https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-...-general-hunter-biden-burisma-investigations/ Senator Chris Murphy requests investigation into agencies' cooperation on Biden, Trump probes Washington — Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut has demanded answers from the internal watchdogs at three federal departments and the National Archives about their cooperation with congressional investigations into Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden's son. In a letter to the inspectors general of the National Archives and departments of State, Treasury and Homeland Security, Murphy requested an investigation how their agencies responded to congressional demands for information during the impeachment inquiry, compared to how they responded to requests about Hunter Biden and his work for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profil...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Second Impeachment Incoming? Federal Court Orders Release of Mueller’s Secret Grand Jury Materials A federal court on Tuesday ruled that the Department of Justice (DOJ) must release a tranche of secret grand jury materials sourced from the Russiagate investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller. Those materials have been long-coveted by Democrats who have said they could lead to a second impeachment of the 45th president. U.S. Circuit Judge Judith Rogers authored the decision—which was joined by Judge Thomas Griffith. Judge Neomi Rao authored the dissent. “The courts cannot tell the House how to conduct its impeachment investigation or what lines of inquiry to pursue, or how to prosecute its case before the Senate,” Judge Rogers noted—in reference to the plaintiffs and victors in the ongoing legal spat between House Democrats Attorney General William Barr. The House Judiciary Committee has argued for several months that the unredacted Mueller materials—spanning nearly 500 pages—should be released to congressional investigators who planned to use those documents in order to potentially make a case for impeaching President Donald Trump. The legal battle, however, was largely cabined within a picayune discussion of what case law in the D.C. Circuit determined was a “judicial proceeding” under the U.S. Constitution. DOJ argued for a very limited understanding of that term—claiming that impeachment hearings and trials didn’t qualify and that releasing the materials would irreparably harm the agency’s legal interests. Democrats on the other hand said—and the court ultimately agreed—that precedent held the term sustained a fairly broad definition. As Law&Crime previously reported, a lower court in the District of Columbia previously reached more or less the same conclusion—with the exact number of pages. U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell savaged the White House and DOJ for their stonewalling efforts last October—calling out White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and mocking Barr’s staff attorneys for failing to understand how precedent actually works. To wit, DOJ argued that an impeachment proceeding was not a judicial proceeding but failed to account for their prior argument—also made under President Trump—in the prior year that an impeachment proceeding was considered a judicial proceeding under a precedent/definition established by legendary D.C. Circuit Judge Learned Hand in 1958. Whoops. And whoops redux. “The constitutional text confirms that a Senate impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding,” Judge Rogers continued. “The term ‘judicial proceeding’ has long and repeatedly been interpreted broadly.” After determining that impeachment proceedings fit the bill, the three-judge panel easily determined House Democrats were entitled to the documents—staking the decision on the Congress’s great power over all matters related to impeachment. “Courts must take care not to second-guess the manner in which the House plans to proceed with its impeachment investigation or interfere with the House’s sole power of impeachment,” the decision notes. “The Committee states that it needs the unredacted material,” Rogers reasoned elsewhere in her ruling before dispatching concerns that Democrats were on a fishing expedition or otherwise acting with nefarious motives. “The district court had no reason to question the Committee’s representation.” The potential implications of the ruling are substantial. Democrats have long maintained that the Mueller-focused investigation and legal battle was separate and distinct from their failed Ukraine-based impeachment effort—previously argued before the lower court that the contents of Mueller’s secret grand jury materials may very well lead them toward a second round of impeachment hearings. There was, of course, some discord from Trump’s handpicked Brett Kavanaugh replacement on the D.C. Circuit. Rao’s stinging dissent complained that the time for Democratic relief had simply passed. “A reasonable observer might wonder why we are deciding this case at this time. After all, the Committee sought these materials preliminary to an impeachment proceeding and the Senate impeachment trial has concluded. Why is this controversy not moot?” Rao asked rhetorically. “The majority simply turns a blind eye to these very public events.” Read the full 75-page court ruling below:
https://nypost.com/2020/03/15/trump-weighing-a-full-pardon-for-michael-flynn/ Trump weighing a ‘full pardon’ for Michael Flynn President Trump said he is mulling a “full pardon” for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. “So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has ‘lost’ the records of General Michael Flynn. How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!,” Trump posted on Twitter Sunday.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/footno...russian-disinformation-in-the-steele-dossier/ Footnotes in watchdog report indicate FBI knew of risk of Russian disinformation in Steele dossier The FBI was warned sections of the controversial Steele dossier could have been part of a "Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations," according to newly declassified footnotes from a government watchdog report. The December report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz examined the FBI's investigation into alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia as well as the FBI's four surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Horowitz concluded the FBI was justified in launching the investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, although he found 17 "significant inaccuracies and omissions" in the FBI's handling of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) applications to surveil Page. But some of Horowitz's findings were disputed by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a broader investigation. At the time, Durham said "we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened." Several footnotes in Horowitz's report were redacted, and Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson pushed for the declassification of four footnotes related to the Steele dossier, a collection of opposition research notes on the Trump campaign's ties to Russia compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. The dossier was used, in part, by FBI investigators to secure four surveillance warrants for Page. Footnote 350 in the IG report addresses the FBI's knowledge of Russian contacts with Steele and the potential for disinformation. Steele had "frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from (redacted) indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting." The footnote also indicates that warnings to the FBI's Russia probe became more pronounced over time. "The (redacted) stated that it did not have high confidence in this subset of Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate US foreign relations." Footnote 302 relates to the FBI's efforts to verify information contained in the Steele dossier, commissioned by the DNC through opposition research firm Fusion GPS. "According to a document circulated among Crossfire Hurricane team members and supervisors in early October 2016, Person 1 had historical contact with persons and entities suspected of being linked to RIS (Russian Intel)......In addition, in late December 2016, Department Attorney Bruce Ohr told SSA 1 that he had met with Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS) and that Simpson had assessed that Person 1 was a RIS (Russian intel) officer who was central in connecting Trump to Russia." The third footnote also relates to the Steele source. Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd, in a letter to Grassley and Johnson, wrote that the "fourth and final footnote presents unique and significant concerns. Specifically, the redacted information refers to information received by a member of the Crossfire Hurricane team regarding possible previous attempts by a foreign government to penetrate and research a company or individuals associated with Christopher Steele." In the December FISA report, Horowitz found "the FBI did not have information corroborating the specific allegations against Carter Page in Steele's reporting when it relied upon his reports in the first FISA application or subsequent renewal applications." The FBI declined to comment on the declassified footnotes, but said in an earlier statement of the ongoing audit into the bureau's surveillance applications to the national security court or FISC, "The FBI and NSD's filing with the FISC provides the Court with an update regarding some of the corrective actions that the FBI has made and continues to make to its FISA processes. These steps are part of the 40-plus corrective actions that Director Wray ordered in December 2019. The FBI remains confident that these corrective actions will address the errors identified in earlier FISA applications that the IG reviewed in connection with its recent Woods Procedures audit as well as its review of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation." "Consistent with our duty of candor to the Court and our responsibilities to the American people, we will continue updating the FISC and the Department of Justice to ensure that our corrective steps are implemented in a timely manner and that our FISA authorities are exercised responsibly," the statement added. In a statement, Grassley said the declassified footnotes indicate the roots of the Russia investigation were flawed. "...beginning early on and continuing throughout the FBI's Russia investigation, FBI officials learned critical information streams that flowed to the dossier were likely tainted with Russian Intelligence disinformation. Despite later intelligence reports that key elements of the FBI's evidence were the result of Russian infiltration to undermine U.S. foreign relations, the FBI still pushed forward with its probe. It would eventually spill over into the years-long special counsel operation, costing taxpayers more than $30 million and increasing partisan divisions." Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Johnson said, "From the opening of the investigation, the FBI team kept accumulating exculpatory information. Yet rather than wind the investigation down, they ramped it up...Then it got worse. The FBI team excluded exculpatory information from its FISA application..." U.S. Attorney John Durham has a broad mandate to investigate the origins of the FBI Russia probe, which officially opened in July 2016, as well as actions taken to secure four surveillance warrants for Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Those warrants are under review, and the Justice Department has already determined two lacked probable cause. Speaking to Fox News earlier this week before the declassified footnotes were public, Attorney General William Barr said of the Durham investigation, "...It takes some time to build a, to build the case. So he is diligently pursuing it. My own view is that the evidence shows that we're not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness, there's something far more troubling here, and we're going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted." Read the letter sent to Senators Grassley and Johnson below.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/na...ssessment-about-russian-interference-n1188696 Bipartisan Senate report says 2017 intel assessment about Russian interference and Trump was accurate The new report by the GOP-run intelligence committee undercuts criticisms by some Trump supporters that the assessment overstated Russia's activities. A bipartisan investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee has validated the January 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment describing Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election — including Russian efforts to help Donald Trump — describing it as accurate, thorough, and in keeping with long-established practices. “The Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions," said Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C. The CIA and other spy agencies produced the assessment during the final weeks of the Obama administration, and a version of it was made public on Jan. 6, 2017. It told a story of a Russian covert operation designed to undermine American democracy that evolved into an attempt to help Trump win. The new report by the Republican-run committee — which examines how the assessment was put together — undercuts long-standing criticisms by some of President Trump's supporters that the assessment overstated Russia's activities. A long-running theory on the right holds that the assessment was "rigged" by a cabal of hand-picked intelligence analysts led by then-CIA Director John Brennan, who has become a vocal Trump critic. The Senate report found no evidence of that. It comes as a prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William Barr is said to be examining Brennan's role in the assessment, which was written based on intelligence gathered by the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, among others. The assessment of Russian interference "was a comprehensive all-source detailed assessment written by the top-notch analysts in the intelligence community," said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA case officer who played a role in the intelligence gathering. "It was a top-notch document that revealed the true Russian efforts to subvert American democracy. There is no dispute that Russia interfered in our elections. None." In "Key Judgments," the 2017 analysis says, "We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary (Hillary) Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump."