U.S. Attorney Durham Seized 2 Interesting Blackberries

Posted on October 18, 2019October 18, 2019 by Denise Simon

AG Barr assigned John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI’s counter-intelligence operation known as Crossfire Hurricane. Durham is working the globe on the investigation and two key people are Joseph Mifsud and Stephan Halper. There may be others that include Alexander Downer, Azra Turk, Seems that Peter Strzok issued two Blackberries to Joseph Mifsud. Durham has those two phones in his possession. You can bet that Durham is working the channels to see who else has FBI issued phones. The FBI loves those phones.

US News on Flipboard by The Epoch Times

Mr. Mifsud, a university professor and well-traveled lecturer, told George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, in London in April 2016 that Moscow owned thousands of Hillary Clinton emails. When the news reached the FBI in July, agent Peter Strzok initiated the probe.

Ms. Sidney Power is representing General Michael Flynn as she has added to the Mifsud intrigue with her motion before District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan asking him to order the government to turn over the BlackBerrys’ data. The filing lists the two phones’ model number, PIN and SIM card information. She filed a court motion on Monday disclosing the phones’ existence while tying them to Western intelligence.

She told the judge that on Oct. 11 she asked the prosecution for phone data. She was ignored until she sent notification days later that she planned to file the discovery motion.

The motion says: “Michael T. Flynn requests the government be ordered to produce evidence that has only recently come into its possession……… This information is material, exculpatory, and relevant to the defense of Mr. Flynn, and specifically to the “OCONUS LURES” and agents that western intelligence tasked against him likely as early as 2014 to arrange—unbeknownst to him—‘connections’ with certain Russians that they would then use against him in their false claims. The phones were used by Mr. Joseph Mifsud.”

“OCONUS LURES” is an FBI acronym for an operation to lure a person back to the U.S.

Ms. Powell has been filing motions demanding the government turn over exculpatory evidence. She wants to show it was withheld early on, violating Judge Sullivan’s order.

Reacting to the BlackBerry disclosure, Mr. Papadopoulos tweeted: “I lived this spy story. The government’s of the UK, Australia, Italy sent their agents: Mifsud, Downer, Halper, Azra Turk and many more. With the new info on Mifsud’s phones with the DOJ, my story was the one that exposed the greatest spying scandal in history. Downer is next!”

Alexander Downer was the Australian ambassador in London to whom Mr. Papadopoulos relayed the Mifsud gossip. Mr. Downer denies he was a spy. Stephan Halper and Azar Turk were FBI/western intelligence spies assigned to Mr. Papadopoulos in London.

Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec declined to comment on the Flynn motion.

When news broke that Mr. Durham was in Rome, she released a statement:

“As the Department of Justice has previously announced, a team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the origins of the U.S. counterintelligence probe of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials.” More here for full story and context.

*** One other detail from the Daily Beast due to AG Barr’s travels to Rome with John Durham was to listen to a taped deposition of Joseph Mifsud. Meanwhile:

The Italian intelligence community had Mifsud on its radar for some years before he got involved in the Trump campaign’s troubles. His affiliations with both the Link University of Rome and London Center of International Law Practice—both often affiliated with Western diplomacy and foreign intelligence agencies—made him an easy target. So did the slew of apartments he owned in Malta that are allegedly tied to a racket involving Russians buying Maltese passports for cheap.

Voters vs. Google in 2020 General Election

Posted on July 8, 2019July 8, 2019 by Denise Simon

Donald Trump prevailed against the Google and Eric Schmidt forces but can it happen again?

Civis Analytics is back again and you can bet that Trump’s digital campaign director, Brad Parscale is in a David and Goliath force operation.

Dive into data with jobs at these 6 Chicago companies ...

So, Free Beacon describes Google, Schmidt and Civis Analytics as this:

A data firm backed by Eric Schmidt, the former executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been paid millions of dollars by Democratic committees and is currently working for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

The idea for what became Civis Analytics emerged in the wake of President Obama’s 2012 re-election when Schmidt pitched Dan Wagner, the campaign’s chief analytics officer, on creating a lasting political data and website services firm. Schmidt, who remained an executive at Google and Alphabet, went on to quietly aid Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Less than one month after the elections it was announced that he had helped round up $22 million for Civis, where he is also a partial owner and sits on the group’s board of directors. In June, Schmidt stepped away as executive chairman of Alphabet, although he now acts as a technical advisor to the company’s leadership on policy issues.

