Vigilant News

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FBI

Igor Danchenko Found Not Guilty on All Counts of Lying to the FBI

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A jury on Tuesday found Steele Dossier source Igor Danchenko not guilty on all counts pursuant to charges of lying to the FBI.

The case was led by Special Counsel John Durham who led much of the prosecution’s questioning of witnesses in the case and whose intent for the trial was at least in part intended to expose the FBI’s mishandling of the large Russia-2016 Trump campaign collusion probe.

The jury had deliberated for roughly nine hours. After the verdict, Durham left and declined to comment. Danchenko attorney Stuart Sears, meanwhile, thanked the jurors for their service and added that the American public learned of Danchenko’s innocence, of which he had long been aware.

Durham was appointed in 2020 by then-Attorney General William Barr to look into the FBI’s handling of the probe.

Danchencko compiled about 80% of the information in the dossier organized by former British spy Christopher Steele.

The biggest revelation in the trial that started Oct. 11 is that the FBI offered Steele as much as $1 million to corroborate the information in the dossier, which was essentially a Trump opposition file that has now been largely discredited.

Danchenko was found not guilty by a 12-member jury in a federal court in northern Virginia. Juror Joel Greene said that the decision was close, but that ultimately the jury reached a unanimous decision.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga dropped one of the five counts in the original indictment that alleged Danchenko didn’t fully disclose the nature of his contacts with dossier source Democrat operative Charles Dolan.

Whistleblowers Claim FBI is Sitting on “Voluminous Evidence” of Biden Family Criminal Conduct in China and Ukraine

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Whistleblowers from within the Federal Bureau of Investigation have disclosed that the Bureau possesses “voluminous evidence” of criminal conduct by members of the Biden family in regard to their overseas business dealings in Ukraine and China.

We reported not long ago that FBI whistleblowers had claimed the Bureau was downplaying negative press in regards to Hunter Biden, going so far as to wrongly label this information as disinformation. 

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) provided the recent revelations in a Thursday letter obtained by the Washington Examiner. The letter was sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss — who is presently running a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.

These new allegations, which involve not only Hunter Biden but the president’s brother James Biden, specifically highlight the duo’s dealings with the Chinese government-linked energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy. They also relate to the younger Biden’s work for Ukrainian gas giant Burisma Holdings. Grassley said his staff “reviewed the unclassified records” supporting the whistleblower claims.

“Based on recent protected disclosures to my office, the FBI has within its possession significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden and James Biden,” Grassley said in the letter.

In regards to the dealings in China, Grassley cited former Hunter Biden business partner and confidant Tony Bobulinski: 

“The information provided by Mr. Bobulinski formed a sufficient basis to open a full field investigation on pay-to-play grounds; however, it is unclear whether the FBI did so and whether the information is part of the ongoing criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney Weiss,”

In August a whistleblower told Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) that FBI leadership told bureau employees not to look at Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell. This same whistleblower also claims the FBI purposely slow-walked the Hunter Biden investigation.

The FBI took possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop nearly 3 years ago and the Justice Department still has not charged Hunter with any crimes despite countless emails revealing an intricate web involving the Biden Crime family’s ties to Ukraine, Russia, and the Chinese Communist Party.

Regardless of where one’s political loyalties lay, it is hard to not see the glaring double standard when Hunter Biden walks free despite all he’s been implicated in, while the DOJ recommends 6 months in jail for Steven K. Bannon for defying the partisan J6 Committee.

FBI Fails to Turn Over Seth Rich Documents Despite Court Order

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Back in September, a US District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas ordered the FBI to produce certain information that it possesses related to Seth Rich’s laptop.

The mystery surrounding the murder of the presumed DNC leaker Seth Rich, as well as the dubious official narrative regarding his assailants, has persisted for over six years now. Rich was shot in the back twice while walking near his home in Washington DC and later died in the hospital.

The police recorded the event as a robbery and yet Rich’s phone, wallet, and personal items were with him when the police arrived. Many, including WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, have cast doubt on the findings of the DC Police; going so far as to suggest that “powerful people” may have wanted Seth out of the picture.

It is widely held that Rich was the source of the emails released by WikiLeaks just before the 2016 election and not Russian hackers. 

In December 2016, Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima released a report that the Democrat National Committee (DNC) had been hacked by Russia. The firm that validated this was Crowdstrike and its President Shawn Henry confirmed the claims.

WikiLeaks did release DNC emails related to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager, in the months before the 2016 Presidential election which showed massive corruption combined with an elitist attitude from members of the Hillary Clinton team – all willing to do whatever it took to win the election. Going so far as to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders.

Authors note: This brief overview is just the tip of the iceberg, to get caught up on all the gritty details we suggest reading through the Seth Rich archives over at The Gateway Pundit.

This brings us to September 29th, 2022, when we see US District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas order the FBI to “produce the information it possesses related to Seth Rich’s laptop.”

