More Proof That Adam Schiff's Countermemo Was Deliberately Misleading

from Undercover Huber via Threadreader

More proof Adam Schiff's FISA memo was deliberately misleading about "narrow use" of the Steele dossier to spy on Carter Page 

Also EXCLUSIVE: the FBI/DOJ FISAs *heavily relied* on reporting attributed to "Source E" / "Person 1" (Sergei Millian) for probable cause 🚨

Let's compare yesterday release of a more declassified set of Carter Page FISA warrant applications with Adam Schiff's memo again

Reminder: Schiff and staff had full, clear text access to all the unredacted FISAs before they wrote their memo in Jan 2018

Schiff's memo claimed the FISAs:

"only made narrow use of information from Steele's sources about Page's specific activities in 2016, chiefly his suspected July 2016 meetings in Moscow with Russian officials"

"Narrow use" of Steele's sources, and just for the Moscow trip 

Schiff also claimed that only a "specific sub-section" of the FISA applications referred to "Steele's reporting" (the section that discusses the allegation that Page met secretly Igor Sechin and other Russian officials in Moscow in July 2016) 

This "specific sub section" of the FISA starts at p.15 (Section III,B)

This is where the FISA first *appears* to mention Steele, and rely on his dossier reporting about Page's alleged meetings in Moscow with Igor Sechin and others - or the "narrow use", according to Schiff 

Until yesterday's release, it was hard to 100% disprove Schiff's memo just from the FISA itself. You could rely on the 2019 IG report, but Schiff can claim he didn't know the IG's findings when he wrote his memo

Not true: Schiff knew he was lying at time, in Jan 2018

Section II, p.10 of the FISA was partially redacted in the original release in July 2018. But Schiff knew what was under these black lines - he had full access at the time he wrote his memo. Okay, what do they say? 

The latest declassification reveals *for the first time publicly* that Section II, p.10 said that:

"[Carter] Page...has been identified by source reporting as an intermediary with Russian leadership" in "a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation" to influence the 2016 election 

A "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation" with Page and "Russian leadership" is **literally cut and pasted from the Steele dossier**

And specifically, the source is "Source E", referred to as "Person 1" by the IG report (referring to Sergei Millian). 

That's a major problem for FBI/DOJ:

—FBI/DOJ submitted this FISA, which relies on Person 1 as a key source, on Oct 21 2016

—The FBI had opened a counterintelligence case on Person 1 for their alleged links to Russian intel *before* the FISA, likely between Oct 3-12 2016

You read that right.

The FBI claimed a Collusion "conspiracy" between the Trump campaign and Russia in a secret FISA warrant application relying on a source they were supposedly investigating for having links to Russian intelligence.

Which they didn't disclose to the court.

SUMMARY (1/2)

—Schiff knew in Jan 18 the FISA relied on the Steele reporting to claim a "conspiracy of co-operation" between the Trump campaign (using Page) & Russia

—Schiff made up a claim of "narrow use" and hid this fact

—FBI/DOJ also hid the evidence that could refute this

SUMMARY (2/2)

—The FBI/DOJ used Steele's "source reporting" to claim a "conspiracy" between the Trump campaign and Russia, relying on Source E/Person 1/Millian 🚨

—At the time they wrote this FISA they now claim they also had a CI investigation into Source E/Person 1/Millian🤔

Oh, and this is now the second time it's been proven that the FBI/DOJ literally *cut and pasted* entire phrases and sections out of the Steele dossier and put them into the Page FISA warrant applications. So much for "narrow use":

And of course, the media almost entirely bought into Schiff's spin about "narrow use" of the dossier

Example from NYT:
nytimes.com/2018/02/24/us/…

MSNBC:

Yet more examples from "fact checkers":

FactCheck dot org: factcheck.org/2018/02/trumps…

Politifact: politifact.com/article/2018/f…

Steele defender @DavidCornDC weighed in of course 

None of these guys have corrected their prior reporting, or more importantly, questioned whether they should rely in the future on documented fraudster and liar Adam Schiff for information, given his clearly intentional misrepresentations about the FISA warrants

/ENDS

SOURCES

Schiff FISA memo (Jan 2018): assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4387…

Steele Dossier (2016): assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259…

Original Page FISA (July 2018): assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4614…

