PrairiePundit

Red States: ... House Intel Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) made the rounds on the political talk shows on Sunday, echoing a claim he made Friday on Twitter about how Stone’s commutation meant “there are now two systems of justice in America: One for Trump’s criminal friends and one for everyone else”.... White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Fox and Friends this morning and was asked about Trump’s decision and Robert Mueller’s self-serving WaPo op-ed from over the weekend. During the interview and today’s press briefing, McEnany made some key observations many in the media and on the left (including Schiff) have overlooked in their rush to condemn Trump: Defending President Trump’s decision to commute Stone’s upcoming prison sentence, McEnany said that then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller had been charging people with “process crimes” in order to “justify the waste in tax dollars” on a “completely bogus witch hunt.” McEnany said it was “curious” that ex-FBI offi...

Fox News: U.S. Attorney John Durham's ongoing probe into potential FBI and Justice Department misconduct in the run-up to the 2016 election through the spring of 2017 has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal investigation, two sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News on Thursday night. One source added that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's upcoming report on alleged FBI surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign will shed light on why Durham's probe has become a criminal inquiry. Horowitz announced on Thursday his report would be available to the public soon, with "few" redactions. The investigation's new status means Durham can subpoena witnesses, file charges, and impanel fact-finding grand juries. Fox News reported on Tuesday that Durham's probe had expanded significantly based on new evidence uncovered during a recent trip to Rome with Attorney General Bill Barr. ... A source in the Italian Ministry of Justice to...

Red States: Big news breaking in the investigation of the Russia probe by U.S. Attorney John Durham. We’ve reported that the Durham probe had expanded , was now likely a criminal investigation and that Durham wanted to talk to both former CIA head John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Now comes the word about what caused that expansion of the investigation from Fox News’ Catherine Herridge. Herridge explained it was expanded because of “new evidence” that was discovered during their investigations in Rome, Italy. Herridge reports that the Italian prime minister confirmed to his parliament that he did let Attorney General William Barr meet with Italian intelligence agents on the subject of the Russia investigation, that this was the “correct decision” and had been arranged through proper diplomatic channels. The meetings occurred August 15 and September 27 in Rome. During one of the trips, Barr and Durham discovered the “new evidence” and ...

Red States: One Of The Whistle-Blower’s Lawyers Worked Directly For James Clapper This is more evidence that the intelligence community is up to its eyeballs in this coup attempt.  This comes as Brennan and Clapper are both backtracking on the Russian collusion hoax as the Barr-Durham investigation heats up.

Rush Limbaugh: RUSH: Audio sound bite number 10, this morning on CNN Jim Sciutto is talking to James Clapper, who was as corrupt as Brennan, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence. And Jim Sciutto says, “Are you concerned that Barr or Durham’s investigation will find wrongdoing and seek to punish former intelligence officials like you?” CLAPPER: The message I’m getting from all this is, apparently what we were supposed to have done was to ignore the Russian interference, ignore the Russian meddling and the threat that it poses to us, and oh, by the way, blown off what the then commander in chief, President Obama, told us to do, which was to assemble all the reporting that we could that we had available to us — RUSH: Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Stop the digital. Did you hear what he just said? He just said (imitating Clapper), “And, by the way, should we have just blown off what Obama told us to do?” Does he know what he’s just done here? Clapper on CNN today said Obama made ...

Thomas Lifson: Deep State apoplectic over the appointment of John Ratcliffe as DNI — for good reason ... In other words, trust and protect those intelligence professionals who conspired with their MI6 colleagues, FBI head Comey and counterintelligence agents like Peter Strzok, and the Australian and Italian intel services (among others) to set up surveillance of the Trump campaign and the later appointment of the Mueller/Weissmann team to take down the elected president. It's not for nothing that Ignatius has been called "the mainstream media's apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency" and is a leading recipient of leaks. (A couple of paragraphs after the prose above, Ignatius calls James Clapper "the most successful DNI since the position was created" — which tells you what he considers "success" to be.) ... Clapper was a liar and clearly dead wrong about the Russian collusion hoax.  He has reason to fear what may be exposed about hi...

