Impeachment/Coup Collapse?
Impeachment About Nothing
FBI Emails Dispute Clinton’s Claim about Sending Classified Information
Obama and the UN Undermined Elected Government in Guatemala
Impeachment About Nothing
Our video Weekly Update gives you my latest take on the Coup Cabal show trial hearing this week.
Suffice it to say here the corrupted case for impeachment suffered major setbacks this week. There was no direct, or indirect evidence, of any misconduct by President Trump. In fact, none of the witnesses ever communicated with President Trump. This is why I’ve been calling this the “Gossip Girl Impeachment.” So as the case for impeachment against President Trump is exposed for the sham it is, the testimony this week confirms that the Obama State Department was concerned about the Biden-Burisma-Ukraine scandal.
The coup hearings this week were unconstitutional and corrupt but also petty and boring. The case against President Trump is so weak that his opponents’ case against him is failing even as they deny President Trump his God-given and constitutional right to defend himself and confront his accusers.
You can track my hot takes on the impeachment charade here, here, and here and watch my full Weekly Update on the crisis here.
FBI Emails Dispute Clinton’s Claim about Sending Classified Information
When it comes to Hillary’s email scandal, the lies and evasions of top Obama administration officials, as well as top State Department and FBI executives, were no more than a flimsy house of cards, which, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we continue to pull down.
Here’s the latest.
After former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement denying the transmission of classified information over her unsecure email system, former FBI official Peter Strzok sent an email to FBI officials citing “three [Clinton email] chains” containing (C) [classified confidential] portion marks in front of paragraphs.”
We learned this in 119 pages of records we obtained from the Justice Department through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The records containing emails from Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page also reveal senior FBI officials’ concerns over articles written about the “tarmac meeting” between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Strzok specifically cited a CBS News report terming the meeting “shocking, absolutely shocking,” and adding that, “the appearance of impropriety is just stunning.”
We received these documents in response to the January 24, 2018, lawsuit we filed after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a December 4, 2017, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)). Judicial Watch seeks:
- All records of communications, including but not limited to, emails, text messages and instant chats, between FBI official Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page;
- All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Peter Strzok;
- All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Lisa Page.
In a July 4, 2016, email exchange with FBI Assistant Director William Priestap, FBI Counterintelligence official Jonathan Moffa, and unidentified Office of the General Counsel officials, a Daily Beast article titled “Is Hillary Clinton Telling the Truth About Emails?” is discussed. In it Clinton is quoted saying that she never sent or received emails with material marked classified.
Strzok: There are three chains totaling 8 or 9 emails which have (C) [classified confidential] portion marks in front of paragraphs. Some have both (C) and (SBU) [sensitive but unclassified] in front of different paragraphs in the same email. During a brief a few weeks ago Jon provided a copy of the emails in question.
All were released in the 30,000 FOIA production. One of the chains contains multiple B1 [national defense or foreign policy] redactions, indicating it is currently classified Confidential; the other two chains were released in full. We do not yet have determinations from State about their classification at the time of writing.
On June 29, 2016, Strzok forwards to Page a story about the meeting between Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the Phoenix airport tarmac just days before Clinton’s criminal investigation interview. Strzok highlights an excerpt in which CBS News’s Justice Reporter Paul Reid called the meeting, “shocking, absolutely shocking” also that, “the appearance of impropriety is just stunning.” The excerpt ends with Reid saying: “[Lynch] stood up to El Chapo, she has taken on FIFA – she is not incapable to telling someone, ‘Look, you can’t come on my plane’ or ‘Look, I don’t want to talk to you.’”
The documents also show that on May 23, 2016, Strzok; FBI Office of Congressional Affairs’ official Elizabeth Beers; Principal Deputy General Counsel for the FBI Trisha Anderson; FBI Counterintelligence Division official Jonathan Moffa; and another redacted senior FBI official have an email exchange about how to respond to a letter sent from Senator Chuck Grassley to then-FBI Director Comey asking a series of pointed questions focusing on why FBI personnel working on Clinton’s email server case (Midyear Exam/MYE) were required to sign a special non-disclosure agreement (NDA) above and beyond the normal rules in place that govern disclosure of sensitive information by FBI personnel.
Grassley asked for copies of the special NDA and if any agents refused to sign.
Beers notes that some of her communications about the matter were on the “redside” (the Top Secret FBI computer system). Beers also noted that she ran their proposed response to Grassley by the DOJ, which provided “edits.”
On June 3, 2016, Peter Strzok organized an “MYE Scrub” meeting with Page, Moffa and an unidentified official from the FBI General Counsel’s Office.
On June 3, 2016, following the “MYE Scrub” meeting, Strzok emailed then Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, Asst. Dir. for Counterintelligence Bill Priestap and other redacted officials, advising them that “PSEU [Policy and Statutory Enforcement Unit] approved memo about 45 minutes ago. They (Toscas, CES [George Toscas, Dep. Asst. Atty. Gen. for National Security Div., Counterespionage Section], and EDVA [US Attorney for Eastern District of Virginia] are having a conference call tonight …”
(The PSEU, among other tasks, advises senior department leadership about “investigative tools and prosecutorial actions” to obtain information “from or about members of the news media.” The PSEU can “close otherwise public judicial proceedings to the public in federal criminal cases; seek court-ordered use immunity for federal witnesses; subpoena attorneys in federal criminal as well as civil proceedings for information relating to their representation of clients; [provide] authorization to apply for search warrants for the premises or electronic storage devices of attorneys who are the subjects or targets of federal investigations; and obtain authorization to conduct a dual or successive federal prosecution of an individual under the Department’s Petite policy. The PSEU also provides advice when Department of Justice employees have been subpoenaed to provide testimony or to produce evidence in state or federal judicial proceedings.)
On June 6, 2016, Strzok organized a “MYE comment walk thru” meeting for himself, then-FBI Director James Comey’s Chief of Staff James Rybicki, Lisa Page, Moffa and an unidentified General Counsel’s office official.
On June 7, 2016, Strzok emails his boss, Bill Priestap, saying that that the FBI’s Counterespionage Section “engaged in multiple conversations with Beth Wilkinson [an attorney for several top Clinton aides during the server investigation] concerning the scope and wording of the consent to search the Samuelson and Mills laptops.”
In a June 9, 2016, email exchange, FBI Public Affairs Official Richard Quinn sends a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article titled “Clinton Emails in Probe Dealt with Planned Drone Strikes” to Strzok and FBI Asst. Dir. for Public Affairs Michael Kortan. The article cites unidentified “law enforcement sources” by saying, “Several law enforcement officials said they don’t expect any criminal charges to be filed as a result of the investigation [of Clinton’s transmission of classified information on an unsecure server], although a final review of the evidence will be made only after an expected FBI interview with Mrs. Clinton this summer.”
Kortan writes to Strzok: “Whatta you think?”
Strzok replies: “Not bad at all. I think we’ll be OK. Thanks for all your work on this.”
Also on June 9, 2016, Strzok emailed redacted FBI officials, cc’ing Moffa about a phrase in the WSJ article that concerned him, asking whom they had interviewed that said something similar: “Some [State Department] officials chafed at pressure to send internal deliberations through intelligence channels, since they were discussing whether to push back against the CIA, congressional officials said.”
Moffa replied that he remembered an interviewee saying something like that at a 9AM briefing. Strzok then emails Page privately about it, asking her to “Call me.”
In a June 10, 2016 email exchange between top FBI and DOJ officials that included Strzok, Page, Moffa, McCabe, Priestap, General Counsel James Baker, and Toscas, they discuss scheduling the FBI’s interview of Clinton in the MYE investigation, keeping in mind “the Boss’s strong desire to get this wrapped up in June.”. The exchange has the subject line “Kendall DOJ contact:”
Strzok: Bill, I’m driving and can provide more detail on the phone, but DOJ is telling Toscas. Without DOJ asking, Kendall [Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall] threw out a date of 2 July in NY for the Interview. [Redacted] said that he could not commit to a date and we need to look at the laptops first. Kendall said he would keep the date blocked anyway because it is getting very hard to get on her calendar, even for him.
Thanks,
Pete
***
Baker: I guesss I’m OK with it so long as we clearly state in writing that the date is tentative and subject to our finishing our review of the laptops [of Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson]
McCabe: Keep in mind the Boss’s [presuambly James Comey] strong desire to get this wrapped up in June.
***
McCabe: So if July 2 is the first thing she has free now, we should grab it.
The exchange concludes with Strzok telling Page, “Also Phase I [redacted] of Samuelson is done. CES (Counterespionage Section) notifying Wilkinson per terms of consent – that we are moving to Phase 2 [redacted]. Mills laptop still processing, was about twice as large. OTD [Technical Division] thinks that will be done tonight as well.”
