PrairiePundit

 Margot Cleveland: Documents made public last week by the Federal Election Commission reveal that Hillary Clinton campaign payments to Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Donald Trump were not treated as legal expenses. These newly released documents eviscerate the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign’s attempts to hide behind attorney-client privilege in the special counsel’s criminal case against former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. ... These documents were related to an attempt to smear Trump and overturn an election and there should be no privilege in such a case. They appear to be part of a political fraud on a grand scale having nothing to do with a valid legal case.

 PJ Media: Special counsel John Durham, who has been investigating the origins of the Russiagate hoax, has issued trial subpoenas to people from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Fusion GPS, and liberal law firm Perkins Coie, according to  a report  from  The Epoch Times . Durham  called the conspiracy to thwart Trump a “joint venture”  between the aforementioned parties to flood the government with false allegations in the hopes that something would stick. Former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is expected to face trial next month for lying to the FBI. Sussmann was indicted in September 2021. Related:   Durham Filings Reveal Timeline of Conspiracy to Frame Trump Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI for falsely claiming that he wasn’t working on behalf of a client when he delivered bogus Trump dirt to federal agents. At the time, he alleged that Trump had a secret communications channel wi...

 Washington Examiner: The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory. The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm. A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research. Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term. The memo said that the Clinton campaign a...

 Washington Examiner: A  nonprofit group run by a former top aide for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein who has pushed  debunked claims  about a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank spent the post-2016 era funneling millions to Christopher Steele’s company and the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Daniel Jones, lead author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s  report  on the CIA’s interrogation program, founded the Democracy Integrity Project in January 2017. Tax records show he  funded  Steele, Fusion, and others, keeping a web of groups working and donor money flowing to the tune of millions of dollars for years, helping the groups continue their Russia-related research into 2020. The filings contend the mission of the nonprofit is to provide research “to educate the public on matters such as foreign election interference, global extremism, corruption, and coordinated disinformation.” Tax  records  from ...

 Real Clear Politics: Kash Patel: Look For Indictments Against Fusion GPS And Glenn Simpson For Perpetuating Trump-Russia Fraud Patel was one of the key figures in uncovering the fraud during the Nunes investigation. 

  Thomas Lifson: It looks like Fusion GPS is panicking over being forced to disclose communications as Russiagate was being hatched The case was brought by Alfa Bank which was accused of  "bribery, extortion, and interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election."  There are some 500 documents being withheld.  The Russian collusion hoax was a massive fraud during and after the 2016 election.  The bank was falsely accused of laundering money from Putin to Trump.

 Mark Judge: A must-read new book exposes in new, fine-grained detail the corruption of the media. Get hold of Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier. It digs deep into the diabolical vortex of political spies, opposition researchers and the mainstream media. Spooked also helped me put the final nail in the coffin of the Christine Blasey Ford hoax. I’ve been writing a series on the Ford fraud for The Stream this past year. The series will be a book . Spooked packs in a lot of complex detail, but the case it makes is clear. With the rise of political spies and opposition researchers, plus the demise of gatekeepers like honest reporters and editors, there are no guardrails in the media anymore. Anyone can make any claim about anyone, and without any proof the story can make it into the media. There are no more reality checks. How the Fake News Industry Hatched Meier describes three hugely consequential changes in how our media work. In...

 Jack Cashill: ... What Meier does not even hint at in this 2600-word article, largely excerpted from his forthcoming book,  Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube and the Rise of Private Spies , are the political consequences of the three-year media feeding frenzy between the dossier’s rise and fall.  Not surprisingly, Meier makes zero mention in this lengthy excerpt of how then-President Barack Obama and his operatives used the dossier to rig the 2016 election and subvert the Trump presidency.  This omission is classic “limited hangout.” According to a  lawsuit filed  by Watergate conspirator Hunt, “A ‘limited hangout' is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting -- sometimes even volunteering -- some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts...

  John Sexton: Collusion: How Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier fooled the world with the media's help Remember when Democrats thought it was an act of patriotism to question election results? 

 Epoch Times: A former staffer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) continued to pay large sums of money in 2019 to former British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the firm that retained Steele for work on a Hillary Clinton-funded misinformation dossier, even as the credibility of both Steele and the claims in his dossier evaporated. The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP), a nonprofit operated by former Feinstein staffer Daniel Jones, paid $1,222,714 in 2019 to Bean LLC., the shell company that controls Fusion GPS, and $700,000 to Walsingham Partners Ltd., a British company co-owned by Steele, according to a tax filing. Jones continued to fund the firms despite revelations in 2018 and 2019 that severely undermined the credibility of the dossier and its author. The dossier, compiled in 2016, contained bombastic allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia—none of which remain proven to this day, and some of which have been outright debunked. In mid- to late-2019, t...

John Solomon: ... The official said that not all intelligence community analysts felt comfortable with the conclusion about Russia’s intent to help Trump. “There was some dissent and concern that has been hidden all this time,” the official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity. One reason for that dissent may have emerged just two weeks later. Recently declassified footnotes from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report reveal U.S intelligence provided multiple warnings that some of Steele’s dossier was Russian disinformation fed by Moscow’s intelligence service. Footnote 350, for instance, revealed that the FBI received a U.S. intelligence report on Jan. 12, 2017 warning of an inaccuracy in the dossier related to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and warning that the material was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.” That same day, the FISA warrant against Trump adviser Carter Page was renewed for the first t...

