John R. Houk
© May 4, 2018
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01) wrote a post I found at Noisy
Room that paints a profile of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller as a Crooked
DOJ attorney (at various levels of promotion) and as a Crooked FBI
Director. EXTREMELY well worth the read!
I recall watching Gohmert on Fox News stating it is a
huge mistake appointing Robert Mueller as Special Prosecutor. It seems I
recollect Gohmert replying stating something to the effect, “You will regret
the day Mueller is a Special Prosecutor.” (A recollection of several months
ago, so I doubt my quote is word for word. It’s my memory of the intended
meaning.)
At the time other Conservative pundits and politicians
praised the Mueller appointment because of a reputation of an integrity but
tough. At the time it seemed to me Gohmert was as a lone voice in the
wilderness proclaiming the truth about Mueller. Even now there are way too many
Republicans calling Mueller a man of integrity. After you read Gohmert’s
profile of Mueller (which is commonly known history and not fake news), if you
still think Mueller has integrity you are a blind Dem or just a gullible idiot.
The Gohmert article is lengthy, because Mueller’s corruption
is legion. I suggest you bookmark this blog post or the Noisy Room post to keep
going back to read its entirety. Know the truth.
Just as a teaser here are the subject headings from
Gohmert’s exposé:
Ø MONUMENTAL: The Naked Truth About Robert Mueller
Ø ROBERT MUELLER – BACKGROUND
Ø MUELLER: THE WHITEY BULGER AFFAIR
Ø REP. CURT WELDON ATTACKED AND CRUSHED BY ROBERT MUELLER
Ø ROD ROSENSTEIN
Ø AN ILLEGAL RAID ON CONGRESS BY MUELLER
Ø MUELLER’S 5-YEAR UP-OUR-OUT
Ø NATIONAL SECURITY LETTER ABUSES
Ø SENATOR TED STEVENS
Ø Unfortunately for Ted Stevens, his conviction came only eight
days before his election, which tipped the scales on a close election.
Ø THE DISGUSTING TREATMENT OF DR. STEVEN HATFILL
Ø THE FRAMING OF SCOOTER LIBBY
Ø MUELLER’S EMBRACE OF THE FRIENDS OF ISLAMIC TERROR
Ø PURGING THE FBI OF ANTI-TERROR INFORMATION
Ø PURGING COUNTER-TERRORISM TRAINING MATERIALS
Ø MUELLER’S UNETHICAL ACCEPTANCE OF APPOINTMENT AS SPECIAL
PROSECUTOR
Ø SPECIAL PROSECUTOR MUELLER’S TROUBLINGLY BIASED HIRES
Ø GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN
Ø FISA ABUSE
Ø MUELLER IGNORES PROVABLE CRIMES BY THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN, THE
FBI, THE FISC, ETC.
JRH 5/4/18
*********************************
MONUMENTAL: The Naked Truth About Robert Mueller
Posted on May 3, 2018 11:00 am by TMH
From Doug Ross @ Journal
Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history of illicitly
targeting innocent people. His many actions are a stain upon the legacy of
American jurisprudence. He lacks the judgment and credibility to lead the
prosecution of anyone.
I do not make these statements lightly. Each time I prepared
to question Mueller during Congressional hearings, the more concerned I became
about his ethics and behavior. As I went back to begin compiling all of that
information in order to recount personal interactions with Mueller, the more
clearly the big picture began to come into focus.
At one point I had to make the decision to stop adding to
this compilation or it would turn into a far too lengthy project. My goal was
to share some firsthand experiences with Mueller — as other Republican Members
of Congress had requested — adding, “You seem to know so much about him.”
This article is prepared from my viewpoint to help better
inform the reader about the Special Prosecutor leading the effort to railroad
President Donald J. Trump through whatever manufactured charge he can allege.
Judging by Mueller’s history, it doesn’t matter who he has
to threaten, harass, prosecute or bankrupt to get to allege something or, for
that matter, anything. It certainly appears Mueller will do
whatever it takes to bring down his target — ethically or unethically — based
on my findings.
What does former Attorney General Eric Holder say? Sounds
like much the same thing I just said. Holder has stated, “I’ve known Bob
Mueller for 20, 30 years; my guess is he’s just trying to make the case as good
as he possibly can.”
Holder does know him. He has seen Mueller at work when
Holder was obstructing justice and was therefore held in Contempt of Congress.
He knows Mueller’s FBI framed innocent people and had no remorse in doing so.
Let’s look at what we know. What I have accumulated here is
absolutely shocking upon the realization that Mueller’s disreputable, twisted
history speaks to the character of the man placed in a position to attempt to
legalize a coup against a lawfully-elected President. Any Republican who says
anything resembling, “Bob Mueller will do a good job as Special Counsel,” “Bob
Mueller has a great reputation for being fair,” or anything similar; either (a)
wants President Trump indicted for something and removed from office regardless
of his innocence; (b) is intentionally ignorant of the myriad of outrageous
problems permeating Mueller’s professional history; or (c) is cultivating
future Democrat votes when he or she comes before the Senate someday for a
confirmation hearing.
There is simply too much clear and convincing evicdence
[sic] to the contrary. Where other writers have set out information succinctly,
I have quoted them, with proper attribution. My goal is to help you understand
what I have found.
ROBERT MUELLER – BACKGROUND
In his early years as FBI Director, most Republican members
of Congress gave Mueller a pass in oversight hearings, allowing him to avoid
tough questions. After all, we were continually told, “Bush appointed him.” I
gave him easy questions the first time I questioned him in 2005 out of
deference to his Vietnam service. Yet, the longer I was in Congress, the more
conspicuous the problems became. As I have said before of another Vietnam
veteran, just because someone deserves our respect for service or our sympathy
for things that happened to them in the military, that does not give them the
right to harm our country later. As glaring problems came to light, I toughened
up my questions in the oversight hearings. But first, let’s cover a little of
Mueller’s history.
MUELLER: THE WHITEY BULGER AFFAIR
The Boston
Globe noted Robert Mueller’s connection with the Whitey
Bulger case in an article entitled, “One Lingering Question for FBI Director
Robert Mueller.” The Globe said this: “[Mike] Albano [former Parole Board
Member who was threatened by two FBI agents for considering parole for the men
imprisoned for a crime they did not commit] was appalled that, later that same
year, Mueller was appointed FBI director, because it was Mueller, first as an
assistant US attorney then as the acting U.S. attorney in Boston, who wrote
letters to the parole and pardons board throughout the 1980s opposing
clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies. Of course, Mueller was also
in that position while Whitey Bulger was helping the FBI cart off his criminal
competitors even as he buried bodies in shallow graves along the Neponset…”
Mueller was the head of the Criminal Division as Assistant
U.S. Attorney, then as Acting U.S. Attorney. I could not find any explanation
online by Mueller as to why he insisted on keeping the defendants in prison
that FBI agents—in the pocket of Whitey Bulger— had framed for a murder they
did not commit. Make no mistake: these were not honorable people he had
incarcerated. But it was part of a pattern that eventually became quite clear
that Mueller was more concerned with convicting and putting people in jail he
disliked, even if they were innocent of the charges, than he was with ferreting
out the truth. I found no explanation as to why he did not bear any
responsibility for the $100 million paid to the defendants who were framed by
FBI agents under his control. The Boston Globe said, “Thanks to the FBI’s
corruption, taxpayers
got stuck with the $100 million bill for compensating the framed men, two of
whom, Greco and Tameleo, died in prison.”
The New York Times explained the relationship
this way: “In the 1980’s, while [FBI Agent] Mr. Connolly was working with
Whitey Bulger, Mr. Mueller was assistant United States attorney in Boston in
charge of the criminal division and for a period was the acting United States
attorney here, presiding over Mr. Connolly and Mr. Bulger as a ’top echelon
informant.’
Officials of the Massachusetts State Police and the Boston
Police Department had long wondered why their investigations of Mr. Bulger were
always compromised before they could gather evidence against him, and they
suspected that the FBI was protecting him.”
If Mr. Mueller had no knowledge that the FBI agents he used
were engaged in criminal activity, then he certainly was so incredibly blind
that he should never be allowed back into any type of criminal case
supervision. He certainly helped continue contributing to the damages of the
framed individuals by working relentlessly to prevent them from being paroled
out of prison even as their charges were in the process of being
completely thrown out.
Notice also the evidence of a pattern throughout Mueller’s
career: the leaking of information to disparage Mueller’s targets. In the
Whitey Bulger case, the leaks were to organized crime — the Mafia.
One of the basic, most bedrock tenets of our Republic is
that we never imprison people for being “bad” people. Anyone imprisoned has to
have committed a specific crime for which they are found guilty. Not in Mueller’s
world. He has the anti-Santa Claus list; and, if you are on his list, you get
punished even if you are framed.
He never apologizes when the truth is learned, no matter how
wrong or potentially criminal or malicious the prosecution was. In his book,
you deserve what you get even if you did not commit the crime for which he
helped put you away. This is but one example, though — as Al Pacino once
famously said — “I’m just getting warmed up!”
REP. CURT WELDON ATTACKED AND CRUSHED BY ROBERT MUELLER
During my first term in Congress, 2005 to 2006, Congressman
Curt Weldon delivered some powerful and relentless allegations about the FBI
having prior knowledge that 9/11 was coming. He repeatedly alleged that there
was documentary evidence to show that 9/11 could have been prevented and
thousands of lives saved if the FBI had done its job. He held up documents at
times while making these claims in speeches on the floor of the House of
Representatives.
I was surprised that FBI Director Mueller seemed to largely
ignore these allegations. It seemed to me that he should either admit the FBI
made significant mistakes or refute the allegations. Little did I know
Mueller’s FBI was preparing a response, but it certainly was not the kind of
response that I would have expected if an honorable man had been running that
once hallowed institution.
