Tag: russiagate

Deep State Attempts to Resurrect RussiaGate as Trump Gains Speed

As former President Donald Trump began tightening his grip on becoming the Republican presidential nominee early this year, former intelligence officials began ramping up familiar rhetoric and fear-mongering among the American public — that he is pro-Russia and a vote for Trump is a vote for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The same players from “RussiaGate” — the failed deep state hoax to frame Trump for colluding with Russia to win in 2016 — are pushing the narrative, with some help from Never Trump allies who made their way into in the Trump administration.

One of them, Fiona Hill, a Russia hawk who was reportedly recruited into the Trump administration by K.T. McFarland and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Michael Flynn, has been making the rounds in the media warning about Trump as the public face for those disgruntled former intelligence officials.

“He wants to weaponize the intelligence community. And the fact is you need to look with a 360 degree perspective. He can’t just cherry pick what he wants to hear when there are so many U.S. adversaries and countries that don’t wish the U.S. well,” Hill told Politico recently. “If he guts the intel on one thing, he’ll be partially blinding us.”

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Deja vu: Russia collusion is back

Anyone tuning into Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) interview with former White House press secretary and MSNBC host Jen Psaki on Monday night would be forgiven for thinking they were watching a clip from 2016. Pelosi said she believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has something” on former President Donald Trump and that it likely involves money. Sounds familiar, right?

After establishing that Trump “brought disgrace to the White House” and that “we must be sure that he does not step one foot into the White House” again, Pelosi asked, “What does he [Putin] have on Donald Trump that he has to constantly be catering to Putin? Telling Putin to go into these countries, NATO countries.”

“What do you think Putin has on him?” Psaki asked. “I mean, it sure seems like something, as you’ve said a few times, given that he refuses to criticize him, that he seems to be a fanboy of him. Are you worried at all?”

“I don’t know what he has on him, but I think it’s probably financial,” Pelosi replied. “Either something financial he has him on or something on the come. Something that he expects to get.” 

Of course, Pelosi doesn’t believe a word of what she said. Trump’s potential ties to the Kremlin, financial or otherwise, were debunked by special counsel Robert Mueller’s exhaustive 22-month investigation, which ended in March 2019. She is merely laying the groundwork for the Democrats’ plan to defeat Trump in November.

Lo and behold, the loyal foot soldiers in the legacy media are already repeating Pelosi’s words. The marching orders from the Democratic National Committee or the Biden campaign or whatever entity it is that determines party messaging has gone out. 

It is now clear that resurrecting the narrative that Trump is an agent of Russia will be an integral part of the Democrats’ 2024 strategy. And they are using it to discredit the House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden’s alleged involvement in his family’s foreign influence-peddling business. 

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Crooked FBI Special Agent Who Investigated Trump-Russia Hoax Faces Additional Prison Time — Sentenced to Over 2 Years for Concealing Payment from Albanian Businessman

Charles F. McGonigal, a former high-ranking FBI official who once played a pivotal role in the controversial Trump-Russia collusion investigation, was sentenced on Friday to an additional 28 months in federal prison.

McGonigal, 55, faced the judicial consequences for failing to disclose a substantial sum of $225,000 he received from an Albanian businessman connected to the Albanian government.

The sentencing was made public by U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, alongside FBI Assistant Directors Donald Alway of the Los Angeles Field Office and David Sundberg of the Washington Field Office.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly handed down the sentence, which also includes a three-year term of supervised release after McGonigal’s imprisonment.

McGonigal was previously the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office, a role in which he was responsible for, among other duties, counterintelligence investigations.

In September, McGonigal admitted that he received at least $225,000 in cash from a person with whom he also traveled internationally, during which they met with foreign citizens. This person later became an informant for the FBI in a criminal case concerning foreign political lobbying, a case over which McGonigal had supervisory authority.

The court recognized that his actions significantly obstructed the administration of justice.

As the Special Agent in Charge for the FBI’s New York Field Office, McGonigal had a significant role in overseeing matters of national security and counterintelligence from August 2017 until his retirement in September 2018.

