DougRoss

Earlier, in July, I called for a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's collusion with Russia  to turn over control of 20 percent of our uranium supplies to Russian interests in return for some $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.  It turns out that there was one: an FBI investigation dating back to 2009, with current deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller up to their eyeballs in covering up evidence of Hillary's collusion, bordering on treason, with Vladimir Putin's Russia:

Prior to the Obama administration approving the very controversial deal in 2010 giving Russia 20% of America's Uranium, the FBI had evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were involved in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering in order to benefit Vladimir Putin, says a report by The Hill[.]

Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show[.]

If evidence of bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money-laundering in the Uranium One affair are not grounds for a special prosecutor assigned to investigate Hillary Clinton, what is?  Rosenstein and Mueller, by their silence on this investigation hidden from Congress and the American people, come off as unindicted coconspirators in Hillary's crimes.  We may soon find just how much Robert Mueller was involved in killing a serious investigation into Uranium One.

Dennis Nathan Cain is a Department of Justice whistleblower who had obtained documents showing how Robert Mueller failed to properly investigate Uranium One and Hillary's involvement in it, actually aiding and abetting a cover-up to protect her presidential ambitions.  As The Daily Wire reports:

In a stunning display, a man who is a recognized government watchdog and had given Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz documents showing federal officials ignored the relationship among Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and Rosatom, the Russian company that purchased Uranium One, had his home raided by the FBI, despite the fact that his status was protected by law[.]

Why would the FBI, once headed by a director who had investigated Russia and Uranium One, raid the home of the whistleblower, named Dennis Nathan Cain?  The FBI might have not known that the documents, or which documents, had already been legally turned over by Cain and possibly was trying to seize the documents to protect Mueller himself.  Yet Cain told agents at his door of his legally protected status, and the documents they sought had been turned over to the proper authorities.  They either didn't believe him or did not care.

Mirroring similar thuggish raids involving Trump associates Paul Manafort and Larry Cohen, the raid on Cain's home suggests that Mueller is afraid that Horowitz is actually doing his job and a good one, leading to the exposure of Mueller's own culpability in Hillary's nefarious, dare we say it, collusion with Russia.

Few Americans have heard of Douglas Campbell, another whistleblower and the FBI informant with extensive and deep knowledge of how the Russians of Vladimir Putin used bribery, extortion, and other tools in their bag of tricks to penetrate America's nuclear industry, and how they used Hillary Clinton to gain access to our uranium.  As The Hill's John Solomon reports:

An FBI informant connected to the Uranium One controversy told three congressional committees in a written statement that Moscow routed millions of dollars to America with the expectation it would be used to benefit Bill Clinton's charitable efforts while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quarterbacked a "reset" in U.S.-Russian relations.

The informant, Douglas Campbell, said in the statement obtained by The Hill that he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide specifically because it was in position to influence the Obama administration, and more specifically Hillary Clinton.

Campbell added in the testimony that Russian nuclear officials "told me at various times that they expected APCO to apply a portion of the $3 million annual lobbying fee it was receiving from the Russians to provide in-kind support for the Clintons' Global Initiative."

Mueller can look for Trump collusion with Russia, and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif,  can continue his quest for naked pictures of Donald Trump, but here we have real evidence of collusion bordering on treason.  Ironically, the same cast of characters who tried to frame Donald Trump on collusion aided and abetted the cover-up of Russia's moves and Hillary's involvement.  As Fox News analyst Gregg Jarrett notes on the Uranium One scandal:

[W]hy has there been no prosecution of Clinton?  Why did the FBI and the Department of Justice during the Obama administration keep the evidence secret?  Was it concealed to prevent a scandal that would poison Barack Obama's presidency?  Was Hillary Clinton being protected in her quest to succeed him?

The answer may lie with the people who were in charge of the investigation and who knew of its explosive impact.   Who are they?

Eric Holder was the Attorney General when the FBI began uncovering the Russian corruption scheme in 2009.  Since the FBI reports to him, he surely knew what the bureau had uncovered.