At first, the FBI denied possessing any information or files related to the Seth Rich murder. But that was not true and eventually, the information was discovered.

Attorney Ty Clevenger brought the government to court and last month the FBI was ordered to turn over information on Seth Rich’s computer that they possessed, and documents pertaining to Crowdstrike and the purported hack of the DNC in 2016.

Ty Clevenger at Lawflog reported:

Yesterday the government asked for more time to respond to U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant’s September 29, 2022 order directing the FBI to produce all records related to Seth Rich’s laptop. Somewhat relatedly, the FBI is withholding three reports produced by CrowdStrike in August of 2016 regarding the purported hack of the Democratic National Committee.

First the laptop. The FBI wants two more weeks so it can prepare a motion for reconsideration. As a courtesy, we have not objected to the request. According to the government’s motion, “the FBI is uncertain how to comply with the Court’s order as written, and the FBI is seeking input from a pending appellate consultation regarding the order to properly address this issue.”

The order itself is pretty straightforward, at least with respect to Seth’s personal laptop, because it directs the FBI to “produce the information it possesses related to Seth Rich’s laptop and responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA requests within 14 days of this Order.” On the other hand, the order does not discuss Seth’s work laptop, which is also in the possession of the FBI.

I’m waiting for the FBI to explain what it thinks needs to be clarified, then I may be filing my own motion for clarification. Meanwhile, the FBI has cited only one narrow basis for withholding the records related to Seth’s laptop, namely his privacy. I’m not sure why it takes four weeks and an appellate lawyer to figure out why the judge did or didn’t get that issue right.

In any event, I’m reminded of something that I learned almost thirty years ago when I was a newspaper reporter: people with nothing to hide don’t try to hide nothing.

FBI Mislead Congress, Offered Christopher Steele $1 Million to Corroborate Bogus Intel

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The trial of Igor Danchenko is entering its second day and there has already been a bombshell revelation showing that the FBI offered Christopher Steele $1 million to corroborate his now-debunked dossier, the piece of intel that initiated the Russiagate scandal.

Former House Intelligence Committee investigator Kash Patel said this proves the bureau knew it hadn’t been able to verify the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and that they knowingly misled Congress.

Igor Danchenko, who was the primary source for the dossier, is being charged with five counts of lying to the FBI.

After the prosecution opened its case against Danchenko on Tuesday, ​​Special Counsel John Durham questioned his first witness, FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten.

Auten’s testimony revealed that in early October 2016, the FBI offered Steele “up to $1 million” to provide corroborating evidence for his dossier, but the former British spy didn’t provide any such information to the bureau. As a result, Steele wasn’t given the money because he was unable to “prove the allegations.”

The FBI submitted an application to a FISA court on Oct. 21, 2016 for a warrant to initiate electronic surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page that included uncorroborated information from the dossier. Auten testified that before the FBI received the dossier, it didn’t have enough evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. 

Durham asked Auten, “On October 21, 2016 did you have any information to corroborate that information?”  

“No,” Auten replied. 

Rep. Devin Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee sent 17 congressional subpoenas to the FBI “for information specifically related to payments and confidential human sources, were denied this information, and we learn it four years after our investigation,” said the lead investigator of the panel’s probe into the FBI’s Russia Collusion investigation.

“That means somebody obstructed a congressional investigation with congressional subpoenas,” said Patel, a former national security prosecutor. 

This exposes “the depths that [the FBI] would go to to falsely corroborate the Steele dossier, which … shows they didn’t have it verified, which we’ve said the whole time,” Patel added. 

“And more importantly,” he continued, “they were willing to spend a million taxpayer dollars on shoveling political hot garbage through the federal court system just to surveil a political target that would have been totally baseless — it was baseless then.”

Patel referred to a group of senior FBI leaders during the James Comey era as “government gangsters,” saying “were so arrogant, that they said, ‘Nobody is going to catch us. We are going to break a constitutional republic’s 250-year tradition because we don’t like the guy in the White House, and we’re going to manufacture a crime on it.'”

We will continue to follow the trial of Igor Danchenko and provide updates as more information becomes available.

Trump Requests Supreme Court Intervention in FBI Dispute Over Mar-a-Lago Raid

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Lawyers representing former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in a dispute with the FBI over how to handle documents seized earlier this year from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

In an emergency request, Trump attorneys have asked the nation’s highest court to vacate an order issued last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that allowed the federal government to review documents with classification markings that had been seized in the Aug. 8 search.

On Sept. 21, the federal appeals court ruled in favor of allowing authorities to resume their investigation into the records. Earlier, a federal judge had ordered officials to halt their review to allow a third-party to review the seized documents for possible attorney-client or executive privilege issues.

Trump’s attorneys argued that the appeals court lacked the jurisdiction needed to stay parts of the lower court’s order appointing a special master to review the seized records. They argued that the appeals court’s ruling “should be vacated as it impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the Special Master.”

“Moreover, any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a President’s home erodes public confidence in our system of justice,” attorneys wrote.