Devin Nunes Tells Sara Carter: “ICIG Michael Atkinson is Under Active Investigation”
credit: sundance at CTH
Sara Carter held a pod-cast interview with HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes. At approximately 36:25 of the interview congressman Nunes discusses the testimony of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
The transcript from Atkinson’s House testimony has never been released. Rep. Nunes states the reason HPSCI Chairman Schiff has kept the transcript hidden and classified is because the content is extremely damaging to the origin of the impeachment fraud. Additionally, the testimony from Atkinson conflicted with evidence which surfaced later:
“[Atkinson] is under active investigation. I’m not gonna go any farther than that because you know obviously he has a chance to come in and prove his innocence, but my guess is Schiff, Atkinson they don’t want that transcript out because it’s very damaging”… (Link)
CTH has previously outlined ICIG Michael Atkinson as a dirty player amid a network of very corrupt officials who hold self-interests from participating in unlawful abuses of government surveillance including the DOJ and FBI activity during the 2016 election.
On Sunday, October 6th, 2019, even before the revelations of Schiff working with the whistle-blower surfaced, ranking member Devin Nunes originally discussed his concerns with the testimony of Michael Atkinson. Nunes noted the testimony “was a joke”.
Nunes told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Sunday host Matt Boyle, “[The ICIG is] either totally incompetent or part of the deep state, and he’s got a lot of questions he needs to answer because he knowingly changed the form and the requirements in order to make sure that this whistleblower complaint got out publicly.”“So he’s either incompetent or in on it, and he’s going to have more to answer for, I can promise you, because we are not going to let him go; he is going to tell he truth about what happened,” Nunes added. (read more)
ICIG Atkinson never reviewed the call transcript and facilitated the complaint processing despite numerous flaws. Additionally Atkinson ignored legal guidance from both the director of national intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel that highlighted Atkinson’s poor decision-making.
Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016. That makes Atkinson senior legal counsel to John Carlin and Mary McCord who were the former heads of the DOJ-NSD in 2016 when the stop Trump operation was underway.
The DOJ-NSD were using sketchy legal interpretations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA §901) to justify political surveillance. Atkinson’s legal guidance within the department would have been critical for them to continue this approach.
[Reminder: The DOJ-NSD was purposefully under no IG oversight. In 2015 the OIG requested oversight and it was Deputy AG Sally Yates who responded with a lengthy 58 page legal explanation saying, essentially, ‘nope – not allowed.’ (PDF HERE) All of the DOJ is subject to oversight, except the NSD.]
Additionally, Michael Atkinson was the lawyer for the same DOJ-NSD players who: (1) lied to the FISA court (Judge Rosemary Collyer) about the 80% non compliant NSA database abuse using FBI contractors; (2) filed the FISA application against Carter Page; and (3) used FARA violations as tools for political surveillance and political targeting.
Yes, that means Michael Atkinson was Senior Counsel for the DOJ-NSD, at the very epicenter of the political weaponization and FISA abuse.
Immediately after the Carter Page FISA warrant is approved, in the period where DOJ-NSD head John Carlin has given his notice of intent to leave but not yet left, inside those specific two weeks, the National Security Division of the DOJ tells the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) they have been breaking the law. The NSD specifically inform the court they are aware of contractors who have been using FISA 702(16)(17) database search queries to extract information on political candidates.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has looked into the FISA application used against U.S. Person Carter Page. Additionally, U.S. Attorney John Durham is said to be looking at the intelligence communities’ use of systems for spying and surveillance.
If the DOJ-NSD exploitation of the NSA database, and/or DOJ-NSD FISA abuse, and/or DOJ-NSD FARA corruption were ever to reach sunlight, current ICIG Atkinson -as the lawyer for the process- would be under a lot of scrutiny for his involvement.
Yes, that gives current ICIG Michael Atkinson a strong and corrupt motive to participate with the Schiff/Lawfare impeachment objective.
It now looks like the Lawfare network constructed the ‘whistle-blower’ complaint aka a Schiff Dossier, and handed it to allied CIA operative Eric Ciaramella to file as a formal IC complaint. This process is almost identical to the Fusion-GPS/Lawfare network handing the Steele Dossier to the FBI to use as the evidence for the 2016/2017 Russia conspiracy.
