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DEEP STATE HYPOCRISY: Top FBI Official Who Investigated Trump’s Ties to Russia Just Arrested for Taking Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars From Russians

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By Washington Times. A former top FBI counterintelligence official who was involved in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation was arrested and charged with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Russia, federal prosecutors announced Monday.

Charles McGonigal, who had been the special agent in charge of the FBI‘s counterintelligence division in New York, is accused of taking secret payments from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in exchange for investigating a rival oligarch, according to court documents.

Mr. McGonigal, 54, is one of the highest-ranking FBI officials ever charged with a crime. He faces one count of violating U.S. sanctions, one count of money laundering and two conspiracy counts.

Each of the four counts, which were filed in a New York federal court, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager, said the indictment underscores the duplicity of the FBI.

“The depth of the corruption inside the FBI knows no bounds. They quite literally had the fox guarding the hen house as it relates to Donald J. Trump,” he told The Washington Times. “The chief ‘investigator’ of alleged ties between Trump and Russia turns out to have his own illegal ties to Russia. Nothing shocks me anymore.” (Read more from “DEEP STATE HYPOCRISY: Top FBI Official Who Investigated Trump’s Ties to Russia Just Arrested for Taking Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars From Russians” HERE)

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Ex-FBI Official Involved in Trump-Russia Probe Indicted for Working on Behalf of Sanctioned Russian Oligarch

By National Review. Charles McGonigal, a former FBI official involved in the investigation of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, has been charged with violating sanctions and collaborating with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

According to federal prosecutors, McGonigal received “concealed payments” from a Russian intelligence officer in exchange for his help in having sanctions targeting Deripaska lifted. McGonigal is being charged by the Federal District in Manhattan with additional counts relating to money laundering and conspiracy.

“Charles McGonigal, a former high-level FBI official, and Sergey Shestakov, a Court interpreter, violated U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. They both previously worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanctions removed, and, as public servants, they should have known better,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams wrote in a statement released Monday.

As chief of counterintelligence in the bureau’s New York City field office, McGonigal was among the first FBI officials to learn of the fateful conversation between a senior Trump campaign adviser and a foreign diplomat over the topic of Hillary Clinton’s emails, the Washington Free Beacon noted. Knowledge of that interaction proved crucial to the federal agency opening an investigation into the matter, which ultimately found there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. (Read more from “Ex-FBI Official Involved in Trump-Russia Probe Indicted for Working on Behalf of Sanctioned Russian Oligarch” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Trump Blasts Evangelicals for ‘Disloyalty’ Over Lack of 2024 Support

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Former President Donald Trump lashed out at evangelicals for not supporting his latest presidential campaign, saying it was a “sign of disloyalty” after he appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices and made their long-held dream of overturning Roe v. Wade possible.

Trump, 76, told Real America’s Voice’s “The Water Cooler” Monday that the religious bloc of voters who were key to his 2016 victory have not yet come out to back his 2024 White House bid.

“That’s a sign of disloyalty,” Trump told host David Brody. “There’s great disloyalty in the world of politics, and that’s a sign of disloyalty.” . . .

But the former president added that he was “disappointed” that evangelicals failed to rally behind the court’s decision during the midterm elections, when many Democratic candidates campaigned on the issue. . .

“Because, you know, they won, and a lot of them didn’t fight or weren’t really around to fight. And it did energize the Democrats. But a lot of the people who wanted and fought for years to get it … they weren’t there protesting and doing what they could have done,” he added. (Read more from “Trump Blasts Evangelicals for ‘Disloyalty’ Over Lack of 2024 Support” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Poll: Biden Would Have Lost Overwhelmingly in 2020 Had FBI Not Interfered in Election

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Former President Donald Trump still has a reverence for the FBI, even after the Russia collusion debacle and Mar-a-Lago raid. But he’s adamant the bureau needs to be banned from meddling in elections by pressuring social media firms to censor Americans’ opinions.

In a wide-ranging interview Tuesday with Just the News, America’s 45th president said it was “shocking to me” when Twitter released internal files showing the extent of FBI efforts to censor content during the 2020 election, including the creation of a command center in San Francisco just for that mission.

“You always want to love the FBI and all you know it stands for, the image of what it stands for,” Trump told the John Solomon Reports podcast and “Just the News, No Noise” television show on Real America’s Voice.

“And then you see where the FBI was actually rigging the election,” he continued, “where they were suppressing bad news on Biden and they say push the good news on Biden, and the exact opposite on me.”

A poll released last month found three quarters of American voters believed they lacked “critical” information about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 elections, and half would have voted differently if they had know the Biden scandal allegations were authentic. (Read more from “Poll: Biden Would Have Lost Overwhelmingly in 2020 Had FBI Not Interfered in Election” HERE)

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Backtracking: WaPo Admits Russian Trolls ‘Had Little Influence’ After Years Hyping Role in Trump’s Win

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The Washington Post acknowledged that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election regarding its social media footprint was not as significant in putting Donald Trump in the White House as the paper previously hyped.

In a report from the paper’s “The Cybersecurity 202” newsletter headlined “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters,” the Post cited a new study from the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics that analyzed what sort of impact disinformation and misinformation had on one social media platform, in this case Twitter.

Josh Tucker, one of the study’s authors, told the Post, “My personal sense coming out of this is that this got way overhyped.”

