Does Mueller Indictment Mean Clinton Campaign Can Be Indicted for Chris Steele?

Law & Crime
February 17, 2018

Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted foreign citizens for trying to influence the American public about an election because those citizens did not register as a foreign agent nor record their financial expenditures to the Federal Elections Commission. By that theory, when will Mueller indict Christopher Steele, FusionGPS, PerkinsCoie, the DNC and the Clinton Campaign? Mueller’s indictment against 13 Russian trolls claimed their social media political activity was criminal because: they were foreign citizens; they tried to influence an election; and they neither registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act nor reported their funding to the Federal Elections Commission.
First, if Mueller’s theory is correct, three things make Steele a criminal: first, he is a foreign citizen; second, he tried to influence an election, which he received payments to do (including from the FBI itself); and third, he neither registered as a foreign agent nor listed his receipts and expenditures to the Federal Election Commission. Also, according to the FBI, along the way, Steele lied…a lot, while the dossier he disseminated contained its own lies based on bought-and-paid for smears from foreign sources reliant on rumors and innuendo.
Second, if Mueller’s theory is correct, three things make FusionGPS a criminal co-conspirator: it knew Steele was a foreign citizen; it knew, and paid, Steele to influence an election; and it knew, and facilitated, Steele neither registering as a foreign agent nor reporting his funding from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to the Federal Election Commission.
Third, if Mueller’s theory is correct, then three things make PerkinsCoie a potential target: it knew Steele was a foreign citizen; it knew, and paid, Steele to influence an election; and it knew, and facilitated, Steele neither registering as a foreign agent nor reporting his funding from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to the Federal Election Commission, by disguising its receipt of payments from the Clinton campaign as a “legal expense.”
Fourth, if Mueller’s theory is correct, then three things make the DNC a potential target: it knew Steele was a foreign citizen; it knew, and paid, Steele to influence an election; and it knew, and facilitated, Steele neither registering as a foreign agent nor reporting his funding from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to the Federal Election Commission, by disguising its payments to Steele as laundered legal expenses to a law firm.
Fifth, if Mueller’s theory is correct, three things make the Clinton Campaign a potential target: it knew Steele was a foreign citizen; it knew, and paid, Steele to influence an election; and it knew, and facilitated, Steele neither registering as a foreign agent nor reporting his funding from the Clinton campaign to the Federal Election Commission, by disguising its funding of payments to Steele laundered through a law firm as a “legal expense.”
Don’t expect such an indictment. Mueller chose his targets because he knows they will never appear in court, never contest the charges, and cannot be arrested or extradited as Russian citizens. Mueller’s unprecedented prosecution raises three novel arguments: first, that speaking out about American politics requires a foreign citizen to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act; second, that speaking out about American politics requires a foreign citizen list their source and expenditure of funding to the Federal Election Commission; and third, that mistakes on visa applications constitute “fraud” on the State Department. All appear to borrow from the now-discredited “honest services” theories Mueller’s team previously used in corporate and bribery cases, cases the Supreme Court overturned for their unconstitutional vagueness. The indictment raises serious issues under the free speech clause of the First Amendment and due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.
Robert Barnes is a California-based trial attorney whose practice focuses on Constitutional, criminal and civil rights law. You can follow him at @Barnes_Law.
[Image via Shutterstock]
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

Feds Collect Record Taxes in First Month Under Tax Cut; Run Surplus in January

CNS News
February 13, 2018

(CNSNews.com) - The federal government this January ran a surplus while collecting record total tax revenues for that month of the year, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

January was the first month under the new tax law that President Donald Trump signed in December.
During January, the Treasury collected approximately $361,038,000,000 in total tax revenues and spent a total of approximately $311,802,000,000 to run a surplus of approximately $49,236,000,000.

Despite the monthly surplus of $49,236,000,000, the federal government is still running a deficit of approximately $175,718,000,000 for fiscal year 2018. That is because the government entered the month with a deficit of approximately $224,955,000,000.


The $361,038,000,000 in total taxes the Treasury collected this January was $11,747,870,000 more than the $349,290,130,000 that the Treasury collected in January of last year (in December 2017 dollars, adjusted using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator).

The Treasury not only collected record taxes in the month of January itself, but has now collected record tax revenues for the first four months of a fiscal year (October through January).

So far in fiscal 2018, the federal government has collected a record $1,130,550,000,000 in total taxes.


However, despite the record tax collections so far this fiscal year, and despite the one-month surplus in January, the federal government is still running a cumulative deficit in this fiscal year of $175,718,000,000.

Over the last twenty fiscal years, going back to 1999, the federal government has run surpluses in the month of January 13 times and deficits 7 times. Six of the Januaries in which the federal government ran deficits overlapped President Barack Obama’s time in office—including January 2009, the month Obama was inaugurated, and the Januaries in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Deep State-Fake News Marriage: CIA, NSA, FBI Operatives Join Media In Droves

Daily Caller
February 11, 2018


Josh Campbell, James Clapper, John Brennan, Michael Hayden, Phillip Mudd, Clint Watts, et al: As President Trump tries to drain the DOJ-FBI-Intel swamp, the political swamp creatures are taking refuge in the “mainstream” media, where they are joining “the growing chorus” agrainst Trump.