You can read two of Congressman Weldon’s speeches on the
House floor that are linked below. After reading the excerpts I have provided,
you may get a window into the mind of the FBI Director or someone under
Mueller’s control at the FBI. The FBI literally destroyed Congressman Weldon’s
public service life, which then foreclosed his ability to use a national
platform to expose what he believed were major problems in the FBI fostered
under the Clinton administration. Here is but one such excerpt of a speech
wherein he spoke of the failure of FBI leadership, then under the direction of
the Clinton administration and as came within Mueller’s control just before
9/11. Shockingly, the Mueller FBI failed to even accept from the military any
information on the very terrorists who would later go on to commit the
atrocities of 9/11, much less act upon it.
The U.S. gleaned this information through development of a
surveillance technology called Able Danger. On October 19, 2005, Rep. Curt
Weldon delivered the
following statement on the House floor.
Mr. Speaker, back in 1999 when I
was Chair of the Defense Research Subcommittee, the Army was doing cutting-edge
work on a new type of technology to allow us to understand and predict emerging
transnational terrorist threats. That technology was being done at several
locations but was being led by our Special Forces Command. The work that they
were doing was unprecedented. And because of what I saw there, I supported the
development of a national capability of a collaborative center that the CIA
would just not accept.
In fact, in November 4 of 1999,
two years before 9-11, in a meeting in my office with the Deputy Secretary of
Defense, Deputy Director of the CIA, Deputy Director of the FBI, we presented a
nine-page proposal to create a national collaborative center.
When we finished the brief, the
CIA said we did not need that capability, and so before 9/11 we did not have
it. When President Bush came in after a year of research, he announced the
formation of the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, exactly what I had
proposed in 1999. Today it is known as the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism
Center.
But, Mr. Speaker, what troubles
me is not the fact that we did not take those steps. What troubles me is that I
now have learned in the last four months that one of the tasks that was being
done in 1999 and 2000 was a Top Secret program organized at the request of the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, carried out by the General in charge of
our Special Forces Command, a very elite unit focusing on information regarding
al Qaeda. It was a military language effort to allow us to identify the key
cells of al Qaeda around the world and to give the military the capability to
plan actions against those cells, so they could not attack us as they did in
1993 at the Trade Center, at the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole attack, and the
African embassy bombings.
What I did not know, Mr.
Speaker, up until June of this year, was that this secret program
called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda in January
and February of 2000, over one year before 9/11 ever happened.
In addition, I learned that not
only did we identify the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, but we identified
Mohamed Atta as one of the members of that Brooklyn cell along with three other
terrorists who were the leadership of the 9-11 attack.
I have also learned, Mr.
Speaker, that in September of 2000, again, over one year before 9-11,
that [the] Able Danger team attempted on three separate occasions to
provide information to the FBI about the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, and on
three separate occasions they were denied by lawyers in the previous
administration to transfer that information.
Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday on
“Meet the Press,” Louis Freeh, FBI Director at the time, was interviewed by Tim
Russert. The first question to Louis Freeh was in regard to the FBI’s ability
to ferret out the terrorists. Louis Freeh’s response, which can be obtained by
anyone in this country as a part of the official record, was, ‘Well, Tim, we
are now finding out that a top-secret program of the military called Able
Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda and Mohammed Atta over
a year before 9/11.’
And what Louis Freeh said, Mr.
Speaker, is that that kind of actionable data could have allowed us to prevent
the hijackings that occurred on September 11.
So now we know, Mr. Speaker,
that military intelligence officers working in a program authorized by the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the General in charge of Special Forces
Command, identified Mohammed Atta and three terrorists a year before 9/11,
tried to transfer that information to the FBI [and] were denied; and [that] the
FBI Director has now said publicly if he would have had that information, the
FBI could have used it to perhaps prevent the hijackings that struck the World
Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the plane that landed in Pennsylvania and
perhaps saved 3,000 lives and changed the course of world history.
Curt Weldon gave a series of speeches, recounting what he
saw and what he knew, regarding the failures of the FBI and the Clinton
administration to share information that could
have prevented 9/11.
Congressman Weldon tried to
hold those accountable in the FBI and CIA that he felt had
mishandled actionable intelligence which he said could have thwarted the 9/11
attacks. He recounted many examples of similar intelligence failures.
In 2006, the Robert Mueller-led FBI took horrendously
unjust actions to derail Curt Weldon’s reelection bid just weeks
before the vote—actions that were later described as a “hit job”: “Each of
Weldon’s 10 previous re-elections had been by sizable margins. Polls showed he
was up by 5-7 points [in the fall of 2006]. Three weeks prior to the election,
however, a national story ran about Weldon based upon anonymous sources that an
investigation was underway against him and his daughter, alleging illegal
activities involving his congressional work. Weldon had received no prior
notification of any such investigation and was dumbfounded that such a story
would run especially since he regularly briefed the FBI and intelligence
agencies on his work.
A week after the news story broke, alleging a need to act
quickly because of the leak, FBI agents from Washington raided the home
of Weldon’s daughter at 7:00AM on a Monday morning… Local TV and print
media had all been alerted to the raid in advance and were already in position
to cover the story. Editor’s note: Sound familiar?
Within hours, Democratic protesters were waving “Caught
Red-Handed” signs outside Weldon’s district office in Upper Darby. In the
ensuing two weeks, local and national media ran multiple stories implying that
Weldon must also have been under investigation. Given the coverage, Weldon lost
the election… To this day, incredibly, no one in authority has asked Weldon or
his daughter about the raid or the investigation. There was no follow
up, no questions, no grand jury interrogation, nothing.
One year after the raid the local FBI office called Weldon’s
daughter to have her come get the property that had been removed from her home.
That was it…The raid ruined the career of Weldon and his daughter.”
Though some blamed the Clintons and Sandy Berger for
orchestrating the FBI “hit job,” we can’t lose sight of the fact that the head
of the FBI at the time was Robert Mueller. Please understand what former FBI
officials have told me: the FBI would never go after a member
of Congress, House or Senate, without the full disclosure to and the blessing
of the FBI Director. Even if the idea on how to silence Curt Weldon did not
come from Director Mueller himself, it surely had his approval and
encouragement.
The early morning raid by Mueller’s FBI — with all the media
outside — who had obviously been alerted by the FBI, achieved its goal of abusing
the U.S. Justice system to silence Curt Weldon by ending his political career.
Mueller’s tactics worked. If the Clintons and Berger manipulated Weldon’s
reelection to assure his defeat, they did it with the artful aid of Mueller,
all while George W. Bush was President. Does any of this sound familiar?
People say those kinds of things just don’t happen in
America. They certainly seemed to when Mueller was in charge of the FBI and
they certainly seem to happen now during his tenure as Special Counsel. It
appears clear that President Obama and his adjutants knew of Mueller’s
reputation and that he could be used to take out their political opponents
should such extra-legal actions become politically necessary.
To the great dismay of the many good, decent and patriotic
FBI agents, Obama begged Mueller to stay on for two years past the 10 years the
law allowed. Obama then asked Congress to approve Mueller’s waiver allowing him
to stay on for two extra years. Perhaps the leaders in Congress did not realize
what they were doing in approving it. I did. It was a major mistake, and I said
so at the time. This is also why I objected strenuously the moment I heard
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed his old friend Bob Mueller to
be Special Counsel to go after President Trump.
ROD ROSENSTEIN
I was one of the few who were NOT surprised when Mueller
started selecting his assistants in the Special Counsel’s office. Many had
reputations for being bullies, for indicting people who were not guilty of the
charges, for forcing people toward bankruptcy by running up their legal fees
(while the bullies in the Special Counsel’s office enjoy an apparently endless
government budget), or by threatening innocent family members with prosecution
so the Special Counsel’s victim would agree to pleading guilty to anything to
prevent the Kafka-esque prosecutors from doing more harm to their families.
AN ILLEGAL RAID ON CONGRESS BY MUELLER
There is a doctrine in our governmental system that mandates
each part of government must have oversight to prevent power from corrupting —
and absolute power from corrupting absolutely. The Congress and Senate are
accountable to the voters as is the President. Our massive and bloated
bureaucracy is supposed to be accountable to the Congress.
A good example would be complaints against the Department of
Justice or, specifically, the FBI.
If constituents or whistleblowers within those entities have
complaints, a Congressman’s office is a good place to contact. Our
conversations or information from constituents or whistleblowers are normally
privileged from review by anyone within the Executive Branch. It must be so.
If the FBI could raid our offices anytime an FBI agent were
to complain to us, no FBI agent could ever afford to come forward, no matter
how egregious the conduct they sought to disclose.
Whistleblowers in the FBI must know they are protected. They
always have known that in the past. As I learned from talking with attorneys
who had helped the House previously with this issue, if the FBI or another law
enforcement entity needed to search something on the House side of the Capitol
or House office buildings, they contacted the House Counsel, whether with a
warrant or request. The House Counsel with approval of the Speaker, would go
through the Congress Members’ documents, computers, flash drives, or anything
that might have any bearing on what was being sought as part of the
investigation.
They would honestly determine what was relevant and what was
not, and what was both irrelevant and privileged from Executive Branch review.
Normally, if there were a dispute or question, it could be presented to a
federal judge for a private in-chamber review to determine if it were
privileged or relevant. If the DOJ or FBI were to get a warrant and gather all
of the computers and documents in a Congressman’s office without the recovered
items being screened to insure they are not privileged from DOJ seizure, the
DOJ would be risking that an entire case might be thrown out because of things
improperly recovered and “fruit of the poisonous tree,” preventing the use of
even things that were not privileged.
FBI Director Mueller, however, seemed determined to throw
over 200 years of Constitutional restraints to the wind so he could let
Congress know he was the unstoppable government bully who could potentially
waltz into our offices whenever he wished.
In the case of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat of
Louisiana, Mueller was willing to risk a reversal of a slam dunk criminal case
just to send a message to the rest of Congress: you don’t mess with Mueller.
