FARRELL: HOW THE FBI RAN AN ILLEGAL COUNTERINTELLIGENCE MASQUERADE IN PLOT TO GET TRUMP

[TigerGrowls]

https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/20/fbi-counterintelligence-trump/

Nice write up on what happened.

3:00 PM 12/20/2018 | OPINION
Chris Farrell | Judicial Watch

In examining the cast of FBI and senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials fired, retired, resigned and under investigation since May 2017, the breathtaking scope of the FBI’s unprecedented criminal efforts to steer a presidential election and frame a newly elected president serves as Exhibit A for the organization’s disbandment. The “leadership” that willfully and corruptly ignored Hillary Clinton’s criminal mishandling of highly classified information had no problem faking a counterintelligence investigation to smear and destroy President Trump.

A recitation of the FBI/DOJ Litany of Shame is called for: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Baker, Ohr, Yates, Priestap, Rybicki, Kortan, Campbell, Turgal, Bower, Steinbach, Giacalone, Laufman, Carlin, McCord — there are more, and eventually we’ll learn their names. Some took unlawful action draped in the American flag and smarmy self-righteousness. Some were careerists craving a retirement paycheck and a strong resume, standing by and doing nothing — negligent or complicit with guilty knowledge

The group dubbed the “Secret Society” by FBI lawyer Lisa Page in a text to self-anointed FBI “Super Agent” Peter Strzok had a clear goal: Stop Trump. But how to do that “legally”? How does one manufacture a phony Russia hoax and hang it around Trump’s neck when you’re constrained from going after his campaign, organization and staff?

The FBI is specifically prohibited from penetrating and subverting U.S. organizations under the provisions of Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9: “No one acting on behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the intelligence community without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization, except in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and approved by the attorney general.” That’s tough for the “secret society.”

Could they — would they — rely on Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and have her office generate a legal finding memo? An actual, discoverable, legal record detailing and authorizing an operation against a presidential candidate? Too risky on a few levels.

But there’s more to Section 2.9: “Such participation shall be authorized only if it is essential to achieving lawful purposes as determined by the agency head or designee. No such participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the organization or its members except in cases where: (a) The participation is undertaken on behalf of the FBI in the course of a lawful investigation; or (b) The organization concerned is composed primarily of individuals who are not United States persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power.”

That second portion of Section 2.9 was exploited by Strzok & Co to create the predicate for a foreign counterintelligence investigation overseas that would then be “imported” back into the United States — circumventing the prohibition on “Undisclosed Participation in Organizations Within the United States.” Using this technique, Strzok & Co wouldn’t be offensively targeting the Trump operation to subvert his election and presidency. The FBI would now be “reacting” to a foreign intelligence threat.

Hence, we have the widely reported (FBI designed and orchestrated) events surrounding Carter Page, George Papadopolous, Stef Halper, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, et al. Super Agent Strzok even traveled to the United Kingdom (the safest “Outside the Continental United States” [OCONUS] operating environment for the FBI) to grease the skids for a counterintelligence “dangle” operation. The reader will recall Lisa Page’s December 2015 text message: “You get all our oconus lures approved? ,” to Strzok.

Having personally run double-agent operations as a counterintelligence case officer, I’m not guessing at this language and intelligence tradecraft.

Thrilled with the initiation of their foreign counterintelligence investigation implicating Trump “associates,” (and laundering the criminality of their end-run of “undisclosed participation”) the secret society could launch full-bore with an array of techniques and tradecraft. Keep in mind that the FBI/DOJ never gave Trump a “defensive security briefing” that is standard when FBI/DOJ comes upon a foreign counterintelligence threat to a U.S. organization or corporation. Never.

Not coincidentally, the “Trump Dossier” appears on the scene — thanks to Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee funding, via a couple of cut-outs, to actual Russians (a crime actually worth investigating). Next come the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, predicated on Hillary’s mercenary’s lies. Now we know the FBI went so far as to phony-up investigative reports (“302s”) in the related framing of LTG Mike Flynn. Is there anything the FBI/DOJ leadership wouldn’t do to stop Trump?

