Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Interesting video about the Australian bush fires.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_tn8f0uaB4

And the Attorney General also releases a statement.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-william-p-barr-inspector-generals-report-review-four-fisa



https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/statement-us-attorney-john-h-durham


"This is a very quiet big deal."


https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/12/some-call-it-performance-failure.php


"In the same vein.  I think Durham’s press release, in tandem with Barr’s, signals interesting stuff to come.  Like the Horowitz report, I don’t think it makes sense to hope for a silver bullet.  But I’d be willing to bet we’ll recognize some of the names referred for prosecution.  And I’ll also bet that the Durham report will be scathing."


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/horowitz-report-cia-rejected-steele-dossier-as-internet-rumor


"Of course, Brennan took it as gospel, or pretended to.  And he raced to brief Harry Reid so he could engineer leaks against Trump."

Clearly, Prof Karlan did not thoroughly research her snarky attempt at humor.  If so, she would have realized that Barron Trump is named after Barron Hilton, the son of Conrad Hilton who succeeded his father as CEO of Hilton Hotels.  She needs a refresher course on proper names and homonyms. 

I did some more digging into the American Thinker column I posted above.  I'm not sure the author is accurate as to every claim; but I am certain about several things.  I suggest reading the following article.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/how-the-omb-used-its-powers-to-delay-ukraine-aid

1.  We are talking about the process called "obligating the funds."  This means that the contracts necessary to spend the funds are signed and approved before the money is spent.  This is not a case where the appropriated funds are wire transferred in bulk to Ukraine.  The actual spending of the funds might not occur until next year, but those dollars would come from the federal government's fiscal year 2019 budget - not the current FY 2020 budget. 

2.  The OMB order was an apportionment order that was issued on the same day as the phone call, July 25th.  An apportionment order is issued to review whether the appropriated funds should be spent exactly as proposed or whether the funds should be spent in different amounts on different things.  The Ukraine law mandates 4 reviews per year on apportionment of appropriated funds.  An apportionment review cannot block the spending of the appropriated funds.

3.  If the President wants to block the spending of the money, he must seek a rescission of the appropriation from Congress.  And Congress must approve such a rescission.  While some people claim that rescission was discussed as to Ukraine, it was never requested.

4.  On September 11th, the State Department certified to OMB that its portion, $141.5 million, of the Ukraine funds under apportionment review, were ready for obligation.

5.  On September 12th, OMB released its verbal hold on the $250 million of security assistance and the $141.5 million of aid through the State Department.

6.  By September 30, 2019, most all of these appropriations were obligated.

7.  Trump requested another $250 million of security assistance for Ukraine in his FY 2020 budget request.

Thus, what we are talking about is an OMB freeze on releasing funds for obligation; but, at the same time, OMB was telling the DoD and State Department to continue preparing for obligating these funds before the end of the fiscal year.  And, we are talking about a situation in which these funds most likely would not have been obligated for spending until near the end of the prior fiscal year anyway. 

A number of Congressmen of both parties didn't like the slowness of the apportionment process and started complaining to OMB and to the media. 

Senator Ron Johnson's letter to HPSCI states clearly that by late August, the Trump administration had decided to release the Ukraine funds for obligation.  When Johnson asked Trump about it, Trump said that we were close to a decision and that he (Johnson) would like the result. 

Thus, it appears that we are talking about an authorized and legal apportionment process for the aid that took longer than some wanted it to take.  And that sparked a mini political spat.  However, even if the funds had been released from the OMB hold for apportionment review in mid-August, they most likely would not have been obligated for spending until mid to late September anyway.  Finally, obligation of the funds did not mean that the funds were actually sent to Ukraine.  It just meant that these funds were allocated for use in various spending tranches for specific things and for disbursement at some later time.

craftydog - all I note is that the media keeps reporting that the funding had been placed under review.  They don't go into detail.  It does not fit Schiff's narrative to bring out this information.  If this is accurate, it could be brought forward by the Republicans if they are permitted to call witnesses.  The point here is that the law itself requires these reviews during each fiscal year.  And Sondman asserted today that the quid pro quo was the meeting - not the aid under review. 

Sondman's testimony then doesn't make sense if you compare it to the memo of the July 25th phone call.

