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FBI

Kash Patel Suggests Durham Trials Should Take Place Outside Compromised DC

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Ryan DeLarme
June 3rd, 2022

Former White House national security official and children’s book author Kash Patel has suggested that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) move its Russia hoax trials outside of the D.C. area to ensure an untainted jury and judge. This statement comes in the wake of Michael Sussmann’s acquittal on Tuesday.

Related: Michael Sussmann Found “Not Guilty”

For those who are still unfamiliar, Sussman was the former Hillary Clinton Campaign lawyer that the DOJ prosecuted on charges of lying to the FBI as part of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the “Russia collusion” hoax. 

Sussman was a key player in promoting the “Russia collusion” hoax.

Patel is intimately tied to the case and was even brought up during the trial, his now 4-year-old interview with Sussmann was used as evidence from when he assisted then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) investigate the “Russia collusion” hoax while Nunes served on the House Intelligence Committee.

The former prosecutor said that after Sussmann’s acquittal, his faith in the Justice Department was “completely gone.” 

“I was the last man who had any faith in D.C. and the Department of Justice. It is now completely gone,” Patel said in a statement obtained by Breitbart News.

Patel has condemned the jury pool as being “tainted” and politically motivated. He has also called out the federal court system for allowing three pro-Hillary Clinton Democrat donors to serve on the jury.

He has also called on the DOJ to remove the hoax cases from D.C.’s jurisdiction.

“The DOJ needs to move these cases out of D.C. as it is 100% impossible to have a fair trial in the city. I am appalled at this verdict and appalled at our justice system,” 

The former prosecutor was recently interviewed by John Bachman of Newsmax, where he predicted that we will see two more indictments before the Igor Danchenko trial this October. When asked who he thought these indictments would include, Patel said: 

“I think it’s going to be an FBI agent who lied, and admitted it, if not one or two more. And I think that Fusion GPS is most certainly part of this conspiracy because they are all over the dossier…”

Patel also claimed that the FBI itself is under investigation for lying, and withholding evidence of innocence in regard to the Trump/Russia collusion smear.

FBI Kept Office at DNC Law firm Perkins Coie

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Ryan DeLarme,
June 1st, 2022

Yesterday we reported that Hillary Clinton’s lawyer Michael Sussmann was acquitted in what appears to be the first in a series of trials regarding the Durham Probe. Last night, hours after the verdict, it was discovered that the FBI maintains an office at Sussmanss firm, Perkins Coie.

Further Reading: Michael Sussmann Found “Not Guilty”

The acquittal came despite text evidence, evidence that the jury was barred from considering. The texts show where Sussmann claimed that he was not representing the Clinton campaign when he presented false evidence to the FBI linking Trump to the Russian Alfa bank.  The FBI employee he met with also testified that he said he was not representing a client.

The acquittal may clear Sussmann in the minds of some, but to many of those who have been following the case for the last couple of years, there are a lot of red flags to consider. Potentially compromised Judge and Jury aside, certain political operative’s cozy relationship with the FBI still remains an issue.

Further Reading: Was the Trial Rigged from the Start? Sussmann Jury, Judge Accused of Having Conflicts of Interest

These fears were further stoked last night after Perkins Coie, the DNC law firm where Sussmann was employed, admitted that the FBI maintains an office at their workplace.

The admission comes after the law office responded to a letter sent by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.)

This is important for several reasons; first, it highlights why the Durham probe was even necessary in the first place, due to the cozy relationship between Democratic political operatives and the FBI that investigated President Trump for collusion with Russia. 

Secondly, it shows that Democrat lawyers and political operatives possibly had access to FBI databases where they could perform search queries on American citizens.

The revelation is in line with past complaints about abuses by the FBI and other intelligence agencies of the FISA database.  FISA judge Rosemary Collyer discussed these abuses going back to 2012, saying that a shocking 85% of FISA searches by the FBI are unlawful.

Though Durham’s first trial did not secure a conviction, it has succeeded in further proving why this type of investigation is necessary. Information gleaned from this trial will be useful in future trials when painting the roadmap of criminal conspiracy.

