How about this one SC sharedPizzaSnake wrote: ↑Thu Oct 20, 2022 12:43 pm"In the short trial, Durham established that the bureau knowingly submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) sworn applications that claimed the information supplied by former British spy Christopher Steele had been verified. In reality, not only had the bureau failed to verify Steele’s claims of a “conspiracy of cooperation” between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Kremlin; it had offered Steele $1 million if he could provide corroborating proof. The FBI never had to pay because neither Steele nor his primary source for anti-Trump “intelligence,” Danchenko, could deliver."old salt wrote: ↑Thu Oct 20, 2022 12:22 pm National Review Editorial :https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/ ... isconduct/
John Durham Exposed the FBI’s Misconduct
By THE EDITORS, October 20, 2022
The acquittal of Igor Danchenko for making false statements to investigators about his part in providing bogus anti-Trump information for the discredited Steele dossier is, in the end, a footnote. As Russiagate special counsel John Durham argued in summing up the prosecution’s case to the jury, “the elephant in the room” was the FBI. It was the bureau’s malfeasance that was really on trial, and the verdict on that, emphatically, is guilty.
In the short trial, Durham established that the bureau knowingly submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) sworn applications that claimed the information supplied by former British spy Christopher Steele had been verified. In reality, not only had the bureau failed to verify Steele’s claims of a “conspiracy of cooperation” between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Kremlin; it had offered Steele $1 million if he could provide corroborating proof. The FBI never had to pay because neither Steele nor his primary source for anti-Trump “intelligence,” Danchenko, could deliver.
That is not the half of it. The bureau knew Steele was compiling the dossier as opposition research for the Clinton campaign — he’d been contracted by the information firm Fusion GPS, which had been retained by Clinton’s lawyer, Marc Elias. At Danchenko’s trial, Durham elicited testimony from a senior FBI intelligence analyst, Brian Auten, that in a meeting in Rome in October 2016 (the same month that the FBI started using Steele’s fabricated reporting in its FISA application), an agent improperly briefed Steele on “Crossfire Hurricane,” the bureau’s codename for the Trump/Russia probe. That is, even as Steele was providing the FBI with nonsense that he could not back up, the FBI was providing Steele with classified intelligence related to Trump that Steele was then positioned to share with his Clinton campaign sponsors.
During these same weeks in the run-up to the 2016 election, the Clinton campaign was portraying Trump as a mole for Moscow. Simultaneously, Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department attorney, exploited his friendship with the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, to convey directly to the bureau’s top hierarchy skewed data that he wrongly insisted showed that Trump had established a communications back channel with the Kremlin. Sussmann was the subject of Durham’s last prosecution — for lying to the FBI when he claimed, in conveying the shoddy information, that he was not representing any client in doing so.
As with the Danchenko case, Sussmann’s acquittal — which could be explained by the fact that his misconduct wasn’t as blameworthy as that of the FBI — was secondary in importance to Durham’s unrefuted evidence that the FBI knew Sussmann represented the DNC; that it falsely recorded that the information from Sussmann had come from the Justice Department; and that its headquarters concealed from the bureau’s own investigators the fact that Sussmann was the source, realizing that this would cause the agents to doubt the data (though, as it happened, the data was so half-baked that investigators concluded it was nonsense without being told that the source was biased).
As for the Steele dossier, evidence in Danchenko’s trial showed that the FBI swore that it was duly verified twice, in October 2016 and mid-January 2017, before it finally got around to interviewing the main source, Danchenko. He told interviewing agents that Steele’s reports were spurious. He said he was unaware that Steele had taken the rumor and innuendo he had passed along, embellished them with exaggeration and fabrication, and then wrote them up to appear as professional intelligence reporting — indeed, he claimed not to have seen or known about the so-called dossier until BuzzFeed published it in January 2017 (shortly before the FBI finally interviewed Danchenko).
Under the rules of the FISC, information is supposed to be verified before it is presented to a FISC judge; and, if the FBI or Justice Department learns that significant information previously presented to the FISC is inaccurate, the government must promptly correct the record. Here, far from alerting the court that Steele’s information was unreliable and could not be verified, the FBI continued to rely on it in obtaining additional surveillance warrants in April and June 2017. That is, for more than half a year into Trump’s presidency, a federal court was still being told that the FBI suspected him of being a clandestine agent of Russia.
Even worse, the bureau told the FISA court in April 2017 that it had interviewed Danchenko in an effort to “further” corroborate Steele (whose information had not been corroborated) and that agents found Danchenko to be “truthful and cooperative.” Omitted was the inconvenient fact that what Danchenko had been truthful and cooperative about was the fraudulence of the dossier.
It is fair to question Durham’s judgment in bringing the cases against Danchenko and Sussmann. The charges were weak, largely but not exclusively because the defendants’ alleged misconduct paled in comparison to the FBI’s. Durham’s only conviction was a guilty plea by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for lying to an agent by altering a key document in the preparation of a surveillance warrant. But even there, the judge imposed a minimal, no-jail sentence after prosecutors put up minimal resistance to Clinesmith’s implausible claim that he hadn’t meant to mislead the court. The unimpressive results will give Democrats and pundits who championed the Trump-Russia smear fodder to argue that Durham’s ultimate report should be ignored. We will wait to review the findings and supporting evidence. In the interim, Durham has done a public service in exposing how imperative it is that the FBI be subjected to searching congressional investigation and reform.
Really, Durham did? Last time I checked, judicial findings of fact in court proceedings are made by the judge or the jury. Please share any such findings re FBI from these proceedings. As an example of judicial findings let me offer you this:
'In March, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter agreed, concluding, “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”'
Followed by this:
"in yesterday’s instance, the judge concluded that Eastman, in one of the relevant email exchanges, said that Trump was aware that the number of voter fraud cases his team was alleging in a federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Georgia was “inaccurate.” But, the judge said, Trump signed off on the suit, “swearing under oath” that the numbers were correct anyway."
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-sho ... -rcna53115
Now, those "findings", unlike the opinions in your article, have force of law.
DISPOSITION
Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower—it was a coup in search of a legal theory. The plan spurred violent attacks on the seat of our nation’s government, led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, and deepened public distrust in our political process.
More than a year after the attack on our Capitol, the public is still searching for accountability. This case cannot provide it. The Court is tasked only with deciding a dispute over a handful of emails. This is not a criminal prosecution; this is not even a civil liability suit. At most, this case is a warning about the dangers of “legal theories” gone wrong, the powerful abusing public platforms, and desperation to win at all costs. If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.
With this limited mandate, the Court finds the following ten documents privileged: 4553; 4793; 4794; 4828; 5097; 5101; 5113; 5412; 5424; 5719.289 The Court ORDERS Dr. Eastman to disclose the other one hundred and one documents to the House Select Committee.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... .260.0.pdf
So What ? Nobody in the Trump campaign, including Manafrort, had anything to do with Clinton campaign emails being hacked. Wikileaks didn't need Trump campaign advice or polling data to make use of the emails, Jimmy Kimmel's comedy writers could have done that.
