THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR August 6, 2019 at 6:43 pm

Paul Plante says:

And while we are on the subject of RULE OF LAW and DUE PROCESS OF LAW and PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY and CONSTITUTIONAL BALANCE and SEPARATION OF POWERS all going out the window thanks to Nancy Pelosi and her pack of House Democrats who are totally perverting Article I of OUR Constitution and our laws in order to smear and slander and heap slime on a president of the opposite party in a bid to get a Democrat into the oval office come November 2020, before we go back to Alexander Hamilton and Federalist No. 65, The Hill just came out with an article entitled “Nadler: Judiciary panel could reach impeachment decision by late fall” by Olivia Beavers on 5 August, where we get this update on what the Democrats are thinking, and how they are proceeding, as follows:

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Monday said that his committee could decide whether to move forward with articles of impeachment against President Trump by late fall of this year but cautioned that such a decision requires certain conditions.

“If we decide to report articles of impeachment, we could get to that in the late fall perhaps – in the latter part of the year,” Nadler said in an appearance on MSNBC.

end quotes

So, are they getting with it, then?

Or are they fixin’ to get with it?

A huge mystery to which the pundits so far have no answers, other than that maybe something will happen by fall, but then again, maybe nothing will happen, which will leave us in suspense and on the edge of our seats all winter, and hey, that may well be the plan here, because we are dealing with some very canny Democrats here, and these investigations of Trump are a fundraising bonanza for the Democrats, so this show is not going to end so long as the campaign contributions keep rolling in, which takes us back to The Hill, as follows:

“The calendar is whatever it is,” Nadler said.

“We can’t let the election calendar dictate.”

“We will have hearings in September and October, who are witnesses not dependent on the court proceedings and we will do it through the fall.”

Nadler also noted that three key ingredients must exist before moving forward with articles of impeachment: The committee must be able to prove the president committed impeachable offenses, answer whether they reach the threshold of serious impeachable offenses, and have the support of the American people.

Polls currently indicate that a majority of U.S. citizens do not favor impeachment, but Nadler thinks his committee’s work will likely change their minds.

“We will hold these hearings.”

“We will get the support of the American people or we won’t.”

“I suspect we will,” Nadler said.

But even if House ultimately decided to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump, Democrats would face a far more difficult time seeking to convince the GOP-controlled Senate of removing Trump from office.

Democrats say it is their duty to conduct oversight.

Late last month, Nadler and others heralded the testimony of Mueller as a resounding success, despite Democrats privately saying the high-profile hearing in many ways failed to match their hope and expectations.

Still, Nadler, who jabbed the press for initially acting like “theater critics” over the Mueller’s testimony, called it an “inflection point.”

While the former FBI chief did not present any new evidence during the hearings – and often times gave basic or one-worded answers – he did confirm on camera that his investigation did not exonerate the president of obstruction of justice.

Mueller’s investigation ultimately did not find sufficient evidence that members of the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia.

But Democrats say it is now in the hands of Congress to make that determination, and they will continue to collect evidence in order to do so.

“The Mueller report was the summary of the evidence, we don’t have the evidence,” Nadler said on MSNBC.

“We will get the evidence in public hearings in front of the American people and then we will see about the conclusions.”

end quotes

So from that, it very much sounds like Jerrold Nadler is not accepting the Mueller Report as either conclusive or final, and he is going to have his committee redo the Mueller Investigation so that they can have it come up with some different conclusions more beneficial to the Democrats going into the 2020 elections, which takes us back to July 24, 2019, and the HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE HEARING ON OVERSIGHT OF THE REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION INTO RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT S. MUELLER, III, REP. JERROLD NADLER, D-N.Y., and his opening statement wherein he essentially indicts Trump, as follows:

CHAIRMAN: I will now recognize myself for a brief opening statement.

Director Mueller, thank you for being here.

I want to say just a few words about our themes today: responsibility, integrity and accountability.

end quotes

And so do I, actually, which takes us to a MARKETWATCH story entitled “Justice Department won’t charge Comey over Trump memos” by Associated Press published Aug. 1, 2019, where we have what appears to be a case of Jimmy Comey, like Hillary Clinton, being above the law, and thus not responsible or accountable, as follows:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has declined to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey over his handling of a series of memos he wrote that documented personal interactions with President Donald Trump, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.

The memos, some of which Justice Department officials later determined contained classified information, were written in the weeks and months before Comey’s firing by Trump in May 2017.

A week after he was fired, Comey authorized a friend to describe the contents of one of the memos to the news media.

He has said his hope in having one of the memos become public was to spur the appointment of a special counsel to run the Justice Department’s investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

end quotes

So, okay, admitted, he did have to break the law to make that happen, but since the goal is to hang Trump, and Jimmy was loyal to Hillary, so he shouldn’t have to take a fall for helping to take down Trump, that kind of law-breaking can be overlooked as politics.

Getting back to that article:

FBI agents collected four memos from Comey’s house one month after he was fired, according to court documents made public this week as part of a lawsuit by the organization Judicial Watch.

In court documents arguing against the public release of the memos, the FBI has contended that the memos include “highly sensitive information” about the Russia probe as well as certain classified details, including the code name and true identity of a source and details of foreign intelligence information.

Comey has said he took pains to document other information in an unclassified manner so that it could be made public and discussed out in the open.

That includes his February 2017 conversation about Flynn, the topic of the first memo described to the media.

“So my thinking was, if I write it in such a way that I don’t include anything that would trigger a classification, that’ll make it easier for us to discuss, within the FBI and the government, and to — to hold on to it in a way that makes it accessible to us,” Comey said at a June 2017 hearing.

The memos, some of which Comey described in a book released last year, were also pieces of evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The person who confirmed the Justice Department’s decision was not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

A lawyer for Comey declined to comment.

John Lavinsky, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s inspector general, which had been investigating, said he could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.

end quotes

So, nothing to see here, people, let’s go, clear the streets, everybody go back home and you will be just fine, because nothing happened in the first place to worry about, and now, we’ll pause to take a station break for a word from our sponsors, before returning to Alexander Hamilton, who will speak prophetically as follows, to wit:

The necessity of a numerous court for the trial of impeachments, is equally dictated by the nature of the proceeding.