More unredacted Page FISA (April 2020): judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

UPDATE (1/4): Case Agent 1 is in a lot of trouble

In this Oct 2016 FISA, the FBI alleged there was a "well developed conspiracy of co-operation", involving Carter Page working with Paul Manafort to collude with Russian leadership (sourced to Person 1/Millian from the dossier) 

UPDATE (2/4): At the time this FISA was written, Case Agent 1

—Helped draft that FISA

—Knew an FBI CI case was open on Person 1

—Knew Page was on tape to Halper wired up saying he "literally never met" or "said one word" to Manafort (& he was Halper's longtime handler!)

UPDATE (3/4)

—The CI case on Person 1 wasn't disclosed to the court

—Page's denials to Halper about knowing Manafort or ever speaking to him weren't disclosed to the court

UPDATE (4/4)

—After the FISA was granted (lacking those disclosures), the FBI then looked at "past communications" of Page and found no substantive comms between Page/Manafort, meaning there almost certainly couldn't be a "conspiracy"....

....and didn't disclose that either!

Listen, My Children, and You Shall Hear…

 Statue of Paul Revere in front of Christ Church, where the lanterns were hung.
 
Article by Susie Moore in "RedState": 

…Of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,
On the Eighteenth of April, in ’75:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Old as I am, I don’t remember it either — it pre-dated me by about 193 years.

Nevertheless, I do remember Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem about Revere’s ride. Literally. In Fifth Grade, we had a unit on poetry which culminated in each student having to memorize and recite a poem to the class. I don’t recall the specific parameters — I assume there was a minimum length requirement. I was overly ambitious and undertook to memorize the entire poem. Which is rather lengthy.

I don’t recall the whole thing anymore — can only make it through the first three stanzas from memory at this point. But seeing as how today is the Eighteenth of April, I thought it fitting to give a nod to this integral Revolutionary figure (and event).

Maybe even particularly fitting, as our nation (and world) grapples with a war of a different sort. The “enemy” this time doesn’t announce its approach boldly with red coats and musket-balls — though it’s staged its invasion by land and by sea (and air, for that matter).

No, this enemy is stealthier. And, ironically, waging war against it is beginning to clash with the very freedoms our Revolutionary forebearers fought so valiantly to secure.

We’re treading a precarious path here. And the tension between safety and liberty is ratcheting up. What will the outcome be?

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

https://www.redstate.com/smoosieq/2020/04/18/listen-my-children-and-you-shall-hear.../

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” — Thomas Jefferson

 
Article written by Dana Pico in "RedState":

The movie musical 1776 had the following fictitious exchange between John Dickinson and Benjamin Franklin, delegates to the Continental Congress from Pennsylvania:

Dr Franklin: Please Mr. Dickinson, but must you start banging? How is a man to sleep?
Mr Dickinson: Forgive me, Dr. Franklin, but must you start speaking? How is a man to stay awake? We’ll promise to be quiet – I’m sure everyone prefers that you remained asleep.
Dr Franklin: If I’m to hear myself called an Englishman, sir, I assure you I prefer I’d remained asleep.
Mr Dickinson: What’s so terrible about being called an Englishman? The English don’t seem to mind.
Dr Franklin: Nor would I, were I given the full rights of an Englishman. But to call me one without those rights is like calling an ox a bull. He’s thankful for the honor, but he’d much rather have restored what’s rightfully his.

And so it is: how are we to be called Americans if our constitutional rights are so blatantly trampled upon, and most Americans seem to be perfectly fine with it?

Trump ‘fomenting domestic rebellion,’ Dem governor Inslee says

By Dom Calicchio | Fox News | April 18, 2020
A series of Twitter messages posted by President Trump showed the president is “fomenting domestic rebellion,” a Democrat governor alleged Friday.
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee leveled the charge in a statement that also accused the president of encouraging “illegal and dangerous acts,” Q13 FOX of Seattle reported.

There’s more at the original.

President Trump has tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, from Paris, on January 30, 1787:

Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable.

1. Without government, as among our Indians.
2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one.
3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics.

To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep.

It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.