What's more, Holder was a member of the "Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States" which approved the uranium sale to the Russians in 2010.  Since the vote was unanimous, it appears Holder knowingly and deliberately countenanced a deal that was based on illegal activities and which gave Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America's uranium assets.

It gets worse.  Robert Mueller was the FBI Director during the time of the Russian uranium probe, and so was his successor James Comey who took over in 2013 as the FBI was still developing the case.  Rod Rosenstein, then-U.S. Attorney, was supervising the case.  There is no indication that any of these men ever told Congress of all the incriminating evidence they had discovered and the connection to Clinton.  The entire matter was kept secret from the American public.

Things are about to get interesting.  Go make some popcorn.

• Mueller probe target Jerome Corsi is accusing special counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors of trying to force him to give “false testimony” against President Donald Trump and Roger Stone.
• Corsi leveled the allegations in a complaint filed with the Justice Department on Monday.
• The right-wing author claims Mueller’s team wants him to falsely claim he was a link between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign.

Conservative author Jerome Corsi filed a criminal and ethics complaint against special counsel Robert Mueller on Monday, accusing prosecutors of trying to force him into giving “false testimony” against President Donald Trump and GOP operative Roger Stone.

“Dr. Corsi has been threatened with immediate indictment by Mueller’s prosecutorial staff unless he testifies falsely against Roger Stone and/or President Donald Trump and his presidential campaign, among other false testimony,” Corsi’s lawyers, Larry Klayman and David Gray, asserted in a complaint submitted to Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and others in the Justice Department.

Corsi, a former InfoWars correspondent, revealed in late November that Mueller’s team offered him a plea deal that would have required him to admit to making false statements regarding his communications with Stone. Corsi says he rejected the plea offer because he did not believe he had willfully lied to prosecutors. (RELATED: Jerome Corsi Reveals Why He’s In Mueller’s Crosshairs)

At the center of the plea offer are three emails Corsi and Stone exchanged in late July and early August 2016.

“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” Corsi wrote in an Aug. 2, 2016 email to Stone, referring to Assange.

“Time to let more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w/ enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC,” he said. “That appears to be the game hackers are now about.”

Corsi asserts Mueller’s team informed him in that interview they had evidence undercutting his claim. But he says prosecutors allowed him to amend his testimony after allowing him to review his emails.

Corsi argues in his complaint that he was tricked by prosecutors.

“In sum, the Special Counsel seeks to prosecute statements that were amended,” Corsi’s lawyers write.

Corsi claims prosecutors want him to testify that he was a conduit between Stone and WikiLeaks. But Corsi denies he was, saying that he has never met WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or any associates of WikiLeaks.

The 72-year-old Corsi claims his email to Stone was based on a theory he came up with on his own in August 2016 that WikiLeaks was set to release Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails in October. He says Mueller’s team does not believe his statement, and are insisting that he must have had a source close to WikiLeaks.

Corsi did testify to Mueller’s grand jury on Sept. 21 that he told Stone of his theory on WikiLeaks and the Podesta documents. But Stone has denied Corsi’s charge, saying he and Corsi did not discuss WikiLeaks having information on Podesta.

Stone previously told The Daily Caller News Foundation he did not interpret Corsi’s Aug. 2, 2016, email as saying that WikiLeaks had Podesta’s emails.

Corsi also claims Mueller’s team withheld exculpatory evidence from the grand jury hearing the case.

Corsi sent two tweets in the days before the WikiLeaks dump that he claims shows he did not have direct insight into WikiLeaks’ plans.

“If Assange has the goods on Hillary, he ought just to drop the goods,” Corsi tweeted on Oct. 2, 2016, after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced he was holding a press conference. “Otherwise, he’s going to make a fool of himself.”

After the press conference, in which Assange failed to release any campaign-related documents, Corsi tweeted: “So Assange made a fool of Himself.”

“Had zero, or he would have released it. Will take grassroots on Internet to get truth out & beat Hillary.”