Jay Sekulow: ... ... the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, under Director James Clapper, eagerly pushed to get new procedures as part of an anti-Trump effort. The procedures increased access to raw signals intelligence before the conclusion of the Obama administration, just days before President Trump was inaugurated. By greatly expanding access to classified information by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, the Obama administration paved the way for a shadow government to leak classified information – endangering our national security and severely jeopardizing the integrity and reputation of our critical national security apparatus – in an attempt to undermine President Trump. ... And that is exactly how they leaked information to liberals in the media to attack and undercut the President.  It became a critical part of the coup attempt against the President.

Washington Post: Top Democrats tell intelligence chiefs they must help monitor Barr’s review of Russia probe The House Intelligence Committee chairman sent letters to the heads of the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, demanding in-person briefings to discuss what materials the attorney general has sought thus far. That is like putting the perps in charge of the investigation.  Why would you let Brennan and Clapper investigate themselves?  Both are clearly implicated in the Russian collusion hoax and have no business being anything other than a witness.

Charles Lipson: The skies are growing dark and increasingly ominous for dirty officials at the top of Obama-era law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Leading the “I’m really worried” list are James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch, and their senior aides, all political appointees. They expected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016 and bury any traces of malfeasance, just as they had buried hers. It didn’t work out that way. Now they need protection themselves. House Democrats and anonymous leakers are busy providing it. Many are delicately called “current and former senior officials” by the New York Times , Washington Post , and other legacy media. Gee, I wonder who they are? These defenders of the old guard are sliming Attorney General Bill Barr, who heads the investigation into their actions. They have good reasons, if not clean hands, for their attack. First, they want to keep as much secret as they can. Exposure can only harm them. Their main argument is that ...

H.A. Goodman: James Clapper Knew There Was No Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion In 2016 President Obama’s top intelligence official stated categorically that no evidence existed of Trump-Russia collusion. So why did Rosenstein appoint Mueller two months later? ... From July 2016 until Clapper’s appearance on “Meet the Press” in March 2017, not one shred of evidence linked anyone in Trump’s campaign to allegations listed in the Christopher Steele dossier or Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos’s meeting with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. Clapper stated to Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 5, 2017 that the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency had collected “no evidence” regarding “improper contacts” between Trump and Russia.... ... Clapper sometimes appeared to claim otherwise on CNN.  But his early statement of Meet the Press turns out to have been correct as verified by the Muller Report.

The Federalist: 4 Different Lies James Clapper Told About Lying To Congress This is yet another example of the two-tier justice system in the US where Democrats get a pass when it comes to breaking the law.  From Hillary Clinton and her staff to Clapper and Brennan. there are no legal consequences for breaking the law,  But if you worked for Trump prosecutors will manufacture a case.

Ian Schwartz: Historian Victor Davis Hanson said there has been no consequences for the wrongdoing by elites in society and warned that republics and successful states fall apart when the elites fall out of touch with the people. "We have a whole bunch... here at home, that feel they can dictate to people and they're never subject to the ramifications of their own ideology and policy," he said of elites. "And it's like the emperor has no clothes and then they're surprised that Trump won or surprised that people are rioting in Paris. What did they think was going to happen?" "We know historically, Tucker, when you have successful systems like ours or the Greek city-state of the fourth century or Rome in the fifth century A.D. or the Byzantines in the fifthteenth century or the ancient regime in Rome. Why do they fall apart? They fall apart because an elite no longer warrants the respect they think that they deserve because they are out of touch...

Julie Kelly: Two years ago this month, the set-up of Lt. General Michael Flynn began. And now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has recommended the lightest sentence possible for Flynn’s crime of lying to the FBI in 2017, Americans are reminded that the real criminals—top officials at our nation’s most trusted agencies—have yet to be charged for illegally leaking classified information about Flynn to the news media in an effort to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidency. Flynn was toward the top of Barack Obama’s enemies list. Forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 by Obama loyalist James Clapper, Flynn joined the Trump campaign and became an outspoken critic of Obama and Hillary Clinton. Famously, he led the “lock her up” chants at the Republican National Convention. Ten days later, James Comey’s FBI opened up a counterintelligence probe into possible election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Flynn was one of four campaign associates targeted by the age...