On June 21, 2016, Strzok emails to Page a Congressional Research Service (CRS) article about the McDade-Murtha Amendment relating to “Ethical Standards for Justice Department Attorneys.” He highlights in bold a section about the DOJ’s concerns relating to the “No Contact Rule” in many state laws that says a lawyer representing a client cannot discuss his representation of that client with another person involved in the same matter, without approval of the lawyer representing the other person in the same matter.
In a June 21, 2016 email, Strzok informs Priestap that there was a different email domain other than clintonemail.com located on Clinton’s private server (in addition to clintonemail.com):
And slight correction to below [redacted] account was not on clintonemail.com, but a different domain on the same server. We saw the login from the server logs.
In the early morning of July 5, 2016, (the day of Comey’s press conference) there is an email exchange among McCabe, Strzok, Comey’s Chief of Staff James Rybicki and Priestap:
McCabe: Jim will email us once the D [Director Comey] has made contact with [redacted]. That will be the green light. If you are not able to make contact, you can send him a brief, non-detailed email. Please confirm.
Strzok replies: OK, will do.
Rybicki writes: DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] and Axelrod [Principal Deputy AG Matthew Axelrod] notified. Go ahead with the others.
Strzok replies: Laufman notified [DOJ’s Chief of Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, David Laufman].
McCabe writes: Toscas emailed.
In a July 5, 2016, email marked “Importance: High,” with the subject line “Read this,” Strzok sends Page a New York Times article titled, “James Comey’s Rebuke of Hillary Clinton Fits a 3-Decade Pattern.” The article discusses Comey’s press conference and claims it demonstrated his “willingness to ‘take the hit’ on a controversial decision.”
Here’s my take on all of this. These emails show that neither the corrupt ‘tarmac’ meeting nor Hillary Clinton’s falsehoods about her emails nor anything else would get in the way of the Obama-Comey FBI letting Clinton skate. The FBI continues to slow roll the release of Strzok-Page materials and we may not see them all until at least 2021. What other documents are the FBI sitting on?
Here are some important background.
Strzok and Page were key investigators in the Clinton email and Russia collusion investigations. Strzok was removed from the Mueller investigative team in July 2017 and reassigned to a human resources position after it was discovered that he and Page, who worked for FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and with whom Strzok was carrying on an extramarital affair, exchanged pro-Clinton and anti-Trump text messages. Page resigned in May 2018. Strzok was dismissed from the FBI in August 2018.
In July 2019, Judge Walton ordered a hearing regarding the rate of production of emails, text messages, and other communications between Strzok and Page. The court scheduled the hearing to discuss: “Upon further consideration, the Court is concerned that the processing rate adopted by the Court may be inadequate.” The court’s July 24 order followed a joint status report by the FBI and Judicial Watch that disclosed that only 6,000 of almost 20,000 responsive records had been processed since May 2018.
In June 2019, we announced that we received documents showing FBI top officials scrambling to write a letter to Congress to supplement then-Director James Comey’s Senate testimony in an apparent attempt to muddle his message.
In June 2019, we uncovered documents in this case including emails showing the FBI’s attempts to muddle former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony on the Clinton email investigation and collusion between the FBI and the media. Other documents revealed then-FBI General Counsel James Baker instructing FBI officials to expedite the release of FBI investigative material to Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, in August 2016. Kendall and the FBI’s top lawyer discussed specifically quickly obtaining the FBI’s “302” report of the interview of Clinton.
In February 2019, we uncovered documents showing an evident cover-up of a chart of potential violations of law by Clinton. In May 2019, we filed a related lawsuit for that secret chart of potential violations, as well as Comey’s talking points for the press conference.
Also in February 2019, we made public 215 pages of records from the DOJ revealing former FBI General Counsel James Baker discussed the investigation of Clinton-related emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop with Clinton’s lawyer David Kendall. Baker then forwarded the conversation to his FBI colleagues. The documents also describe a previously reported quid pro quo from the Obama State Department offering the FBI more legal attaché positions if it would downgrade a redaction in an email found during the Clinton email investigation “from classified to something else.”
In September 2018, we uncovered documents showing email exchanges between fired FBI official Strzok and FBI attorney Page revealing that FBI officials used unsecure devices in discussing how the U.S. could improve the sharing of sensitive data with the European Union top executive governing commission. The documents also reveal that high-ranking FBI officials were not properly read-in to top secret programs.
In July 2018, we received documents from the Department of Justice revealing Strzok and Page’s profanity-laced disdain for FBI hierarchy and policies. The DOJ, meanwhile, was resisting our request for a court order to preserve all responsive Page-Strzok communications. In May 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the FBI to begin processing thousands of pages of previously undisclosed records between FBI officials Strzok and Page.
There’s a lesson here: Lies and evasions can endure only in the darkness of secrecy, and whither in the light of FOIA. “If it is not right, do not do it,” the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius said. “If it is not true do not say it.” There are some in Washington who need to read this.
Obama and the UN Undermined Elected Government in Guatemala
Wonder why Central America is so unstable and creating so much trouble for the United States?
Here’s one huge piece of the problem: the Obama administration, the Deep State, Soros’ organizations and UN bureaucrats worked together to attack conservative governance in Central America in support of hardcore leftist policies. The ripple effect is damaging the United States by destabilizing the region and encouraging mass migrations that are overwhelming our borders.
We continue to explore this activity.
We recently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department for communications among U.S. and Guatemalan officials regarding the of International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG, its acronym in Spanish).
We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the State Department failed to comply with May and August 2018 FOIA requests for records of communications and meetings between the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and CICIG’s Commissioner Iván Velásquez Gómez; any representative of CICIG; as well as other Guatemalan officials. We also seek communications of State Department officials, including Ambassador Todd Robinson, with Velásquez and others related to CICIG (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of State (No.1:19-cv-00968)).
The U.N.’s CICIG was formed in December 2006 and given the mission of strengthening the rule of law in Guatemala but has been embroiled in controversy and was reportedly politicizing the judiciary:
CICIG says it is in Guatemala merely to “support” the attorney general in her work “identifying and dismantling” criminal networks and is not involved in politics. But an academic analysis of CICIG by Jonatán Lemus, a Francisco Marroquín University political science professor, suggests otherwise. Mr. Lemus observes that “CICIG has also been criticized for the very same reasons others have praised it: becoming a player in judicial appointments, proposing some controversial reforms to the Guatemalan constitution, and the use of televised conferences to shift the public in its favor. From this perspective, instead of strengthening Guatemalan institutions, the Commission is making national institutions dependent on its assistance.”
Todd Robinson, Obama’s former ambassador to Guatemala, who is now a senior advisor for the State Department, reportedly worked with Velásquez, a Colombian attorney and former judge with powerful leftist alliances who ran the CICIG, to depose President Otto Pérez Molina and wanted to cancel the 2015 elections to put leftists in power. Robinson is said to be aggressively working against President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy agenda:
To continue the Obama policy, Robinson had to subdue [President] Morales, an anti-establishment outsider. A local news outlet funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations has bragged that Robinson vetoed Morales’s choices for interior minister and finally named Robinson’s candidate. The same happened with other ministries, including foreign relations.
In April 2018, the CICIG came to the attention of the Helsinki Commission for alleged abuse of power and was also asked to answer questions at a hearing in the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. The invitation was declined.
In May 2018, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) placed a hold on the State Department’s release of $6 million to the CICIG, saying: “I am concerned that CICIG, a commission mostly funded by the United States, has been manipulated and used by radical elements.”
More recently, a complaint was filed by the Morales government to the UN about witness tampering by CICIG, as well as illegal negotiations with convicted criminals and other matters went unanswered. Morales asked the UN to replace Velásquez. The UN neglected to act on the complaint or replace Velásquez. But in January 2019, the Morales government allowed the commission to wind down by not renewing its two-year mandate.
Velásquez appears to be part of a broader effort launched under Barack Obama to destabilize moderate and conservative governments abroad. We uncovered details of a similar initiative in Macedonia, where the Obama administration spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government by working with groups funded by leftwing billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
The Obama administration reportedly “embraced Castro-supported allies throughout Latin America, including in Guatemala,” and is believed to have led to the growth of transnational criminal activity. During the Obama administration, In 2016, Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, commander of SOUTHCOM, spoke of transnational drug, weapons and human smuggling, to include people with known terrorist ties from the Middle East, that are moved up through south and then Central America and over the U.S. border.
After a special investigation, we reported in 2018:
Guatemala has found itself increasingly targeted by the Soros network. In 2016, Soros’ Open Society Foundations [OSFs] provided more than $1,000,000 to organizations there, and hundreds of thousands more to U.S.-based organizations supporting his agenda in the country. Relative to GDP, OSFs spend more than twice as much in grant and program funding in Guatemala than in the United States.
Our investigation found that the OSF’s close alignment with the United Nations, which maintains a massive footprint in the nation, enables the Soros network to exert tremendous influence.
Until next week …
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