The war between Trump and the CIA

[Albany Rifles]

Absolute filth

[TopHatter]

Absolute filth

You really can't expect anything else...

[TopHatter]

How Can Biden Handle It If His Son Is Indicted?
It is possible that the DoJ's investigation of Hunter Biden will lead to one or more indictments. How can the president handle this? Well, he could look to history. It turns out that numerous presidential relatives in the past thought they could cash in on their famous relative. Biden could learn from some of these.

FDR's son James, a paid member of the White House staff, didn't even bother to hide activities that were soley designed to enrich himself. It got so bad that William Douglas, then chairman of the SEC (and later Supreme Court justice) offered to resign out of frustration concerning James' conduct. FDR talked him out of it.

Richard Nixon's brother Donald was a problem for Nixon. Donald received a $200,000 loan from billionaire Howard Hughes. The loan haunted Nixon for years.

Jimmy Carter's brother, Billy Carter, tried to create a new product, Billy Beer, but the venture failed. It certainly embarrassed the straight-laced president. Even worse were the hundreds of thousands of dollars Billy got from the Libyan government. Carter simply disassociated himself from this brother's activities. The Biblically oriented president could have said: "Am I my brother's keeper?" but he didn't. He just cut the brother off.

Bill Clinton was involved in plenty of scandals as president, but so were Hillary Rodham Clinton's brothers, Tony and Hugh. They got involved in some strange business harvesting hazelnuts in Georgia (the country, not the state). Also, Hugh received $400,000 for work obtaining a pardon for some clients. He was forced to return the money.

More recently we have the Trump administration, which was purer than the driven snow. Well, with one or two exceptions, perhaps. For example, Ivanka Trump was having trouble getting trademarks for her products in China. But after her father become president, she got 18 of them very quickly. Then there was the billion-dollar bailout of Jared Kushner's troubled investment firm. Also, Kushner got $2 billion to invest for the Saudis despite having little to no knowledge of investment banking.

None of these problems led to debilitating political difficulties for the respective presidents. The voters understand that what a president's son or daughter or brother does, is not the president's fault. If Hunter Biden is indicted, Joe could say that unfortunately, Hunter, like millions of Americans, fell into drug abuse and it ruined his life, but no one is above the law and he will let the DoJ handle the case as it sees fit. And then he could talk about all the corruption during the Trump administration and ask what President Trump did for the Saudis that made them give $2 billion to little Jared?

In fact, somewhat perversely, a DoJ indictment of Hunter Biden might actually help the President in a roundabout way. Trump is almost certainly going to be indicted one of these days, and is going to claim it's a witch hunt and that the Biden administration is pulling the strings and has weaponized the DoJ. But if the President's son is also under DoJ indictment? That makes it rather harder to argue that the DoJ is taking its marching order from Biden. (V)
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They forgot to mention Roger Clinton and his "difficulties"

[TopHatter]

Today in Unsubstantiated Nonsense: The Biden Tapes
And now, let's talk about another de facto line of attack in the ongoing right-wing defense of Donald Trump. The latest "news" on the Joe Biden corruption front is that there are recordings of the President, near the end of his time as VP, demanding (and allegedly getting) a $10 million bribe from Burisma.

This is being presented as fact by right-wing commentators. For example, Margot Cleveland is the Senior Propagandist... er, Senior Legal Correspondent for The Federalist. In a piece headlined "The Bidens 'Coerced' Burisma To Pay $10 Million In Bribes, Says Credible FBI Source," Cleveland writes:
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The Bidens allegedly "coerced" a foreign national to pay them $10 million in bribes, according to individuals familiar with the investigation into the FBI's handling of the FD-1023 confidential human source report. What, if anything, agents did to investigate these explosive claims remains unknown, however, with sources telling The Federalist the FBI continues to stonewall.

On Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed a foreign national—identified by individuals with knowledge of the matter as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky—allegedly possessed 17 recordings implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal. While 15 of the audio recordings consisted of phone calls between Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden, two were of calls the Ukrainian had with then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to the FD-1023.

The remaining 12 paragraphs continue in the same vein.

