Tag: trump derangement syndrome

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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NBC is slammed for report about black people needing ‘safe spaces’ to camp to avoid ‘trauma’ from white people who might have Trump flags

NBC News has been slammed online for a report about black people needing ‘safe spaces’ to enjoy outdoor activities.

NBC BLK reporter Char Adams described in a recently-revived June essay several black-led outdoor groups working to ‘provide safe spaces for black people to enjoy outdoor activities and dispel myths that the outdoors doesn’t belong to us.’

The report focused heavily on creating racially segregated ‘safe spaces’ so that black people can avoid ‘harassment’ and ‘trauma’ from white people who might fly ‘Trump flags’ at campsites.  

Adams explained that the groups were founded to combat racism from the Jim Crow Era barring African Americans from National Parks, and current stereotypes that black people do not enjoy outdoor activities.

Many on Twitter criticized the report after NBC News re-shared it on Tuesday, saying the media outlet was race-baiting.

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DOJ Reveals How Much Jack Smith’s Special Counsel Probe Is Costing Taxpayers

Special counsel Jack Smith’s wide-ranging investigation into former President Donald Trump has cost taxpayers over $9 million since he was appointed last year, according to a newly released government report on Friday.

His team has incurred some $5.4 million in rent, personnel, and other costs, while another $3.8 million in “component expenses” was also incurred by other Justice Department (DOJ) agencies over four months, according to figures (pdf) released by the DOJ on Friday. Last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith, a former Hague prosecutor, to oversee multiple probes targeting the former president, while Mr. Trump has characterized Smith as a partisan actor who is working on behalf of the Democrats to undermine him.

“Although not legally required, DOJ components that support the [Smith special counsel office] were asked to track non-reimbursed expenditures attributable to this investigation, which includes hours worked by agents and investigative support analysts, as well as the cost of protective details for the Special Counsel when warranted,” the DOJ report said. “The expenditures for this period totaled $3,818,818.”

About $2 million was used for federal employee salaries, another $1 million was paid for investigative support, and some $80,000 was used to help employees relocate while they worked for Smith. The report runs through March 31 of this year.

In comparison, special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the controversial FBI Crossfire Hurricane probe cost about $1 million in the same time period, while special counsel Robert Hur’s probe has cost some $600,000, according to reports. Meanwhile, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, which ultimately did not reveal that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russian government, cost a whopping $32 million upon its conclusion.

Months after Mr. Smith was appointed, Mr. Hur was named by Mr. Garland to head the investigation into the handling of classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and private office. A report issued by the DOJ showed that he spent most of his expenses on employee pay.

Overall, Mr. Durham’s team spent about $9.4 million over several years, according to a filing, starting in late 2020 after then-Attorney General Bill Barr named him to head the investigation into the origins of the Trump–Russia probe and collusion narrative. His work ended in May after releasing a significant, 300-page report that faulted the FBI’s leadership for approving the investigation into Mr. Trump—although no charges were filed against any current employees at the FBI or DOJ and no one was fired.

That investigation netted one guilty plea from a former FBI lawyer who admitted to falsifying an email about a surveillance warrant for a former Trump aide. Mr. Durham’s prosecutions against a Democratic campaign lawyer, Michael Sussmann, and Igor Danchenko, who was used as a source for a controversial and widely discredited dossier, ended up in acquittals, respectively.

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A Post-Clemency Prosecution Shines a Light on a Broken System

A month before he left office, then-President Donald Trump freed Philip Esformes, a Florida nursing home operator who had served nearly five years of a 20-year sentence for bilking Medicare and Medicaid. Despite that commutation, the Justice Department plans to retry Esformes for the same conduct that sent him to prison in the first place.

Critics of that unprecedented move say it undermines the pardon power and violates the Fifth Amendment’s ban on double jeopardy. As witnesses at a recent congressional hearing emphasized, the case also illustrates the sorry state of the federal clemency system, which in recent decades has become increasingly stingy, inefficient, and haphazard.