FBI Knew Sussmann Worked for Hillary Clinton, Moved Forward with Alfa Bank Investigation Anyway

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Ryan DeLarme,
May 26th, 2022

The Sussman trial shifted to the defense team on Wednesday after the prosecution finished presenting their evidence against the former federal prosecutor and partner at Perkins Coie, one of the Clinton Cabal’s go-to firms.

It is now a matter of public fact that Michael Sussmann met with the FBI as a client representative of the Hillary Clinton Campaign weeks before his one-on-one meeting with the bureau’s top lawyer before the election in 2016.

The Courthouse News Service reported on yesterday’s activities in the Sussmann trial.

After prosecutors rested their case in the Michael Sussmann trial on Wednesday, a federal jury learned for the first time that he met with the FBI as the client representative for Hillary Clinton’s campaign just weeks before his infamous one-on-one meeting with the bureau’s top lawyer in 2016.

The government has repeatedly insisted that the bureau did not know that Sussmann was legal counsel for the campaign — in litigation related to Russian hacking groups’ accessing Democratic National Committee servers — when he met with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in 2016 and gave him data files allegedly containing evidence of secret communications between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank.

The government claims that if the FBI knew during the September 2016 meeting that Sussmann was representing the campaign in other matters, the bureau might have taken different steps in its investigation of the Trump-Alfa Bank information he brought, which he said was “not on behalf of a client.”

 

In short, the evidence seems to suggest that they (the Clinton team, FBI, etc) were all in on it. That the bureau and Clinton’s legal team worked together on a 2016 October Surprise that went south and is now coming back to bite them 6 years later.

Durham’s case now rests on the argument that Michael Sussmann came into James Baker’s office and provided Baker bogus intel on a Trump-Alfa Bank connection and that Baker was unaware that Sussmann worked for Hillary. The problem is that Baker was Comey’s top lawyer at the FBI at the time.  It is highly unlikely that no one in this situation knew who was working for who.

Sussmann’s evidence indicates that the FBI knew the information coming from Sussmann was unverified but they ran with it anyway.  The FBI knew the information was coming from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  

Now the defense must convince the jury that they weren’t all in on it.

 

Techno Fog Coverage of The Sussmann Trial: Fingers Pointed at FBI Leadership

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Excerpt from Techno Fog’s SubStack report from Monday evening:

It was a long day of travel but we’re back at it on the Sussmann trial.

This morning started with testimony from Bill Priestap, who in September 2016 was the FBI’s Assistant Director of Counterintelligence. His testimony was expected, even before the witness lists were put out. Back in January, we observed that Priestap had testified before a grand jury. In fact, Priestap himself stated today that he testified before the grand jury in June 2021.

A little bit of background on Priestap before we begin. Priestap approved the opening of Crossfire Hurricane and decided against defensive briefings being provided to the Trump Campaign. He was Peter Strzok’s supervisor and also approved the use of all the confidential human sources used against the Trump campaign (Stefan Halper, et al.).

Last week, former FBI general counsel James Baker testified that he spoke with Priestap about his meeting with Sussmann and “repeated to Mr. Priestap that Michael had said that he was not there on behalf of a particular client, that he was there as a citizen, as a – essentially as a human source of information, confidential source.”

At trial today, Priestap was presented with notes he took after that meeting with Baker. Those notes reflected that conversation with Baker, stating Sussmann “said not doing this for any client.” Priestap also said that the Alfa Bank/Trump Organization investigation ultimately fell under his control. Getting to the issue of materiality, Priestap was then asked about why the motivations of sources matter to the FBI:

Q: Based on your experience, if Mr. Sussmann had brought these allegations to the FBI on behalf of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, would that have mattered to the FBI?

Priestap: Again, the – somebody – anybody bringing information to the FBI, we’re interested – the FBI is interested in knowing the motivation of the person providing the information.

On cross examination, Priestap admitted he couldn’t recall the meeting with Baker or why he wrote in his notes that Sussmann wasn’t there on behalf of a client. After approximately 6 years, his memory was fuzzy:

Q: Do you remember anything more about why you wrote that down?

Priestap: I do not.

Q: You don’t remember anything about the context in which that was said to you?