“I am reluctantly turning in my badge and leaving an organization I love," wrote FBI agent Josh Campbell, in a February 2 op-ed for the New York Times.” He is leaving the Bureau, he said, so he can “join the growing chorus” of voices denouncing “the relentless attacks on the bureau” by President Trump. The attacks by the Trump administration and Republicans on the politicized, upper-echelon bureaucrats at the FBI, said Campbell, “undermine not just America’s premier law enforcement agency but also the nation’s security.”
Agent Campbell was immediately embraced by the “mainstream” media as a heroic man of principle and became an instant “expert” celebrity. In its brief bio, at the bottom of his op-ed, the Times identified Campbell merely as “a former supervisory special  agent with the F.B.I. who served as a counterterrorism investigator and special agent to the bureau’s director.”
If the Times (and Campbell) had been a bit more forthcoming, the bio might have mentioned that Campbell was headed to a new gig at CNN, where he will join a gaggle of virulently anti-Trump bloviators  —  will undoubtedly earn much more than he did as an FBI employee. He thus has a double incentive (at least), besides his ostensible motivation to “defend the FBI” against supposedly unwarranted “political attacks.” CNN used the Times piece as an opportunity to interview Campbell, but also neglected to mention that Campbell and CNN had already entered into a contract whereby Campbell would become one of the network’s talking heads on terrorism, national security, and, of course, President Trump.
One need not be paranoid to see suspicious timing in Campbell’s big Times/CNN media splash. It was timed to steal thunder from — and serve as a refutation of — the hotly-debated and long-awaited House Intelligence Committee memo regarding alleged Obama DOJ-FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on the Trump presidential campaign. The Campbell media love-fest coincided with a culminating media hate-fest for House Intelligence Committee memo and the committee’s chairman, Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
“Growing Chorus” — Disturbing Incestuous Media-Intel Relationship
When Josh Campbell announced he was joining “the growing chorus” of former intelligence community operatives who are opposing President Trump, he wasn’t kidding. We have been witnessing an unprecedented wave of “spooks” from the CIA, NSA, FBI, and other agencies jump ship and join up as frontline cheerleaders in the anti-Trump media choir: James Clapper, John Brennan, Michael Hayden, Phillip Mudd, Clint Watts — and many more.  As President Trump tries to drain the DOJ-FBI-Intel swamp, the political swamp creatures are taking refuge in the “mainstream” media, where they are joining “the growing chorus” in alarming numbers.
On February 1, only hours before the Campbell chorus line began, the leftist website Axios announced that ex-Obama apparatchik and former spook chief John Brennan is formally joining up with the Trump haters at NBC/MSNBC. The Axios notice came in the form a simple, two-sentence announcement by Mike Allen, under the heading, “Situational awareness”: “Former CIA Director John Brennan has been named a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. His first "Meet the Press With Chuck Todd" appearance will be on Sunday.”
The controversial Brennan once supported the Communist Party and voted for Communist Party boss Gus Hall for president of the United States. Nevertheless, he rose through the CIA ranks to be the daily White House intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton, and later was appointed by President Obama to be, first, his Homeland Security Advisor, and later, head of the CIA.
Like former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, Brennan lied to Congress and the American people, claiming that the CIA had not, did not, and would not spy on Congress. Turns out that was a big, fat lie. Surprisingly it was exposed, not by a right-wing Republican but by a left-wing “progressive” Democrat globalist, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). On March 11, 2014, Senator Feinstein addressed the Senate, in a 45-minute speech, during which she accused the CIA of breaking the law by spying on the Senate. She provided solid evidence of the criminal acts by the agency. “This is a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence community," Feinstein said in her concluding statement. The government’s response, she averred, would show whether the Senate “can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee."
At virtually the same time that Senator Feinstein was denouncing the CIA’s outrageous and illegal actions, Brennan was denying that they had ever happened, in an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. The venue for the NBC interview is noteworthy: the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Andrea Mitchell, a longtime CFR member, asked Brennan about the Senate spying charge. Brennan acted as if the charge were patently ludicrous. “As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into Senate computers,” he said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head, “nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that.” No, no, of course not — except that they did (and most likely, still do). The CFR, as we have reported many times over the years (see here and here) is the premier globalist brain hub that has been directing America’s leftward policy and staffing America’s academic, media, and governmental institutions with subversives for much of the past century.
The CIA’s criminal activities on Brennan’s watch, and Brennan's deceitful denial of the same, should have caused him to be fired — and then prosecuted. Even the Washington Post, a globalist bastion of CFR-CIA propagandists, said he must be fired, as did other left-tilted media organizations. Instead, President Obama protected him, and after a little time had passed, the media herd forgot their  outrage (or faux outrage). Instead of a penalty, Brennan received reward upon reward, soon becoming a sought-after commentator, on PBS, CBS, CNN, NPR, and other organs. Now he is set to be a regular, paid spokesliar for NBC/MSNBC.
Liars-R-Us
Even more notorious a liar than Brennan is the above-mentioned DNI Director James Clapper, who lied under oath (and on camera)to the U.S. Senate, when asked by Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (see at the video's six-minute mark): "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Director Clapper answered, falsely, "No, sir.” “It does not?” Senator Wyden asked. “Not wittingly," Clapper responded, then added that “perhaps” some might be collected “inadvertently.” When this was later proven to have been a bald-faced lie, since the NSA was indeed illegally collecting data on millions of Americans, Clapper simply apologized and claimed he had made a “mistake.” There were bipartisan calls for him to be prosecuted, both for perjury and for illegal spying, but President Obama and his Justice Department were deaf to those appeals.
While President Trump’s former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn has been hit with felony charges for making “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements” to the FBI with regard to conversations with a Russian ambassador (conversations which were not illegal, unethical, or extraordinary, as far as we know) Clapper has been welcomed as a new addition to “the CNN family.” CNN host Chris Cuomo — who along with Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, and other CNN opinionators has denounced President Trump as a “liar” — warmly introduced  (see here) Clapper last year as CNN’s new “family” member who will grace viewers with his invaluable “perspective.”
CNN : CIA News Network
The CNN-CIA “family” is getting somewhat crowded. The network also has ex-CIA Director and ex-NSA Director Michael V. Hayden (CFR) on the payroll as a national security commentator. Then there’s former CIA/FBI agent Philip Mudd, who is one of CNN’s most rabid anti-Trump attack dogs, who has also been unleashed against House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (see here).
On February 7, CNN’s Anderson Cooper continued the network’s ongoing attack on the Nunes memo, with contributions from three former CIA veterans who are outspoken critics of Trump and Nunes: Jeff Asher, Nada Bakos, and Cindy Otis. Bakos is now a regular, paid "analyst" for CNN. The headline for the story, “Former CIA analysts: We can't trust Devin Nunes,” gives one a hint as to the slant they are taking.
The above-mentioned lineup of CNN’s paid “former” members of the “intelligence community” barely scratches the network’s extensive Deep State ties. However, while CNN has been the most blatant of the so-called mainstream media in openly brandishing its Deep State connections, it is far from alone. Moreover, it is not only that an unprecedented number of agents and high officials from the intelligence agencies are now populating Big Media as paid propagandists attacking the current administration,we are also seeing an unprecedented volume of completely fake  "news" stories — without a shred of documentary evidence — originating in intelligence circles and then making their way into the major media through anonymous sources. We will be detailing those disturbing ties in further reports.

