Spygate is unravelling

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Sean Hayden
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Sean Hayden » Fri Apr 22, 2022 4:13 pm

Oh yeah, that's cool. Did you blog about IT or something else?

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Joe » Fri Apr 22, 2022 4:22 pm

A variety of stuff. I got the most attention for an in depth post on Social Security that's held up pretty well, but as my kids got older I didn't have the time or energy to do the research. Met some interesting people online though.
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Tue May 31, 2022 4:24 pm

The deep state must have twisted the arms of the jury. Ah well, maybe next time.

'Clinton Campaign Lawyer Acquitted of Lying to the FBI in Trump-Russia Case'
The federal investigation of a Clinton-connected lawyer over his role in spreading news of a Trump-Russia mystery—the still-unexplained computer links between the Trump Organization and Russia’s powerful Alfa Bank—has ended just like the conundrum he shared. It was a dud.

On Tuesday, a jury found Michael A. Sussman was not guilty of lying to the FBI when he passed along computer signal information to the feds—but allegedly didn’t tell them he was a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic Party.

Sussmann was indicted in September 2021 and charged with a single count of “willfully and knowingly” making a “materially false” statement to a federal agent. He was the primary target of a politically charged prosecution led by a Justice Department attorney that Republicans had hoped would be the counter to the much-maligned Trump-Russia investigation.

When the independent team led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up its probe, the Trump administration started its own investigation of that investigation. The administration tapped Special Counsel John H. Durham, then the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, to lead his own mission. Sussman was supposed to be his first major takedown.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue May 31, 2022 11:20 pm

A view from the other side...
Durham lost because he treated the FBI as a dupe — rather than a Clinton collaborator

What was the role of the FBI? In the Russiagate probe, in which Special Counsel John Durham has been tasked with getting to the bottom of the Trump-Russia “collusion” farce, that is the key question. If you don’t get the bureau’s role right, you’re apt to get the most consequential things wrong.

Durham has banked his investigation on the premise that the FBI was a victim — an innocent dupe manipulated by the wily Clinton campaign. On Tuesday, this misplaced faith led to the acquittal of Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann.

The irony abounds. A Washington, DC, jury found Sussmann found [sic] not guilty of making a false statement to the bureau even though Durham’s team convincingly proved the falsity of the statement he made — namely, that in purveying derogatory information about Donald Trump, Sussmann was not representing any client, when in fact he was representing the Hillary Clinton campaign. Moreover, although the acquittal will encourage Democrats and their legacy media allies in seeking to discredit Durham’s probe, the law enforcement shenanigans uncovered by the trial illustrate that the probe is essential.

Nevertheless, the probe will come to naught, and accountability will remain a pipedream, unless Durham gets the FBI’s role right.

As I contended in “Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency,” the outrage of the Trump-Russia “collusion” farce is that the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the United States government was put in the service of partisan politics — first to attempt to get Hillary Clinton elected president and, when that failed, to hamstring the Trump administration’s capacity to govern.

That is, what makes Russiagate a uniquely dangerous chapter in modern American history is the willful interference by powerful federal agencies in electoral politics. The real collusion was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama-era executive branch — particularly (but by no means exclusively), the FBI...

https://nypost.com/2022/05/31/durham-lo ... laborator/
I guess the late-in-the-day FBI investigation of Clinton before the 2016 election was just a cunning ruse, as Baldrick might say. How much harder would America have loved Trump if not for that nasty... nasty woman?
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:37 pm

Excellent observation regarding the FBI putting its thumb on the scales shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

The author of that piece is interesting. A seemingly competent prosecutor who pushed the 'death panels' nonsense about 'Obamacare' and claimed that Obama was advancing a 'sharia agenda.' Maybe not the most reliable source. :ask:

Further details of the unravelling ...

'Michael Flynn’s Identity Was Not Improperly Revealed By Obama Officials, A Secret DOJ Report Has Found'
A Justice Department probe found that members of the Obama administration did not seek to reveal the identity of Michael Flynn “for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons,” a newly disclosed report reveals.

The document details the results of a monthslong investigation into the so-called unmasking of Flynn, who briefly served as national security adviser to then-president Donald Trump before he resigned in February 2017 in the wake of the revelation that he had lied about phone conversations he held with Russia’s ambassador to the US.

Republicans later accused officials in the Obama administration of using their positions to reveal anonymized names in classified documents, known in the intelligence community as unmasking, in order to target individuals in Trump’s orbit. In May 2020, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, ordered an investigation into the practice of unmasking. That review, conducted by John Bash — at the time the US attorney for the Western District of Texas — was finished the following September without finding any evidence of wrongdoing.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Sun Jun 05, 2022 5:54 am

Durham may be a real straight-arrow, an unwitting tool for Bill Barr's corrupt use of the power of the US Department of Justice. Nonetheless Barr thinks he did the important work of getting 'the real story out.'

