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Open in TheBrain

russia -gate BS

PRIMARY ON TULSI EPSTEIN REBOOT --> TRIFECTA

REBOOTED 10 25 ON COMEY INDICTMENTBRENNAN GRAND CONSPIRACY BS 4 26 DOJ 3 DIGENOVA AILEEN CANNON

SEE ALSO BIG LIE GASLT ON TRUMP J6 REVISIONISM

3 22 much belated, often paired with hunter biden laptop as evidence of liberal media bias

merri ok

SEE FOX HANNITY WATTERS BARTIROMO INGRAHAM

SEE CRM 4

SEE KASH PATEL

SEE RT ED MARTIN SEAMUS BRUNER GAI ?

VOUGHT? KASH GABBARD

SEE COMEY TARGET LAWFARE RETALIATION RUSSIAGATE

SEE TULSI GABBARD DESPERATE DEFLECTION FROM EPSTEIN 7 25 RUSSIAGATE OBAMA TREASON, TRUMP RETWEET

SEE TAIBBI GREENWALD [wikileaks kinda libtard?]

SEE DEFLECT PROJECTION RHET

steele dossier often brought up, claim discredited but none of the mjr findings were?  they also forget it was started by GOP

SEE LIE 2 GASLT J6 REVSIONISM

SEE COLLUSION MUELLER

SEE DURHAM FAIL

bak 10 25

see retaliation and two eg hurricane crossfire files ~ strzok MM

dunham fail ~ michael sussman

METAXAS

bit hard to understand how right/gop/trumpistas denied collusion, aside from it dinged their guy/brand since he was tough and a savvy negotiator; also if putin was helping trump, then they have been fooled by disinfo; glenn greenwald puzzling? (rogan?); when barr "cleared" trump, seal of approval that russiagate was true

eg

nY post owned by Murdoch

pro disinfo (i think they must have gotten dinged in report //dirty dozen?) so rubber glue

https://nypost.com/2021/12/14/hypocrisy-of-media-censors-claim-to-be-against-misinformation/

labelled opinion

no lnx many

inside the hypocrisy of media manipulators, censors who claim to fight misinformation

By Christine Rosen

December 14, 2021   Updated

George Soros, billionaire and founder of Soros Fund Management LLC,

Billionaire George Soros will play a critical role in funneling millions into the Aspen Institute's information suppression project.

MORE ON:

JOURNALISM

Journalists in Ukraine pay the ultimate price for revealing the atrocities of war

Sky News correspondent shot by Russians while covering Ukraine invasion

Russian law poses heavy threat to journalists who report ‘fake’ news: officials]

Letters to the Editor — Feb. 21, 2022

There is a new scourge befouling the media landscape, one that our self-appointed mandarins have declared themselves eager to combat: misinformation.

The Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorderrecently released a report that blamed misinformation for a range of social problems: “Information disorder is a crisis that exacerbates all other crises … Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems. Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.”

With $65 million in backing from investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, the newly organized Project for Good Information also vows to fight fake news wherever it roams.As Recode reported, the group’s marketing materials claim, “Traditional media is failing. Disinformation is flourishing. It’s time for a new kind of media.” The project is run by Democratic operative Tara Hoffman, whose company ACRONYM created the app that spectacularly bungled the Iowa Democratic caucus vote in 2020.

And as Ben Smith reported in the New York Times, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University has been hosting a series of meetings with major media executives to “help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation.” Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for his platform’s role in spreading misinformation.

Big Disinfo

The origin of this new wave of portentous declarations and hand-wringing can be found in the Trump years. In an insightful piece in Harper’s, Joseph Bernstein labels this effort Big Disinfo.

Then President Donald Trump

The liberal elites are storming with every resource at their disposal to combat former President Donald Trump’s war on “fake news.”

It’s “a new field of knowledge production that emerged during the Trump years at the juncture of media, academia, and policy research,” he writes. “A kind of EPA for content, it seeks to expose the spread of various sorts of ‘toxicity’ on social-media platforms, the downstream effects of this spread, and the platforms’ clumsy, dishonest, and half-hearted attempts to halt it.”

As Bernstein argues, “As an environmental cleanup project, it presumes a harm model of content consumption. Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard.”

Big Disinfo has gained in popularity in mainstream media outlets in part because it claims to solve the problem of bad information while placing blame for it on anyone other than mainstream media. In fact, those diagnosing our illness and prescribing the cure are themselves purveyors of the “infodemic” they claim is upon us.

The Aspen Institute’s commission, for example, includes several people who have actively engaged in misinformation efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, one of the commission’s advisers, Yoel Roth, was the Twitter executive who blocked his site’s users from sharing the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the 2020 election. 

Adviser Renee DiResta is something of a misinformation wunderkind as well: She was an adviser to American Engagement Technologies, which, the Beacon reports, is a “tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in ­Alabama.”

The commission’s co-chair, Katie Couric, is also familiar with manipulating facts to yield favorable outcomes. She admitted in her recently published memoir that she had removed and edited statements made by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about athletes protesting the playing of the national anthem. Ginsburg’s criticism of the practice might have angered her fellow liberals, Couric feared.

Rashad Robinson, President, Color of Change

Activist leader Rashad Robinson tried to perpetuate Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax.

Commissioner Rashad Robinson, head of the activist group Color of Change, also helped spread misinformation by promoting the hate-crime hoax of actor Jussie Smollett even after it was clear Smollett, who last week was convicted on criminal charges related to the staging of the attack, was lying. And then there is commission member Prince Harry, an expat British ex-royal with few qualifications but a lifetime of evidence of his own questionable judgment (such as dressing up as a Nazi and, more recently, whining to Oprah about the family that funds his lavish lifestyle).

Earlier this year, Harry declared the First Amendment “bonkers.”

Lies trump honesty

The Aspen Commission’s report says there is no such thing as an “arbiter of truth,” and yet our media gatekeepers have claimed that mantle for themselves — with decidedly mixed results — for some time.

Katie Couric

Longtime anchor Katie Couric adds elite media connections as co-chair of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder.

Consider the fact that Russiagate, a yearslong effort to prove that Donald Trump was being blackmailed and controlled, proved untrue yet was given constant media attention, while the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents, which proved true, was actively suppressed with the explicit purpose of protecting Joe Biden’s chances of becoming president. We live in a surreal information moment when the lie was given ample airtime and featured prominently in print, while the truth was smothered and labeled disinformation.

And yet our self-appointed misinformation warriors have proven unwilling to engage in self-reflection. Harvard’s Shorenstein Center used the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer as the basis for one of its case studies during its recent misinformation sessions.

The lesson that the center’s leaders drew, however, was not the one anyone who values the truth should follow. According to the Times, the Shorenstein Center claimed that the Hunter Biden story offered “an instructive case study on the power of social media and news organizations to mitigate media manipulation campaigns.” In other words, the suppression of information deemed by “experts” to be misinformation was precisely the kind of Good Information objective we should be pursuing. The research director of the center, Joan Donovan, told the Times that the Hunter Biden case study was “designed to cause conversation — it’s not supposed to leave you resolved as a reader.” [huh?]

But what is there to resolve about the fact that the Fourth Estate eagerly embraced the role of chief information censor on behalf of a Democratic candidate for president?

Then Deputy National Security Adviser For Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes

Then-Obama administration top aide Ben Rhodes tricked America into falling for Iran’s sham nuclear deal.

Misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. Propaganda, political dirty tricks, and deliberate lies have been with us a while — and have often been a point of pride for their practitioners. It was not that long ago that Ben Rhodes, then a top aide to President Barack Obama, boasted about creating an “echo chamber” in the media to spread falsehoods about the details of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.

It is true that misinformation has taken on greater significance thanks to the scale and speed of the social-media platforms that spread it. But the new sanctimony about misinformation should be leavened with some healthy skepticism about the movement’s ­major actors.

Prince Harry visits One World Observatory on September 23, 2021 in New York City.

Prince Harry will be a commission member while he’s not asking for his daily allowance from the royal family.

As Bernstein noted, in some sense “the disinformation project is simply an unofficial partnership between Big Tech, corporate media, elite universities, and cash-rich foundations.” The crusade against misinformation is an approximate mirror image of Donald Trump’s war against “fake news.”

Confirmation bias

Control of information is control of one of the most valuable commodities in the developed world: people’s attention. And people want their confirmation biases affirmed. But scholars and commissioners studying misinformation also suffer from confirmation bias. Contra the proposals made by panels and commissions on misinformation, the most radical thing we could do right now isn’t to give more power to elites or the federal government to control information. 

Their record of late — Russiagate, Hunter Biden, the Covington kids, the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis, Border Patrol officers with whips, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial — has not been stellar. It would be far better for the health of the “information ecosystem” that these supposed experts are always invoking if reporters focused on shoring up what were once unassailable tenets of journalism — balance, iron-clad sourcing, and critical independence from and skepticism about the powerful. ­Instead, they are power’s ­handmaidens.

From Commentary

FILED UNDER 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION  BARACK OBAMA  BEN RHODES  CENSORSHIP  DEMOCRATS  DONALD TRUMP  DOSSIER  FACEBOOK  FAKE NEWS  GEORGE SOROS  HUNTER BIDEN  IRAN DEAL  JOE BIDEN  JOURNALISM  KATIE COURIC  LIBERALS  SOCIAL MEDIA  12/14/21

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AN 6 26

On Monday, a new Supreme Court announcement complicated the fate of a settlement paid by the Department of Justice to an ally of President Donald Trump, turning down a request by Trump 2016 advisor Carter Page to revive a lawsuit filed against former FBI director James Comey and others. The Trump administration had previously paid Page a $1.25 million settlement tied to the lawsuit, but now the top court’s decision means that the case prompting the payout had no legal merit.

The matter dates back to the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 election, during which Page was targeted with a FISA wiretap due to allegations surrounding his travel to Russia, which fueled rumors about Trump’s ties to the Kremlin. While Page was never charged with a crime, a DOJ investigation during Trump’s first term turned up errors and omissions that made Page appear more suspicious than he was in order to justify the surveillance. As the New York Times notes, “Although the wiretapping was just a part of a much larger investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump and his allies used it to try to broadly discredit the inquiry.”

Page filed suit against Comey and seven others in 2020, claiming that the public revelations of his surveillance had harmed his reputation and business. While lower courts dismissed his claims, saying that he had taken too long to file them, he appealed to the Supreme Court.

Then in April, while waiting on the Court’s decision, the Trump administration abruptly agreed to the $1.25 million settlement, paying Page even though an inspector general — and appointee of George H.W. Bush — said he could find no evidence that the case against Page had been motivated by political bias. Though the settlement was reached, his appeal to the Supreme Court continued.

Now the Court has declined to revive the suit, including the decision among a list of others it has elected to decline or accept without further explanation. While this ends the lawsuit, it also likely raises new questions about the legality of the settlement, as the case it was based upon has essentially been deemed invalid.

The settlement is among several similar recent payments or efforts that have raised controversy. The Trump administration also paid $1.2 million to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who faced allegations of misconduct in the Russia investigation. More recently, the Trump administration drew bipartisan outrage by announcing the creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” for the benefit of those “harmed” by the Biden administration. The fund, which was widely decried as a “slush fund” for Trump’s allies, has been stymied by the courts as well as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, though the president has persisted in pursuing it.

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an 5 26

President Donald Trump lost his appealof a personal lawsuit he launched against former Secretary Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee, the law firm Perkins Coie, LLC and others he blames for the Russia investigation.

Politico's Kyle Cheney reported on Tuesday that the 11th Circuit declined to rehear Trump's case, leaving his only option an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump and lawyer Alina Habba in 2023 were sanctioned $1 million for the "frivolous" lawsuit. Florida has rules that allow defendants to ask that a court decide whether a lawsuit is "bogus," the Associated Press reported.

At the time, U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote in the ruling that Trump has a "pattern of abuse of the courts" for filing such lawsuits specifically for political purposes. He said that the move "undermines the rule of law" and "amounts to obstruction of justice."

"Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose," he wrote.

Chief Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, along with Trump appointee Judge Andrew L. Brasher and Joe Biden appointee Judge Embry Kidd, denied Trump's demand to rehear the case.

They added the detail, "... no judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc," which means none of the judges had any interest in weighing in on rehearing the matter. On the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, six of the 12 judges were appointed by Trump.

Lawyer Marc Elias commented on BlueSky, "I was a defendant in Trump’s frivolous lawsuit. I did not settle. I did not compromise. I did not stop speaking out. We fought and won."

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JOE DI GENOVA GRAND CONSPIRACY REBOOT REDING AILEEN CANNON

WIKI 4 26

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]

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AN 1 26

President Donald Trump was up early Thursday morning for a Truth Social posting spree that focused largely on his 2020 election loss — but included a dash of claims about 2016's "Russiagate."