This can never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense by the prosecutors, or in the construction of it by the judges, as in common cases serve to limit the discretion of courts in favor of personal security.

There will be no jury to stand between the judges who are to pronounce the sentence of the law, and the party who is to receive or suffer it.

The awful discretion which a court of impeachments must necessarily have, to doom to honor or to infamy the most confidential and the most distinguished characters of the community, forbids the commitment of the trust to a small number of persons.

These considerations seem alone sufficient to authorize a conclusion, that the Supreme Court would have been an improper substitute for the Senate, as a court of impeachments.

There remains a further consideration, which will not a little strengthen this conclusion.

It is this: The punishment which may be the consequence of conviction upon impeachment, is not to terminate the chastisement of the offender.

After having been sentenced to a perpetual ostracism from the esteem and confidence, and honors and emoluments of his country, he will still be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.

Would it be proper that the persons who had disposed of his fame, and his most valuable rights as a citizen in one trial, should, in another trial, for the same offense, be also the disposers of his life and his fortune?

Would there not be the greatest reason to apprehend, that error, in the first sentence, would be the parent of error in the second sentence?

That the strong bias of one decision would be apt to overrule the influence of any new lights which might be brought to vary the complexion of another decision?

Those who know anything of human nature, will not hesitate to answer these questions in the affirmative; and will be at no loss to perceive, that by making the same persons judges in both cases, those who might happen to be the objects of prosecution would, in a great measure, be deprived of the double security intended them by a double trial.

The loss of life and estate would often be virtually included in a sentence which, in its terms, imported nothing more than dismission from a present, and disqualification for a future, office.

It may be said, that the intervention of a jury, in the second instance, would obviate the danger.

But juries are frequently influenced by the opinions of judges.

They are sometimes induced to find special verdicts, which refer the main question to the decision of the court.

Who would be willing to stake his life and his estate upon the verdict of a jury acting under the auspices of judges who had predetermined his guilt?

end quotes

Who, indeed, Alexander – an existential question for our times!

http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-164104
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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"Emails show Strzok-Page spat after word got out grand jury used in Clinton emails investigation"


by Daniel Chaitin

June 20, 2019 05:04 PM

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok snapped at colleague Lisa Page in a spat over not being included in an email distribution list.

The exchange between Strzok and Page, an FBI lawyer who reportedly carried on an extramarital affair with Strzok, was revealed in emails obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.


On April 27, 2017, Page reacted to a Judicial Watch release that found former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was targeted the prior year by a federal grand jury in an effort to obtain further information about her private email server.

Page sent a reply email to an official in the Office of General Counsel saying, “I didn’t realize that we had said this publicly.”

She then appeared to get into an argument with Strzok. "Are you serious, dude?"

"I sent to [redacted]."

"So I’ve committed some grave sin for not including you on this?"

"My apologies, DAD Strzok, sir," Page said, referring to his role as deputy assistant director.

Strzok shot back, "You know what?"

"Take a step back and look at this…"

"And stop with the DAD Sir bullsh*t."

"That’s not the point and you know it."

Page called on Strzok to calm down.

"I think you think you should take your own advice."

"I didn’t look to see who was on the distribution when I sent it."

"Sorry, that’s on me."

"But this is distinctly not a big deal."

"And I definitely didn’t err in not including you on a two-line email to [redacted]."

"Get a grip," she said.

Both Strzok and Page, who are no longer with the FBI, have been a focus of GOP investigators concerned about potential bias within the Justice Department and FBI.

Strzok was the lead investigator of the Clinton emails inquiry and opened the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia in the summer of 2016.

Text messages between Strzok and Page, in which they displayed a negative opinion of Trump, were uncovered over the course of the Justice Department's inspector general investigation into the Justice Department and FBI's conduct during the investigation into Hillary Clinton's unauthorized private email server.

Upon the discovery of these texts, Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and was later fired from the bureau.

The emails obtained by Judicial Watch were released in response to a May 21 court order by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton to the FBI to process 13,000 pages of records, stemming from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking access to communications between Strzok and Page.

Other emails unveiled by Judicial Watch show FBI officials scrambling to correct the record after then-Director James Comey provided inaccurate testimony about a top aide to Clinton and a New York Times reporter feeding information about Jared Kushner meeting with Russians to the FBI.

“These new Page-Strzok emails show the Obama FBI to be a mess both professionally and ethically,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement.

“The best example of the ethical morass at the FBI are the emails showing how a report on Judicial Watch’s disclosure that a grand jury had been used in the Clinton email investigation set off a spat between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.”


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... estigation
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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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FOX NEWS

"Dem group exposed millions of email addresses associated with Clinton Senate campaign"


Brooke Singman

6 AUGUST 2019

A cybersecurity firm revealed this week that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee left more than 6.2 million email addresses -- apparently connected to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign -- exposed in an online public "storage bucket."

The data breach research team at the firm Upguard discovered the files last month.


They apparently showed that an employee at the DSCC, the organization dedicated to electing Democrats to the Senate, had uploaded a spreadsheet of millions of Americans' email addresses to a “misconfigured” Amazon S3 storage bucket in 2010.

The firm said the bucket, titled “toclinton,” and the spreadsheet file, titled “EmailExcludeClinton.zip,” likely were associated with one of her New York Senate campaigns.

The spreadsheet file contained more than 6 million email addresses, containing those from major email providers, universities, government agencies and the military, according to the firm.

The firm said that the filename “seems to indicate that this was a list of people who had opted out or should otherwise be excluded from DSCC marketing emails.”


The file, according to the firm, was last modified on Sept. 17, 2010 — nearly a year after Clinton became former President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

The file also predates Clinton's own server scandal, in which she exclusively used a private server for government business during her time as secretary of state.

The firm said they contacted the DSCC on July 26 and by that afternoon, the bucket “had been secured, preventing future malicious use of the data.”

A spokesperson for the DSCC reportedly denied that the spreadsheet data came from Clinton’s Senate campaign and said it was based on their own information.

“A spreadsheet from nearly a decade ago that was created for fundraising purposes was removed in compliance with the stringent protocols we now have in place,” DSCC spokesman Stewart Boss told TechCrunch, the outlet that first reported on Upguard’s findings.

Neither the DSCC nor Clinton’s office responded to Fox News’ request for comment.

Upguard researchers said that they have previously reported on two “significantly larger exposures,” including a data analytics provider exposing the Republican National Committee’s “enriched voter database,” which included personal information for every registered American voter.

That exposure did not reveal email addresses of voters, but rather names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details, as well as data described as “modeled” voter ethnicities and religions.


“The list of six million email addresses, with some link to Clinton and the DSCC, is a much smaller exposure than that with data for the entire U.S. electorate,” the researchers wrote.

“But it still a large number of potential targets for a malicious actor, and enough context to make reasonable guesses about how to craft such an attack.”

Upguard researchers warned of further lapses in data security surrounding political campaigns.

“This list contained only email addresses, but other political data sets contain far more information on individuals, down to psychographic information such as their habits, behaviors, and likely beliefs,” the firm’s research team wrote.

“The same things that make this data valuable to political campaigns makes it valuable to malicious actors — intel on individuals that can be used to contact and influence them.”


They added: “If political data can be exposed for ten years, the risk created by that data has unknown half-life.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... e=2#page=2
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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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MARKETWATCH

"Trump bashes Fed’s ‘lack of vision’ as White House reportedly mulls payroll tax cut"


By Victor Reklaitis and Greg Robb

Published: Aug 19, 2019 4:58 p.m. ET

President Donald Trump on Monday criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ahead of the central banker’s highly anticipated speech later this week.

In a series of tweets, Trump said the economy was very strong “despite the horrendous lack of vision by Jay Powell.”


The president repeated his past call for the Fed to slash interest rates by a percentage point to bolster the U.S. and global economy.

He urged the Fed to buy bonds and expand its balance sheet, a policy known as quantitative easing.

Powell will speak Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern Time at the central bank’s summer retreat at Jackson Hole.

TAX CUT

White House economic advisors are mulling a possible temporary payroll tax cut to boost the economy, according to a Washington Post report late Monday.

The report, based on three officials, said the White House talks are at an early stage.

Officials are scrambling for new ideas to give the economy a lift while publicly stressing that fears about a recession are misplaced.

No decision had been made on asking Congress to approve the cut.

President Obama lowered the payroll tax for two years after the financial crisis.

GOOGLE BASHED

The president claimed in a tweet that Alphabet Inc.’s Google business manipulated millions of votes in the 2016 election in a way that favored Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Clinton responded on Twitter that Trump was referring to a “debunked study” that “was based on 21 undecided voters.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump ... latestnews
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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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USA TODAY

"Overstock.com CEO resigns: Everything we know so far"


Brett Molina, USA TODAY

Published 11:05 a.m. ET Aug. 23, 2019

Online retailer Overstock.com is searching for a new, permanent CEO.

On Thursday, Patrick Byrne announced he was stepping down from the top role at Overstock.com, following a bizarre statement about the "deep state" and his potential involvement in an FBI investigation.


"While I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock.com, both as CEO and board member," wrote Byrne in a statement.

In 1999, Byrne founded Overstock.com, which has since grown into a $2 billion business, according to a bio on the company's website.

Here's what we know so far about Byrne's resignation:

Why is he resigning?

In his statement, Byrne cites his involvement in "certain government matters" for his resignation.

The company statement did not elaborate on details of the government matters Byrne referenced.

What's this about the 'deep state'?

On August 12, Overstock.com issued a press release titled "Overstock.com CEO Comments on Deep State, Withholds Further Comment," during which Byrne said he somehow became involved in the "Clinton investigation" and the "Russian investigation" starting in 2015.

He also discusses helping "the Men in Black," which he says he had done previously to help in the case of a friend who was murdered and to "shake up Wall Street" a decade ago.


"Unfortunately, this third time turned out to be less about law enforcement and more about political espionage conducted against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and to a lesser degree, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz)," Byrne said.

Overstock.com’s shares fell 36% in the two days after the statement was made public.

How is Maria Butina involved?

According to The New York Times, which interviewed Byrne, the Overstock.com CEO had become romantically involved with Butina, who was sentenced in April to 18 months in prison for participating in a Russian effort to infiltrate U.S. political organizations.

Robert Driscoll, Butina's lawyer, confirmed to the Times the two were romantically involved.

In an interview with CNN, Byrne claims he was directed by the FBI to pursue a romantic relationship with Butina ahead of the 2016 election.

CNN reports no agencies have verified his claims, and neither the FBI nor Justice Department would comment.


In his August 12 statement, Byrne mentions presenting information to the Justice Department in April.

What's next for Overstock.com?

Jonathan Johnson, who has worked with Overstock.com for nearly 17 years and serves on its board, was appointed interim CEO.

"It will be my mission as I take the helm to continue and build on Overstock’s achievements and success," said Johnson in a statement.

Overstock.com did not provide information on a search for a permanent CEO.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/20 ... 094074001/
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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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THIS SOUNDS LIKE A VERY GOOD POLICY PROPOSAL HILLARY CLINTON HAS COME OUT WITH HERE, HER PROMISE NOT TO NUKE HURRICANES, IF ONLY WE WOULD CHOOSE HER FOR OUR NEXT PRESIDENT ...

THE HILL

"Hillary Clinton: 'We should not nuke hurricanes'"


Justin Wise

27 AUGUST 2019

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday took a swipe at President Trump following a report that he floated the idea of dropping nuclear bombs into hurricanes to prevent them from reaching the United States.

"We should not nuke hurricanes," Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, tweeted.

Her comments came just a day after Axios reported that Trump had floated the idea in meetings with Homeland Security and national security officials.

The news outlet, citing sources who have heard the president's private remarks and have been briefed on a National Security Council (NSC) memorandum, noted that the president made the suggestions while receiving briefings about hurricanes.

"Why don't we nuke them?" Trump reportedly said at a White House briefing, asserting that a bomb "inside the eye of the hurricane" could disrupt it.

Trump earlier Monday pushed back against the report, saying that the story was "fake news."

"The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous," he tweeted.

"I never said this."

"Just more FAKE NEWS!"

Utilizing nuclear weapons to thwart hurricanes has been floated before.

A fact sheet from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration notes that the idea gains attention every hurricane season.