At this point, the B.S. detector of anyone who is not in the bag for Trump, as Cleveland is, should be blaring at top volume. There are two aspects of this story that stand out as particularly phony to us. The first is how very convenient it is that the supposed damning evidence against Joe Biden is almost exactly the same as the actual damning evidence against Donald Trump. There are recordings of the 45th president saying incriminating things? Well, guess what, there just so happen to be recordings of the 46th president saying incriminating things, too! Whataboutism, anyone?

The second large, red flag (among many smaller red flags) is this: Why is this coming to light now? If there is real, legit dirt on Biden, how did it not come to light during the 2020 presidential campaign, when it ultimately would have done him more harm? Why are we only hearing about it at a time when Donald Trump and his supporters are desperate and grabbing at straws?

The upshot is that this does not pass the smell test at all. The right-wingers who are trying to take Biden down have operated in bad faith many times, such that they no longer get any benefit of the doubt. Further, we live in a world where it is entirely possible to fake audio (and video) recordings. That means that, even if the alleged recordings somehow surface later this afternoon, we're simply not buying it until there is heavy-duty evidence of their being real. Serious forensic analysis by experts in recorded evidence—something like that.

Of course, the tapes are not going to surface later this afternoon. Because—and you'll want to make sure you're close to your fainting couch before you read this next part—Grassley, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and other Republicans in Congress are now backing off their claims and conceding that they're not entirely certain that the tapes even exist. Surprise! Certainly didn't see that coming.

We are reluctant to pay any notice to this sort of nonsense. However, we also know there are readers interested in whether the scandalous claim du jour has any merit to it. So, we write this item to make clear that this one does not. (Z)
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[TopHatter]

Did Durham lie?

John Durham was supposed to be the great Trump hope — the anti-Mueller, who would blow the lid off something something something. His years-long probe ended with multiple courtroom humiliations and a damp squib of a report.

His testimony before a House committee yesterday didn’t go any better. He stumbled, hedged, and made it clear that he didn’t really know much at all about the Rusia probe. Here’s Jonathan Chait:
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Durham seemed to be unaware of the major factual elements of the alliance between the Trump campaign and Russia. This ignorance came through in several awkward exchanges with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee panel.

Eric Swalwell asked Durham about how Trump “tried and concealed from the public a real-estate deal he was seeking in Moscow.” This was a deal, described in the Mueller report, in which the Russian government promised Trump several hundreds of millions of dollars in profit at no risk to himself to license a tower in Moscow. The proposed payoff, and Trump’s public lies at the time about it, gave Russia enormous leverage over his campaign. Durham replied, “I don’t know anything about that.”

There was a lot more like that.
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When Adam Schiff asked Durham if the Russians released stolen information through cutouts, he replied, “I’m not sure.” Schiff responded, “The answer is yes,” to which Durham reported, “In your mind, it’s yes.”

When Schiff asked Durham if he knew that, hours after Trump publicly asked Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails and release them, Russian hackers made an attempt to hack Clinton emails, Durham replied, “If that happened, I’m not aware of that.”

When asked if Trump referred to those stolen emails more than 100 times on the campaign trail, Durham answered, “I don’t really read the newspapers and listen to the news.”

And when Schiff asked Durham if he was aware that Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, passed on polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence agent, at the time Russia was conducting both a social-media campaign and the release of stolen documents to help Trump, Durham replied, “You may be getting beyond the depth of my knowledge.”

David Corn isn’t having it. He writes, “John Durham Just Made False Statements to Congress.”
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“The Manafort-Kilimnik connection — which the Senate Intelligence Committee report characterized as a ‘grave counterintelligence threat’ — is one of the most serious and still not fully explained components of the Trump-Russia scandal.

“It is inconceivable that Durham is unaware of this troubling link.”

Corn walks through Durham’s other false statements, including his account of the infamous Trump Tower meeting in which Don Jr. hoped the Russians would provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.
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This meeting signaled to Moscow that the Trump camp was receptive to Russian endeavors to intervene in the election to boost Trump’s chances, and Schiff expressed surprise that Durham found it insignificant. “Are you really trying to diminish the importance of what happened here?” he asked.

Durham answered: “The more complete story is that they met, and it was a ruse, and they didn’t talk about Mrs. Clinton.”

That is not true.