The rant included a nearly decade-long conspiracy that Trump was spied on by former President Barack Obama. Trump reposted Fox News commentary from far-right host Jesse Watters who claimed Obama personally ordered a CIA spying operation on Trump.

"ARREST OBAMA NOW," one post read.

According to the "Truths," the Obama administration manufactured evidence to undermine Trump's election in 2016, though none of the information about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia was revealed publicly until after the election. Other reports about the Russian hack of Hillary Clinton's campaign, Russian bots and content farms were reported throughout 2016, a Washington Post timeline shows.

Trump on Thursday morning also posted a series of "Truths" showing he's still focused on his 2020 election loss.

Among the posts was a flood of accusations claiming that the election was "crooked."

Trump appeared to post screenshots of random users from X who agree with his sentiment that he actually won the 2020 election.

Another video Trump posted from CNN appears to show a discussion about Trump winning Georgia in 2024, though Trump doesn't explain how that is relevant to his 2020 conspiracy theories about the election.

Trump also shared another conspiracy cited by former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly about the Chinese government funding leftist groups and the Minnesota Immigration Rights Action Committee.

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AN 12 25

Donald Trump's efforts to sue the Pulitzer Prize board over defamation claims took a turn for the president last week, according to a new report from Law & Crime, after the board demanded extensive documents in discovery pertaining to everything from his psychological history to his prescription medication use.

Trump first sued the board back in 2022over a statement the board released defending prizes it awarded in 2018 to the New York Timesand theWashington Postreporting related to collusion between his first presidential campaign and the Russian government, after Trump demanded that the prizes be rescinded. The board's statement explained that "two independent reviews" of the reports awarded in 2018 showed that no aspects of them were refuted by special counsel Robert Mueller's Russian collusion findings, despite Trump's claims.

In claiming defamation from this statement, Trump's lawsuit nevertheless called the Russia connection a "now-debunked theory," and alleged that he suffered reputational harm and damages from it.

As of Thursday, the case had reached the discovery phase, with the Pulitzer board submitting a 12-page filing with a "litany of broad discovery demands" for Trump's legal team. In addition to demanding more typical documents pertaining to Trump's various lawsuits and claims about the political impact of the Pulitzer Prizes, the board also requested a wide range of documents detailing much more personal and intimate details.

This includes "all" of the president's tax returns dating from 2015 to now, so as to show any potential financial harm caused by the Pulitzer board's actions. It also requested health records and prescription histories to demonstrate proof of Trump's claims of mental and physical anguish.

"To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken," the filing explained. "For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing."

Per the filing, Trump's legal team could potentially avoid providing some of these sensitive materials by deciding not to pursue damages specifically for the alleged harms they pertain to.

The board's filing also leaves open the possibility for Trump's team to claim that certain materials are privileged and cannot be provided, though it will have to explain why.

"With respect to your responses to the following Requests, if any information is withheld because of a claim of privilege, state the basis for your claim of privilege with respect to such information and the specific ground(s) on which the claim of privilege rests," the filing noted.

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report-three-russiagate-grand-jury-subpoenas-sent-today-brennan-page-and-strzok-up-to-30-subpoenas-pending

BS

:REPORT: Three Russiagate Grand Jury Subpoenas Sent Today, Brennan, Page and Strzok – Up to 30 Subpoenas Pending](https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/11/07/report-three-russiagate-grand-jury-subpoenas-sent-today-brennan-page-and-strzok-up-to-30-subpoenas-pending/)}:

November 7, 2025 | Sundance | 184 Comments

Fox News is reporting that three grand jury subpoenas were issued today for John Brennan, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

Brennan was the former CIA Director during Russiagate, who created the fraudulent Intelligence Community Assessment. Strzok was the lead FBI counterintelligence agent in charge of Crossfire Hurricane, and Page was the former DOJ lawyer assigned to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Strzok and Page worked both the Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia investigation.

Fox News also reports that up to 30 grand jury subpoenas are anticipated to be served on former government officials involved in “Spygate” and/or “Russiagate.” [SEE FOX REPORT HERE]

There has been a tremendous amount of external pressure being applied, and thankfully this year a significant amount of key internal pressure has joined that effort. For the issues surrounding former CIA Director John Brennan, Fox News is citing a declassified “Annex A” of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which highlights John Brennan including the Steele Dossier in the ICA at the request of former FBI Director James Comey.

Apparently, according to Fox News, the most significant citation against Brennan is an issue we outlined at CTH five years ago [SEE HERE] when we wrote about Annex-A and the implications therein. President Trump was still in office in 2020 when Annex-A was released. The good news is that Annex-A found its way into evidence that a prosecutor can present to a grand jury.

The outcome of a grand jury subpoena means the primary Russiagate officials will have to lawyer up, spend money and go plead the 5th amendment, the most likely outcome.

From my frame of reference, the evidence against the targets clearly exists and does not need them to make any admissions or denials. However, putting them on record in court individually, possibly compelled to testify or invoke the 5th, would perhaps narrow down their options if they were eventually indicted and face a criminal trial.

EXCLUSIVE:A federal grand jury has subpoenaed former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, among others as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, Fox News Digital has learned.

Sources told Fox News Digital Brennan; Strzok, the FBI’s former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence; and Page, a former FBI lawyer, were served with federal subpoenas on Friday.

Law enforcement sources told Fox News Digital that up to 30 subpoenas will be issued in the coming days relating to the investigation.

The grand jury is out of the Southern District of Florida. U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones is supervising the probe. Fox News Digital first reported this summer that Brennan was under criminal investigation.

[…] As for the criminal investigation into Brennan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of wrongdoing by Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel for potential prosecution, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital.

[…] But back in June 2020, Ratcliffe, while serving as director of national intelligence, declassified a footnote of the 2017 ICA, which revealed that the reporting of Trump dossier author Christopher Steele had only “limited corroboration” regarding whether then-President-elect Trump “knowingly worked with Russian officials to bolster his chances of beating” Hillary Clinton and other claims.

[…] The footnote, also known as “Annex A” of the 2017 ICA, exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital in June 2020, spanned less than two pages and detailed reporting by Steele, the former British spy who authored the unverified anti-Trump dossier — a document that helped serve as the basis for controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants obtained against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. (read more)

I also find it interesting they begin with “Russiagate”, and I wonder if they will find the “Spygate” that preceded it {GO DEEP}.

Then again, I am thankful for the change and recognize Spygate might just be a little too uncomfy for those who seek to retain continuity of government.

Posted in Big Government, Big Stupid Government, CIA, Conspiracy ?, Decepticons, Deep State, Dept Of Justice, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Election 2020, FBI, Lawfare, media bias, President Trump, propaganda, Russia, Spygate, Spying, THE BIG UGLY, Uncategorized, White House Coverup

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TREEH

# Fox News Says Justice Dept About to Issue Subpoenas to John Brennan from DC and FL Grand Juries

November 6, 2025 | Sundance | 132 Comments

I would not get too spun up about this yet because investigators and reviewers in/around Washington DC, have a ton of catching up to do on the material evidence against former CIA Director John Brennan.

Additionally, there is an institutional aversion to targeting anything to do with the CIA because the information needed for most direct evidence is behind a legislative authorized locked door.

That said, Fox News is reporting that a grand jury in DC and/or FL is potentially going to be used to issue subpoenas against John Brennan.

The primary issue surrounds Brennan telling congress in 2023 the “Steele Dossier” was not used in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), and current DNI Tulsi Gabbard releasing evidence proving it was.

*(Fox News) – Justice Department officials in Miami and Washington, D.C., are actively preparing to issue several grand jury subpoenas relating to an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, Fox News has learned.

*U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones is supervising the probe; Fox News is told.

{Last month, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, referred Brennan to the DOJ, saying that the former CIA chief “willfully and intentionally” made false statements to Congress.*}:

Jordan accused Brennan of lying in his 2023 Judiciary Committee testimony by denying that the CIA used the Steele dossier in prepping the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference, and falsely claiming the CIA opposed including the dossier. (more)*

President Trump’s January Executive Order says in part, “*The Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of the appropriate departments and agencies within the Intelligence Community, shall take all appropriate action to review the activities of the Intelligence Community over the last 4 years and identify any instances where the Intelligence Community’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order, and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the National Security Advisor, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of this order.”{source}:

DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been working on this for nine months.

Tulsi Gabbard retrieved and released a host of documents relating to the fraudulent ICA construct, including the use of the Steele Dossier. Gabbard also declassified and released the email from former DNI James Clapper who was pressuring NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers to go along with the team goal, and blame Russia:

“Understand your concern. It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page, and are all supportive of the report -in the highest tradition of “That’s OUR story, and we’re stickin’ to it.” This evening CIA has provided to the NIC the complete draft generated by the ad hoc fusion cell. We will facilitate as much mutual transparency as possible as we complete the report, but, more time is not negotiable. We may have to compromise our “normal” modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule. This is one project that has to be a team sport.”*

DNI James Clapper, December 22, 2016

fox nation vid strm

Remember, on July 20, 2025, DNI Tulsi Gabbard gave this interview. Within the interview, Tulsi Gabbard emphasizes how important it is for the people who engaged in a treasonous conspiracy to be held accountable. Gabbard notes there are now whistleblowers from within the IC agencies who have come forward to discuss how the intelligence apparatus was intentionally weaponized.

In her opinion as expressed, there is enough direct evidence now available to the Dept of Justice to begin criminal indictments against all of the participants.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard outlines how the documents released show how the Obama administration actively engaged the Intelligence Community to fabricate a false and malicious conspiracy against the incoming Trump administration.

I like how within the interview Director Gabbard emphasizes within her role she is able to reach into each of the eighteen intelligence agencies and extract documents that pertain to singular issues, in this case the role of Russia in the 2016 election. This cross-silo investigative ability is why the DNI office is so important to revealing information from within individual silos.

Posted in Big Government, Big Stupid Government, CIA, Deep State, Dept Of Justice, Donald Trump, FBI, Lawfare, media bias, Notorious Liars, President Trump, propaganda, Russia, Spygate, Spying, THE BIG UGLY, Uncategorized

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Patel: FBI Thwarts 'Potential Terrorist Attack'

Home | Politics

Tags: peter navarro | walter giardina | donald trump | fbi

Navarro: Fmr FBI Agent Drove Partisan Cases Against Trump

By Jim Thomas | Wednesday, 20 August 2025

Former White House adviser Peter Navarro has called for a full investigation into retired FBI agent Walter Giardina, accusing him of orchestrating politically motivated operations against President Donald Trump and his allies, including Navarro himself, Breitbart reported.

Navarro, a senior trade adviser in Trump first administration, urged Congress and federal authorities to launch an inquiry into Giardina, whom he describes as the central figure in a long-running campaign of "weaponized justice."

Navarro's accusations are detailed in his new book "I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To," in which he argued that Giardina played a pivotal role in nearly every major investigation into Trump over the past decade, from the Steele dossier to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe and beyond.

"I still feel the cold steel of the handcuffs Giardina and his gaggle of armed agents slapped on me at Reagan National Airport," wrote Navarro, recalling his 2022 arrest. "I will never forget the sight of my fiancee being perp-walked out of that same terminal as part of the circus arrest Giardina staged for maximum humiliation."

According to Navarro, Giardina was among the first FBI officials to review the Steele dossier in 2016.

He claimed that whistleblowers told Congress that Giardina vouched for the dossier as "corroborated" despite its most explosive allegations later proving to be false. The document became central to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane probe and helped justify secret surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's 2019 report found 17 errors or omissions in the bureau's applications for surveillance warrants, including exaggerated claims about Steele's reliability. Navarro argueed Giardina's actions directly enabled what Trump has long branded the "Russia hoax."

Navarro also ties Giardina to the Mueller investigation, alleging the agent improperly wiped his government-issued laptop, potentially erasing key records from the inquiry. Despite that, Giardina reportedly received an internal award for his work on the team.

Whistleblower disclosures to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, further implicated Giardina in a separate 2017 case known as Crimson River, which pursued claims that Egypt funneled $10 million to Trump's campaign. That investigation, Navarro said, never produced evidence but was classified in a way that restricted oversight.

Navarro accuses Giardina of using the Constitution's Emoluments Clause as a "political fishing license" to target Trump's business dealings and later spearheading Operation Arctic Frost, a Jan. 6-related probe that led to the seizure of phones from both Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.

The most personal chapter of Navarro's allegations centers on his own 2022 arrest. Navarro said the bureau turned his indictment into "political theater," even subjecting his fiancee to a public walkout, though she was not accused of wrongdoing.

Navarro was held in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated Jan. 6. Sentenced to four months in prison, he described his conviction as the "partisan weaponization of the judicial system."

Navarro insisted that firing politicized FBI officials is insufficient.

"That's why Giardina, along with a long list of alleged lawfare perpetrators, must be investigated," he wrote. "Because if they are not, they will do it again.