Esformes was arrested in 2016 and charged with numerous crimes related to a scheme that prosecutors said involved bribes, kickbacks, and medically unnecessary treatments, all of which helped fund a “lavish lifestyle.” After an eight-week trial in 2019, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. directed the jury to acquit Esformes of six charges, including two counts of health care fraud, deeming the evidence underlying them insufficient as a matter of law.

The jury convicted Esformes of 20 other charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, payment and receipt of kickbacks, and obstruction of justice. But it failed to reach verdicts on six counts, including the central charge of conspiring to commit health care fraud.

Based on the 20 convictions, Right on Crime Executive Director Brett Tolman noted in his congressional testimony, “Mr. Esformes was facing 5 years in prison.” But prosecutors successfully urged Scola to sentence Esformes as if he had been convicted of health care fraud, which “increased Mr. Esformes’ sentence by 15 years.”

Although it defies conventional notions of justice, federal judges are allowed to punish defendants for crimes that have not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, Scola explicitly said he considered the six undecided counts in determining Esformes’ sentence.

The Justice Department nevertheless wants to take another stab at convicting Esformes of those crimes. It argues that the commutation Esformes received does not preclude another prosecution, because it says nothing about the unresolved counts.

Trump explicitly left in place three years of post-release supervision, plus restitution and forfeiture totaling about $44 million. But it is hard to believe he thought he was leaving the door open to a trial that could send Esformes back to prison. That prospect instead seems to be the result of a mistake that could have been avoided if Trump had been better advised.

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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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Schiff Aide Threatened Researchers Who Refused to Investigate False Trump–Russia Links

Staffers for Democratic congressman Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Senator Jack Reed (R.I.) threatened two university researchers to force them to help with an investigation into former president Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the researchers told Special Counsel John Durham.

The researchers, from Georgia Tech University, told Durham that they were invited to Washington, D.C., in November 2018 to provide what they thought was a briefing about the school’s federal research contracts. Instead, they were lured into a meeting with staff members working for Schiff at the House Intelligence Committee and for Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The researchers said the Democratic staffers asked them to analyze a news article about alleged links between Trump’s company and Russia’s Alfa Bank.

When they balked at the request because it was “inappropriate” conduct for a public university, the Democratic staffers issued what one researcher believed was a “mild threat.” A staffer for Reed told the researchers that “we are now in charge,” and a staffer for Schiff pointed out the Democrat would soon take over as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, one researcher told Durham.

Durham’s office investigated whether the Democrats’ pressure campaign merited prosecution “for contract fraud or abuse of government resources,” though no charges were filed.

The revelation marks yet another black eye for Schiff in his failed quest to establish ties between Trump and Russia. The California Democrat, who is running for Senate, infamously claimed in 2017 that he had seen “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He also read portions of the discredited Steele dossier at a congressional hearing on March 20, 2017. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) stripped Schiff of his House Intelligence position in January, citing the Democrat’s promotion of Trump conspiracy theories.

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John Durham releases final report, concludes FBI had no verified intel when it opened probe on Trump

Special Counsel John Durham released a damning final report Monday after more than three years investigating the Russia collusion probe, declaring the FBI had no verified intelligence or evidence when it opened the Crossfire Hurricane probe of President Donald Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016. The prosecutor, however, recommended no new criminal charges.

“Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote in a 300-plus page report sent to Congress and others and obtained by Just the News.

DOJ was slated to make the report public later Monday.

The prosecutor faulted the department and the FBI for failing to follow their own standards and allowing a probe to persist, including the surveillance of an American citizen, without basis under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we concluded the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

“The FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probably cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power.”

You can read the full report here:

 Durham Report

The report’s release touched off instant outrage and impact on Capitol Hill, where House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted he planned to summon Durham for testimony next week.

