"It is the very nature of power that it attracts the very sort of people who should not have it. The United States, as the world's last superpower, is a prize that attracts men and women willing to do anything to win that power, and hence are willing to do anything with it once they have it."-- Michael Rivero
Dan Bongino: The Stunning Reason Why Rod Rosenstein Will Be the First Witness Before Senate Committee Posted at 9:00 pm on May 27, 2020 by Elizabeth Vaughn Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein pauses while speaking at the federal inspector general community’s 21st annual awards ceremony, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) This afternoon, it was reported that former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will be the first witness to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. I’ve never understood why Rosenstein, who has played such a pivotal role in the investigation of President Trump, has received so little scrutiny. Although he projects the persona of a boy scout, he is one of the vipers slithering through the muck of the Washington swamp. In March 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the disastrous decision to recuse himself from the Trump/Russia collusion case because he had met twice during the 2016 presidential campaign with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. This remarkably poor choice, which left Rosenstein in charge of the FBI’s investigation, changed the course of history. We all know Rosenstein is the man who appointed Robert Mueller in May 2017 to investigate allegations that President Trump may have colluded with the Russians to win the presidency and may have obstructed justice. We also know he wrote the memo which outlined the reasons why FBI Director James Comey should be fired. After Trump fired Comey and this memo became public, The New York Times reported that Rosenstein had been “anguished.” And, yes, The Times reported that he’d offered to wear a wire into the White House to record President Trump. We’ve known all those things and more. But it was in February, while watching Dan Bongino’s podcast, that I learned something truly stunning. Rosenstein had met with FBI agents on April 28, 2017, and then again on May 23, 2017. The FBI 302s (summary written by an FBI agent following an interview) from those briefings had just been declassified and they revealed a bombshell. The FBI told Rosenstein that President Trump was NOT a suspect. Bongino began with a hat tip to the well-known (but anonymous) lawyer who posts on Twitter as Techno Fog for this “tactical nuke.” It’s been clear for a long time that the FBI and Robert Mueller knew early on that President Trump had done nothing wrong. For example, we know that after the FBI’s January 2017 interview with dossier author Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source, they had a pretty good idea it was all a lie. The FBI interviewed the sub-source two additional times, in March and in May 2017, and by then, they were sure of it. We also learned from the testimony of former FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, that in May 2017, when the FBI turned their counterintelligence investigation over to Robert Mueller, they still had no evidence that Trump had colluded with the Russians to win the election. The FBI had been investigating Trump for ten months at that point. Until now, we’ve never seen any of those involved actually admit it. In the following excerpts from an FBI 302 report, it is made clear three times that the FBI did not believe President Trump was a suspect. (Source of information: The Dan Bongino Show, Episode 1191, February 27, 2020) 1. FBI agents confirmed to [acting Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein on May 10, 2017 that the President was not a suspect. 2. This was also Rosenstein’s impression from his initial April 28 briefing he received from then Director Comey. 3. Rosenstein elaborated that based on his May 10 briefing, “there appeared to be no evidence the President was involved personally.” FD-302 (excerpt): FBI Interview of Rod Rosenstein: May 23, 2017 (emphasis mine) Events of May 10, 2017 Rosenstein first contacted Robert Mueller on May 10 at 7:34 am, but “of course” he was thinking about the issue of appointing a special counsel before that time. Then, at 11:30 am, Rosenstein attended a previously scheduled meeting with the prosecutors assigned to the FBI’s Russia investigation. This was the first regularly scheduled meeting on the matter. During this first meeting, and in light of all the controversy surrounding the investigation, Rosenstein declared, “In my acting capacity as the Attorney General, leave no stone unturned” or words to that effect. However, those assigned to the case are career prosecutors, so in his personal opinion, telling them to do so was unnecessary because he knew they would do the right thing. During his May 10 briefing, the team confirmed for Rosenstein that the President was not a suspect. This was also Rosenstein’s impression from his initial April 28 briefing he received from then Director Comey. Carl Ghattas may have attended this briefing, as well as several