Corsi told TheDCNF on Friday that Mueller’s team did not cite the text messages in his 40-plus hours of interviews or two grand jury appearances.

• Google employees debated whether to bury The Daily Caller and other conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election
• “Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years,” one engineer wrote in a thread that included a Google vice president
• Google employees similarly sought to manipulate search results to combat Trump’s travel ban

Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal.

The Daily Caller and Breitbart were specifically singled out as outlets to potentially bury, the communications reveal.

Trump’s election in 2016 shocked many Google employees, who had been counting on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win.

Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.

“This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.

Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.

“How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote.

“Beyond that, let’s concentrate on teaching critical thinking. A little bit of that would go a long way. Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years – demographics will be on our side.”

Some of Byer’s colleagues expressed concern that manipulating search results could backfire and suggested alternative measures.

One Google engineer, Uri Dekel, identified himself as a Clinton supporter but argued that manipulating search results was the wrong route to take.

“Thinking that Breitbart, Drudge, etc. are not ‘legitimate news sources’ is contrary to the beliefs of a major portion of our user base is partially what got us to this mess. MSNBC is not more legit than Drudge just because Rachel Maddow may be more educated / less deplorable / closer to our views, than, say Sean Hannity,” Dekel wrote in a reply to Byer.

“I follow a lot of right wing folks on social networks you could tell something was brewing. We laughed off Drudge’s Instant Polls and all that stuff, but in the end, people go to those sources because they believe that the media doesn’t do it’s job. I’m a Hillary supporter and let’s admit it, the media avoided dealing with the hard questions and issues, which didn’t pay off. By ranking ‘legitimacy’ you’ll just introduce more conspiracy theories,” Dekel added.

“Too many times, Breitbart is just echoing a demonstrably made up story,” Byer wrote in a reply to his original post. He did not cite any examples.

“That happens at MSNBC, too. I don’t want a political judgement. The desire is to break the myth feedback loop, the false equivalency, instead of the current amplification of it,” Byer added.

“What I believe we can do, technically, that avoids the accusations of conspiracy or bias from people who ultimately have a right and obligation to decide what they want to believe, is to get better at displaying the ‘ripples’ and copy-pasta, to trace information to its source, to link to critiques of those sources, and let people decide what sources they believe,” another Google engineer, Mike Brauwerman, suggested.

“Give people a comprehensive but effectively summarized view of the information, not context-free rage-inducing sound-bytes,” he added.

“We’re working on providing users with context around stories so that they can know the bigger picture,” chimed in David Besbris, vice president of engineering at Google.

“We can play a role in providing the full story and educate them about all sides. This doesn’t have to be filtering and can be useful to everyone,” he wrote.

Other employees similarly advocated providing contextual information about media sources in search results, and the company later did so with a short-lived fact check at the end of 2017.

Not only did the fact-check feature target conservative outlets almost exclusively, it was also blatantly wrong. Google’s fact check repeatedly attributed false claims to those outlets, even though they demonstrably never made those claims.

Google pulled the faulty fact-check program in January, crediting TheDCNF’s investigation for the decision.

A Google spokeswoman said that the conversation did not lead to manipulation of search results for political purposes.

“This post shows that far from suppressing Breitbart and Daily Caller, we surfaced these sites regularly in our products. Furthermore, it shows that we value providing people with the full view on stories from a variety of sources,” the spokeswoman told TheDCNF in an email.

“Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology. Our processes and policies do not allow for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies.”

The discussion about whether to bury conservative media outlets isn’t the first evidence that some Google employees have sought to manipulate search results for political ends.

After Trump announced his initial travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed ways to manipulate search results in order to push back against the president’s order.

A group of employees brainstormed ways to counter “islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Iran’, etc,” as well as “prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms ‘Mexico’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latino’, etc.”

WATCH:

Trump speculated to The Daily Caller in September that Google and Facebook are trying to affect election outcomes.

“I think they already have,” Trump said, responding to questions about potential election interference by Google and Facebook.

“I mean the true interference in the last election was that — if you look at all, virtually all of those companies are super liberal companies in favor of Hillary Clinton,” he added.

