Category Archives: Republicans

The Memo: 1 Case of How The Bush-Created FISA Deep-State Court Treats Its American Subjects

Bush, Constitution, Democrats, Donald Trump, Government, Intelligence, Law, Republicans, The State

Let’s not forget that George Bush created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and Republicans keep voting to keep it, despite the Court’s enormous potential for abuse. Republicans have helped create and perpetuate this Deep-State apparatus.

The PDF document transcribes poorly and crudely to text. But I was not about to change even the formatting. So, here it is:

*****************
THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON
February 2, 2018

The Honorable Devin Nunes

Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
United States Capitol

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Mr. Chairman:

On January 29, 2018, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (hereinafter ?the
Committee?) voted to disclose publicly a memorandum containing classified information
provided to the Committee in connection with its oversight activities (the ?Memorandum,?
which is attached to this letter). As provided by clause 11(g) of Rule of the House of Representatives, the Committee has forwarded this Memorandum to the President based on its
determination that the release of the Memorandum would serve the public interest.

The Constitution vests the President with the authority to protect national security secrets from it disclosure. As the Supreme Court has recognized, it is the President?s responsibility to classify, declassify, and control access to information bearing on our intelligence sources and methods and national defense. See, Dep of Navy v. Egan, 484 US. 518, 527 (1988). In order to
facilitate appropriate congressional oversight, the Executive Branch may entrust classi?ed
information to the appropriate committees of Congress, as it has done in connection with the
Committee?s oversight activities here. The Executive Branch does so on the assumption that the Committee will responsibly protect such classi?ed information, consistent with the laws of the United States.

The Committee has now determined that the release of the Memorandum would be appropriate. The Executive Branch, across Administrations of both parties, has worked to accommodate congressional requests to declassify speci?c materials in the public interest.1 However, public release of classi?ed information by unilateral action of the Legislative Branch is extremely rare and raises signi?cant separation of powers concerns. Accordingly, the Committees request to release the Memorandum is interpreted as a request for declassi?cation pursuant to the President’s authority.

The President understands that the protection of our national security represents his highest
obligation. Accordingly, he has directed lawyers and national security staff to assess the

1 See, e. S. Rept. 114?8 at 12 (Administration of Barack Obama) (?On April 3, 2014 . . . the Committee agreed to
send the revised Findings and Conclusions, and the updated Executive Summary of the Committee Study, to the
President for declassi?cation and public release?); H. Rept. 107-792 (Administration of George W. Bush) (similar);
E.O. 12812 (Administration of George H.W. Bush) (noting Senate resolution requesting that President provide for
declassi?cation of certain information Via Executive Order).
1.

declassification request, consistent with established standards governing the handling of
classi?ed information, including those under Section 3.1(d) of Executive Order 13526. Those
standards permit declassi?cation when the public interest in disclosure outweighs any need to
protect the information. The White House review process also included input from the Of?ce of
the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice. Consistent with this review
and these standards, the President has determined that declassification of the Memorandum is
appropriate.

Based on this assessment and in light of the signi?cant public interest in the memorandum, the
President has authorized the declassi?cation of the Memorandum. To be clear, the Memorandum re?ects the judgments of its congressional authors. The President understands
that oversight concerning matters related to the Memorandum may be continuing. Though the
circumstances leading to the declassi?cation through this process are extraordinary, the
Executive Branch stands ready to work with Congress to accommodate oversight requests
consistent with applicable standards and processes, including the need to protect intelligence
sources and methods.

Sincerely,

Donald F. McGahn II

Counsel to the President

cc: The Honorable Paul Ryan
Speaker of the House of Representatives

The Honorable Adam Schiff
Ranking Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

DeclasSi?ed by order of the President
February 2, 2018

January 18, 2018

To: HPSCI Majority Members
From: HPSCI Majority Staff
Subject: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Purpose

This memorandum provides Members an update on significant facts relating to the
Committee?s ongoing investigation into the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (F ISA) during the
2016 presidential election cycle. Our ?ndings, which are detailed below, 1) raise concerns with
the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISC), and 2) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established
to protect the American people from abuses related to the ISA process.

