Tag: Federal Bureau of Investigation

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Saturday accused the Democrats of playing politics with classified information, asserting that their memo countering GOP allegations about the conduct of the FBI’s Russia probe was a trap meant to “blame the White House for lack of transparency.” Citing national security concerns, the White House notified the House Intelligence Committee on Friday that the president was “unable” to declassify the Democratic memo. White House counsel Don McGahn said in a letter to the committee that the memo contains “numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages” and asked the committee to revise it with the help of the Justice Department. “The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency,” he tweeted. Even before reading the GOP document, Trump pledged to make it public. The Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, California Rep. Adam Schiff, criticized Trump for treating the two documents differently, saying the president is now seeking revisions by the same committee that produced the original Republican memo. She tweeted that Trump’s blocking the memo is “hypocrisy at its worst.” The head of the House committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who produced the GOP memo, encouraged Democrats to accept the Justice Department’s recommendations and “make the appropriate technical changes and redactions.” Trump has said the GOP memo “vindicates” him in the ongoing Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday to release the Democratic memo. Ryan also said he thought the Democratic document should be released. Trump declassified the GOP-authored memo over the objections of the FBI, which said it had “grave concerns” about the document’s accuracy. They noted that federal law enforcement officials had informed the court about the political origins of Steele’s work and that some of the former spy’s information was corroborated by the FBI.

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted a brief explanation for why he rejected the request to declassify a Democratic memo from the House Intelligence Committee. Trump called the memo "very political and long" and said he "told them to re-do and send back in proper form." — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018 On Friday, White House counsel Don McGahn informed the committee of the President's decision, writing in a letter that although Trump is "inclined to declassify" the memo spearheaded by the panel's ranking member, California Rep. Adam Schiff, "he is unable to do so at this time." Schiff's memo rebuts allegations in another memo from the committee's Republicans that accuses the FBI suppressing Democratic ties to an opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia used in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. "Mr. President, what you call 'political' are actually called facts, and your concern for sources and methods would be more convincing if you hadn't decided to release the GOP memo ("100%") before reading it and over the objections of the FBI," Schiff wrote. In a statement Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein called Trump's decision not to release the Democratic memo "hypocrisy at its worst." In a statement Friday, Feinstein, a Democrat from California, called the Republicans' memo "misleading" and said she had read the underlying intelligence documents on which both memos were based. Mueller's is just one of several investigations into Russian meddling in the campaign, which include a probe by the House Intelligence Committee. Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion. "One week after he released the misleading and incomplete Nunes memo, President Trump tonight blocked the release of the Schiff memo that sought to fill in the holes.

What a paranoid lunatic they said, 'Get off Twitter!' Yeah. The question at this point is how many Trump's people weren't spied on by the FBI. We know from Congressional testimony that Page spoke to Trump advisor, Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon while he was being spied on, meaning Bannon was likely spied on too. Suddenly it looks like the Obama administration may have spied on a significant portion of the Trump campaign team. Just how many people were surveilled and to what extent? Asking questions is a sign of disloyalty to this country. The very people that once told us that spying absolutely never happened are now telling us that spying was perfectly justified and normal. I, "would rather not have a paper trail," he texted in the oligarch's lobbyist. That story alleges just within the last year American intelligence agencies paid a spy -- apparently a spy working for the Russian government -- $100,000 in American tax dollars in exchange for unverified and possibly fabricated information about President Trump.

It’s getting tiresome –but best I can decipher from all this FISA stuff: the Dept. of Justice, the FBI and Democrats claim it’s very bad for a U.S. presidential candidate to seek help for their campaign from a foreign regime—especially a hostile one, even if the hostility is mostly covert, as in the case of Putin’s Russia. Hope I haven’t missed anything but it seems that: in seeking to investigate and prosecute foreign collusion with the Republican presidential candidate, the FBI and DOJ relied on evidence kindly proffered by the Democrat candidate who colluded with foreigners (as in paying them) for it. In dramatic contrast to the “dossier” the FBI and DOJ used for their FISA warrant, my “dossier” documenting how Putin’s client state colluded with one of our presidential candidates on our very soil is FULLY verified. To wit: “The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.” View Cartoon And yet a major “get out the vote for Hillary” rally in Miami on Oct. 30th, 2016 --and partly paid for by the Democratic Party-- featured government apparatchiks of a hostile foreign regime, a musical duo called Gente De Zona. This permission, as you might guess, is bestowed by the Castro family only upon those of its subjects whose lack of scruples and penchant for bootlicking allow them to single-mindedly serve the foreign policy and financial interests of the totalitarian regime. We’re not talking about some Birkenstocked French backpackers who got swept up in the hoopla of the Hillary campaign and joined their J-Lo listening American friends on a conga line at a campaign event. A few days prior to sending their musical apparatchiks to perform in Miami, Castro’s media apparatchiks declared that: “Hillary Clinton is our only hope of detaining barbarism!...The only hope of defeating Donald Trump is Hillary Clinton…the difference between the two candidates is vast. So apparently it’s not enough that the Castro family endorsed Hillary Clinton from their home base, and denounced Donald Trump as fit only for prison or a mental institution.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Former hippies across the United States have been put in the unbearable position of rooting for the F.B.I., hippies have confirmed. From Vermont to California, erstwhile hippies bemoaned a nightmare scenario that has forced them to side with a law-enforcement agency they have despised since the Summer of Love. “I always dreamed I’d spend my retirement surrounded by my grandchildren, telling them that the F.B.I. “That dream has been shot to hell.” Her husband, Mick, nodded his head in sad agreement. “We were so happy when pot was legalized in California,” he said. “But the fact that we’re now on the same side as the F.B.I. has ruined even that.” Now in their seventies, the Foylers are spending their days doing things they never dreamed possible when they traipsed through the mud at Woodstock: going door to door in Santa Cruz, asking other former freaks to sign a pro-F.B.I. petition. “Donald Trump has wrecked America’s standing around the world, spread misogyny and bigotry, ravaged the environment, and endorsed a child molester,” Carol said. “But making people like us support the F.B.I.

The Department of Justice has recovered missing text messages between anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the DOJ’s inspector general said Thursday. In a letter sent to congressional committees, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his office “succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Fox News’ Sean Hannity had reported Wednesday that the Department of Justice had started to recover some of the texts. More than 50,000 texts were exchanged between Strzok and Page, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed Monday. The texts are believed to have taken place during the course of a romantic affair. Sessions had pledged to figure out how some of their texts went missing. Republicans, arguing some top officials at the FBI are politically biased against Trump, have seized on the texts. “We learned today about information that in the immediate aftermath of [Trump’s] election, that there may have been a secret society of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI -- to include Page and Strzok -- that would be working against him,” Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, said Monday on Fox News. In another infamous message, Strzok appeared to make reference to an “insurance policy” against a Trump win. “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.

President Donald Trump has called the FBI’s investigation of his financial affairs with the Deutsche Bank ‘ridiculous’ and claims any illegal or illicit funds were merely ‘resting in his account’ before being moved on to their proper owner. With the FBI serving a subpoena to Deutsche Bank, demanding full detailed records of all of Donald Trump’s financial affairs, rumours are quickly spreading that Trump may have foreign money in his account. The president has been quick to deny these allegations. ‘This is more fake news from the fake media and the fake FBI. I have a lot of money and I can’t be expected to keep track of it all 24/7. Believe me, any illegal funds were merely resting in my account before they could be moved onto the proper owner,’ Trump said to the press. But a source within the FBI believes that may not be the case. ‘If that money was just resting then it was having a good long rest. More like a full-blown retirement in Donald Trump’s account,’ said our anonymous source. In unrelated news, Donald Trump and his staff have completed the purchase of hundreds of high-powered shredders.

Washington (CNN)A former top counterintelligence expert at the FBI, now at the center of a political uproar for exchanging private messages that appeared to mock President Donald Trump, changed a key phrase in former FBI Director James Comey's description of how former secretary of state Hillary Clinton handled classified information, according to US officials familiar with the matter. 2 official in the counterintelligence division, changed Comey's earlier draft language describing Clinton's actions as "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless," the sources said. The drafting process was a team effort, CNN is told, with a handful of people reviewing the language as edits were made, according to another US official familiar with the matter. CNN has also learned that Strzok was the FBI official who signed the document officially opening an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to sources familiar with the matter. But the news of Strzok's direct role in the statement that ultimately cleared the former Democratic presidential candidate of criminal wrongdoing, now combined with the fact that he was dismissed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team after exchanging private messages with an FBI lawyer that could be seen as favoring Clinton politically, may give ammunition to those seeking ways to discredit Mueller's Russia investigation. CNN reported in November that Comey and his FBI colleagues were "playing with the language" throughout the process of drafting Comey's statement on Clinton, believing that they needed to condemn the former secretary of state's handling of classified information, while also making clear they would not recommend criminal charges, according to a source familiar with the FBI decision. "Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," Comey said back in July 2016. Grassley said that documents the FBI provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in November included an earlier draft of Comey's exoneration statement from May 2016, which stated: "There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the private email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified material." Grassley then asked for the electronic "metadata," which would include "who created the original drafts, who made the edits to the draft statement, and when those edits were made." Sources familiar with the requests tell CNN that Grassley has received the metadata, but he wants the FBI to provide further explanation about the changes.

Trump, two days after his former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, again denied that he directed FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn. The Republican president offered a running Twitter commentary Sunday amid renewed focus on Mueller’s probe and Flynn’s decision to cooperate with the investigation as part of his plea agreement. Democrats said the developments suggested growing evidence of coordination between Trump’s circle and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. In a series of tweets, Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Comey, whom Trump fired in May, the FBI’s reputation is “in Tatters — worst in History!” He vowed to “bring it back to greatness.” The president also retweeted a tweet that said new FBI Director Chris Wray “needs to clean house.” The president seized upon reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from Mueller’s team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump. The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorized to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump tweeted Sunday: “Tainted (no, very dishonest?) Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team. On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he “had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could “let this go.” Amid questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance Saturday evening between the president himself and the tweet.

“Gen. When pressed on the issue during a Friday press briefing, Sanders accused Wilson of making "quite a few comments" outside of those captured in the speech that were witnessed by Kelly and others. "If you don't understand that reference, I'll put it a little more simply—as we say in the South, all hat no cattle." Kelly leveled his criticism of Wilson during a rare appearance before the press to quell a controversy surrounding President Trump’s condolence call to the widow of a fallen U.S. solider. La David Johnson after she put the call on speakerphone. "A congresswoman stood up, and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money — the $20 million — to build the building, and she sat down, and we were stunned,” Kelly told reporters Thursday. But she made no mention of winning funding for it. The congresswoman also recognized the sacrifice of the agents who were killed and talked about the danger FBI personnel face every day. She then asked all law enforcement personnel and first responders to stand up “so we can applaud you for what you do."