"If they can come for me, they can come for you," Navarro said.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Jim Thomas ✉

Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.

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MMA

October 17, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): We are living in the f-aroundest of times and the find-outingest of times.

And, I personally believe that it is the most entertaining thing that has happened over the past nine months, that those communists who accused Donald Trump of crimes are guilty of the crimes in which they are accusing Donald Trump. It is the iron law of wokeism. It is actually part of Saul Alinsky's plan. It is actually part of the Communist Manifesto. Every Bolshevik that has ever lived practiced this. We're against the bourgeois because they're gonna genocide us, and then the Bolsheviks go on to genocide half the population.

Right? Like, we're against the capitalists because they're here to kill you, and then the communist will go and kill half the population. Right? Mao Zedong kills 60 million people. They will accuse you of the crimes of which they are guilty. Now we found this out with Letitia James. Leticia James accused Donald Trump of real estate mortgage crimes, and it turns out that she has now been caught cold committing those exact same crimes, but far worse than Donald Trump ever committed them. She's been indicted for that. James Comey went after General Flynn, Donald Trump for lying to Congress, for lying under oath, for lying to the federal government and FBI. James Comey indicted for that exact same thing.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Brennan and James Clapper, they're in very hot water because of what they did launching the Russia collusion hoax, raiding Donald Trump's house and so on and so forth. It turns out that they've hoaxed themselves directly into some real legal trouble. And we hear that that's going to be heating up quite quickly. Interesting little birdies tell us this.

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CRC BS RECYCLED 10 25

Author’s note: A previous version of this essay was originally posted in December 2024. It is again timely because FBI director James Comey was arraigned in federal court on Wednesday. He pleaded “not guilty” to charges of lying to Congress over the Russiagate hoax.

Guilt beyond reasonable doubt is a very high bar to clear. If Comey is to be convicted, then it will require the unanimous agreement of more than a dozen people who have not yet met each other. First, the federal judge will decide if the case should even proceed to a trial. Then, if there is a trial, a “guilty” verdict will require agreement from all twelve of the jurors selected in the case. This implicitly gives each of them the unilateral authority to extend Comey’s presumption of innocence. Presumption of innocence protects all of us.

But whether or not Comey is found guilty of the federal felonies charged against him, his complicity in the creation and perpetuation of the Russiagate scam is beyond reasonable doubt. The six-foot, eight-inch-tall Comey was buried into that dung pile up to his eyeballs.

Kash Patel, now the FBI director, promised to clean up that smelly pile shortly after he was nominated to become America’s top cop. Reproduced below is my December 2024 analysis of what Comey left him with.

Kash Patel, the nominee to be the next FBI director, believes the Bureau has been abusing its power. The Russiagate hoax is at the top of the evidence list.

Led by former director James Comey, the FBI used the so-called Steele dossier to help cook up the hoax. A 2019 investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (IG) concluded the “Steele reporting” had “played a central and essential role” in the FBI’s filing of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) spy warrants targeting former Donald Trump aide Carter Page.

Back in May 2017, according to the IG, the FBI was told by Steele’s primary source that there was “zero” proof for the dossier’s assertions. But three years later, and then just seven months before the 2020 presidential election, a Harvard-Harris survey showed 53 percent still thought the “Steele dossier was real.”

It’s hard to exaggerate the damage the hoax did to America.

“Gross Incompetence”

The IG described FISA surveillance as one of the “most sensitive and intrusive investigative techniques” available, and the only Russiagate target they used it against was Page. While the FBI’s snooping uncovered no evildoing by the target or Trump, it did reveal plenty of bad behavior by the Bureau. The IG reported 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FISA applications, and the IG himself told Congress the FBI had performed with “gross incompetence and negligence.”

From 2008 to 2013, Page was an “operational contact” for the CIA and occasionally interacted with Russian intelligence officers of interest to the Agency. The IG found that the CIA had given a “positive assessment of Page’s candor.” The CIA shared this positive opinion of Page with the Bureau two months before the FBI submitted the first FISA application.

But that application referenced only Page’s contact with Russian spies, and not that this occurred with the CIA’s blessing. The FBI repeated the supposed error over and over again in subsequent warrant requests. Just before the last FISA application was sent in, the CIA confirmed againthat Page was a friendly source. This time an FBI attorney changed the answer to “nota source” [emphasis added] and sent it careening through the careless bureaucracy.

During the inept investigation, the FBI learned that the Steele dossier had been paid for by the Democratic National Committee and that Steele had openly stated his desire to prevent Trump from winning. The Bureau should have told the FISA court about this political bias, but did not do so. The IG investigators wrote that they “did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or missing information.”

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, but Comey kept at it, trigging yet another critical IG report. This one found the former FBI chief had “improperly disclosed FBI documents and information” to the New York Times.

Leaky Comey

In a memoir written after his dismissal, Comey recounted a discussion with Trump about this subject.

“I don’t do sneaky things, I told him. I don’t leak,” Comey claims to have told Trump.

Elsewhere in the memoir Comey wrote that the “stuff that gets me the most is the claim that I am in love with my own righteousness, my own virtue.”

That must be some tough love. The IG concluded Comey’s leaky behavior set “a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees.”

Comey also wrote that he kept on his desk at the FBI a copy of the memo from J. Edgar Hoover that authorized FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. Among many other abuses, Hoover’s FBI also sent a blackmail letter encouraging King to kill himself.

Comey claimed that desk is where he “reviewed applications by the FBI and the Department of Justice to conduct national security electronic surveillance.” In other words, stuff like FISA applications, such as the ones approved for Page while Comey was the FBI director.

Neither Page nor references to him appear in the Comey memoir.

Similarly obtuse, Comey responded to the IG’s damning FISA report with an opinion essay in the Washington Post. He concluded mistakes were made . . . and that others should be blamed.

“The FBI fulfilled its mission—protecting the American people and upholding the U.S. Constitution,” he wrote. “Now those who attacked the FBI for two years should admit they were wrong.”

In his non-apology, Comey also brushed off the FISA errors as routine: “That’s always unfortunate, but human beings make mistakes.”

It’s true. Quality control takes a hit when the guy who is supposedly reading the botched spy warrant requests is instead performatively gazing at his J. Edgar Hoover memo. (Sarcastic props to the University of Chicago Law School, which awarded Comey his J.D.)

Sanctimony

Comey met the future president for the first time in late 2016, just prior to the inauguration. The FBI director used this unique opportunity to discuss the most salacious rumor in the Steele dossier—that Russian intelligence had video of Trump cavorting with prostitutes. Buzzfeed published the dossier a few days later, setting off a media firestorm that lasted years.

This also triggered a follow-up call to Comey from an understandably annoyed Trump, who had already strongly denied the outlandish tale the first time he heard it from Comey.

“I stared out at the monuments and wondered what had happened to me and our country that the FBI director was talking about this with our incoming president,” wrote Comey of the discussion.

Well, Jimmy, it was you who brought all this up. What did you expect?

Comey also complained that Trump wanted the FBI to investigate so the prostitute rumor could be disproven. Already well into the act of using the dossier to justify spy warrants, Comey implied that Trump’s fixation on it was due to Trump’s guilty conscience!

“I’m almost certain the president is unfamiliar with the proverb ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth,’” he wrote.

This sanctimonious observation raises a good question for the new FBI director. Will the wicked from Russiagate flee if someone does pursueth?

More about the FBI

This essay was adapted from a larger report, “The FBI’s Bad Apples: The Bureau’s Worst Days Are Worth Remembering,” a cover story from theSeptember 2022issue ofCapital Research*magazine. That longer report addresses FBI abuses stretching back to the era of the 9/11 attacks, the Branch Davidian standoff, the Olympic Park bomber, and more.

*The report is also available online at the following links:

Part 1: Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax

Part 2: The Dirty Dossier

Part 3: More Jewells

Part 4: Mueller and Mistakes

Part 5: Hoover’s Return

Part 6: Bad Apples

{Additional coverage of the FBI includes:*}:

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)is a comprehensive history of the FBI at InfluenceWatch.org. Additional InfluenceWatch.org profiles covering the history and behavior of the FBI includeThe Twitter Files,Trump-Russia Collusion Claims,National Lawyers Guild, theInstitute for Policy Studies, theWeather Underground,Students for a Democratic Society, theVenceremos Brigade,The Black Panther Party,Stokely Carmichael and theCommunist Party USA.*

{“The Twitter Files and the Ministry of Truth Media,” a cover story from theMarch/April 2023issue of Capital Research magazine, addressed the FBI’s involvement in speech suppression and the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. That report is also available online at the following links:*}:

Part 1: The Twitter Files

Part 2: Watchdogs Became Lapdogs

Part 3: The Enemies List

Part 4: Apologies Without End

Part 5: Winston Enjoyed the Work

Tags: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), FBI, James Comey, Russiagate, Trump-Russia hoax

Ken Braun

As managing editor and director of content of CRC, Ken Braun edits Capital Research magazine. He also conducts investigative research and drafts profiles for InfluenceWatch.org. He previously worked…

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Laura Ingraham says James Comey's Russia investigation “was a travesty and justice must be done”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 09/25/25

Video

Citation

From the September 25, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): We have to think about it this way, too, regardless of how this all turns out, the director of the FBI helped spearhead one of the most damaging episodes of American criminal justice that we have ever seen -- injustice, I should say. Taking it upon himself to try to unseat a sitting president of the United States with these bogus, B.S. cases that they tried to, you know, gin up in the public's mind, affect public opinion, and ultimately hobble this president. That's at the bottom of what all went on here. And there were a lot of people involved. But he was at the top of the food chain here. Barack Obama was the other, but he was at the top chain here. And I think justice must be done, lest no one have faith in the FBI anymore. If nothing comes of everything that we know happened, then what are we?

FITZGERALD: Well, I'm retired FBI and I certainly agree with that. I would be very much bothered if this wasn't taken to its logical conclusion.

I'm going to go back to 2017, the Women's March in January of that year. Right after Trump was inaugurated or right around that time. I'll never forget Mrs. Comey and two of her daughters were interviewed by chance, by CNN directly identifying themselves, who they were. They have every right to do that, First Amendment, all that. But you really think the wife and daughters of the FBI would stay away from making controversial statements about the upcoming Trump administration. But we knew that was just one adjacent part of what their husband/father was doing. It was also Crossfire Hurricane going on inside the FBI. And we all know where that went, winding up with him possibly committing perjury in front of Congress.

INGRAHAM: This was a long, winding set up of a duly elected president of the United States. And it was a travesty and justice must be done.

MMA//

  1. ### Fox News panel expresses extreme skepticism on Comey charges: “I don't think this case even gets to trial”

09/26/25 12:02 PM EDT

  1. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, September 26

09/26/25 10:50 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox News' Howard Kurtz says the Comey indictment was “completely and totally orchestrated by President Trump”

09/25/2

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SEE TRAITOR BS 7 25

NY Times reported John Durham found the “Clinton Plan” emails were likely created by Russian spies. Right-wing media are running with them as legitimate.

Figures have suggested Clinton should be “behind bars,” argued the debunked scandal will “make Watergate look like a jaywalking ticket,” and likened it to a “soft coup attempt” and “treason”

Written by Noah Dowe, Pete Tsipis & Lis Power

:{Published 08/01/25

The right-wing media ecosystem has exploded with false claims about a newly-declassified annex to special counsel John Durham’s report on Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign. Right-wing media are claiming that the annex provides evidence of a “plot” by the Clinton campaign to undermine then-candidate Donald Trump. However, the newly-declassified assessment found that the documents in question were “not credible” and “likely made by Russian spies.”

Conservative media figures have ignored this assessment, instead calling for Hillary Clinton to be put “behind bars” for coordinating a “soft coup attempt.” And although they previously heralded Durham’s efforts, some in right-wing media are now arguing he “failed the American people.”

Citation

Fox News

Citation

Fox Business

Citation

Fox News

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  1. ### Fox News has mentioned Obama over 3 times more than Epstein since Tulsi Gabbard released her report

07/23/25 4:07 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News since Monday: 85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney, 3 minutes talking about Epstein

07/31/25 2:12 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News has aired 168 segments about Tulsi Gabbard's revisionist claims regarding Russia, Obama, and the 2016 election

07/30/25

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an ah 7 25 XLNT

With the Jeffrey Epstein controversy continuing to dominate headlines, President Donald Trump is using much of the rhetoric he used during Russiagate back in 2016 and 2017 as well as during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Trump is accusing the mainstream media of pushing "fake news," railing against "the deep state," and repeatedly using the word "hoax." The president is also describing himself as the victim of a "witch hunt," a phrase he used during his two impeachments as well as when he was facing four criminal indictments.

Never Trump conservative David French, in his July 31 column for the New York Times, emphasizes that Trump and his allies are responding to the "ongoing Epstein saga by playing one of MAGA's greatest hits: the claim that Trump was the victim of a witch hunt, that the establishment attempted to destroy him even before he began his first term."