The report produced by special counsel Robert Mueller notes that the Russian emissary, a lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya, did discuss Clinton: “Participants agreed that Veselnitskaya stated that the Ziff brothers [an American family investment firm] had broken Russian laws and had donated their profits to the DNC or the Clinton Campaign. She asserted that the Ziff brothers had engaged in tax evasion and money laundering in both the United States and Russia.” (There was no evidence that Ziff Brothers Investments had engaged in wrongdoing.)

The Mueller report points out that Trump Jr. zeroed in on this: “Trump Jr. asked follow-up questions about how the alleged payments could be tied specifically to the Clinton Campaign, but Veselnitskaya indicated that she could not trace the money once it entered the United States.” The report quotes a participant in the meeting recalling “that Trump Jr. asked what they [the Russians] have on Clinton.”

Durham’s characterization of the meeting—that it had nothing to do with Clinton—lined up with what the Trump camp first claimed when the meeting was revealed a year afterward, in 2017. At that time, Trump Jr. issued a false statement dictated by his father that insisted the conversation had focused “primarily” on the adoption of Russian children by Americans. That was a phony cover story. Later on, when more information came out, even the elder Trump conceded that the point of the meeting was to gather negative information on Clinton from a foreign adversary. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent,” Trump said. Yet years later, Durham was still pushing the original disinformation about the meeting propagated by Trump and his allies.

You can read Corn’s whole piece here.

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BONUS: You know who else was mad at Durham? Matt Gaetz.


**

As Hayes Brown notes, Durham’s testimony was “a far cry from when the former president was promising that Durham’s probe would reveal ‘the crime of the century’.”
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Instead, Durham said in his opening statement that his report “should not be read to suggest in any way that Russian election interference was not a threat; it was.” And when it came to Mueller himself, Durham didn’t hold back in his praise. “Our object, our aim, was not to dispute Director Mueller,” Durham said. “I have the greatest regard, the highest regard for Director Mueller. He is a patriot.” That’s again not what Trump’s most ardent devotees would like to hear coming from the man who they expected to expose Mueller’s role in the “witch hunt” against Trump.

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[TopHatter]

Former federal prosecutor who resigned from Trump-Russia probe says she left over concerns with Barr

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A former top federal prosecutor who resigned from the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe said Wednesday she left because of her concerns with then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr's public comments about possibly releasing an interim report before the 2020 presidential election and the fact that she strongly disagreed with a draft she had seen.

“I simply couldn't be part of it. So I resigned,” Nora Dannehy told Connecticut state legislators during her confirmation hearing as a nominee to the state Supreme Court. It marked the first time Dannehy has spoken publicly about her sudden resignation from the probe overseen by former special counsel John Durham.

Durham, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, was appointed in the spring of 2019 by Barr to investigate potential wrongdoing by government officials and others in the early days of the FBI probe into ties between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Trump expected the investigation to expose what he and his supporters alleged was a “deep state” conspiracy to undermine his campaign, but the slow pace of the probe – and the lack of blockbuster findings – contributed to a deep wedge between the president and Barr by the time the attorney general resigned in December 2020.

The investigation concluded last May with underwhelming results: A single guilty plea from a little-known FBI lawyer, resulting in probation, and two acquittals at trial by juries.

Dannehy, who was the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, told Connecticut lawmakers that politics had “never played a role” in how she was expected to carry out her job as a federal prosecutor and “that was the Justice Department I thought I was returning to” when she ultimately joined Durham's team.

“I had been taught and spent my entire career at Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner,” she said. "In the spring and summer of 2020, I had growing concerns that this Russia investigation was not being conducted in that way. Attorney General Barr began to speak more publicly and specifically about the ongoing criminal investigation. I thought these public comments violated DOJ guidelines.”

Dannehy said Barr's comments were “certainly taken in a political way by reports. Whether he intended that or not, I don’t know.”

She declined to detail what happened during her time with the investigation because it involved highly classified information.

While Durham’s report did identify significant problems with the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, including major errors and omissions in wiretap applications targeting a former Trump campaign official, many of the findings had already been revealed by the Justice Department inspector general. And though Trump had looked to the report to malign the FBI as prejudiced against him, Durham concluded that the FBI’s mistakes were mostly a result of “confirmation bias” rather than partisanship or outright political bias.

