Posts

Anti-Trump Dossier Author Referred to FBI for Criminal Investigation

/0 Comments/in , /by

On Friday, top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee referred the author of the unverified anti-Trump dossier to the FBI and DOJ for criminal investigation.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) referred former British spy Christopher Steele, who was hired by Fusion GPS to compile the anti-Trump dossier, to the FBI and DOJ to be investigated for possible crimes after they said that he may have made false statements to investigators about his communications with journalists in the U.S. about the dossier. The letter states:

Based on the information contained therein, we are respectfully referring Mr. Steele to you for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, for statements the Committee has reason to believe Mr. Steele made regarding his distribution of information contained in the dossier.

In a statement, Grassley wrote, “I don’t take lightly making a referral for criminal investigation. But, as I would with any credible evidence of a crime unearthed in the course of our investigations, I feel obliged to pass that information along to the Justice Department for appropriate review.”

(Read more from “Anti-Trump Dossier Author Referred to FBI for Criminal Investigation” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Former FBI Asst Director: ‘Nothing About Clinton Investigation Was Right’

/0 Comments/in , /by

The former assistant FBI director who oversaw the bureau’s office in North Carolina said “nothing about the [Hillary Clinton] investigation was right.”

Chris Swecker said that the FBI always uses grand juries and search warrants to obtain information about suspects or witnesses.

“It doesn’t take a Congressional investigation [to show that] nothing about that investigation was right,” Swecker said.

Tucker Carlson noted that James Comey’s FBI began drafting Clinton’s exoneration document before all evidence had been gathered and before all witnesses were interviewed.

“That’s not how a real, thorough… investigation is conducted,” Swecker said, adding that the FBI normally doesn’t go to witnesses and ask “mother, may I?” to obtain information. (Read more from “Former FBI Asst Director: ‘Nothing About Clinton Investigation Was Right'” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Now FBI Probed for 2016 Election Interference

/0 Comments/in , , /by

What began as an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election has now become a probe into how federal law enforcement conspired to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has expanded its investigation that began with claims of Russian collusion and a fraudulent memo paid for by Trump opponents to one that focuses on members of federal law enforcement – both in the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI – and how they actively worked against the Trump campaign and the eventual Trump presidency.

In a startling turnabout, committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., is accusing the Justice Department and the FBI of misleading him in “a pattern of behavior that can no longer be tolerated.” He charges that Justice claimed it possesses no documents related to the infamous Trump dossier, then, under pressure, produced “numerous” such papers.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is already opposing the move, even though he and other Democrats have conceded recently that finding a Russia-Trump conspiracy has produced no real evidence.

Nunes has put in place what amounts to a separate investigation of the FBI and the Justice Department hierarchy. (Read more from “Now FBI Probed for 2016 Election Interference” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Take Down of Sheriff Clarke: FBI Used Search Warrant to Gain Access to His Gmail

/0 Comments/in , , /by

By Katie Leach. The FBI obtained a search warrant to access former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke’s personal email in March, according to a federal court filing made public this week.

An affidavit dated March 7 explained the FBI wanted access to Clarke’s personal Gmail account for an investigation into an incident between Clarke and fellow airline passenger, Dan Black, in January.

Black sued, claiming he was unlawfully detained by six uniformed deputies and two K-9 dogs after a squabble with Clarke aboard an American Airlines flight in January.

Special Agent Jennifer Walkowski requested the search warrant for the FBI after being pointed towards the emails by Milwaukee County auditors.

Walkowski presented the court with a photocopy of an email from Clarke – at the address [email protected] – referencing Black’s formal complaint which read: “Sheriff has taken this asshole’s compliant under advisement and summarily determined that he can go to hell. The next time he or anyone else pulls this stunt they may get knocked out. Sheriff does not have to wait for some goof to assault him.” (Read more from “The Take Down of Sheriff Clarke: FBI Used Search Warrant to Gain Access to His Gmail” HERE)

______________________________________________

FBI Executed Search Warrant on Ex-Sheriff David Clarke’s Email

By Alberto Luperon. A recently discovered search warrant dated March 21 showed that the FBI searched Google for “information associated” with the email account of former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. They wanted info on communications from or after January 15 regarding the detention of Dan Black.

Yes, that Dan Black, the guy who sued Clarke in February for allegedly having him detained and interrogated by deputies after a flight to Milwaukee. Black claimed that it was Clarke who started the confrontation, asking him during the flight if he “had a problem.” He also said that the sheriff’s office later posted a threatening statement, “Next time he or anyone else pulls this stunt on a plane they may get knocked out. The Sheriff said he does not have to wait for some goof to assault him. He reserved the reasonable right to pre-empt a possible assault.” His office declined to comment on the lawsuit in February.