Here’s the big picture: there are the crimes described above — and there are the crimes to facilitate and then cover-up the underlying activity. That’s where the FBI got lost. It’s gone. No sensible American believes in the organization anymore. The DOJ is right there with them. Compromised, arrogant, ruthless, vindictive, detached, self-righteous, hypersensitive to criticism and largely immune. A fish rots from the head down. Go back and read the FBI/DOJ Litany of Shame. Review Comey’s arrogant, smug, Flynn-interview statement: “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”

The answer is to create an investigative division within the U.S. Marshals Service and laterally transfer over vetted, honest FBI agents. Collapse the decayed wreck of the FBI within six months and hope the American public can once again believe in “Equal Justice Under the Law.”

Chris Farrell is director of investigations and research for Judicial Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group. He previously worked as a counterintelligence case officer.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

 

[hopefultiger13]

Cool things about the daily caller: (Wikipedia, so to be fair, I didn't work very hard for this). Tucker Carlson started it, so you KNOW that they don't like Brown people b/c they are dirty, dirty, dirty. Point being is that this isn't a reputable site any more than the Huffington Post is.

The Daily Caller was founded by Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel. After raising $3 million in funding from businessman Foster Friess, the website was launched on January 11, 2010. The organization started with a reporting staff of 21 in its Washington office. It was launched as an alternative to the liberal The Huffington Post, similarly featuring sections in broad range of subjects beyond politics.

By late 2012, The New York Times reported that the site had quadrupled its page view and total audience and had become profitable without ever buying an advertisement for itself.[3]

By 2013, the site was receiving over 35 million views a month according to Quantcast, surpassing rival sites such as The Washington Times, Politico, and Forbes.[4] The site has an active community, with over 200,000 comments made each month.

Notable figures have commented on The Daily Caller. Karl Rove has said that "The Daily Caller is necessary reading for anyone who wants to be up to speed with what's going on with politics in America." Larry Kudlow referred to the site as "one of [his] faves."[4]

Climate change denial[edit]
The Daily Caller has published a number of articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change.[16] In 2017, The Daily Caller published a story saying that a "peer-reviewed study" by "two scientists and a veteran statistician" found that recent years have not been the warmest ever.[17][18] The alleged "study" was a PDF file on a WordPress blog, and was not peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.[17] Also in 2017, The Daily Caller uncritically published a bogus Daily Mail story which claimed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) manipulated data to make climate change appear worse; at the same time, legitimate news outlets debunked the Daily Mail story.[19][20][21] Also in 2017, The Daily Caller published a story claiming that a study found no evidence of accelerating temperatures over a 23-year period, which climate scientists described as a misleading story.[16] In 2016, The Daily Caller published a story claiming that climate scientist Michael Mann (director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University) had asserted that data was unnecessary to measure climate change; Mann described the story as "egregiously false".[22] In 2015, The Daily Caller wrote that NOAA "fiddle[d]" with data when the agency published a report concluding that there was no global warming hiatus.[23][24]

Misleading video about NPR[edit]
In 2011, The Daily Caller was the first news outlet to disseminate a video by conservative provocateur James O'Keefe which purportedly showed an NPR fundraiser deriding Republicans. The video was later proven to have been misleadingly edited.[25]

False prostitution allegations[edit]
In March 2013 The Daily Caller posted interviews with two women claiming that New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez had paid them for sex while he was a guest of a campaign donor.[26] The allegation came five days before the 2012 New Jersey senate election. News organizations such as ABC News, which had also interviewed the women, the New York Times, and the New York Post declined to publish the allegations, viewing them as unsubstantiated and lacking credibility.[27][28][29] Subsequently, one of the women who accused Menendez stated that she had been paid to falsely implicate the senator and had never met him.[27][30] Menendez's office described the allegations as "manufactured" by a right-wing blog as a politically motivated smear.[31]

