Home » Posts tagged 'us department of justice' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: us department of justice

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Judicial Watch: FBI Records Show Dossier Author Deemed ‘Not Suitable For Use’ as Source, Show Several FBI Payments in 2016

Judicial Watch: FBI Records Show Dossier Author Deemed ‘Not Suitable For Use’ as Source, Show Several FBI Payments in 2016

Documents Reveal Steele Was Admonished in February, 2016

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today the FBI turned over 70 pages of heavily redacted records about Christopher Steele, the former British spy, hired with Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee funds, who authored the infamous Dossier targeting President Trump during last year’s presidential campaign.  The documents show that Steele was cut off as a “Confidential Human Source” (CHS) after he disclosed his relationship with the FBI to a third party.  The documents show at least 11 FBI payments to Steele in 2016 and document that he was admonished for unknown reasons in February, 2016.  The documents were turned over in response to Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records of communications and payments between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-00916)).

The documents include a “source closing communication” that states that Steele (referred to as “CHS” or Confidential Human Source) “is being closed” because:

CHS confirmed to an outside third party that CHS has a confidential relationship with the FBI. CHS was used as a source for an online article. In the article, CHS revealed CHS’ relationship with the FBI as well as information that CHS obtained and provided to FBI. On November 1, 2016, CHS confirmed all of this to the handling agent. At that time, handling agent advised CHS that the nature of the relationship between the FBI and CHS would change completely and that it was unlikely that the FBI would continue a relationship with the CHS. Additionally, handling agent advised that CHS was not to operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

DOJ Indicts “Vault 7” Leak Suspect; WikiLeaks Release Was Largest Breach In CIA History

A 29-year-old former CIA computer engineer, Joshua Adam Schulte, was indicted Monday by the Department of Justice on charges of masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the spy agency’s history.

Schulte, who created malware for the U.S. Government to break into adversaries computers, has been sitting in jail since his August 24, 2017 arrest on unrelated charges of posessing and transporting child pornography – which was discovered in a search of his New York apartment after Schulte was named as the prime suspect in the cyber-breach one week after WikiLeaks published the “Vault 7” series of classified files. Schulte was arrested and jailed on the child porn charges while the DOJ ostensibly built their case leading to Monday’s additional charges.

[I]nstead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with possessing child pornography, saying agents had found 10,000 illicit images on a server he created as a business in 2009 while studying at the University of Texas at Austin.

Court papers quote messages from Mr. Schulte that suggest he was aware of the encrypted images of children being molested by adults on his computer, though he advised one user, “Just don’t put anything too illegal on there.” –New York Times

Monday’s DOJ announcement adds new charges related to stealing classified national defense information from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2016 and transmitting it to WikiLeaks (“Organization-1”).

The Vault 7 release – a series of 24 documents which began to publish on March 7, 2017 – reveal that the CIA had a wide variety of tools to use against adversaries, including the ability to “spoof” its malware to appear as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency, as well as the ability to take control of Samsung Smart TV’s and surveil a target using a “Fake Off” mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Unspooling


With spring, things come unstuck; an unspooling has begun. The turnaround at the FBI and Department of Justice has been so swift that even The New York Times has shut up about collusion with Russia — at the same time omitting to report what appears to have been a wholly politicized FBI upper echelon intruding on the 2016 election campaign, and then laboring stealthily to un-do the election result.

The ominous silence enveloping the DOJ the week after Andrew McCabe’s firing — and before the release of the FBI Inspector General’s report — suggests to me that a grand jury is about to convene and indictments are in process, not necessarily from Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s office. The evidence already publicly-aired about FBI machinations and interventions on behalf of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump looks bad from any angle, and the wonder was that it took so long for anyone at the agency to answer for it.

McCabe is gone from office and, apparently hung out to dry on the recommendation of his own colleagues. Do not think for a moment that he will just ride off into the sunset. Meanwhile, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, have been sent to the FBI study hall pending some other shoes dropping in a grand jury room. James Comey is out hustling a book he slapped together to manage the optics of his own legal predicament (evidently, lying to a congressional committee). And way out in orbit beyond the gravitation of the FBI, lurk those two other scoundrels, John Brennan, former head of the CIA (now a CNN blabbermouth), and James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, a new and redundant post in the Deep State’s intel matrix (and ditto a CNN blabbermouth). Brennan especially has been provoked to issue blunt Twitter threats against Mr. Trump, suggesting he might be entering a legal squeeze himself.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The US-UK Deep State Empire Strikes Back: ‘It’s Russia! Russia! Russia!’

The US-UK Deep State Empire Strikes Back: ‘It’s Russia! Russia! Russia!’

There’s no defense like a good offense.

For weeks the unfolding story in Washington has been how a cabal of conspirators in the heart of the American federal law enforcement and intelligence apparat colluded to ensure the election of Hillary Clinton and, when that failed, to undermine the nascent presidency of Donald Trump. Agencies tainted by this corruption include not only the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) but the Obama White House, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA, plus their British sister organizations MI6 and GCHQ, possibly along with the British Foreign Office (with the involvement of former British ambassador to Russia Andrew Wood) and even Number 10 Downing Street.

Those implicated form a regular rogue’s gallery of the Deep State: Peter Strzok (formerly Chief of the FBI’s Counterespionage Section, then Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division; busy bee Strzok is implicated not only in exonerating Hillary from her email server crimes but initiating the Russiagate investigation in the first place, securing a FISA warrant using the dodgy “Steele Dossier,” and nailing erstwhile National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn on a bogus charge of “lying to the FBI”); Lisa Page (Strzok’s paramour and a DOJ lawyer formerly assigned to the all-star Democrat lineup on the Robert Mueller Russigate inquisition); former FBI Director James Comey, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and – let’s not forget – current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, himself implicated by having signed at least one of the dubious FISA warrant requests. Finally, there’s reason to believe that former CIA Director John O. Brennan may have been the mastermind behind the whole operation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Media Stopped Reporting The Russia Collusion Story Because They Helped Create It

The Media Stopped Reporting The Russia Collusion Story Because They Helped Create It

The press has played an active role in the Trump-Russia collusion story since its inception. It helped birth it.
Half the country wants to know why the press won’t cover the growing scandal now implicating the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice, and threatening to reach the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and perhaps even the Obama White House.

After all, the release last week of a less-redacted version of Sens. Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham’s January 4 letter showed that the FBI secured a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to search the communications of a Trump campaign adviser based on a piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Fourth Amendment rights of an American citizen were violated to allow one political party to spy on another.

If the press did its job and reported the facts, the argument goes, then it wouldn’t just be Republicans and Trump supporters demanding accountability and justice. Americans across the political spectrum would understand the nature and extent of the abuses and crimes touching not just on one political party and its presidential candidate but the rights of every American.

That’s all true, but irrelevant. The reasons the press won’t cover the story are suggested in the Graham-Grassley letter itself.

Steele Was a Media Informant

The letter details how Christopher Steele, the former British spy who allegedly authored the documents claiming ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, told the FBI he wasn’t talking to the press about his investigation. In a British court, however, Steele acknowledged briefing several media organizations on the material in his dossier.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington Threatens America and the World

Washington Threatens America and the World

When I look at news reports from whichever country, I see no awareness of the two most ominous developments in US history. One is the conspiracy between US security agencies, the US Department of Justice, the Democratic Party and the American print and TV media to overthrow the democratically elected president of the United States. With “Russiagate” we have been experiencing a coup against President Trump and American democracy. Although the Democrats’ Identity Politics cannot conceive of it, it is possible to be opposed to President Trump without believing that a police state coup against him is desireable.

The other ominous development is the just released US Nuclear Posture Review, which calls nuclear weapons “useable,” legitimizes their first use, and sets the stage for spending trillions of dollars acquiring more nuclear weapons when massive public needs go unmet and 10 percent of the existing US arsenal is sufficient to destroy all life on earth.

