Sunday, May 10, 2020
New York has mismanaged COVID-19 from top to bottom
So why is Andrew Cuomo’s popularity at an all time high?
Andrew Cuomo is having the time of his life. His approval ratings are through the roof and he’s being talked about as a replacement for Joe Biden should Joe wander off somewhere without his Visiting Angel, never to be found again. Hipster merchandise featuring his face is exploding on Etsy and he’s getting a nightly hour with his own brother on CNN to chat about oh, this and that, and whatever is happening in his day at the given moment. It’s quite the arrangement! Andrew doesn’t ask his brother why he broke quarantine, literally endangering lives and the younger Fredo doesn’t ask him about 1,700 previously uncounted COVID related deaths in New York nursing homes, or why he didn’t authorize disinfecting subway cars until early May, a full 90 days after the first cases were reported on March 1.
Governors in Florida, Texas and Georgia bear the brunt of media criticism for their handling of testing, shutdowns and hospitalizations. In each instance, no outbreak or death count in those states has come close to matching New York. National media went to plaid over Jacksonville’s reopened beaches, while glossing over the hordes of impatient hipsters grouping together throughout New York parks, the entire time lavishing praise on the governor of the moment.
There is something deeply unsettling about the way Cuomo’s handling of the epidemic has been lionized by the national media, and treated as a reality show by his brother’s network; especially when it’s viewed in tandem with attempts to delegitimize governors in other states who have competently faced down similar challenges. California’s Gavin Newsom deserves credit for pouncing early, while also crediting the work of the Trump administration. Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington was the first statewide elected executive outside of Donald Trump forced into dealing with the pandemic head on. What looked to be a spiraling disaster was quickly contained. Yet in both cases, the national New York-based media ignored them, choosing to zone in on the dangers of yokel hick states and their GOP governors, catering to a catastrophe that never actually came. Remember spring breakers all amassing on beaches and on patios?
Meanwhile, researchers believe that New York City was the epicenter for the spread throughout most of the country and that the New York subway system — far from a beacon of cleanliness at the best of times — was the largest incubator of the virus, according to the New York Times . As the virus took hold throughout the city, elected officials denounced concerns about its origins as racist and xenophobic, and encouraging their constituents to go about life as usual and attend festivals and movie theaters. As it turns out, the mayor snuffing out a groundhog was just a practice run.
Last week, the bombshell dropped that someone in New York authorized the use of nursing homes for recovering patients of COVID-19, a decision that led to approximately 1,700 casualties. That’s more COVID deaths than the entire state of Florida…but if you watch the news, you’ll only hear about supposed massive failure on the part of Gov. Ron DeSantis. We still don’t know who made that decision in New York, or what Cuomo knows about it…because the toughest questions he’s faced have been from his infected brother. (By the way, how are the plasma donations going, Chris?) The fact subway cars had not been sterilized nightly until May 4 has gone all but unscrutinized as well.
Yet through it all, Daddy Cuomo has enjoyed an 80 percent approval rating from his uber-liberal voting base and adoring media, who believe in pinning every death in New York on the decision-making coming out of the White House. Maybe Cuomo should replace Biden on the Democratic ticket, and beat Donald Trump. Perhaps once he’s in the White House, the press would take more of an interest in the several missteps that have, as of yet, gone under-examined on his watch.
Barack Obama Forgets That Bill Clinton Got Away With Perjury
Barack Obama says there is no precedent for
anyone getting away with perjury.
anyone getting away with perjury.
He forgot about his buddy Bill Clinton.
As we get closer and closer to November’s election, a ghost of presidential past is beginning to haunt the political discourse. Barack Obama is back. Beginning last month on Twitter, he started attacking president Trump directly. Now audio of a phone conversation has been “leaked” in which Obama has more to say about what he views as Trump’s failures. In the remarks, one thing stood out: his remarkable take on the exoneration of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Here’s what the 44th president had to say on the matter:
The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn, and the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.
Let’s focus in on this idea that nobody has ever gotten off scot-free after being charged with perjury. The year was 1999, “Armageddon” was the highest grossing film in America, the New York Yankees were World Series champions, and President William Jefferson Clinton was impeached for committing — wait for it — perjury.
Let’s back up for second because, in fact, Flynn was never actually accused of perjury. He was not under oath when he was questioned by the FBI and, according to the Justice Department, told no material lies. Clinton, on the other hand, blatantly lied under oath to a grand jury about the exact allegation of sexual misconduct he was facing.
Not only did Clinton face no criminal charges for his blatant act of perjury, he wasn’t even convicted by the Senate. One might even say he “got off scot-free.” Of course, it’s fairly unlikely that Obama actually forgot that Clinton lied under oath; rather he is applying the requisite double standard for actions committed by Republicans and Democrats.
We are all familiar with this by now. If a claim of sexual assault is made against Brett Kavanaugh, he is unfit for the Supreme Court. If a claim of sexual assault is made against Joe Biden, then #BelieveBiden. Likewise, Clinton didn’t really commit perjury, he just told a little white lie about a consensual sex act with an intern, but Flynn should be rotting in jail.
Barack Obama is making it crystal clear that he does not intend to abide by the tradition of former presidents staying above the political fray. That’s fine, but let’s hope the next time he decides to pontificate, he does so in a way that is accurate and that makes the slightest bit of sense.
Common Sense and Self-Evident Truth in a Post-Truth World
Article by Robert Curry in "The American Thinker":
Many Americans today go far beyond simply rejecting the ideas of the American founders, the claims of the Declaration, and the Constitution. They reject the very idea of truth. These Americans were taught in American universities that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is an outmoded concept, that we now live in a post-truth reality. The belief that the concept of truth is outmoded is no longer confined to academia. It has invaded the world outside academia and won a great victory there; the Oxford Dictionaries selected "post-truth" as the Word of the Year for 2016.
And a great victory it is. Convincing Americans that there is no such thing as truth defeats the very foundation of the American idea. The Founders, famously, founded America on certain truths, truths they declared to the world were not only true, but self-evidently true: "We hold these truths to be self-evident…" Self-evident truth occupies the first place and also the highest position among the declarations of the Declaration of Independence. "Created equal" and "unalienable rights" and all the rest follow along after that bold opening claim.
The Founders certainly believed they built on the rock of self-evident truth. But if there is no such thing as truth, then there can be no such thing as a self-evident truth, and everything the Founders declared and established can simply be dismissed. There is no need to try to understand the thinking of the Founders — not even by professors of constitutional law.
A few years ago, I watched a broadcast of an academic conference on the Constitution. The participants were all professors of constitutional law from major American universities. The keynote speaker declared for himself and for his colleagues their indifference to the ideas of the Founders. He developed his theme at some length to repeated enthusiastic applause from his fellow professors in the audience.
However, if you as an American citizen decide to take an interest in the ideas of the Founders, you quickly run into their idea of self-evident truth; it is everywhere in their writings. Sometimes you may not realize it, though. For example, consider a passage written by Alexander Hamilton. Please read Hamilton's words carefully before you move on to reading what I have to say about them. The passage is from Federalist 31:
In disquisitions [discourses] of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind.
The passage may be easier to understand with the explanation that "primary truths" and "first principles" are alternative ways in which the Founders referred to self-evident truths. Consequently, we can restate Hamilton's words in a way that gives them a more familiar feeling: "there are certain self-evident truths upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend." Restated in this way, it becomes clear that Hamilton's statement parallels Jefferson's iconic one in the Declaration. Hamilton and Jefferson are relying on a shared understanding of self-evident truth — and Hamilton's passage, like the Declaration, gives self-evident truth the highest position.
What is that shared understanding of self-evident truth that Jefferson and Hamilton and the other Founders relied on? It is this: to know that a statement is self-evidently true, all that is required is that we understand the statement; to understand a self-evident truth is to know that it is true.
Does this idea of statements that are self-evidently true seem a bit high-flown, something for special occasions such as a speech celebrating the Fourth of July? Actually, it shouldn't seem unusual because we make use of the same understanding of self-evident truth all the time. The idea of self-evident truth has been carefully excised from our political discourse, yet we constantly rely on the self-evidence of truth in our day-to-day lives, though we may not always notice it when we do. Here is an example of the kind of thing we do all the time, selected from a book on economics entitled Cents and Sensibility:
Without Columbus someone else would have discovered America, but it defies common sense to assert that without Milton someone else would have written Paradise Lost.
Both the claim about Columbus and the claim about Milton are self-evidently true; to understand them is to know they are true. We could re-state them in this way: "it is a self-evident truth that without Columbus someone would have discovered America, and it is a self-evident truth that without Milton Paradise Lost would never have been written." Such statements, as Hamilton puts it, "command the assent of the mind."
A self-evident truth does not need a proof; it only needs to be understood. If a university assembled a committee of scholars and spent years and millions of dollars examining those statements about Columbus and Milton, absolutely nothing would be gained. When the scholars issued their report, people would be right to say it was a waste of time and money. However, most of us would probably not make reference to self-evident truths to make that point. Instead of saying there was no need for the all the expenditure of time and money because the statements are self-evidently true, we would be more likely to say it was a waste of time and money because "it's just common sense."
The Founders would agree with us, though they might want to help our understanding along by pointing out the difference between a self-evident truth and our capacity to recognize a self-evident truth.
Common sense gives us the capacity to recognize what is self-evidently true, and using common sense to recognize what is self-evidently true is something we do all the time. And every time we do, we disprove the claims of those who defy common sense by claiming that there is no such thing as truth.
Matt Whitaker Discusses Why the FBI Targeted Lt. General Michael Flynn
Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker appears on Fox News to discuss the DOJ decision to drop the case against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and the ongoing revelations about prior FBI activity. Mr. Whitaker also gives his opinion of current FBI Director Christopher Wray.
With Michael Flynn trapped on the burning roof of a corrupt institution the problem for Barr upon arrival was how to rescue Flynn without admitting Main Justice and the FBI is on fire. Fortuitously in January 2020 the FISA Court provided cover, an escape route, for Bill Barr to deal with the problem:
That appears to be exactly what happened.
As a result of the January FISC order, Bill Barr recruited five U.S. Attorneys to review all of the cases handled by special counsel Robert Mueller {Go Deep}.
The review crosses all judicial venues, and the objective was/is to identify any evidence that was obtained as a result of fraudulently obtained surveillance authorities.
It does not appear coincidental the number of U.S. attorney’s recruited matches the number of targets prosecuted by Robert Mueller’s special counsel team.
It looks like one USAO was assigned to review each prosecution from Mueller’s initial target list, Rod Rosenstein’s authorizing scope memo. [Flynn, Manafort, Papadopoulos, Page, and REDACTED (likely Trump himself)]
To address the consequences of fraudulently obtained FISA warrants the DOJ and FBI informed the court they would begin a process to “sequester” all collected evidence from all four FISA warrants. [FISA COURT LINK]
Sequestering the evidence is essentially a search for what investigative material the FISA warrants were used to obtain; ie. the search for the fruit of the poisoned tree; and then a review of all DOJ/FBI cases that may have utilized that investigative material.
In late January the DOJ contacted the FISA court and asked for an extension to the deadline. The FISA court granted an extension until February 5th [LINK] A week after the deadline expired, DC media started reporting on FIVE newly assigned DOJ lawyers.
One of those DOJ lawyers was USAO Jeff Jensen from Missouri.
Jensen was assigned to review the Flynn case and all of the documents attached to the investigation therein. It was with this authority and DOJ responsibility that U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen worked to collect, highlight and release background material. Ultimately culminating in showing the corrupt FBI activity behind the Flynn prosecution; and the subsequent dropping of charges.
It is important to keep the motives and approach of Main Justice in mind when considering what might come next.
Again, accepting institutional preservation is the ultimate objective, this context is very important because it explains and reconciles why AG Barr keeps praising current FBI Director Wray; and accepting plausible denials from Obama’s primary officials (ex. Yates).