Investigation Update

– On October 21, 2016, DOJ and FBI sought and received a ISA probable cause order
(up; under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. Page is a
US citizen who served as a volunteer advisor to the Trump presidential campaign. Consistent .
with requirements under FISA, the application had to be ?rst certi?ed by the Director or Deputy
Director of the FBI. It then required the approval of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney
General (DAG), or the Senate?con?rmed Assistant Attorney General for the National Security
Division.

The FBI and DOJ obtained one initial FISA warrant targeting Carter Page and three FISA
renewals from the FISC. As required by statute (50 U.S.C. a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the ISC every 90 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. Then-Director James Comey signed three FISA applications in question on behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one. Sally Yates, then-Acting DAG Dana Boente, and DAG Rod Rosenstein each signed one or more FISA applications on behalf of Due to the sensitive nature of foreign intelligence activity, FISA submissions (including renewals) before the ISC are classified. As such, the public?s con?dence in the integrity of the FISA process depends on the court?s ability to hold the government to the highest standard?? particularly as it relates to surveillance of American citizens. However, the rigor in protecting the rights of Americans, which is reinforced by 90?day renewals of surveillance orders, is necessarily dependent on the government?s production to the court of all material and relevant facts. This should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA

PROPERTY OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
3.

application that is known by the government. In the case of Carter Page, the government had at
least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the
relevant facts. However, our ?ndings indicate that, as described below, material and relevant
information was omitted.

The ?dossier?- compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an
essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. Steele was a longtime FBI source who
was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law ?rm Perkins Coie
and research ?rm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump?s ties
to Russia.

a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or
reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or. any party/campaign in funding
Steele?s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then
known to senior and FBI of?cials.

b) The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named US. person, but
does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a US. law
?rm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOI at the,
time that political actors were involved with the Steele dossier). The application does
not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of?and paid by?wthe DNC and
Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the
same information.

The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo
News article by- Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Page?s July 2016 trip to Moscow.

– This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information

leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News. The Page FISA application incorrectly assesses
that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News. Steele has admitted in
British court ?lings that he met with Yahoo Newly?and several other. outlets?in
September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS. Perkins Coie was aware of Steele?s
initial media contacts because they hosted at least one meeting in Washington DC. in
2016 with Steele and Fusion GPS where this matter was discussed.”

a) Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI de?nes
as the most serious of violations?an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his
relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David
Corn Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with
Yahoo and other outlets’ 1n September?before the Page application was submitted to

PROPERTY OF THE US. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
4.

the FISC in October-but Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about
those contacts.

b) Steele?s numerous encounters with the media violated the cardinal rule of source
handling?maintaining con?dentiality?and demonstrated that Steele had become a
less than reliable source for the FBI.

Before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via
then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce 0hr, a senior DOJ of?cial who worked
closely with Deputy Attorneys General Yates and later Rosenstein. Shortly after the
election, the FBI began interviewing 0hr, documenting his communications with Steele.
For example, in September 2016, Steele admitted to 0hr his feelings against then-
candidate Trump when Steele said he ?was desperate that Donald Trump not get
elected and was passionate about him not, being president.? This clear evidence of Steele? bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in of?cial FBI ?les?but
not re?ected in any of the Page FISA applications.

a) During this same time period, Ohr?s wife was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in
the cultivation of opposition research on Trump. Ohr later provided the FBI with all
of his wife?s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via
Fusion GPS. The Ohrs? relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably
concealed from the FISC. .

According to the head of the counterintelligence division, Assistant Director Bill Priestap, corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its ?infancy? at the time of the initial Page FISA application. After Steele was terminated, a source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele?s reporting as only minimally corroborated. Yet, in early January 2017, Director Comey briefed President-elect Trump on a summary of the Steele dossier, even though it was??according to his June 2017 and unveri?ed.? While the FISA application relied on Steele?s past record of credible reporting on other unrelated matters, it ignored or concealed his anti?Trump ?nancial and ideological motivations. Furthermore, Deputy Director

McCabe testi?ed before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.

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PROPERTY OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
5.

5) The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign
advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy
between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening
of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.
Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel?s Office to FBI Human Resources for
improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to
Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of
Clinton, Whom Strzok had also investigated. The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also re?ect
extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and
include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an ?insurance? policy against
President Trump?s election.

PROPERTY OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
6.

Train Carrying Fat-Cat Politicians Kills Trucker. Politicians Proceed “Heroically” To Their Taxpayer-Funded Retreat.

Labor, Media, Politics, Republicans, The State

So, our mummified media are no longer paused on the story of the train freighted with fat-cat politicians that crushed a truck, killing a young (working-class, no doubt) trucker and gravely injuring a passenger.

The dumpster of a story dumped on the public was of “lawmakers on the scene [who] sprung into action to help the injured, including by carrying one individual across the tracks to an ambulance.”

Wow. A presidential medal is in the offing. For sure.

Move on just as soon as you’ve had your fill of our magnificent legislators doing heroic deeds.

Footnote: A regular guy died. He was 28-year-old Christopher Foley, about whom the media care to report NOT A THING, only that he was helped mightily by the retreat-bound politicians:

Several members of Congress have medical training and assisted the injured. Rep. Roger Marshall’s office says the Kansas congressman and doctor helped individuals who needed medical attention, including performing CPR.
Pence tweeted that he was monitoring the situation and still planning to speak at the retreat.

Other than the death of a young, working-class man, the news to take away from the veritable orgy of journalistic idiocy is that politicians treat themselves and their families to a retreat—to recharge, you know—on the backs of taxpayers. They say it’s a working retreat.

Republicans are gathered at the storied Greenbrier Resort — home to a Cold War-era bunker once meant to house Congress in the event of a nuclear attack — to plot the party’s legislative agenda for 2018 and strategize for what could be a bruising midterm election.

MORE “HEROICS.”

“Pathway To Citizenship”: What Will Happen If President Trump Says Those Words, Tomorrow

Bush, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Neoconservatism, Republicans

A source who shall remain anonymous writes:

If tomorrow night President Donald Trump utters the words “pathway to citizenship,” it will mark one of the biggest betrayals of the modern era and the effective end of his presidency.

1) He will cause the 2018 midterms to be a Democratic victory as a significant part of the demoralized and disillusioned base stays home and we lose the House – and perhaps even the senate.

2) Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will impeach him in the House.

3) A Democrat-controlled Senate will proceed with a trial. A Republican-controlled Senate will not proceed with trial but nothing Trump wants will come out of the House and his “America First” agenda will be neutralized.

4) Trump will be challenged from the Right in the 2020 presidential primaries.

My well-connected source’s own sources tell him that, “Trump is proceeding down this road of self-immolation”:

The Koch brothers successfully infiltrated their agent, Marc Short, into the inner sanctum. Short, who led the Koch’s Never Trump movement in 2016, has teamed up with Establishment lackey Kirstjen Nielsen [with whom I was actually quite taken] and the princess regent Ivanka [whom I’ve grown to detest] to sideline and neutralize Stephen Miller, the last remaining voice for immigration sanity. [First they came for Steve Bannon, now it’s Steve Miller’s turn.]

Trump is being pushed off the cliff with all the happy talk from this cabal, buttressed by Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake and Paul Ryan. In summation, the entire rabid Never Trump partisans are now in control of POTUS and are succeeding in getting him to do their immigration policy:

Amnesty now. Enforcement later, maybe.

No effectual changes to chain migration for at least ten years since all pre-existing applicants for green cards are grandfathered in . That’s at least a ten-year backlog.

This is the 1986 Bill on steroids.

The headline, all over conservative and populist media on Wednesday morning will be one word: betrayal.

We who want Trump to succeed have been trying to head this off all week, since this country killing plan was first floated in the press. Seemingly to no avail. Trump is cocooned, just as he was and continues to be on foreign policy. He’s captive to the neocon interventionists AND now to the open borders, cheap-labor lobby as well.

It’s as if we had elected JEB Bush.

This is NOT America First.

What a colossal disappointment. On Wednesday morning Trump supporters will be in disarray, the Conservative movement will be fractured and, once again, Republicans will be at each other’s throats – as the Kochs, the Bushes, Bill Kristol and all the other members of the Never Trump cabal are filled with glee and satisfaction as they celebrate the beginning of the end of his presidency.