“Now we’re looking back at data and we can see how concentrated this was in one small portion of the population, and how the fact that people who were being exposed to these were really, really likely to vote for Trump,” Tucker said to the Post. “And then we have this data to show we can’t find any relationship between being exposed to these tweets and people’s change in attitudes.” (Read more from “Backtracking: WaPo Admits Russian Trolls ‘Had Little Influence’ After Years Hyping Role in Trump’s Win” HERE)

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Court Overturns a Trump-Era Bump Stock Ban

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A Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a firearm accessory that enables a semi-automatic gun to shoot at an increased rate of fire, was struck down by a federal appeals court.

In a 13 to 3 decision, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that bump stocks are not covered under the same machine gun laws.

The court concluded that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), rushed the legislative process by approving a rule to define bump stocks as “machineguns,” in which the court ruled that the group did not have the authority from Congress to do so.

“A plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of ‘machinegun’ outlined in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act,” a statement from the court read. (Read more from “Court Overturns a Trump-Era Bump Stock Ban” HERE)

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Trump Reportedly Had a Large Influence in Securing the Gavel for McCarthy

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Former President Trump may have played a crucial role in helping now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) to secure the required votes needed to take over the position.

According to Breitbart, the 45th President was responsible for bringing about a compromise among House Republicans who initially opposed McCarthy to electing him.

After nearly a week of voting, McCarthy took the gavel after 15 rounds.

Several GOP members of Congress claimed that Trump was the honey that sweetened the tea, urging Republican holdouts to vote in favor of McCarthy.

“This doesn’t get done without the support and leadership of President Trump,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said, applauding the former president’s help. (Read more from “Trump Reportedly Had a Large Influence in Securing the Gavel for McCarthy” HERE)

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Trump Endorsement of McCarthy Did Not Get a ‘Single New Vote’

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NBC’s Chuck Todd said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell’s Reports” that former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for speaker after Tuesday’s failed votes did not get a “single new vote” today. . .

Todd added, “Donald Trump, once again, was very helpful to Kevin McCarthy to the point of it got him not a single new vote. It is kind of a reminder because we have been chronicling how much power he has been losing inside the party. This is why Trump had been quiet for a while, for fear his voice doesn’t matter. I think we just found out, at least when it comes to getting Mccarthy over the finish line. He could maybe end McCarthy if he wanted to, but he couldn’t crown him.” (Read more from “Trump Endorsement of McCarthy Did Not Get a ‘Single New Vote’” HERE)

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Special Counsel Jack Smith Returns To United States To Lead Investigations Into Trump

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Special counsel Jack Smith has reportedly arrived back in the United States to lead investigations into former President Donald Trump after working as a prosecutor at The Hague.

Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, to be special counsel to take over two Department of Justice investigations into Trump in November. Smith accepted the appointment but was initially held back at The Hague in the Netherlands as he recovered from a biking accident.

He has since returned to the United States weeks after his appointment. His exact return date is unclear as the Justice Department has not officially announced his return to the country, according to The Washington Post. People familiar with Smith’s travels told the Post that Smith had been back in the U.S. “for some time.”

Garland appointed Smith to be special counsel after Trump announced his third run for president at an event at Mar-a-Lago in November. (Read more from “Special Counsel Jack Smith Returns To United States To Lead Investigations Into Trump” HERE)

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Trump Blames Pro-Lifers for Midterm Election Fumble

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. . .“It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday evening.

“It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters. Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again. Plus, Mitch stupid $’s!” Trump added.

The Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade in June, handing back power to individual states to decide how to address the issue. No major Republican office holder or candidate advocated for abortion restrictions without exceptions for the life of the mother during the 2020 cycle.

Trump-backed candidates largely underperformed on Election Day. Across several battleground states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, Trump loyalists from Kari Lake and Herschel Walker to Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano fell by the wayside in an environment that heavily favored Republicans. (Read more from “Trump Blames Pro-Lifers for Midterm Election Fumble” HERE)

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The Laughable Pivot Some in the Media Are Taking Over Trump’s Tax Returns

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. . .The liberal obsession with Trump’s tax returns did lead to media leaks. The New York Times and other outlets obtained past returns, with the Times proceeding to write lengthy exposes that no one read. It also found no ties to Russia, which further torched the collusion delusion that engulfed progressive America.

Now, with no evidence of felonious activity, the Times is pivoting to say that the latest trove of returns, the big reveal, showed that the former president’s business prowess isn’t what was advertised (via NYT):

House Democrats released six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax records on Friday, offering new insight into his business dealings that further undermined his long-cultivated image as a wildly successful businessman.

The release on Friday morning contained thousands of pages of tax documents, including individual returns for Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, as well as business returns for several of the hundreds of companies that make up his sprawling business organization. It followed the release of reports from Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee that showed Mr. Trump had paid a total of $1.1 million in federal income taxes in the first three years of his presidency, but paid no tax in 2020 as his income dwindled and losses mounted.

The document disclosure drew rebukes and threats of retaliation from Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, who suggested that once their party takes over the House on Jan. 3, they may seek to disclose tax returns filed by Democratic politicians, Supreme Court justices and members of President Biden’s family, such as his son Hunter.

(Read more from “The Laughable Pivot Some in the Media Are Taking Over Trump’s Tax Returns” HERE)

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