Why is Obama Panicking Now?
The Importance of Understanding Political Surveillance In The Era of President Obama
Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now? Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her cya letter? Why have republicans in congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance? What is the reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?
With the release of recent transcripts and the declassification of material from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and Flynn documents showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about why the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place. Why was Donald Trump considered a threat?
In this outline we hope to provide some fully cited deep source material that will explain the origin; and specifically why those inside the Intelligence Community began targeting Trump and using Confidential Human Sources against campaign officials.
During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches.
On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware.
Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
When you compile the timeline with the people involved; and the specific wording of the resulting review, which was then delivered to the FISA court; and overlay the activity that was taking place in the GOP primary; what we discover is a process where the metadata collected by the NSA was being searched for political opposition research and surveillance.
Additionally, tens-of-thousands of searches were identified by the FISA court as likely extending much further than the compliance review period: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non compliant queries since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
In short, during the Obama administration the NSA database was continually used to conduct surveillance. This is the critical point that leads to understanding the origin of “Spygate”, as it unfolded in the Spring and Summer of 2016.
It was the discovery of the database exploitation and the removal of access as a surveillance tool that created their initial problem. Here’s how we can tell.
Initially in December 2015 there were 17 GOP candidates and all needed to be researched.
However, when Donald Trump won New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina the field was significantly whittled. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson remained.
On Super Tuesday, March 2, 2016, Donald Trump won seven states (VT, AR, VA, GA, AL, TN, MA) it was then clear that Trump was the GOP frontrunner with momentum to become the presumptive nominee. On March 5th, Trump won Kentucky and Louisiana; and on March 8th Trump won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.
The next day, March 9th, NSA security alerts warned internal oversight personnel that something sketchy was going on.
This timing is not coincidental. As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer later wrote in her report, “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” Put another way: attributes belonging to a specific individual(s) were being targeted and queried, unlawfully. Given what was later discovered, it seems obvious the primary search target, over multiple date ranges, was Donald Trump.
There were tens-of-thousands of unauthorized search queries; and as Judge Collyer stated in her report, there is no reason to believe the 85% non compliant rate was any different from the abuse of the NSA database going back to 2012.
As you will see below the NSA database was how political surveillance was being conducted during Obama’s second term in office. However, when the system was flagged, and when NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down “contractor” access to the system, the system users needed to develop another way to get access.
Mike Rogers shuts down access on April 18, 2016. On April 19, 2016, Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby visits the White House. Immediately thereafter, the DNC and Clinton campaign contract Fusion GPS… who then hire Christopher Steele.
Knowing it was federal “contractors”, outside government with access to the system, doing the unauthorized searches, the question becomes: who were the contractors?
The possibilities are quite vast. Essentially anyone the FBI or intelligence apparatus was using could have participated. Crowdstrike was a known FBI contractor; they were also contracted by the DNC. Shawn Henry was the former head of the FBI office in DC and is now the head of Crowdstrike; a rather dubious contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company. James Comey’s special friend Daniel Richman was an unpaid FBI “special employee” with security access to the database. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion-GPS on the Trump project in November 2015 and she was a CIA contractor; and it’s entirely likely Glenn Simpson or people within his Fusion-GPS network were also contractors for the intelligence community.
Remember the Sharyl Attkisson computer intrusions? It’s all part of this same network; Attkisson even names Shawn Henry as a defendant in her ongoing lawsuit.
All of the aforementioned names, and so many more, held a political agenda in 2016.
It seems likely if the NSA flags were never triggered then the contracted system users would have continued exploiting the NSA database for political opposition research; which would then be funneled to the Clinton team. However, once the unauthorized flags were triggered, the system users (including those inside the official intelligence apparatus) needed to find another back-door to continue… Again, the timing becomes transparent.
Immediately after NSA flags were raised March 9th; the same intelligence agencies began using confidential human sources (CHS’s) to run into the Trump campaign. By activating intelligence assets like Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper the IC (CIA, FBI) and system users had now created an authorized way to continue the same political surveillance operations.
When Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort on March 28, 2016, it was a perfect scenario for those doing the surveillance. Manafort was a known entity to the FBI and was previously under investigation. Paul Manafort’s entry into the Trump orbit was perfect for Glenn Simpson to sell his prior research on Manafort as a Trump-Russia collusion script two weeks later.
The shift from “unauthorized exploitation of the NSA database” to legally authorized exploitation of the NSA database was now in place. This was how they continued the political surveillance. This is the confluence of events that originated “spygate”, or what officially blossomed into the FBI investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane” on July 31.
If the NSA flags were never raised; and if Director Rogers had never initiated the compliance audit; and if the political contractors were never blocked from access to the database; they would never have needed to create a legal back-door, a justification to retain the surveillance. The political operatives/contractors would have just continued the targeted metadata exploitation.
Once they created the surveillance door, Fusion-GPS was then needed to get the FBI known commodity of Chris Steele activated as a pipeline. Into that pipeline all system users pushed opposition research. However, one mistake from the NSA database extraction during an “about” query shows up as a New Yorker named Michael Cohen in Prague.
That misinterpreted data from a FISA-702 “about query” is then piped to Steele and turns up inside the dossier; it was the wrong Michael Cohen. It wasn’t Trump’s lawyer, it was an art dealer from New York City with the same name; the same “identifier”.
A DEEP DIVE – How Did It Work?
Start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinionrendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26, 2017. Review the details within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the FISA court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes. That complexity also helps the media avoid discussing it; and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the Obama-era surveillance issues. So we’ll try to break down the language.
For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.
While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
♦ FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”); and the “16” is a check box to initiate a search based on “To and From“. Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
♦ FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the “17” is a check box to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything aboutthat phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.
And that’s just from a phone number.
Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter?
You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy; and database access was from the FBI network:
Report this ad
But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.
85% !! “representing [redacted number]”.
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 10,000 and 99,999 [six digits]. If we take the middle number of 50,000 – a non compliant rate of 85 percent means 42,500 unlawful searches out of 50,000.
The [six digit] amount (more than 10,000, less than 99,999), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016.
Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” This tells us the system users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic identifier, repeatedly over different dates.
Specific person(s) were being tracked/monitored.
Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012.
2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:
- Who was 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller, who was selected by the FBI group to become special prosecutor in 2017.
- Who was Mueller’ chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the Mueller special counsel.
- Who was 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan (remember the ouster of Gen Petraeus)
- Who was ODNI? James Clapper.
- Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? Ash Carter
Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired in 2016? Brennan, Clapper and Carter.
And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? The same John Brennan, and James Clapper along with James Comey.
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal.
The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or likely not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the very next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, if declassified, could be a key. Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.
Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.
Summary: The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.
Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue:
SIDEBAR: To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the “About” query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [SEE HERE] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command. [SEE HERE] Unfortunately it didn’t work as shown by the 2018 FISC opinion rendered by FISC Judge James Boasberg [SEE HERE]
There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.
Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.
Everything after March 9th, 2016, had a dual purpose: (1) done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [Explained Here] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment(drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began. And (2) they needed to keep the surveillance going.
The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.
Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
How this all comes together in 2019/2020
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 just to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
Report this ad
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content.
The Steele Dossier, an outcome of the Fusion contract, contains three insurance policy purposes: (1) the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation (protect Obama); and (2) facilitate the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign (assist Clinton); and (3) continue the operation with a special counsel (protect both).
The Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion-GPS gave them that justification and evidence for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier.
Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the FBI would not have a tool that Mueller needed to continue the investigation of President Trump. In essence by renewing the FISA application, despite them knowing the underlying dossier was junk, the FBI was keeping the surveillance gateway open for Team Mueller to exploit later on.
Additionally, without the Steele Dossier the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse as outlined by John Ratcliffe.
Thankfully we know U.S. Attorney John Durham has talked to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In this video Rogers explains how he was notified of what was happening and what he did after the notification.