The Feds were investigating Clarke for allegedly misusing his authority as sheriff.

(Read more from “FBI Executed Search Warrant on Ex-Sheriff David Clarke’s Email” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Did FBI Conspire to Stop Trump?

/0 Comments/in , /by

The original question the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign was to answer was a simple one: Did he do it?

Did Trump, or officials with his knowledge, collude with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to hack the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and leak the contents to damage Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump?

A year-and-a-half into the investigation, and, still, no “collusion” has been found. Yet the investigation goes on, at the demand of the never-Trump media and Beltway establishment . . .

That, from the outset, Director James Comey and an FBI camarilla were determined to stop Trump and elect Hillary Clinton. Having failed, they conspired to break Trump’s presidency, overturn his mandate and bring him down.

Essential to any such project was first to block any indictment of Hillary for transmitting national security secrets over her private email server. That first objective was achieved 18 months ago. (Read more from “Did FBI Conspire to Stop Trump?” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

FBI Says Las Vegas Shooter’s Motive May Take Nearly a Year to Release

/0 Comments/in , , /by

It may be a long time until the public knows exactly what led to the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

The FBI have revealed it will not release its report on Stephen Paddock’s shooting onto a crowd of Las Vegas concert goers any time soon.

During an interview, the chief of the FBI’s Las Vegas office revealed that the agency probably would not brief the public until the report is released sometime in October — a full year year after Paddock gunned down 58 people.

“Now that’s a long time for some people, but speaking for the FBI, that’s light speed, all right?” Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse said, according to Fox News.

On the night of Oct. 1, Paddock opened fire from his Mandalay Bay hotel room onto a crowd of around 22,000 people attending a country music concert in Las Vegas.

Moments before shooting at the crowd outside, Paddock had fired at a security guard through the door of his hotel room. The security guard had incidentally been on the 31st floor to check on an alarm when he was shot.

Paddock ultimately killed 58 people and injured 527 others during his brief, but devastating rampage, according to Axios.

A SWAT team finally charged into Paddock’s room and found him dead from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.

Over two months have passed since the massacre and there is still no clear motive for his actions.

“As I sit here today, I believe that we are learning as much as we possibly can about why the subject did what they did,” Rouse stated.

Other agencies investigating the event will be releasing their reports at different times. However, Rouse says the FBI’s report is “focusing a large part on the why” which is “what everybody wants to know.”

Rouse said that evidence suggests Paddock acted alone in the attack and he has not been linked to any radical organizations or ideologies.

He added that FBI investigators have about 250,000 photos and 22,000 hours of surveillance and cellphone footage to examine — a colossal amount of data that may shed more light on what happened.

“We didn’t leave anything uncovered,” Rouse said in an interview. “And again, the casinos, with their support, let us track down a lot of information of who may have had contact with that person. And it was very helpful to us.”

The Islamic State group originally claimed responsibility for the massacre, suggesting Paddock had acted on their orders to attack Western countries, but these claims were quickly ruled out by the FBI.

Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, informed investigators that he would lie in bed screaming, an indication that he may have been in “physical or mental anguish.”

Over the years, Paddock made a substantial money from video gambling, and investigators have suggested that his recent gambling losses may have played a role.

Several times, Paddock had gambled over $10,000 in a single day, and in some instances more than than $20,000 and $30,000 in one day, at casinos in Las Vegas, according to NBC News. (For more from the author of “FBI Says Las Vegas Shooter’s Motive May Take Nearly a Year to Release” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Prosecutors Ask FBI Agents for Info on Uranium One Deal

/0 Comments/in , /by

On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News.

The interviews with FBI agents are part of the Justice Department’s effort to fulfill a promise an assistant attorney general made to Congress last month to examine whether a special counsel was warranted to look into what has become known as the Uranium One deal, a senior Justice Department official said.

At issue is a 2010 transaction in which the Obama Administration allowed the sale of U.S. uranium mining facilities to Russia’s state atomic energy company. Hillary Clinton was secretary of state at the time, and the State Department was one of nine agencies that agreed to approve the deal after finding no threat to U.S. national security.

A senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the initial FBI investigation told NBC News there were allegations of corruption surrounding the process under which the U.S. government approved the sale. But no charges were filed.

As the New York Times reported in April 2015, some of the people associated with the deal contributed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. And Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 for a Moscow speech by a Russian investment bank with links to the transaction. (Read more from “Prosecutors Ask FBI Agents for Info on Uranium One Deal” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

As Trump-Russia Goes Cold, Clinton-Comey Turns up Smoking Gun

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Text messages released by the Department of Justice Tuesday revealed an extreme anti-Trump bias by Peter Strzok, a former senior member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s election probe team. The texts also hint at the possibility that the James Comey-led FBI may have had a plan to illegally thwart Trump’s presidential ambitions.

