Category Archives: FBI

Rosenstein Authorized Release of Strzok-Page Texts

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Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein acknowledged in a court filing Friday that he authorized the release of text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to media outlets.

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Rosenstein said in a declaration filed in response to a lawsuit Strzok has pending against the Justice Department and FBI that he authorized releasing the text messages to media outlets Dec. 12, 2017, the eve of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

“The disclosure obviously would adversely affect public confidence in the FBI, but providing the most egregious messages in one package would avoid the additional harm of prolonged selective disclosures and minimize the appearance of the Department concealing information that was embarrassing to the FBI,” said Rosenstein, who left the Justice Department in May 2019.

Strzok, the former deputy chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, sued the Justice Department and FBI on Aug. 6, 2019, for unlawful termination, infringement of due process, and violations of the Privacy Act. He said he consulted with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Affairs, which determined that there was no legal basis preventing the release of the messages, and the authorized the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs to provide 375 messages to a group of media outlets.

Rosenstein asserted that Strzok and Page’s privacy interests were not violated by releasing the messages because they “were sent on government phones with the knowledge that they were subject to review by FBI” and because they “were so inappropriate and intertwined with their FBI work that they raised concerns about political bias influencing official duties.”

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The Justice Department argued that Rosenstein did his due diligence by having his aides consult with the DOJ’s top privacy official Peter Winn on the release of the text messages, and cannot be held responsible for violating the Privacy Act because there was no willful intent.

“Even if [the] Plaintiff could show that the disclosure was somehow inconsistent with the Privacy Act — the Department did not intentionally or willfully violate the statute,” the court filings read. Strzok and Page, who were both members of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team, were caught exchanging messages that were disparaging of President Trump and highly partisan in nature throughout 2016.

Page, who eventually resigned from the Bureau, sued the DOJ last month over the release of the text messages, claiming it violated the Federal Privacy Act. She said she has suffered numerous damages including therapy costs and “permanent loss of earning capacity due to reputational damage.”

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Strzok also sued the DOJ last month, claiming his First Amendment Rights had been violated. He is seeking reinstatement on the basis that his firing was unconstitutional. Rosenstein’s declaration was part of the government’s defense in Strzok’s lawsuit.

Rosenstein resigned from his post with the DOJ in April and is now with a corporate law firm in Washington, D.C.

Iran Refuses to Release Black Box of Downed Ukraine Plane

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(Reuters) – Ukraine will press Iran to hand over the black boxes from the crash of a Ukrainian passenger plane at a meeting with a visiting Iranian delegation on Monday, Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told reporters.

Ukraine would convey the message to visiting Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami, that returning the black boxes would show that Iran wanted an unbiased investigation of the crash, Prystaiko said.

“His main task is to apologize and acknowledge what happened. We hope that we can go a little further than just political discussions and discuss practical problems. Among them in particular is the return of the black boxes,” Prystaiko said.

Iran has appeared to reverse course after its earlier decision to send abroad the black box flight recorders from the Ukrainian jetliner shot down earlier this month, saying Tehran would first review the audiotapes.

Hassan Rezaeifar, who is leading the investigation into the tragedy, was cited by the state-run IRNA news agency on Sunday as saying: “The flight recorders from the Ukrainian Boeing are in Iranian hands and we have no plans to send them out.”

“We are trying to read the black boxes here in Iran. Otherwise, our options are Ukraine and France, but no decision has been taken so far to send them to another country,” he added.

A day earlier, another Iranian news agency, semi-official Tasnim, cited Rezaeifar as saying that it was not possible to interpret the recordings in Iran, and that the black boxes would be sent to Kyiv, where French, American and Canadian experts would help analyze them.

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***Gotta wonder if the Iranians protesting against the regime know this.

A slew of influential Iranian artists, television personalities and sports stars have publicly broken with Tehran after the government denied for days that it shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane this month.

“Apologies for lying to you for 13 years,” Gelareh Jabbari, a host on the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting TV network, wrote last Monday in an Instagram post. The post has since been deleted, but it was seen by

“It was very hard for me to believe our people have been killed, forgive me for believing this late,” Jabbari, the anchor of the lifestyle show “Good Morning Iran,” added in an apparent reference to the 82 Iranians who were among the 176 passengers and crew members killed.

Iran initially denied that a missile had struck the plane on Jan. 8 shortly after it took off from Tehran, the capital, only to reverse course and admit that it had shot the plane down by mistake.

Many students and middle-class Iranians took to the streets in protest. In Tehran, some students refused to trample on paintings of U.S. and Israeli flags in an apparent rejection of the government’s attempts to deflect blame.

Those in more influential positions used their sway to send a message.

The government’s handling of the incident has served only to “confirm an existing sense of moral bankruptcy that the Islamic Republic is accused of,” said Afshin Shahi, an associate professor of Middle East politics at Bradford University in England.

“The Islamic Republic is facing the worst legitimacy crisis in its 40-year history, and the pressures are mounting from every angle,” he said, adding that state repression, censorship and the country’s economic woes in the last three years had created a profound sense of disillusionment. “The gap between the state and society has widened to an extreme extent.”

In a sign of how seriously Iranian authorities are taking the backlash, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered a sermon at last week’s Friday prayers praising recent strikes on Iraqi bases hosting U.S. forces.

The Not so Pure Comey Being Investigated AGAIN

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Voters would all be rich if we had a dollar for every leak, lie and scandal coming out of Washington DC.

So, Comey is back in the news…he did a no no.

Department of Justice prosecutors are reportedly investigating the possibility that former FBI director James Comey leaked a classified Russian intelligence document to the media during the Hillary Clinton email investigation, according to a Thursday report from the New York Times.

Per the Times, the investigation is centered around two 2017 articles from the Times and the Washington Post describing the Russian document, which played a key role in Comey’s unilateral decision to announce the FBI would not pursue charges against Clinton for using a private email server to conduct official business during her time as secretary of state.

The document, which was shared with the U.S. by Dutch intelligence, includes an analysis of an email exchange between Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D., Fla.), who was then chairing the Democratic National Committee, and Leonard Bernardo, an official with the Soros-backed non-profit Open Society Foundations. Wasserman-Schultz assures Bernardo in the email that then-attorney general Loretta Lynch will make sure Clinton wasn’t charged in the email probe.

Comey has long taken criticism for his handling of the Clinton investigation from Republicans and President Trump, who suggested in December that Comey could get jail time.
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Well now, the plot thickens with new names in the equation.
We cannot forget this little item either.Former FBI Director James Comey violated official policy in the way he handled his memos describing his exchanges with President Trump, an investigation concluded — but Comey won’t be charged.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz conducted the investigation into Comey’s actions and then referred his results to prosecutors.

“After reviewing the matter, the DOJ declined prosecution.”

Investigators concluded that Comey broke several rules.

One involved the former director’s decision to arrange for a friend to disclose the contents of a memo to a New York Times reporter. Another involved Comey’s decision to keep memos at home and discuss them with his lawyers but not reveal to the FBI their contents or what he was doing.

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In part from RedState: Now this new investigation involves leaks relating to two articles including one in the Washington Post and another in the NY Times (now we see why the spinning) about a Russian intelligence document, which the Times says was highly classified.

Now this part is fascinating:

The document played a key role in Mr. Comey’s decision to sideline the Justice Department and announce in July 2016 that the F.B.I. would not recommend that Hillary Clinton face charges in her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state.

Wait, what? What would a Russian intelligence document have to do with Comey stepping in and taking the power away from the DOJ, which he could not properly do anyway? At the time, Comey implied in his reasoning that there was classified information with regard to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The document is mentioned in a book published last fall, “Deep State: Trump, the F.B.I., and the Rule of Law” by James B. Stewart, a Times reporter.

Here’s the money paragraph, hidden down in the story.

The latest investigation involves material that Dutch intelligence operatives siphoned off Russian computers and provided to the United States government. The information included a Russian analysis of what appeared to be an email exchange during the 2016 presidential campaign between Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida who was also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee at the time, and Leonard Benardo, an official with the Open Society Foundations, a democracy-promoting organization whose founder, George Soros, has long been a target of the far right.

In the email, Ms. Wasserman Schultz suggested that then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch would make sure that Mrs. Clinton would not be prosecuted in the email case. Both Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Benardo have denied being in contact, suggesting the document was meant to be Russian disinformation.