But the organization said that the action could cause substantial harm to the environment.

"Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems," the sheet reads.

"Needless to say, this is not a good idea."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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USA TODAY

"Andrew McCabe: prosecutors recommend charges for former FBI official"


Bart Jansen, USA TODAY

13 SEPTEMBER 2019

WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors recommended seeking criminal charges against Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI and a frequent target of criticism by President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the decision Thursday.

McCabe was fired from the FBI just before his retirement in March 2018 after the Justice Department's internal watchdog concluded that he improperly authorized a leak about a federal investigation into the Clinton Foundation in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Investigators concluded that he displayed a lack of candor when asked about the leak.

The U.S. attorney in Washington, Jessie Liu, recommended moving forward with unspecified charges against McCabe, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly.

McCabe's lawyers appealed that decision to Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who rejected their request, one of the people said.


McCabe's lawyers were informed of that decision Thursday.

The decision clears the way for prosecutors to ask a grand jury to indict McCabe, though it was unclear Thursday whether that would happen.

Whether McCabe is indicted will be up to a federal grand jury in Washington.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington declined to comment.

The recommendation that McCabe be charged is the latest fallout from the FBI's handling of investigations around the 2016 presidential election, when agents investigated both of the major-party candidates.

Those investigations – into Russian meddling to help Trump win the presidency and Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server – inserted the FBI into the center of fraught political controversies.


Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe after a Justice Department Inspector General’s report found he misstated his involvement in a leak to The Wall Street Journal days before the election about an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

He was ousted days before he could begin collecting retirement benefits.

McCabe, who became acting FBI director after Trump fired James Comey in May 2017, has been the target of the president's attacks.

Trump accused law enforcement officials of partisan investigations of him, his campaign and his administration.

Inquiries led to charges against a half-dozen of Trump's aides and advisers.

Trump applauded the decision to fire McCabe in March 2018, calling it "a great day for democracy.”

Trump called McCabe a "major sleazebag" and argued that his conduct was akin to treason for favoring Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival in 2016.

The election-year investigations roiled the top ranks of the FBI.

Internal investigators faulted McCabe and Comey for violating Justice Department rules in the final months of the campaign.

Lower-level staffers were fired or reassigned.


The Justice Department announced Aug. 29 that Comey violated bureau policies for keeping private memos about his conversations with Trump, then having a friend describe the contents of one memo to The New York Times for a story.

The department didn't charge Comey criminally.

McCabe's firing came after the inspector general investigated the information behind a Wall Street Journal story about the Clinton Foundation to determine whether it was an unauthorized leak and if so, who was the source.

The story appeared online Oct. 30, 2016, and in print Oct. 31, which was a week after another story reported that McCabe terminated the foundation probe under pressure from the Justice Department.


Investigators determined that McCabe, to promote his impartiality, authorized associates to disclose a call Aug. 12 between McCabe and the principal associate deputy attorney general to The Wall Street Journal.

The call effectively confirmed the existence of the Clinton Foundation investigation, which Comey refused to do.

The inspector general found McCabe “lacked candor” when he said he hadn't authorized the disclosure and didn't know who did while talking to Comey, when questioned under oath by FBI agents, then when questioned under oath by investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller.

McCabe filed a lawsuit in August challenging his dismissal, alleging that Justice Department officials demoted him in January 2018 and fired him two months later to cater to Trump’s “unlawful whims.”

McCabe's termination came after he had announced his intention to resign and days before his full retirement benefits would have set in.

Trump's political accusations against McCabe stemmed from his wife running unsuccessfully for state Senate as a Democrat in Virginia.

Trump seized on contributions Jill McCabe received from a political action committee tied with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally.

Trump said McCabe took “massive amounts of money” for his wife’s campaign.

Internal FBI documents stated that McCabe didn't oversee the Clinton investigation while his wife was running for office and that he didn't have a conflict of interest.

McCabe argued in television interviews that top congressional leaders were notified about the counterintelligence inquiry into Russian influence on Trump's campaign and nobody objected.

The decision about McCabe comes amid several investigations of how the Justice Department and the FBI began inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 election.


Attorney General William Barr assigned one internal probe in May.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review launched in March 2018 focuses on an FBI wiretap of Carter Page, a former policy adviser to Trump's campaign.

The inspector general looked into whether the FBI violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, when it sought court-ordered surveillance of Page in late 2016.

Horowitz examined the FBI's relationship and communication with Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who was hired by a research firm working for Clinton's campaign and compiled a "dossier" alleging links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Republicans complained that the FBI concealed its reliance on Steele's findings in the surveillance applications for Page.

Copies of those applications released after USA TODAY and others sued showed investigators disclosed to judges that Steele sought information to "discredit" Trump and that investigators had broader suspicions about Page's ties to the Russian government.

Mueller took over the Russia investigation in May 2017 after Trump fired Comey.

Mueller's report, released in April, detailed a "sweeping and systematic" effort by the Russian government to intercede in the election to help Trump win but "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Contributing: Kristine Phillips

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Andrew McCabe: prosecutors recommend charges for former FBI official

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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Yahoo! News

"Exclusive: Russia carried out a 'stunning' breach of FBI communications system, escalating the spy game on U.S. soil"


Zach Dorfman, Jenna McLaughlin and Sean D. Naylor

16 SEPTEMBER 2019

On Dec. 29, 2016, the Obama administration announced that it was giving nearly three dozen Russian diplomats just 72 hours to leave the United States and was seizing two rural East Coast estates owned by the Russian government.

As the Russians burned papers and scrambled to pack their bags, the Kremlin protested the treatment of its diplomats, and denied that those compounds — sometimes known as the “dachas” — were anything more than vacation spots for their personnel.


The Obama administration’s public rationale for the expulsions and closures — the harshest U.S. diplomatic reprisals taken against Russia in several decades — was to retaliate for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

But there was another critical, and secret, reason why those locations and diplomats were targeted.

Both compounds, and at least some of the expelled diplomats, played key roles in a brazen Russian counterintelligence operation that stretched from the Bay Area to the heart of the nation’s capital, according to former U.S. officials.