Is President Trump really ‘fomenting domestic rebellion’? I’m sure that, to Democratic governors, trampling willy-nilly on our constitutional rights in their attempts to fight COVID-19, he probably is. But, as our third President said, there are times when a little rebellion is a good and necessary thing. When Governors send the State Police to take down license plate numbers in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday of all days, to order the parishioners into what amounts to house arrest, the people should rebel. When Governors order the house arrest, under armed guard, of a man who tested positive for COVID-19, without any semblance of due process, without any day in court, the people should rebel. When Governors order the state police to stop cars with New York license plates and send the National Guard, the National Guard! around knocking on doors in coastal communities to interrogate people as to where they had been, the people should rebel. When Mayors order the police, fire department, etc, to break up church services and threaten to permanently close their buildings if the Do Not Comply, a little rebellion is most certainly in order. When the Kentucky State Police put up signs declaring that protesting on an open area constitutes a Class B misdemeanor — punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $250 fine — a little rebellion is not just justified but necessary.

The First Amendment specifies that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Nevertheless, state and local officials are banning peaceable assemblies, trampling on the free exercise of religion, and banning the protest of governmental decisions. All of this is illegal and unconstitutional.

Sadly, it won’t matter. Like Korematsu v United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), which upheld the racially discriminatory conviction of a man just because he was of Japanese descent and was widely repudiated, and ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944), which held that a ‘concededly loyal citizen’ could not be detained simply because he was Japanese while we were at war with Japan, were decided in December of 1944, nearly three years after the Nisei, Americans of Japanese descent, were rounded up and thrown into concentration camps. With all of the legal trickery that the states will employ, we won’t get any decisions invalidating the blatantly unconstitutional actions of our governors and mayors until after people have had their rights trampled upon, after some have been fined or even jailed, after some have been held under what amounts to house arrest, until after the COVID-19 ’emergency’ is (supposedly) going to be over. The only recourse we are going to have is to throw these tinpot dictators out of office, and make clear why it’s being done.

https://www.redstate.com/diary/kentucky_dana/2020/04/18/i-hold-it-that-a-little-rebellion-now-and-then-is-a-good-thing-and-as-necessary-in-the-political-world-as-storms-in-the-physical.-thomas-jefferson

Government Is Destroying Our Cities, But Trump Might Be Onto A Cure

There are a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington who see no problem with an America defined by big box stores and chain restaurants.

Christopher Bedford writing for The Federalist

California released a plan Tuesday to reopen businesses. One thing conspicuously missing from the governor’s slideshow was any sort of timeline, replaced instead by a six-point plan to remake society around fear of the coronavirus. Could be June, he said in a press conference, or even July or August. One thing conspicuously included was the observation that “things will look different,” including restaurants having to open “with fewer tables.”

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is right that “things will look different”: When our front doors finally swing open and we come out blinking in the sunshine, our cities and towns will be mere husks of what they were just a month ago. Empty storefronts, boarded-up shops, terrible “local art” installations in windows that once showed friends and families laughing over their favorite dish and bottle of wine.

Nine states have issued similar “plans.” Washington, D.C. chimed in Wednesday, extending the shutdown another month. Meanwhile, the House and Senate are fighting when they’re talking at all. The ideas batting about Capitol Hill are more money for leftist projects, more for employees, and more for that last plan that isn’t working. There is, however, a major resource to stop this nightmare that has not been tapped yet — one the president, who has spent far more years as a businessman than politician, teased on Friday.

The Problem

The Senate’s phase III Paycheck Protection Plan funds are “going fast” and set to run out “this week,” one small bank president told The Federalist; not that it mattered much to a lot of restaurants anyway. Politicians’ plan to give small businesses funds on the condition they either pay it back on an impossible deadline or disperse it to their employees wasn’t in their interest for actually surviving this crisis.

As one restaurateur told The Federalist, “My employees are already on unemployment. What am I going to do, hire them all when there’s no work to do, only to have to let them go again in June when the money runs out and we’re still not able to open? Back into the unemployment line, which could be longer by then? That’s not good for any of us.”

The reality is many of the small businesses we love might never open up again. Because even when bars, restaurants, and event spaces, for example, can legally open their doors, how many will be able to? For most of those, profit margins aren’t big.