Civis has provided data and tech services for a number of Democratic committees in recent years, with its most recent payments coming from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which paid $63,400 for polling and website services during the first quarter of the 2020 cycle; the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which dished $33,900 to the firm for data analytics; Planned Parenthood Votes, which also pushed $33,900 to Civis for data analytics; and NextGen Climate Action, liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s committee, which paid $16,000 for data and consulting services.

In addition to the committees, the presidential campaigns of Sens. Cory Booker (D., NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), and failed Senate candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke have also combined to pay tens of thousands for its services during the first three months of the year. Civis Analytics announced in late April that it will be working with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign for the 2020 election cycle, Bloomberg reported. Civis appears to be expanding its political team in Washington and New York, according to job postings on its website.

Now remember, Google is already white-listing and black-listing search results…

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and still an advisor surely has taken much of the same tactics with him including algorithm equations with him to the Biden and the rest of the Democrat candidates to skew results favorable to their respective political missions. While Google has a data warehouse analytics tool called BigQuery, Civis Analytics is also a select vendor for the Democrat National Committee. Other Civis Analytics customers include:

Where is some of these social justice policy concepts coming from that were introduced at both Democrat debates? Yet another project also tied to Civis Analytics call The New Progressive Agenda Project.

The New Progressive Agenda Project gives policymakers and advocates reliable congressional district and state-level polling data that would normally be out of reach for even the best-funded campaign. In the coming weeks, we’ll be periodically releasing new data on progressive proposals that are message-tested and ready to be introduced in the 116th Congress. Using the state-of-the-art modeling techniques employed by leading campaign professionals, we are confident that these policies will remain popular in the electorate at large while also engaging the progressive base. They have been carefully vetted by veteran campaigners from Civis Analytics, which was formed by the data scientists who oversaw Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Civis’s political data science arm is one of the most reputable in the business. These numbers are the gold standard — they are actionable by candidates and campaigns.

It’s time for unabashed progressive policies that can win.

Today, we roll out our second set of policies:

Senator Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) make the case for a Medical Innovation Fund

Senator Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) and Speaker Corey Johnson (@CoreyinNYC) make the case for ending cash bail

House candidate Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) makes the case for lead paint removal.

Indivisible Co-Founders Leah Greenberg (@Leahgreenb) and Ezra Levin (@ezralevin) make the case for automatic voter registration (AVR).

Methodology

Civis Analytics fielded support for four progressive policies to determine their levels of public support. Full question wording is available below, but here it is important to note that questions included a revenue pay-for where needed, as well as both partisan cues and counterframes throughout. In other words, respondents were told that these policies were being proposed by Democrats, and were given reasons why Republicans say they should oppose them. The sample for medical innovation prizes was 12,154, for automatic voter registration (8,357), for lead removal (12,166) and for bail reform (10,851)and these surveys were fielded between July 10th 2018 through September 30th 2018. Using modern machine learning techniques, Civis generated estimates for Clinton voters, Trump voters, Independent voters, drop-off voters (who voted in 2016 but not 2014) and the overall electorate. Because our goal is to provide information that can be immediately relevant to politicians, the overall number reflects a likely 2018 voters, not national adults. Sub-national opinion is presented in terms of two-way support (that is, excluding respondents who did not register an opinion one way or the other). Please direct methodological questions to Michael Sadowsky: [email protected].

For our second round of polling, we analyzed four policies:

Medical innovation prizes: We asked respondents whether they would support having the government fund a prize fund that would reward the creation of drugs and vaccines that improve health outcomes, with medication developed through this program sold cheaply to the American public without a patent. Forty-six percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 32 percent opposed.

Automatic voter registration: We asked respondents whether they would support having voter registration records automatically update when citizens interact with the DMV and other state agencies, unless they opt out. Forty-seven percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 36 percent opposed.

Lead removal: We asked respondents whether they would support a ten year program in which taxes on high-income earners would be raised to fund lead removal in houses with dangerous levels of lead paint. Forty-six percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 36 percent opposed.

Bail reform: We asked respondents if they would support shifting from the current cash bail-only system to one that allows judges to release some defendants, under the court’s supervision, if they are not considered a threat to society. Forty-two percent of likely 2018 voters supported this policy, with 39 percent opposed.

Marc Elias, the Dubious Lawyer of Politicians

Posted on April 24, 2019April 24, 2019 by Denise Simon

Marc Elias is the Chair of the law firm Perkins Coie. You know that firm because that firm hired Fusion GPS, then Christopher Steele, the former British spy that eventually gave us that funky Trump dossier.

OOPS: Lawyer Linked To Trump Dossier Was Sitting Right ... Elias and Podesta

The Democrat National Committee paid Perkins Coie at least $7 million for legal work on the matter of Fusion GPS. Not to be overlook, the Obama campaign (OFA) also paid Perkins Coie almost $1 million in 2016 for ‘legal services’. Oh, and the Hillary for America paid Perkins Coie $5.1 in 2016 ad the DNC paid Perkins Coie $5.4 million in 2016.

Sidebar: (the wife of a Fusion GPS employee, Shailagh Murray, who previously worked for the Washington Post went on to work in the Obama White House as a communications adviser. Murray is married to Neil King, who formerly worked for the Wall Street Journal, the very place and time that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS was there. And those back channels just keep open with high traffic of shady people…

During some testimony….the FBI general counsel, James Baker revealed that Michael Sussman, a former DoJ lawyer was the point person that got a thumb drive that had documents related to Russian interference of the election and hacking. Sussman..well yes works at Perkins Coie.

Famed lawyer and legal professor, Jonathan Turley had an item from October of 2017 that read in part: Here is the nut of the report:

“Podesta was asked in his September interview whether the Clinton campaign had a contractual agreement with Fusion GPS, and he said he was not aware of one, according to one of the sources. Sitting next to Podesta during the interview: his attorney Marc Elias, who worked for the law firm that hired Fusion GPS to continue research on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC, multiple sources said. Elias was only there in his capacity as Podesta’s attorney and not as a witness.”

If this and the earlier report is true, Elias not only falsely denied any connection between the Clinton campaign and the dossier to two New York Times reporters but sat silently as Podesta gave false information to congressional investigators.

In the meantime, both high-ranking campaign officials and DNC officials have denied any knowledge or approval of the contract with Fusion GPS.

Okay now that we have that part covered, let us move on to Kamala Harris shall we? When she launched her presidential campaign, she needed a lawyer. Yup, she hired Marc Elias. He came with high recommendations from Hillary as Elias worked for her campaign and he also worked for the John Kerry presidential campaign. Elias represents the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Congressional Committee and oh yeah, the Democratic Governors Association. Pssst, he also represented Al Franken and his 2008 senate campaign.

Elias is the legal fixer.

During the two highly contested races in Florida including the senate race and the governor race….guess who Marc Elias represented? Yes, Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson, the democrats and both had to concede. Elias was again the shady lawyer that pulled all the levers for making absentee ballots, mismarked ballots and irregular ballots get counted.

He is the loud voice behind the repeated headlines that the Republicans support voter suppression of youth voters. Hence part in parcel the reason there is a new debate of lowering the voting age. If you just read his Twitter feed, you will see how he plants the seeds of new voting laws. He does have a cool dog though named Bode.

Shortly before the 2016 election, billionaire left-wing donor George Soros gave at least $5 million to Elias and his firm to challenge what left-wing activists allege to be restrictions that deter Democrats and left-wing constituencies from voting, such as photo identification requirements at polling places. In early 2017, Elias joined the board of Priorities USA as it was announced that the organization would begin focusing on similar work. Soros also contributed $5 million to the Priorities USA super PAC during the 2018 election cycle.

Important Thread https://t.co/lxvZTnDK20

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) April 23, 2019

Elias recently had a 5 minute Q&A. Of note is the following:

What law would you change, abolish or create?
I would enact universal voter registration and otherwise modernize our voting laws.

How has the practice of representing public officials, parties and organizations evolved over the years?
The field of political law has grown dramatically in size since I started, and has changed dramatically. What was once a side-practice for a handful of lawyers is not a fully-fledged specialty. We now deal with so many more issues than just campaign finance. We need to advise on intellectual property, business law, leases, employment law, and litigation — to name a few areas. As campaigns grow in size so do their legal needs.

Who is your legal hero?
I have a deep and abiding respect for my mentor and fellow Partner at Perkins Coie, Bob Bauer, who literally invented this area of the law.

Sheesh Bob Bauer was a White House lawyer and private attorney for Barack Obama. At that time there were at least three cases of note. 1) the whole Obama/Blagojevich case 2) letters written to TV stations forbidding them from running ads that tied Obama to Bill Ayers and Weather Underground and then 3) the Tony Rezko affair.