prosecutors. Rosenstein elaborated that based on his May 10 briefing, “there appeared to be no evidence the President was involved personally.”Rosenstein inquired whether they needed additional resources, and was informed there was no such need. Any reasonable person would assume that would have been the end of the Trump/Russia collusion story. But it wasn’t. So why did Rosenstein appoint a special counsel to investigate President Trump, a man he knew was innocent? Bongino’s Analysis: Do you understand the tactical nuke this is? Rosenstein knows, he’s been briefed by the FBI as early as April, that this case is total garbage and that President Trump is not a suspect in this thing, and they refuse to clear him. Why? Because the Mueller probe has one purpose…To nail Donald Trump. On May 10, Mueller is appointed to investigate Trump for a scandal that doesn’t exist. It was always an effort to accumulate enough political damage on Donald Trump to hopefully impeach him, to get him out of office before this thing resulted in some denouement at the end. Now you have it nailed down. Rosenstein knew what Mueller was going to do. That’s why he appointed Andy Weissmann. Andy Weissmann having a reputation for, at best, shady legal tactics. They appointed him knowing he’d keep this case open and knowing Trump wasn’t a suspect the entire time. He ends the segment asking, “What else do you need to hear?” I believe this is the single most extraordinary revelation we’ve heard in the last three years. This is why the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chose to call Rosenstein to testify first. Rosenstein knew President Trump was not a suspect, but he still went ahead and appointed a Special Counsel to investigate him. He needs to explain why he did that, under oath. Next Wednesday, June 3. 10 am. Be there! (Relevant portion starts at 7:30.)
Indeed. Rosenstein is swamp central for the justice department. Not necessarily for the entire swamp because that includes Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Rice, and Samantha Power within their assigned swamp lanes. McCabe was a higher level lieutenant who carried out a lot of missions and advanced the cause but he owed his existence and ability to maneuver to those above him. Ditto obviously for characters like Page and Strzok. They were freelancing a bit but everyone above them knew about it and that they were doing the dirty work that others wanted to see done.
It is difficult to understand because there are many moving parts. So it is understandable why you are confused. This article explains it in detail. Enjoy. What the 'Obamagate' Scandals Mean and Why They Matter COMMENTARY By Charles Lipson - RCP Contributor May 27, 2020 AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais Amid the flurry of details about spying on Michael Flynn, lying to secret courts about Carter Page, leaking classified documents, and more, it’s easy to get lost in the muck. It’s important to stand back, identify the worst abuses, and explain why they matter for American democracy. These abuses didn’t simply follow each other; their targets, goals, and principal players overlapped. Taken together, they represent some of the gravest violations of constitutional norms and legal protections in American history. Whether you are Democrat or Republican, whether you like Donald Trump or loathe him, these violations matter. Some call this debacle “Obamagate” since the key officials were his appointees and the White House was directly involved. But they got plenty of help. Some came from the permanent bureaucracy, especially in law enforcement and intelligence. Still more came from the mainstream media, which served as conduits for classified leaks aimed at Trump, his campaign, and then his presidency. For over three years, the media’s top story was “Trump colluded with Russia.” When that imploded after the Mueller Report, they moved on to impeachment. The entrenched elites behind these scandals are the Swamp at its most sulfurous. They spied illegally on Americans and used powerful tools of government to damage the party-out-of-power, its outsider candidate, and then his new presidency. It’s worse than a single surveillance scandal. It’s three huge ones, intertwined. All were abuses of power. Some were crimes. Scandal No. 1: Massive, illegal surveillance of American citizens, using the database of the National Security Agency During the second term of President Obama, and perhaps earlier, private firms from outside the government were allowed to trawl through the massive NSA database of phone calls, emails, and text messages. Without any warrants, they spied on vast numbers of American citizens. The public still doesn’t know who did it, who authorized it, or how the metadata was used. This illegal practice ended in summer 2016 when the agency’s head, Adm. Mike Rogers, learned about it. He stopped it immediately and reported it to the Rosemary Collyer, chief judge of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court. Judge Collyer issued a scathing, heavily redacted report about the illegal activity, but, so far, no one has been indicted. Scandal No. 2: Spying on the Trump campaign When NSA surveillance