'Bill Barr's reign of innuendo -- unmasked'
Hours after the jury dismissed Durham’s bull, BuzzFeed published a previously secret Justice Department report, also ordered by Barr, in which Barr’s own DOJ concluded that the Obama administration didn’t intend to expose the identity of Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn “for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons.” It was further evidence that another favorite Trump claim enabled by Barr — that Obama officials engaged in illegal “unmasking” — was bunk.

The day after these twin repudiations of Barr’s fantasies, the hoaxster explained himself on Fox News — by arguing that Durham’s failure in court was in fact a triumph. “While he did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury,” Barr said, “I think he accomplished something far more important.”

...

So what did Barr think was more important than Durham actually winning his case? “He crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative,” Barr said, and “he exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI.”

Durham didn’t “crystallize” or “expose” anything. He packed his court filings with innuendo, and the jury decided he hadn’t made his case. The only conviction Durham has earned to date was a plea deal with an FBI lawyer over a doctored email — and that wrongdoing was uncovered by the Justice Department’s inspector general, not Durham.

But Barr’s argument, that the innuendo Durham spread is “far more important” than proving actual wrongdoing, unmasks Barr’s perverted view of justice. He didn’t tap Durham (or John Bash, who handled the unmasking probe) primarily to prosecute criminal behavior. He launched the inquiries to tell a political “story.”

“Part of this operation is to try to get the real story out,” Barr told Fox News. “And I have said from the beginning, you know, if we can get convictions, if they are achievable, then John Durham will achieve them. But, the other aspect of this is to get the story out.” Bringing a case for such a purpose violates Justice Department policy.

Running Trump’s DOJ, Barr was all about telling stories rather than prosecuting wrongdoing. He sat on the Mueller report of the original Russia investigation, instead releasing his own purported summary that gave a misleading impression of Mueller’s findings. Barr baldly alleged, “I think spying did occur” against the Trump campaign, but no proof has surfaced.

In fulfilling Donald Trump’s demands to investigate the Russia investigators and those who allegedly “unmasked” Flynn, Barr wasn’t seeking justice. He now admits that trying to make a case that the FBI acted in bad faith against Trump — as Republicans allege — would have been “onerous” and “a herculean case” and a “very hard thing to prove.”
We'll see if Durham's important work will continue.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:30 am

Sophistry all the way down.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Joe » Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:12 am

I'm sure we'll just hear less of Durham and more of Hunter's laptop. :coffee:
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Sep 14, 2022 2:44 pm

Aww. We all had such high hopes that the horrible Obama person and his Deep State goons would face justice for their dastardly scheming against Dear Leader. :sadcheer:

'Durham Inquiry Appears to Wind Down as Grand Jury Expires'
When John H. Durham was assigned by the Justice Department in 2019 to examine the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Donald J. Trump and his supporters expressed a belief that the inquiry would prove that a “deep state” conspiracy including top Obama-era officials had worked to sabotage him.

Now Mr. Durham appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry without anything close to the results Mr. Trump was seeking. The grand jury that Mr. Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired, and while he could convene another, there are currently no plans to do so, three people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Durham and his team are working to complete a final report by the end of the year, they said, and one of the lead prosecutors on his team is leaving for a job with a prominent law firm.

Over the course of his inquiry, Mr. Durham has developed cases against two people accused of lying to the F.B.I. in relation to outside efforts to investigate purported Trump-Russia ties, but he has not charged any conspiracy or put any high-level officials on trial. The recent developments suggest that the chances of any more indictments are remote.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Sep 14, 2022 4:49 pm

Deep State got to him eh? :tea:
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Joe » Wed Sep 14, 2022 6:48 pm

Feel the power of the Deep State!
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Oct 19, 2022 4:01 am

I think there will have to be an investigation of the Durham investigation once the Republicans are in charge again.

'Primary source for Trump-Russia dossier acquitted, handing special counsel Durham another trial loss'
Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, was acquitted Tuesday of four counts of lying to the FBI in an embarrassing defeat for special counsel John Durham.

Durham has taken two cases to trial, and both have ended in acquittals. After more than three years looking for misconduct in the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, Durham has only secured one conviction: the guilty plea of a low-level FBI lawyer, who got probation.

The jury returned not guilty verdicts on all charges against Danchenko, a Russian expat and think tank analyst who provided the bulk of the material for the anti-Trump dossier. Durham initially charged Danchenko with five counts of lying to the FBI, but a judge threw out one of the charges on Friday.

Jurors deliberated for about nine hours at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Joe » Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:32 pm

Durham's report should be interesting. I wonder how many words will it take to say, "I got nothing." :read:
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:34 pm

lol
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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Spygate is unravelling

Post by Svartalf » Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:59 pm

Joe wrote:
Wed Oct 19, 2022 2:32 pm
Durham's report should be interesting. I wonder how many words will it take to say, "I got nothing." :read:
If you take a cue from religions, it can take several thousand pages
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