In the phone call, Trump agreed to a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky after hearing Zelensky's statements about conducting full and fair investigations with his people.  The only issue was a scheduling one concerning whether they would meet in early September at Warsaw or on some other date at the White House. 

Trump stayed in the US when Hurricane Dorian was threatening to hit the east coast and VP Pence went to Warsaw in hiss place.  VP Pence's Chief of Staff today issued a written statement denying Sondman's claim that Sondman and Pence met in person and alone with Zelensky at Warsaw. 

The review of the military aid tranche was completed and the funds were released on Sept 11, 2019.  I wonder if it is mere coincidence that this release date occurred one day after Bolton's resignation. 

Trump met Zelensky in New York in late September. 

https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-15-essential-questions-for-marie-yovanovitch-americas-former-ambassador-to-ukraine/

https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-real-ukraine-controversy-an-activist-u-s-embassy-and-its-adherence-to-the-geneva-convention/

The links to primary sources in these two articles are important.  It isn't just Solomon stating his opinion.

Fake whistleblower who was the catalyst for the current informal impeachment inquiry in the House Intelligence Committee had a professional tie to a current Dem candidate for president.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/whistleblower-had-professional-tie-to-2020-democratic-candidate

Other things to consider about this fake whistleblower complaint.

1.  An employee of the intelligence community can only contact a congressional committee directly in order to report an "urgent concern."  50 USC Sec 3033(k)(5)(A).

2.  An "urgent concern" must relate to "the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity that is within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information."  50 USC Sec 3033(k)(5)(G).

3.  An employee of the intelligence community can contact one or both congressional intelligence committees only if he gives notice of this intent to the Director through the IG before making any contact; and, along with this notice provides the IG with a statement of the complaint or information that he will be giving to Congress.  50 USC Sec 3033(k)(5)(D)(ii)(I).

4.  Any member of the committees or one of its employees who receives a complaint or information is acting in his or her official capacity regardless of the circumstances of the contact.  50 USC Sec 3033(k)(5)(D)(iii).

5.  Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine on 21 April 2019.  He assumed office on 20 May 2019.

6.  The actual complaint released by Schiff's committee says, "Over the past four months, over half a dozen officials have informed me" about efforts to pressure Ukraine. 

7.  The date of the cover letter to the committee is 12 August.  The date of the complaint on the new form created in late August is September 2019.

8.  Thus, all of this behind the scenes chatter about "pressuring Ukraine" began at about the time Zelensky was elected and assumed the presidency in Ukraine. 

White House ordered security upgrades storing information in the Spring of 2018 to stop leaks. 

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/white-house-trump-leaks-code-015194

"The changes came months after entire transcripts of President Trump’s calls with the leaders of Australia and Mexico were leaked to the Washington Post, setting off a furious internal search for the source of the unauthorized disclosures and widening the mistrust between the president and his own staff."

Pseudo-whistleblower's complaint claimed that extraordinary measures were taken just for this call.

"White House officials told me that they were "directed" by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.
Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective."

This is really a complaint about the heightened security established in 2018 after the same types of employees leaked the complete MEMCONs of conversations between Trump and the former Presdient of Mexico and the President of Australia.

more left wing slant the past week ?

 

Really don't care how Drudge tries to get his clicks. 

We delayed payment of the aid to Ukraine because we were concerned about the pending sale of a Ukraine defense contractor to a Chinese company.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-usa-bolton-statement/trump-adviser-bolton-tells-ukraine-beware-chinese-influence-idUSKCN1VI1KD

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-did-the-ukrainians-know-and-when-did-they-know-it/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-aims-to-block-chinese-acquisition-of-ukrainian-aerospace-company-11566594485

See the last graf in John Solomon column to which craftydog first linked.

Did Biden exaggerate his role in the Ukraine prosecutor firing when he spoke on the Council of Foreign Relations panel in 2018?  Solomon suggests that he may done so.

Is it a matter of public concern for the US to discover if Biden, while acting in his official capacity as VP of the US, used his official position to cause the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating alleged illegalities in Burisma, a company that had named Biden's son as a member of its board of directors?

Burisma itself is very interesting given that it had first named Biden's son to its board when Biden himself was VPOTUS.  Then, shortly after Trump took office, Burisma named a former CIA official to its board to replace Biden.  And this CIA official just happened to have been a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney during the now senator's 2012 presidential election campaign.