The Conservative Cult Of Dr. Martin Luther King, Communist, Plagiarist, And Worse

BAB's A List, Boyd Cathey, Communism, Conservatism, Cultural Marxism, Ethics, History, Intellectualism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, Republicans

I almost lost my lunch listening to a radio rerun of Sean Hannity’s odes to Martin Luther King Jr. To declare the schmaltzy, sub-intellectual fare of King Jr. to be the greatest thinking ever is to kill one’s intellectual credibility and affront the history of thought. I read Plato—yes yes, he was a statist—and I think, “Just wow,”and “what genius.” I listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech, and I think, “Oprah,” and “what kitsch.”

Barley A Blog correspondent Dr. Boyd Cathey fills in the blanks:

For the past thirty-five years (officially since 1986) the third Monday in January has been celebrated as a federal holiday, Martin Luther King Day. Federal and state offices and many businesses either close or go on limited schedules. We are awash with public observances, parades, prayer breakfasts, stepped-up school projects for our unwary and intellectually-abused children, and gobs and gobs of over-the-top television “specials” and movies, all geared to tell us—to shout it in our faces, if we don’t pay strict attention—that Martin Luther King Jr. was some sort of superhuman, semi-divine civil rights leader who brought the promise of equality to millions of Americans, a kind of modern St. John the Baptist ushering in the Millenium. And that he stands just below Jesus Christ in the pantheon of revered and adored historical personages…and in some ways, perhaps above Jesus Christ in the minds of many of his present-day devotees and epigones.

It seems to do no good to issue a demurrer to this veritable religious “cult of Dr. King.” There are, indeed, numerous “Christian” churches that now “celebrate” this day just as if it were a major feast in the Christian calendar. In short, Martin Luther King has received de facto canonization religiously and in the public mind as no other person in American history.

Mention the fact that King plagiarized as much as 40 percent of his Boston University Ph.D. dissertation [cf. Theodore Pappas, Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr, and Other Prominent Americans, 1998, and Martin Luther King Jr Plagiarism Story, 1994], or that he worked closely with known Communists throughout his life, or that he advocated American defeat in Vietnam while praising Ho Chi Minh, or that he implicitly countenanced violence and Marxism, especially later in his life [cf., Congressional Record, 129, no. 130 (October 3, 1983): S13452-S13461]—mention any of these accusations confirmed begrudgingly by his establishment biographers David Garrow and Taylor Branch, or mention his even-by-current-standards violent “rough sex” escapades (which apparently involved even under-age children) [cf., Cooper Sterling, January 13, 2018]—and you immediately get labeled a “racist” and condemned by not just the zealous King flame-keepers on the Left, but by such neoconservatives like James Kirchick and Dinesh D’Souza who supposedly are on the Right.

Indeed, in some ways Establishment “conservatives” such as Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry (National Review), D’Souza, Glenn Beck, the talking heads on Fox and the furious scribblers at The Weekly Standard, and many others, not only eagerly buy into this narrative, they now have converted King into a full-fledged, card-carrying member of “conservatism inc.”—the (contemporary) “conservative movement,” a “plaster saint” iconized as literally no one else in our history.

Celebrating King becomes a means for these ersatz conservatives to demonstrate their “civil rights” and “egalitarian” bona fides. The neocons, with their philosophical and ideological origins over on the Trotskyite Left of the 1930s and 1940s, when they made their pilgrimage towards conservatism in the 1960s and 1970s, brought with them a fervent believe in a globalist New World Order egalitarianism that characterized Trotskyite Marxist ideology, and the determination to redefine and re-orient the traditional American Rightwing, and to re-write, as well, American history.

Thus, the purges of the old conservative movement in the 1980s and 1990s—there was no room for Southern conservatives like Mel Bradford, no room for traditionalist Catholics like Frederick Wilhelmsen or Brent Bozell Sr., no room for paleolibertarians like Murray Rothbard, no room for Old Right anti-egalitarians like Paul Gottfried, and no room for “America Firsters” like Pat Buchanan … And those traditional conservatives who were too significant in the “pantheon of greats,” like a Russell Kirk, they attempted to simply whitewash and give new, cleaned up images and identities (part and parcel of their “rewriting” of conservatism). Thus, Kirk’s opposition to the civil rights bills of the 1960s and 1970s, his staunch arguments against egalitarianism—are all swept under the carpet or carefully ignored.

