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Spy Court Picks FISA Abuse Denier To Tackle FISA Abuse The appointment of a former official who served as an apologist for the FBI signals that the court isn't particularly concerned about the civil liberty violations catalogued by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Mollie HemingwayBy Mollie Hemingway JANUARY 12, 2020 The nation’s top spy court appointed an Obama-era Justice Department official who has denied and downplayed FBI surveillance abuse to assess the FBI’s response to a scathing new report cataloguing problems with how the agency secured authority to spy on a Donald Trump campaign affiliate.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris -- a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" and written extensively in support of the FBI's surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare -- to oversee the FBI's implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice Inspector general report last year. The development on Friday, first reported by independent journalist Mike Cernovich, has roiled Republicans who have demanded accountability at the FBI. House Intelligence Commitee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told The Daily Caller that Kris' appointment...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris -- a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" and written extensively in support of the FBI's surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare -- to oversee the FBI's implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice Inspector general report last year. The development on Friday, first reported by independent journalist Mike Cernovich, has roiled Republicans who have demanded accountability at the FBI. House Intelligence Commitee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told The Daily Caller that Kris' appointment...

David Kris served as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice under President Obama and Attorney General Holder. He drew on his prestige as a former senior official in the Department of Justice to disparage Rep. Devin Nunes in his exposure of the FBI’s misconduct in the Russia haox and assure anyone who would listen to him that all was in order. He is an apologist for FBI misconduct who gives the Department of Justice Inspector General report on the FBI’s FISA misconduct the stupidly credulous reading that absolves the FBI of political bias in the matter. Who better...

An email proves disgraced ex-FBI Director James Comey personally approved an FBI effort to have the wild and unsubstantiated “golden showers” claim about President Trump included in material to be considered for publication in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s official report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Comey email, which has not received media attention until now, was revealed inside the Justice Department’s recently released 476-page Inspector General report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation. The IG report further discloses a separate email in which Andrew McCabe, who served under Comey as the FBI’s deputy director, specifically...

An email proves disgraced ex-FBI Director James Comey personally approved an FBI effort to have the wild and unsubstantiated “golden showers” claim about President Trump included in material to be considered for publication in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s official report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Comey email, which has not received media attention until now, was revealed inside the Justice Department’s recently released 476-page Inspector General report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation. The IG report further discloses a separate email in which Andrew McCabe, who served under Comey as the FBI’s deputy director, specifically...

CNN pundit Andrew McCabe apologized for lying to federal investigators concerning a 2016 leak to The Wall Street Journal about the Hillary Clinton email probe, but you wouldn't know it if you were tuning in to his employer. Transcripts released last week revealed McCabe’s apology, which underscores his legal jeopardy as U.S. Attorney John Durham continues the Justice Department's criminal probe into potential bureau misconduct. The transcripts released by the Justice Department specifically raised the possibility that ex-Deputy FBI Director McCabe, now a paid CNN commentator, could face a false statements charge similar to the one leveled against former national...

A Republican senator said he would vote to repeal the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act following a scathing report that found serious problems in how the FBI sought to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a longtime critic of the FISA program, told One America News Network on Saturday that the audit released last month by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz was a wake-up call to "stop allowing the American people to be subjected to this type of abuse and manipulation." "We should all be scared to death," Lee said. "We shouldn't rest until FISA is...

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe apologized to an FBI investigator after changing his story regarding a leak to the media in October 2016, according to documents released Tuesday. McCabe was interviewed May 9, 2017, the same day James Comey was fired as FBI director, regarding two separate leaks to the media. During the interview, FBI agents also asked McCabe whether he knew how FBI information wound up in an Oct. 23, 2016, Wall Street Journal article about an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. McCabe said during that sit-down he did not know how the Journal story came about, but...

Movita Johnson-Harrell seemed to take pride in her position as the first Muslim woman elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature. Now that record will forever have an asterisk next to it, as Johnson-Harrell has turned herself in to Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro's office, pleading guilty on charges of perjury, record-tampering, and embezzling over $500,000 in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security disability funds, as well as donations to Motivations Education and Consultation Associates (MECA), a charity she established to allegedly serve the mentally ill and drug addicted poor in her predominately African-American neighborhood. In a press conference, Attorney General Shapiro described Johnson-Harrell's actions...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was charged with perjury for failing to disclose her business interest in Healthy Holly, LLC, while she served as a Maryland state senator, the state prosecutor’s office said Wednesday. “She is charged with omitting to declare on her financial disclosure statements when she was a Maryland state senator in 2016, her relationship with Healthy Holly, LLC,” Maryland State Prosecutor Charlton Howard said. Charging documents filed in circuit court in Anne Arundel County said Pugh did not disclose her business interest in the company between 2012 and 2016 or her partial ownership of...