That Congressman Jefferson was guilty of something did not surprise most
observers when, amidst swirling allegations, $90,000 in cold hard cash was
found in his freezer. As we understood it, the FBI had a witness who was wired
and basically got Jefferson on tape taking money. They had mountains of
indisputable evidence to prove their case. They had gotten an entirely
appropriate warrant to search his home and had even more mountains of evidence
to nail the lid on his coffin, figuratively speaking.
The FBI certainly did not need to conduct an unsupervised
search of a Congressman’s office to put their unbeatable case at risk.
Apparently, the risk was worth it to Mueller — he could now show the members of
Congress who was in charge. Apparently, the FBI knew just the right federal
judge who would disregard the Constitution and allow
Mueller’s minions to do their dirty work.
I read the Application for Warrant and the accompanying
Affidavit for Warrant to raid Jefferson’s office, as I did so many times as a
judge.
I simply could not believe they would risk such a
high-profile case just to try to intimidate Members of Congress.
In the opinion of this former prosecutor, felony judge and
Appellate Court Chief Justice, they could have gotten a conviction based on
what they had already spelled out in the very lengthy affidavit. The official
attorneys representing the House, knowing my background, allowed me to sit in
on the extremely heated discussions between attorneys for the House, DOJ
attorneys, and, to my recollection, an attorney from the Bush White House,
after Jefferson’s office was raided.
The FBI had gathered up virtually every kind of record,
computerized or otherwise, and carted them off. I was not aware of the times
that the DOJ and House attorneys, with the Speaker’s permission, had cooperated
over the years. No Congressman is above the law nor is any above having search
warrants issued against them which is why Jefferson’s home was searched without
protest.
However, when the material is in a Congressional office,
there is a critical and centuries’ old balance of power that must be preserved.
The Mueller FBI, along with the DOJ, assured everyone that
all was copacetic. They would ask some of the DOJ’s attorneys review all of the
material and give back anything that was privileged and unlawful for the DOJ to
see. Then they would make sure none of the DOJ attorneys who participated in
the review of materials (that were privileged from the DOJ’s viewing) would be
allowed to be prosecutors in Jefferson’s case.
If you find that kind of thinking terribly flawed and
constitutionally appalling, you would be in agreement with the former Speakers
of the House, the Vice President at the time, and ultimately, the final
decisions of our federal appellate court system. They found the search to be
illegal and inappropriate. Fortunately for the DOJ, they did not throw the
entire case out. In retrospect, we did not know at the time what a farce a DOJ
“firewall” would have been. Now we do!
MUELLER’S 5-YEAR UP-OUR-OUT
In federal law enforcement, it takes a new federal agent or
supervisor about five years or so after arriving at a newly assigned office to
gain the trust and respect of local law enforcement officers. That trust and
respect is absolutely critical to doing the best job possible. Yet new FBI
Director Robert Mueller came up with a new personnel policy that would rid the
FBI of thousands of years of its most invaluable experience.
In a nutshell, after an FBI
employee was in any type of supervisory position for five years, he or she had
to either come to Washington to sit at a desk or get out of the FBI.
In the myriad of FBI offices around the country, most agents
love what they do in actively enforcing the law. They have families involved in
the community; their kids enjoy their schools; and they do not want to move to
the high cost of living in Washington, DC, and especially not to an inside desk
job. What occurred around the country was that agents in charge of their local
offices got out of the FBI and did something more lucrative. Though they really
wanted to stay in, they were not allowed to do so if they were not moving to
DC. Agents told me that it was not unusual for the Special Agent in Charge of a
field office to have well over 20 years of experience before the policy change.
Under Mueller’s policy that changed to new Special Agents in Charge having five
to ten years of experience when they took over.
If the FBI Director wanted nothing but “yes” men and women
around the country working for him, this was a great policy. Newer
agents are more likely to unquestioningly salute the FBI figurehead in
Washington, but never boldly offer a suggestion to fix a bad idea and Mueller
had plenty of them.
Whether it was wasting millions of dollars on a software
boondoggle or questionable personnel preferences, agents tell me Mueller did
not want to hear from more experienced people voicing their concerns about his
ideas or policies. An NPR report December 13, 2007, entitled, “FBI’S
‘Five-And-Out’ Transfer Policy Draws Criticism” dealt with the Mueller
controversial policy: “From the beginning of this year (2007) until the end of
September (2007), 576 agents found themselves in the five-and-out pool. Less
than half of them — just 286 — opted to go to headquarters; 150 decided to take
a pay cut and a lesser job to stay put; 135 retired; and five resigned
outright.”
In the period of nine months accounted for in this
report, the FBI ran off a massive amount of absolutely priceless law
enforcement experience vested in 140 invaluable agents. For the vast part,
those are the agents who have seen the mistakes, learned lessons, could advise
newer agents on unseen pitfalls of investigations and pursuit of justice.
So many of these had at least 20-30 years of experience or
more. The lessons learned by such seasoned agents were lost as the agents
carried it with them when they left. In the 2007 NPR report, the FBI Agents
Association indicated that the Five-Year-Up-or-Out program hobbles field
offices and takes relationships forged there for granted. In other words, it
was a terrible idea.
The incalculable experience loss damages the FBI by
eliminating those in the field in a position to advise the FBI Director against
his many judgment errors, which were listed in the NPR article. But this was
not the only damage done.
If an FBI Director has inappropriate personal vengeance in
mind or holds an inappropriate prejudice such as those that infamously
motivated Director J. Edgar Hoover, then the older, wiser, experienced agents
were not around with the confidence to question or guide the Director away from
potential misjudgment. I also cannot help but wonder: if Mueller had not run
off the more experienced agents, would they have been able to advise against
and stop the kind of Obama-era abuses and corruption being unearthed right now?
Rather than admit that his 5-Year program was a mistake,
Mueller eventually changed the policy to a Seven-Year-Up-or-Out Program. I once
pointed out to him at a hearing that if he had applied the Five Year Up-or-Out
Policy to literally everyone in a supervisory position, he himself would have
had to leave the FBI by September of 2006. He did not seem to be amused.
One other problem remained that will be discussed in more
detail later in this article. Before Mueller became Director, FBI agents were
trained to identify certain Muslims who had become radicalized and dangerous.
Mueller purged and even eliminated training that would have helped identify
radical Islamic killers. By running off the more experienced agents who had
better training on radical Islam before Mueller, “blinded us of the ability to
identify our enemy,” as I was told by some of them, Mueller put victims in
harm’s way in cities like Boston, San Diego and elsewhere.
NATIONAL SECURITY LETTER ABUSES
National Security Letters (NSL) are a tool that allows the
DOJ to bypass the formality of subpoenas, applications for warrants with
affidavits in support, and instead simply send a letter to an individual,
business or any entity they so choose to demand that records or documents of
any kind must be produced and provided to the sender.
The letter also informs the recipient that if the he or she
reveals to anyone that the letter was received or what it requires to be
produced, then the recipient has committed a federal felony and will be
prosecuted.
It is a rather dramatic event to receive such a letter and
then realize that this simple letter could have such profound power and
consequences.
The Committee in the House of Representatives that has
oversight jurisdiction over the DOJ is the Judiciary Committee of which I am a
member. We have grilled DOJ personnel in the past over the potential for NSL
abuse, but both the House and Senate Committees were reassured that there were
no known abuses of this extra-constitutional power.
Unfortunately, the day came when we learned that there had
been an extraordinary number of abuses.
Apparently, some of Mueller’s FBI agents had just been
sending out demands for records or documents without any probable cause,
which the Fourth Amendment requires. Some agents were on outright fishing
expeditions just to find out what different people were doing. We were told
that there may have even been thousands of NSL’s dispatched to demand documents
without following either the Constitutional requirements or the DOJ’s own
policy requirements.
When the Inspector General’s report revealed such absolutely
outrageous conduct by FBI agents, some in Congress were absolutely livid.
An NBC
News report on March 9, 2007, had this headline and
sub-headline: “Justice Department: FBI acted illegally on data; Audit finds
agency misused Patriot Act to obtain information on citizens.”
The report went on to say, “FBI Director Robert Mueller said
he was to blame for not putting more safeguards into place. ‘I am to be held
accountable,’ Mueller said. He told reporters he would correct the problems and
did not plan to resign. ‘The inspector general went and did the audit that I
should have put in place many years ago,’ Mueller said.” Some Republicans
wanted to completely eliminate such an extraordinary power that was so widely
abused. Nonetheless, I could not help but wonder that if Mueller had not run
off thousands of years of experience though his “Five Year Up-or-Out Policy,”
perhaps young, inexperienced agents would not have been so tempted to vastly
abuse the power of the NSL.
In fact, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lost his job over
the widespread, pervasive abuses under Mueller’s supervision. In retrospect,
Mueller probably should have been gone first. It was his people, his lack of
oversight, his atmosphere that encouraged it, and his FBI that did virtually
nothing to hold people accountable.
SENATOR TED STEVENS
With Mueller as his mentor and confidant, is it any surprise
that we’re now finding James Comey’s FBI found additional ways to monitor
Americans and plot with Democrat loyalists in an attempt to oust a duly-elected
President?
Ted Stevens had served in the U.S. Senate since 1968 and was
indicted in 2008 by the U.S. Justice Department. One would think before the
U.S. government would seek to destroy a sitting U.S. Senator, there would be no
question whatsoever of his guilt. One would be completely wrong, at least when
the FBI Director is Robert Mueller. Roll
Call provides us with General Colin Powell’s take on Ted
Stevens.
“According to former Secretary of
State Colin Powell, who had worked closely with the senator since his days as
President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, the senator was ‘a trusted
individual … someone whose word you could rely on. I never heard in all of
those years a single dissenting voice with respect to his integrity, with
respect to his forthrightness, and with respect to the fact that when you shook
hands with Ted Stevens, or made a deal with Ted Stevens, it was going to be a
deal that benefited the nation in the long run, one that he would stick with.’”
Such a glowing reputation certainly did not inhibit
Mueller’s FBI from putting Stevens in its cross-hairs, pushing to get an
indictment that came 100 days before his election, and engaging in third world
dictator-type tactics to help an innocent man lose his election, after which he
lost his life. As reported by NPR, after the conviction and all truth came
rolling out of the framing and conviction of Senator Stevens, the new Attorney
General Eric Holder, had no choice. He “abandoned the Stevens case in April
2009 after uncovering new and ‘disturbing’ details about the prosecution…”
Unfortunately for Ted Stevens, his conviction came only
eight days before his election, which tipped the scales on a close election.
[Blog Editor: Prosecutorial misconduct & FBI sex with prosecution’s
star witness had conviction tossed – CFP]
Does this sound familiar yet? The allegation was that Senator
Stevens had not paid full price for improvements to his Alaska cabin. As Roll
Call reported, he had actually overpaid for the improvements by over twenty
percent. Roll
Call went on to state:
“But relying on false records and
fueled by testimony from a richly rewarded ‘cooperating’ witness… government
prosecutors convinced jurors to find him guilty just eight days before the
general election which he lost by less than 2 percent of the vote.”
After a report substantiated massive improprieties by the
FBI and DOJ in the investigation and prosecution of Senator Stevens, the result
was ultimately a complete dismissal of the conviction.
At the time there was no direct evidence that Director
Mueller was aware of the tactics of concealing exculpatory evidence that would
have exonerated Stevens, and the creation of evidence that convicted him in
2008. Nearly four years later, in 2012, the Alaska Dispatch News concluded:
“Bottom line: Kepner (the lead FBI
investigator accused of wrongdoing by Agent Joy) is still working for the FBI
and is still investigating cases, including criminal probes. Joy, the
whistleblower (who was the FBI agent who disclosed the FBI’s vast wrongdoing,
especially of Kepner), has left the agency.”
Director Mueller either did control or could have controlled
what happened to the lead FBI agent that destroyed a well-respected U.S.
Senator. That U.S. Senator was not only completely innocent of the manufactured
case against him, he was an honest and honorable man. Under Director Mueller’s
overriding supervision, the wrongdoer who helped manufacture the case stayed on
and the whistleblower was punished. Obviously, the FBI Director wanted his FBI
agents to understand that honesty would be punished if it revealed wrongdoing
within Mueller’s organization. Further, not only was evidentiary proof of
Senator Stevens’ innocence concealed from the Senator’s defense attorneys by
the FBI, there was also a witness that provided compelling testimony that
Stevens’ had done everything appropriately. That witness, however, was who
agents sent back to Alaska by FBI Agents, unbeknownst to the Senator’s defense
attorneys. This key exonerating testimony was placed out of reach for Senator
Stevens’ defense. Someone should have gone to jail for this illegality within
the nation’s top law enforcement agency. Instead, Senator Stevens lost his
seat, and surprise, surprise, Mueller’s FBI helped another elected Republican
bite the dust. Unfortunately, I am not speaking figuratively.
In August of 2010, former Senator Stevens boarded his doomed
plane. But for the heinous, twisted and corrupt investigation by the FBI, and
inappropriate prosecution by the DOJ, he would have still been a sitting U.S.
Senator.
Don’t forget, one vote in the Senate was critical to
ObamaCare becoming law. If Senator Stevens was still there, it would not
have become law. In the following month after Senator Stevens’ untimely death,
in September of 2010, a young DOJ lawyer, Nicholas Marsh — who had been
involved in the Stevens case — committed suicide at his home as the
investigation into the fraudulent case continued. The report expressed, “no
conclusion as to his (Marsh’s) conduct,” given his untimely death. Robert
Luskin, an attorney for Marsh, said, “he
tried to do the right thing.”
If you’re wondering what happened to the valuable FBI agent
who was an upstanding whistleblower with a conscience, you should know that
inside Mueller’s FBI, Special Agent Joy was terribly mistreated.
Orders came down from on high that he was not to participate
in any criminal investigation again, which is the FBI management’s way of
forcing an agent out of the FBI. On the other hand, the FBI agent who was said
to have manufactured evidence against Senator Stevens — while hiding evidence
of his innocence — was treated wonderfully and continued to work important
criminal cases for Director Mueller.
If you wonder if mistreatment of an FBI agent who exposed
impropriety was an anomaly in Mueller’s FBI, the Alaska
Dispatch noted this about another case:
“Former FBI agent Jane Turner was
treated much like Joy (the whistleblower agent in the Stevens case) after she
blew the whistle on fellow agents who had taken valuable mementos from Ground
Zero following the 9-11 terrorist attacks. She took the FBI to court over her
treatment and ended up winning her case against the agency after a jury trial.
When you blow the whistle on the FBI, ‘it’s death by a million paper cuts,’ she
told Alaska Dispatch. Turner said that agents who violate the FBI’s omerta —
those who internally challenge the agency — are undercut and isolated. ‘They
(Mueller’s FBI supervisors) do everything they can to get you to quit’ she
said.”
THE DISGUSTING TREATMENT OF DR. STEVEN HATFILL
Here is how Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist described
this combined Mueller-Comey debacle:
“The FBI absolutely bungled its investigation into the
Anthrax attacker who struck after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Carl Cannon goes
through this story well, and it’s worth reading for how it involves both Comey
and his dear ‘friend’ and current special counsel Robert Mueller. The FBI tried
— in the media — its case against Hatfill. Their actual case ended up being
thrown out by the courts: Comey and Mueller badly bungled the biggest case they
ever handled. They botched the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks
that took five lives and infected 17 other people, shut down the U.S. Capitol
and Washington’s mail system, solidified the Bush administration’s antipathy
for Iraq, and eventually, when the facts finally came out, made the FBI look
feckless, incompetent, and easily manipulated by outside political pressure.
More from the Carl Cannon cited above, recounting how disastrous the attempt to
convict Dr. Steven Hatfill for a crime he didn’t commit was: In truth, Hatfill
was an implausible suspect from the outset. He was a virologist who never
handled anthrax, which is a bacterium. (Ivins, by contrast, shared ownership of
anthrax patents, was diagnosed as having paranoid personality disorder, and had
a habit of stalking and threatening people with anonymous letters – including
the woman who provided the long-ignored tip to the FBI). So what evidence did
the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency threw a Hail Mary,
importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff
the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters. These dogs were shown
to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their
handlers told the FBI that they’d “alerted” on Hatfill and that he must be the
killer.
Unfortunately, both Mueller and Comey were absolutely and
totally convinced of the innocent man’s guilt. They ruined his life, his
relationship with friends, neighbors and potential employers. And from Carl
Cannon, Real
Clear Politics:
You’d think that any good FBI agent would have kicked these
quacks in the fanny and found their dogs a good home. Or at least checked news
accounts of criminal cases in California where these same dogs had been used
against defendants who’d been convicted — and later exonerated. As Pulitzer
Prize-winning Los Angeles Times investigative reporter David Willman detailed
in his authoritative book on the case, a California judge who’d tossed out a
murder conviction based on these sketchy canines called the prosecution’s dog
handler “as biased as any witness that this court has ever seen.” Instead,
Mueller, who micromanaged the anthrax case and fell in love with the dubious
dog evidence, and personally assured Ashcroft and presumably George W. Bush
that in Steven Hatfill, the bureau had its man… Mueller didn’t exactly
distinguish himself with contrition, either. In 2008, after Ivins committed
suicide as he was about to be apprehended for his crimes, and the Justice
Department had formally exonerated Hatfill – and paid him $5.82 million
in a legal settlement ($2.82+150,000/yr. for 20 yrs) – Mueller could
not be bothered to walk across the street to attend the press conference
announcing the case’s resolution. When reporters did ask him about it, Mueller
was graceless. “I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation,” he
said, adding that it would be erroneous “to say there were mistakes.”
Though FBI jurisdiction has its limitations, Mueller’s ego
does not. Mueller and Comey’s next target in the Anthrax case was Dr. Bruce
Ivins. As the FBI was closing in and preparing to give him the ultimate Hatfill
treatment, Dr. Ivins took his own life. Though Mueller and Comey were every bit
as convinced that Dr. Ivins was the Anthrax culprit as they were that Dr.
Hatfill was, there are lingering questions about whether or not there was a
case beyond a reasonable doubt. Since Dr. Ivins is deceased, we are expected to
simply accept that he was definitely the Anthrax killer and drop the whole
matter. That’s a difficult ask after taxpayer money paid off Mueller’s previous
victim. Mueller had relentlessly dogged Dr. Hatfill using life destroying,
Orwellian tactics. Either Mueller was wrong when he said it would be a mistake,
“to say there were mistakes,” in the railroading of Hatfill or Mueller did
intentionally and knowingly persecute an innocent man.
THE FRAMING OF SCOOTER LIBBY
In 2003, there was yet another fabricated and
politically-charged FBI investigation: this one “searching” for the leak of CIA
agent Valery Plame’s identity to the media. Robert Mueller’s close friend James
Comey was at the time serving as the Deputy Attorney General. Comey convinced
then Attorney General John Ashcroft that he should recuse himself from the
Plame investigation while Ashcroft was in the hospital.
After Deputy A.G. Comey was successful in securing
Ashcroft’s recusal, Comey then got to choose the Special Counsel. He then
looked about for someone who was completely independent of any relationships
that might affect his independence and settled upon his own child’s godfather,
nameing [sic] Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the source of the leak. So much
for the independence of the Special Counsel.
The entire episode was further revealed as a fraud when it
was later made public that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, FBI Director Mueller,
and Deputy Attorney Comey had very early on learned that the source of Plame’s
identity leak came from Richard Armitage. But neither Comey nor Mueller nor
Fitzgerald wanted Armitage’s scalp. Oh no. These so-called apolitical,
fair-minded pursuers of their own brand of justice were after a bigger name in
the Bush administration like Vice President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. Yet they
knew from the beginning that these two men were not guilty of anything.
Nonetheless, Fitzgerald, Mueller and Comey pursued Cheney’s
chief of staff, Scooter Libby, as a path to ensnare the Vice President.