Following an internal Justice Department investigation, agent Strzok was quietly reassigned from his senior post at the FBI to a human resources position in the Bureau. It’s unclear at this time whether his text messages had anything to do with his reassignment. He was exchanging messages with Lisa Page, a fellow FBI official at the time, during the 2016 election campaign, according to reports.

Some have argued that Strzok did no wrong, because he had every right to criticize and use explicit language to target then-candidate Trump in his private exchanges. Strzok and Page frequently called the president “an idiot,” or “awful,” which is 100 percent their right to do as observers of politics.

However, some of the texts hint at the possibility that Strzok may have stepped over that line, and that he moved beyond simply expressing his discontent with the Republican presidential nominee.

One particular text may be interpreted as strategizing to interfere in the electoral process — what could be understood as discussing a plan to work with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to stop Trump from becoming president.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s (McCabe) office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok texted Page in 2016.

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, remarks that the text “clearly indicates” that Strzok was “infected by political viewpoints,” describing the text as “disqualifying.”

The text’s possible reference to Andrew McCabe raises another giant red flag about Comey’s deputy.

Although McCabe’s wife was running for office with the help of Clinton allies, the FBI deputy director refused to recuse himself from the Clinton email investigation until one week before the presidential election. Judicial Watch later found out that he was using his work email account to spread the word about his wife’s political ambitions.

It’s worth recalling that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the research into the infamous “Trump-Russia” dossier. The FBI (under James Comey and McCabe) then reportedly paid for this information and used the mostly debunked dossier to wiretap Trump advisers.

The ongoing investigation into the 2016 election was far from a smooth-running ship prior to these latest revelations. Peter Strzok is far from the only extreme partisan on Mueller’s investigation team. (For more from the author of “As Trump-Russia Goes Cold, Clinton-Comey Turns up Smoking Gun” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

FBI Lacks ‘Technical Ability’ to Crack Most Smartphone Encryption

/0 Comments/in , /by

The FBI is struggling to decode private messages on phones and other mobile devices that could contain key criminal evidence, and the agency failed to access data more than half of the times it tried during the last fiscal year, FBI Director Christopher Wray told House lawmakers.

Wray will testify at the House Judiciary Committee Thursday morning on the wide range of issues the FBI faces. One of the issues hurting the FBI, he said, is the ability of criminals to “go dark,” or hide evidence electronically from authorities.

“The rapid pace of advances in mobile and other communication technologies continues to present a significant challenge to conducting lawful court-ordered access to digital information or evidence,” he said in his prepared remarks to the committee. “Unfortunately, there is a real and growing gap between law enforcement’s legal authority to access digital information and its technical ability to do so.”

Wray said criminals and terrorists are increasingly using these technologies. He added that the Islamic State is reaching potential recruits through encrypted messaging, which are difficult for the FBI to crack . . .

He noted that in the last fiscal year, the FBI was unable to access data on about 7,800 mobile devices, even though they had the legal authority to try. He said that was a little more than half of the mobile devices the FBI tried to access in fiscal year 2017. (Read more from “FBI Lacks ‘Technical Ability’ to Crack Most Smartphone Encryption” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Black Friday Posts New Single Day Record for Gun Checks at More Than 200,000

/0 Comments/in , /by

The FBI was flooded Friday with more than 200,000 background check requests for gun purchases, setting a new single day record, the bureau reported Saturday.

In all, the FBI fielded 203,086 requests on Black Friday, up from the previous single-day highs of 185,713 last year and 185,345 in 2015. The two previous records also were recorded on Black Friday.

Gun checks, required for purchases at federally licensed firearm dealers, are not a measure of actual gun sales. The number of firearms sold Friday is likely higher because multiple firearms can be included in one transaction by a single buyer.

The surging numbers received by the bureau’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), comes just days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a sweeping review of the system, which allowed a court-martialed Air Force veteran to purchase the rifle used earlier this month to kill 25 people inside a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church . . .

The breakdown in the Kelley case highlighted longstanding problems within the system, which for more than 20 years has served as the centerpiece of the government’s effort to block criminals from obtaining firearms. Yet it has largely struggled to keep pace with the volume of firearm transactions and still properly maintain the databases of criminal and mental health records necessary to determine whether buyers are eligible to purchase guns. (Read more from “Black Friday Posts New Single Day Record for Gun Checks at More Than 200,000” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.