Do leaders like California’s governor actually, really, honestly think that telling a steakhouse they can only have half as many customers will keep them in business? That the owner of a diner that needs to put six feet between each customer will still get up for work at 3 a.m. every morning? That a man will build a 50-foot bar so he can seat eight patrons? How about the neighborhood Italian or Chinese or Mexican spot that stacked table on table but you didn’t mind because you loved the food and the staff? Or you and your spouse’s favorite cozy little date spot? Gone, shuttered. It isn’t worth it for them to stay open, so they won’t.

This, by the way, is happening right now. Rent was due April 1. Five days later, on April 5, it was late. Ten days after that, on Wednesday, tenants began to get eviction letters. While some landlords will offer forgiveness and some tenants will pay the rent, those tenants who cannot afford the rent also can’t pay the legal fees to stay.

That means decision time is here. And every day, every week, every long month this drags on without serious relief for real small business owners — not just the employees, but the entrepreneurs — decision time comes for more and more of the people who’ve chosen the harder path and taken on personal risk to create our Main Streets, employ our neighbors, and help build our middle class.

Many of the banks either aren’t properly equipped to help or don’t think it’s in their business interest to shell out loans at 1 percent interest (if the feds don’t simply forgive them). For other banks who consider it a service to their local community, it’s still been a grind.

“Volumes have been surreal,” the small bank president told The Federalist. “We have done more in the past two weeks than in a traditional year. On top of that, huge refinancings due to lower interest rates. The combination is daunting to a degree. My staff have literally been working remotely in what seems at times like 24/7.”

A Way Forward

There is a business that is not scrambling to help, however: It’s the insurance industry, which is strange because a huge number of small business owners have been paying high premiums for years for disruption of business coverage. After SARS, the insurance companies banded together and decided they wouldn’t cover pandemics, but the policies still cover when access to the restaurant is restricted, as it was when the government stepped in.

“You have people,” President Donald Trump said Friday, “that have never asked for business-interruption insurance, and they’ve been paying a lot of money for a lot of years for the privilege of having it. And then when they finally need it, the insurance company says, ‘We’re not going to give it.’”

“We can’t,” he concluded, “let that happen.”

The insurance companies, of course, don’t want to make these payments. We all know they never want to pay anything, but in this case the burden really could sink them. They do, however, have the roll calls and the means of disbursement and even the amounts to be disbursed already in their systems. It’s pretty amazing, really, and makes you wonder why politicians have tried instead to funnel relief through institutions like TD Bank, which is so overwhelmed that desperate business owners say it’s one of many banks barely even picking up the phones anymore.

While Washington is printing money that is increasingly going to the wealthier companies with more accountants and more lawyers, and while the politicians are busy crafting the next stage of their economic relief plan, the offer of reward, the threat of punishment, and the insurance companies should play a major role.

There are a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington who see no problem with an America defined by big box stores and chain restaurants. Money will be made regardless. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s friends will make money regardless. But those among us who value our towns, who care about our middle class, and who love our small business owners can’t accept this. Let’s hope our politicians agree; and when this is over, remember those who didn’t.

Pandemic Panic Has Magnified The Worst Impulses Of The Power-Hungry Elite

This pandemic has exposed the motives of our self-appointed betters in D.C. and the media, pushing anti-American policies to give themselves more power.

by Stella Morabito at The Federalist

For all the American people’s common efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, we keep seeing a lot of reckless responses from politicians and propagandists. They continue to shamelessly exploit a national crisis to pursue their own political and personal agendas. Obama-era health care adviser Zeke Emanuel and others are calling for an 18-month shutdown, which is obviously not survivable for America economically or socially.

Media pundits, impervious to the suffering this crisis is causing Americans, persist in trying to use the pandemic to trap President Trump and instill panic. “How many deaths are acceptable, Mr. President?” “Why don’t you shut down the grocery stores, Mr. President?” The list goes on.

It’s time to stop pretending such folks have any interest in the public good. Let’s stop enabling them by taking their policy prescriptions at face value. Instead, I daresay we should confront them by questioning their motives and real goals. No matter how this pandemic ends, we owe it to ourselves and our posterity to put that mindset under a microscope and try to diagnose it.

What Is the Media’s Megalomania Mindset?