was halted, the Obama administration lost its secret eyes on domestic political activity and especially on the rising Trump campaign. To regain that vision, the CIA and FBI launched new surveillance efforts. Three elements stand out. First, the executive branch, then controlled by Democrats, was determined to spy on the opposition party. Second, much of the spying was conducted by agencies that are limited, by law, to foreign operations. Since their goal was actually domestic surveillance and since that was illegal, they apparently outsourced some of it to friendly foreign governments, who relayed the information back to Washington. Third, since the FBI wanted to spy on Trump aides who were not actually suspected of crimes, they couldn’t get regular warrants. To work around that, the FBI (under James Comey) and Department of Justice (under Loretta Lynch) falsely claimed the targets were foreign spies, making them eligible for FISA warrants. They also tried to entrap them (with help from CIA assets abroad), hoping they would commit illegal acts or say their colleagues had done so. We know the FBI and CIA did all that, though we still don’t know all the details. We know, too, that the FBI and DoJ used opposition-party research and worthless gossip (the “Steele Dossier”) to gain the secret warrants on Carter Page. The second-ranking official in Comey’s FBI, Andrew McCabe, testified the warrants would never had been issued without the Steele material. Yet the FBI and DoJ never told the court it was unverified and never said who commissioned it. Before the warrant was renewed, the FBI finally spoke with Steele’s main source, who told them the information was garbage. Instead of telling the court immediately, the bureau simply said the sub-source was truthful and falsely implied he backed Steele. This dunghill of deceit should lead to criminal indictments and major civil suits for damages. Scandal No. 3: Covering up this spying, continuing it during the new administration, charging that Trump was not legitimately elected, and impeding his presidency with major investigations, based on false charges After Trump was elected, top officials from the outgoing administration made two fundamental decisions. The first was to hide the earlier spying and continue it during the new presidency, using holdover officials and friendly bureaucrats. The second was to entangle the new administration in a series of sprawling investigations designed to prevent it from governing, even though Republicans had won the White House and both branches of Congress. The Obama team did whatever it could to bring down the new administration, primarily with accusations Trump had won with Russia’s help. They went even further, saying Trump’s campaign had actively worked with the Kremlin. That’s treason. There was no evidence for it, but the mainstream media, led by the New York Times, Washington Post and all cable news channels except Fox, promoted it nonstop. The implication was clear: Because Trump was elected with help from a foreign enemy, he was not a legitimate president. This accusation has been the leitmotif of Democratic Party messaging and mainstream media coverage for the entire Trump presidency. Proving these specious accusations was the main task of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, appointed after leaks from Comey. The fired FBI director told Congress his leaks were designed to force Mueller’s appointment. Mueller’s deputy, Andrew Weissmann, appointed a team of virulently anti-Trump lawyers to investigate and prosecute. From the beginning, the Mueller team should have known, as the FBI did, that the charge of “Russian collusion” was false. Despite a massive, prolonged investigation, the Office of Special Counsel never charged any American (inside or outside the Trump campaign) with helping the Russians during the 2016 campaign. Yet the OSC continued its investigation, hiding exculpatory evidence, trying to catch Trump officials in false statements, and using strong-arm tactics to force confessions. The great prize would be nailing Trump himself. That failed, of course, but, as long as Mueller’s investigation continued, the thunderclouds of legal peril and a fraudulent election hung over the presidency. The House Intelligence Committee knew the truth, early on, after conducting classified interviews with top Obama officials. The committee, controlled by Republicans in 2017-18, asked Obama’s senior officials in law enforcement, intelligence, and national security if they had any evidence the Trump campaign actually colluded with Russia. Every single one, testifying under oath, said they did not. In public, however, they said the exact opposite. Their false statements to the cameras carried weight because the public assumed, reasonably enough, that these former officials must have seen damning classified evidence. They hadn’t. Still, they spewed devastating anti-Trump messages the mainstream media was eager to broadcast. “Trump-Russia Collusion” was their biggest story for three years. And it wasn’t true. The whole ruse would be exposed if the secret testimony were released. That’s why Democrats blocked it after they won the House. That’s why committee Chairman Adam Schiff could say, again and again, he had clear evidence Trump colluded with Russia. Similar messages came from Comey, former CIA head John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and others. Secretly, under oath, they acknowledged they had “no evidence of collusion, cooperation, or coordination.” Publicly, they said the opposite. Some called Trump a traitor, a Russian asset, or “Putin’s puppet.” All of them were media darlings. All of them were lying. Conclusion: What do these three scandals mean, individually and collectively? The first, accessing the NSA database, is the largest violation of basic constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure in American history. The second, surveillance of the Trump campaign, involves illegally using of the government’s most powerful tools of national intelligence and law enforcement against an opposition political party. These crimes directly attack two pillars of constitutional democracy: (1) elections should be free and fair, not corrupted by the party in power, and (2) law enforcement and intelligence should never be used as partisan instruments. The third scandal attacks yet another pillar of constitutional democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a new administration. Handing government authority to the opposition party is a hallmark of stable democracy. Much as the Obama administration hated to see Hillary Clinton lose, it was obliged to transfer power seamlessly to Donald Trump. On the surface it did so. Beneath the surface, it erected every obstacle it could. Obama officials worked especially hard to remove incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Because Gen. Flynn was an experienced intelligence officer, he would surely uncover the surveillance of Trump’s campaign and transition and stop its continuation against the new administration. He had to go. Now we know just how low the Obama administration and Comey FBI sunk to make that happen: spying, unmasking, leaking classified phone calls, discarding FBI protocols to set up an entrapment interview based on a meaningless “legal violation,” and telling Trump directly, as Obama did, not to hire Flynn. Beyond this destructive mission, Brennan loyalists at the CIA burrowed into Trump’s National Security Council while the FBI tried to plant agents in the White House itself. Most important of all, the Obama team and their congressional allies helped launch multiple, full-scale investigations of “Russian collusion” with no solid basis, plenty of contrived “evidence,” and breathless media headlines. It all failed, but not before it damaged Trump’s presidency and the basic tenets of liberal democracy. It’s an ugly picture, one that goes beyond dirty tricks and the normal bounds of “loyal opposition.” We still have a lot to learn, but we already know a great deal. We know how grave the three scandals were. We know they fit together, forming something much larger. With each new tranche of declassified documents, we see something big and hideous emerging from the Swamp, a political scandal of profound import. Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.
The lefties will try to reduce this whole scenario to indictments of lack thereof. That's fine. But the larger picture is more important. The dems are/were trying to defeat trump at the polls by advancing the impeachment/mueller scenario and the assertion that Trump colluded with the Russians and somehow skated, and that Trump's claim that he was a victim of the swamp and higher level bad actors witchhunting him was bogus. THAT ATTEMPT BY THE DEMS HAS NOW ALREAY BEEN TOTALLY DESTROYED. That did not and is not going to work for them and they want less investigation now rather than more because all the revelations work against them and in favor of Trump's assertion. And we have not even begun to see the MORE TO COME part of it. Brennan, for example, may or may not be indicted but the revelations of what Brennan was up to (just using him as an example) are political dynamite that destroys lefty claims that there were no swampy bad actors trying to undermine Trump before and after the election. There is already wayyyyyyyyy too much evidence out there and there are genies that cannot be stuffed back in the bottle. So I can see a handful or less of indictments but I will not step into the trap that the lefties are setting which is to make it all about indictiments. Nope this is about exposing the whole network that attempted a coup before and after the election. Right now the lefties are thinking "well, the hell with that now anyway, we got covid and dead people on our side now so we are not talking about Mueller and impeachment anymore anyway." I see that and acknowledge that. Just as I did with the previous four or five scams they tried to work. We also know that they are scared shiitless that the covid situation will improve along with the economy. That's something they need to worry about. In regard to UsualTard asking whether anyone can explain what iObamagate is, as I said before, he can ask me and I will explain it completely to him. He is welcome. And he can print my explanation on the milk carton.