Although the Biden episode is getting all the ink/pixels, the other two topics involving Ukraine and the 2016 election are very interesting:

1) the fact that the DNC server analyzed by Crowdstrike (but not he FBI) may be in Ukraine; and,

2) the US ambassador to Ukraine being discussed as a very bad person. 

Wonder if our ambassador was facilitating the DNC's efforts about Russia collusion through the Ukraine government back in 2016 when the pro-Obama president was in charge there?

Is it merely a coincidence that Taco Bell recently introduced a new cheesy chalupa and another episode in the Obama administration's policy in favor of one Ukraine political faction has emerged under the pretext of a whistleblower complaint to the DNI?

The Russia collusion hoax began as a Ukrainian-influence operation inside the DNC by Andrea Chalupa.  She worked for and supported an anti-Russia faction in Ukraine.  When Manafort joined the Trump campaign in early 2016, Chalupa and the DNC began the earliest versions of the Russia story because she and her Ukraine faction feared that Manafort would steer Trump to support Russia in its disputes with Ukraine. 

But there is a third faction inside Ukraine that is anti-Russia and anti-corruption.  That faction elected the new president of Ukraine.  Chalupa was supporting an anti-Russia faction that was likely corrupt.

Now that the original Russia hoax diversion has been proven false, the alignment between the corrupt Ukraine faction and many Obama administration members along with Biden's son could come to light because the current Ukraine president has authorized an investigation into this type of corruption.  Hence, the need for certain partisan members of the intelligence bureaucracy to try and parry this threat until after the 2020 election. 

This time, they chose not to leak transcripts of the phone call.  Instead, they abused the whistleblower statute and reg's inside DNI in order to provide cover for the identity of the whistleblower and the leaker.  Then, they leaked to Schiff the existence of the questionable whistleblower complaint. 

It is also no coincidence that this occurred at the same time that Trump was at the UN and Iran's Rouhani will speak at the UN.  Because that deal also could be argued to be corrupt.

There are some bad people working inside the bureaucracy.  And they are tarnishing the reputations of the many workers there who do their jobs properly.

And Ms. Chalupa appears again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=iWH8i5jQNPM

Why were the Russians particularly interested in the DNC 's emails in 2015 and 2016?  Because they knew about Chalupa and her contacts and they wanted intelligence on Ukraine and the potential influence Ukraine would have when Clinton won the 2016 election.

Why did the Russians distribute all of those emails obtained from Podesta via Wikileaks?  So, Clinton would be embarrassed and still subject to compromise after she won the election.

Why would Ukraine not want Trump as President?  Because it feared that Trump's prior business dealings with Russia would make him pro-Russia when it came to the ongoing territorial disputes between Ukraine and Russia.   

Why would Russia supply Steele with disinformation about Trump?  Because it viewed Clinton as the more pliable President when she was elected as all the experts predicted.  So, different Russian operatives played both sides of the game in the 2016 election. 

In the end, what began as a pure intelligence operation to learn what Ukraine officials were doing with the DNC and Clinton turned into an unexpected bonanza of political chaos inflicted upon the USA when Obama administration officials used the Russian intelligence efforts aimed at the DNC over Ukraine as cover for their misuse of US counterintelligence to spy on the Trump campaign.  The reason why the Mueller investigation never investigated this side of the Russian interference efforts was that it would have implicated many on their own staff as well as many political appointees with whom they agreed politically.

The above is certainly a reasonable hypothesis based upon facts as we know them.  It's no different than Watergate when Nixon took a valid national security concern about the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers and turned it into a justification for a burglary of the DNC office in the Watergate complex.  Plumbers.  Unmasking.  All the presidents' men (and women).  Just two different presidents.

Most "experts" have glossed over the banalities on pages 11-12 of the Mueller Report about the August and October 2017 memos from Rosenstein that provided details to Mueller about his charging authority.

Rosenstein's August memo specifically named Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Paul Manafort and authorized Mueller to investigate and decide whether they had "committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election." 

By including Carter Page on this list, this means that Rosenstein was using the Steele Dossier as the predicate for the initial grant of authority for the special counsel.  Why?  Because the August 2, 2017 memo explained that the original May 17, 2017 appointment order had been word categorically (generally) "in order to permits its public release without confirming specific investigations involving specific individuals."  (Mueller Report, p.11)

Rosenstein's October 20, 2017 memo added Michael Cohen, Richard Gates, Roger Stone, and two other redacted (for personal privacy) names to the list of people that could be investigated.  In this memo, Cohen was added so that the Special Counsel could investigate "leads related to Cohen's establishment and use of Essential Consultants LLC to, inter alia, receive funds from Russian backed entities."  This is how Rosenstein bootstrapped the Stormy Daniels matter into the Special Prosecutor's investigation.  (Mueller Report, p.12)

Therefore, the Mueller investigation was based upon the phony Steele Dossier, George Papadopoulos' drunken bragging that the Russians had hacked Hillary's emails, and a desire to get Paul Manafort because he had once worked for a Russian-backed group in Ukraine.

The report goes on to state that the FBI had been investigating these issues for 10 months before the May 17th appointment of Mueller; i.e., July 2016.  Then, why was the FBI investigating Page?  Answer: the Steele dossier.  Why was the FBI investigating Papadopoulos?  Answer: bragging to an Aussie diplomat at a bar about the Russians hacking Hillary's emails.  Why was the FBI investigating Manafort?  Answer:  opposition research fed to the media by a pro-Ukraine faction member on the DNC.

How did Papadopoulos acquire his information about the Russians having hacked Hillary's emails?  Answer:  from Jospeh Mifsud and/or Stefan Halper, CIA assets who had spread that info to Papadopoulos at two meetings in Europe earlier in 2016.  Who ran the CIA in the summer of 2016?  John Brennan.  For whom did he work in the summer of 2016?  James Clapper. 

It takes awhile to read and understand 400 pages.

As I posted earlier this year, Mueller punted and his report on obstruction is disingenuous because he declines to apply traditional prosecutorial judgment to the obstruction issue.

For example, many of the 10 obstruction instances involved the President's reaction to published media reports - not the investigation itself.  A prime example is the section on whether Trump told the White House counsel to get Mueller fired. 

Trump says he told the WH counsel to tell Rosenstein that Mueller was conflicted and should go.  The WH counsel told Mueller's team that Trump told him to go to Rosenstein and get Mueller fired.  Shortly afterwards, the NYT and WaPo publish articles claiming that the WH Counsel was threatening to resign because Trump told him to get Mueller fired. 

So, Trump calls in the lawyer and asks him to issue a statement saying that Trump never demand that Mueller be fired.  Trump said he wanted this lawyer to convey to Rosenstein his concern about Mueller's personal conflicts of interest, convey his opinion to Rosenstein, but let Rosenstein decide what to do with Mueller.  This was directed at Mueller - not at the existence of a special counsel.

The WH Counsel refused to issue such a clarification or place a note to that effect in his file.  Of course, the WH counsel never conveyed Trump's opinion to Rosenstein.  And Trump never fired the WH counsel.  And Trump never ordered the WH counsel to stop cooperating with the Mueller and his team.

Mueller's team argued that Trump's attempt to get the WH counsel to issue a public statement denying that Trump ever said "fire" could be obstruction.

Of course, it is isn't obstruction if Trump's recollection of the conversation is accurate and the WH Counsel's use of "fired" is inaccurate.

On June 9th meeting at Trump Tower between the Fusion GPS client's Russian lawyer and Trump, Jr., I'm still amazed that the original emails about a crown prosecutor in Russia having dirt on Hillary were true because there hasn't been a crown in Russia since 1917 when Nicholas II abdicated in response to the Bolshevik Revolution. 

Just some initial thoughts.

Now that Mueller has ended his work and filed no more indictments, it is clear that the investigation was primarily an attempt to cover up and divert attention from the massive abuses of federal espionage powers for political purposes by many high-up officials in the Obama administration.  They took the Steele dossier and transformed it from political opposition research into a classic disinformation campaign.  This has/had all the hallmarks of being run by intelligence operatives in the various agencies that conduct those kinds of things.

The Mueller investigation and Russia collusion hoax was also a classic Chicago-style political power game.  Instead of using a ward boss or a city government department head to cut off a political opponent's electricity or water, the operatives abused the national intelligence powers to do the same thing to their political opponents.  Always remember that Obama himself, although claiming to be a community organizer, was really just another Chicago machine politician.  Never forget that Michelle Obama is the daughter of a city water department employee who was also a Chicago democrat machine precinct captain.