First, we are witnessing an attitude that hopes for failure. Trump critics seem to hope for high death counts in America to score political points against the president. This mindset shamelessly manipulates people’s worst fears, such as CBS News using a video from a crowded Italian hospital dealing with coronavirus patients and reporting that it was in New York. CBS pulled that stunt not once, but twice.

The media go ballistic when audiences are exposed to any views that do not coincide with their agenda to accrue and maintain their power and status — hence, mainstream media cries to stop airing Trump’s press briefings on the virus, and now their attempts to get him to stop appearing at them.

Astonishingly, they also want to ban hydroxychloroquine because it could prove to be an effective treatment for Wuhan virus symptoms as we wait for a vaccine. It’s an outlook that also hopes for a stock market crash, ruining the retirement plans of millions of Americans. Many of these folks also run cover for the totalitarian regime of communist China, which suppressed critical information about the outbreak in Wuhan, unleashing the virus on the world.

Second, they seem to be using the crisis to infect American life with anti-American attitudes. For example, officials are empowering petty tyrants to snitch on people who gather “unlawfully,” promising anonymity to the snitches. A rural-area Virginia hospital — not in a hot spot for the virus — is preventing parents from visiting their newborns in neonatal intensive care units.

The governor of Indiana purports to tell Christians whether they may take communion and, if so, how they may take it. The mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, forbade people to attend drive-in church services on Easter morning, even asking congregants to inform on pastors who held services by calling 311. The last thing America needs is a shameful profusion of communist China-styled meddlers and snitches.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff are using the crisis to try to devise another destructive impeachment attempt, sowing yet more chaos into a nation where people are reeling from imposed isolation, economic ruin, and fear of a plague for which there is no cure. What kind of people do such things?

Megalomaniacs Are Always Looking for ‘Awesome Power’

This scenario does not reflect politics as usual at all. It reflects something much darker: a stark naked megalomania intent on controlling the lives of others. These folks feel entitled to play god. This is no overstatement.

Not so long ago, the nation rallied together in times of national crisis. Even members of Congress would set aside partisan interests when many Americans were suffering. We’re beyond that now. Power corrupts. And behind every policy prescription of central planners is a Jabba-sized ego that aims to put itself in charge of others’ lives.

Consider, for example, the 1,400-page socialist-saturated wish list that Pelosi tried to substitute for the Senate relief bill in March. She caused unconscionable delays and disruptions to the lives of millions of Americans.

Pelosi revealed the reason for her self-centered behavior in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone in which she discussed the prospect of Democrats regaining the House. She could not contain herself as she cried out that it was all about “awesome power.” She excitedly added, “The speaker has awesome power.” Indeed, that is the raison d’etre of all so-called progressives. This is perfectly in line with the structure of socialism, which is always based upon putting too much power in the hands of too few people.

When Majority Whip James Clyburn reportedly told the Democrat caucus that the coronavirus relief bill was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” he was simply echoing Rahm Emanuel’s mindset that a crisis should never “go to waste.”

What is at the bottom of this “vision” to which Clyburn refers? “Awesome power.” Personal power. Political power that always ends up with a top-down elite telling everyone what they may say, what they may think, how they may act, and with whom they may associate.

Those who perpetuate this vision have never made a secret of the fact that they wish to perpetuate their power in the form of a permanent majority. This is nascent communism in a nutshell — or, in today’s parlance, progressivism.

Leftism Is Undeniably Linked to Megalomania

Pelosi’s wish list included several aspects of the Green New Deal, such as demands that airlines “fully offset the annual carbon emissions … for domestic flights beginning in 2025.” She also attempted to put abortion funding into the bill. (Some deny this, but abortion funding tends to be a staple of all Democrat bills and amendments.)

Pelosi included a heavy dose of identity politics, with requirements for “corporate board diversity.” To top it all off, she included enhancements for vote harvesting, such as grants for conducting election audits, as well as same-day voter registration, obvious ingredients for election fraud. That’s just a short list.

It’s no secret that Democrats have worked overtime to destroy policies that promote self-reliance, free speech, choice in education, family cohesion, and religious devotion. But let’s ponder more closely what the sampling of policy prescriptions noted above have in common: They are always about a power elite controlling you.

