The following is an excerpt of my article in Epoch Times
Former CIA Director John Brennan might have perjured himself in testimony he delivered more than two years ago to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on May 23, 2017.
In an exchange with then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Brennan claimed he didn’t know who commissioned ex-British spy Christopher Steele to write what would become the infamous “Steele dossier” that alleged Russia had damaging information on Donald Trump and that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the election.
Mr. Gowdy: “Director Brennan, do you know who commissioned the Steele dossier?”
Mr. Brennan: “I don’t.”
Brennan’s response to the question is similar to that of former special counsel Robert Mueller, who was asked about Fusion GPS—the company who hired Steele—during a hearing before Congress last month.
In response to questions by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), Mueller claimed he was “not familiar with” Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the Steele dossier, and said it was outside his “purview” to investigate. Notably, Fusion GPS was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, at the same time it also represented a Russian-based company, Prevezon, that had been sanctioned by the government.
Brennan, in his testimony, also claimed he didn’t know whether the FBI paid for a part of the dossier.
Mr. Gowdy: “Do you know if the FBI paid for any portion of the Steele dossier?”
Mr. Brennan: “I don’t know. I know that there are press reports related to that, but I don’t know. I have no firsthand knowledge of that.”
According to a House Intelligence Committee memo that was declassified in February 2018, the Steele dossier “formed an essential part” of the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Brennan, however, claimed he had no awareness of such use.
Mr. Gowdy: “Do you know if the bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as any — as part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?”
Mr. Brennan: “I have no awareness.”
What is even more telling is Brennan’s outright denial that the CIA ever relied on the Steele dossier and that the dossier “was not in any way used as the basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done.”
Mr. Gowdy: “Did the CIA rely on it?”
Mr. Brennan: “No.”
Mr. Gowdy: “Why not?”
Mr. Brennan: “Because we — we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. It was — it was not.”
After this answer, Brennan should have been asked: If the Steele dossier wasn’t used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment or by the CIA, then what other “intelligence” did Brennan have as a basis for his assessment?
Continue reading the rest of my article at Epoch Times or by clicking on the link below:
When the FBI was in contact with Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled his infamous dossier smearing then candidate Donald J. Trump, was it aware that his employer, Fusion GPS, was allegedly simultaneously working as an unregistered agent for Russian interests? This question among many others have yet to be answered. The following is a short timeline of earlier questions and important revelations from 2017 involving the Russia hoax which exposed the connections between Fusion GPS, the FBI, and the media. Many, if not all, of these remain unanswered to this day.
In a March 6, 2017, letter sent by Senator Chuck Grassley, at the time Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to the former disgraced FBI Director James Comey, inquiring into the FBI’s agreement with ex-British Spy Christopher Steele over the creation of his dossier Grassley asks in part:
Were any other government officials outside of the FBI involved in discussing or authorizing the agreement with Mr. Steele, including anyone from the Department of Justice or the Obama White House?
Has the FBI relied on or otherwise referenced the memos or any information in the memos in seeking a FISA warrant, other search warrant, or any other judicial process? Did the FBI rely on or otherwise reference the memos in relation to any National Security Letters?
Who decided to include the memos in the briefings received by Presidents Obama and Trump? What was the basis for that decision?
Next, in an April 28, 2017, letter by Grassley, once again left unanswered by Comey, the American public is given a glimpse into the hidden past of Fusion GPS.
Grassley writes:
Fusion GPS is the subject of a complaint to the Justice Department, which alleges that the company violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by working on behalf of Russian principals to undermine U.S. sanctions against Russians. That unregistered work was reportedly conducted with a former Russian intelligence operative, Mr. Rinat Akhmetshin, and appears to have been occurring simultaneous to Fusion GPS’s work overseeing the creation of the dossier. I wrote to the Justice Department about this issue on March 31, copying you, and I have attached that letter here for your reference. The Justice Department has yet to respond.
As Grassley noted in his letter gone unanswered on March 31, 2017, to Dana Boente, then Acting Deputy Attorney General:
It is highly troubling that Fusion GPS appears to have been working with someone with ties to Russian intelligence –let alone someone alleged to have conducted political disinformation campaigns– as part of a pro-Russia lobbying effort while also simultaneously overseeing the creation of the Trump/Russia dossier. The relationship casts further doubt on an already highly dubious dossier…in fact, it is unclear whether the FBI was or is aware of Fusion GPS’s pro-Russia lobbying and connection to Mr. Akhmetshin, or that these efforts coincided with the creation of the dossier.
Overlooked early on as well was the July 26, 2017, testimony from William Browder, Chief Executive Officer of Hermitage Capital Management regarding Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations connected to the anti-Magnitsky Campaign by Russian government interests. Mr. Browder explains how Fusion GPS operates as well as the methods used by Russian operatives in D.C. and how they exploit U.S. enablers to achieve foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests.
As investigative journalist Lee Smith alluded to back in 2017 following Browder’s testimony, “the fact that Fusion GPS was the source of both the anti-Magnitsky smear campaign and the anti-Trump dossier was perhaps too confusing, or too troubling for most reporters to consider.” Smith continues, “putting both stories together suggests both the Steele dossier and Fusion GPS’s anti-Magnitsky work were Russian state-sponsored hit-jobs.” I believe this to be true as the American press along with the DOJ and the FBI acted as a delivery vehicle for an outright disinformation campaign aimed directly at the incompetency of our government and indirectly at the American people.
Questions will remain forever unanswered given that the media was outright complicit in this scandal. Is it any wonder that no one in the media has dared to ask which journalists in D.C. were operating with financial incentives to spread propaganda on behalf of Fusion GPS and the FBI?
Delivering remarks on domestic terrorism at an event co-sponsored by the George Washington University’s program on extremism and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin announced on Wednesday the creation of a new position within the Department of Justice (DOJ) aimed at investigating violent extremism.
“We are here to talk about combating domestic terrorism, which the FBI has explained as ‘Americans attacking Americans based on U.S.-based extremist ideologies.’ The threat ranges from individuals motivated by anti-government animus, to eco-radicalism and racism,” stated Carlin. He continued, “Homegrown violent extremists can be motivated by any viewpoint on the full spectrum of hate. Anti-government views, racism, bigotry, anarchy and other despicable beliefs. When it comes to hate and intolerance, no single ideology governs. Carlin then went on to mention the following, “as our SPLC colleagues can attest, racial hatred motivates many of the violent extremist attacks. The Attorney General noted this summer that these kinds of hate crimes are the original domestic terrorism. Among domestic extremist movements active in the United States, white supremacists are the most violent.”
The new position at the Justice Department, dubbed the “Domestic Terrorism Counsel,” will serve as the main point of contact for U.S. attorney offices nationwide and will identify “trends across cases, help shape strategy and analyze legal gaps that need to be closed,” stated Carlin. Yet, as Leo Hohmann writes, “while the FBI has confirmed it has active ISIS investigations in all 50 states and Islamic-inspired attacks have occurred in recent years in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Garland, Texas, and Fort Hood, the Justice Department sees Islamic jihadists as no more dangerous than mentally ill actors such as Dylann Roof, the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooter who killed nine black Christians.” In fact, Hohmann notes “Justice officials have indicated that home-grown ‘right wingers’ are possibly more numerous and dangerous than the jihadists. In announcing the new position Wednesday, Carlin referred to a study by the New America Foundation that found nearly twice as many Americans have been killed by ‘right-wing’ extremists since Sept. 11 than by Islamic terrorists.”
The New America Foundation lists the Charleston church shooting among 19 right-wing terrorist attacks while the study only lists seven jihadist attacks that killed 26 people since Sept. 11. “Nowhere to be found on the foundation’s list is the Chattanooga shooter, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, who killed five U.S. servicemen. Also absent on the list is John Muhammad, the Washington, D.C., sniper who killed at least 10 people in 2002 with his young accomplice, Lee Malvo,” points out Hohmann. The reason for this is because the New America Foundation, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, defines threats not by reality but by a false narrative that selectively targets conservatives groups.
The threats are defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which is working in conjunction with the Department of Justice to target those they label apart of the “radical right.” The SPLC labels organizations with conservative views as hate groups and has enjoyed premier access to our DOJ. The government watchdog agency Judicial Watchfirst exposed this in 2013 as they obtained emails from the Obama DOJ that revealed SPLC co-founder Morris Dees had conducted a “diversity training event” for the agency back in 2012. Furthermore, the Family Research Council along with a coalition of conservative groups exposed the wide ranging influence of the SPLC as they have also provided the U.S. military with training supplies and briefings as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In fact, the FBI actually endorsed the SPLC as a source and listed it as a resource on its “hate crime web page.”
The relationship between the SPLC and it’s influence on shaping who the federal government investigates as a “domestic terrorist” was fully disclosed in a 2014 Annual Report on the Southern Poverty Law Center. In part, the report boasts that the SPLC “investigative team exposed the growing threat from the radical right, trained thousands of law enforcement officials to counter the threat, and pushed the federal government to open its eyes to domestic terrorism.” The report specifically highlights that the SPLC “successfully pushed the federal government to reinstate a high-level task force on domestic terrorism.”
Under the title of “Fighting Hate“, the SPLC report notes the following work done by their very own Intelligence Project which monitors hate groups and extremist activity in all 50 states and provides comprehensive updates to law enforcement, government agencies, the media, scholars and policymakers. The following is an excerpt from the report:
In 2013, the Project documented 939 hate groups and 1,096 antigovernment “Patriot” groups, including armed militias. In addition, it fought the mainstreaming of hate and extremist propaganda by shining a spotlight on public officials who help legitimize groups such as the Family Research Council (FRC) and the American Family Association (AFA).
In October, the Intelligence Project and a coalition of human rights groups called on members of Congress and other public officials not to speak at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., because the event host and its key co-sponsor – the Family Research Council (FRC) and the American Family Association (AFA) – have long records of vilifying the LGBT community
After the coalition sent letters urging speakers to forego the event, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal backed out. U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia also canceled his appearance at the Values Voter Summit, where he was set to headline a fundraising luncheon for the AFA.
The Intelligence Project also provides in-person training sessions to law enforcement officers to ensure they not only understand hate-related issues but are equipped with the latest intelligence on the radical right. In 2013, the Project provided training to more than 5,000 officers. Its staffers traveled extensively to share their expertise on hate groups and domestic terrorism with local, state and federal government agencies.
To get an idea of the role played by the SPLC within the DOJ’s new position on the Domestic Terrorism Counsel look no further than this October 12, 2015 headline that ran on the SPLC website, “Fifteen Confederate ‘flaggers’ indicted for terroristic threats and gang activity in Georgia.” The article highlights the role that the SPLC will be playing in future investigations working in conjunction with the DOJ. An excerpt reads:
A Georgia state prosecutor today announced the indictments of 15 people who threatened African Americans and used racial slurs when they stopped at a family party while cruising around in a convoy of pickup trucks flying Confederate flags. Ten men and five women were charged with issuing terroristic threats and participating in gang activity. Two of the men were also charged with battery for hitting a man at a gas station on the same day.
The SPLC launched an investigation immediately after the July 25 incident and turned over videos and other evidence to Douglasville District Attorney Brian K. Fortner. SPLC attorneys also brought witnesses to the prosecutor and have been representing some of the people at the party.
Knowing that the SPLC will now be given a larger role in our government to target “domestic extremists” is troubling, particularly when you look at the history under the Obama administration as they’re primarily focused on targeting “domestic right-wing extremists.” You may not think of yourself as a “domestic right-wing extremist” but the truth is that patriotic Americans and conservative Christians as well as returning veterans have been repeatedly labeled as “potential terrorists” since Barack Obama became president.
Michael Snyder of The Truth Wins,writes that in regards to this administration history of targeting those of us on the right had “just happened one time, it would be easy to dismiss. Sadly, there has been a steady pattern of this happening over the past several years. Large groups of people that are the heart and soul of this country have been systematically demonized over the past four years. When you consider what history has taught us, it is absolutely chilling to think about what this could eventually lead to.”
Looking at some examples of government documents released under this administration that identifies who and what this regime considers to be domestic terrorist, one can begin to realize why these reports are so frightening given the creation of the DOJ’s Domestic Terrorism Counsel.
The report claimed that a belief in “Bible prophecy could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons.” Among other things, here are some of the key highlights of the report in which the DHS was extremely concerned about:
“Rightwing extremists”
“Returning veterans”
Those concerned about “illegal immigration”
Those that “believe in the right to bear arms”
“Fear of communist regimes and related conspiracy theories”
In describing the ideological motivation of “Extreme Right-Wing” groups in their profile of perpetrators of terrorism in the United States, the report notes the following:
Extreme Right-Wing: groups that subscribe to aspects of the following ideals: they are fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty (especially their right to own guns, be free of taxes), believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty and a belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (sometimes such beliefs are amorphous and vague, but for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism.
In 2013, an internal FBI intelligence report on the “National Threat Assessment for Domestic Extremists” was obtained by the Washington Free Beaconin which the FBI concludes that the threat to U.S. internal security from extremists is limited to attacks and activities by eight types of domestic extremist movements — none motivated by radical Islam. They include anti-government militia groups and white supremacy extremists, along with “sovereign citizen” nationalists, and anarchists.
Then in 2014, another report was penned by START, which is the same cadre of professors at the University of Maryland who advised the DHS in their 2012 “Hot Spots of Terrorism” report mentioned earlier. The 2014 report titled “Understanding Law Enforcement Intelligence Processes” attempts to equivocate the threat posed by foreign terrorists being the same as that of people who love the Constitution, want to observe their Second Amendment rights, and love the flag and think America is a great nation. The report can be read below.
The FBI assesses militia extremist interest in Islam as a target is a product of ideology that views Muslims collectively with suspicion. Salient perceptions within militia extremism that contribute toward an anti-Muslim bias include the following: Islam represents a foreign threat, equivalent to those which emanate from illegal immigration or international terrorism; The President of the United States not only sympathizes with Islamic extremists but directs US Government policy to align with their goals.
The report goes on to cite two instances of “militia” leaders implying their anger at Muslims and that they may target them. No actual instances of this desire to attack Muslims has been seen, though. Yet, with this FBI assessment we finally see the agenda of this administration come full circle as intelligence agencies have warned since 2009 that the real threat to America is the one posed by conservative groups, tea partiers, military veterans, and militias. It has gotten to the point in which Islam is now the victim of a threat that literally does not even exist while the threat posed by Islamic jihadists is more real than we could ever imagine.
In fact, in a new report from the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee it is noted that there has been a sharp rise in jihadi terror attempts inside the USA, from the 38 that were identified in 2010 to 127 today. According to the Chairman of the Committee Michael McCaul, as of early October, the terrorist organization known as ISIS has inspired or directed 61 terror attack plots against Western targets, including 17 in the United States. There have been more than twice as many ISIS-linked attack plots against Western targets in 2015 (41) than in 2014 (20). To see the Committee’s latest Terror Threat Snapshot, click on the map below.
As the Committee notes, “there have been more U.S.-based jihadist terror cases in 2015 than in any full year since 9/11. The number today is more than a three-fold increase in just five years.” Yet, with the creation of the Domestic Terrorism Counsel by the DOJ, Islamic terrorism is flat out denied as they have now become the victims of a fantasy of right-wing extremism that is now endorsed as reality aided by radical groups such as the SPLC. As Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch concludes, “if a totalitarian leftist had to write a description for a government operation to suppress his enemies, this would be it.”
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