“During this time, McGonigal concealed from the FBI the nature of his relationship with a former foreign security officer and businessperson who had ongoing business interests in foreign countries and before foreign governments. Specifically, McGonigal hid from the FBI that he received at least $225,000 in cash from the individual and traveled abroad with him and met with foreign nationals, in-part to advance their private business interests,” according to the DOJ.

This sentence follows his prior conviction for charges unrelated to the current case.

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More on the Secret Binder That Could Expose Officials in Russia Collusion Hoax

I reported earlier about the bombshell report that blew apart the “official” account of the start of the Russia collusion hoax and explained that it was started by the Obama CIA. 

The report – written by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag – details how the Obama administration CIA allegedly and improperly called on foreign allies from the “Five Eyes Nations” (the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) to surveil 26 Trump aides as “targets for collection and misinformation.” The journalists got this information from sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation.

That’s big news. Shellenberger told Fox News that it was both illegal and election interference. 

Some of the information on this is in a binder, Shellenberger said. There has been a rumor about the binder and speculation that Mar-a-Lago was raided because of information that former President Donald Trump may have had on Crossfire Hurricane. 

Shellenberger is now talking about his and fellow journalist’s new report that gives more information about the secret binder. 

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Ex-FBI Intel Chief Who ‘Investigated’ Trump-Russia Collusion Gets 4 Years In Prison For Colluding With Russia

A former top FBI official who led the agency’s New York counterintelligence division, and played a key role in the Trump-Russia collusion probe, has been sentenced to 4 years in prison for colluding with Russia – and he may face an even longer sentence under a second indictment for hiding $225,000 in payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer.

Charles McGonigal, 55, was arrested in January and slapped with two separate indictments – one in New York and one in Washington, with the New York case related to taking nearly $200,000 in bribes from Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska to investigate a rival oligarch, and the Washington case concerning the Albanian money.

Mr. McGonigal made at least $25,000 as an investigator for the law firm before directly working for Mr. Deripaska. He received an initial payment of $51,000 and then payments of $41,790 each month for three months from August 2021 to November 2021, the indictment said.

Prosecutors said Mr. McGonigal concealed his ties to the Russian oligarch by telling friends he was working for a “rich Russian guy” and stressed that his work was legal. In conversations about Mr. Deripaska, he would try to keep his employer’s identity a secret by referring to him as “the big guy” and “you know whom.” -Washington Times

McGonigal pleaded guilty in August after being hit with four initial corruption charges – including conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions, money laundering, conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals. Each count carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

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“He’ll Do It Again”: Hillary Clinton Claims Putin Will Interfere In 2024 Election

Hillary Clinton maintained her assertion of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interference in American elections, and warned he’ll interfere in the 2024 presidential race “if he has a chance.”

“I don’t think, despite all of the deniers, there’s any doubt that he interfered in our election or that he has interfered in many ways in the internal affairs of other countries—funding political parties, funding, you know, political candidates, buying off, you know, government officials in different places,” Ms. Clinton said in a Sept. 25 interview with MSNBC.

She said Mr. Putin “hates democracy” and hates the West and the United States.

“I fear that the Russians have proved themselves to be quite adept at interfering. And if he has a chance, he’ll do it again,” she said.

Ms. Clinton said that Mr. Putin has determined “he can do two things simultaneously.” First is that Russia can “continue to damage and divide us internally. And he’s quite good at it.”

The 2016 Democrat presidential candidate said that the Russian president has “a lot of apologists and enablers in our own country.” Ms. Clinton believes part of the reason Mr. Putin “worked so hard against me is because he didn’t think that he wanted me in the White House.”

Ms. Clinton insisted that the United States is heading toward fascism.

“We have to reject authoritarianism, we have to reject a kind of creeping fascism, almost, of people who are really ready to turn over their thinking, their votes, to wannabe dictators. And we can’t allow that to proceed.”

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DHS Taps Spooks Who Signed False Hunter Biden Letter for ‘Intelligence Experts’ Group

Three former intelligence officials who signed the debunked letter asserting the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian disinformation plot have landed senior intelligence positions in the Biden administration.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday appointed former CIA director John Brennan, former national intelligence director James Clapper, and former CIA officer Paul Kolbe to the 17-person Homeland Intelligence Experts Group, which will “provide advice and perspectives on intelligence and national security efforts,” according to a press release from the agency. The new committee will focus on “foreign nation-state adversaries, domestic violent extremists, cyber criminals” among other issues, according to Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Ken Wainstein, who served as an attorney for Brennan and Clapper.

The department’s choices to lead its initiative are sure to garner controversy. Neither Brennan, Clapper, nor Kolbe have expressed any contrition for their role in the now-infamous letter released on Oct. 19, 2020, which alleged the trove of incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The three former spies signed the letter at the behest of former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, who told Congress he spearheaded the letter in order to help Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and to provide Biden with a “talking point” to use in his upcoming debate with Donald Trump. Morell initially contacted Brennan, his former boss at the CIA, to sign the letter. Brennan immediately agreed, writing in an email to Morell that the letter was a “good initiative.”

There is no evidence that Russia was involved in the release of Biden’s laptop, which contains emails and other correspondences about foreign business dealings that are at the center of House Republican investigations. FBI analysts authenticated Biden’s laptop in November 2019, according to an IRS agent who investigated the younger Biden for unpaid taxes.

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FBI Official Involved In Trump-Russia Hoax To Plead Guilty To — Conspiring With Russia

An ex-FBI agent who led the agency’s New York counterintelligence division and played a key role in the Trump-Russia collusion probe – will plead guilty to charges of colluding with Russia himself, a federal judge suggested in a Monday order reported by the Washington Times.

Charles McGonigal was arrested in January and charged with violating US sanctions on Russia by taking secret payments from a Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, to investigate a rival oligarch.

“The court has been informed that defendant Charles McGonigal may wish to enter a change of plea,” wrote Judge Jennifer Reardon in a brief order in which she also scheduled a hearing for Aug. 15.

McGonigal initially pleaded not guilty on four corruption charges – including conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions, money laundering, conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

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Jen Psaki and Dem Lawmaker Peddle New Conspiracy Theory: Biden Investigators are Captured by Foreign Agents

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and House Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), two key perpetrators of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, had another conspiracy theory to peddle on Psaki’s CNN show on Sunday.

On MSNBC, the interlocutors bantered about the baseless speculation that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) was an asset of foreign agents, due to his investigations into alleged Biden family corruption.

“I want to ask about the work of the Oversight Committee, because you and Congressman Dan Goldman sent a letter to Oversight Chair James Comer this week requesting that he hand over any information he’s received from Gal Luft, with the man who the GOP claimed, for those who haven’t been following this in detail, he had evidence of corruption by the Biden family — who was charged with arms trafficking, sanctions violations, and acting as an unregistered agent for China,” Psaki said. “It is almost like part of a movie that is happening right now. According to an indictment on sale this week. What information are you seeking about James Comer’s involvement with Luft and what do you want to know?”

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Russiagate’s Missing Pieces

The first thing to understand about John Durham is that he was a fearless prosecutor who went after organized crime and put in prison retired and active FBI agents who protected the mob for money or other enticements. One of the agents he stopped had enabled James “Whitey” Bulger Jr., once one of America’s most wanted men, the Winter Hill Gang boss who evaded arrest for sixteen years.

In his forty-five years as a state and federal prosecutor in Connecticut and Virginia, Durham worked often and closely with FBI agents, especially on cases that involved violations of federal racketeering statutes.

Durham also handled two inquiries into the CIA’s conduct in the War on Terror, and he did so without angering his superiors in the executive branch. In one case he was asked to investigate the alleged destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations, the so-called torture tapes. His final report on the matter remains secret, and he recommended that no charges be filed. He was later asked to lead a Justice Department inquiry into the legality of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” that resulted in the death of two detainees. In that case, he was told that officers who were given and obeyed what were determined to be illegal orders—there were many of those after 9/11—could not be prosecuted. No charges were filed.

Durham’s 306-page report was made public on May 15, and it pleased no one with its focus on the obvious. The journalist Susan Schmidt, whose byline was a must-read when she was a reporter for the Washington Post, pointed out on Racket News that Durham said the FBI would have done less damage to its reputation if it had scrutinized the questionable actions of the Clinton campaign in 2016: the Feds “might at least have cast a critical eye on the phony evidence they were gathering.”

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