The Green New Deal, with its focus on tracking every industry and person’s “carbon footprint,” is the perfect vehicle for a power elite to control the masses from the top down. It would cut back severely on people’s mobility and cause greater scarcity of resources, opening the door for nationalizing whole industries. It provides excuses to punish any hint of nonconformity, and it depends on fearmongering — “the burning planet!” — to coerce compliance.

Next, consider the constant push for taxpayer-funded abortion, which has now entered the infanticide phase. What’s that about? It’s an open door to eugenics and further top-down control of the population by elites drunk on power.

The bait for unrestricted abortion has always been sex without any balance of responsibility. But the switch comes in the abortion culture’s dire effects on society: broken homes, broken families, broken relationships, which all fuel an unprecedented loneliness epidemic. Such brokenness further cultivates people’s vulnerability to government dependency and social control by self-supremacists.

Power-hungry elites use identity politics, or the constant push for “diversity,” to divide us by causing tension, discord, and hatred — all of which require government power to address. No more “hate speech,” such as voicing support for traditional marriage or sex distinctions. Under the anti-discrimination coating, identity politics is a poison pill for the First Amendment.

Consider the laser-focus on policing speech by forcing pronoun protocols into our laws. A prime example is a 2015 New York City law that calls for a fine of $250,000 for misgendering someone. Should you be accused, you will likely be at the mercy of an activist judge. The virus of identity politics — along with its twin virus, political correctness — is all about shutting people up and separating them, empowering elites to do more social engineering.

Same-day voter registration and universal mail-in voting is an obvious invitation to election fraud. Normal people know that voting every couple of years is not a hard thing to do. So the point of this election tampering is to bring about a permanent Democrat majority that doesn’t have to bother with real elections anymore.

The Political Left Has a God Complex

This pandemic has laid bare the intentions of our self-appointed betters in Washington, the media, and beyond. They have shown no desire for national unity, pushing policies to empower only themselves. They manipulate people’s worst fears, knowing that’s the surest way to get them to lay down their liberties.

We should be able to see a God-complex at work in all this control-freak behavior, and we should not fear calling out that behavior for what it is. If this seems over-the-top to American readers, that’s because we aren’t used to living under totalitarian rule.

As we just emerged from Holy Week, we would do well to recognize that this is man’s natural, sinful state. After all, the sin of pride, or the conceit of playing god, is the original sin from which all other sins emanate.

Consider that the 1.4 billion people of communist China are at the mercy of this mindset every day, an atheistic mentality hostile to religion and intent on destroying churches and any assembly that does not put the state first. People intent on playing god do not want to compete with the one living God as they try to control the lives of others.

That mindset brought on the miseries of human history. Our founders recognized it because they saw that failing in human nature, and therefore in themselves. There was a time when Americans were taught that the central purpose of the Constitution was to keep that impulse in check so we could have individual liberties. When we refuse to see the urge in ourselves, we are far less able to keep it in check.

We should call out this mindset wherever we see it, and that means questioning the motives of anyone who continuously pushes for policies that undermine individual liberties and build a mass state with a tiny elite controlling us all. No more should Americans simply attribute the totalitarian impulse to good intentions gone astray — certainly not while our economy is on its knees and the nation has undergone the trauma of the media’s fearmongering. The stakes are just too high.

Senate Democrats, Obama Small Business Chief Break With Pelosi, Urge Loan Funds Now

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

Pressure is growing among congressional Democrats within their own ranks to pass critical funding to save small businesses after the $350 billion loan program set up to provide federal assistance was officially exhausted on Thursday.

Former President Barack Obama’s small-business chief during his first term, Karen Mills, even began urging Democrats to pass new funding immediately.

“Congress has to act as soon as possible,” Mills said in an interview with Roll Call Thursday, “Number one, get the money replenished.”

Funding ran out for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) established in the $2.3 trillion dollar Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act for small businesses struggling to stay afloat amid the coronavirus crisis after just two weeks when loans became available.

Congressional Republicans have been trying for more than a week to pass a clean funding bill allocating $250 billion to replenish the program as it became increasingly apparent that funds would soon run out. Democrats, however, blocked the legislation to offer a counter-proposal of their own consisting of a progressive wish-list of long sought-for items while calling for stricter guidelines on how the loans are administered.

Mills however, pleaded with Democrats on Capitol Hill to pass funding now as there’s no time to delay additional resources to suffering businesses preparing to go under.

“Complexity is not our friend here,” Mills told Roll Call. “Things that have to be implemented quickly can’t have a lot of bells and whistles, or else there will be too many unintended consequences – one of which is delay. And we don’t have time to delay.”

Several Senate Democrats are now breaking with party leadership to demand immediate replenishment of the fund now, while unemployment continues to skyrocket and small businesses report facing permanent closure. According to new data released from the Department of Labor Thursday, 22 million Americans have now filed for unemployment in just four weeks.

“Arizona businesses are counting on us to help them during this emergency,” Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema wrote on Twitter Thursday. “I’m calling on leadership in both parties to get thru this stalemate ASAP – we can’t wait any longer.”

Sinema was joined by fellow Democratic Sens. Tina Smith of Minnesota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

“Minnesota small businesses need relief now,” wrote Smith. “I fought hard for this program and am not pressing for additional funds, faster delivery and implementation improvements to help more Minnesotans get assistance ASAP.”

“West Virginia small businesses are hurting,” Manchin wrote in a press releaseThursday. “It’s time to stop the partisan bickering and come together to fix this. Congress must act in a bipartisan way to quickly invest more funding into the PPP and we need to do so in a way that protects small businesses and healthcare providers like those across rural West Virginia.”

As signs became clear small business funds were nearing exhaustion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed off concerns of their depletion calling such predictions and proposed Republican funding for replenishment a “stunt.”

There’s “no data as to why we need it,” Pelosi said on C-SPAN. Within 24 hours of the fund drying out, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York entered negotiations with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. When pressed on why she was holding small business funding hostage during a Thursday press conference, Pelosi tried to equate the small business program to funds allocated for hospitals and local governments condemning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for rejecting Democrats’ counter-proposal to direct more money to such institutions.

“When we talk to McConnell, he says, ‘Well, I think we should do some of that, but let’s see how the money that is out there is working for state and local and for hospitals before we do more,” Pelosi said. Only small business funds however, have run out.

Meanwhile, Pelosi continued her media tour this week holding up small business life-support from her kitchen in front of a $24,000 refrigerator.

DOJ Blames FBI For Spygate

Declassified DOJ Letter to FISA Court Highlights Severe Institutional Corruption

sundance at cth

Amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee [SEE HERE] there is a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court in July 2018 that points toward an institutional cover-up.   [Link to Letter]

Before getting to the substance of the letter, it’s important to put the release in context.  After the FISA Court reviewed the DOJ inspector general report, the FISC ordered the DOJ-NSD to declassify and release documents related to the Carter Page FISA application.

In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ cites the January 7, 2020, FISA court order:

Keep in mind that prior to this release only the FISA court had seen this letter from the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD).  As we walk through the alarming content of this letter I think you’ll identify the motive behind the FISC order to release it.

First, the letter in question was sent by the DOJ-NSD to the FISA Court on July 12, 2018.  It is critical to keep the date of the letter in mind as we review the content.

Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The DOJ is telling the court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application.   The DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.

However, it is within the justification of the application that alarm bells are found. On page six the letter identifies the primary participants behind the FISA redactions:

As you can see: Christopher Steele is noted as “Source #1”.  Glenn Simpson of Fusion-GPS is noted as “identified U.S. person” or “business associate”; and Perkins Coie is the “U.S-based law firm.”

Now things get very interesting.

On page #8 when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the DOJ notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.

This is an incredibly misleading statement to the FISA court because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier the sub-source, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.

Let’s look at how the IG report frames the primary sub-source, and specifically notice the FBI contact and questioning took place in January 2017 (we now know that date to be January 12, 2017):

Those interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source took place in January, March and May of 2017; and clearly the sub-source debunked the content of the dossier itself.

Those interviews were 18-months, 16-months and 14-months ahead of the July 2018 DOJ letter to the FISC.   The DOJ-NSD says the sub-source was “truthful and cooperative” but the DOJ doesn’t tell the court the content of the truthfulness and cooperation.  Why?

Keep in mind this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018.  Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy, and Dana Boente is FBI chief-legal-counsel.

Why would the DOJ-NSD not be forthcoming with the FISA court about the primary sub-source?  This level of disingenuous withholding of information speaks to an institutional motive.