READ MORE:The one man who has the strength to finish off Donald Trump

"The (Trump) Administration's claims about the Russia investigation are designed to alter our understanding of history, to foster MAGA’s fake narrative of Trump and MAGA as perpetual victims of a maliciously corrupt 'deep state,'" French explains. "In fact, the response to the Russia story provided the template for how MAGA has responded to nearly every Trump scandal. And once you recognize the pattern, you can see it play out time and time again. It comes in four distinct steps."

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Those "steps," according to French, are: (1) "redefine the scandal on the terms most favorable to Trump," (2) "lie relentlessly," (3) "ignore genuine concerns," and (4) "reverse the villains."

"Trump has run this same playbook for more than eight years," French argues. "Whether he was facing impeachment in 2019 over charges of threatening to hold back aid to Ukraine unless Ukraine investigated the Biden family or facing impeachment again over his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the pattern is the same. It has worked on Republicans every single time. It works because he's telling them what they want to hear: Trump is not corrupt; his critics are."

French continues, "But for the first time since he announced his first campaign in June 2015, Trump's team has told his base something many definitely did not want to hear — and very much did not expect: that the Epstein scandal is less expansive than they thought, that there was nothing to see here. He has been flailing ever since. So it's no surprise that he turned back to the 'Russia hoax.' It was the first significant scandal of his administration, and the fight over the (Robert) Mueller investigation helped bond Trump to his base. But the real Russia hoax is the idea that there was nothing to investigate."

READ MORE:'We have it on video!' Ex-RNC chair rips Trump on 'doing the backstroke away from' Epstein

*David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

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RWW

07/24/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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MMA

Right-wing media use Tulsi Gabbard's flimsy memo to call for imprisoning Obama

The right-wing media efforts to implicate Obama come as Trump tries to deflect from the Epstein files

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Chloe Simon

Published 07/23/25

As the MAGA world continues to rail against the Trump administration over the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a report suggesting former President Barack Obama pressured national intelligence agencies to fabricate or exaggerate Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election in favor of President Donald Trump.

Right-wing media have reacted to the story — which Trump has seized on as he tries to distract from the Epstein chaos — by demanding or predicting that Obama be charged for “treason” and “seditious conspiracy” in a “military tribunal” or accusing him of orchestrating “a three-year project to overturn the will of the American people and to destroy an administration.”

Tulsi Gabbard suggested Obama pressured intelligence agencies to fabricate or dramatize Russian influence operations in the 2016 election

Trump seized on Gabbard’s claims in an apparent effort to detract from the Epstein files}:

PROJECTION

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WOW DEFLECTION ON EPSTEIN IMPLOSION OF MAGA

mma

Trump’s latest attempt to defuse the Epstein revolt: Point supporters at common enemies

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 07/21/25

President Donald Trump is seeking to reunify allies enraged by his administration’s repudiation of MAGA claims about late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein by offering up spurious attacks on common and familiar enemies: the media — in this case Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal — and former President Barack Obama.

Trump brought together an ideologically diverse coalition and a fractured right-wing media ecosystem during his 2024 campaign based largely on their shared hatred for Democrats, liberal institutions like the press, and the left. His administration’s actions have at times sparked criticism from different factions over the handling of issues like the Russia-Ukraine war, tariffs, U.S. strikes on Iran,, and, most of all, disclosures in the Epstein case.

The president spent last week failing to tamp down discussion of the Epstein story that seemed to be fracturing the MAGA movement. He tried claiming that his political enemies had “written” the “Epstein Files,” argued that the Epstein case is “pretty boring stuff,” and even lashed out at supporters who talk about it as “weaklings” and “stupid people.” But while the propagandists at Fox News were willing to play ball, Trump’s statements backfired elsewhere, leaving many right-wing media figures and the base alike in a state of revolt.

On Thursday, however, The Wall Street Journal reported that a “bawdy” letter bearing Trump’s signature had been included in an album created for Epstein’s 50th birthday (before allegations of his sexual abuse of girls became publicly known). The document, according to the Journal, had been reviewed by Justice Department officials who handled Epstein’s case.

The Journal report could have focused the right’s attention on Trump’s voluminous ties to Epstein. But Trump redirected them at a familiar target: journalists. responded that night by calling the letter “FAKE,” denouncing the paper, and claiming that he would sue. The following day, he followed through with a defamation lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages from the two authors of the article; the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones & Co.; parent company News Corp and that company’s CEO; and Murdoch himself.

Trump’s lawsuit is both unprecedented and consistent with Trump’s authoritarian treatment of a free press whose criticism he seeks to curtail through corrupt means. The message it sends is straightforward: If you publish reporting that displeases the president — even if, like Murdoch, your support was crucial to his political ascension — he may try to ruin you, so don’t try it.

While the Journal’s corporate cousins at Fox News mostly avoided the story on Friday, the network’s competitors throughout the fractured marketplace of right-wing media responded by sharpening their knives and attacking the paper. Laura Loomer deemed the Journal story “totally fake,” Charlie Kirk accused the Journal of a “terrible drive-by,” and Benny Johnson claimed that the real “scandal is in who wrote the story,” referencing a baroque conspiracy theory that was circulating on the right at the time.

The same day Trump’s lawyers filed their suit, former Fox contributor and current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard offered even more grist for the right-wing media mill. In a story served up to Fox as an exclusive, Gabbard claimed to have uncovered documents proving “a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government” which aimed “to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup.” She suggested that figures including Obama “must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” and said she was referring the documents to the Justice Department. Leaving nothing to subtext, Trump subsequently posted to Truth Social an AI video featuring Obama beng arrested and imprisoned.

Those documents, however, demonstrate nothing other than Gabbard’s own ignorance and/or malice. They show that Obama received an intelligence report that Russia had not hacked election systems to change vote totals in the 2016 election — which is consistent with what the Obama administration said publicly at the time — then asked for and subsequently received another intelligence report detailing other actions taken by the Russian government in an effort to influence the election. That effort, according to the intelligence community, the Justice Department, and a Senate committee helmed at the time by current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, included hacking and releasing Democratic emails.

Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy, in a withering piece at National Review, described Gabbard’s argument as a “frivolous” attempt to further Trump’s “foolish stance” that Russia had not tried to influence the 2016 election via “overwrought and misleading” language and “thundering claptrap.”

But her attacks served to reignite years of conspiracy-mongering about the Russia “witch hunt,” and thus were credibly regurgitated elsewhere on the right, including by Fox’s stars, with some echoing Gabbard’s demagogic language about purported “treason.” Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly posted Fox clips and articles from right-wing media hyping the purported scandal.

Much of MAGA media seems eager to target the Journal and Obama on Trump’s behalf. But it remains to be seen whether those influencers — or their audience — will be willing to allow the Epstein story to fade away altogether.

That said, Trump’s best hope of keeping his supporters happy may very well be increasing the scale and tempo of his authoritarian attacks — and that means there will be more to come in the months ahead.

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July 21, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): I mean, you're simply left to assume that all of it's been a lie and that they're 100% authentic, and I think most people in this audience already believe that.

But then if that's the case, then there's a lot of questions that are gonna be asked of Hillary Clinton. Now there's reports that Hillary Clinton and her team were aggressively pushing Barack Obama to launch Russiagate. We'll wait to see those documents — perhaps that's what Tulsi Gabbard is telling us is going to be dropping soon. We're not sure. But Tulsi Gabbard is saying not only are there major whistleblowers from inside the IC, but also that there's a lot more to come. And, you know, at what point do you begin to pull the threads back to Hillary Clinton? Could she potentially be culpable in any of this?

JULIE KELLY (HOST): I doubt it. I mean, you know, let's cut to the chase. No one's gonna indict Hillary Clinton. No one's gonna indict Barack Obama. So we can, I think, disabuse ourselves of that vision or —

JOHNSON: Really? You don't think Obama either?

KELLY: No. No. No. No. No. No. And, you know, of course, you got the issue with Barack Obama. What would you charge him with? We have the immunity ruling from the Supreme Court, really, a year ago that carves out only specific instances where a president in office could be held criminally liable. And I'm sure that Barack Obama, if anything came down, would be smart enough and his lawyers would figure that out. So no.

But look. I really wanna see the henchmen like Lisa Monaco — and I know I keep going back to her. But look, she also ran the Biden DOJ. So she was the one that really ran the first two invest — the two investigations into the president for classified documents and for January 6. She, I'm sure, worked with special counsel Jack Smith, was involved in his appointment. People from the DOJ leaving the Department of Justice, going to the special counsel's office — Chuck Grassley just, last week, I believe, the last several days, releasing emails showing how Tom Windom, another prosecutor who went to the DCUS attorney's office, which was in constant contact with the DOJ, I'm told, specifically Lisa Monaco's office, how he was pushing top-down the FBI to open this January 6 investigation into the president, which of course they did.

So I'm looking for a lot more records related to that as well. And so, those are the people who I think are the most likely to be held responsible, criminally liable, and the ones who should be.

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NPR

Trump's spy chief claims the Obama administration 'manufactured' intel on Russia

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has published the latest in a series of reports that scrutinize years-old intel community...

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, has published the latest in a series of recent Trump administration reports aimed at scrutinizing years-old intelligence community conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

For years, President Trump has spread disinformation about those conclusions, calling the entire Russia investigation a "hoax," despite supporting evidence that has been systematically reviewed by intelligence agencies, lawmakers and Department of Justice lawyers.

The Two-Way

Putin Ordered 'Influence Campaign' To Help Trump, U.S. Intelligence Report Says

On Friday afternoon, ODNI published a press releaseasserting that its director, Tulsi Gabbard, "revealed overwhelming evidence" that President Obama and his national security officials "manufactured and politicized intelligence" to launch a "years-long coup against President Trump." Gabbard echoed those conclusions across social media platforms X and Truth Social, and in interviews on Fox News in the days that followed.

Among the materials Gabbard declassified are emails and memos published under the banner of the new "Director's Initiatives Group," formed to "execut[e] President Trump's Executive Orders aimed at rebuilding trust in the [Intelligence Community]."

In those files, Obama officials exchange correspondence about Russian attempts at election interference, concluding that it was unlikely Russian hackers would successfully compromise physical election infrastructure or alter vote totals without detection but might be successful in influencing voter confidence in the election.

"There is no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count through cyber means," wrote an ODNI official whose name was redacted in a newly published email. "However, as seen in recent media reporting, any cyber activity directed against the election infrastructure is likely to have an effect on public confidence," they continued.

Author Interviews

Mueller investigator says Russia interfered in 2016 — and in the 2024 election too

Gabbard also released a timeline that outlines events leading up to the 2017 assessment that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election. The timeline focuses on the conclusions by intelligence community officials that Russia likely had not and would not use cyber means to directly compromise voter systems or change vote tallies.

Gabbard argues that these conclusions are hypocritical and poke holes – if not directly contradict – the intelligence community's 2017 assessment that Russian attempted to influence the election.

But Obama officials never claimed that Russian hackers had successfully changed votes or hacked election infrastructure at scale.

The 2017 assessment focuses on Russian influence, from social media disinformation networks, hack-and-leak campaigns, Russian bot farms and other more psychological efforts made by Russian actors. Intelligence community experts acknowledge that Russian hacking targeting election infrastructure was likely limited and aimed at gathering intelligence.

Democrats were quick to criticize the new ODNI publication as contradictory to previous reviews of the assessment, as well as dishonest and politically motivated.

"This is utter nonsense," wrote Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

[

The Two-Way

Trump Denies Allegations Of Secret Ties, Collusion Between Campaign And Russia

"It is sadly not surprising that DNI Gabbard, who promised to depoliticize the intelligence community, is once again weaponizing her position to amplify the president's election conspiracy theories," wrote Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on X.

Meanwhile, earlier in July, CIA Director John Ratcliffe published a separate report reviewing the CIA's internal processes while compiling the 2017 assessment. On X.com, he claimed that Obama officials had "manipulated intelligence" in an effort to "get Trump."

However, like the newly declassified emails and memos, the CIA report doesn't appear to directly contradict the central thesis of the 2017 assessment: that Russia attempted to influence the American public and their perceptions of the 2016 election.

The CIA's "lessons-learned" review of the analytic procedure behind the 2017 assessment identified several recommendations for stricter compliance with CIA standards, but ultimately said that the actual conclusions made in that assessment were "defensible."

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MSNBC STEVE B

#DNI Gabbard concocts odd ‘treasonous conspiracy’ theory, eyes Russia probe prosecutions

Tulsi Gabbard's new findings on the Trump-Russia scandal have been panned as “ludicrous.” The DNI is seeking criminal prosecutions anyway.

July 21, 2025,

By Steve Benen

By all appearances, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been struggling for months. On Capitol Hill, she’s become the subject of bipartisan ridicule, with one Republican senator recently questioning whether she should be medicated.