The FBI immediately reacted, saying Durham’s findings justified the changes that current Director Christopher Wray made after taking over from fired Director James Comey.

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Billionaire Who Funded E. Jean Carroll’s Lawsuit Against Trump Visited Epstein’s Island

The Democrat billionaire who funded E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against Donald Trump visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and met him on at least two other occasions, records show.

Trump was ordered by a New York City jury to pay $5 million in damages to E Jean Carroll for “sexually abusing” her nearly three decades ago in a department store changing room.

The former president was also found responsible for defaming Carroll by calling her a “liar” after asserting that he had never even met the woman.

Trump called the case a “con job,” posting on Truth Social that he has “absolutely no idea who this woman is” and that the verdicts is “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”

The civil verdict, which was overseen by Clinton-appointed judge Lewis Kaplan, is likely to remain tied up in appeal for a significant amount of time, during which Trump won’t have to pay Carroll anything.

Carroll’s secret funding source has been outed as being Democrat billionaire and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

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Dem Megadonor Funding Trump Rape Lawsuit Visited Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Pedophile Island’

A Democratic megadonor who is helping bankroll a rape and defamation lawsuit against former president Donald Trump visited the private Caribbean island of Jeffrey Epstein years after Epstein registered as a sex offender for soliciting underage girls.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman visited Epstein’s compound in the Virgin Islands in 2014, known as “Pedophile Island” because he allegedly housed young girls there. Hoffman may have also stayed overnight at Epstein’s New York City residence in December 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those visits came years after it was publicly revealed that Epstein pleaded guilty on charges that he solicited sex from underage girls. Hoffman has been funding former journalist E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump since 2020.

“It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors,” Hoffman told the Journal. It’s not the first time Hoffman has come under fire for meeting Epstein. He apologized after Epstein’s death in 2019 after revelations that he hosted Epstein at a dinner in 2015. Hoffman did not disclose his earlier encounters with the registered sex offender.

Hoffman is one of the Democratic party’s largest donors. He contributed $1.5 million in 2020 to a super PAC supporting President Joe Biden and has given tens of millions more to other Democratic groups. He has also funded several controversial political operations on behalf of the Democratic party. In 2017, he funded a tech firm that created fake online personas to pressure conservatives not to vote in the Alabama special election. He has funded ACRONYM, the group behind a network of partisan news sites that are disguised to look like legitimate local news organizations.

He donated $2 million to Integrity First for America, a legal advocacy group that gave $620,000 to a legal defense fund for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the infamous Steele dossier, which falsely accused the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia.

Hoffman, who serves on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board, began funding the Trump lawsuit in 2020. He backed the lawsuit through one of his nonprofits, American Future Republic, court filings revealed.

Hoffman says he supports the lawsuit because of “Trump’s hostility towards women.”

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Trump Accuser E. Jean Carroll Keeps Calling Rape ‘Sexy’, As Social Media Notices Her Story Matches a 2012 Law & Order Episode.

Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll has how claimed that simulated rapes in the Game of Thrones television series were “sexy” and used to excite viewers and draw an audience, in a bid to contextualize comments made to CNN host Anderson Cooper.

In doing so, some contend Carroll herself comes across as a rape fantasist. The notion is perhaps underscored by the fact that her story about Donald Trump raping her appears in a 2012 episode of Law and Order, featuring rape fantasists and the very same Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing rooms she claims the former President used in an attack on her.

Carroll – a Law and Order fan – first made her allegations against Trump in a 2019 book.

The former Elle advice columnist, 79, made her most remarks in reference to an interview she gave to Anderson Cooper on CNN, in which she bizarrely suggested that “most people think of rape as sexy”. She had also previously told Britain’s leftist Guardian newspaper that rape is “a fantasy” and “very sexual” and that this is why she previously refused to describe her alleged attack as “rape”.

The live, televised interview was so strange that even Cooper, scarcely an example of traditional values, balked and cut to commercial.

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