Another sidebar: Bob Bauer’s wife is Anita Dunn, who also worked in the Obama White House. For those with a short memory, she was the one who said she admired Mao Zedong….

Ah, so now we have a major Federal investigation in Illinois….no real surprise there except this has to do with the new Governor, J.B. Pritzker. The federal criminal investigation is for a dubious residential property tax appeal that critics highlighted in last year’s gubernatorial race. Those details are here.

Oh…guess who is the lawyer of record for Pritzker? SURPRISE it is….Marc Elias. Can you imagine the case files he has on democrats and their nefarious actions?

New Committee Chair Cummings has 64 Subpoenas for Trump

Posted on November 15, 2018November 15, 2018 by Denise Simon

Yup, Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings will become the Oversight Committee Chairman in the new Congress and he has readied 64 subpoenas for Trump and his family over conflicting business deals, the hotel and more.

Meanwhile, the democrats are likely going to work to cut funding for the military, ICE and DHS. They will advance legislation to move the Federal minimum wage to $15.00 an hour and will continue to bail out health insurers to save Obamacare.

Ah but this democrat agenda can become more contentious and nasty if the democrats want to play a legal warfare game as the republicans can take some major counter-measures. Of course none of this is really good for the country but as President Trump declared more than once, we will restore law and order and those who violated law should in fact receive a consequence.

So, what should the republicans consider?

Declassify and release all Fast and Furious documents.
Declassify and release all HolyLand Foundation trial documents.
Declassify and release and IRS targeting scandal documents and subpoena emails and documents of Lois Lerner, Eric Holder, Doug Shulman, John Koskinen, Steven T. Miller, Daniel Werfel, Peter Kadzik, Elijah Cummings among others.
Department of Justice to formally open a case on Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Pakistan IT scandal.
Announce a formal investigation into Dianne Feinstein’s Chinese operative employed in her California office and to demand Feinstein submit her investments in Chinese corporations/organizations.
Defund Planned Parenthood.
Defund Export Import Bank.
Investigate Maxine Waters and her use of campaign funds employing her daughter’s company.
Investigate newly elected congresswoman Debbie Muscarel Powell and her association(s) with Ihor Kolomoisky, a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.
Open formal investigation into Keith Ellison.
Re-open criminal case against New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez.
Refer Bernie Sanders to the Senate Ethics Committee on loan scandal.
Release all the text messages and emails of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Open a formal and announced investigation into the Clinton Foundation and release what is in the file now.
Need we explain the Hillary email server thing? Git ‘er done.
Comey, McCabe, Ohr, and that crowd with the FISA warrant, communications and the dossier.
Investigate Sheila Jackson Lee’s office for the staffer’s doxxing operation.
How about Uranium One, Rosemont Capital and Vistria?
Then there is John Podesta, Tony Podesta, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and all of that.
But we cannot overlook the tarmac meeting and the role Loretta Lynch and her DoJ played in the coverup.
Benghazi? Was that ever resolved or the billions to Iran?
How about release of details on the side deals or payments for the Taliban 5 and Bergdahl or the Iran nuclear deal? Include Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes in these details.
Release communications on why Obama and the Justice Department canceled Operation Cassandra.
Release full report on John Brennan, former Director of the CIA and his role in ‘spygate’ along his spying on member of the senate.
Declare via Treasury and DHS, ANTIFA a domestic terror organization.
Release all payments made by Office of Compliance due to congressional member’s misconduct.

There of course are many other things to add to this list. You are invited to include some of your own ideas in the comments.

More International Classified Material on Hillary’s Server

Posted on September 11, 2018September 11, 2018 by Denise Simon

Ruh Roh…hope the statute of limitations does not apply here.

As a reminder:

When Clinton was running for president in 2008, she had a private server installed at her home in Chappaqua, New York. The domains clintonemail.com, wjcoffice.com, and presidentclinton.com, which were registered to a man named Eric Hoteham, all pointed to that server. In 2013, a Denver-based IT company called Platte River Networks was hired to manage the server, but wasn’t cleared to work with classified information. The company executives received death threats for taking on the contract. It was later discovered that multiple private servers were used for Clinton’s email.