A few weeks later, police in the Dominican Republic announced that three women had claimed they were paid $300–425 each to lie about having had sex with Menendez.[32] Dominican law enforcement also alleged that the women had been paid to lie about Menendez by an individual claiming to work for The Daily Caller. The Daily Caller denied this allegation, stating: "At no point did any money change hands between The Daily Caller and any sources or individuals connected with this investigation".[33] Describing what it saw as the unraveling of The Daily Caller's "scoop", the Poynter Institute wrote: The Daily Caller stands by its reports, though apparently doesn't feel the need to prove its allegations right".[34]

Fox News controversy[edit]
In March 2015 The Daily Caller columnist Mickey Kaus quit after editor Tucker Carlson refused to run a column critical of Fox News coverage of the immigration policy debate.[35] Carlson, who also works for Fox, reportedly did not want The Daily Caller publishing criticism of a firm that employed him.[36] Journalist Neil Munro quit two weeks later and Carlson said he was not going to go to work for Breitbart. However, He started writing for Breitbard four months later and has remained there, as of November 2018.[37]

2016 presidential election[edit]
According to a study by Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, The Daily Caller was among the most popular sites on the right during the 2016 presidential election. The study also found that The Daily Caller provided "amplification and legitimation" for "the most extreme conspiracy sites", such as Truthfeed, Infowars, Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse during the 2016 presidential election.[38][39][40] The Daily Caller also "employed anti-immigrant narratives that echoed sentiments from the alt-right and white nationalists but without the explicitly racist and pro-segregation language."[39] The Daily Caller also played a significant role in creating and disseminating stories that had little purchase outside the right-wing media ecosystem but that stoked the belief among core Trump followers that what Clinton did was not merely questionable but criminal and treasonous. In a campaign that expressed deep anti-Muslim sentiment, a repeated theme was that Hillary Clinton was seriously in hock to Muslim nations.[39] In one of its most frequently shared stories, The Daily Caller falsely asserted that Morocco's King Mohammed VI flew Bill Clinton on a private jet, and that this had been omitted from the Clinton Foundation's tax disclosures.[39] The Daily Caller also made the "utterly unsubstantiated and unsourced claim" that Hillary Clinton got Environmental Protection Agency "head Lisa Jackson to try to shut down Mosaic Fertilizer, described as America’s largest phosphate mining company, in exchange for a $15 million donation to the Clinton Foundation from King Mohammed VI of Morocco, ostensibly to benefit Morocco’s state-owned phosphate company."[39]

Encouragement of violence against protesters[edit]
In January 2017, The Daily Caller posted a video which encouraged violence against protesters.[41][42][43][44] The video in question showed a car plowing through protesters, with the headline "Here's A Reel Of Cars Plowing Through Protesters Trying To Block The Road" and set to a cover of Ludacris' "Move Bitch."[41] The video drew attention in August 2017 when a white supremacist plowed his car through a group of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.[41] After the video attracted attention, The Daily Callerdeleted it from its website.[41][44]

The Southern Poverty Law Center subsequently criticized The Daily Caller, saying that it had a "white nationalist problem".[45] SPLC also said that two other contributors to The Daily Caller had ties to white nationalist groups.[45] It later retracted its claim that Richard Pollock, a devout Jew, was a white nationalist, saying "Pollock was initially included in this story" but "there is no evidence to suggest Mr. Pollock is otherwise a white nationalist."[45]

Ties to white supremacists[edit]
In August 2018, The Atlantic reported that Scott Greer, then deputy editor of The Daily Caller, had written pieces under a pseudonym in the white supremacist publication Radix Journal from 2014 to 2015. In articles for Radix Journal, Greer expressed white nationalist views, as well as racist anti-black and antisemitic views. While in his emails and messages, he expressed anti-Christian and antisemitic theories, as well his relationship with Richard Spencer.[46] Upon being confronted with his past white supremacist writings, Greer resigned from any affiliation with The Daily Caller.[46] In 2017, it had been revealed, Scott Greer had ties to members of the white nationalist movement, including friendships with Devin Saucier, assistant to Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, and anti-immigrant activist Marcus Epstein, who pled guilty to assaulting an African American woman two years prior to the relationship with Scott Greer.[47] Greer had later deleted parts of his Facebook page, but is seen photographed with nationalists such as Tim Dionisopoulos and Richard Spencer, Wolves of Vinland and appears wearing clothes belonging to the group Youth for Western Civilization.[47] The Daily Caller itself subsequently stated, about why he had not been fired in 2017: “We had two choices: Fire a young man because of some photos taken of him at metal shows in college, or take his word. We chose to trust him. Now, if what you allege is accurate, we know that trust was a mistake, we know he lied to us. We won’t publish him, anyone in these circles, or anyone who thinks like them. People who associate with these losers have no business writing for our company.” [46]