Priestap: I do not.

To summarize the defense theory of this case, it’s that Sussmann was there to help the FBI and that he supposedly acted against his clients’ interest by stopping a New York Times article on the Alfa Bank allegations from being published. On that topic, Priestap discussed how the FBI might ask a newspaper to not run a story:

Q: As a general matter, if the FBI knew that a newspaper story was coming out about a threat from a nation state, are there ever occasions in which you would, at the FBI, want to ask a newspaper to hold off on running that story?

Priestap: Yes.

Q: Okay. And that’s because there are situations in which the FBI would want to have the chance to investigate before a story came out, right?

Priestap: Yes. If the FBI thought, let’s just say, that publicly revealing a certain matter could potentially negatively impact not just things the FBI was doing but potentially negatively impact the country, we’d want to have a conversation about it.

Then there’s this blockbuster of a comment. Counsel for Sussmann presented Priestap with messages from the FBI’s internal messaging system, in which Priestap discussed how the FBI’s leadership – Comey, McCabe, et al. – were excited about pursuing the Alfa Bank/Trump allegations:

The influence that FBI leadership (Comey and McCabe) had on the investigations related to the Trump/Russia accusations is notable – but not an exception. This is the first time we heard that the Alfa Bank hoax was pushed by FBI leadership. However, this fits their broader pattern. Recall the statement of FBI agent William Barnett. He was part of the FBI’s investigation of General Flynn and decided it should be closed down. The FBI’s senior officials, who ran the investigation from the “top down,” called the shots.

Testimony from FBI Agent Ryan Gaynor

Back in 2016, Agent Gaynor was the FBI’s counterintelligence division’s unit chief in Washington, DC. He learned of the Alfa Bank allegations on September 23, 2016 during a briefing led by the FBI’s Chicago field office. Agent Gaynor reported to Supervisor Special Agent Joe Pientka (who, along with Strzok, interviewed General Flynn) and volunteered to help work on the case.

This is how he described some of the steps the FBI took in its Alfa Bank investigation:

As to the accuracy of the information and accusations provided by Sussmann? One investigating agent found it to be BS:

In fact, the Chicago Office itself was curious about the source of Sussmann’s data. Agent Curtis Heide e-mailed:

Their supervisor in Chicago agreed:

Whether or not the Chicago team would have access to the source of the Alfa Bank data was discussed – but not approved by – FBI headquarters.

Then there’s the issue of another confidential human source (CHS). The Chicago Field Office was informed that the Alfa Bank allegations had been provided to various media outlets. This source “was not Mr. Sussmann.”

End excerpt.

Click here to read Techno Fog’s full report on the Sussmann trial.

No Oversight: Who Does the FBI Really Work For?

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Ryan DeLarme

The FBI has had a pretty murky track record in recent years, leading many to wonder if the domestic intelligence service still works with the best interest of the American people in mind. Whether it’s hatching the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer or helping to orchestrate and execute the January 6th photo op, it’s starting to appear as though the Bureau’s become a tool of the political elite.

There’s new evidence coming out suggesting that the FBI has been warped into something far-flung from its original purpose, operating by its own rules with seemingly no oversight from anyone. Inspector General Michael Horowitz recently issued a new report on the FBI’s execution of the Woods Procedures for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications, and it has been called “damning”.

Last year, Horowitz reviewed 29 random FISA applications and found that the FBI was “not meeting the expectations of its own protocols.”

The FISA court has a questionable track record for excusing government misconduct as was recently displayed by the sentencing of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. After he went to great lengths to lie to a federal court and, when caught, lied by saying he didn’t really intend to lie; Clinesmith received only a year of probation. Many have been left wondering what such leniency says about the FISA Court’s “heightened duty of candor” If there aren’t heightened punishments for violating that duty.

The FISA abuse scandal isn’t the only negative press currently directed at the FBI. During a recent Senate Judiciary hearing on how the FBI failed to investigate alleged sexual abuse by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) interrupted the proceedings when he reported that the FBI had failed to respond to the Republican Senator’s letters and also that,  they had declined to meet with him “month after month, year after year, at any time for any reason”. This is significant considering that Grassley is a ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and has been for a long time.