Durham would not answer questions about Dannehy’s resignation during a June appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, saying the issue was not part of the report that he had been summoned to talk about.

Dannehy, a 62-year-old Connecticut native, served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut from 2008 to 2010. She later was appointed deputy attorney general for the state of Connecticut before taking a job with United Technologies Corporation as associate general counsel for global ethics and compliance.

Her nomination was cleared the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee by a vote of 30-4 on Wednesday. The full General Assembly is scheduled to vote next week.
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[TopHatter]

Donald Trump suing ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele at High Court
The former US president is bringing a data protection claim against Mr Steele and his company Orbis Business Intelligence.


Donald Trump is suing a former MI6 officer and the intelligence consultancy he founded, High Court records show.

The former US president is bringing a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence and its founder Christopher Steele, who previously ran the Secret Intelligence Service’s Russia desk.

According to a court order published on Thursday, a two-day hearing in Mr Trump’s legal action is set to start on October 16, which is thought to be the first hearing in the claim.

No other details of the case have been made available, but Mr Trump is not expected to attend.

Mr Steele was the author of the so-called Steele dossier, which included allegations that Mr Trump had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, the FSB.

The dossier, leaked to BuzzFeed in 2017, also alleged that Mr Putin “supported and directed” an operation to “cultivate” Mr Trump as a presidential candidate for “at least five years”.

Mr Trump denied the claims.

Mr Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence were previously sued for libel by Russian national Aleksej Gubarev over the publication of the dossier, claiming they were legally responsible for BuzzFeed publishing the dossier.

However, in a judgment in October 2020, Mr Justice Warby dismissed the claim.
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Guess Trump figured he hasn't stiffed enough gullible lawyers for this year....

Discovery ought to be interesting.

[Monash]

This could get interesting in the event there is a dispute over some of the information Steele used when compiling his initial reports/assessments. If any of that information indirectly relied on means or sources covered by the Official Secrets Act the British Government might become involved i.e. there might have to be a closed session where either certain details are disclosed that confirm or refute Trumps claims or alternately the British government is forced to act and shut down any disclosure, possibly ending the case entirely. In that case? Queue moral outrage from Trump.

Of course if evidence is disclosed in court (under strict conditions) and it doesn't help the applicant we'll suddenly see Trump withdrawing his suit for (insert excuse here) and even possibly costs being awarded to Steele. In fairness however if any such disclosure actually affirms Trump's claims then he wins. But then again neither Trump or his lawyers can disclose specifics of the 'why' he won outside of court. Trump being Trump ...??

[TopHatter]

U.S. judge orders Trump deposed in lawsuits by former FBI officials
February 23, 2023

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered former President Donald Trump to be questioned in a pair of lawsuits against the Justice Department and FBI by two former agency officials who allege they were the targets of an improper political pressure campaign by his White House.

Trump to be deposed Tuesday in Peter Strzok and Lisa Page lawsuit



Donald Trump is scheduled to be interviewed under oath in New York on Tuesday for a lawsuit related to his time as president and the termination of a Russia investigation-era FBI official.

The deposition is to be conducted by attorneys for the FBI official, Peter Strzok, and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page late in the day on Tuesday, sources familiar with Trump’s schedule say.

The deposition comes as Trump’s obligations in court continue to mount – on Tuesday he’s also attending the civil fraud trial related to his business inflating its assets. Monday, he was ordered not to disparage possible witnesses, court officers or prosecutors while facing federal criminal charges related to January 6. On Friday, jury selection will begin in the first trial of his co-defendants in the 2020 election subversion case in Georgia.

Whether the deposition of Trump would be allowed has been an issue fought in court for years, with the Justice Department under the Trump administration and even the Biden administration seeking to shield Trump from giving the testimony, citing legal protections surrounding presidents and their actions while in office.

But the federal courts in Washington, DC, ultimately sided with Strzok and Page.

The case, and Strzok and Page’s pursuit of Trump’s testimony, has tested the limits of confidentiality around the presidency.

Strzok is accusing the Justice Department of wrongfully terminating him because of Trump’s publicly stated anger toward him and the Russia investigation. He and Page are also suing over the release of their text messages to the press.

Trump is allowed to be questioned on Tuesday at the deposition for no more than two hours. A judge previously put specific parameters around the questions he can be asked. Strzok’s and Page’s attorneys are able to ask Trump about his public statements and other communications he made about the pair in 2017 and 2018.
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Somebody is deathly afraid of testifying under oath....

[TopHatter]

US intelligence report alleging Russia election interference shared with 100 countries

WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday released a U.S. intelligence assessment sent to more than 100 countries that found Moscow is using spies, social media and Russian state-run media to erode public faith in the integrity of democratic elections worldwide.

"This is a global phenomenon," said the assessment. "Our information indicates that senior Russian government officials, including the Kremlin, see value in this type of influence operation and perceive it to be effective."

A senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said that Russia was encouraged to intensify its election influence operations by its success in amplifying disinformation about the 2020 U.S. election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Success breeds more, and we definitely see the U.S. elections as a catalyst," the official said.

The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The release of the assessment comes amid serious tensions between the United States and Russia over Moscow's war against Ukraine and a raft of other issues.

The assessment was sent in a State Department cable dated Wednesday to more than 100 U.S. embassies in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa for distribution to their host governments, he said.

Washington was privately briefing recipient governments and shared the assessment "to get ahead of elections that are over the horizon over the next year," the official said.

The report represents Washington's latest move to combat what it says are Moscow's efforts "to sow instability" in democratic countries by portraying elections as "dysfunctional, and resulting governments as illegitimate."

Washington "recognizes its own vulnerability to this threat," said the report, noting that U.S. intelligence agencies found that "Russian actors spread and amplified information to undermine public confidence in the U.S. 2020 election."

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in 2020 beat his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, who refuses to accept the results, falsely claiming that he lost due to fraud.

Concerted Russian operations between 2020 and 2022 sought to "undermine public confidence in at least 11 elections across nine democracies, including the United States," the report said, adding 17 others were targeted by "less pronounced" efforts.

It did not identify any of the other countries.

Russia "utilizes both overt and covert mechanisms, including influence networks and proxies managed" by Russian spy services, the report said.

As an example, it continued, Russia's FSB security service secretly worked to intimidate election workers, organize election day protests and "sabotage overseas voting" in an unnamed European country's 2020 election.

Russian state media openly claimed polls would be undemocratic and "amplified false claims of fraud" in advance of multiple elections in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America between 2020 and 2021, it said.

Russia also used social media platforms and "proxy websites" to sow doubts about the integrity of elections, it said.

It called Russia "the leading culprit" conducting operations to undermine public faith in the conduct and results of elections.

While China has interfered in elections, it was not assessed to be using that tactic, the official said. China denies interfering in elections.

The report recommended that countries work to mitigate Russian election interference through sanctions, information sharing, expulsions of Russian spies and travel bans.
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"Russia Russia Russia....if you're listening, please interfere in our democratic elections!"

[TopHatter]

Ex U.S. spies warned the Hunter Biden scandal had Russian fingerprints. They feel vindicated now.

The Justice Department’s assertions this week that a longtime FBI informant was seeking to “spread misinformation” designed to hurt President Joe Biden after speaking to Russian intelligence operatives has put a new spotlight on an old debate:

To what extent, if any, has the Russian government manufactured or amplified unproven allegations of corrupt Ukraine dealings by Joe and Hunter Biden?

In a request to revoke his bail, prosecutors said that former informant Alexander Smirnov, charged last week with lying to the FBI in 2020 when he said Joe Biden had received a $5 million bribe, “is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials” as recently as last fall.

The allegation that Smirnov was spreading new falsehoods about Joe Biden with an election looming hearkened back to an episode from the 2020 election, when the question of whether Russian spies were trying to smear Joe Biden was first raised.

Derogatory information, purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop, had surfaced in a New York Post article. Soon afterward, 51 former intelligence officials signed and blasted to the media a letter warning that the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The letter continued: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails … are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

The laptop data included embarrassing photos of Hunter Biden with prostitutes — and emails that detailed his business dealings in Ukraine and China. The mainstream media largely ignored it, while Twitter and Facebook put restrictions on the sharing of the New York Post story.

After mainstream news organizations verified portions of the laptop material, the letter became a focus of anger among Donald Trump and his supporters. They branded the group of mostly Biden supporters as “spies who lie” and accused them of election interference, saying their letter suppressed coverage of a story that reflected poorly on their candidate.

The House Judiciary Committee hauled some of them in for sworn interviews, and in May published a report titled, “How senior intelligence community officials and the Biden campaign worked to mislead American voters.” Some received death threats.


Alexander Smirnov, left, leaves the Las Vegas courthouse on Feb. 20, 2024. (AP)

Now, many of those former officials say they feel vindicated by the allegations against the FBI informant.

No public evidence has emerged pointing to a Russian government role in how the laptop materials were made public. But the former officials say the materials fueled stories consistent with Russian efforts to accuse Biden of corruption that persist to this day — and that therefore they were justified in sounding the alarm.

“It validates exactly what we were warning about,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran who supervised operations involving Russia. “Ours was a prudent warning. The Russians were going to push this narrative of Hunter Biden and corruption, to hurt Joe Biden.”

Polymeropoulos, who spent much of his career in counterterrorism, said he received emails saying he and his family should be hung, and a barrage of crank phone calls. Another signatory, former CIA operations officer John Sipher, says he was also targeted by threats.

Sipher said the group never claimed that material about Hunter Biden was made up — only that the story fit a narrative being pushed by people with ties to Russian intelligence, including some who had met in Ukraine with Trump’s lawyer and adviser Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani had provided the laptop materials to the New York Post.

“This has always been an ugly political game from the beginning,” Sipher said. “Anyone who actually bothered to read the letter would realize that the focus was on warning about Russian subversive efforts prior to the 2020 election.”

He added, “The recent revelations show that we were prescient. While I would love to gloat, the important issue remains the same — foreign interference in American democracy, and unethical, cynical and faithless behavior by members of Congress entrusted to provide oversight of our important institutions.”

Russell Dye, a spokesman for the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, responded:

“The Hunter Biden laptop was always real and always authenticated. They knew, or should have known, that and they still ran with their verifiably bogus letter. The people who signed the letter should feel zero vindication.”

The Judiciary Committee report included excerpts of an interview with Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA, who said he asked Polymeropoulos to draft the letter. Morell acknowledged that he did so after being contacted by then-candidate Biden’s senior foreign policy adviser Antony Blinken, who flagged the New York Post story.

That revelation was characterized by Republicans as more evidence the letter had been a political maneuver. Most if not all the signatories preferred Biden over Trump in the 2020 election. Among them were James Clapper, who served as President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, and Leon Panetta, an Obama CIA director and defense secretary.

There is little doubt the letter helped Democrats rebuff allegations of Biden family corruption. Biden cited it during a presidential debate when Trump raised the issue, asserting that “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan.”

But the signatories said they were expressing a genuine concern that went beyond who would win an election. And it wasn’t only those 51 former officials who were concerned about possible Russian attempts to smear Biden. NBC News reported in October 2020 that the CIA and other spy agencies gathered intelligence on Giuliani’s dealings with alleged Russian intelligence agents as he searched for dirt on Biden and passed his findings on to the Trump White House.

American intelligence agencies were not spying on Giuliani, but on the people with whom he was talking, including Andrii Derkach, who had been identified by the Treasury Department as a Russian agent. In the process, the U.S. spy agencies learned that Derkach and other Russian operatives were in touch with Giuliani, and wanted to feed him information in an attempt to discredit Joe Biden.

In that context, the emergence of the laptop around the same time raised suspicions, especially because the New York Post reported that it obtained the material from Giuliani, who got it from the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop. The shop owner said Hunter Biden brought it in and never picked it up.

Material from the laptop became evidence in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden, which ultimately resulted in a pair of indictments accusing him of tax and gun crimes. He has pleaded not guilty. A recent court filing by the lead prosecutor in the case, special counsel David Weiss, says investigators authenticated the laptop material — and the fact that a computer had been left in a store.

“In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant [Hunter Biden]’s Apple iCloud account,” the filing said. “In response to that warrant, in September 2019, Apple produced backups of data from various of the defendant’s electronic devices that he had backed up to his iCloud account. Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.”