In the White House, it’s worse. In recent months, there’s been reporting from major outlets about the intelligence chief being sidelined, being left out of important meetings, and falling out of favor in the Oval Office. Indeed, in the run-up to the president launching a pre-emptive military strike in Iran, Donald Trump twice told reporters — out loud and on camera — that he didn’t care what Gabbard thought.

If the DNI were looking for a way to return to the president’s good graces, she apparently found one. The New York Times reported:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday issued the latest in a series of reports from the Trump administration attempting to undermine the eight-year-old assessment that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said the information she was releasing showed a ‘treasonous conspiracy in 2016’ by top Obama administration officials to harm Mr. Trump.

Late Friday afternoon, Gabbard’s Director’s Initiative Group (DIG) unveiled a report with a title that read, “Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency.” In an accompanying press release, the DNI added, “The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.”

It was over-the-top nonsense that Gabbard was quick to bring to Fox News during multiple on-air appearances, including an interview in which she raised the prospect of an anti-Trump “coup.”

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The president appeared delighted. I lost count of how many items he published to his social media platform about Gabbard’s claims, but The Daily Beast tallied “at least 17 times,” which sounds about right.

Those who apparently believe it’s their job to parrot Trump played their predictable roles. House Speaker Mike Johnson, for example, wrote online in response to the DNI’s findings, “DISMANTLING THE DEEP STATE! New evidence from [Gabbard] confirms what we’ve long known: The Russia hoax was a political hit job manufactured by Obama officials and weaponized by intel agencies to take down President Trump.”

And if that were true, it would certainly be a big deal. But it’s not true at all.

Right off the bat, it’s worth noting that the hapless intelligence director could have better timing: The week before she released her weird report, Trump’s handpicked CIA director released the findings of his own internal investigation that concluded, once again, that Russia attacked the U.S. political system in 2016 because Putin’s regime wanted to put Trump in the White House — which is the same thing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found, and which is the same thing the Senate Intelligence Committee found when it was led by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, before he became Trump’s secretary of state.

But even if we put that aside, and consider Gabbard’s findings on their own, the DNI released a document that can charitably be described as an embarrassment to herself, her office and the U.S. intelligence community. An analysis from The Bulwark explained, “[E]ven a cursory look at the actual substance of Gabbard’s dramatic claims shows ... a nothingburger. There is no actual substance. Instead, there is blatant sleight of hand and manipulation of evidence, debunking a theory of Russian election interference that the Obama administration never endorsed.”

MaddowblogAt the six-month mark, Trump claims he kept promises he never actually made

Similarly, Philip Bump, who spent years covering the underlying scandal at The Washington Post, described Gabbard’s conclusions as “ludicrous.”

Broadly speaking, there are two main points to Gabbard’s pitch. The first is that Democratic officials in the Obama administration somehow manufactured the entire Russia scandal after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race, following a period in which the intelligence community was largely indifferent to Vladimir Putin’s tactics before. We already know that’s not true: Not only did administration officials warn Americans about Russian efforts weeks *before* Election Day, but those same officials famously brought their concerns to Congress, only to be brushed off by GOP leaders.

Gabbard focused heavily on the fact that the Obama White House sought a revised assessment the month after Trump’s electoral victory, and the changes that were made at this point. But as The Bulwark explained, “this supposed scandal rests on a crude bait-and-switch.”

A quick look at the media reports Gabbard cites shows that they weren’t talking about altering the election outcome through ‘cyberattacks on election infrastructure’ — that is, actual tampering with the vote count. Rather, the claims of election interference via cyber warfare concerned, as the Washington Post put it, ‘individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.’ ... Was this a new, post-election assessment, as Gabbard seems to claim? Hardly: The same conclusion was announced at the start of the October 7, 2016, joint statement issued by the DNI and the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of seventeen intelligence agencies.

All of this dovetails with the second problem with Gabbard’s findings: The DNI leaned heavily into the fact that there was no evidence of Russia targeting U.S. vote-counting machines and election infrastructure. That’s true, but it’s also irrelevant: Democratic officials never claimed that Russia targeted U.S. vote-counting machines and election infrastructure.

Looking ahead, the fact that Gabbard released a pitiful report might seem unimportant. The DNI already lacked credibility, so the fact that her findings make her appear like an even more brazen partisan activist will strike some as trivial.

But Gabbard has also spent the last three days claiming that she’s now pushing for “indictments” and “prosecutions” of Obama administration officials who committed outrageous crimes that don’t appear to have actually happened in reality.

In other words, the release of a misguided report on Trump’s Russia scandal wasn’t just a desperate ploy to make the president happy; it was also an apparent first step toward pushing the Justice Department to act on a silly partisan stunt.

---

---

GGL 7 25

Time Magazine

Trump Envisions Jailing Obama as Tulsi Gabbard Threatens Prosecutions

Tulsi Gabbard recently referred evidence supposedly showing Obama Administration officials conspiring to subvert Trump's 2016 election...

.11 hours ago

Fox News

Tulsi Gabbard reveals 'historic' intelligence plot allegedly targeting Trump and more top headlines

Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox.

.11 hours ago

The Independent

Tulsi Gabbard openly accuses Obama of longstanding effort to overthrow Trump in coup

Gabbard claimed Obama and his officials committed 'treasonous conspiracy' over the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016...

.1 day ago

Newsweek

Tulsi Gabbard Unveils 230,000 MLK Docs Under Trump Executive Order

Gabbard announced the release of 230000 pages tied to MLK Jr.'s assassination, fulfilling a Trump-era transparency directive.

.2 hours ago

CBS News

Tulsi Gabbard claims Obama administration "conspiracy" to subvert 2016 election

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is claiming she has evidence that the Obama administration attempted to subvert the 2016...

.5 hours ago

MSNBC News

DNI Gabbard concocts odd ‘treasonous conspiracy’ theory, eyes Russia probe prosecutions

By all appearances, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been struggling for months. On Capitol Hill, she's become the...

.7 hours ago

The Times of India

Trump Teases Obama Arrest By FBI As Tulsi Gabbard Hints At More Coup Details | 'Russiagate' Row

U.S. President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated (deepfake) video that shows ex-President Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents inside...

.17 hours ago

KFOX

Gabbard unveils docs claiming Obama officials skewed 2016 election intelligence

(TNND) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents on Friday that show reports alleging the Obama...

.2 days ago

The Daily Beast

Top Dem Deflates Gabbard’s Obama ‘Coup’ Claims in Two Words

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner blasted Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard as “not competent,” moments before she dropped a report...

.1 day ago

---

an 7 25

The Guardian reports even dedicated CIA critic Tim Weiner is sounding the alarm on the damage President Donald Trump is doing the agency.

Weiner — who wrote the CIA political take-down ‘Legacy of Ashes’ about decades of CIA mistakes and bad behavior — compares Trump’s second administration to watching the U.S. stand with Russia, Iran and North Korea by voting against a UN resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine.

“You come to the realization, if you hadn’t already: ‘My God, the president of the United States has gone over to the other side. He has joined the authoritarian axis,’” Weiner said.

READ MORE: Stick a fork in him: Trump finally faces the threat of retribution—from MAGA

A chapter of Weiner’s new book "The Mission" addresses how the CIA was blindsided by Russia’s influence operation on behalf of Trump’s 2016 campaign. This was when Russian intelligence began releasing hacked Democratic National Committee emails, dealing a devastating blow to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

“The Russians stole our f—————— election. How do we make sure this never happens again?” Weiner recalls CIA head Tom Rakusan demanding of his staff.

Following two impeachments, an insurrection and a second election, Trump is back in the White House and bent on revenge against the CIA. He’s also hired, according to Weiner, “a coterie of dangerously incompetent and servile acolytes to the highest positions of national security”.

“What keeps me up at night,” he told The Guardian, “is the fact that Trump has put the instruments of American national security in the hands of crackpots and fools, and that their incompetence and ideological blinkers will blind them to a coming attack. If the United States gets hit again under Trump, he will destroy what is left of our democracy.”

READ MORE:'This is his king complex': Republicans split as Trump threatens to 'takeover' a 'pigsty'

Weiner describes new CIA director, John Ratcliffe — a former personal injury attorney — as “a spineless person who will do whatever Trump tells him to do.”

Ratcliffe immediately fired hundreds of recently hired staffers and then sent their names to Elon Musk in an unclassified email that Weiner said was probably intercepted by the Russians and Chinese, who are now presumably working to recruit them as spies.

“All they need to do is to find people who are either deeply resentful or who might have a financial or a drug problem to be exploited,” Weiner said.

Trump’s anti-diversity crusade was another foolish mistake because “if you want to spy in a nation like Somalia or Pakistan or China, it might be wise to have a workforce that is not made up exclusively of white guys, and who speak languages other than English,” Weiner said. “Diversity was one of the CIA’s few superpowers, and the mindless abolition of the effort to diversify the CIA’s officers and analysts was one of the most stupid self-inflicted wounds that Radcliffe could have delivered.”

READ MORE:'Blatantly political': Outrage grows as Americans receive misleading email from Trump admin

Sadly, Weiner says no “Robert Mueller” or “Barack Obama” is going to save the nation. What that takes is a massive upheaval from Americans.

“[T]he other day, several million Americans marched in the street to protest the Mad King. And just as only we can defeat ourselves, I think only we can save ourselves,” Weiner said.

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

---

RETALIATION

nbc?

:{July 9, 2025

By Ken Dilanian, Ryan J. Reilly and Dan De Luce

The Trump administration has put two repeated targets of President Donald Trump under criminal investigation, although details of what exactly they are being investigated for or how far the Justice Department intends on taking the probes are unclear.

The two targets are former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in his first term, according to a statement that a Justice Department spokesperson provided to reporters.

The statement followed a Fox News article on Tuesday evening reporting on the existence of the investigations. After referring to Comey and Brennan, the spokesperson said the Justice Department does "not comment on ongoing investigations.”

A lawyer for Comey had no comment. Brennan, who is a paid contributor to NBC News and MSNBC, said he has not been contacted by the Justice Department or the CIA about the reported investigation. The FBI declined to comment.

The Fox News article was published as both FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi are facing significant blowback from conservative media and influencers over their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and material related to it. This week, the Justice Department and the FBI put out a memo restating what prior investigations had already found: that Epstein, a convicted sex offender and financier, killed himself in his jail cell in 2019 and that there was no incriminating evidence against uncharged third parties.

Patel, before joining the government, engaged with conspiracy theories about Epstein, while a statement from Bondi that an Epstein "client list" was sitting on her desk fueled more speculation on the right. Bondi later said she was speaking about documents related to Epstein, not an actual list.

U.S. newsVirginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin says his family was rescued in Texas floods

As for Brennan, a source briefed on the matter said CIA Director John Ratcliffe had made a criminal referral of Brennan to the Justice Department. Exactly what prompted the Comey investigation is unclear.

Ratcliffe last week released an internal CIA review that criticized Brennan’s handling of a 2017 intelligence assessment concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Any conduct that took place during that campaign or even in most of Trump’s first term is now outside the typical five-year statute of limitations for federal crimes. The Fox News article mentions testimony that Brennan gave to the House Judiciary Committee in May 2023 about the so-called Steele Dossier that was an issue during the 2016 campaign. It cites no specific conduct from Comey during the past five years.

A special counsel appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr spent years investigating how the 2017 intelligence assessment was put together, requiring many CIA officials to hire lawyers. That special counsel, John Durham, also used a grand jury to scrutinize the actions of Brennan, Comey and many who worked for them over how the FBI and CIA handled investigations into Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. But Durham did not charge the two former leaders or accuse them of wrongdoing. His sole charge against a public official came against a low-level FBI lawyer who had lied on a warrant application.

The Trump administration has been taking action against people involved in investigations of the president and his supporters. The Justice Department has a "Weaponization Working Group" that is examining those investigations, and many who worked on them and were still in the department have been fired. And on his first day in office, Trump pardoned his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

ED FUCKING MARTIN JARED WISE EX FBI

---

// LIE GASLIGHT ON JAN 6

NOTE LIBERAL MEDIA BS BELOW

Trump says “Russia, if you’re listening” was a joke. There’s tape proving otherwise. | Vox

no lnx

Trump says “Russia, if you’re listening” was a joke. There’s tape to prove otherwise.

Trump is layering lie upon lie to rewrite the history of his encouragement of Russian hackers.

by Aaron Rupar

Sep 29, 2020,

Trump accused reporters this weekend of mischaracterizing comments he made in July 2016 publicly encouraging Russian hackers to attack Hillary Clinton. But the way he described those comments is completely at odds with reality, and there’s video to prove it.

“Do you remember when I said, ‘Russia, if you’re listening, find her emails,’ or whatever the hell I said? ‘Find her emails,’ and then we all laughed together, 25,000 people in a stadium,” Trump said at a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. “They cut it off exactly before we all started to laugh together, right? And for two years they’ve been saying, ‘He dealt with Russia. He asked Russia to please get her emails,’ or whatever the hell we were asking ... the whole place cracks up with me ... this is how dishonest these people are.”

This is no doubt part of his never-ending effort to discredit the media.

Watch:

Trump made the remarks in question during his first campaign, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening — I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”

But Trump did not say this to a cheering and laughing crowd at one of his rallies. He actually said it in front of a handful of reporters during a news conference at his Doral property in Florida. That news conference wound up being his final one before the election, in large part because of the negative stir his remarks generated.

Furthermore, nobody laughed when Trump said it, and his comments are just as bad in context as they are when the “Russia, if you’re listening” line is considered on its own. Here’s the footage:

Jim Acosta of CNN, the reporter who asked the question that prompted Trump to say “Russia, if you’re listening” at the July 2016 news conference, tweeted on Tuesday morning that “the reporters at the news conference didn’t laugh. And Trump didn’t appear to be joking.”

The president seems to be trying to turn reality on its head, even though there’s tape to prove otherwise.

Trump is spitting on his supporters and telling them it’s raining

Retconning the incident has become a staple of Trump’s campaign speeches. On September 19 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for instance, Trump brought it up and claimed “everybody laughed” and “it was a joke,” then added the lie about it happening at a rally for the first time over the weekend.

Even if Trump didn’t mean for his comments to be taken seriously, Russian hackers apparently did. According to Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officials, on the same day Trump made those comments, Russian hackers “attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provided and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.”

Trump has made clear in the years since that he doesn’t think foreign interference in American elections is a bad thing, insofar as it helps him. In October 2019, Trump flatly told reporters that he thought the Chinese and Ukrainian governments “should investigate the Bidens.” Those comments were widely condemned but were defended as just a joke by Republican members of Congress like Kevin McCarthy and Roy Blunt, even though footage of the comment showed Trump was serious.

Trump’s comments about the July 2016 news conference were especially shameless, but they were far from the only brazen lie he pushed in Middletown. He told his supporters that just prior to the coronavirus hitting the US, “we were coming together ... I was getting calls from stone-cold, hard-line Democrats,” even though in reality he had just been through an impeachment trial. He claimed 35,000 people attended his Friday evening rally in Newport News, Virginia, but local reports indicate there were around 4,000. And he appeared to fabricate stats about excess mortality in order to mislead people about how hard the US has been hit by Covid-19.

Trump once advised his supporters in 2018 to “just remember — what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” He’s not subtle about it.

See More:

2020 Presidential Election

Donald Trump

Politics

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{===

mma 12 24

December 6, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): What are they spending their time on, wait for it, preemptive - blanket preemptive pardons. What is a blanket preemptive pardon? I don't know. I'm not so sure it's constitutional. I'm sure the Supreme Court will have to decide.

We've so rattled these people. We've so rattled them, they know their crimes and they're so rattled because finally somebody in opposition to them is saying, hey, we're coming after you and we're not going to stop, we're not going to stop. We're going to be relentless. We're going to unearth your crimes. We're going to investigate, adjudicate, put you on trial, and then incarcerate.

You're going to go broke. You're going to spend all your money. You're going to be worried nonstop, am I going to prison? Andrew Weissman the entire crowd. We're going to get all the connective tissues of the text messages, all of it. And the vast criminal conspiracy, not simply against President Trump, but what you did to the life movement, the parents movement. There's so much. It's a vertical that will go quite deep.

…

We broke you and now you're going to pay for what you did to the American people. This has nothing to do with President Trump. It has nothing to do with Steve Bannon. It's not vengeance, it's not retribution, it is justice and the administration of justice.

---

===

new rep 9 24

Another burgeoning conservative outlet has been tied to Russia, with former advisers to Donald Trump coordinating directly with contributors for Kremlin state media.

Former Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos and his wife, Simona Mangiante, have become involved with Intelligencer, a growing conservative site heavily critical of the war in Ukraine (the right-wing site has no apparent connection with New York magazine’s Intelligencer). Nearly half of the company’s board members are former aides, surrogates, or fake electors for Trump’s previous campaigns, *The Guardian* reported Thursday.

The site’s financial backing did not indicate that it had received funds directly from the Kremlin. Instead, Intelligencer began as a subsidiary of a right-wing radio station in Australia that covers a host of conservative U.S. issues, including climate change denial and Covid-19 conspiracies, until George Eliason, an American journalist with experience in Ukraine, took over the website. In recent months, Intelligencer’s conspiracy-laden articles have been shared by the likes of Alex Jones and former Trump aide Roger Stone.

“Intelligencer appears to be one of several [Russia-friendly] operations targeting the upcoming U.S. elections, leveraging a network of far-right figures and disinformation tactics,” Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told The Guardian.

Intelligencer is far from the only conservative site that’s been busted in a recent government crackdown ahead of the November election. Earlier this month, another pro-Trump media group—Tenet Media—folded under the pressure of a Justice Department investigation that found the company had been backed to the tune of millions of dollars from Russian state-controlled media.

The DOJ indictment accused Tenet and its founders of receiving nearly $10 million from employees of Russia Today as part of “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

The Russian funds paid for videos by popular far-right personalities, including podcaster Tim Pool and Lauren Southern. Pool described himself as a “victim” in the Tenet scandal.

The switch to utilizing more overt methods to sway American voters, including relying on conservative influencers, is a decidedly new strategy for Russian propaganda outfits.

“Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has increasingly been forced to rely on networks of proxies and influencers whose conspiracist ‘brand’ generates income and audiences through social media monetization and some of whom Russia has now been caught covertly subsidizing,” Emma Briant, an associate professor of news and political communication at Monash University in Australia, told The Guardian.

But while conservative media tried to wash its hands of the Tenet scandal, the Trump campaign did not, with Trump campaign senior adviser Alina Habba chalking the indictment up to another “hoax.”

“A $10 million payment to some podcasters who had no idea from some ties allegedly to Russia is now going to make a spin on Russia backing Trump,” Habba told Fox News last week.

// ?

2 24 an

former President Donald Trump was just handed another loss in court – this time in the United Kingdom.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that a judge in the UK ruled against the former president in his lawsuit against former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele and his intelligence firm, Orbis, which assembled a 2016 dossier alleging Trump and his campaign were compromised by Vladimir Putin's regime.

Trump filed the lawsuit seeking both compensation for "significant damage and distress" as well as a statement from the court that the allegations in the dossier were false. However, Judge Karen Steyn was unmoved by his argument, stating that the ex-president was "seeking court findings to vindicate his reputation in circumstances where has not been able to formulate any viable remedy which he would have a real prospect of obtaining."

The Steele dossier — commissioned by a firm contracting with the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign — famously included allegations that Trump paid Russian sex workers to urinate on a bed that former President Barack Obama had once slept on. Even though the media has since moved on, Trump has continued to revive the "golden showers" rumor on multiple occasions. New York Magazine reported that Trump insisted he was "not into golden showers" during a Senate Republican retreat, though no one had brought up the subject.

Late last year, as he was in and out of the courtroom for his civil fraud trial in New York, Trump again referenced the rumor on the campaign trail.

"It started with Russia, Russia, Russia, remember that?" Trump said. "He was with four hookers. You think that was good that night to go up and tell my wife, 'It's not true, darling, I love you very much. It's not true!' Actually, that one she didn’t believe, 'cause she said, 'He’s a germophobe; he’s not into that. He’s not into golden showers, as they say they called it, he’s not.'"

Orbis lawyers shrugged off Trump's unsuccessful lawsuit as a "vendetta" by a plaintiff with a penchant for "harassing perceived enemies and others against whom he bears a grudge."

---

---

maga world can never admit collusion?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/sean-hannity-claims-fbi-put-their-thumb-scale-joe-biden-2020-presidential-election

mma 3 23 see bengh y roth did not say feds? another co?

HANNITY (HOST): Now, that is sadly the FBI putting their thumb on the scale of a presidential election. They were indoctrinating and basically training people in Big Tech, they had weekly meetings with them -- oh, that they're going to be victims of a disinformation campaign that never happened.

And by the way, they did something else in 2016, it was called the Russia hoax.And they did it again in the fall of 2020, with the censorship, disinformation campaign against what was the very real reports about Hunter Biden and his laptop from hell. A laptop, by the way, that your FBI had since December of 2019 and they easily could've verified probably in 48 hours.

==

---

an ah 2 23

When former special counsel Robert Mueller released, in 2019, his in-depth report on Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump was quick to describe it as a total exoneration of him — a claim that was echoed repeatedly by a long list of right-wing media outlets. In reality, the Mueller report was more complex than that.

Mueller, a conservative Republican and former FBI director, concluded that the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians did not rise to the level of a full-fledged criminal conspiracy. But the Mueller report, when one really digs into it, shows that those interactions were at least questionable.

Moreover, Robert Mueller never said that the Russian government did not interfere in the 2016 election; that interference, according to Mueller, was quite real. And Mueller’s investigation led to criminal prosecutions of some of Trump’s close associates, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

READ MORE: Appeals court orders release of secret memo Barr 'used to undercut the Mueller report'

CNN’s Michael Warren, on April 18, 2019, pointed out, “Mueller’s report concludes that it ‘did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in the election interference activities.’ That’s as clear as it can be, but Mueller also concluded that both the Russian government and the Trump campaign believed the other would be beneficial.”

Nonetheless, MAGA Republicans continue to dismiss Russiagate as an example of “Trump derangement syndrome” run amok. But libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young, in a lengthy article published by The Bulwark on February 8, stresses that Russiagate is “hardly” the “hoax” that “Trump cultists” claim it is.

Young cites two reasons why “Russiagate skeptics” were feeling giddy in January. But neither of them, she writes, mean that Russiagate was a mere “hoax.”

“Committed skeptics of ‘Russiagate’ — the scandal around Russian interference in the 2016 election with the intent of helping elect Donald Trump, and the Trump campaign’s collaboration with this effort — had a good month in January,” Young explains. “First, a study released on January 9 concluded that Russian disinformation and propaganda on Twitter, while a real phenomenon, did not significantly affect American attitudes — partly because the notorious Russian bots were, as The Intercept put it, ‘a small speck when compared to homegrown posters’ — or influence the results of the 2016 election.”

READ MORE:'Beyond a reasonable doubt': Watergate lawyer breaks down Jan. 6 Committee’s 'overwhelming case' against Trump

Young continues, “Then, on January 30, Columbia Journalism Review published a four-part report on Russiagate with a scathing analysis of media coverage by veteran investigative journalist Jeff Gerth. It concluded that the news media repeatedly fell short of professional standards in their handling of the story, compromising their objectivity and contributing to polarization and erosion of public trust in journalism. The reaction from the skeptics — a motley crowd that includes everyone from hardcore Donald Trump cultists to anti-anti-Trumpists to critics of America’s national security apparatus and various anti-establishment contrarians — was downright exuberant.”

But Young goes on to say that none of that means that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election didn’t happen.

“Some Democrats, shocked by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in November 2016, did fall back on exaggerated claims of Russian interference — including claims that there had been actual vote-tampering — instead of examining Clinton’s very real flaws as a candidate,” Young argues. “But it is no less true that plenty of conservatives have used the supposed ‘Russia hoax’ to promote narratives of Republican victimization…. Examining and critiquing the media’s handling of Russiagate is important and necessary,but it can be done without downplaying Russia’s very real assaults on election integrity in the U.S. and in other democracies.”

Young adds, “Otherwise, the ‘Russia hoax’ quickly becomes an excuse for everything from Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election to the enabling of Russia’s foreign aggression: in other words, the last refuge of scoundrels.”

READ MORE: Trump goes on hours-long rant against FBI after J6 committee criminal charges — and admits he lost

Read The Bulwark’s full report at this link.

---

OMG

an badash 1 23

Special counsel Robert Durham, appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, uncovered possible financial crimes by Donald Trump but made no attempt to prosecute them, The New York Times reveals in massive, bombshell report published Thursday after a months-long investigation.

“Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it,” The Times’ Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner report.

The “potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes” came during a trip Barr and Durham, his special counsel, took together. They “decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore.”

But, “Mr. Durham never filed charges, and it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, what steps he took, what he learned and whether anyone at the White House ever found out. The extraordinary fact that Mr. Durham opened a criminal investigation that included scrutinizing Mr. Trump has remained secret.”

That’s just one aspect of The Times’ extensive and disturbing report.

It also reveals that there was little justification for Barr to install Durham as a special counsel to investigate what Trump wrongly maintained was an unjustifiable investigation into his ties to Russia.

In fact, The Times “found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.”

READ MORE: ‘Failed Spectacularly’: Top Legal Experts Call for Ethics Probe Into Bill Barr’s Handpicked Special Counsel John Durham

In another shocking revelation, The Times reports Durham “used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide toGeorge Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media.”