The operation, which targeted FBI communications, hampered the bureau’s ability to track Russian spies on U.S. soil at a time of increasing tension with Moscow, forced the FBI and CIA to cease contact with some of their Russian assets, and prompted tighter security procedures at key U.S. national security facilities in the Washington area and elsewhere, according to former U.S. officials.

It even raised concerns among some U.S. officials about a Russian mole within the U.S. intelligence community.

“It was a very broad effort to try and penetrate our most sensitive operations,” said a former senior CIA official.

American officials discovered that the Russians had dramatically improved their ability to decrypt certain types of secure communications and had successfully tracked devices used by elite FBI surveillance teams.

Officials also feared that the Russians may have devised other ways to monitor U.S. intelligence communications, including hacking into computers not connected to the internet.


Senior FBI and CIA officials briefed congressional leaders on these issues as part of a wide-ranging examination on Capitol Hill of U.S. counterintelligence vulnerabilities.

These compromises, the full gravity of which became clear to U.S. officials in 2012, gave Russian spies in American cities including Washington, New York and San Francisco key insights into the location of undercover FBI surveillance teams, and likely the actual substance of FBI communications, according to former officials.

They provided the Russians opportunities to potentially shake off FBI surveillance and communicate with sensitive human sources, check on remote recording devices and even gather intelligence on their FBI pursuers, the former officials said.

“When we found out about this, the light bulb went on — that this could be why we haven’t seen [certain types of] activity” from known Russian spies in the United States, said a former senior intelligence official.

The compromise of FBI systems occurred not long after the White House’s 2010 decision to arrest and expose a group of “illegals” – Russian operatives embedded in American society under deep non-official cover – and reflected a resurgence of Russian espionage.

Just a few months after the illegals pleaded guilty in July 2010, the FBI opened a new investigation into a group of New York-based undercover Russian intelligence officers.

These Russian spies, the FBI discovered, were attempting to recruit a ring of U.S. assets — including Carter Page, an American businessman who would later act as an unpaid foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The breaches also spoke to larger challenges faced by U.S. intelligence agencies in guarding the nation’s secrets, an issue highlighted by recent revelations, first published by CNN, that the CIA was forced to extract a key Russian asset and bring him to the U.S. in 2017.

The asset was reportedly critical to the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally directed the interference in the 2016 presidential election in support of Donald Trump.

Yahoo spoke about these previously unreported technical breaches and the larger government debates surrounding U.S. policies toward Russia with more than 50 current and former intelligence and national security officials, most of whom requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations and internal discussions.

While the officials expressed a variety of views on what went wrong with U.S.-Russian relations, some said the United States at times neglected to appreciate the espionage challenge from Moscow, and paid a significant price for a failure to prioritize technical threats.

“When I was in office, the counterintelligence business was … focused entirely on its core concern, which is insider threats, and in particular mole hunting,” said Joel Brenner, the head of U.S. counterintelligence and strategy from 2006 to 2009.

“This is, in fact, the core risk and it’s right that it should be the focus."

"But we were neither organized nor resourced to deal with counterintelligence in networks, technical networks, electronic networks.”

The discovery of Russia’s newfound capacity to crack certain types of encryption was particularly unnerving, according to former U.S. officials.

“Anytime you find out that an adversary has these capabilities, it sets off a ripple effect,” said a former senior national security official.

“The Russians are able to extract every capability from any given technology."

"... They are singularly dangerous in this area.”

The FBI’s discovery of these compromises took place on the heels of what many hoped would be a breakthrough between Washington and Moscow — the Obama administration’s 2009 “reset” initiative, which sought to improve U.S.-Russia relations.

Despite what seemed to be some initial progress, the reset soon went awry.

In September 2011, Vladimir Putin announced the launch of his third presidential campaign, only to be confronted during the following months by tens of thousands of protesters accusing him of electoral fraud.

Putin, a former intelligence officer, publicly accused then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fomenting the unrest.

It was around this time that Putin’s spies in the United States, operating under diplomatic cover, achieved what a former senior intelligence official called a “stunning” technical breakthrough, demonstrating their relentless focus on the country they’ve long considered their primary adversary.


That effort compromised the encrypted radio systems used by the FBI’s mobile surveillance teams, which track the movements of Russian spies on American soil, according to more than half a dozen former senior intelligence and national security officials.

Around the same time, Russian spies also compromised the FBI teams’ backup communications systems — cellphones outfitted with “push-to-talk” walkie-talkie capabilities.

“This was something we took extremely seriously,” said a former senior counterintelligence official.

The Russian operation went beyond tracking the communications devices used by FBI surveillance teams, according to four former senior officials.

Working out of secret “listening posts” housed in Russian diplomatic and other government-controlled facilities, the Russians were able to intercept, record and eventually crack the codes to FBI radio communications.

Some of the clandestine eavesdropping annexes were staffed by the wives of Russian intelligence officers, said a former senior intelligence official.

That operation was part of a larger sustained, deliberate Russian campaign targeting secret U.S. government communications throughout the United States, according to former officials.

The two Russian government compounds in Maryland and New York closed in 2016 played a role in the operation, according to three former officials.

They were “basically being used as signals intelligence facilities,” said one former senior national security official.

Russian spies also deployed “mobile listening posts.”

Some Russian intelligence officers, carrying signals intelligence gear, would walk near FBI surveillance teams.

Others drove vans full of listening equipment aimed at intercepting FBI teams’ communications.

For the Russians, the operation was “amazingly low risk in an angering way,” said a former senior intelligence official.

The FBI teams were using relatively lightweight radios with limited range, according to former officials.

These low-tech devices allowed the teams to move quickly and discreetly while tracking their targets, which would have been more difficult with clunkier but more secure technology, a former official said.

But the outdated radios left the teams’ communications vulnerable to the Russians.

“The amount of security you employ is the inverse of being able to do things with flexibility, agility and at scale,” said the former official.

A former senior counterintelligence official blamed the compromises on a “hodgepodge of systems” ineffective beyond the line of sight.

“The infrastructure that was supposed to be built, they never followed up, or gave us the money for it,” said the former official.

“The intelligence community has never gotten an integrated system.”

The limitations of the radio technology, said the former senior officials, led the FBI’s surveillance personnel to communicate on the backup systems.

“Eventually they switched to push-to-talk cellphones,” said a former counterintelligence executive.

