Former Clinton Pollster & Political Strategist Says, Stopping Robert Mueller to Protect Us All

KEEP IN MIND, THIS IS COMING FROM A FORMER CLINTON POLLSTER AND POLITICAL STRATEGIST …

You know the Mueller investigation is a sham when former Clinton pollster and political strategist Mark Penn says it is time to end the charade and witch hunt against President Donald Trump to protect us all.  Penn has stated that the Mueller probe has been fruit of the poisonous tree of the Hillary Clinton paid for Steele dossier , “What was originally sought after wasn’t found. This is now 1998 all over again with an investigation somehow related to a porn star. Come on, we need to get a North Korea deal, we need to push back on the Iranians. We need a good economy. We cannot treat our White House, presidents, people working campaigns and put them under this kind of Star Chamber investigation and expect our government to function.”

Via The Hill:

The “deep state” is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector general’s report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming.

At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton “matter,” but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done. It is hard to see how a year-long investigation of this won’t come down hard on former FBI Director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasn’t playing mahjong in a secret “no aides allowed” meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.

With this report on the way and congressional investigators beginning to zero in on the lack of hard, verified evidence for starting the Trump probe, current and former intelligence and Justice Department officials are dumping everything they can think of to save their reputations.

But it is backfiring. They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? That’s left out of their narrative. Downer’s signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You don’t need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, which then called the FBI to complete the loop. This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start.

In no way would a fourth-hand report from a Maltese professor justify wholesale targeting of four or five members of the Trump campaign. It took Christopher Steele, with his funding concealed through false campaign filings, to be incredibly successful at creating a vast echo chamber around his unverified, fanciful dossier, bouncing it back and forth between the press and the FBI so it appeared that there were multiple sources all coming to the same conclusion.

Time and time again, investigators came up empty. Even several sting operations with an FBI spy we just learned about failed to produce a Delorean-like video with cash on the table. But rather than close the probe, the deep state just expanded it. All they had were a few isolated contacts with Russians and absolutely nothing related to Trump himself, yet they pressed forward. Egged on by Steele, they simply believed Trump and his team must be dirty. They just needed to dig deep enough.

IT’S OFFICIAL … Confirmed by NY Times, Deep State FBI Spied on Trump’s Camp Using Informant: Code Name: Crossfire Hurricane.

ITS OFFICIAL, THE DEEP STATE IS OUT OF CONTROL AND INDIVIDUALS NEED TO GO TO PRISON ..

We know have confirmation that the FBI spied on a political campaign and actually used an undercover informant to do so. The NY Times article is a must read. So riddle me this Batman, if the FBI had an informant in the Trump political campaign apparatus, how that was authorized one can only imagine, and this mole was supposed to be getting dirt and information on Trump-Russian collusion, then how in hell over one year later of a Mueller Special counsel and even longer FBI investigation has the Deep State come up with nothing to do with collusion? Seriously, they had and informant and still nothing! Maybe because there is nothing and this was a political hit job born out of the Obama administration to get Hillary elected and then destroy a duly elected President of the United States. Folks, this is 1000 times worse than Watergate.

VIA the New York Times, of all places, Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation.

Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.

Their assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the Australian ambassador, who had evidence that one of Donald J. Trump’s advisers knew in advance about Russian election meddling. After tense deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander Downer, to sit for an F.B.I. interview to describe his meeting with the campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.

The agents summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to Washington on Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the investigation was opened. Their report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation. But at the time, a small group of F.B.I. officials knew it by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane.

[...]

In the Clinton case, Mr. Comey has said he erred on the side of transparency. But in the face of questions from Congress about the Trump campaign, the F.B.I. declined to tip its hand. And when The New York Times tried to assess the state of the investigation in October 2016, law enforcement officials cautioned against drawing any conclusions, resulting in a story that significantly played down the case.

Mr. Comey has said it is unfair to compare the Clinton case, which was winding down in the summer of 2016, with the Russia case, which was in its earliest stages. He said he did not make political considerations about who would benefit from each decision.

But underpinning both cases was one political calculation: that Mrs. Clinton would win and Mr. Trump would lose. Agents feared being seen as withholding information or going too easy on her. And they worried that any overt actions against Mr. Trump’s campaign would only reinforce his claims that the election was being rigged against him.

[…]

The F.B.I. obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters — a secret type of subpoena — officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. That has become a politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump’s allies questioning whether the F.B.I. was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap campaign officials.

Read the full story at the NYT.

Mueller may have a Conflict of Interest … Leads directly to a Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska (VIDEO)

MUELLER HAS HIS OWN RUSSIAN PROBLEM …

From John Solomon of The Hill, Special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have his own Russian problem and his name is Oleg Deripaska. In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent. So why does a Russian oligarch spend $25 million of their own money unless there was something expected in return and a quid pro quo?

Update: Now we find out that 3 FBI agents visit Deripaska in NYC and tell him that they believe Russians are colluding with Trump through Manafort. It is reported that Deripaska laughed and told the FBI agents that there is no way they were colluding. One wonders if this info was made available to the FISA courts?

The Hill’s John Solomon explains on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’

Special counsel Robert Mueller has withstood relentless political attacks, many distorting his record of distinguished government service.