In this, in fact, the dominant necons have joined with their cousins on the “farther Left,” to the point that Bush consultant guru and Fox pundit, Karl Rove, could boast that hardcore Marxist/Communist historian Eric Foner (who lamented the collapse of Soviet Communism) was his favorite historian (when examining Reconstruction) [See Dr. Paul Gottfried’s incisive critique of Foner and those “conservatives” who have praised him, “Guilt Trip,” The American Conservative,” May 4, 2009, pp. 21-23].

King Day becomes, then, for the Conservative Movement an opportunity for it to beat its chest, brag about its commitment to civil rights and the American “dream, the unrealized idea of equality (that is, to distort and re-write the history of the American Founding), and to protect its left flank against the ever increasing charges that it could be, just might be, maybe is—“racist.”

And for the “farther Left,” that catapulting cultural Marxist juggernaut that continues to move the societal and political goalposts to the Left, King Day becomes as a major ideological blitzkrieg, a weaponized cudgel used to strike down and silence anyone, anywhere, who might offer the slightest dissent to the latest barbarity and latest “advance” in civil rights, now expanded to include not just everything “racial,” but also same sex marriage, transgenderism and abortion on demand. Martin Luther King–that deeply and irredeemably flawed and fraudulent figure imposed upon us and our consciousness—has become an icon, a totem, who serves in martyred death the purposes of continuing Revolution.

The heavily-documented literature detailing the real Martin Luther King is abundant and remains uncontroverted and uncontested. During the debates over establishing a national “King Day” in the mid-1980s, Senators Jesse Helms and John East (both North Carolinians) led the opposition, supplying the Congress and the nation, and anyone with eyes to read, full accounts of the “King legacy,” from his close association and collaboration with the Communist Party USA to his advocacy of violence and support for the Communists in North Vietnam, to implicit support for Marxist revolution domestically. Ironically, it was Robert Woodson, a noted black Republican, who highlighted, in a lecture given to honor the “conservative virtues of Dr. Martin Luther King” at the Heritage Foundation on November 5, 1993, the difficulties in getting black advocates of the older generation to respect King’s role as a Civil Rights leader. According to Woodson, as quoted in an excellent essay by Paul Gottfried,

“When Dr. King tried to bring the Civil Rights movement together with the [Marxist] peace movement, it was Carl Rowan who characterized King as a Communist, not Ronald Reagan. I remember being on the dais of the NAACP banquet in Darby, Pennsylvania when Roy Wilkins soundly castigated King for this position.” [Paul Gottfried, “The Cult of St. Martin Luther King – A Loyalty Test for Careerist Conservatives?” January 16, 2012]

But not only that, behind the scenes there were voluminous secretly-made FBI recordings and accounts of King’s violent sexual escapades, often times with more than two or three others involved in such “rough sex” trysts; and of his near total hypocrisy when discussing civil rights and other prominent civil rights leaders. It is, to put it mildly, a sorry record, scandalous even by today’s standards…Indeed, King makes Harvey Weinstein look like a meek choirboy in comparison.

But you won’t hear any of that mentioned by the slobbering Mainstream Media or the media mavens on Fox News. In fact, such comments will get you exiled to the far reaches of the Gobi Desert and labeled a “racist,” quicker that my cocker spaniel gobbles down his kibble.

THERE IS MORE HERE.

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~ DR. BOYD D. CATHEY is an Unz Review columnist, as well as a Barely a Blog contributor, whose work is easily located on this site under the “BAB’s A List” search category. Dr. Cathey earned an MA in history at the University of Virginia (as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow), and as a Richard M Weaver Fellow earned his doctorate in history and political philosophy at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. After additional studies in theology and philosophy in Switzerland, he taught in Argentina and Connecticut before returning to North Carolina. He was State Registrar of the North Carolina State Archives before retiring in 2011. He writes for The Unz Review, The Abbeville Institute, Confederate Veteran magazine, The Remnant, and other publications in the United States and Europe on a variety of topics, including politics, social and religious questions, film, and music.