“The tech guys would get upset by that, because if they could intercept radio, they might be able to intercept telephones.”

That is indeed what happened.

Those devices were then identified and compromised by Russian intelligence operatives.

(A number of other countries’ surveillance teams — including those from hostile services — also transitioned from using radios to cellphones during this time, noted another former official.)

U.S. intelligence officials were uncertain whether the Russians were able to unscramble the FBI conversations in real time.

But even the ability to decrypt them later would have given the Russians critical insights into FBI surveillance practices, including “call signs and locations, team composition and tactics,” said a former intelligence official.

U.S. officials were also unsure about how long the Russians had been able to decipher FBI communications before the bureau realized what was happening.

“There was a gap between when they were really onto us, and when we got onto them,” said a former senior intelligence official.

Even after they understood that the Russians had compromised the FBI teams’ radios, U.S. counterintelligence officials could not agree on how they had done it.

“The intel reporting was they did break our codes or got their hands on a radio and figured it out,” said a former senior intelligence official.

“Either way, they decrypted our comms.”

Officials also cautioned, however, that the Russians could only crack moderately encrypted communications, not the strongest types of encryption used by the U.S. government for its most sensitive transmissions.

It was nonetheless “an incredible intelligence success” for the Russians, said the former senior official.

While the Russians may have developed this capability by themselves, senior counterintelligence officials also feared that someone from within the U.S. government — a Russian mole — may have helped them, said former officials.

“You’re wondering, ‘If this is true, and they can do this, is this because someone on the inside has given them that information?’’ said another former senior intelligence official.

Russia has a clear interest in concealing how it gets its information, further muddying the waters.

According to a former senior CIA officer who served in Moscow, the Russians would often try to disguise a human source as a technical penetration.

Ultimately, officials were unable to pinpoint exactly how the Russians pulled off the compromise of the FBI’s systems.

Mark Kelton, who served as the chief of counterintelligence at the CIA until he retired in 2015, declined to discuss specific Russian operations, but he told Yahoo News that “the Russians are a professionally proficient adversary who have historically penetrated every American institution worth penetrating.”

This remains a core worry for U.S. spy hunters.

The number of ongoing espionage investigations into U.S. government personnel — at the CIA, the FBI and elsewhere — including those potentially recruited by Russia, “is not a little, it’s a lot,” said another former senior counterintelligence official.

Once the compromises of FBI communications devices were confirmed, U.S. officials scrambled to minimize the exposure of mobile surveillance team operations, quickly putting countermeasures in place, according to former senior officials.

There was a “huge concern” about protecting the identities of the individuals on the teams — an elite, secret group — said the former senior counterintelligence official.

U.S. officials also conducted a damage assessment and repeatedly briefed select White House officials and members of Congress about the compromise.

After the FBI discovered that its surveillance teams’ cellphones had been compromised, they were forced to switch back to encrypted radios, purchasing different models, according to two former officials.

“It was an expensive venture,” said one former counterintelligence official.

But the spying successes went both ways.

The U.S. intelligence community collected its own inside information to conclude that the damage from the compromises had been limited, partly due to the Russians’ efforts to keep their intelligence coup secret, according to a former senior intelligence official.

“The Russians were reticent to take steps [that might reveal] that they’d figured it out,” the former senior official said.

Even so, the costs to U.S. intelligence were significant.

Spooked by the discovery that its surveillance teams’ communications had been compromised, the FBI worried that some of its assets had been blown, said two former senior intelligence officials.

The bureau consequently cut off contact with some of its Russian sources, according to one of those officials.

At the time of the compromise, some of the FBI’s other Russian assets stopped cooperating with their American handlers.

“There were a couple instances where a recruited person had said, ‘I can’t meet you anymore,’” said a former senior intelligence official.

In a damage assessment conducted around 2012, U.S. intelligence officials concluded the events may have been linked.

The impact was not limited to the FBI.

Alerted by the bureau to concerns surrounding Russia’s enhanced interception capabilities, the CIA also ceased certain types of communications with sources abroad, according to a former senior CIA official.

The agency “had to resort to a whole series of steps” to ensure the Russians weren’t able to eavesdrop on CIA communications, the former senior official said.

There was a “strong hint” that these newly discovered code-breaking capabilities by Russia were also being used abroad, said another former senior intelligence official.

The CIA has long been wary of Russian spies’ eavesdropping efforts outside of the United States, especially near U.S. diplomatic facilities.

U.S. officials have observed Russian technical officers repeatedly walking close to those compounds with packages in their hands, or wearing backpacks, or pushing strollers, or driving by in vehicles — all attempts, U.S. officials believe, to collect information on the different signals emanating from the facilities.

While the tools used by the Russians for these activities were “a bit antiquated,” said a former senior CIA official, they were still a “constant concern.”

It’s not unusual for intelligence officers operating from diplomatic facilities, including the United States’s own operatives, to try and intercept the communications of the host nation.

“You had to find ways to attack their surveillance,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, former head of counterintelligence at the Department of Energy and a former CIA officer who first served in Moscow in the 1980s.

“The Russians do everything in the U.S. that we did in Moscow.”

Indeed, the focus on cracking radio communications was no different.

“We put extraordinary effort into intercepting and monitoring the FSB surveillance radio networks for the purpose of understanding whether our officers were under surveillance or not,” said another former senior CIA officer who also served in Moscow.

The discovery of the Russians’ new code-breaking capabilities came at a time when gathering intelligence on Russia and its leaders’ intentions was of particular importance to the U.S. government.

U.S. national security officials working on Russia at the time received rigorous security training on how to keep their digital devices secure, according to two former senior officials.

One former U.S. official recalled how during the negotiations surrounding the reset, NSC officials, partially tongue in cheek, “would sometimes say things on the phone hoping [they] were communicating things to the Russians.”

According to a former CIA official and a former national security official, the CIA’s analysts often disagreed about how committed Russia was to negotiations during the attempted reset and how far Putin would go to achieve his strategic aims, divergences that confused the White House and senior policy makers.

“It caused a really big rift within the [National Security Council] on how seriously they took analysis from the agency,” said the former CIA official.

Senior administration leaders “went along with” some of the more optimistic analysis on the future of U.S.-Russia relations “in the hopes that this would work out,” the official continued.