Finally, this investigation was the last best hope for those people who fancy themselves as clear-headed thinkers to rationalize their purely emotional response to Trump as a person and the fact that he won the Republican nomination and won the 2016 election. 

It is now getting even more interesting.

Monica McLean is being represented by David Laufman.

In February 2018, Laufman stepped down from his position in DOJ where he was chief of the department that oversaw the Clinton email probe and the Russian interference investigations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-dept-official-who-helped-oversee-clinton-russia-probes-steps-down/2018/02/07/ab19f24e-0b69-11e8-8b0d-891602206fb7_story.html?utm_term=.7b142810309e

WSJ this morning.

Leyland Keyser, Blasey's friend who was allegedly at the party, showed the FBI text messages from Blasey's retired FBI agent friend and fellow Holton-Arms classmate, Monica McLean, urging her to "clarify" her statements.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/friend-of-dr-ford-felt-pressure-to-revisit-statement-1538715152?mod=djemalertNEWS&mod=article_inline

Now, where this gets interesting.  McLean is the same person to whom, according to the written statement of Blasey's former boyfriend/partner, Blasey gave tips on how to pass her initial FBI polygraph when she was applying to the Bureau for employment.

It gets even more interesting when it is learned that McLean was Preet Bharra's FBI press liaison in SDNY.  Bharra was the US Atty for SDNY who was fired by Trump in early 2017 along with other US Attys.  Bharra himself has waged a virulent war against Trump on Twitter and in other public statements.  He is aligned with Comey and the other insider members of the resistance.

McLean retired from the FBI in 2016.  She lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  That happens to be the same town that Blasey testified in which she was vacationing while also preparing her letter to Feinstein.  And where she was for most of the time before she took her own polygraph on August 7th.

What also gets interesting is that Blasey's initial texts to the WaPo about this claim in early July were sent on an encrypted texting app.  Now, who is most likely to know about encrypted texting apps?  A retired FBI agent or a professor of psychology?  Just asking.

It's a very scary situation because SuperMicro is an ODM that makes the white box servers for Amazon and Apple.  So, the chip can bypass the normal security precautions that are in standalone switches and other boxes located in data centers. 

Until recently, in data centers, all of the security was on the perimeter of the site to guard against the infiltration of bad packets from external sources.  And the secure boot authentication systems on most boxes from personal computers to large servers would also not prevent this threat because the device would boot with the spy chip inside.

In the last few years, however, the security protocols inside data centers have changed from an emphasis upon preventing external threats to a system more like a large ship's ability to cordon off bad areas with water-tight bulkheads.  So, the data center can take offline the affected servers and run everything by going around quarantined areas. 

The issue is whether those chips could reach into the entire packet flow of the networks in which they were installed or whether they just intercepted packet flows that were routed through the specific servers in which the chips were installed.

On a less serious note:  wonder if DiFi's gofer was the leader of this ring?

The judicial temperament argument is silly.  First, it’s an appellate court.  Everything is done by writing except strictly regulated oral argument in front of the Supreme Court.  Second, if Kavanaugh had a temperament issue, it would have already surfaced at the DC Circuit which, again, is an appellate court panel of 3 judges presiding over strictly regulated oral argument.  Third, I’ve heard a lot worse temperament by federal district judges and magistrates than what Kavanaugh displayed in his testimony last Thursday. 

Kavanaugh is the accused in this process.  As the subject of a constitutionally mandated Senate process, Kavanaugh is entitled to 5th Amendment Due Process and to 9th Amendment due process and fairness as well as statutory guarantees of fairness in congressional hearings that are contained in the various laws and regulations on the books.  Blasey is not immune from applicable false statement laws.

The fact that this politics are intertwined with this advice and consent process does not deprive Kavanaugh of his enumerated rights contained in the 5th Amendment and federal statutes and regulations.  Also, it does not mean that Kavanaugh is deprived of his unenumerated rights guaranteed by the 9th Amendment plus any unenumerated unalienable rights not delineated in our Declaration of Independence. 

And he has the absolute right and duty to point out these violations to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The memo from Rachel Mitchell to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Mitchell is the prosecutor hired by the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Blasey.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4952137/Rachel-Mitchell-s-analysis.pdf