“Maybe I did a better job because I’m good with the Twitter and I’m good at social media, but the truth is they were all on Hillary Clinton’s side, and if you look at what was going on with Facebook and with Google and all of it, they were very much on her side,” Trump continued.

Google this month corrected a “knowledge panel” about a Republican women’s group that labeled them “enablers.”

Google cited Wikipedia for the disparaging description, though a similar change made to Wikipedia’s page for the women’s group was corrected almost immediately. Google left up the digital vandalism for three weeks.

Google apologized in May after search results for the California Republican Party falsely listed “Nazism” as one of the state party’s ideologies.

Then, too, Google blamed manipulation of the party’s Wikipedia page for the inaccurate and disparaging description.

In a shocking exclusive, The Daily Caller revealed that FBI agents raided the home of a recognized whistleblower who allegedly has evidence then-FBI Director Robert Mueller did not investigate potential criminal activity by Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Rosatom, the Russian company that purchased Uranium One.

The FBI dodged the whistleblower’s attorney Michael Socarras which is an act of serious misconduct, Socarras said. They contacted his client Dennis Nathan Cain directly and, on November 19th, they raided his home, advising him the documents he possessed were stolen.

A federal magistrate Stephanie A. Gallagher of the U.S. District Court for Baltimore approved the raid but who knows what she was told.

The agent who led the raid said Cain possessed stolen property and on November 19th, 16 agents showed up and terrified Cain into turning the documents over. They spent an additional six hours hunting through his private belongings and documents.

Cain had told the agents he was a recognized protected whistleblower under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act and that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz recognized his whistleblower status, his lawyer said. Cain also told the agents he turned over the documents to Senate and House Intelligence committees.

It appears to be a total disregard of the law, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. These are the same people who raided Michael Cohen’s home, office, hotel, and car, destroying attorney-client privilege rights in one fell swoop.

Cain came across the material when he worked for an FBI contractor and he is protected by the whistleblower law as such. He followed all the rules and met with a senior member of Horowitz’s office to deliver the documents to the IG under a strange setup (undercover in a church), Socarras said. Still, agents raided his home and accused him of theft.

There is another whistleblower on the Uranium One deal, William Campbell, but nothing has come out of that.

The man primarily responsible for executing the scheme, former FBI Director James Comey, exited the Trump Administration as a martyr and a hero. Republican lawmakers blasted the president for his (totally justified) firing of the deceptive FBI director in May 2017, lauding his public service and reputation even as the disturbing details of the way his agency spied on the Trump campaign and hid the probe from Congress were coming into view.

After successfully escaping any accountability for his actions, it’s no surprise that Comey now is threatening to thwart Congress once again. On Thanksgiving morning, Comey responded on Twitter to a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee: “Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a ‘closed door’ thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.”

But here is the most galling part of Comey’s response: The man who once led the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world is threatening to defy a legally issued congressional subpoena unless the interview is conducted on his terms.

And the reason isn’t that Comey has nothing to hide—it’s that he has plenty to hide and he knows a public setting would provide him precisely the cover he needs.

He “Can’t Answer in an Open Setting”
During open testimony on Capitol Hill last year, Comey repeatedly invoked the defense, “it’s classified” as a way to avoid publicly disclosing crucial information about his agency’s conduct in 2016 and 2017. He dodged questions about the infamous Steele dossier, a thoroughly discredited political document produced by an opposition research firm that had been hired by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to dig up Russia-related dirt on Trump. Comey cited the dossier as key evidence on his October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

But despite knowing the dossier was nothing more than political dirt—and knowing it was paid for by Trump’s presidential rivals—Comey refused to answer basic questions about it. Similarly, he refused to answer questions about the Page FISA warrant and Fusion GPS.

Here are a few exchanges between Comey and Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in June 2017:

Burr: At the time of your departure from the FBI, was the FBI able to confirm any criminal allegations contained in the Steele document?

Comey: I don’t think that’s a question I can answer in an open setting because it goes into the details of the investigation.