The Times does not explain how Durham obtained the Russian disinformation.

“Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.”

Attorneys on Durham’s team apparently had significant qualms with his actions, leading at least two to resign.

“There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known,” The Times reports. “The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)”

BARR THREATENED NSA

The Times also reports that Attorney General Barr bought into Trump’s false claims that there had been “no collusion” between the Trump camp and Russia.

READ MORE: Republicans Claiming ‘Censorship’ Threaten to Haul AT&T and DirecTV Into Congress for Dropping Far-Right Newsmax

Importantly,The Times states point-blank that the Mueller Report “detailed ‘numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,’ and it established both how Moscow had worked to help Mr. Trump win and how his campaign had expected to benefit from the foreign interference.”

According to The Times’ account, “soon after giving Mr. Durham his assignment,” in May of 2019, “Mr. Barr summoned the head of the National Security Agency, Paul M. Nakasone, to his office. In front of several aides, Mr. Barr demanded that the N.S.A. cooperate with the Durham inquiry.”

The NSA is a wholly separate entity from the Dept. of Justice. It is an agency under the Dept. of Defense and reports to the powerful Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Barr apparently did not care, and, “repeating a sexual vulgarity, he warned that if the N.S.A. wronged him by not doing all it could to help Mr. Durham, Mr. Barr would do the same to the agency.”

DURHAM TRIED TO SCUTTLE A REPORT’S FINDING THAT TRUMP-RUSSIA INVESTIGATION WAS WARRANTED

“Mr. Durham’s team spent long hours combing the C.I.A.’s files but found no way to support the allegation” that the investigation into Trump and Russia was the result of some anti-Trump deep state operation.

Barr and Durham actually “traveled abroad together to press British and Italian officials to reveal everything their agencies had gleaned about the Trump campaign and relayed to the United States, but both allied governments denied they had done any such thing. Top British intelligence officials expressed indignation to their U.S. counterparts about the accusation, three former U.S. officials said.”

The Dept. of Justice’s Inspector General’s investigation found there was, in fact, sufficient cause for the DOJ to have opened up the Trump-Russia investigation, contrary to Barr’s personal beliefs.

So he tried to have that finding removed from the final report.

READ MORE: ‘Big No-No’: Santos May or May Not Have a Campaign Treasurer Prompting Questions About Whose Signature That Is

The Times reports that “the broader findings contradicted Mr. Trump’s accusations and the rationale for Mr. Durham’s inquiry,” which should have shut down what ultimately became Durham’s four-year long investigation that netted almost nothing.

The DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, “found no evidence that F.B.I. actions were politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat’s tip that aTrump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient to lawfully open it.”

So Barr tried to discredit Horowitz’s report.

“Minutes before the inspector general’s report went online, Mr. Barr issued a statement contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the F.B.I. opened the investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient.” He would later tell Fox News that the investigation began “without any basis,” as if the diplomat’s tip never happened.”

Read the entire Times report here.

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9 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/trump-official-kash-patel-says-he-and-trump-are-blown-away-acumen-some

no lnx

MARY GRACE (HOST): One of the things that I have loved about following the Q community is that people are accessing open source information. They're not creating conspiracies out of thin air. They're actually uncovering conspiracies that are available through open-source research. For example, a lot of the information that you put on your website ... are documents that many of the Q community have researched and have broken down for the layperson to be able to understand. And they've also made connections between one sort of incident and another. So they've taken some of the Russiagate things and then they tied them into other things that have happened. They're just good researchers, from what I've seen. Is that -- is that your take, maybe, on what you've seen?

KASH PATEL: I've seen on social media, on Trump -- on Truth Social, how good these researchers are and I kind of wish I had some of them when I was doing Russiagate and some of these other things. You know, Devin and I talk regularly and then, you know, I talk with the president all the time as well. And we're just blown away at the amount of acumen some of these people have and how quick they are to -- to grab it and suss through it and sort of thin it down and make it presentable, you know. And it's actually heartening to me to hear that people are going to [Patel's website] and getting the documents from the [INAUDIBLE]. That's the whole point. It's free.

Don't listen to my commentary. Go get the government documents that expose their own corruption, that show their own unethical behavior. From January 6, from Durham, from Russiagate, from Ukraine, impeachment one, whatever. We're going to keep getting those documents and keep putting them out. And that's part of the mission at [Patel's website].It's the education component of our charity, we're a 501(c)(3), is to get this out there.

So I'm glad people are reading it. We're going to keep doing it. And that is -- that is the singular best way on how you effectuate the change that you want in your community. And if it's Q or whatever movement that's getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.

IN THIS ARTICLE

QAnon Conspiracy Theory

Related

Trump official Kash Patel defends signing book with QAnon slogan

09/27/22

How Devin Nunes and Kash Patel appealed to QAnon extremists to build Truth Social’s user base

08/01/22

How True the Vote cultivated relationships with QAnon influencers to target an election software company and serve as a pipeline to law enforcement

09/15/22

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mma 9 22

Fox News host Sean Hannity loves to tout the ridiculous lawsuits that Donald Trump’s lawyers keep filing against the former president’s enemies. But when those suits fail — and they almost always do — he either ignores the results or denounces the judge dismissing the lawsuit.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks tossed Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and various other people and entities for purportedly conspiring to undermine his 2016 presidential campaign by tying him to Russia. In dismissing the lawsuit — in part with prejudice — Middlebrooks criticized its application of law and factual accuracy. He even suggested that Trump’s attorneys may face sanctions.

The lawsuit had drawn praise on Hannity’s program the night it was initially filed for supposedly having “all the necessary predicates for a racketeering case.” When Middlebrooks dismissed the suit, the Fox host denounced his action as a symptom of a “two-tiered system of justice in this country” that is “undermining faith in our most important institutions.”

Trump is extraordinarily litigious and regularly threatens dubious legal action to garner attention. His ultimatums frequently fall apart in court, when they materialize at all. That trend has continued since Trump left office, with his lawyers repeatedly filing complaints that immediately meet with scorn and derision from the legal community.

But Hannity is both a close adviser to Trump and one of his most obsequious supporters, so that history has not dissuaded him from credulously promoting the former president’s legal actions.

The Fox host has propped up at least three Trump complaints that were tossed by federal judges this year. In addition to the Clinton lawsuit, Hannity’s program touted Trump’s ineffectual complaint against New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking to halt her investigation of his business empire, as well as a class action lawsuit he brought against Twitter, Facebook, and Google over their suspensions of his social media accounts. But in each case, he did not follow up when the cases were thrown out.

On Hannity’s program, Trump’s lawyers and family members get softball interviews to lay out the complaints, while the host and his regular legal-issue guests tout their prospects. In some cases, Hannity has even drawn connections between the filings and the conspiracy theories featured on his show.

The “Russiagate” RICO suit

Hannity’s mood was celebratory on his March 24 broadcast as he announced the action Trump’s lawyers had taken just hours earlier.

“Former President Trump filed an explosive lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and others for their role in pushing their years-long Russian conspiracy hoax and lies, laying out evidence of racketeering, a conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood, among other claims,” Hannity said.

“As the lawsuit reads: ‘The defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent Donald J. Trump was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty’ -- which, of course, we expose right here on this program,” he added.

Hannity then turned to Trump lawyer Alina Habba and Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, to discuss the “very valid suit.”

“It's wonderful when you can actually file a suit that is in the most part proven, which is the situation that I find myself in,” Habba said, before praising Hannity for “calling it out from the beginning.”

Indeed, Hannity had spent years helping to concoct the sprawling “Russiagate” conspiracy theories at the heart of Trump’s complaint. But while he was cheering on Trump’s attempt to effectively take Fox monologues before a judge, legal experts were mocking the former president’s complaint and warning that it would go nowhere. 

But Hannity claimed the lawsuit “has great merit,” then asked Jarrett for his opinion. Jarrett praised the complaint, saying that Habba and her co-counsel had provided “all the necessary predicates for a racketeering case.”

“This was a criminal enterprise run by Hillary Clinton, approved by Hillary Clinton, the false information disseminated by Hillary Clinton and her cronies,” Jarrett added. “And it's got everything in it, that is necessary to prove the case: obstruction of justice, fraud, conspiracy, theft of trade secrets. The list goes on and on."

[twt]

"I can't wait for discovery and depositions,”Hannity said at the end of the segment, before asking Habba, “I hope we get to that point. You think we'll get there?”

“We're going to get there,” she replied.

They are not going to get there.

Hannity reconvened the panel on Friday night following the suit’s dismissal. The host introduced the segment by painting the judge’s action as evidence of the “two-tiered system of justice in this country” that is “undermining faith in our most important institutions” and “shredding our Constitution” before turning it over to his guests.

[vid 9/12]

habba blamed the suit’s failure on drawing “a Clinton judge … who I had asked to recuse himself but insisted that he didn’t need to; he was going to be impartial.”

Jarrett also took issue with the ruling, saying, “It appears to me here that this judge in Florida wanted to be both judge and jury. He wanted to be the trier of the fact here. And he simply states and declares that Trump hasn’t stated a cognizable claim under the law. Well, I think he has!”

The suit to stop New York’s Trump Organization probe 

Hannity had already started his Christmas vacation on December 20, 2021, when Trump’s lawyers filed suit against James, seeking to force her to call off the state attorney general probe into the Trump Organization on the purported grounds that she had violated his constitutional rights by bringing the suit due to “political animus.”

But Hannity’s guest host, Tammy Bruce, filled in in his stead that night. While legal experts had warned the effort was far-fetched, Bruce gave Habba a friendly platform to tout the supposedly “pretty clean and cut” case.

“You can't scrutinize somebody,” Habba claimed. “It's called viewpoint discrimination. It's unconstitutional. The country doesn't allow it, and Letitia James has to be stopped.”

A few weeks later, Hannity hosted Trump’s adult son Eric, who brought up the suit.

“It's going to stop because frankly we've assembled the best legal, ethical minds, and we're going to sue her for this abuse of power.And that's the only way we can fight back, to sue her for this abuse of power,” Trump said.

“We don't have equal justice under the law or application of our laws anymore, and I say that sadly. We're now criminalizing political differences. I say that sadly,” Hannity replied.

A federal judge dismissed Trump’s suit in May.

The class action suit to get back on social media

“First tonight, President Trump is fighting back against Big Tech and today, he announced a brand-new class action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google,” Hannity said at the top of his July 7, 2021, program.

“Now, with a team of high-powered attorneys, President Trump is now taking aim at what we have discussed at length on this program,” Hannity explained. “That Section 230 protections. Now, it's enjoyed by many Big Tech giants because supposedly they don't involve themselves in editorial. But in reality, they do.”

Legal experts scoffed at the class action lawsuits Trump’s lawyers filed, calling them “sure losers” due to the First Amendment protections the platforms enjoy.

But Hannity called it a “strong case,” and the people he turns to for discussions of legal issues were on board.

Alan Dershowitz, who served as one of Trump’s impeachment lawyers, called it “the most important First Amendment case of the 21st century,” adding, “There are cases, precedents going both ways and no one can predict what the outcome would be.”

And Jarrett told Hannity that “the argument that Trump makes in his lawsuit is a compelling one” and that it was “a solid argument to be presented in court.”

It wasn’t. A judge dismissed the Twitter lawsuit in May.

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klayman JW the hill

    :{NATIONAL SECURITY:(style="font-family:Merriweather"):}:

Court ruling on NSA spying can’t wait, activist says

BY JULIAN HATTEM

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8 22 an raw

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggested over the weekend that Democrats are engaging in voter suppression because many people in Wisconsin believe he is a "tool" of Russia.

During a Sunday interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo argued that there was reason to "distrust and question" the honesty of elections.

"That was part of what went on in 2020," she told Johnson. "People were questioning. Well, can we trust them? We know what they just did in the Russia collusion hoax."

"You say they are interfering with your election!" the host exclaimed, "because of these smears on you."

Bartiromo added: "Tell me about your opponent and why you believe you are being smeared and this is the result: 50% for [Mandela] Barnes, 46% for Johnson in the Wisconsin senate race [polls]."

Johnson claimed Democrats "interfered in the 2020 election far greater than anything Russia or China could ever do."

The senator said that Democrats leaked a briefing about his connections to Russia.

"Basically saying that I'm a tool of Russia, which I am not," Johnson remarked. "It's a completely false accusation. The Wisconsin press picks that up and [some] people in Wisconsin think I'm a tool of Vladimir Putin."

"Nothing could be further from the truth," he insisted. "But they have smeared me publicly and they just might impact the 2022 election here in Wisconsin as well. Because, let's face it, Maria, they do not want me reelected because I would be chairman on the permanent subcommittee on investigations. They know I will investigate their corruption."

Watch the video clip below from Fox News.