By July 2018 the DOJ clearly knew the dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the court and said the predicate was still valid.  Why?

It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.

In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex.

This letter justifying the application and claiming the current information would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant…. My research suspicion is that the DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller had already extracted from the fraudulent FISA authority.  That’s the motive. In July 2018 if the DOJ-NSD had admitted the FISA application and all renewals were fatally flawed Robert Mueller would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation.  The DOJ in 2018 was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.

If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending.  The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.

This is not simply a hunch, because that motive also speaks to why the FISC would order the current DOJ to release the letter.

Remember, in December the FISC received the IG Horowitz report; and they would have immediately noted the disparity between what IG Horowitz outlined about the FBI investigating Steele’s sub-source, as contrast against what the DOJ told them in July 2018.

The DOJ letter is a transparent misrepresentation when compared to the information in the Horowitz report. Hence, the court orders the DOJ to release the July letter so that everyone, including congressional oversight and the public can see the misrepresentation.

The court was misled; now everyone can see it.

The content of that DOJ-NSD letter, and the subsequent disparity, points to an institutional cover-up; and as a consequence the FISC also ordered the DOJ to begin an immediate sequestration effort to find all the evidence from the fraudulent FISA application.  The proverbial fruit from the poisonous tree…. And yes, that is ongoing.

Moving on…

Two more big misstatements within the July letter appear on page #9.  The first is the DOJ claiming that only after the application was filed did they become aware of Christopher Steele working for Fusion-GPS and knowing his intent was to create opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign.  See the top of the page.

According to the DOJ-NSD claim the number four ranking official in the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, never told them he was acting as a conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI.   While that claim is hard to believe, in essence what the DOJ-NSD is saying in that paragraph is that the FBI hoodwinked the DOJ-NSD by not telling them where the information for the FISA application was coming from.  The DOJ, via John Demers, is blaming the FBI.

The second statement, equally as incredulous, is at the bottom of page nine where the DOJ claims they had no idea Bruce Ohr was talking to the FBI throughout the entire time any of the FISA applications were being submitted.  October 2016 through June 2017.

In essence the claim there is that Bruce Ohr was working with the FBI and never told anyone in the DOJ throughout 2016 and all the way past June 29th of 2017.  That denial seems rather unlikely; however, once again the DOJ-NSD is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they knew nothing about the information pipeline.

Bruce Ohr, whose wife was working for Fusion-GPS and assisting Christopher Steele with information, was interviewed by the FBI over a dozen times as he communicated with Steele and fed his information to the FBI.  Yet the DOJ claims they knew nothing about it.

Again, just keep in mind this claim by the DOJ-NSD is being made in July 2018, six months after Bruce Ohr was demoted twice (December 2017 and January 2018).  If what the DOJ is saying is true, well, the FBI was completely off-the-rails and rogue.

Neither option speaks well about the integrity of either institution; and quite frankly I don’t buy the DOJ-NSD spin.  Why?  The reason is simple, the DOJ is claiming in the letter the predication was still valid… if the DOJ-NSD genuinely didn’t know about the FBI manipulation, they would be informing the court in 2018 the DOJ no longer supported the FISA application due to new information.  They did not do that.  Instead, in July 2018, they specifically told the court the predicate was valid, yet the DOJ-NSD knew it was not.

The last point about the July 2018 letter is perhaps the most jarring.  Again, keep in mind when it was written Chris Wray is FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy and Dana Boente is FBI chief legal counsel.

Their own FBI reports, by three different INSD and IG investigations; had turned up seriously alarming evidence going back to the early 2017 time-frame; the results of which ultimately led to the DC FBI office losing all of their top officials; and knowing the letter itself was full of misleading and false information about FBI knowledge in/around Christopher Steele; this particular sentence is alarming:

“The FBI has reviewed this letter and confirmed its factual accuracy?”

Really?

As we have just shared, the July 2018 letter itself is filled with factual inaccuracies, misstatements and intentional omissions.  So who exactly did the “reviewing”?

This declassification release raises more questions than any other in recent memory.  Perhaps AG Bill Barr will now start asking some rather hard questions to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Here’s the Full Letter.  I strongly suggest everyone read the 14-pages slowly.  If you know the background, this letter is infuriating…

DOJ Justification Letter to... by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd