his close personal ties with the publisher." Free preview or subscription required.
Richard W. Stevenson, Carl Hulse, and David Johnston, "At White House, A Day of Silence on Role of Rove," New York Times (Abstract), January 12, 2005. re Karl Rove See "NYT: 'At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in C.I.A. Leak' (Richard W. Stevenson)," The Common Ills Blogspot, January 12, 2005.
"Victoria Toensing failed to disclose friendship with 'No Disclosure' Novak in *Wash. Post* op-ed," Media Matters for America, January 14, 2005.
Jack Shafer, "Memo to Cooper and Miller. Fire Floyd Abrams. Hire Bruce Sanford," Slate, February 15, 2005. re Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller
Mark Schmitt, "More diGenova/Toensing Nonsense," The Decembrist, July 22, 2005.
Joshua Micah Marshall, "Joe deGenova, on the case," Talking Points Memo, November 25, 2005.
David Corn, "Rove Scandal: Distractions and Disinformation," The Nation, July 19, 2005.
Brad DeLong, "The Nine... Well, the Four...," Grasping Reality with Both Hands, October 18, 2005.
David Fiderer, "Whom Should I Believe? Victoria Toensing or My Own Lying Eyes?" The Huffington Post, October 25, 2005.
ReddHedd, "Libby Masking Cheney's Role?" Firedoglake, November 13, 2005. re Dick Cheney
Ellen, "Why Sean Hannity And GOP Attorney Have No Problem With Bush Ordering Illegal Spying On Americans: What If Osama Bin Laden Is Calling?" News Hounds, December 19, 2005. See Transcript: "Spies Like Us?" Hannity & Colmes/Fox News, December 19, 2005.
Jon Ponder, "Clinton-Hater Toensing Laughs - Literally - at Idea of Investigating Bush’s Allegedly Illegal Spying on U.S. Citizens," Pensito Review, December 20, 2005. re George W. Bush's domestic spying
GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Victoria Toensing, BuzzFlash, December 23, 2005.
Jim Montague, Letters: "Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing set the standard for Republican criminal behavior," Salon, March 6, 2006.
Jeralyn Merritt, "Pardon Talk for Scooter Libby Begins," Talk Left, June 17, 2006. re trial of Scooter Libby
Ellen, "Former DOJ Official Victoria Toensing Can't Give A Straight Answer About How New York Times Compromised National Security," News Hounds, June 29, 2006.
Jeralyn Merritt, "David Corn Denies Outing Valerie Plame Wilson," Talk Left, September 16, 2006.
"James Bamford Punks Victoria Toensing," Crooks and Liars, December 20, 2006.
Larry Johnson, "Washington Post Enables Toensing's Delusions," Booman Tribune, February 18, 2007.
Jeralyn Merritt, "The Worst Argument for Libby's Acquittal," Talk Left, February 18, 2007.
Brent Budowsky, "Dear Editor, Washington Post," No Quarter, February 18, 2007.
Robert Parry, "Shame on the Washington Post, Again," Consortiumnews, February 19, 2007.
"Just Learn to Read Your Talking Points: How to be a Washington Expert," I can't believe it's not a democracy! Blog, February 20, 2007; *CounterPunch*, February 20, 2007.
"We'll Have Priest's People Call Toensing's People," PostWatch Blog, February 22, 2007.
Jeff Lomonaco, "WaPo Good, Bad, and Funny," TAPPED/The American Prospect, February 22, 2007.
GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Victoria Toensing, BuzzFlash, February 23, 2007.
"Deb Howell's Victoria Toensing Defense," Big Head DC, February 25, 2007.
"Assclowns of the Week #60: Iraq and Ruin Edition," Welcome to Pottersville Blogspot, February 25, 2007. Scroll down to #7: Victoria Toensing.
Jim Marcinkowski, "Victoria's Secret," No Quarter, February 27, 2007.
"CNN's Blitzer interviewed Toensing after Libby verdict, did not disclose her legal work for CNN during probe," Media Matters for America, March 6, 2007.
Wandering mind, "The Victoria Toensing Misdirection Game," Daily Kos, March 15, 2007.
John Amato, "Waxman v Toensing," Crooks and Liars, March 16, 2007.
David Corn, "Did GOP Lawyer Mislead Congress About Plame Case?" The Nation, March 19, 2007.
Cliff Schecter, "Where Lies, Neo-Cons, Scandals and Crime Intersect... You always find Vickie," Cliff Schecter Blogspot, April 17, 2007.

Unusual trip to Iraq in '03 for Wolfowitz** companion

By Steven R. Weisman and David E. Sanger Published: April 17, 2007

WASHINGTON: The Defense Department directed a private contractor in 2003 to hire Shaha Ali Riza, a World Bank employee and the companion of Paul Wolfowitz**, then the deputy secretary of defense, to spend a month studying issues related to setting up a new government in Iraq, the contractor said Monday.

The contractor, Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, said that it had been directed to hire Riza by the office of the under secretary for policy. The head of that office at the time was Douglas Feith, who reported to Wolfowitz.

TOE BAK

1219 primary with joe, BLT

bak 1219

trump hired the dynamic duo than dropped b/c of scandal? do they believe this crap, or just getting paid/ back on fox, in trump orbit?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/joseph-digenova-and-victoria-toensing-have-vanished-fox

Republican attorneys Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing have been fixtures on Fox News and Fox Business for years, serving as critical figures in the networks’ pro-Trump conspiracy theories. But in recent weeks, the pair has quietly vanished from the right-wing networks.

They have appeared on the networks, individually or together, for a total of 66 interviews* this year, and the couple made more appearances in September than they had in any prior month of 2019 as they rallied to President Donald Trump’s defense after news broke of a whistleblower complaint into his abuse of power in Ukraine. But neither has been interviewed on Fox News since diGenova’s October 8 appearance on The Ingraham Angle, and they last appeared on Fox Business for a November 13 joint appearance on Lou Dobbs Tonight, according to a Media Matters review of transcripts and our internal guest database.

The couple’s apparent sidelining has come just when one might expect Fox shows to be most interested in hearing from them: Their absence from Fox Business has overlapped with the impeachment inquiry’s public hearings, and they have been off Fox News during both the public hearings and the release of witness depositions.

It’s unclear exactly why diGenova and Toensing suddenly stopped going on Fox or when they might return. But the timing of their disappearance and the network’s past practices suggests that they may have been quietly banned for an indeterminate period.

DiGenova’s last Fox News interview came just the day before the arrests of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and amid the revelation that the Soviet-born con men had been working alongside diGenova, Toensing, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and conservative columnist John Solomon in a sprawling disinformation plot in Ukraine -- a massive ethical breach for the Fox regulars. And during his most recent Fox Business appearance, diGenova issued a widely criticized rant against progressive billionaire George Soros that was steeped in disgusting anti-Semitic tropes.

Fox has declined to comment on diGenova’s screed, even as the Anti-Defamation League and Soros’ Open Society Foundation called for the network to remove him from its airwaves.

Toensing has maintained an active Twitter presence since she has stopped appearing on Fox News and Fox Business, regularly lashing out at journalists and media outlets over their coverage of the Ukraine scandal. On November 14, she praised the far-right One America News Network for purportedly identifying the whistleblower, asking, “Can the rest of MSM be as brave?” (Such behavior is officially banned at Fox, though multiple network figures have breached that restriction.) On December 2, she attacked Fox host Steve Hilton over his criticism of her “toxic” crew’s Ukraine plot.

Fox’s lack of transparency and its total lack of firm standards often make it difficult to say for sure whether it has issued punishments. The network at times publicly disciplines low-ranking employees and guests, as it did in condemning and permanently banning Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell after he made vile anti-Semitic comments similar to diGenova’s on Dobbs’ program last year. But more prominent Fox personalities are issued stealth suspensions when their bigoted comments lead to public outrage -- when they are punished at all.

That’s what happened to Fox host Jeanine Pirro, whose questioning of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) patriotism on the grounds that Omar wears a hijab led to a firestorm in March. Pirro was off the air for the next two weeks. But while Fox had publicly criticized her comments, it never publicly acknowledged that she had been punished. That only became fully clear in September, when Pirro revealed the suspension in a hot mic incident.

But the Pirro incident offers a cautionary tale for Fox. Her disappearance triggered a furious backlash from Trump, who is her personal friend and watches her show religiously. After she was absent the Saturday night after her Omar comments, Trump lashed out on Twitter the next morning, urging the network to “stop working soooo hard on being politically correct” and “fight hard for @JudgeJeanine.”

If Fox has taken action against diGenova or Toensing, its executives may very well be keeping it quiet to avoid facing that blowback again. In calling for diGenova to be permanently banned from Fox’s airwaves, critics have pointed out that Fox condemned and banned Farrell for virtually identical comments. But Farrell was an occasional guest who could be easily replaced with his boss, Fox regular Tom Fitton, or a host of other conservatives. By contrast, diGenova and Toensing play a role at the network closer to that of Pirro -- and thus may have earned similar deference.

Since the early months of the Trump administration, the pair have been key figures in Sean Hannity’s twisted alternative narrative about the Mueller probe. This year, diGenova became “too critical to the pro-Trump conspiracy fairy tale that Fox News opinionators are now scrambling to keep intact,” as The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple put it in a piece questioning why diGenova had not received the Farrell treatment. Indeed, the Republican lawyers were deeply enmeshed in Giuliani’s plot to use a shadow foreign policy effort in Ukraine to smear Joe Biden and undermine the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in our 2016 election, as the current impeachment inquiry has revealed. They made regular Fox appearances to discuss this twisted pro-Trump narrative without disclosing that they had helped to craft it -- or that they represented Solomon, who first published many of the key allegations.

Like Pirro, and unlike Farrell, the two also have direct ties to Trump himself, who apparently appreciates their Fox appearances. (Trump has tweeted quotes from diGenova’s Fox commentary at least six times, most recently on October 3.) They were briefly announced during the Mueller probe as his personal lawyers before backing out due to conflicts of interest. But Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow explained at the time that “those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters,” perhaps foreshadowing their work with Giuliani. DiGenova has also claimed to have advised Trump on who to name as his attorney general.

That gives Fox reason to fear that any public criticism of the pair might cause trouble, either with the president or with network hosts who rely on their commentary like Dobbs or Hannity. Instead, they appear to have simply disappeared from the airwaves without mention.

*They have made 103 total combined appearances on the networks (37 joint interviews, 28 solo diGenova appearance, and one solo Toensing appearance).

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/

"huge" rudy

no lnx

Report points to Trump, ‘-1,’ as the ringleader of a global conspiracy

Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board December 4, 2019

The House Intelligence Committee released its report Tuesday. In it were phone call records showing frequent contact between Rudy Giuliani and the White House. The records suggest in the most granular detail yet that the president of the United States is the leader of an international criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people.

This we knew. What didn’t know was the timing.

Coincidence? Unlikely.

The right word to describe all that is conspiracy.

As I said, giant.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-the-hills-john-solomon-undermined-journalism

no lnx

How The Hill’s John Solomon undermined journalism

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington MonthlyDecember 6, 2019

York isn’t the only one complaining. The guy who smeared a U.S. ambassador with a mountain of lies in order to get her fired actually had the nerve to talk about a lack of decency.

Documents shared with congress by the State Department inspector general give us an inside look at how these kinds of stories were coordinated.

Included in the roughly 50-page packet was an email from Solomon to Toensing, diGenova, and Parnas previewing an article he’d written that was not yet published…

In other words, Solomon was running the article by his handlers to get their input and/or approval prior to publication.

Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.

omg this could finish djt? 10/18/19

https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/how-conservative-writer-john-solomon-served-conduit-rudy-giulianis-ukraine-conspiracy

What follows is a case study in how right-wing media work hand in hand with Trump cronies to smear his enemies, undermine democracy, and defend the president at all costs.

Here’s how it went down.

Key Takeaways

Rudy Giuliani, working with con men and Trump cronies, pursued an “investigation” in Ukraine that he claimed showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.
In March, Giuliani sent the results of his investigation to the State Department to be investigated and to conservative columnist John Solomon.
The same month, Solomon began publishing a series of columns that mirrored the sourcing and claims Giuliani made in his State Department dossier.
Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which focused primarily on Ukraine.
During that same time period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times.
Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that deep state elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump.
On October 5, John Solomon landed a job at Fox.

Key players

Rudy Giuliani -- the president’s personal attorney who has traveled around the globe attempting to dig up dirt on Democrats and discredit the Russia investigation on Trump’s behalf.

The plan

The media strategy

Giuliani and associates feed story to Solomon

In his reporting, Solomon spelled out Giuliani’s conspiracy theory in detail. For instance:

He reported that Ukrainian officials claimed to have “evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes,” at least some of it related to Biden.
Solomon reported that these officials tried to “deliver their evidence to Washington” but were unable because the American ambassador (Yovanovitch) “blocked” them “from obtaining a visa” to the U.S.
He weaved an elaborate story about Americans working with Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Trump’s one-time 2016 campaign manager Manafort, in order to damage Trump.
He claimed that the infamous “black ledger” that showed Manafort had received millions in undisclosed payments from Ukrainian officials was fabricated andreleased to damage Trump. He also suggested that in January 2016, Obama’s Department of Justice pressured Ukraine to help the department investigate Manafort in response to Trump’s rise in popularity in the Republican primary race (Manafort did not join the Trump campaign until March 2016).
He strongly suggested that the Obama State Department pressured Ukrainian officials to drop an investigation into a Ukrainian good governance group linked to Soros because Soros backed Clinton.
He also claimed the U.S. ambassador’s “do not prosecute” list included people related to this organization, and he strained to link the group to the Manafort investigation by claiming that an FBI agent involved in the investigation is tied to the same group.
And, of course, he claimedthat Biden withheld a billion dollars worth of U.S. aid to shut down an investigation into Burisma Holdings and Biden’s son Hunter through his position on the company’s board.

Solomon brings the conspiracy theory to Fox

The payoff

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/fox-news-outs-two-network-analysts-for-working-off-the-books-with-trump-and-giuliani-to-find-biden-dirt/

kos