[NYPOST] National security adviser Robert O’Brien denied accusations from an alleged Department of Homeland Security whistleblower that he ordered intelligence about Russian influence in the US to either be downplayed or removed from a report and said he had never heard of the person making the allegations.
The complaint, filed Tuesday by Brian Murphy, former head of the intelligence branch in Homeland Security, alleges that brass hats moved to alter intelligence findings on Russia and white supremacists to appease the views of President Trump.
Supposedly Reliable Steele Acted 'Crazy,' His FBI Handler Says
[REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS] The previously unreported testimony of FBI agent Michael Gaeta is found on page 900 of the fifth and final volume of the Senate committee’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. It raises new questions about the basis of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, Crossfire Hurricane, and the declarations it made to the FISA court in four separate applications submitted to spy on American citizens.
Gaeta had a long history with the London-based Remington Christopher Steele, who had started his own firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, after leaving the British spy service MI6 in 2009. Between 2013 and 2016, the bureau had paid Steele $95,000 to pass along tidbits on Eurasian organized crime; Gaeta was his contact at the bureau. It was Gaeta whom Steele approached in July 2016 with wild and depraved stories of collusion and kompromat. Gaeta became the "handling agent" for Steele’s participation in Crossfire Hurricane. Among his tasks was to get Steele paid (a process that came along slowly) and to see to it that Steele didn’t violate the FBI’s rules on confidentiality.
This requirement for discretion created a conflict of interest for Steele, who was also being paid for the same information by the Washington-based firm Fusion GPS. Fusion, in turn was being paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Crooked Hillary Clinton
...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away. Politix is not one of her talents, but it's something she keeps trying to do...
campaign for opposition research on Trump. The Democrats wanted Steele’s information spread far and wide. They also wanted to be able to claim that the FBI was investigating the allegations. Paid FBI informants, however, are not allowed to tell anyone of their work for the FBI or of the bureau’s investigations.
Gaeta was astonished, then, when shortly before the 2016 election an article appeared in Mother Jones titled "A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump
...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons......
." The sub-headline asked, "Has the bureau investigated this material?" Gaeta was convinced Steele was the source for the article and confronted him about it. Steele readily admitted he was behind the Mother Jones story.
The conversation that followed and its aftermath have been described before, but in bloodless ways that fail to capture the importance of that confrontation in determining Steele’s reliability and credibility. For example, a Justice Department inspector general report says "Handling Agent 1 advised Steele that he must cease collecting information for the FBI, and it was unlikely that the FBI would continue a relationship with him."
'LISTEN, IS IT ABOUT THE MONEY?'
Here’s how Gaeta recounted that conversation to the Senate: "Listen, is it about the money?" Gaeta asked Steele. "Because we have the money now. Is it about the money?" The FBI had promised, but had yet to deliver to Steele, $15,000 for one meeting with Crossfire Hurricane agents. The bureau had further promised Steele he would be paid "significantly" for his Trump-Russia research.
Gaeta assumed at first a delay in payment had made Steele go rogue.
"Yes, I'm owed the money, but that's secondary," Steele told Gaeta. "I'm very upset about — we’re very upset — about the actions of your agency." By the "we" in "we’re very upset" one can reasonably infer that Steele was speaking about himself and his client, Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson (whose client, not counting cutouts, was Hillary Clinton’s campaign).
The handling agent was shocked: "I had no idea what he was talking about." Before Gaeta could inquire further, Steele started railing about ''your Director" and his "reopening of the investigation." This was an apparent reference to former FBI Director JamesThe spine of the FBI is the rule of law Comey
 The disgraced, except in his own mind, former head of the FBI...
’s decision to reopen the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server after 340,000 copies of State Department emails between Clinton and her close personal aide, Huma Abedin, were discovered on a laptop used by Abedin and her husband, Anthony Carlos Danger Weiner
...aka Hot Dog Tony , the remarkably offensive sex maniac six-term New York congressman who resigned in 2011, then decided everybody had forgotten by 2013, when he decided to run for mayor of New York City...
. He was a disgraced congressman under investigation by the bureau’s New York office for sending sexually explicit messages and photos to an underage girl.
At which point it all became clear to the handling agent: "I'm now understanding that he did this because he was upset that the Director's reopening of the investigation was going to negatively affect the election for Hillary Clinton."
The handling agent described his reaction to Steele’s behavior as "surprise and disbelief." Gaeta told the Senate that Steele’s actions and attitude weren’t just "crazy source-related stuff," but "one of the craziest" the veteran agent had seen in two decades of handling sources. The words are significant: Steele’s behavior with the FBI has been characterized as a sort of professional disagreement, uncomfortable perhaps but not unreasonable. Gaeta’s blunt assessment casts things in a much harsher light and undercuts subsequent efforts by the FBI’s brass hats to rehabilitate Steele in order to justify using his "reporting."
Although it has been downplayed until now, Steele’s acting out — and his overtly declared partisan motivations -- constituted a crisis for the bureau, so much so that the handling agent describes it in violent mostly peaceful terms: "After that point — after everybody digests what happened," Gaeta told the Senate committee, "[p]hones were ringing at that point; people's ears were bleeding." |
[GatewayPundit] On Monday Republican Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH), Devin Nunes (R-CA), Rodney Davis (R-IL) and James Comer (R-KY) sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi on her failure to protect the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Senatrix from Minnesota, candidate for the Dem presidential 2020 nomination. You can tell the kind of husband a boy will make by the way he treats his mother. You can tell the kind of leader a politician will make by the way he treats his staff. Klobuchar is reportedly overbearing, snide, and dictatorial with her people. She see this as merely 
...Candidate for president in 2020. 
[Washington Examiner] Rep. 
[The Federalist] House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member 
[DAILYWIRE] A criminal complaint was filed against a 
[Washington Examiner] A top House Republican said he was "shocked" when he saw the name of the judge before whom former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith is expected to plead guilty in the first criminal case arising out of U.S. Attorney John Durham's inquiry into the Russia investigation.