It was Weiss who filed charges last week against Smirnov, accusing the informant of lying to the FBI when he relayed information that Joe and Hunter Biden had each accepted bribes of $5 million in 2015 from Ukrainian executives of Burisma, the company that paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars to sit on its board.

NBC News has reported that the bribery allegations had been investigated and debunked by the Justice Department during the Trump administration. But they had become part of the push by House Republicans to impeach Joe Biden. And the prosecutor who investigated, former Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady, testified to the House Judiciary Committee in October that the FBI viewed the informant as a “trusted source.”

It’s not clear when and why that changed. In a filing this week seeking to revoke Smirnov’s bail, prosecutors said he had repeatedly “lied to his FBI Handler after a 10-year relationship where the two spoke nearly every day” — and that he had “extensive” contacts with Russian operatives. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. Hunter Biden’s lawyers said in a filing that the informant’s alleged lies have irreparably tainted the cases against him.

“Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials who are affiliated with Russian intelligence services are not benign,” the filing says, adding that his “efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues. … What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
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Russia Russia Russia....

[TopHatter]

Donald Trump suing ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele at High Court
The former US president is bringing a data protection claim against Mr Steele and his company Orbis Business Intelligence.


Donald Trump is suing a former MI6 officer and the intelligence consultancy he founded, High Court records show.

The former US president is bringing a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence and its founder Christopher Steele, who previously ran the Secret Intelligence Service’s Russia desk.
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Guess Trump figured he hasn't stiffed enough gullible lawyers for this year....

Discovery ought to be interesting.

Trump ordered to pay legal fees after failed lawsuit over 'shocking and scandalous' Steele dossier


FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. Trump has been ordered to pay a six-figure legal bill to a company founded by a former British spy that he unsuccessfully sued for making what his lawyer called “shocking and scandalous" false claims that harmed his reputation, it was reported on Thursday, March 7, 2024.

LONDON (AP) — Former U.S. President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay a six-figure legal bill to a company founded by a former British spy that he unsuccessfully sued for making what his lawyer called “shocking and scandalous" false claims that harmed his reputation.

A London judge, who threw out the case against Orbis Business Intelligence last month saying it was “bound to fail," ordered Trump to pay legal fees of 300,000 pounds ($382,000), according to court documents released Thursday.

The British court case was one of few in which Trump, who is almost sure to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was not a defendant as he faces massive legal problems back home.

Trump is charged in four criminal cases and faces a civil complaint in U.S. courts. He lost a subsequent defamation case in which a jury found him liable for sexual abuse, and has been ordered to pay $355 million after a fraud verdict against his businesses.

In England, he had gone on the offensive and sued Orbis, which was founded by Christopher Steele, who once ran the Russia desk for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

Steele was paid by Democrats for research that included salacious allegations Russians could potentially use to blackmail Trump. The so-called Steele dossier assembled in 2016 created a political storm just before Trump's inauguration with rumors and uncorroborated allegations that have since been largely discredited.

Trump sued the company, saying the the dossier was phony and Orbis had violated British data protection laws.

Attorney Hugh Tomlinson said at an October hearing that the former president “suffered personal and reputational damage and distress” over claims in the dossier that he’d taken part in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg and consorted with sex workers in Moscow.

Tomlinson said the dossier “contained shocking and scandalous claims about the personal conduct of President Trump” and included allegations he paid bribes to Russian officials to further his business interests.

Orbis said the lawsuit should be thrown out because the report was never meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said the claim was filed too late.

Judge Karen Steyn, who sided with Orbis in her Feb. 1 ruling, issued an order several days later on the legal costs.

She cut the amount of legal bills Orbis said it incurred — 634,000 pounds ($809,000) — by more than 50% because she said it was high considering there had only been a one-day hearing.

In 2022, a U.S. federal judge in Florida dismissed a Trump lawsuit against Steele, 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and former top FBI officials, rejecting his claims that they helped concoct the Russia investigation that overshadowed much of his administration.
____________

lol so much winning....

Trump's lawyers get stiffed in 3...2...1....

[Albany Rifles]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH... ...takes a breath.......HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHH AAHA!