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Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are “tying up loose ends” in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks, according to multiple sources close to the matter. The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump...

A story broke last week that an Arabic journalist named Jamal Khashoggi who was working for the Washington Post had disappeared and was presumed dead. The official story is that Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on the afternoon of October 2. Immediately (and suspiciously) media stories that appeared to be coordinated appeared, pointing the finger of blame for Khashoggi’s disappearance at Saudi Arabia, in general, and at the country’s Crown Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, in particular. It was alleged by anonymous sources for several days that Khashoggi had been abducted and then killed at...

(snip) --- The CIA director couldn’t himself go public with his Clinton spin—he lacked the support of the intelligence community and had to be careful not to be seen interfering in U.S. politics. So what to do? He called Harry Reid. In a late August briefing, he told the Senate minority leader that Russia was trying to help Mr. Trump win the election, and that Trump advisers might be colluding with Russia. (Two years later, no public evidence has emerged to support such a claim.) But the truth was irrelevant. On cue, within a few days of the briefing, Mr....

The FBI warned the Clinton campaign that it was a target of a cyberattack last March, just weeks before the Democratic National Committee discovered it had been penetrated by hackers it now believes were working for Russian intelligence, two sources who have been briefed on the matter told Yahoo News. One of the sources said agents conducting a national security investigation asked the Clinton campaign to turn over internal computer logs as well as the personal email addresses of senior campaign officials. But the campaign, through its lawyers, declined to provide the data, deciding that the FBI’s request for sensitive...

[FULL TITLE] [ ‘Stand down!’ Obama’s orders to national security officials who wanted to hit back at election-meddling Putin revealed ] A new book, 'Russian Roulette,' details Donald Trump's business ties in Russia and Russia's efforts to meddle in the presidential election The interference was one of the greatest policy challenges for the outgoing Obama administration Advisors debated the pros and cons of hitting back at Russia, whether to go public with what they knew, and how to get it to stop One risk was fueling the chaos intelligence officials believe Russia was trying to sew Two security advisors prepared...

Michael Daniel confirmed Wednesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice ordered him and his staff to "stand down" in 2016 in regard to Russian attempts to meddle in the 2016 election. Daniel, special assistant to former President Barack Obama and White House cybersecurity coordinator, told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that quotes attributed to him in the book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, were an "accurate rendering of the conversation" he had with Rice and his staff. Daniel's staff reportedly responded to the order in "disbelief." Over...

WASHINGTON — The Obama White House’s chief cyber official testified Wednesday that proposals he was developing to counter Russia’s attack on the U.S. presidential election were put on a “back burner” after he was ordered to “stand down” his efforts in the summer of 2016. The comments by Michael Daniel, who served as White House “cyber security coordinator” between 2012 and January of last year, provided his first public confirmation of a much-discussed passage in the book, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” co-written by this reporter and David Corn,...

Former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar confirmed Wednesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice told him to “stand down” in response to Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign. Michael Daniel, whose official title was “cybersecurity coordinator,” confirmed the stand-down order during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held to review the Obama and President Donald Trump’s administrations’ policy response to Russian election interference. Rice’s order to Daniel was first reported in “Russian Roulette,” a book published in March that details Russia’s meddling in the election. In the book, authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn reported that...

Former British spy Christopher Steele visited the State Department in October 2016 and briefed officials there about his work on the infamous anti-Trump dossier, it was revealed on Wednesday. “Based upon our review of the visitor logs at the State Department, Mr. Steele visited the State Department, briefing officials on the dossier in October 2016,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said during a hearing held to review the U.S. government’s response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Steele’s visit to Foggy Bottom in Washington, D.C., prior to the election has not been previously reported. Burr revealed...

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday. Jose Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps,...

CIA or CNN? The Media Deep State’s Echo Chamber Will the media ever be held accountable for conspiring against America? May 25, 2018 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism. Spygate began with the Clinton campaign. It ended with informants and eavesdropping on the Trump campaign. Clinton opposition research morphed into an endless investigation of her opponent. The Clinton campaign and its opposition research were the starting point of Spygate. And Mueller’s hound dog face scowling from a thousand CNN screens...