According to multiple reports, Fitzgerald had twice offered to drop all charges
against Libby if he would ‘deliver’ Cheney to him. There was nothing to
deliver. Is any of this sounding familiar? Could it be that these same tactics
have been used against an innocent Gen. Mike Flynn? Could it be that Flynn only
agreed to plead guilty to prevent any family members from being unjustly
prosecuted and to also prevent going completely broke from attorneys’ fees?
That’s the apparent Mueller-Comey Special Counsel distinctive modus-operandi.
Libby would not lie about Cheney, so he was prosecuted for obstruction of
justice, perjury, making a false statement. This Spectator report from
2015 sums up this particularly egregious element of the railroading.
“… By the time Scooter Libby was tried in 2007 it wasn’t for
anything to do with the Plame leak — everyone then knew Armitage had taken
responsibility for that — but for lying to federal officials about what he had
said to three reporters, including Miller. It is relating to this part of the
story that an extraordinary new piece of information has come to light. After
her spell in prison, and with her job on the line, Miller was eventually worn
down to agree to hand over some redacted portions of notes of her few
conversations with Libby. Several years on, she could no longer recall where
she had first heard of Plame’s CIA identity, but her notes included a reference
to Wilson alongside which the journalist had added in brackets ‘wife works in
Bureau?’
After Fitzgerald went through these notes it was put to
Miller that this showed that the CIA identity of Plame had been raised by Libby
during the noted meeting. At Libby’s trial Miller was the only reporter to
state that Libby had discussed Plame. His conviction and his sentencing to 30
months in prison and a $250,000 fine, rested on this piece of evidence. But
Miller has just published her memoirs. One detail in particular stands out.
Since the Libby trial, Miller has read Plame’s own memoir and there discovered
that Plame had worked at a State Department bureau as cover for her real CIA
role. The discovery, in Miller’s words, ‘left her cold’. The idea that the
‘Bureau’ in her notebook meant ‘CIA’ had been planted in her head by
Fitzgerald. It was a strange word to use for the CIA. Reading Plame’s memoir,
Miller realized that ‘Bureau’ was in brackets because it related to her working
at State Department. (Emphasis added)
What that means is that Scooter Libby had not lied as she
originally thought and testified. He was innocent of everything including the
contrived offense. For his honesty and innocence, Scooter Libby spent time
behind bars, and still has a federal felony conviction he carries like an
albatross. The real culprit of the allegation for which the Special Counsel was
appointed, and massive amounts of tax payer dollars expended was Richard
Armitage. A similar technique was used against Martha Stewart. After all, Mueller’s
FBI developed both cases. If the desired crime to be prosecuted was never
committed, then talk to someone you want to convict until you find something
that others are willing to say was not true. Then you can convict them of lying
to the FBI. Martha Stewart found out about Mueller’s FBI the hard way.
Unfortunately, Mueller has left a wake of innocent people whom he has crowned
with criminal records. History does seem to repeat itself when it is recording
the same people using the same tactics. Can anyone who has ever actually looked
at Robert Mueller’s history honestly say that Mueller deserves a sterling
reputation in law enforcement? One part of his reputation he does apparently
deserve is the reputation for being James Comey’s mentor.
MUELLER’S EMBRACE OF THE FRIENDS OF ISLAMIC TERROR
In 2011, in one of the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight
hearings, FBI Director Mueller repeatedly testified during questioning by
various Members about how the Muslim community was just like every other
religious community in the United States. He also referenced an “Outreach
Program” the FBI had with the Muslim community.
When it was my turn to question, I could not help but put
the two points of his testimony together for a purge question:
GOHMERT: Thank you, Director. I
see you had mentioned earlier, and it’s in your written statement, that the
FBI’s developed extensive outreach to Muslim communities and in answer to an
earlier question I understood you to say that you know Muslim communities were
like all other communities, so I’m curious as the result of the extensive
outreach program the FBI’s had to the Muslim community, how is your outreach
program going with the Baptists and the Catholics?
MUELLER: I’m not certain of,
necessarily the rest of that, the question I would say — there are outreach to
all segments of a particular city or county or society is good.
GOHMERT: Well do you have a
particular program of outreach to Hindus, Buddhists, Jewish community,
agnostics or is it just an extensive outreach program to –
MUELLER: We have outreach to
every one of those communities.
GOHMERT: And how do you do that?
MUELLER: Every one of those
communities can be affected can be affected by facts or circumstance.
GOHMERT: I’ve looked
extensively, and I haven’t seen anywhere in any one from the FBI’s letters,
information that there’s been an extensive outreach program to any other
community trying to develop trust in this kind of relationship and it makes me
wonder if there is an issue of trust or some problem like that that the FBI has
seen in that particular community.
MUELLER: I would say if you look
at one of our more effective tools or what we call citizens academies where we
bring in individuals from a variety of segments of the territory in which the
office operates . . . look at the citizens’ academy, the persons here, they are
a crosssection [sic] of the community, they can be Muslim, could be Indian,
they can be Baptists – GOHMERT: Okay but no specific programs to any of those.
You have extensive outreach to the Muslim community and then you have a program
of outreach to communities in general is what it sounds like.
We went further in the questioning. The 2007 trial of the
Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism financing trial in American
history, linked the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to the
Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. CAIR was named as an unindicted
co-conspirator in the case. Because of this affiliation, the FBI issued policy
and guidance to restrict its non-investigative interactions with CAIR in an
effort to limit CAIR’s ability to exploit contacts with the FBI. As a result,
FBI field offices were instructed to cut ties with all local branches of CAIR
across the country.
GOHMERT: Are you aware of the
evidence in the Holy Land Foundation case that linked the Council on
American-Islamic relations, CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America and the
North America Islamic Trust to the Holy Land Foundation?
MUELLER: I’m not going to speak
to specific information in a particular case. I would tell you on the other
hand that we do not –
GOHMERT: Are you aware of the
case, Director?
[CROSSTALK] MUELLER: –
relationship with CAIR because of concerns –
GOHMERT: Well I’ve got the
letter from the Assistant Director Richard Powers that says in light of the
evidence – talking about during the trial – evidence was introduced that
demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders, including its
current president emeritus and executive director and the Palestine committee,
evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the
Palestine committee and Hamas, which was designated as a terrorist organization
in 1995.
In light of that evidence, he
says, the FBI suspended all formal contacts between CAIR and FBI. Well now it’s
my understanding, and I’ve got documentation, and I hope you’ve seen this kind
of documentation before, it’s public record, and also the memo order from the
judge in turning down a request that the unindicted co-conspirators be eliminated
from the list, and he says the FBI’s information is clear there is a tie here,
and I’m not going to grant the deletion of these particular parties as
unindicted coconspirators.
So, I’m a little surprised that
you’re reluctant to discuss something that’s already been set out in an order,
that’s already been in a letter saying we cut ties in light of the evidence at
this trial. I’m just surprised it took the evidence that the FBI had, being
introduced at the trial in order to sever the relationships with CAIR that it
(the FBI) had that showed going back to the 1993 meeting in Philadelphia, what
was tied to a terrorist organization. So, I welcome your comments about that.
MUELLER: As I told you before,
we have no formal relationship with CAIR because of concerns with regard to the
national leadership on that.
What Director Mueller was intentionally deceptive about was
that the FBI had apparently maintained a relationship and even “community
partnership” instigated on his watch with CAIR and other groups and individuals
that his FBI had evidence showing they were co-conspirators to terrorism. That,
of course, is consistent with his misrepresentation that Mueller’s FBI had
outreach programs to other religious communities just like they did with the
Muslim community. They did not. He was not honest about it. In a March 2009
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) questioned Mueller
over the FBI move to cut off contact with CAIR. Mueller responded to Kyl’s
pressing over how the policy was to be handled by FBI field offices and
headquarters with the following:
MUELLER: We try to adapt, when
we have situations where we have an issue with one or more individuals, as
opposed to institution, or an institution, large, to identify the specificity
of those particular individuals or issues that need to be addressed. We will
generally have — individuals may have some maybe leaders in the community who
we have no reason to believe whatsoever are involved in terrorism, but may be
affiliated, in some way, shape or form, with an institution about which there
is some concern, and which we have to work out a separate arrangement. We have
to be sensitive to both the individuals, as well as the organization, and try
to resolve the issues that may prevent us from working with a particular
organization.
KYL: They try to “adapt” with
members of terror-related groups? Are they as “sensitive” with other
organizations? Do they work out “separate arrangements” with members of, say,
the Mafia or the Ku Klux Klan for “community outreach”? Why the special
treatment for radical Islamic terrorism?
A March 2012 review of FBI field office compliance with this
policy by the Office of Inspector General found a discrepancy between the FBI’s
enforcement policy restricting contact and interaction with CAIR and its
resulting actions. Rather than FBI headquarters enforcing the rules, they
hedged. Mueller set up a separate cover through the Office of Public Affairs
and allowed them to work together, despite the terrorist connections.
That was the cultivated atmosphere of Mueller’s FBI. The DOJ
actually set out in writing in an indictment that CAIR and some of the people
Mueller was coddling were supporters of terrorism. I had understood that the
plan by the Bush Justice Department was that if they got convictions of the
principals in the Holy Land Foundation trial, they would come right back after
the co-conspirators who were named in the indictment as co-conspirators but who
were not formally indicted. In late 2008, the DOJ got convictions against all
those formally indicted, so DOJ could then move forward with formally indicting
and convicting the rest—EXCEPT that the November 2008 election meant it was now
going to be the OBAMA DOJ with Eric Holder leading. The newly-named but not
confirmed Attorney General apparently made clear they were not going to pursue
any of the named co-conspirators. That itself was a major loss for the United
States in its war against terrorism in the Obama administration. It was a
self-inflicted refusal to go after and defeat our enemies. All of the named
co-conspirators would not likely have been formally indicted, but certainly
there was evidence to support the allegations against some of them, as the
federal district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had formally
found. One of the problems with FBI Director Mueller is that he had already
been cozying up to named co-conspirators with evidence in hand of their
collusion with terrorists. That probably was an assurance to President Obama
and Attorney General Holder that Mueller would fit right in to the Obama
administration. He did. It also helps explain why President Obama and AG Holder
wanted him to serve and extra two years as FBI Director. Mueller was their kind
of guy. Unfortunately for America, he truly was!
PURGING THE FBI OF ANTI-TERROR INFORMATION
We repeatedly see cases where people were radicalized,
emerge on the FBI’s radar, but federal agents are instead looking for
Islamophobes, not the terrorists standing in front of them. That is because Mueller’s
demand of his FBI Agents, in the New Age to which he brought them, was to look
for Islamophobes.
If a Mueller-trained FBI agent got a complaint about a
potential radical Islamist who may pose a threat, the agent must immediately
recognize that the one complaining is most likely an Islamophobe. That means
the agent should first investigate whether the complainant is guilty of a hate
crime. Too often it was after an attack occurred that
Mueller-trained FBI agents would decide that there really was a radical Islamic
threat to the United States.
The blinding of our FBI agents to the domestic threat of
radical Islam is part of the beguiling damage Robert Mueller did as FBI
Director. That is also the kind of damage that got Americans killed, even
though Mueller may have avoided offending the radical Islamists who were
killing Americans. As terrorism expert Patrick Poole continually points out in
his “Known Wolf” series, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks on U.S.
soil are committed by those the FBI has interviewed and dismissed as a threat.
Here are
three of the more high-profile cases:
ORLANDO: The mass killer who attacked the Pulse nightclub in
June 2016, Omar Mateen, had been interviewed by the FBI on three separate
occasions. The open preliminary investigation in 2013 lasted 10 months, after
Mateen had told others about mutual acquaintances he shared with the Boston
bombers and had made extremist statements. He was investigated again in 2014
for his contacts with a suicide bomber who attended the same mosque. At one
point, Mateen was placed on TWO separate terrorism databases. He was later
removed from them.
NORTHWEST AIRLINES: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded
Detroit bound Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009 with 289 other
passengers wearing an underwear bomb intended to murder them all. He was
well-known to U.S. intelligence officials before he boarded.
Only one month before the attempted bombing, Abdulmutallab’s
father had actually gone to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and met with two CIA
officers. He directly told the CIA that he was concerned about his son’s
extremism. Abdulmutallab’s name was added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart
Environment (TIDE) database. However, his name was not added the FBI’s
Terrorist Screening Database. Or even the no-fly list. So, he boarded a plane.
When asked about the near-takedown of the flight and these missteps, then-Homeland
Security Secretary Janet Napolitano remarkably told CNN that “the system
worked.” The only “system” that worked in this incident: a culture that values
bravery, already instilled in the passengers who acted.
BOSTON: Prior to the bombing of the Boston Marathon by
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in April 2013 that killed three people and
injured 264 others, the FBI had been tipped off. Twice. Russian intelligence
warned that Tamerlan was “a follower of radical Islam.” Initially, the FBI
denied ever meeting with Tamerlan. They later claimed that they followed up on
the lead, couldn’t find anything in their databases linking him to terrorism,
and quickly closed the case. After the second Russian warning, Tamerlan’s file
was flagged by federal authorities demanding “mandatory” detention if he
attempted to leave or re-enter the United States. But Tsarnaev’s name was
misspelled when it was entered into the database.
An internal FBI report of the handling of the Tsarnaev’s
case -unsurprisingly — saw the FBI exonerate itself. When I asked at yet
another House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, in the wake of the Boston
Marathon bombing, Mueller himself admitted in response to my questioning, that
the FBI had indeed gone to the Boston mosque the bombers attended. Of course,
The FBI did not go to investigate the Tsarnaevs. The bombers’ mosque, the
Islamic Society of Boston, was incorporated by known and convicted terrorists.
The incorporation papers were signed by none other than Abduram Al-Amoudi who
is currently serving 23 years in a federal prison for funding terrorism. One of
the members of the Board of Trustees included a leader of the International
Muslim Brotherhood, Yusef al-Qawadari, who is barred from entering the United
States due to his terrorist ties. Did Mueller’s FBI go to the Boston bombers’
mosque to investigate the Tsarnaevs? This
is from the House Judiciary oversight hearing transcript:
GOHMERT: The FBI never canvassed
Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks. If the Russians tell
you that someone has been radicalized and you go check and see the mosque that
they went to, then you get the articles of incorporation, as I have, for the
group that created the Boston mosque where these Tsarnaevs attended, and you
find out the name Al-Amoudi, which you will remember, because while you were
FBI Director this man who was so helpful to the Clinton administration with so
many big things, he gets arrested at Dulles Airport by the FBI and he is now
doing over 20 years for supporting terrorism. This is the guy that started the
mosque where the Tsarnaevs were attending, and you didn’t even bother to go
check about the mosque? And then when you have the pictures, why did no one go
to the mosque and say, who are these guys? They may attend here. Why was that
not done since such a thorough job was done?
MUELLER: Your facts are not
altogether——
GOHMERT: Point out specifically.
MUELLER: May I finish my——
GOHMERT: Point out specifically.
Sir, if you’re going to call me a liar, you need to point out specifically
where any facts are wrong.
MUELLER: We went to the mosque
prior to Boston.
GOHMERT: Prior to Boston?
MUELLER: Prior to Boston
happening, we were in that mosque talking to the imam several months beforehand
as part of our outreach efforts. “Outreach efforts”? Yes. That is apparently
Mueller’s efforts to play figurative pattycake with the leaders and tell them
how wonderful they are and how crazy all those Islamaphobes out there are, but
they surely got assurance that Mueller’s FBI is after those bigots. Maybe they
sat around on the floor and had a really nice meal together. One thing for
certain, they weren’t asking about the Tsarnaevs! But the hearing got even
worse:
GOHMERT: Were you aware that
those mosques were started by Al-Amoudi?
MUELLER. I’ve answered the
question, sir.
GOHMERT. You didn’t answer the
question. Were you aware that they were started by Al-Amoudi?
MUELLER. No. . .
Then my time for questioning expired, leaving many questions
unanswered. Why was the FBI unaware of the origins of the mosque attended by
the Boston bombers? This was arguably the most traumatic Islamic terrorist
attack in America since 9-11 because the explosions happened on live television
at the Boston Marathon. When did the FBI become an outreach-to-terrorism
organization to the detriment and disregard of its investigations? Under
Director Robert Mueller’s tenure, that’s when!
In Director Mueller’s efforts to appease and please the
named co-conspirators of terrorism, he was keenly attuned to their complaints
that the FBI training materials on radical Islam said some things about Islamic
terrorists that offended some Muslims. Never mind that the main offense was
done to the American people by radical Islamists who wanted to kill Americans
and destroy our way of life. Mueller wanted to make these co-conspirators feel
good toward Mueller and to let them know he was pleased to appease. Director
Mueller had all of the training materials regarding radical Islam “purged” of
anything that might offend radical Islamic terrorists. So, in addition to using
his “Five Year Up-or-Out” policy to force out so many experienced FBI agents
who had been properly trained to identify radical Islamic terrorists, now
Mueller was going even further. He was ensuring that new FBI agents would not
know what to look for when assessing potentially radicalized individuals.
When those of us in Congress learned of the Mueller-mandated
“purge” of FBI training materials, we demanded to see what was being removed.
Unfortunately, Mueller was well experienced in covering his tracks, so
naturally the pages of training materials that were purged were ordered to be
“classified,” so most people would never get to see them.
After many terrorist attacks, we would hear that the FBI had
the Islamic terrorists on their radar but failed to identify them. Now you are
beginning to see why FBI agents could not spot them. They were looking more at
the complainant than they were at the radical Islamist because that is what
Mueller had them trained to do.
Michele Bachmann and I were extremely upset that Americans
were being killed because of the terribly flawed training. We demanded to see
the material that was “purged” from the training of FBI agents regarding
radical Islam. That is when we were told it could not be sent over for review
because the purged material was “classified.” We were authorized to review
classified material, so we demanded to see it anyway. We were willing to go over
to the FBI office or the DOJ, but we wanted to review the material.
We were told they would bring it over and let us review it
in the Rayburn Building in a protected setting. They finally agreed to produce
the material. Members of Congress Michele Bachmann, Lynn Westmoreland, and I
went to the little room to review the vast amount of material. Lynn was not
able to stay as long as Michele and I did, but we started pouring through the
notebooks of materials. It was classified so naturally I am not allowed to
disclose any specifics, but we were surprised at the amount of material that
was purged from the training our agents. Some of the items that were strictly
for illustration or accentuation were removed. A few were silly. But some
should clearly have been left in if an FBI agent was going to know how and what
a radical Islamic terrorist thinks, and what milestone had been reached in the
radicalization process.
It was clear to Michele and me as we went through the purged
materials that some of the material really did need to be taught to our FBI
agents. For those densely-headed or radical activists who will wrongly proclaim
that what I am writing is an Islamophobic complaint, please note that I have
never said that all Muslims are terrorists. I have never said that, because all
Muslims are not terrorists. But for the minority who are, we
have to actually learn exactly what they study and learn how they think. As
Patton made clear after defeating Rommel’s tanks in World War II, he studied
his enemy, what he believed and how he thought. In the movie, “Patton,” he
loudly proclaims, “Rommel, you magnificent ___, I read your book!”
That is how an enemy is defeated. You study what they
believe, how they think, what they know. Failure to do so is precisely why so
many “Known Wolves” are able to attack us. Clearly, Mueller weakened our
ability to recognize a true radical Islamic terrorist. As one of my friends in
our U.S. Intelligence said, “We have blinded ourselves of the ability to see
our enemy! You cannot defeat an enemy you cannot define.” Robert Mueller
deserves a significant amount of the credit for the inability of our federal
agents to define our enemy.
PURGING COUNTER-TERRORISM TRAINING MATERIALS
FBI Special Agent Kim Jensen had spent a great deal of his
adult life studying radical Islam. He is personally responsible for some
extraordinary undercover work that remains classified to this day. He was
tasked with putting together a program to train our more experienced FBI agents
to locate and identify radicalized Muslims on the threshold of violence.
Jensen had done this well before Mueller began to cozy up
with and pander to groups such as CAIR. Complaints by similar groups caused
Mueller to once again demand that our agents could not be properly instructed
on radical Islam.
Accordingly, Jensen’s roughly 700-pages of advanced training
material on radical Islam were eliminated from FBI training and all copies were
ordered destroyed.
When Director Mueller decides he wants our federal agents to
be blind and ignorant of radical Islam, they are indeed going to be blind and
ignorant.
Fortunately, in changing times well after Mueller’s
departure as FBI Director, a new request went out to Mr. Jensen to recreate
that work because at least someone in the FBI needed to know what traits to
look for in a terrorist. It still did not undo the years of damage from
Mueller’s commanded ignorance of radical Islam.
MUELLER’S UNETHICAL ACCEPTANCE OF APPOINTMENT AS SPECIAL
PROSECUTOR
Robert Mueller had more than one direct conflict of interest
that should have prohibited him from serving as the Special Counsel to
investigate President Donald Trump.
For one thing, President Trump fired his close friend and
confidante, disgraced FBI Director James Comey. Mueller had long served as a
mentor to Comey, who would most certainly be a critical witness in any
investigation of Donald Trump.
Mueller and Comey had also been exceedingly close friends
beyond the mentor relationship. But Comey’s insertion of himself into so much
of the election cycle — and even its aftermath — in conversations he had with
the President himself made him a critical witness in the investigation. There
is no way Mueller could sit in judgment of his dear, close friend’s
credibility, and certainly no way he should be allowed to do so.
Gregg Jarrett explained one aspect of this situation quite
clearly and succinctly at FoxNews.com in an article titled, “Gregg Jarrett: Are
Mueller and Comey ‘Colluding’ against Trump by acting as co-special counsel?”
A portion
of that article reads:
The law governing the special
counsel (28 CFR 600.7) specifically prohibits Mueller from serving if he has a
“conflict of interest.” Even the appearance of a conflict is disallowed. The
same Code of Federal Regulations defines what constitutes a conflict. That is,
“a personal relationship with any person substantially involved in the conduct
that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution” (28 CFR 45.2).
Comey is that person. He was
substantially involved in the conversation with President Trump who may be the
subject of an obstruction investigation. In fact, the former Director is the
only other person involved. There were no witnesses beyond himself. A conflict
of interest is a situation in which an individual has competing interests or
loyalties. Here, it sets up a clash between the special counsel’s self-interest
or bias and his professional or public interest in discharging his
responsibilities in a fair, objective and impartial manner. His close
association with the star witness raises the likelihood of prejudice or
favoritism which is anathema to the fair administration of justice.
Mueller has no choice but to
disqualify himself. The law affords him no discretion because the recusal is
mandatory in its language. It does not say “may” or “can” or “might”. It says
the special counsel “shall” recuse himself in such instances.
An excellent post by Robert Barnes, a constitutional lawyer,
identifies five statutes, regulations and codes of conduct that Mueller is
violating because of his conflict of interest with Comey. Byron York, chief
political correspondent for the Washington Examiner recounts in detail the close
personal relationship between Mueller and Comey which gives rise to the blatant
conflict of interest.
Another deeply troubling aspect of Mueller’s conflict of
interest is and was his role in the investigation of Russia’s effort to
illegally gain control of a substantial part of United States’ precious supply
of uranium. That investigation was taking place within the Mueller FBI, which
should have had a direct effect on prohibiting Secretary of State Clinton from
participating in the approval of the uranium sale into the hands that were
ultimately the Russian government.
Of course, then U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein had direct
control over that Russia uranium investigation in conjunction with FBI Director
Mueller. It certainly appears that with what they had gleaned from that
undercover investigation, they should never have been involved in any
subsequent investigation that might touch on potential collusion and millions
of dollars paid to the Clinton’s foundation by the very beneficiaries of the
Russians’ uranium schemes. Rosenstein and Mueller’s failure to warn against or
stop the sale reeks of its own form of collusion, cooperation, or capitulation
in what some consider a treasonous sale.
Quite the interesting duo is now in charge of all things
investigatory surrounding their own actions. In fact, Rosenstein and Mueller
are now in a position to dissuade others from pursuing them for
their own conduct.
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR MUELLER’S TROUBLINGLY BIASED HIRES
Through it all, Mueller’s modus operandi does not seem to
have ever changed. He has hired nine Democrat-supporting lawyers and zero Republicans.
Certainly all attorneys likely have political views and that is not a problem
so long as they do not affect their job. But not a single Republican was worthy
of Mueller’s selection?
Were there no establishment Republicans who wanted to join
his jihad? Mueller’s hand-picked team of Democrats reveal political views that
distinctly conflict with Trump and the conservative agenda, raising questions
about Mueller’s bias and his ability to conduct a fair investigation. At least
nine members of Mueller’s team made significant contributions to Democrats or
Democratic campaigns, while none contributed to Trump’s campaign and only James
Quarles contributed to Republicans in a drastically smaller amount than what he
gave to Democrats.
Analysis of Federal Election Commission records shows that
Andrew Weissmann, Jeannie Rhee, Andrew Goldstein, James Quarles, Elizabeth
Prelogar, Greg Andres, Brandon Van Grack, Rush Atkinson, and Kyle Freeny all
contributed over $50,000 in donations to Democrats including Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama’s Presidential campaigns, various Democratic non-presidential
candidates, and the Democratic National Convention. Mueller also has
surprisingly strong personal ties to a number of the lawyers he hired.
Three former partners with Mueller at the Boston law firm of
Wilmer Hale are on the payroll: Aaron Zebley, Jeannie Rhee, and James Quarles.
In addition to strong personal ties to Mueller, many of the attorneys have
potential conflicts in working for persons directly connected to the people and
issues being investigated.
Jeannie Rhee represented Ben Rhodes, ex-Obama
National Security Adviser, and the Clinton Foundation in a 2015 racketeering
lawsuit, as well as Hillary Clinton in a lawsuit probing her private emails.
Aaron Zebley, former Chief of Staff to Mueller while
Director of the FBI, represented Justin Cooper in the Clinton email scandal as
he was responsible for setting up Clinton’s private email server. He admitted
to physically damaging Clinton’s old mobile devices.
Andrew Goldstein joined the team after working
under major Trump critic Preet Bharara in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New
York. Bharara became a strong critic after Trump fired him as an Obama-holdover
and spoke on ABC News that “there’s absolutely evidence to launch an
obstruction of justice case against Trump’s team with regard to the Russia
probe.” Does he sound a bit prejudiced?
Andrew Weissman, notoriously a “tough” prosecutor
previously accused of “prosecutorial overreach,” has a less than stellar career
after various courts reversed his prosecutions due to his questionable conduct
and tactics. As director of the Enron Task Force, Weissman shattered the Arthur
Andersen LLP accounting firm and destroyed over 85,000 jobs. In 2005, the
conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court. In other words, the only true
crime in the case was the murderous destruction of 85,000 jobs and the lives
they ruined.
Weissman’s next conviction threw four Merrill Lynch
executives into prison without bail for a year, only to be reversed by the 5th
Circuit Court of Appeals. Weissman subsequently resigned from the Enron Task
Force. A suspiciously timely move, as the public eye had just caught sight of
his modus operandi. Additionally, Weissman has unsightly political ties, having
attended Clinton’s election night celebration in New York City. He also sent an
email to Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, praising her boldness on the
night she was fired for refusing to enforce President Trump’s travel ban.
President Trump was trying to enforce the law; Weissman was trying to enforce
his bigotry against Trump and Republicans.
Peter Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team
after more than 10,000 texts between him and former Mueller investigator Lisa
Page were found to contain vitriolic anti-Trump tirades. They were not simply
anti-Trump. They were more in the nature of desperate attempts to stop him from
becoming President and talk of a nefarious insurance policy to orchestrate his
removal if he were elected.
GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN
Michael Flynn is a man entangled in manufactured controversy
from the moment he stepped into his role in the Trump administration. The
circumstances surrounding his take-down have become one of the more puzzling
aspects of the Trump-Russia investigation. His career took him from three
decades in the U.S. Army to overseeing the Pentagon’s military intelligence
operation and directing the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn was more than
qualified to act as the first national security adviser in a new
administration. However, his influence and zeal made him a clear target for the
Trump-Russia investigation.
As a strong supporter and friend of Donald Trump’s from the
onset, he campaigned and publicly supported then-candidate Trump throughout
2016. As best I can sort it out through the media hype and hysteria, having no
first-hand knowledge like the rest of America: after the successful election,
during the transition period, in December 2016, Flynn reportedly conversed with
a Russian ambassador.
He was “accidentally” swept up in an intelligence foreign
surveillance recording. When this happens, the names of American citizens are
supposed to be masked in the transcripts. Somehow Flynn’s name was magically unmasked,
which apparently allowed the Obama administration to peruse his meetings and
conversations. Parts of the classified transcript of that conversation were
leaked to the media by rogue Deep State law breakers (criminals who Mueller
seems completely disinterested in). This appears to be what fueled the
media-driven narrative of Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia because Flynn
had a discussion with a Russian ambassador, which conversation is absolutely
legal and advisable. A media-generated doubt clouded Flynn’s reputation, as the
discussion was long reported as having taken place during the campaign (which
could possibly be illegal) but was later proven to have been after the election
and during the transition which should not have been illegal.
After a complete pounding of media-driven hysteria, in
mid-February of 2017, Flynn resigned having served only 23 days as National
Security Advisor. Mueller targeted Flynn using illicitly-gathered and leaked
foreign intelligence and surveillance as evidence. Nine months later after
Flynn and his family were subjected to Mueller’s usual threats and
intimidation, a financially exhausted Flynn entered a guilty plea on one count
of lying to the FBI—the result of a Mueller-technique perjury trap as was used
on Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart. What is Flynn guilty of? He apparently
misremembered a conversation that took place 33 days previously? The FBI had a
transcript of that conversation and already knew what information was there.
They went into a conversation with Flynn not seeking answers to questions, but
to try to trip him up on exact statements made in a conversation when they were
already in possession of the transcript.
Flynn’s unmasking has become the center of a controversy
wherein those transcripts were procured under exceedingly questionable
circumstances before a judge who had a questionable and undisclosed
relationship with part of Mueller’s team. That judge was appointed to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secretive court created by
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows federal law
enforcement to seek secretive warrants to surveil foreign persons outside of
the United States who are suspected of terrorism. But the Obama administration
and Mueller seemed to find it much more politically expedient to use the secret
court to go after Americans who were part of the Trump team for actions that
did not occur while they were part of the Trump campaign team. Strange
goings-on.
One could argue that Judge Rudolph Contreras, the federal
judge who accepted Flynn’s guilty plea, conveniently misremembered that he also
served on the FISA court as a judge and conveniently misremembered his
friendship with the FBI agent whose interview was used as evidence against
Flynn. As it turns out, the FBI interview notes of that very encounter with
Flynn may exonerate Michael Flynn, crushing Mueller’s case against him, not to
mention the highly questionable hearing before a judge who may well have been
recused much too late to save the Flynn prosecution.
FISA ABUSE
The FISA-authorized FISC is built upon the principle that
highly delicate cases dealing with government surveillance of foreign agents
and officials would be handled in an unbiased and respectful environment where
secrecy at all costs was critical. There is supposed to be an added precaution
to prevent any potential for bias in a FISA Judge by having a rotation of
judges. That is why it is such a shock to find out now that Mueller’s case
against Michael Flynn would happen to end up before the “randomly selected”
very dear close personal friend of FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, who hated
President Trump with a passion, as evidenced in his text messages with
colleague and paramour, Lisa Page. U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras,
or “Rudy” as Strzok likes to refer to him, should have recused himself from
such a highly sensitive case involving the ultimate attempted removal of the
duly-elected President of the United States who happened to be despised by the
very people who by law were required to prosecute with fairness. He was later
forced to ‘recuse’ himself and be removed from the Flynn proceedings, without
public explanation.
This forced recusal was an unmistakable indication that he
never should have been involved in the Michael Flynn plea agreement. Judge
Contreras’ conflict of interest has yet to be explained by the court.
Contreras’ is one of only three local FISA court judges, and by default, is
likely one of the judges who have on four occasions approved the Title I
surveillance of another character in this melodrama, Carter Page. This is the
case where the FBI is known to have intentionally misled the FISA court by
using as evidence the illustrious “Steele Dossier,” a sordid opposition
research document paid for by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the
Democratic National Committee (DNC). Oh, what a tangled web of crime Special
Prosecutor Mueller’s team appears to have helped weave, and of which Mueller
appears to be completely disinterested, all while he searches high and low for
an elusive crime to pin on the President.
MUELLER IGNORES PROVABLE CRIMES BY THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN,
THE FBI, THE FISC, ETC.
Strategically timed leaks of selective classified
information are being used to target individuals for investigation in order to
create the appearance of some sinister crime are committed.
Upon closer scrutiny, the cases fall apart.
Yet, slam dunk federal criminal cases of leaking classified
material are going on under Mueller’s nose, and by those within his purview and
his team. When we think of all the leaks from Mueller’s investigation, it
brings to mind Wilford Brimley’s quote from Absence of Malice: “You call what’s
goin’ on around here a leak? Boy, the last time there was a leak like this,
Noah built hisself a boat.”
Case in point: Erik Prince. As Lee Smith put it in a recent
article from TabletMag.com, Robert Mueller’s Beltway Cover-Up:
News that special counselor
Robert Mueller has turned his attention to Erik Prince’s January 11, 2017
meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker, a Lebanese-American political
fixer, and officials from the United Arab Emirates, helps clarify the nature of
Mueller’s work. It’s not an investigation that the former director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading—rather, it’s a cover-up…
Mueller is said to believe that the Prince meeting was to
set up a back channel with the Kremlin. But that makes no sense. According to
the foundational text of the collusion narrative, the dossier allegedly written
by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had cultivated Trump
himself for years. So what’s the purpose of a back channel, when Vladimir Putin
already had a key to the front door of Mar-a-Lago? Further, the collusion
thesis holds that the Trump circle teamed with high-level Russian officials for
the purpose of winning the 2016 election. How does a meeting that Erik Prince
had a week before Trump’s inauguration advance the crooked election victory
plot? It doesn’t—it contradicts it. The writer goes on to point out that
serious crimes have been committed which Mueller is purposefully ignoring.
Prince was thrown into the middle of Russiagate after an April 3, 2017,
Washington Post story reported his meeting with the Russian banker. But how did
anyone know about the meeting? After the story came out, Prince said he was
shown “specific evidence” by sources from the intelligence community that the
information was swept up in the collection of electronic communications and his
identity was unmasked. The US official or officials who gave his name to the
Post broke the law when they leaked classified intelligence. “Unless the
Washington Post has somehow miraculously recruited the bartender of a hotel in
the Seychelles,” Prince told the House Intelligence Committee in December, “the
only way that’s happening is through SIGINT [signals intelligence].” Prince’s
name was unmasked and leaked from classified signals intelligence. Oddly
enough, it’s the same modus operandi used in the targeting of President Donald
Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn. It is a federal felony to publish leaked classified information.
Ask WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about that particular
unequal application of the law. The Deep State felons who are strategically
leaking this information have politically weaponized our justice system and
should be prosecuted for their attempts, with malice aforethought, to
manufacture the overthrow of a duly elected President of the United States. The
leaks and publication of classified information alone warrant investigation and
prosecution to the fullest extent of the law in this matter, yet Mueller
appears utterly uninterested in those crimes even as they go to the very heart
of the credibility of his investigative mandate.
Yet, as I’ve demonstrated here, the man put in charge of the
investigation of “Russian Collusion”; case, Robert Mueller, has perfected the
art of abuse of the justice system for personal and political gain. He is
uninterested in any criminal activity that does not further his cause of
damaging this President. If you think that is harsh, consider the criminality
of the FISA court abuses by the Obama Department of Justice and FBI. We have
all heard ad nauseum about the infamous “Steele Dossier,” the
opposition research document paid for by the Clinton campaign that was used to
manufacture the Russia collusion narrative and spark what became the Mueller
investigation into our President. On June 18, 2017, Muller protégé and
disgraced former FBI Director James Comey testified in front of the U.S. Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence about the Clinton campaign-funded document,
telling Congress that the document was, “salacious and unverified.” https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/08/full-text-james-comey-trump-russia-testimony-239295)
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, created
a court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to allow
secret warrants to surveil agents of foreign governments, be they U.S. citizens
or non-U.S. actors. In October of 2016, the Obama DOJ/FBI successfully applied
for one of these secret warrants to surveil Carter Page, a short-time Trump
campaign volunteer. Since these warrants against U.S. citizens are outside of
the bounds of the Constitution, they have to be renewed by applying to the
court every 90 days after the first warrant application is approved. These
secret warrants are so serious they have to be signed off on at the highest
levels. The applications in question would have been signed off on by Obama
administration FBI and DOJ officials including then FBI Director James Comey.
At least one of the renewal applications would have been signed off on by our
current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. At the time of the signing, they
all would have had the knowledge and/or the professional and legal duty to know
that the dossier was used as evidence and also had the legal duty to know the
evidence origins. The same would apply to the knowledge of the penalty for
submitting unverified information to the FISC for the purpose of obtaining a
warrant. It is a crime to submit under the color of law an application to the
FISC that contains unverified information 50 U.S. Code § 1809).
Comey’s “salacious and unverified” testimony before the
Senate occurred eight months after the Clinton campaign-funded dossier was used
in the first successful FISA court application to obtain a surveillance warrant
against Carter Page, a Trump campaign volunteer for several months. The
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence examined the documentation
submitted to the court and concluded that the unverified information contained
in the Steele dossier was in fact used in the FISC application, without
disclosing to the court that it was an opposition research document paid
for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Neither the initial application in October of 2016, nor any
of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, the Clinton
campaign, or any other partyn [sic] in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the
political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI
officials. The timing of the applications, the inclusion of material the
DOJ/FBI knew to be unverified at the time, and the successful result after this
fraudulent inclusion speak to the level of criminal corruption of those who
sought to destroy Donald Trump’s candidacy and still seek to overturn his
election. The widespread abuse of the FISA-authorized court, FISC, was laid
bare in a court memorandum of review of these abuses that was
declassified in 2017 and went virtually unnoticed by the media because it
didn’t fit their narrative.
These are serious crimes that, left unchecked, lead nations
down the path to tyranny at the hands of people who think they know better than
citizens. It’s an age-old struggle America’s Founding Fathers knew well and did
everything they could to prevent from happening. The FISC judges themselves
have a duty to police their own courts and call to account these bad actors
who, by all facts in the documentation I’ve personally seen, have committed a
fraud upon the court. If these judges do not have the integrity to self-police
in this matter, we in Congress must hold them accountable using the power
granted to us in the Constitution. Congress has created every single federal
court in the country except the Supreme Court. We have the duty to phase out,
change or disband the FISC, all while developing a better solution to address
the authorization of this sort of surveillance of foreign agents and actors. It
is our duty to clean up the mess that the Obama administration demonstrated is
far too easy to create.
If you want answers, and you can handle the truth, join
me in demanding those answers from “Special Counsel” Robert Mueller, along with
his resignation. If he were to resign, it could well be the only truly moral,
ethical and decent action Mueller has undertaken in this entire investigation.
______________________
Gohmert Exposes Mueller
& Comrades
John R. Houk
© May 4, 2018
________________________
MONUMENTAL: The Naked
Truth About Robert Mueller
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