But there’s one episode even Mueller’s former law enforcement comrades — and independent ethicists — acknowledge raises legitimate legal issues and a possible conflict of interest in his overseeing the Russia election probe.

In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.

Yes, that’s the same Deripaska who has surfaced in Mueller’s current investigation and who was recently sanctioned by the Trump administration.

The Levinson mission is confirmed by more than a dozen participants inside and outside the FBI, including Deripaska, his lawyer, the Levinson family and a retired agent who supervised the case. Mueller was kept apprised of the operation, officials told me.

[...]

Sean Hannity 5/14/18 – John Solomon

They said FBI agents courted Deripaska in 2009 in a series of secret hotel meetings in Paris; Vienna; Budapest, Hungary, and Washington. Agents persuaded the aluminum industry magnate to underwrite the mission. The Russian billionaire insisted the operation neither involve nor harm his homeland.

“We knew he was paying for his team helping us, and that probably ran into the millions,” a U.S. official involved in the operation confirmed.

One agent who helped court Deripaska was Andrew McCabe, the recently fired FBI deputy director who played a seminal role starting the Trump-Russia case, multiple sources confirmed.

Deripaska’s lawyer said the Russian ultimately spent $25 million assembling a private search and rescue team that worked with Iranian contacts under the FBI’s watchful eye. Photos and videos indicating Levinson was alive were uncovered.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III Rips Special Counsel Robert Mueller in Paul Manffort Case … “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort. You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead to Mr. Trump” and his eventual prosecution or impeachment.” (VIDEO)

WOW, FEDERAL JUDGE DROPS BOMB ON MUELLER INVESTIGATION AND THEIR “UNFETTERED POWER” …

As reported at Reuters, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III questioned in federal court in Virginia that the Special Counsel Robert Mueller  should not have “unfettered power.” in the Russia probe. Judge T.S. Ellis went on the rebuke the Mueller investigation with regards to the Paul Manifort case in that they exceeded their authority. Judge Ellis went on to say, “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort. You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead to Mr. Trump” and his eventual prosecution or impeachment.” It is about time some one put their foot down with regards to the out of control Mueller witch hunt. The federal judge literally accused the Muller team of lying. Even CNN fake news had to admit this was a bad day for the Mueller team.

A federal judge said Special Counsel Robert Mueller should not have “unfettered power” in probing ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, and accused Mueller of using criminal cases to pressure Trump’s allies to turn against him.

At a tense hearing in a federal court in Virginia on Friday, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III sharply questioned whether Mueller exceeded his authority in filing tax and bank fraud charges against Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Ellis said the indictment appeared to be a way for Mueller to leverage Manafort into providing information about Trump.

“The vernacular is to sing,” he said.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort,” the judge said. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead to Mr. Trump” and his eventual prosecution or impeachment.

“It’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me the special counsel has unfettered power to do whatever he wants,” Ellis, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, said at a hearing on Manafort’s motion to dismiss the Virginia charges.

Judge questions Mueller decision to prosecute Manafort – Trump discusses at NRA Convention

Dershowitz reacts to judge questioning Manafort case motives from ‘The Ingraham Angle.’

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III comments:

The case before Judge Ellis consists of tax and bank fraud charges that not only have nothing to do with alleged Russian collusion, but also predate the 2016 presidential campaign by a decade…

“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” Judge Ellis said. He decried Mueller’s apparently “unfettered power.” He did not find the power to prosecute Mueller in the May 2017 appointment order, which directed him to pursue links between Russia and the Trump campaign, as well as “any matter that arose or may arise directly” from the investigation. He said that Mueller improperly took over existing Justice Department investigations into Manafort without adequately explaining what connection it had to the Russia probe…

Judge Ellis doesn’t find [an authority to investigate such matters] in the May 2017 memo by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. Team Mueller was represented at the hearing by former deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben. At the hearing Dreeben took a drubbing. Asserting that Mueller’s authority is even broader than the mandate given 2017 memo, Dreeben claimed that national security precluded a full accounting of Mueller’s authority.

Dreeben cited Rosenstein’s August 2017 memo — covered by Andrew McCarthy in this NR column — explicitly granting Mueller the authority to investigate Manafort’s Ukraine dealings years before the 2016 election.

Mueller must have given Judge Ellis the same highly redacted copy of the August 2017 memo that is linked above. Judge Ellis wanted to see the whole thing. He gave Mueller two weeks to consult with intelligence agencies to determine whether they can confide a sealed, unredacted version of the memo with him.

Dreeben told him the redacted portions did not pertain to the Manafort case. “I’ll be the judge,” Ellis said.

CNN quotes Judge Ellis: “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud.” Judge Ellis demonstrated his grasp of what I’ve been calling the Mueller Switch Project. He said prosecutors were interested in Manafort only because of his potential to provide material that would lead to President Trump’s “prosecution or impeachment.”

Rudy Giuliani on Hannity: “I’m Sorry Hillary, But You’re a Criminal” (VIDEO) … “If They Went After Ivanka The Whole Country Would Turn On Them”

SO WHY ISN’T TRUMP BEING TREATED THE SAME AS HILLARY CLINTON WAS BY THE FBI AND DOJ …

What happened to equal justice under the law in the United States? Rudy Giuliani calls out former FBI Director Comey for his miscarriage of justice, the double standard during the Hillary investigation and calls him perverted.