A short excerpt from a new article posted at The Hill by John Solomon:
Fusion GPS’s work and its involvement with several FBI officials have been well reported. But a close review of new documents shows just how closely Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who reported to Obama-era Deputy AG Sally Yates, maintained contact with Fusion — and, in particular, its primary source, former British spy Christopher Steele — before, during and after the election.
Steele asked Ohr in a Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: “Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.”
“I’m still here and able to help as discussed,” Ohr texted back. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”
Steele replied, “If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can’t allow our guy to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous.” Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.
Ohr had contact w/Steele days before the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in summer 2016 & then engaged Steele as a confidential human source assisting in the probe. Ohr later became a critical conduit of info from Steele after the FBI terminated Steele. https://t.co/WWdWmaSAYzhttps://t.co/5v132cBRy5
Agents made a record of each time Ohr gave the bureau information from Steele. Those records are in the form of so-called 302 reports, in which the FBI agents write up notes of interviews during an investigation. As Byron York of the Washington Examiner explained, “there are a dozen 302 reports on FBI post-election interviews of Ohr. The first was Nov. 22, 2016. After that, the FBI interviewed Ohr on Dec. 5; Dec. 12; Dec. 20; Jan. 23, 2017; Jan. 25; Jan. 27; Feb. 6; Feb. 14; May 8; May 12; and May 15. The dates, previously unreported publicly, were included in a July letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to the FBI and Justice Department.”
.@ChuckGrassley seeking documents related to Bruce Ohr from DOJ. Ohr communicated w/Steele & continued to funnel info from Steele to the FBI after the FBI had terminated Steele as a source for his failure to abide by FBI instructions to avoid contact with the press. pic.twitter.com/HkZMkUxbPN
Grassley’s letter also made note of the fact that numerous FD-302s demonstrated that Bruce Ohr continued to pass along allegations from Steele to the FBI after the FBI suspended its relationship with Steele for unauthorized contact with the media. Ohr funneled allegations from Fusion GPS & Steele to FBI.
Looking at all this new information can be daunting but remember the big picture: The FBI used false information from Steele to get a warrant to spy on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. Then they terminate Steele as a source for leaking to the media. But in fact they continue to use him as a source by using a top ranking DOJ official as a cutout who meets with Steele repeatedly and reports his information back to the FBI. The official’s wife, Nellie Ohr meanwhile, worked with Steele on the dossier project. So, the FBI tells the FISA court in its renewal applications that it has terminated Steele but it doesn’t tell the court that they’re actually still using him as a source via Ohr. If what Ohr did was ok, why was he demoted twice? Moreover, if he wasn’t supposed to be doing what he did, why hasn’t he been fired yet?
Lastly, do not forget that Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS. As Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller highlighted, “the Ohrs’ connection to the dossier was kept secret for nearly a year after the dossier’s publication. Bruce Ohr also failed to disclose Nellie’s work for Fusion on his annual financial disclosure forms.”
Wonder why that is?
The fact that Nellie Ohr is a fluent Russian speaker, has a Ph.D. in Russian history, & a CIA affiliation going back to at least 2010 is apparently irrelevant…Her husband Bruce Ohr, until his “dossier”-related demotion, was the No. 4 man at the DOJ too. https://t.co/GxDCvnU2f4https://t.co/idgN3q96vD
Actions speak louder than words. Given that our media is incapable of covering the former as it obsesses over the latter in it’s breathless “reporting” of the Trump administration’s words, here are just a few examples of various actions taken against the Russians that you probably haven’t heard about.
Trump Admin has maintained the closure of two Russian compounds and the expulsion of 35 diplomats in response to Russian interference in the 2016 election. In March 2017, the Admin obtained the indictment of 3 Russians for the 2014 Yahoo hack, including 2 officers of the FSB….
— Security Studies Group (@SecStudiesGrp) July 17, 2018
This FSB sponsored cyberattack, which lasted from 2014 to September 2016, was one of the largest data breaches in history. The breach involved the theft of vast amounts of credit card data and other financial information, as well as personal details on individuals of high interest to the Russian government such as journalists, U.S. officials and U.S. and foreign corporate executives and employees, including a senior officer of a major U.S. airline and even a Nevada gaming official.
March 2018, Trump admin ordered the expulsion of 48 Russian intel officers from the US & ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. Admin imposed sanctions against 16 Russian entities & individuals for their roles in Russian interference in the 2016 election.
— Security Studies Group (@SecStudiesGrp) July 17, 2018
In December 2017, new Russia-related sanctions were announced under the Sergei Magnitsky and Global Magnitsky programs. Also in December 2017, the Administration imposed export controls against two Russian companies that were helping Russia develop missiles which violate the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The Commerce Department punished Russian companies that had provided technology to help develop the missiles which were outlawed by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the United States and then-Soviet Union in 1987.
That pact banned missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, which when deployed on Europe’s periphery were seen as highly destabilizing because they would provide little advance notice of attack — and could carry a nuclear warhead.
June 2018, President Trump’s Admin imposed sanctions against five Russian entities and three Russian individuals for enabling Russia’s military and intelligence units to increase Russia’s offensive cyber capabilities.
— Security Studies Group (@SecStudiesGrp) July 17, 2018
The April announcement from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets which designated seven Russian oligarchs and the twelve companies they owned, as well as seventeen senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank, came with the following statement from Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin:
“The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites. The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine, supplying the Assad regime with material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities. Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”
Furthermore, as Rowan Scarboroughof the Washington Times notes, Trump has a record of imposing pocketbook penalties on Putin-connected elites, while also sparring with Moscow on the battlefield. He twice has ordered the bombing of chemical weapons owned by Putin ally Bashar Assad of Syria. Last May, Ukraine began receiving U.S. state-of-the-art Javelin anti-tank missiles as well. The administration has now sanctioned a total of one hundred targets in response to Russia’s ongoing occupation of Crimea and aggression in Eastern Ukraine and has designated Russian actors under Iran and North Korea sanctions authorities too. Former President Obama had resisted providing lethal aid in Kiev’s war against Putin-backed separatists while President Trump shows no hesitation in providing increased lethal aid to those in opposition of Putin.
In all, the Trump administration has sanctioned and targeted nearly 200 Russian oligarchs, government officials and organizations and is now set to give Ukraine $200 million more in military aid and has increased funding for the European Deterrence Initiative, providing billions to increase U.S. troop readiness in Europe, deter Russian aggression, and help defend our NATO allies.
So are these the actions of a President who is “Putin’s puppet”?
Trump has sanctioned/targeted over 200 Russian oligarchs, govt officials & orgzs, increased US spending in Europe by 40% above Obama's level, increased direct lethal aid to Georgia & is set to give Ukraine $200M more in military aid. Weak on Russia? https://t.co/NlYthfJslV
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government, wrote Henry David Thoreauin his essay on Civil Disobedience.
The government we find ourselves living under today is no different than that in which Thoreau described in 1849. Our government solely endeavors to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, while at the same time it loses some of its integrity with every breach of the public’s trust. What has become truly perplexing to those like myself is how, to this day and under so many scandals, Americans could still hold faith in a government that no longer adheres to the accountability of the governed?
As Thoreau elaborated, “this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.” This sentiment remains true today as I ask, just as Thoreau did, “for not at once no government, but at once a better government.” In order for us to regain control and create a better government, we must first understand that the actual structure and operation of the government today has virtually nothing to do with the Constitution itself.
The reason that our government is no longer recognizable is because of the creation of the fourth branch of government, the administrative law system.Charles Murray in his book By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission,writes that “the administrative law system, with its own separate courts, prosecutors, judges, and appeals process is [the] governing structure for the regulatory state, which in turn is a largely independent fourth branch of government, only loosely answerable to the executive, legislative, or judicial branches.” It holds in contempt the very idea of a limited national government subject to a formal, tripartite separation of powers. This fourth branch of government takes the form of administrative agencies which routinely combine all three government functions in the same body, and even in the same people within that body in order to enforce regulations created solely by the agency itself.
Explaining what administrative law looks like is best explained in the following example by Boston University law professor Gary Lawson, in his 1994 Harvard Law Review article “The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State.” Lawson uses the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the example:
The [Federal Trade] Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct. The Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission’s rules have been violated. If the Commission authorizes an investigation, the investigation is conducted by the Commission, which reports its findings to the Commission. If the Commission thinks that the Commission’s findings warrant an enforcement action, the Commission issues a complaint.