The Daily Caller has posted articles by Jason Kessler,[48] a white supremacist who organized a rally of hundreds of white nationalists in Charlottesville.[49][50] Before Kessler posted his article, he had spoken at white supremacist gatherings.[51] After Kessler received attention for his organizing of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, the Daily Caller removed his articles from its website,[52] but The Daily Caller executive editor defended Kessler's articles.[53]

The website has also published pieces by Peter Brimelow, founder of the white supremacist website VDARE.[47]

Heckling of Obama[edit]
In 2012, Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro interrupted Barack Obama during one of the President's press conferences, while Obama was giving remarks. Obama said, "The next time I prefer you let me finish my statements before you ask a question." Cutting off Munro's reply, Obama said, "I didn't ask for an argument."[54] Munro's interruption of remarks by the president was widely considered a startling breach of etiquette. Editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson defended Munro's hectoring, saying "As a general matter, reporters are there to ask [questions]" and that he was "proud" of Munro.[55][56][57][58][59]

Munro later said in a statent that his intention was to ask questions after the president made his remarks but misjudged when the president was closing. "I timed the question believing the president was closing his remarks, because naturally I have no intention of interrupting the President of the United States. I know he rarely takes questions before walking away from the podium. When I asked the question as he finished his speech, he turned his back on the many reporters, and walked away while I and at least one other reporter asked questions."[54][60]

Stefan Halper[edit]
The Daily Caller was the first news outlet to report on Stefan Halper, a confidential FBI source, and his interactions with Trump campaign advisors Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about campaign matters.[61]Page became the subject of surveillance warrants issued by the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court regarding his alleged contacts with Russian intelligence officials.[62] Other news outlets confirmed Halper's identity but did not report his identity because US intelligence officials warned that it would endanger him and his contacts.[63][64][65]

Allegation of non-profit abuse[edit]
According to Callum Borchers of the Washington Post, the Daily Caller has "a peculiar business structure that enables it to increase revenue while reducing its tax obligation."[66] The organization, a for-profit company, does this by relying on its charity arm, the Daily CallerNews Foundation, to create the majority of its news content.[67]

According to Lisa Graves, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, the situation is “a huge rip-off for taxpayers if the Daily Caller News Foundation is receiving revenue that it doesn't pay taxes on, to produce stories that are used by the for-profit enterprise, which then makes money on the stories through ads.”[68]

Imran Awan[edit]
The Daily Caller kept conspiracy theories surrounding Imran Awan alive with aggressive coverage.[69][70] Imran Awan was an IT worker for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Daily Caller sought to tie Awan to a wide range of alleged criminal activity, including unauthorized access to government servers.[71] The reporter behind the aggressive coverage of Awan told Fox News that the affair was "straight out of James Bond."[71] An 18-month investigation by federal prosecutors found no evidence of wrongdoing in Awan's work in the House and no support for the conspiracy theories about Awan. In the announcement of the conclusion of the investigation, investigators rebuked a litany of right-wing conspiracy theories about Awan.[69][70]

Chinese email hacking[edit]
In August 2018, The Daily Caller ran a story alleging that a Chinese-owned company hacked then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and successfully obtained nearly all of her emails. The Daily Caller cited “two sources briefed on the matter.” After publishing the story, President Trump tweeted the allegations made in Daily Caller's reporting. The FBI rebutted the allegations.[72] According to The Washington Post, the claims are without evidence.[73]