Revelations that an FBI informant insinuated himself into the Trump campaign have led some congressional investigators to rethink their theories on how and why former President Barack Obama's Justice Department began investigating the 2016 Trump presidential effort. Most reporting has focused on the July 31, 2016, creation of a document formally marking the beginning of the FBI counterintelligence probe targeting the Trump campaign. The document, known as the electronic communication, or EC, is said to have focused on the case of George Papadopoulos, the peripheral Trump adviser who has pleaded guilty to lying to special counsel Robert Mueller about his...

s Trump won primary after primary in 2016, a rattled John Brennan started claiming to colleagues at the CIA that Estonia’s intelligence agency had alerted him to an intercepted phone call suggesting Putin was pouring money into the Trump campaign. The tip was bogus, but Brennan bit on it with opportunistic relish. Out of Brennan’s alarmist chatter about the bogus tip came an extraordinary leak to the BBC: that Brennan had used it, along with later half-baked tips from British intelligence, as the justification to form a multi-agency spy operation (given the Orwellian designation of an “inter-agency taskforce”) on the...

CBS Films has optioned Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s “Russian Roulette,” the story of the Russian attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The book is currently on top of nonfiction titles on the New York Times bestseller list. Isikoff and Corn will serve as executive producers. Nick Wechsler, whose credits include “American Assassin,” is on board to produce. The deal, announced Thursday, came following an auction of the movie rights. It was made on behalf of the Ross Yoon Agency by Hotchkiss & Associates. Wechsler is represented by Carlos Goodman at Bloom Hergott Diemer Rosenthal LaViolette Feldman Schenkman...

...Isikoff and Corn suggest, without saying so explicitly, that the available circumstantial evidence makes the "golden showers" story very unlikely. Reconstructing Trump's time in Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, Isikoff and Corn report that Trump stayed just one night in Moscow. (Trump did in fact stay in the Ritz Carlton presidential suite where Obama had been a few years earlier.) After arriving in Moscow, Trump attended a brief meeting at the hotel and then left for a day of meetings elsewhere. That night, an "exhausted" Trump went to a party at which he agreed to take part in...

A senior Barack Obama State Department official gave the green light to an FBI agent in 2016 to meet with dossier writer Christopher Steele, a meeting that touched off a relationship that would fuel the ongoing investigation into possible Donald Trump-Russia election collusion. And, the sensational Steele allegation that led to an FBI wiretap on Trump volunteer Carter Page came from “pillow talk” with the lover of a Kremlin official, a new book says. The disclosure that Victoria Nuland started the process is contained in “Russian Roulette,” a book released Tuesday by Yahoo News report Michael Isikoff and Mother Jones...

Martha MacCallum just flambayed, seared, frickasseed, barbecued, roasted, broiled, rotisseried, grilled, pan-fried, stewed, braised, and then shoved Michael Isikoff and his sorry wrinkled *ss into a pressure cooker tonight on her show questioning him over his new book, the book written with the perennial slimeball, David Corn.More later ….…. plus video.If anyone finds the video of this 'beatdown' please feel free to post it here. I haven't found it yet. It was about a fifteen minute slaying.Isikoff kept throwing his hand out in front of her face and talking over her in a cheap, chauvinistic, aggressive attempt to intimidate her....

Two pieces of evidence that have come together prove anti-Trump dossier writer Christopher Steele was the key source for a Yahoo News story that the FBI cited to support its wiretap application. Identifying the source of that September 2016 article on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page has taken on added importance in recent weeks. First, Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a declassified memo on Feb. 2. It said the FBI relied greatly on Mr. Steele’s discredited Democrat-financed dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant on Mr. Page. To bolster the...

A criminal referral from top Senate investigators confirms explosive charges in last week’s House Intelligence Committee memo regarding abuse of surveillance authorities at the FBI and Department of Justice. It also reveals a host of problems arising from the bureau’s cooperation with foreign investigator Christopher Steele, who was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The eight-page memo from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) includes underlying evidence to support the claims.“It appears the FBI relied on admittedly uncorroborated information, funded by and obtained for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign,...

It’s not every day that investigative journalists discover their work was cited in a controversial warrant application that has become a flashpoint of partisan conflict in the US. So, it’s telling that, rather than being honored to see his work having such a profound impact, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff said he was “stunned” to see a story he published more than a year ago cited in the “FISA memo” as one of the justifications in a FISA warrant application for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. As Isikoff explains, his story was almost entirely based on information from the...