I have written about these extraordinary developments. See, for example, https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/ and https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/02/nuclear-posture-review/

As for the effect it has had, I might as well not have bothered. No government and no news organization of which I am aware has sounded the alarm that the CIA, FBI, DOJ, Democratic Party, and the entirety of the American print and TV media have been caught red-handed in a coup to overthrow the President of the United States, and nothing is being done about it. The coup cannot even be exposed, because the security agencies, media, and Democrats shout down the hard evidence. Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi were murdered on the basis of total lies, and now the President of the United States faces the same fate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The NSA Is a Blackmail Agency

The NSA Is a Blackmail Agency

The main function of the National Security Administration is to collect the dirt on members of the house and senate, the staffs, principal contributors, and federal judges. The dirt is used to enforce silence about the crimes of the security agencies.

The blackmail mechanism was put into gear the minute the news reported that the House Intelligence Committee had assembled proof that the FBI, DOJ, and DNC created Russiagate as a conspiracy to unseat President Trump. Members of Congress with nothing to hide demanded the evidence be released to the public. Of course, it was to be expected that release of the facts would be denounced by Democrats, but Republicans, such as Rep. Mike Conaway (R, Texas), himself a member of the committee, joined in the effort to protect the Democrats and the corrupt FBI and DOJ from exposure. Hiding behind national security concerns, Conaway opposes revealing the classified information. “That’d be real dangerous,” he said. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48637.htm

As informed people know, 95% of the information that is classified is for purposes that have nothing to do with national security. The House Intelligence Committee memo has no information in it related to any security except that of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Hillary, Obama, Mueller, Rosenstein, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, the DNC, and the presstitute media. The logical assumption is that every member of Congress opposed to informing the American public of the Russiagate conspiracy to unseat the President of the United States is being blackmailed by the security agencies who planned, organized, and implemented the conspiracy against the President of the United States and American democracy.

American insouciance is a great enabler of the ability of the security agencies and their media whores to control the explanations.

Attack on RT Is Another Step Towards Sovietization of American Media

Attack on RT Is Another Step Towards Sovietization of American Media

Attack on RT Is Another Step Towards Sovietization of American Media

This week the US Department of Justice Criminal Division forced the Russian-funded television network RT (formerly Russia Today) to register as a “foreign agent” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Failure to comply would have risked arrest of RT’s management and seizure of its assets. The move comes on the heels of Senators’ recent demands that terrified tech giants Twitter, Facebook, and Google act as ideological filters.

With no discernable defenders among America’s media establishment, RT rightly denounced the selective FARA mandate as an attack on media freedom – which it is. But more ominous is what the move against RT says about America’s rulers’ further intention to limit the sources of information available to its subjects.

As Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute writes:

“RT America is a news organization operating in the United States that is funded at least partly by a foreign government. So is the BBC. So is Deutsche Welle, France24, Al-Jazeera, and numerous other foreign media organizations. It is assumed that they all to a degree reflect the editorial interests of those who pay the bills.

“The same is true with other, non-state funded media outlets, of course. It’s up to us to factor these things in when we consume media. That’s what it means to be a free people.

“A core value in a free society is that our own government has zero power over what we read, what we watch, how we think, how we come to interpret current events, the conclusions we draw based on these inputs, and so on. These are private matters over which any government that is not tyrannical should have no sway.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

DOJ To Russia Today: Register As A Foreign Agent Or Face Arrest

DOJ To Russia Today: Register As A Foreign Agent Or Face Arrest

Congress is using a decades-old piece of legislation to force Russia Today to register as a foreign agent in the US, adding that if the site doesn’t comply with the order by Monday, the DOJ could move to shutter its operations and arrest its top executive, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

Russia Today revealed Thursday that the Department of Justice has given the site until next week to comply with its new interpretation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). RT has been operating in the US since 2005.

While undoubtedly disappointing in terms of its implications for first amendment freedoms in the US, the DOJ’s declaration is hardly a surprise. Under pressure from lawmakers, Twitter last month said it would prohibit RT from buying paid ads on its platform.

The FARA was adopted in the US in 1938 to counter pro-Nazi agitation . Washington has decided to apply the act towards the company that supplies all services for RT America on its territory, including TV production and operations. Just over 400 entities are currently registered under the legislation, though that group doesn’t include a single media outlet.