Just before Christmas 2015, the British intelligence operative Christopher Steele emailed a report to private clients that included an American lawyer for a Ukrainian oligarch. The title of the dossier was “FIRTASH Abortive Return to Ukraine,” and it purported to provide intelligence on why the energy oligarch Dmitri Firtash tried, but failed, to return to his home country of Ukraine. “FIRTASH’s talk of returning to Ukraine a genuine ambition rather than merely a ruse to reveal Ukrainian government’s hand. However the oligarch developed cold feet upon the news of a negative reception at Boryspil airport,” Steele reported on Dec. 23,...

The former senior director for European and Russian affairs for the Trump administration, Fiona Hill, testified last week in the House impeachment hearings. At one point, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., asked her: "Would you say that these different theories, these conspiracy theories that have been targeting you, spun in part by folks like Mr. Stone as well as fueled by Rudy Giuliani and others, basically have a tinge of anti-Semitism to them at least?" This was Ms. Hill's response: "Well, certainly when they involve George Soros, they do. I'd just like to point out that in the early 1900s, the...

WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Donald Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit. The Republican defense of Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony Thursday. She told some of Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating “a fictional narrative” — and that it likely came from a disinformation campaign...

As the Democrat U.S. House of Representatives wrap up its impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump, critics questioning the impartiality and credibility of officials testifying against the president have learned that ex-National Security Council member Fiona Hill previously worked for far-left financier George Soros. Hearings were underway over Trump’s request to the Ukrainian government that it help investigate foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, and look into whether former Vice President Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor because he had been investigating his son Hunter’s business dealings in the country. Democrats claim Trump tried to...

Like a lot of Americans, I've had longtime and close friends renounce me for voting for President Trump in 2016. I can think of two, and yes, it was baffling and hurtful. It's also natural to wonder why such a consequential thing might happen, whether there was some common denominator. What could be behind the intensity of that anti-Trump sentiment that would cause such dear friends to throw away twenty-plus years' friendships as if they never happened? I can think of three or four more who haven't renounced, but have the same anti-Trump intensity. Some things I noticed in all of them and...

While the fake news media are trying to convince you that Trump investigating the obvious and blatant corruption of the Biden family in Ukraine is a crime, one of their witnesses declared that Obama danced to Putin's tune. ... Hill testified that Obama refused to provide lethal aid to Ukraine so as to not upset Putin. That's pretty clear evidence that Obama, not Trump, was in Putin's pocket. Hill's testimony also creates problems for the Democrats' impeachment narrative. After all, the elite policy wonks said the U.S. should arm Ukraine to help defeat Russia's invasion, but Obama said he wouldn't...

Almost everyone so far has provided worthless hearsay as did Fiona Hill who left by July 19th before the phone call, but Morrison was listening in on the phone call and said he heard nothing illegal and declated in testimony along with Volker there was Quid Pro Quo, bribery or extortion. She though appears to have lied through her teeth as even left-wing publications like Politico and others have confirmed Ukraine's role in 2016 election interference despite her attempts today to downplay their role. At the very least she would have blatantly and shamelessly provided a False Choice if both...

Former National Security Council official and Russia expert Fiona Hill on Thursday testified that she heard Russian President Vladimir Putin at a 2011 conference describe American fracking as a "great threat" to Russia, a position he has emphasized ever since. The recollection came out at a point in the impeachment hearing when Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas was asking Hill about Putin's propaganda efforts in the United States, at the center of which is the television channel RT, which pushes anti-fracking messaging. Hill agreed that Russia saw the growth of U.S. fracking as a threat given that it undermines Russia's...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's former Russia adviser Fiona Hill urged lawmakers in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry on Thursday not to promote "politically driven falsehoods" that cast doubt on Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election. In her prepared testimony, Hill said some members of the House Intelligence Committee, based on their questions and statements, appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against the United States during the 2016 presidential race and that perhaps Ukraine did. Hill appeared to be referring to some of President Donald Trump's Republican allies and...