Clinton used a BlackBerry phone to communicate during her tenure as secretary of state, including sending and receiving emails through her private server in New York. The State Department expressed concern about the security of the device. Clinton had requested the NSA provide a strengthened BlackBerry, similar to the one used by President Obama. But, her request was denied. Instead, the NSA requested that Clinton use a secure Windows Phone known as the Sectera Edge, but she opted to continue using her personal BlackBerry.

***

The classified material Hillary Clinton sent and received using an unsecure, private email server included correspondence with foreign leaders, according to documents obtained from the State Department by a government watchdog group.

Judicial Watch, which has called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order “an honest criminal investigation” of Clinton’s email practices while she was secretary of state, now awaits a federal judge’s Sept. 28 deadline for the State Department to finish sorting through the emails.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton last month said the classified information in Clinton emails uncovered by his team shows that then-FBI Director James Comey and other top FBI officials conducted a “sham investigation” into Clinton’s misuse of email as secretary of state.

“These classified Hillary Clinton emails that she tried to hide or destroy show why it is urgent that the DOJ [Department of Justice] finally undertake an honest criminal investigation,” Fitton said in a press release Aug. 16. “It is past time for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order a new investigation of the Hillary Clinton email scandal.”

Comey, apparently without consulting then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, told reporters in July 2016 that Clinton was careless in using her private email account for official business and transmitted classified information, but did not commit prosecutable offenses. President Donald Trump, who defeated Clinton in the November 2016 election, fired Comey in May 2017.

The FBI had uncovered 72,000 documents as part of its 2016 investigation into Clinton’s use of the private email server while serving as secretary of state under President Barack Obama from Jan. 21, 2009, to Jan. 31, 2013.

Judicial Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit that describes itself as promoting “integrity, transparency, and accountability in government,” last month released two new batches of Clinton emails (here and here) that it pried loose from the State Department.

Besides five instances of classified materials, the group said, the newly released Clinton emails contain messages about a meeting with billionaire financier George Soros and a memo to Clinton about a foreign government from a former top aide to her husband when he was president.

U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the State Department to complete processing the Clinton emails by Sept. 28 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brough by Judicial Watch.

It is not clear whether State will meet that deadline.

In its FOIA request filed initially in March 2015, Judicial Watch sought all emails sent or received by Clinton in her official capacity as secretary of state, “as well as all emails by other State Department employees to Secretary Clinton regarding her non-‘state.gov’ email address.”

The tens of thousands of Clinton emails include messages sent to her by a longtime aide, Huma Abedin. The FBI found emails from Abedin on the laptop of her estranged husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., prompting Comey to briefly reopen the FBI probe days before the election on Nov. 8, 2016.

One chain of emails from Abedin, with the subject “Invites for the week,” refers to a two-hour meeting in Southampton, New York, with Soros, founder and chairman of Open Society Foundations, a New York-based international institution known for financing progressive political causes.

The emails referring to Soros do not include dates, but Judicial Watch investigators deduced they were written before November 2011, and perhaps as long ago as early 2009, based on individuals involved in the exchange and the timing of certain events. It is not clear whether the meeting took place.

Five messages in the just-released batch of Clinton emails include classified material, according to Judicial Watch.

For example, on June 7, 2011, Clinton received classified information on her unsecure email account from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair with regard to Blair’s Middle East negotiations with Israel, the Palestinians, and the French. Blair also forwarded the information to Jack Sullivan, who was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.

On Jan. 26, 2010, Sullivan sent classified information through his own unsecure BlackBerry to Abedin’s State Department email address, information that he previously sent to Clinton’s and Abedin’s unsecure @clintonemail.com accounts.

The email, classified as confidential, concerned negotiations between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and included a “call sheet” Clinton received before making a call to political leaders in Northern Ireland.

Redacted portions appear to have contained the names of members of the left-wing Irish political party Sinn Fein, according to Judicial Watch. The Sinn Fein members had been invited to a meeting, but its purpose is not clear.

Northern Ireland was also the subject of a June 13, 2009, email from Sullivan to Clinton that was classified as confidential and almost entirely redacted by the State Department.

As previously reported, Clinton also received emails from Sid Blumenthal, a confidant and former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, her husband. The Obama administration had barred Blumenthal from serving in the State Department under Clinton.

Yet the email messages obtained by Judicial Watch show that Blumenthal advised Hillary Clinton on government policy. In an April 8, 2010, memo that included information classified as confidential, for example, Blumenthal encouraged her to develop relations with the new government in Kyrgyzstan.