RT revealed Thursday that the DOJ sent a letter to the company in September saying it is obligated to register under FARA due to the work it does for RT. Most alarmingly, the law demands the disclosure of the channel’s confidential data, including the personal data of its staff.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The move “will have serious legal consequences”and “compromise the safety of [RT] employees,” the Russian Foreign Ministry previously explained.

Simonyan said on Thursday that the timeframe provided for the company by the DOJ is a “cannibalistic deadline.” She previously said that the channel was being forced into “conditions in which we cannot work” in the US, and called Washington’s demand an attempt to “drive [RT] out of the country.”

Protest is Increasingly Becoming Criminalized in America

Protest is Increasingly Becoming Criminalized in America

The historical space available for Americans to engage in public protest has been declining for many years, and is a topic I covered on several occasions during the Obama administration. For instance in the post,  The War on Free Speech – U.S. Department of Justice Subpoenas Reason.com Over Comment Section, I noted:

Readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg will be well aware of the gradual erosion by the state of the civil liberties of the American public. Such attacks are typically sufficiently under the radar, so that the average citizen has no idea what is happening until it’s too late. I have written about such calculated assaults on many occasions, but the holy grail target of the status quo is the First Amendment of the Constitution, which enshrines a right to the freedom of religion, speech, the press, and the right to peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances. 

Many aspects of the First Amendment have been neutered in practice. For example, the right to assemble peacefully and effectively is often prevented in practice by the need to secure permits and other hindrances (see “free speech cages” and “protest zones”) . Meanwhile, on college campuses, where activism is historically most vibrant, many schools have embraced the Orwellian concept of “free speech zones” in order to prevent free speech.

Unfortunately, it appears this trend is about to get a lot worse following the DAPL protests and increased activism we’ve seen since Trump’s election. As The Hill reports:

Republican state legislators across the country are advancing bills that would criminalize or penalize some public protests just a month after millions of Americans took to the streets in opposition to President Trump.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Merkel Says No Aid for Deutsche Bank; Depositor Bail-In Coming Up?

Merkel Says No Aid for Deutsche Bank; Depositor Bail-In Coming Up?

The €72 trillion (notional) derivatives mess known as Deutsche Bank remains under severe pressure. It’s market cap is $17.43 billion. It has no earnings and pays no dividend.

On April 23, Deutsche Bank was Fined $2.5 Billion over LIBOR rate rigging. Twenty-one people face criminal charges following a seven-year investigation.

On September 16, the US Department of Justice Fined Deutsche Bank $14B for mortgage securities fraud leading up to the 2007-2009 global meltdown.

Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel Rules Out Assistance for Deutsche Bank.

No Comment

Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out any state assistance for Deutsche Bank AG in the year heading into the national election in September 2017, Focus magazine reported, citing unidentified government officials.

The German leader also declined to step into the Frankfurt-based bank’s legal imbroglio with the U.S. Justice Department, which may seek as much as $14 billion in sanctions against Deutsche Bank’s mortgage-backed securities business, the magazine said. A German government spokesman declined to comment on the report Saturday. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman also wouldn’t comment.

Understanding the Fine

The Guardian reports $14bn Deutsche Bank Fine – All You Need to Know.

The prospect of a $14bn penalty from the US Department of Justice has rattled investor confidence in Deutsche. The penalty aims to settle allegations, dating back to 2005, about the way the bank selected mortgages, packaged them into bonds and sold on to investors. These bonds are known as residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

Can Deutsche Afford the Bill?

Deutsche Bank has been quick to describe the fine as an “opening position” from Washington. It is easy to see why. It would be one of the largest ever fines levied by the US. It could also strain the bank’s finances. For 2015, the bank reported its first annual loss since 2008 and could be heading for another loss this year regardless of the threatened justice department fine.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Deutsche Bank May Ultimately Need A State Bailout” – Handelsblatt

“Deutsche Bank May Ultimately Need A State Bailout” – Handelsblatt

While the most recent set of troubles plaguing Deutsche Bank have been duly documented here, most recently yesterday when the stock price tumbled once again just shy of all time lows over fears the bank’s multi-billion DOJ settlement could severely impact its liquidity and/or solvency, this may be the first time we have heard the “n“-word tossed around in an official German publication: as Germany’s top financial newspaper, Handelsblatt said, “German financial officials reacted with shock and dismay to the leaking of a U.S. government demand for a $14 billion fine against Deutsche Bank, which may ultimately need a state bailout to pay the bill.

Some more details from the article titled “Deutsche Bank in New Existential Crisis“:

Discussion of Deutsche Bank’s shaky capitalization has burst back to life, with renewed speculation on whether Chief Executive John Cryan will be forced to raise new capital, which he had previously ruled out, or make emergency asset sales.

Some have even raised the possibility of a government bailout of Germany’s largest bank, which would be a defining event and a symbolic blow to the image of Europe’s largest economy. 

And some more troubling truth:

Many analysts fear the bank may be in a vicious circle, with losses and cancelled dividends pushing down share prices and preventing the rebuilding of a capital buffer.

One thing is clear. With this many unresolved legal issues, any recapitalization is likely to mean selling new shares at knock-down prices. One bright spot for the bank may be ongoing negotiations with finance company Phoenix Group for the sale of Abbey Life, its British insurance subsidiary.

Phoenix recently confirmed talks were at an advanced stage. Any sale would bring €1 billion into Deutsche Bank’s coffers – a welcome sum, but not enough to solve the bank’s problems.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Excellent Interview – A Brief History of Corporate Immunity

Excellent Interview – A Brief History of Corporate Immunity

Like so many other cases of egregious financial fraud over the past several years, regulators used softball tactics to go easy on the banks. No bank was even forced to admit wrongdoing in the orders by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Regulators avoided court and settled for cash, which the traders won’t pay – the bank’s shareholders will. Officials presented a minimal amount of evidence, lacking the full details of the traders’ misconduct. They sought no judicial review.

In short, banks got away with their crimes for a pittance; their stocks even rose on the news of the settlements because the market believes the trouble is over. 

The DoJ has increasingly used a relatively new and declawed method to deal with the aftermath of the financial crisis: the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA). 

No one goes to jail and no one ever gets prosecuted. Under a deferred prosecution agreement, the Justice Department allows corporations to pay a fine, then agree to some enhanced supervision and monitoring. The Justice Department appears to admit this in the US Attorney’s manual, when they describe these deals as “agreements not to enforce the law under particular conditions”.

Each deferred prosecution agreement is negotiated individually. There is no thought to creating a future record: no trials, no jury verdicts, no appellate court decisions, no case law and no binding precedent. This makes it impossible to determine the boundaries of the law. The same conduct can be treated differently, depending on the prosecutor.

–  From the post: The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jesse Eisinger is currently on leave from his day job as he finishes a book about “white collar crime & (non)punishment.” He recently sat down with ProMarket to discuss some of what he’s learned.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The US Government Cannot Stop Telling Lies

The US Government Cannot Stop Telling Lies

The US Department of Justice (sic) is the worst threat to American Liberty. The DOJ will not be happy until the department has shredded every line of the US Constitution and burned the shredded pieces. The DOJ which falsely claims it is safeguarding our liberty has approved illegal and unconstitutional torture, war crimes, illegal and unconstitutional spying without warrants, illegal and unconstitutional indefinite detention without due process of law, illegal and unconstitutional murder of US citizens without due process of law. Americans have no worst enemy than the US Department of Justice (sic).

https://www.rt.com/usa/335177-doj-apple-technical-barriers/

We Just Found out the Real Reason the FBI Wants a Backdoor into the iPhone

On its face, the case boils down to a single locked and encrypted iPhone 5S, used by radical jihadist Syed Rizwan Farook before he and his wide Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in San Bernardino on December 2nd. The DOJ wants Apple to build a backdoor into the device so that it can bypass the company’s state of the art encryption apparatus and access information and evidence related to the case.

At least, that’s the premise presented to the public. As we are learning, the FBI and the federal government have a far more comprehensive end-game in mind than merely bolstering the prosecution of this one case.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted last week that “crucial details [of the case] are being obscured by officials.” Specifically, he made the following trenchant points:


Journalists: Crucial details in the @FBI v.  case are being obscured by officials. Skepticism here is fair:

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress