the great shovellers of America...

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The original Woods file on former campaign advisor Carter Page went missing more than two years ago, and according to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com, those documents had to be recreated by the FBI and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in 2018 from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Application used by the bureau to obtain the warrant on Page. That FISA was used in part to investigate President Donald Trump’s campaign and the now-debunked theory that it colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, according to several sources, with knowledge, who spoke to this reporter.

The woods file procedure, which was overseen by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka,and ultimately former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, was used to verify the contents in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application that was used to obtain a warrant to spy on Page.

Moreover, during Pientka’s numerous interviews with investigators from the DOJ’s Inspector General’s office, who likely have worked for both Michael Horowitz and Connecticut prosecutor John Durham – the fact that it was a recreated Wood’s file was never disclosed.

In fact, it had been missing for an unknown period of time, possibly up to two years and officials did not become aware it had disappeared until last week during a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Pientka attended the closed-door hearing, along with other FBI officials, according to sources familiar with the proceedings.

“The real story here is how does the FBI, Special Counsel’s Office and Inspector General figure out if the Wood’s file went missing through malice or through incompetence,” said a source with knowledge if the circumstances.

Pientka has so far been cleared by the Justice Department and not charged with any wrongdoing. According to sources, he has been speaking and cooperating with Justice Department officials and members of Congress. He still maintains active employment with the FBI, unlike Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and former Assistant Director Bill Priestap, among others.

“The fact that the investigation was run as a ‘special’ out of FBI Headquarters is not unique,” said a person familiar with the situation. “However, running an investigation like that out of headquarters causes all sorts of problems including access to control and sensitive items, improper storage and handling of those sensitive items, and the ability for individuals to become involved in things or gain access to information that they should never rightly have.”

“The real story here is how does the FBI, Special Counsel’s Office and Inspector General figure out if the Wood’s file went missing through malice or though incompetence,” the source added. “Either answer doesn’t reflect well on this investigation.”

FBI officials did not respond by close of business after being contacted several hours earlier. However, this story will be updated once a response is received.

Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec could not be reached by phone or email for comment.

The information regarding Carter Page’s woods file also comes on the heels of an announcement Tuesday by Justice Department Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray that they are rolling out a series of new reforms and procedures for seeking approval of intelligence-related surveillance of campaign staff and officials.

These reforms “will empower the FBI to build a more robust internal compliance program … that will ensure, among other things, the accuracy of [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] applications, as well as the active oversight of applications targeting federal elected officials, candidates for federal elected office, and their staffs,” the news release stated.

Carter Page, author of the new book “Abuse and Power: How an Innocent American Was Framed in an Attempted Coup Against a President,” sent a statement to SaraACarter.com saying, “after years of waiting for basic level of accountability in the U.S. intelligence community and the Democratic party, the crooks continue to roam free in Washington.”

He noted that as “we approach the next presidential election, these latest small steps by the DOJ and FBI have not yet sufficiently addressed the criminal acts by ruthlessly partisan political actors in the swamp.”

“The cancerous abuses by the once-respected National Security Division have still not found an effective remedy, following the destruction of so many loyal American citizens,” he added.

In fact, Carter Page’s life was turned upside down when members of the intelligence community and federal law enforcement apparatus began leaking false information to the media. They used the unverified FISA application, that was later discovered to have numerous errors and omissions that were purposefully done to obtain the warrant to spy on him.

Last month, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to altering an email that would have cleared any suspicion about Page conspiring with Russians. The email was verification that Page was acting on behalf of the CIA and had cooperated with the U.S. government on numerous occasions.

In fact, the Woods file procedure, which was named after FBI Special Agent Michael Woods and instituted in 2001, is to ensure that there are no inaccuracies and that all the information in a FISA application is verified. The application can only be presented to the court once it is verified.

With original Wood’s file missing, investigators now will be unable to properly determine where or how the information presented to the FISC was verified, altered or omitted, according to multiple sources.

The FISA, however, also relied on a shoddy dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC to dig up dirt on Trump. The dossier has now been discovered to be bogus but it was used as a supporting piece of evidence in the FISA to get the warrant.

The investigation into Trump and his campaign, however, was known as a ‘special’ and bureau kept the investigation at headquarters where “the odds of leaks were believed to be less likely,” said one source. However, FBI headquarters in Washington D.C., unlike the FBI’s 56 field offices, is incapable of appropriately storing and securing information in investigations.

Strzok and Lisa Page Discuss Expediting Woods procedure and FISA Before 2016 Election

The history behind the FBI’s FISA application to obtain a warrant to spy on Page is long, murky and scattered in documents obtained by Congressional investigations that have taken years to complete.