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aha roy cohn SOP: deny all and ctr-attack // rubber glue invert / "projection" trump and trumpistas are endlessly the real victim here, persecuted by deep state

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/barr-burning-man/

no lnx twt

Appeals court orders release of secret memo Barr 'used to undercut the Mueller report'

Jessica Corbett and Common DreamsAugust 21, 2022

A federal appeals court on Friday ordered the release of a 2019 memorandum about whether then-President Donald Trump obstructed Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

:{:{}:

}:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)—the watchdog fighting to reveal the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) memo prepared for then-Attorney General Bill Barr—celebrated the ruling as a win.

:{:{}:

}:

"Attorney General Barr cited this memo as a reason not to charge President Trump with obstruction of justice," said CREW spokesperson Jordan Libowitz in a statement. "The American people deserve to know what it says. Now they will."

The unanimous ruling from three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed a lower court's opinion about the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo—a redacted version of which was made public last year.

D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, joined by Judges Judith Rogers and David Tatel, outlined how the DOJ tried to conceal most of the memo "based on the deliberative process privilege, which protects records documenting an agency's internal deliberations en route to a governmental decision," but the lower court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, rejected that argument.

Jackson determined the DOJ failed to show that the privilege applied—specifically, she found that the department "had not identified a relevant agency decision as to which the memorandum formed part of the deliberations," Friday's ruling highlights.

"The department's submissions, the court explained, indicated that the memorandum conveyed advice about whether to charge the president with a crime. But the court's in camera review of the memorandum revealed that the department in fact never considered bringing a charge," it continues. "Instead, the memorandum concerned a separate decision that had gone entirely unmentioned by the government in its submissions to the court—what, if anything, to say to Congress and the public about the Mueller report."

As Bloomberg detailed:

Srinivasan... wrote that any analysis in the memo about bringing obstruction charges was more like a "thought experiment."

Srinivasan noted that the department expressed "regret" about leaving a "misimpression that an actual charging decision was under consideration," but he wrote that it missed opportunities to address the true purpose of the memo.

The court rejected the government's request for another chance to make the case for keeping the full memo secret. Srinivasan wrote that the Justice Department might have successfully argued to keep the memo sealed if it had revealed the public messaging purpose from the beginning and then tried to invoke what's known as the deliberative process privilege, but that it was too late now.

The DOJ has a week to consider appealing the latest decision. The Washington Post reported that spokespeople for the department and Barr declined to comment.

Politico noted Friday:

Trump was never charged in Mueller's probe and the special prosecutor's final report declined to opine on whether what he did in response to the investigation amounted to a crime.

However, some Trump opponents have called on the Attorney General Merrick Garland to reconsider the issue now that Trump is no longer president. Release of the long-sought DOJ memo could fuel those calls and draw more unwanted attention to Trump's potential criminal liability at a time when he is besieged by a slew of other legal woes relating to his handling of classified government records, his role in inspiring many of those involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and his broader efforts to overturn Joe Biden's win in the 2020 presidential election.

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, a federal judge gave the DOJ a week to propose redactions to the warrant affidavit containing the information that led to last week's search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida home.

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Weeks prior to the Federal Bureau of Investigation' (FBI) search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, a former official for the U.S. Department of Defense vowed to publish classified documents, a new report reveals.

According to ABC News, Trump loyalist Kash Patel planned to "retrieve classified documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website."

On June 22, Patel appeared on a far-right podcast where he made the remarks. "I've never told anyone this because it just happened," Patel said during the podcast interview. "I'm going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives, and we're going to start putting that information out next week."

READ MORE: Pentagon says Donald Trump lied about deploying troops to secure the Capitol

However, Patel failed to explain how he would be able to legally obtain copies of those records. "White House counsel and company disobeyed a presidential order and implemented federal governmental bureaucracy on the way out to basically send the stash to the National Archives, and now that's where it's at," Patel said.

A report published around the same time also indicated that Trump had penned a letter instructing the National Archives to grant access to concealed administration records. Access to those records was to be granted to Patel along with conservative journalist John Solomon.

In addition to the June 22 interview, Patel had also spoken about classified documents on other occasions insisting Trump had declassified a substantial amount of "Russiagate documents" during his final days in office.

"I know what's there" in the Archives, said Patel. "I can't still talk about them, but the whole process is going to be: Identify the documents, whether it's Russiagate, Hunter Biden, impeachment, Jan 6th -- and put them out."

READ MORE: [Leaked document suggests Russia is anticipating a 'massive medical emergency' due to Ukraine war casualties: report

In wake of the latest report, Erica Knight, a spokesperson for Patel, spoke to ABC News as she insisted that the former DoD official was acting as "a representative on behalf of President Trump to work with the National Archives to get them to disclose information."

"The GSA has their own policies and procedures for how presidential records must be handled," Knight said, "which Patel is in full cooperation with."

READ MORE: [Trump's superior at the New York Military Academy says president's disdain for the troops predates his White House run: 'Heartless, obnoxious SOB'

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some lnx

...Aspen Institute’s commission, for example, includes several people who have actively engaged in misinformation efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, one of the commission’s advisers, Yoel Roth, was the Twitter executive who blocked his site’s users from sharing the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the 2020 election.

Adviser Renee DiResta is something of a misinformation wunderkind as well: She was an adviser to American Engagement Technologies, which, the Beacon reports, is a “tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in ­Alabama.”

The commission’s co-chair, Katie Couric, is also familiar with manipulating facts to yield favorable outcomes. She admitted in her recently published memoir that she had removed and edited statements made by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about athletes protesting the playing of the national anthem. Ginsburg’s criticism of the practice might have angered her fellow liberals, Couric feared...

Consider the fact that Russiagate, a yearslong effort to prove that Donald Trump was being blackmailed and controlled, proved untrue yet was given constant media attention, while the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents, which proved true, was actively suppressed with the explicit purpose of protecting Joe Biden’s chances of becoming president.We live in a surreal information moment when the lie was given ample airtime and featured prominently in print, while the truth was smothered and labeled disinformation.

And yet our self-appointed misinformation warriors have proven unwilling to engage in self-reflection. Harvard’s Shorenstein Center used the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer as the basis for one of its case studies during its recent misinformation sessions.

The lesson that the center’s leaders drew, however, was not the one anyone who values the truth should follow. According to the Times, the Shorenstein Center claimed that the Hunter Biden story offered “an instructive case study on the power of social media and news organizations to mitigate media manipulation campaigns.” In other words, the suppression of information deemed by “experts” to be misinformation was precisely the kind of Good Information objective we should be pursuing. The research director of the center, Joan Donovan, told the Times that the Hunter Biden case study was “designed to cause conversation — it’s not supposed to leave you resolved as a reader....

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ANDREW C. MCCARTHY is a senior fellow at National Review Institute,an NR contributing editor, and author of BALL OF COLLUSION: THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND DESTROY A PRESIDENCY. @andrewcmccarthy

encounter books

BS BLURB (actually oddly no blurb/endorsement?] but bought w/ countdown to Socialism

:{:{by Devin Nunes}::{}:

}:

The real collusion:{:{ in the 2016 election was not between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. It was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration.}:

Themedia–Democrat “collusion narrative,” which paints Donald Trump as cat’s paw of Russia, is a studiously crafted illusion.

:{:{}:

Despite Clinton’s commanding lead in the polls, hyper-partisan intelligence officials decided they needed an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency. Thus was born the collusion narrative, built on an anonymously sourced “dossier,” secretly underwritten by the Clinton campaign and compiled by a former British spy. Though acknowledged to be “salacious and unverified” at the FBI’s highest level, the dossier was used to build a counterintelligence investigation against Trump’s campaign.}:

Miraculously, Trump won anyway. But his political opponents refused to accept the voters’ decision. Their collusion narrative was now peddled relentlessly by political operatives, intelligence agents, Justice Department officials, and media ideologues―the vanguard of the “Trump Resistance.” Through secret surveillance, high-level intelligence leaking, and tireless news coverage, the public was led to believe that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the election.

Not one to sit passively through an onslaught, President Trump fought back in his tumultuous way. Matters came to a head when he fired his FBI director, who had given explosive House testimony suggesting the president was a criminal suspect, despite privately assuring Trump otherwise. The resulting firestorm of partisan protest cowed the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel, whose seemingly limitless investigation bedeviled the administration for two years.[vs starr? durham?]

Yet as months passed, concrete evidence of collusion failed to materialize. Was the collusion narrative an elaborate fraud? And if so, choreographed by whom? Against media–Democrat caterwauling, a doughty [or just doughy? nunes?] group of lawmakers forced a shift in the spotlight from Trump to his investigators and accusers. This has exposed the depth of politicization within American law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is now clear that the institutions on which our nation depends for objective policing and clear-eyed analysis injected themselves scandalously into the divisive politics of the 2016 election.

They failed to forge a new Clinton administration. Will they succeed in bringing down President Trump?}:

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duck 7 22

https://nypost.com › 2022 › 06 › 11 › the-fbi-knew-russiagate-was-a-lie-but-hid-that-truth

The FBI knew RussiaGate was a lie — but hid that truth

Jun 11, 2022The RussiaGate scandal was thrust upon the country by the FBI and former director James Comey. Walt Disney Television via Getty Images. The FBI knew the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was utter ...

https://www.theatlantic.com › ideas › archive › 2020 › 08 › russiagate-wasnt-a-hoax › 615373

Russiagate Was Not a Hoax - The Atlantic

Aug 19, 2020 It finally delivered what Mueller either could not or would not: a comprehensive presentation of the evidence in the matter of "collusion.". The report confirms that Russiagate is no hoax ...

https://nypost.com › 2021 › 09 › 16 › fresh-proof-russiagate-scandal-was-created-by-hillary-clinton-campaign

Fresh proof Russiagate 'scandal' was created by Hillary Clinton campaign

Sep 16, 2021Fresh proof the Russiagate 'scandal' was created by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation was unable to verify anything from the much-hyped ...

https://www.realclearpolitics.com › articles › 2021 › 12 › 08 › why_the_russiagate_scandal_outranks_the_rest_146853.html#!

Why the Russiagate Scandal Outranks the Rest | RealClearPolitics

Dec 8, 2021Russiagate is the biggest scandal in American history. Nothing comes close in size, scope or harm to the republic than the years-long effort to cripple Donald Trump's presidency by claiming he ...

https://www.msnbc.com › opinion › msnbc-opinion › trump-s-russiagate-hoax-dies-durham-s-sussmann-fail-n1295892

Trump's 'Russiagate' hoax dies with Durham's Sussmann fail

Jun 2, 2022Trump's 'Russiagate' FBI hoax falls apart with DOJ prosecutor John Durham's Michael Sussmann fail — and with it, the Hillary Clinton-Robert Mueller conspiracy

https://nypost.com › 2022 › 07 › 22 › theres-no-climate-emergency-joes-russiagate-suspects-and-other-commentary

There's no climate emergency, Joe's Russiagate suspects and other ...

3 days agoFrom the right: There's No Climate Emergency. America faces "no climate emergency," and Team Biden knows it, thunder National Review's editors. That's "why the president has — so far ...

https://www.counterpunch.org › 2022 › 03 › 23 › what-to-do-with-russiagate-in-2022

What To Do With Russiagate in 2022? - CounterPunch.org

Mar 23, 2022Let's revisit Russiagate. This was the number one story for both liberals and many leftists for a number of years after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016.

https://www.foxnews.com › media › pulitzer-prizes-stand-2018-russiagate-honors-times-wapo-scathing-letter-trumps-team

Pulitzer Prizes stand by 2018 Russiagate honors to NY Times, WaPo after ...

7 days agoPulitzer Prizes stand by 2018 Russiagate honors to NY Times, WaPo after scathing letter from Trump's team New York Times and Washington Post shared the award for reporting Trump's team calls ...

https://www.fairfieldsuntimes.com › news › investigative_reports › here-are-the-senior-biden-officials-entangled-in-durhams-criminal-russiagate-probe › article_f5ea8155-dfbc-594e-8ab4-4ead340f1837.html

Here Are the Senior Biden Officials Entangled in Durham's Criminal ...

4 days agoPatel warned that too many of the people who "abused their power" in the Russiagate conspiracy to frame Trump have returned to power. "A lot of these Russiagate conspirators are back recycled in the Biden administration," said Patel, who recently published a book related to the Russiagate scandal, "The Plot Against the King ...

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com › articles › 2022 › 07 › 21 › here_are_the_senior_biden_officials_entangled_in_durhams_criminal_russiagate_probe_843308.html?mc_cid=bdb95ca0d6&mc_eid=d0a6218c4d

Here Are the Senior Biden Officials Entangled in Durham's Criminal ...

4 days agoKrass is not the only Russiagate-tied official who has resurfaced in the Biden administration. 2017: Jake Sullivan promotes the Alfa Bank story. Jake Sullivan: Potentially False Testimony. Sullivan, 45, played a pivotal role in the baseless Alfa Bank story as the Clinton campaign's foreign policy adviser.

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