John Solomon: Steele reveals he believes Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice knew about his anti-Trump research Rice denies former British spy's account, which comes in a novel litigation by three Russian businessman suing over Britain's data laws. Solomon extensively reviews Steele's testimony in a Brith court in a case brought by three of the Russians he named in his dossier.  As the headline discloses Susan Rice disputes what Steele says about her role in his work.

Washington Examiner: B ritish ex-spy Christopher Steele testified he met with Democratic lawyers during the 2016 presidential election, and one provided him with now-debunked claims about alleged Trump-Russia collusion as he compiled his dossier. Steele, a former MI6 agent whose salacious and unverified dossier was used by the FBI in its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, discussed his meetings with two lawyers tied to Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee during a deposition in a British court in mid-March, according to a transcript  obtained  by the  Daily Caller . Michael Sussman and Marc Elias, two top lawyers for the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC, played an even more significant role in the Trump-Russia investigation than previously known. Steele testified Sussman provided him with claims about Alfa Bank’s purported ties to Russian P...

Daily Caller: Consortium Linked To Steele Dossier Firms Paid $485K To Tech Company That Contributed To Senate Intel Report The Steele dossier has been discredited which makes the Senate intel Report of dubious value.

Red States: ... The implications of this are just stunning. Bruce Ohr, a DOJ official, was meeting with a partisan political operative in Glen Simpson who was then sharing information from a Russian intelligence officer. There wasn’t even any ambiguity here. Ohr knew exactly where this information was coming from. These supposed “professionals” who we are told we must trust were feeding Russian disinformation, not even attempting to verify it, into FISA warrants. It’s like something out of a movie. Ponder also the fact these 2 political operatives getting fake Trump/Russia info from a Russian intelligence officer are also 1) being paid by the Clinton campaign for this! and 2) Steele was also being PAID BY THE FBI as a CHS to give them this same fake info! — Brian Cates //Flynn & Breitbart's Army! (@drawandstrike) April 11, 2020 But while others like James Comey and Andrew McCabe have rightly been fired for the malfeascence that went on, Bruce Ohr continues to garner a gove...

PJ Media: British ex-spy Christopher Steele declined to give an interview to U.S. Attorney John Durham's team for its review of the Russia investigation. Representatives for Steele, whose unverified dossier was used by the FBI to obtain warrants to wiretap a member of President Trump's 2016 campaign, were recently approached by members of the federal prosecutor's team, and they said the former MI6 agent would not cooperate with the inquiry, according to Reuters. Sources for the report said Steele is concerned about politicization and not being treated fairly. Durham's spokesman declined to comment for the report. ... Only one person is publicly known to be under criminal investigation by Durham's team: former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who altered a key document in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act filings related to onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. ... It is weird that Steele and the Democrats try to claim that investigation the bogus all...

Eric Felton: A month before the 2016 presidential election, the FBI met Christopher Steele in Rome and apparently unlawfully shared with the foreign opposition researcher some of the bureau’s most closely held secrets, according to unpublicized disclosures in the recent Justice Department Inspector General report on abuses of federal surveillance powers. What’s more, Steele, the former British spy who compiled the “dossier” of conspiracy theories for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was promised $15,000 to attend the briefing by FBI agents eager to maintain his cooperation in their Trump-Russia collusion investigation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane. That investigation was so closely guarded that only a handful of top officials and agents at the FBI were allowed to know about it. The report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz details how a team of FBI agents in early October 2016 shared with Steele extensive classified materials, just weeks before the bureau cut off ties with him ...

Adam Mill: One can imagine the unspoken question hanging in the darkness during the January 2017 ride back to the airport. A small gaggle1 of FBI agents had just concluded their long-overdue interview with Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source. The silence must have been deafening. Steele had tried to conceal2 his source from the FBI. But the FBI knew his identity and set up an interview behind Steele’s back, and the interview contradicted several Steele assertions. The downcast agents waited for somebody to ask the question on all of their minds: “Now what?” The right answer would have been to admit to the court that Steele was an unreliable source who exaggerates and lies and put an end to spying on Americans in pursuit of the mirage of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. When presented one last opportunity to do the right thing, the FBI instead pushed harder for their now-discredited hypothesis justifying the investigation. Peter Strzok had promised his lover, Lisa Page, ...

Elizabeth Vaughn: ... By the time the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation had been handed off to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017, the FBI knew, without a doubt that the dossier was a collection of lies. It’s hard to imagine the FBI kept that information from Mueller’s team. Even if, for whatever unfathomable reason they had, it wouldn’t have taken long for the Mueller team to learn for themselves. Mueller chose not to renew the warrant to spy on Carter Page after June, so they had to have known by then the information was false. Given this knowledge, the Wall Street Journal editorial staff ask an obvious question? Why did the special counsel not tell America that Christopher Steele’s information was false? The editors write: Rather than take a hard look at it, Team Mueller made a deliberate choice to tiptoe around it. In his opening statement to Congress when he testified this July, Mr. Mueller declared he would not address “matters related to the so-called Stee...

Elizabeth Vaughn: Judicial Watch (JW) announced on Friday that U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg denied the FBI’s second attempt to stop the release of any communications between former FBI General Counsel James Baker and Michael Sussmann, a partner at the Perkins, Coie law firm. Sussmann represented the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. Sussman allegedly met with Baker to share information targeting then candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Sussmann is believed to have hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and the Clinton campaign to produce opposition research to use against Trump. Funds from the DNC and the Clinton campaign were “laundered” through Perkins, Coie by Sussmann to pay for the production of the dossier. The price tag? $12 million. According to JW,” the court specifically rejected the FBI’s argument that it needed to protect the “privacy” of Hillary Clinton’s lawyer.” Good for them. It usually takes several tries before JW actually receives th...