Those texts and emails are invaluable to understanding what transpired. In one exchange durning October, 2016, Strzok emails Page, about the FISA. The back and forth included former FBI Deputy Director McCabe and how they would get him to push the DOJ to. sign off on the warrant to spy on Carter Page.

McCabe, like Strzok, was fired for lying numerous times to the DOJ’s Inspector General investigators under then Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

In the email with the subject line, “Crossfire FISA” – referring to the FBI’s code name for its probe into the Trump campaign’s 2016 election and the bureau’s now debunked theory members conspired with Russia – the pair discussed what they would tell McCabe regarding the FISA.

“At a minimum, that keeps the hurry the F up pressure on him,” said Strzok to Page on Oct. 14, 2016.

“Still an expedite?” one of the emails stated. The reason they were expediting the process was because the election was only months away and the agents were desperate to have access to Carter Page’s communications.

“Any idea what time he can have it woods-ed by?” said Strzok to Page. “I know it’s not going to matter because DOJ is going to take the time DOJ wants to take. I just don’t want this waiting on us at all.”

However, without the Woods procedure files we may not ever know what transpired and what information was actually used to target Carter Page.

The truth, however, resides in all the agents and former senior Obama officials with knowledge of the FBI’s role and their role in handling the case.

The malfeasance ran deep and straight to the top of the bureau. Attorney General Barr and Durham shouldn’t leave any stone unturned and expose what happened to the American public.

There is no way that a file of that significance can go missing in an investigation into a Presidential campaign and then a President of the United States.

The next question we should be asking is “why didn’t anyone know until now?”

https://saraacarter.com/breaking-carter-pages-fisa-related-woods-file-do...

By Gus Leonisky at 2 Sep 2020 - 10:50am
Gus Leonisky's blog
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digging for trump taxes...

Trump has blasted the long-running quest for his financial records as a “continuation of the most disgusting witch hunt in the history of our country” and predicted the case would again end up before the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that the presidency in itself doesn’t shield Trump from Vance’s investigation, but the high court returned the case to U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero’s courtroom to allow Trump’s lawyers to raise other concerns about the subpoena.

Trump’s lawyers then argued that the subpoena was issued in bad faith and overly broad, might have been politically motivated and amounted to harassment. Marrero rejected those claims. Consovoy told the judges Tuesday that the investigation was an “arbitrary fishing expedition.”

Carey Dunne, of the district attorney’s office, said Trump and his lawyers have long misrepresented the scope of the investigation as focusing primarily on hush money payments that were paid to protect Trump from adultery allegations. Vance’s lawyers have said they are legally entitled to extensive records to aid a “complex financial investigation.”

“The president has complained at every turn that we’ve not announced what the grand jury is looking at as if that itself is bad faith,” Dunne said. “But of course, what the grand jury is looking at is secret. We’re not allowed to make that public, which is what has led to his speculation about the grand jury scope. But none of this speculation is plausible.”

Even if Vance does get Trump’s tax records, those would be part of a confidential grand jury investigation and not automatically be made public.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/01/court-blocks-release-of-trump-tax-returns-amid-latest-appeal/

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Between you, me and a small stone-throwing sling, The game of cat mouse, when ended, won't reveal anything sordid or any "tax avoidance". We know that Trump's businesses made in the vicinity of $450 million per year since elected and paid taxes accordingly. Biden meanwhile has some alleged hidden moneys he received from politicking in Ukraine...

By Gus Leonisky at 2 Sep 2020 - 4:25pm
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on the reality front...

For years, journalists cheered the abuse of Julian Assange. Now they’ve paved his path to a US gulag

By Jonathan Cook

Court hearings in Britain over the US administration’s extradition case against Julian Assange begin in earnest on September 7. The decade-long saga that brought us to this point should appall anyone who cares about our increasingly fragile freedoms.

A journalist and publisher has been deprived of his liberty for 10 years. According to UN experts, he has been arbitrarily detained and tortured for much of that time through intense physical confinement and endless psychological pressure. He has been bugged and spied on by the CIA during his time in political asylum, in Ecuador’s London embassy, in ways that violated his most fundamental legal rights. The judge overseeing his hearings has a serious conflict of interest — with her family embedded in the UK security services — that she did not declare and which should have required her to recuse herself from the case.

All indications are that Assange will be extradited to the US to face a rigged grand jury trial meant to ensure he sees out his days in a maximum-security prison, serving a sentence of up to 175 years.

None of this happened in some Third-World, tinpot dictatorship. It happened right under our noses, in a major western capital, and in a state that claims to protect the rights of a free press. It happened not in the blink of an eye but in slow motion — day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

And once we strip out a sophisticated campaign of character assassination against Assange by west- ern governments and a compliant media, the sole justification for this relentless attack on press freedom is that a 49-year-old man published documents exposing US war crimes. That is the reason — and the only reason — that the US is seeking his extradition and why he has been languishing in what amounts to solitary confinement in Belmarsh high-security prison during the Covid-19 pandemic. His lawyers’ appeals for bail have been refused.

While the press corps abandoned Assange a decade ago, echoing official talking points that pilloried him over toilet hygiene and his treatment of his cat, Assange is today exactly where he originally predicted he would be if western governments got their way. What awaits him is rendition to the US so he can be locked out of sight for the rest of his life.

There were two goals the US and UK set out to achieve through the visible persecution, confinement and torture of Assange.

First, he and Wikileaks, the transparency organisation he co-founded, needed to be disabled. Engaging with Wikileaks had to be made too risky to contemplate for potential whistleblowers. That is why Chelsea Manning — the US soldier who passed on documents relating to US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan for which Assange now faces extradition — was similarly subjected to harsh imprisonment. She later faced punitive daily fines while in jail to pressure her into testifying against Assange.

The aim has been to discredit Wikileaks and simi- lar organisations and stop them from publishing ad- ditional revelatory documents — of the kind that show western governments are not the “good guys” managing world affairs for the benefit of mankind, but are in fact highly militarised, global bullies advancing the same ruthless colonial policies of war, destruction and pillage they always pursued.

And second, Assange had to be made to suffer horribly and in public — to be made an example of — to deter other journalists from ever following in his footsteps. He is the modern equivalent of a severed head on a pike displayed at the city gates.

The very obvious fact — confirmed by the media coverage of his case — is that this strategy, advanced chiefly by the US and UK (with Sweden playing a lesser role), has been wildly successful. Most corporate media journalists are still enthusiastically colluding in the vilification of Assange — mainly at this stage by ignoring his awful plight.

http://www.coldtype.net./Assets20/PDFs/ColdType213.Cook.Assange.pdf

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he would mess with every single woman or teen...

September 4, 2020 — Lawsuit filed after Secret Service admits to destroying records over Biden altercation with Secret Service Agent

WASHINGTON, DC – News of a physical fight between then Vice President Joe Biden and a Secret Service agent in 2009 emerged recently after Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the records.

The information alleges that Biden got into some type of physical confrontation with a Secret Service agent while at a photo opportunity in 2009. Judicial Watch claims that they were seeking:

“All records related to a reported incident in 2009 in which a United States Secret Service Agent reportedly was involved in an altercation with, or attempted to strike, then Vice President Joe Biden.”

When the Judicial Watch filed the Freedom of Information Act on May 12th of this year which sought all records including:

“witness statements, the Agent’s statement, victim’s statement, alleged perpetrator’s statement, incident reports, investigative reports, communications among USSS personnel regarding the incident, and disciplinary records related to the incident for the Agent in question.”

Judicial Watch included a news report which spoke of the incident and alleged that the agent involved was suspended for a week.

The group received notice from the USSS on May 13th, acknowledging the request. However, on July 13th, they notified the Judicial Watch and said:

“There are no responsive records or documents pertaining to your request in our files…the above file(s) has been destroyed,” due to “retention standards…no additional information is available.”

Members of Judicial Watch appealed the findings that the reports had been destroyed to the Secret Service Deputy Director on July 14th. As of September 2nd, the group has not been notified as to the status of the FOIA request.

Because of the lack of response, the Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit on September 2nd against the Department of Homeland Security who oversees the Secret Service. Their hope is that there are records and this lawsuit will force the USSS to produce them for public review.

The FOIA was sent after the Gateway Pundit republished an article from 2017 referencing the incident on March 29, 2020. In that article, an unnamed source from the Secret Service alleged that Biden was known to harass women, including teenagers, in front of the agents.

The specific incident, according to the Gateway Pundit, stemmed from an Agent:

“Shoving Biden after he cupped his girlfriend’s breast while the couple was taking a photo with him… The situation got so heated… that others had to step in to prevent the agent from hitting the then-Vice President.”

The agent also claimed at an annual party for agents and Navy members:

“We had to cancel the VP Christmas get together at the Vice President’s house because Biden would grope all of our wives and girlfriend’s [expletive]…He would mess with every single woman or teen. It was horrible.”

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/lawsuit-filed-after-secret-service-admits-to-destroying-records/

Gus: this could be a hoax but it deserves investigating... (seen on several sources)

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Note: these allegations won't appear on the New York Times, the Atlantic or the Washington Post...

By Gus Leonisky at 7 Sep 2020 - 8:27pm
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these elusive russians...