That document was one of the key factors that drove Mr. Comey to hold a news conference in July 2016 announcing that investigators would recommend no charges against Mrs. Clinton. Typically, senior Justice Department officials would decide how to proceed in such a high-profile case, but Mr. Comey was concerned that if Ms. Lynch played a central role in deciding whether to charge Mrs. Clinton, Russia could leak the email.

Whoa, so strip everything away and what the document says is that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was guaranteeing that Lynch would get Hillary Clinton off.

So where is the investigation of this?

The Times does the best it can, suggesting it’s disinformation. They literally accuse Trump of trying to pressure the DOJ to investigate his enemies despite no such thing ever occurring.

But American officials at the time did not believe that Ms. Lynch would hinder the Clinton email investigation, and neither Ms. Wasserman Schultz nor Mr. Benardo had any inside information about it. Still, if the Russians had released the information after the inquiry was closed, it could have tainted the outcome, hurt public confidence in the Justice Department and sowed discord.

Prosecutors are also looking at whether Mr. Richman might have played a role in providing the information to reporters about the Russia document and how it figured into Mr. Comey’s rationale about the news conference, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Mr. Comey hired Mr. Richman at one point to consult for the F.B.I. about encryption and other complex legal issues, and investigators have expressed interest in how he operated.

Mr. Richman was quoted in the April 2017 article in The Times that revealed the document’s existence. A month later, The Post named Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Benardo as subjects of the document in a detailed article. A lawyer for Mr. Richman declined to comment.

This is going to be interesting to see it when the information ultimately comes out without the New York Times spin on it. But this is pretty huge.

Trump Signs the Caesar Act into Law

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America has short memories yet war atrocities continue in Syria. For those that were very skeptical about the use of chemical weapons used in Syria by the Assad regime, here is the truth. Meanwhile. the Assad regime remains in power due to assistance from Russia and Qassim Soleimani was the wartime, military advisor to Assad.

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He was once a military photographer in Syria. For two years, he took pictures of the emaciated and mangled corpses left behind by Bashar al Assad’s interrogators. Then he fled to Europe with 55,000 digital images on flash drives hidden in his shoes.

Even members of Congress know him only as Caesar. When he spoke to them for the first time in 2014, he wore sunglasses and a bright blue windbreaker with the hood pulled over his head. No one recorded his voice or took pictures of his face. The Assad regime would assassinate him if it could.

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Two days after Christmas, President Trump signed into law the Caesar Act, a tribute to the man whose photographs have proven the war crimes of the Assad regime beyond the shadow of a doubt. When the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory examined Caesar’s work, it found no signs of manipulation.

The bodies in Caesar’s images bear a striking resemblance to the ones in photographs of concentration camps liberated from the Nazis. Fittingly, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has had a selection of Caesar’s images on display since 2015.

The purpose of the Caesar Act is to put unprecedented economic pressure on the Assad regime. The United States and European Union put some tough sanctions on Mr. Assad and his henchmen in the early days of the war in Syria, but enforcement has been partial.

Whereas existing U.S. sanctions prohibit Americans from doing business with the Assad regime, the Caesar Act authorizes sanctions on the citizens of any country who work with Mr. Assad. The act specifically targets the Iranian militias and Russian mercenaries that have kept the Syrian dictator in power.

Although Moscow and Tehran have secured Mr. Assad’s grip on Damascus and other major cities, the war in Syria is far from over. An estimated 3 million Syrians are now crowded into the northwestern province of Idlib, which remains under the control of a variety of rebel forces, including extremists with ties to al Qaeda. As usual, Mr. Assad and his allies are targeting civilians, not terrorists. Hospitals are especially popular targets.

Thus, the Caesar Act still serves a pressing need. Economic pressure is one of the few means of holding war criminals to account for their actions. Sanctions alone will not bring down the Assad regime, but in concert with diplomatic and military pressure they should be part of any sound strategy.

On Twitter, Mr. Trump has made very clear that his administration is on the side of the Iranian people against their tyrannical regime. He should be equally clear in his support for the people of Syria. One can certainly object that Mr. Trump’s concern for human rights is selective, yet when the president of the United States speaks, the world pays attention. When the world is watching, war criminals hesitate.

The United States is not at war with Mr. Assad, but a U.S.-led coalition now controls about a fourth of Syria, which was formerly part of the ISIS caliphate. Twice now, Mr. Trump has ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops only to reverse himself under intense pressure from Republicans in Congress. This wavering only emboldens Mr. Assad, who wants to take back the resource-rich areas under the coalition’s control.