Atkinson’s conflict-of-self-interest, and/or possible blackmail upon him by deep state actors who most certainly know his compromise, likely influenced his approach to this whistleblower complaint. That would explain why the Dept. of Justice Office of Legal Counsel so strongly rebuked Atkinson’s interpretation of his responsibility with the complaint.
In the Justice Dept’s OLC opinion, they point out that Atkinson’s internal justification for accepting the whistleblower complaint was poor legal judgement. [See Here] I would say Atkinson’s decision is directly related to his own risk exposure:
Michael Atkinson was moved from DOJ-NSD to become the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) in 2018. What we end up with is a brutally obvious, convoluted, network of corrupt officials; each carrying an independent reason to cover their institutional asses… each individual interest forms a collective fraudulent scheme inside the machinery of the FBI apparatus.
The motive behind the DOJ/FBI effort to cover for Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe’s unlawful classified information leaks, is connected to this network and expands into the SSCI Chairman (Richard Burr) and Vice-Chair Mark Warner.
Security Director Wolfe was working on instructions from inside the committee itself; his leak of the FISA application to journalist Ali Watkins was in alignment with the intents/motives of the SSCI in March 2017. Dirty politicians corrupting staff.
The DOJ and FBI didn’t charge James Wolfe with the leaking of classified information because it would have exposed corruption within the SSCI. Wolfe was prepared to call the senators in his defense…. this could not be allowed. The SSCI has oversight over the intelligence community to include the FBI, DOJ, DOJ-NSD, CIA, ODNI etc.
How does all of this corruption come together?…. More importantly how does this level of institutional corruption create the inability of FBI whistle-blowers to come forward?
♦ The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the approver for any nominations for any executive appointed position involving the intelligence community.
If the senate intel committee wants to block the nomination, likely adverse to their interests, they can… simply, they don’t take it up. (See Trump’s attempt to appoint Representative John Ratcliffe as ODNI as an example.)
However, along with approving Christopher Wray and David Bowditch (recommendations from DAG Rod Rosenstein), the SSCI also approved former DOJ-NSD legal counsel Michael Atkinson to become Intelligence Community Inspector General.
Who would an honest intelligence whistle-blower have to go through? Dirty ICIG Michael Atkinson. The same dirty Michael Atkinson who was the top legal counsel to the head of the DOJ-NSD when the corrupt DOJ-NSD agency operations were ongoing.
See how the whistle-blower block works?
Aligned interests – The Senate Intel Committee used the placement of Atkinson to block any whistle-blower action that would be adverse to their interests. Honest whistle-blowers ain’t stupid, they know what surrounds them.
You might remember recently how Burr and Warner would not support Rep. John Ratcliffe for Director of National intelligence under the auspices of Ratcliffe not having enough “experience” within intelligence operations. However, those same “experience” concerns were absent when they approved dirty ICIG nominee Michael Atkinson.
Senator Mark Warner […] You’re also aware that this Committee is leading the review into the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During this hearing I want to hear assurances from both of you that you will fully cooperate with this review and provide this Committee with all the information requested in a timely fashion.Mr. Atkinson, as the Inspector General of the Intel Community your job is especially critical because of the nature of the material that they handle every day, whistleblowers within the IC generally can’t go public to expose misbehavior and misuse of official resources. We the Congress and the American people will depend upon you as an independent agent of accountability for the Office of the DNI and, for that matter, for the whole intel community.
While you don’t have previous experience as an inspector general, I look forward to hearing your plans for the righting
of the ship at the IC’s IG when it comes to both whistleblower protections and investigations.I’m very concerned by the significant number of open cases that I believe have lingered too long. If confirmed, I will ask you to make the whistleblower program a priority. This is an area that cuts across party lines and committee jurisdictions. (continue transcript)
The intelligence apparatus is a key part of the rogue administrative state that operates in direct alignment with a rogue state department and politicians who use their influence to gain material wealth from sales/control of policy.
It is a synergy of DC interests.
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