As the US presidential election approaches, the Democratic party is ramping up speculation about "Russian interference", with Moscow allegedly attempting to undermine the campaign of Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

Joe Biden warned there would be "consequences" for Russian President Vladimir Putin for "violation of our sovereignty" when asked by MSNBC host on allegations that Russia is conducting "interference [in the US presidential election] to hurt you and cause chaos".

“My message to Vladimir Putin is that if I get elected, I’m coming", Biden said. "Because here's the deal, it's a violation of our sovereignty. I made it clear before, and I'll make it clear again... [Trump] would like to see very much Vladimir Putin continue down the road he is. But I promise you, I promise you: there'll be consequences. There'll be consequences if I win, for this involvement in our sovereignty".

This is not the first time Biden has addressed the Russian president, as the former has promised to "stand up to [Putin]" during his entire presidential campaign, calling the Russian president "a bully" and accusing him of attempting to choose the American president.

https://sputniknews.com/us/202009251080576125-im-coming-biden-threatens-consequences-for-putin-amid-allegations-of-election-interference/

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Between a lunatic loose cannon and an indecent Catholic warrior, the Russians have their work cut out to make a choice and influence the US elections... Putin would be very perplexed as to whom of these two nutcases would be best to deal with... I'm sure that Putin is staying clear of the muck but the political machine in the US likes to claim he is involved in helping "the other guy" whoever he is... It's about time the US Democrats grew up but we live in hope... Hope? The Dems should pay more attention to Uncle Rupe... Ah yes, but this Aussie is an American...

By Gus Leonisky at 26 Sep 2020 - 7:14pm
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of mikhail borisovich khodorkovsky...

Since 2016, the specter of “Russian interference” has been an idée fixe of the Washington political establishment and its media allies. Between the Mueller investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee report, and the House impeachment saga, the long procession of Kremlin-related scandals collectively known as “Russiagate” have occupied a vast chunk of American political life.

For years, we were told by our politicians and journalists that American society is infested by swarms of Russian intelligence assets working tirelessly to corrupt our institutions, poison us against one another, and destroy our way of life. These same politicians and journalists insisted that only they, in their great wisdom and foresight, could save us from the invisible Russian menace. From calling Senator Mitchell McConnell a “Russian asset” to cynically promoting the unverified, and now debunked, Steele Dossier, our intrepid investigators have left no stone unturned in their relentless campaign to expose the Kremlin’s malign influence.

The many failures and embarrassments of Russiagate are well-catalogued. There is, however, a particular dimension of the Russiagate saga that has long been overlooked—namely, the shocking extent to which these narratives have been propelled and amplified with the help of powerful Russians who have been permitted, if not invited, to meddle in American politics.

Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky was a Communist Party functionary-turned-businessman who amassed a fortune during Russia’s haphazard privatization drive in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. Through an elaborate banking scheme that involved loaning the bankrupt Russian government money that he knew it could never repay, Khodorkovsky seized a controlling share in oil and gas producer Yukos and became one of Russia’s most powerful new oligarchs. Questions abound concerning the legality and morality of Khodorkovsky’s business dealings, some of which have been characterized by Russia experts as, at the very least, obscenely unethical. Described in a New York Times profile as radiating “the unlikely allure of a muscular technocrat,” Khodorkovsky developed a growing appetite for politics that placed him on a collision course with Vladimir Putin’s early 2000s efforts to curb the influence of Russia’s new oligarch class.

The two clashed in a 2003 power struggle over Russia’s political direction, and Khodorkovsky lost. He was subsequently arrested, charged with a bouquet of corporate white-collar crimes as part of a 662-page guilty verdict, and imprisoned for several years. His sentence was later extended through 2017, but, following an international pressure campaign that included personal appeals from former president Barack Obama, the Kremlin pardoned and released him in December 2013. From his exile in London, the Russian businessman wasted little time tapping into his considerable financial resources to begin financing opposition movements within Russia and across the Russian diaspora. The Kremlin responded in 2015 by reopening a 1998 murder probe, formally charging Khodorkovsky with facilitating the killing of Siberian mayor Vladimir Petukhov.

There is no need to dwell further on Khodorkovsky’s biography, except to underscore exactly who he is: an exiled Russian oligarch with an active stake in Russian politics. Khodorkovsky is, today, arguably the world’s leading benefactor of anti-Kremlin efforts. But his operations extend far beyond Russia’s borders—in fact, he is deeply invested in lobbying foreign governments to adopt a hardline stance against the Kremlin. Beginning with his Open Russia Foundation, Khodorkovsky established a growing list of proxy groups—among them, think tanks, news outlets, and NGO’s—to marshal Western support for regime change in Russia.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/meet-the-russian-oligarch-who-helped-drive-russiagate/

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By Gus Leonisky at 27 Sep 2020 - 12:28pm
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