CIA denies report over mystery Russian who promised Trump info

Yahoo News
February 11, 2018

The CIA denied reports that US spies paid a Russian $100,000 in an attempt to buy back top secret hacking tools stolen from the National Security Agency, seen here

The CIA denied reports that US spies paid a Russian $100,000 in an attempt to buy back top secret hacking tools stolen from the National Security Agency, seen here (AFP Photo/SAUL LOEB)
Washington (AFP) - The CIA on Saturday categorically denied reports that it was fleeced by a mystery Russian who promised compromising information on US President Donald Trump.
The secretive agency rarely issues any kind of comment, but came out to deny the report in The New York Times and a similar one in The Intercept, an online journal focusing on national security issues.
"The fictional story that CIA was bilked out of $100,000 is patently false," the Central Intelligence Agency said in a statement sent to AFP.
"The people swindled here were James Risen and Matt Rosenberg," the CIA said, referring to Times reporter Rosenberg, who wrote the story, and Risen, a former Times reporter who authored The Intercept's article.
Both reports appeared on Friday.
The president tweeted approvingly that The Times article shows a need to "drain the swamp" in Washington.
In a story worthy of a John le Carre novel that included secret USB-drive handovers in a small Berlin bar and coded messages delivered over the National Security Agency's Twitter account, CIA agents spent much of last year trying to buy back from the Russians hacking programs stolen from the NSA, the Times reported.
The seller, who was not identified but had suspected links to both cyber criminals and Russian intelligence, tantalized the US spies with an offer of the NSA hacking tools that had been advertised for sale online by a group called the Shadow Brokers.
Some of the tools, developed by the NSA to break into the computers of US rivals, were used by other hackers last year to crack or infect computer systems around the world. The Times described the Americans as "desperate" to get the tools back.
Reached through a chain of intermediaries, the seller reportedly wanted $1 million after quickly dropping his opening demand of about $10 million.
The $100,000 was an initial payment by US agents still dubious he really had what he was promising.
In its report, the Times cited US and European intelligence officials, the Russian, and communications the newspaper reviewed.
The seller also repeatedly pressed US agents with offers of compromising materials, or kompromat, on Trump, the Times said.