The Commission’s complaint that a Commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission. This Commission adjudication can either take place before the full Commission or before a semi-autonomous Commission administrative law judge. If the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than before the Commission and the decision is adverse to the Commission, the Commission can appeal to the Commission. If the Commission ultimately finds a violation, then, and only then, the affected private party can appeal to an Article III court. But the agency decision, even before the bona fide Article III tribunal, possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on matters both of fact and of law.
This is the Orwellian rule of law in the regulatory state and as Lawson notes, “one cannot have allegiance both to the administrative state and to the Constitution. If one chooses the administrative state over the Constitution, one must also acknowledge that all constitutional discourse is thereby rendered useless.”
Sadly, this is the state of our government today as constitutional discourse has given way to an administrative state that completely disregards the very sort of power that the Constitution most centrally forbade. It’s seemingly irrelevant and pointless to agonize over the correct application, for example, of the Appointments Clause, the Exceptions Clause, and even the First Amendment, when principles as basic to the Constitution as enumerated powers are no longer considered part of the interpretive order. Lawson concludes, “what is left of the constitution after excision of its structural provisions simply is not the Constitution.”
The administrative state that we have today is extra-legal in that it binds Americans not through laws or statutes created by the legislative branch, but through other mechanisms such as regulations, executive orders, and presidential decrees. “It is supra-legal in that it requires judges to put aside their independent judgment and defer to administrative power as if it were above the law…and it is consolidated in that it combines the three powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial in administrative agencies”, explains Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School.
When provisions are made for far-reaching action by commissions, agencies, and bureaucrats, it all means the imposing of large additional obligations upon the people without our say. This fourth branch of government is in actuality what our government has become today. It has usurped all three branches and invested in itself the power to dictate, regulate, control, and ultimately destroy our lives without consent.
If we are to ever regain again the power to control our own government and thus our own lives, we must rise above partisan politics and do what’s best for our country. This will require a new way of thinking that puts reality in the forefront and ideology in the background by taking a new perspective on handling issues that both parties are equally culpable in creating.
For instance, when politicians talk about “immigration reform”, what they really mean is amnesty, cheap labor, and open borders. Republicans want cheap labor for big business and Democrats want amnesty in order to swell their voter roles. This puts American workers last by keeping unemployment high and labor force participation rates so low that it is currently at 62.6% of the overall population, the lowest the labor force participation rate has been since 1977. Furthermore, U.S. taxpayers have been forced to pay billions in healthcare costs, housing costs, education costs and welfare costs for individuals that are here illegally while they take our jobs and commit heinous crimes against the American people. Republicans want them here for business and Democrats want them here for the votes. The American people at large are thrown to the way side while both parties literally play politics with our lives.
While much controversy has swirled around presidential candidate Donald Trump, his release on Sunday of the steps he would take under his immigration planis precisely what the American people need to help put the needs of the American working class first. The following are the three core principles Trump outlines in his immigration plan:
1. A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.
2. A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.
3. A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.
Furthermore, Trump outlines what those like myself have been saying for years, our immigration system isn’t broken, the law simply needs to be enforced and the Constitution upheld. A few key points in Trump’s plan is that it would triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers (ICE), create a nationwide e-verify system, make mandatory the return of all criminal aliens, defund sanctuary cities, enhance penalties for overstaying a visa, and end birthright citizenship while ending welfare abuse. This would drastically help put American workers first while at the same time protecting American citizens as ICE would be made to enforce the law as it is, not as President Obama has made it under his numerous executive orders that hinder their ability to enforce our immigration laws.
While the issues facing us are enormous in their scope and at times daunting in their reach, to see plans such as Trump’s in dealing with immigration by enforcing the law and cutting the knees out from underneath this aspect of the fourth branch of government established under Obama’s executive fiat, is how we the people fight back in a republic. For, as Calvin Coolidge once famously proclaimed, “in a republic the law reflects rather than makes the standard of conduct and the state of public opinion… the law, changed and changeable on slight provocation, loses its sanctity and authority. A continuation of this condition opens the road to chaos.”
It is time for the ever winding road of the administrative state to be closed and rerouted towards the path that once again leads us back to our Constitution.
To make a donation to Politicallyshort.com click below