Those disagreements were part of a “reset hangover” that persisted, at least for some inside the administration, until the 2016 election meddling, according to a former senior national security official.

Those officials clung to the hope that Washington and Moscow could cooperate on key issues, despite aggressive Russian actions ranging from the invasion of Ukraine to its spying efforts.

“We didn’t understand that they were at political war with us already in the second term once Putin was reelected and Obama himself was reelected,” said Evelyn Farkas, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia during the Obama administration.

As high-level hopes for the U.S.-Russia “reset” withered, concerns about the threat of Russian spying made their way to Capitol Hill.

Top officials at the FBI and CIA briefed key members of Congress on counterintelligence issues related to Russia, according to current and former U.S. officials.

These included briefings on the radio compromises, said two former senior officials.

Mike Rogers, a former Republican lawmaker from Michigan who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2011 to 2015, alluded to counterintelligence concerns at a conference earlier this year in Washington, D.C.

One of those concerns was a massive intelligence failure related to the secret internet-based communications system the CIA used to communicate with agents.

The extent of that failure, first reported publicly by Yahoo News in 2018, got the attention of Congress earlier.

But the problems were broader than that issue, according to Rogers.

“Our counterintelligence operations needed some adjustments,” said Rogers, adding that he and his Democratic counterpart from Maryland, Dutch Ruppersberger, requested regular briefings on the subject from agency representatives.

“We started out monthly until we just wore them out, then we did it quarterly to try to make sure that we had the right resources and the right focus for the entire community on counter[intelligence].”

Rogers later told Yahoo News that his request for the briefings had been prompted by “suspected penetrations, both physical and technical, which is the role of those [Russian and Chinese] intelligence services,” but declined to be more specific.

The former committee chairman said he wanted the intelligence community to make counterintelligence a higher priority.

“Counterintelligence was always looked at as the crazy uncle at the party,” he said.

“I wanted to raise it up and give it a robust importance.”

The briefings, which primarily involved counterintelligence officials from the FBI and CIA and were limited to the committee leadership and staff directors, led to “some useful inquiries to help focus the intelligence community,” Rogers said.

The leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were also included in some of the inquiries, according to Rogers and a current U.S. government official.

Spokespeople for the current House and Senate intelligence committees did not respond to a request for comment.

The FBI and CIA declined to comment.

The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. did not respond to a request for comment.

The briefings were designed to “get the counterintelligence house in order,” said Jamil Jaffer, senior counsel at the House intelligence committee from 2011 to 2013, and to ensure that Congress and the intelligence agencies were “on the same page” when it came to such matters.

“There were some concerns about what the agencies were doing, there were some concerns about what Congress knew, and all of these issues, of course, had China-Russia implications.”

Rogers and Jaffer declined to provide further details about what specific counterintelligence issues the committee was addressing, but other former officials indicated that worries weren’t limited to the compromise of FBI radio systems.

Senior U.S. officials were contemplating an even more disturbing possibility: that the Russians had found a way to penetrate the communications of the U.S. intelligence community’s most sensitive buildings in and around Washington, D.C.

Suspected Russian intelligence officers were seen conspicuously loitering along the road that runs alongside the CIA’s headquarters, according to former senior intelligence officials.

“Russian diplomats would be sitting on Route 123, sometimes in cars with diplomatic plates, other times not,” a former senior intelligence executive said.

“We thought, they’re out doing something."

"It’s not just taking down license plates; those guys are interrogating the system.”

Though this behavior dated back at least to the mid-2000s, former officials said those activities persisted simultaneously with the compromise of the FBI’s communication system.

And these were not the only instances of Russian intelligence operatives staking out locations with a line of sight to CIA headquarters.

They were “fixated on being in neighborhoods” that gave them exposure to Langley, said a former senior official.

Over time, U.S. intelligence officials became increasingly concerned that Russian spies might be attempting to intercept communications from key U.S. intelligence facilities, including the CIA and FBI headquarters.

No one knew if the Russians had actually succeeded.

“The question was whether they had capabilities to penetrate our comms at Langley,” said a former senior CIA official.

In the absence of any proof that that was the case, the working theory was that the Russian activities were provocations designed to sow uncertainty within the CIA.


“We came to the conclusion that they were trying to get into our heads,” the former senior official said.

A major concern was that Russian spies with physical proximity to sensitive U.S. buildings might be exfiltrating pilfered data that had “jumped the air gap,” i.e., that the Russians were collecting information from a breach of computers not connected to the Internet, said former officials.

One factor behind U.S. intelligence officials’ fears was simple: The CIA had already figured out how to perform similar operations themselves, according to a former senior CIA officer directly familiar with the matter.

“We felt it was pretty revolutionary stuff at the time,” the former CIA officer said.

“It allowed us to do some extraordinary things.”

While no one definitively concluded that the Russians had actually succeeded in penetrating Langley’s communications, those fears, combined in part with the breach of the bureau’s encrypted radio system, drove an effort by U.S. intelligence officials around 2012 to fortify sensitive Washington-area government buildings against potential Russian snooping, according to four former officials.

At key government facilities in the Washington area, entire floors were converted to sensitive compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs.

These are specially protected areas designed to be impenetrable to hostile signals intelligence gathering.

The normal assumption was that work done in a SCIF would be secure, but doubts arose about the safety of even those rooms.

“The security guys would say, your windows are ‘tempested’”—that is, protected against the interception of emissions radiating from electronic equipment in the building —“you’re in a SCIF, it’s fine,” a former senior counterintelligence executive recalled.

“The question was, ‘Is it true?’”

Increasingly, U.S. officials began to fear it was not.

New security practices were instituted in sensitive government facilities like the FBI and CIA headquarters, according to former officials.

“It required many procedural changes on our part to make sure we were not susceptible to penetrations,” said a former senior CIA official.

These included basic steps such as moving communication away from windows and changing encryption codes more frequently, as well as more expensive adjustments, said four former officials.

Revelations about the Russian compromise of the radio systems, recalled a former senior intelligence official, “kick-started the money flowing” to upgrade security.

While the breaches of the FBI communications systems appeared to finally spur Congress and the intelligence agencies to adopt steps to counter increasingly sophisticated Russian eavesdropping, it took the Putin-directed interference in the 2016 election to get the White House to expel at least some of those officials deemed responsible for the breaches, and to shut down the facilities that enabled them.