John Solomon: In the summer of 2014, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent a letter assuring Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that enhanced monitoring of Intelligence Community workers was designed to find leakers and insider threats, and was not intended to thwart lawful whistleblowing. Specifically, America’s top spy told the two senators that if any protected whistleblowing was intercepted by the Obama administration’s new monitoring, it wouldn’t be used to tip off spy agency leaders. “In the event a protected disclosure from a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring user activity, there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported to agency leadership under an insider threat program,” Clapper declared in his July 25, 2014, letter. Clapper even cc’d then-CIA Director John Brennan on his letter, an apparent heads-up to America’s most famous spy shop, the Central Intelligence Agency. ...

Sara Carter: The FBI had concerns with the intelligence community’s (IC) January 2017 assessment that the Kremlin interfered in the presidential election with the specific intent of electing President Trump over Hillary Clinton. In newly obtained emails, bureau officials noted there was not enough intelligence to support the January 2017 findings by the CIA which concluded Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, according to a numerous documents and text messages obtained by SaraACarter.com. However, while Strzok, Comey and others were disputing the findings of former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI Director James Clapper behind closed doors, the public perception was that the FBI agreed with the intelligence community’s assessment, as noted in news reports in late 2016 and early 2017. Strzok, however, was a double-edged sword. Although he believed there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove Russia wanted Trump in office, text messages suggest he was s...

IBD Editorial: As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. Well, so do bad governments. Recent revelations about the behavior of President Obama and his CIA director John Brennan in pushing the bogus Russian collusion investigation suggest that's been the case. The release of the FISA application by the FBI to investigate alleged collusion between Russia and President Trump's campaign and recent comments made by top officials are eye opening. Not only did President Obama know about the investigation, he seems to have pushed it from the very beginning. But don't take our word for it. Here's what Obama's Director of National Intelligence, the nation's former spy master, James Clapper, told CNN's Anderson Cooper: "If it weren't for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of event which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller...

Joe Concha: Big question of the week: Should former U.S. intelligence officials who have since jumped into media positions as paid political analysts still have access to classified information? In light of former CIA director and current MSNBC analyst Jonn Brennan's highly critical, often vitriolic comments about the current commander in chief — along with similar sentiment coming from James Clapper, former director of national intelligence and current CNN analyst — the answer is no. The reasons are obvious. For starters, although we keep getting told that the Brennans and Clappers of the world were totally apolitical and unbiased in running their agencies, the rhetoric from both men since retiring makes that prospect difficult to believe. Senior government officials like Brennan and Clapper typically keep their clearances for the sake of continuity and consultation between administrations. But neither Brennan nor Clapper appear to use their access for this purpose. Br...

Breitbart: NBC Reporter: Trump Will Cause ‘Financial’ Harm to Clapper, Brennan by Revoking Security Clearances NBC News reporter Ken Dilanian suggested Monday that President Donald Trump would hurt the livelihoods of Obama administration alumni by taking away the “valuable commodity” of their security clearances. ... That is not the purpose of their security clearance.  They have it so they can respond to questions from their successors.  Neither of these men appears to be helpful to the Trump administration, and I can understand why the President might not trust their advice.

Real Clear Investigations: Former CIA Director John Brennan’s insistence that the salacious and unverified Steele dossier was not part of the official Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election is being contradicted by two top former officials. Recently retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers stated in a classified letter to Congress that the Clinton campaign-funded memos did factor into the ICA . And James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, conceded in a recent CNN interview that the assessment was based on “some of the substantive content of the dossier.” Without elaborating, he maintained that “we were able to corroborate” certain allegations. These accounts are at odds with Brennan’s May 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that the Steele dossier was "not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community's assessment" that Russia interfered in the ele...

Monica Crowley: Long before the 2016 election, when Donald Trump was a mere private citizen, Russia was engaged in widespread cyber-aggression against the United States. Moscow racheted up those attacks during the campaign. And yet, despite knowledge of the ongoing cyberwarfare, the president at the time, Barack Obama, and his intelligence chiefs — John Brennan at the CIA, James Clapper at National Intelligence, James Comey and his predecessor, Robert Mueller, at the FBI — reportedly didn’t lift a finger to stop it. Why? Because the Obama administration was obsessed with protecting its bigger agenda: namely, closing and implementing the Iran nuclear deal and trying to save their collapsed Russian “reset.” Calling Russia on its malign cyber activity would have imperiled both initiatives, so Obama and his intel team apparently chose to ignore it, even as it escalated. After Trump’s shocking election victory, however, the administration switched gears and began waging a sinister ca...