According to Senator Grassley:

“I’ve asked Director Wray several times to meet with me relating to a very troubling briefing that I received in August 2020 from the FBI and which was later weaponized against my and Senator Johnson’s oversight. Director Wray and his staff have ignored my request to meet.”

In short, a ranking member of the Judiciary Committee can’t get the FBI to meet with him. This begs the question: does Congress have any real oversight on the FBI? Does the Bureau serve the American people or only select establishment politicians?

Senator Grassley has recently released a letter that offers some insight to the average American citizen as to how our government really works.

On August 6, 2020, we received a briefing from the FBI which, according to the FBI, was done in conjunction with the Intelligence Community (IC). This briefing was done because of political pressure from Democratic Leadership, not because of any real threat.

We have asked to meet with FBI Director Christopher Wray to discuss our concerns and have requested records relating to the briefing; however, he and his Chief of Staff, Corey Ellis, have refused to answer our communications and have failed to provide any answers or information.

FBI leadership’s failure to respond to congressional inquiries not only undermines the FBI as an institution, it also undermines the work of its dedicated agents and staff.

On July 13, 2020, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Mark Warner, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Representative Adam Schiff sent a letter, with a classified attachment, to the FBI to express a purported belief that Congress was the subject of a foreign disinformation campaign.

In that letter, which was publicly released on July 20, 2020, they requested a briefing on foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The classified attachment included unclassified elements that, among other things, attempted — and failed — to tie our joint investigation into the Biden family’s foreign financial deals to foreign disinformation.  

So, Schumer, Warner, Pelosi, and Schiff were trying to slow down Grassley and Johnson’s “joint investigations into the Biden family’s foreign financial deals.” How did the Democrats do it? By using their go-to strategy of leaking to their allies in the corporate media of course. The letter continues:

Then, on May 1, 2021, the Washington Post reported on “an extensive effort by the [FBI] to alert members of Congress…that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia’s attempt to influence the election’s outcome[.]”

This statement was attributed to “several current and former U.S. officials” who remained anonymous “because the matter remains highly sensitive.”

The article then inaccurately proceeded to link Russian disinformation attempts to our investigation, which was based on Obama administration government records and records that showed extensive financial connections between the Biden family and questionable foreign nationals, including individuals connected to the communist Chinese government’s military and intelligence services.

The Washington Post reporting purported to be based, in part, on an August 6, 2020, briefing that we received from the FBI, which, as the timeline above illustrates, happened in response to pressure from Democratic Leadership. The briefing was not specific. Moreover, it consisted primarily of information that we already knew and information unconnected to our investigation.

We made clear to the FBI briefers on August 6, 2020, that the briefing was not relevant to the substance of our work.

We also made clear our concern that the briefing would be subject to a leak that would shed a false light on the focus of our investigation. Indeed, the Washington Post article did exactly that and so did the other inaccurate media articles.

During your review of Crossfire Hurricane, you identified that counterintelligence briefings for Trump campaign officials were used by the FBI as intelligence gathering operations, concerns that we raised with the Justice Department on April 25, 2019, after we discovered text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Specifically, Peter Strzok was primarily responsible for assisting the FBI agent that would be at those briefings.

In response to your findings, Director Wray established new protocols for these transition briefings to keep potential political considerations out of the decision-making process. Specifically, Director Wray noted that these briefings “should be for national security purposes and not for investigative purposes.”

Senator Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson were credited with the discovery of the now famous text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as well as discovering that Strzok was the one of the crooked agents who used intel briefings to spy on Trump  in 2019 prior to being fired. Director Wray promised to put a stop to these phony briefings that end up getting leaked to the media, yet it happened again to Grassley and Johnson last year while investigating “the Biden family’s foreign financial dealings”.

This information is compelling regardless of which side of the political aisle one falls on. When senators start informing the people during public hearings in Congress that the FBI is setting them up with fake briefings and then stonewalling them once caught, it makes one wonder whether or not Congress is actually in charge anymore. If the FBI can engage in this sort of activity against ranking members of the Judiciary Committee, the mind shudders to think of what they might do to the average citizens of our diminishing republic.