Even then, the decision was controversial.

Some in Washington worried about retribution by the Russians and exposure of American intelligence operations, according to a former senior U.S. national security official directly involved in the discussions.

The FBI consistently supported expulsions, said another former national security official.

More than two years later, the Russian diplomatic compounds used in the FBI communications compromises remain shuttered.

The U.S. government has prevented many of the Russian spies expelled by the United States from returning, according to national security experts and senior foreign intelligence officials.

“They are slowly creeping back in, but [the] FBI makes it hard,” said a senior foreign intelligence official.

“The old guard is basically screwed."

"They need to bring in a whole new generation.”

In the meantime, those familiar with Russian operations warn that the threat from Moscow is far from over.

“Make no mistake, we’re in an intelligence war with the Russians, every bit as dangerous as the Cold War,” said a former senior intelligence officer.

“They’re trying all the time ... and we caught them from time to time,” he said.

Of course, he added, “you don’t know what you don’t know.”

That’s the same message that special counsel Robert Mueller tried to convey during the highly contentious hearings to discuss his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“They are doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign,” Mueller told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee about covert Russian involvement in U.S. politics.

But a number of observers believe Mueller’s message about the threat from Russia was largely lost amid a partisan battle on Capitol Hill over President Trump.

During his Washington conference appearance earlier this year, Rogers, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also lamented that the current politicized state of the intelligence committees would make spy agencies more hesitant to admit their failures.

“They're not going to call you to say, 'I screwed up.'"

"They're going to say, 'God, I hope they don't find that,’” he said.

“That's what's going to happen."

"I'll guarantee it's happening today.”

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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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Transcript of Robert S. Mueller III’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee

By Washington Post Staff

July 24, 2019

STEUBE: OK.

Given your 22 months of investigation, tens of million dollars spent and millions of documents reviewed, did you obtain any evidence at all that any American voter changed their vote as a result of Russia’s election interference?

MUELLER: I’m not going to speak to that.

HILLARY CLINTON IS ABOVE THE LAW IN AMERICA ...

THE WASHINGTON POST

"Hillary Clinton accuses Trump, McConnell of ‘abdicating their responsibility’ on election security"


John Wagner

17 SEPTEMBER 2019

Hillary Clinton accused President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of “abdicating their responsibility” on election security during a pointed speech Tuesday in which she also took aim at Trump for his repeated claims about voter fraud.

In a speech delivered at a conference in Washington, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee applauded the Democratic-led House for passing legislation designed to strengthen election systems in the wake of Russian interference.

Clinton then slammed “Mitch McConnell’s Senate” for not acting on the legislation, which would authorize more than $600 million to update voting equipment to comply with new standards, including requirements that devoting machines produce a paper record, stay disconnected from the Internet and be manufactured in the United States.

“There is no way we can have the kind of secure election that we need without changing our laws and following it up with real investments,” Clinton said.

“We have a fundamental set of threats to the bedrock of our democracy, and anyone who stands in the way of confronting those threats — from Mitch McConnell and his allies to the president himself — is abdicating their responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution.”

Clinton cited the conclusion of the report by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election in “sweeping and systematic fashion” in an attempt to benefit Trump, as well as an assessment by Daniel Coats, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, that the interference was continuing.

Spokesmen for Trump and McConnell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a speech on the Senate floor in late July, McConnell denounced other critics of the Senate’s inaction, some of whom had suggested he was aiding Russia, and argued that steps were being taken by the Trump administration to strengthen election infrastructure.

On Tuesday Clinton criticized Trump for remarks at a rally in North Carolina to bolster the Republican candidate in a special congressional election that was held because the regular election was invalidated because of election fraud.

Clinton called the fraud “Republican cheating.”

“He didn’t condemn that, of course,” Clinton said of Trump.

“Instead he claimed again that voter fraud was rampant in 2016."

"Sometimes it’s hard to process all of this because he lies so much, but let that sink in: The president of the United States is lying to Americans to delegitimize the democratic process."

"Yes, of course, it’s abhorrent, it’s delusional — but it’s also strategic."

"And that should bother every one of us.”

Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that voter fraud was responsible for Clinton winning the popular vote in 2016.

At the North Carolina rally, without evidence, he advanced a claim that undocumented immigrants were involved in massive voter fraud in California.

Clinton’s remarks were delivered at a conference that was billed as a discussion about “democratic norms and institutions” that are “under assault.”

The Defense of American Democracy event was co-organized by the Albert Shanker Institute, the American Federation of Teachers and Onward Together, an organization founded and led by Clinton.

During her remarks, Clinton also said there is “no real effort” being made to improve cybersecurity in the wake of the 2016 campaign, during which Russians hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Clinton noted that she has met with many of the Democratic candidates running for president.

“I tell every candidate if you have not had your personal and campaign emails hacked, they will be,” she said.

Speaking more broadly, Clinton said the nation is experiencing “a crisis in democracy.”

“Racist and white supremacist views are lifted up in the media and in the White House,” she said.

“Hard-fought-for civil rights are being stripped back."

"The rule of law is being undermined."

"The norms and institutions that provide the foundation of our democracy are under assault.”

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Re: THE PRECIOUS AND SPECIAL HILLARY CLINTON

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THE DUDE WAS TIGHT WITH HILLARY CLINTON WHO HERSELF IS ABOVE THE LAW ...

ASSOCIATED PRESS

"California Democratic donor charged with running drug house"


By ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press

18 SEPTEMBER 2019

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A prominent California Democratic donor has been charged with running a drug house where two men died of overdoses.

Edward Buck was charged Tuesday and prosecutors are asking that he be held on $4 million bail.

They're calling Buck "a violent, dangerous sexual predator" who offered drugs, money and shelter to mainly addicted and homeless men in exchange for participating in sexual fetishes, including administering dangerous drug doses.

Prosecutors allege Buck provided the meth that killed two men who were found in his apartment in 2017 and this January.

They claim he personally injected drugs into a man who survived an overdose this month.

Buck has donated tens of thousands of dollars to campaigns of California candidates, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Messages to his lawyer seeking comment weren't immediately returned.

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