In terms of economic pressure, aggressive enforcement of the Caesar Act should be the first priority. Syria remains dependent on illicit shipments of Iranian oil. The Treasury Department has become more aggressive in its pursuit of sanctions evaders, but tankers of Iranian oil are still getting through.

With Russian help, Syria is also trying to revive its phosphate industry, which generated more than $100 million per year of export revenue before the war. Reportedly, Lebanese companies are buying the phosphates before reselling them abroad, likely after processing the raw material into crop fertilizer.

One entity beyond the reach of the Caesar Act is the United Nations, whose humanitarian agencies have been so deferential to the Assad regime that their aid has effectively become a subsidy for Mr. Assad’s war effort. Independent human rights organizations have produced lengthy reports on this travesty year after year, but donor states have not demanded accountability.

This is one area where further congressional action could make a difference. If there is a second Caesar Act, it should condition U.S. funding for U.N. humanitarian work on verifiable reforms. European governments should impose similar conditions.

Caesar demonstrated extraordinary courage by patiently collecting evidence of Mr. Assad’s war crimes. He saw his friends and neighbors among the dead, but he could say nothing. Had his superiors discovered his plans, his corpse would have been the next one in a photograph.

What Caesar deserves is not just a law, but a sustained American commitment to human rights in Syria.

*** From Human Rights Watch: The 86-page report, “If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities,” lays out new evidence regarding the authenticity of what are known as the Caesar photographs, identifies a number of the victims, and highlights some of the key causes of death.

Russia Hacked Burisma Per Area 1

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Someone alert Tucker Carlson that Russia is still inside our political system.

Just reported by a California based company called Area 1 it began when the whole Burisma scandal broke last Fall during the impeachment hearings.

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WSJ/Volz:

Hackers believed to be affiliated with Russia’s military breached the Ukrainian gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son had served on the board as it became a focus of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, according to a U.S. cybersecurity firm.

Attempts to hack into Burisma Holdings began last November, as Congress was holding hearings into whether Mr. Trump abused his office by pressuring his Ukrainian counterpart to work with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter according to research published Monday by Area 1, a California based company.

The hacking attempts are ongoing and are linked to the Russian military intelligence unit previously known as the GRU, which hacked and leaked Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential election, Area 1 said.

The Russia Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. They have historically denied hacking into U.S. elections.

It wasn’t known what information the hackers were seeking or what they obtained, the firm said. In at least one instance, the hackers tricked the recipient of a phishing email into sharing login credentials that allowed them access into on the Burisma’s servers, the company said. Area 1’s findings were earlier reported by the New York Times.

Messrs. Trump and Giuliani have argued without evidence, that Mr. Biden’s anti-corruption push in Ukraine was designed to head off any investigation of Burisma. Both Bidens have denied wrongdoing and said they never discussed business in Ukraine.

Area 1’s documentation is found here.

In part from the preface of the report:

Like all phishing campaigns, we observe the GRU was successful because they found ways to appear authentic to their targets, rather than using any technical sophistication. Everything about their approach is technically unremarkable, yet highly effective. In this campaign the GRU combines several different authenticity techniques to achieve success: Domain-based authenticityBusiness process and application authenticityPartner and supply chain authenticityA key aspect of cyberattack preemption is having a deep understanding of cyber actor patterns and continually discovering and deconstructing campaigns to anticipate future ones. Our report is not noteworthy because we identify the GRU launching a phishing campaign, nor is the targeting of a Ukrainian company particularly novel. It is significant because Burisma Holdings is publically entangled in U.S. foreign and domestic politics. The timing of the GRU’s campaign in relation to the 2020 U.S. elections raises the spectre that this is an early warning of what we have anticipated since the successful cyberattacks undertaken during the 2016 U.S. elections.

Area 1 Security has correlated this campaign against Burisma Holdings with specific tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used exclusively by the GRU in phishing for credentials. Repeatedly, the GRU uses Ititch, NameSilo, and NameCheap for domain registration; MivoCloud and M247 as Internet Service Providers; Yandex for MX record assignment; and a consistent pattern of lookalike domains.

Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted seven officers with the G.R.U in 2018.