Burr: When you read the dossier, what was your reaction, given that it was 100 percent directed at the president-elect?

Comey: Not a question I can answer in an open setting.

The FBI director rebuffed several questions during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2017, one week before he was fired. Here’s an exchange between Comey and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.):

Graham: Was there a FISA warrant issued regarding Carter Page’s activity with the Russians?

Comey: I can’t answer that here.

In fact, the Washington Post had published an article the month before—sourced by anonymous, illegal leaks at the Justice Department—that the Justice Department had a FISA warrant on Page. At the time of Comey’s testimony, the FISA was still active; Rod Rosenstein would sign the final renewal on the application the following month.

Graham: Did you consider Carter Page an agent of the campaign?

Comey: Same answer. I can’t answer that here.

Under questioning by Senate Justice Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Comey refused to answer questions about Fusion GPS; the agency’s policy on paying a source that already was being paid by another firm for the same work (in 2016, both Fusion and the FBI were paying Steele, a British citizen, to find collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia); Comey’s knowledge about Fusion’s lobbying work on behalf of a Russian company; and several questions about the dossier.

What We Know Now—And What We Need to Know Still
But the public now knows the answers to the questions Comey would not answer. Thanks to the Nunes memo (which the FBI tried to prevent from being released in February), we know that Jim Comey presented political opposition research to a secret court to spy on the Trump campaign. We know Comey concealed from the court the fact that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. We know he also concealed this detail from Trump.

We know, too, that Comey’s FBI was paying Christopher Steele at the same time he was being paid by Fusion GPS. We know that Steele, an FBI asset, was meeting with American journalists right before the election to plant damaging stories in the press about the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to the Russians. We know that Comey used one of those articles as evidence in his FISA application.

We know that Fusion GPS was lobbying the Justice Department on behalf of a Russian company and was working with the same Russian lawyer who attended the Trump Tower meeting with Trump’s son and other campaign principals in June 2016. We know that Glenn Simpson, the owner of Fusion, met with Natalia Veselnitskya before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

We know that Fusion hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr, in late 2015 to work on the same opposition research that Steele was manufacturing. We know that the Ohrs met with Steele in the summer of 2016 and that Steele was lobbying Ohr on behalf of his client, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, to restore his U.S. travel privileges.

We know that Comey’s FBI used spies to infiltrate the Trump campaign. We know that he met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch as early as March 2016 to set the plan to spy on Trump’s presidential campaign in motion. We know that he opened a counterintelligence probe into the campaign in July 2016, and violated protocol by not notifying top Congressional leaders about the investigation. We know that top FBI officials were biased against Trump, and worked before and after the election to damage the president.

Here’s what else the public and congressional Republicans know: Comey is a shameless partisan with deep, personal animus toward the president. His interviews and post-firing tweets are evidence of his grudge against Trump and desire to take down his presidency.

But here is the most important thing we know: More than two years after James Comey opened an investigation into a presidential campaign, obtained a secret court’s approval to spy on at least one U.S. citizen associated with the campaign, hired spies to infiltrate the campaign, allowed his deputies to break the law by leaking classified information to the press, and admitted using a personal memo to set in motion a special counsel investigation into Trump-Russia “collusion,” not one person tied to the Trump campaign has been charged with a crime related to “collusion.”

Comey has much to answer for—including the biggest question of all: Why? Why did he put the country through this nightmare for more than two years when he knew the origins of the Trump-Russia election collusion plotline were built on lies?

Congress must compel him to answer, and then hold him accountable for the lives he damaged, the money he cost taxpayers, and the mayhem he unleashed on the American people and Donald Trump’s presidency.

Trump submitted the answers Nov. 20, after months of tense negotiations with Mueller’s team over the scope of the questions. Trump’s lawyers fought to exclude questions about possible obstruction of justice over the firing of James Comey as FBI director. They also opposed a sit-down interview with prosecutors, vying instead for responses provided in writing.

The Trump Tower meeting and WikiLeaks email dumps have been a central focus of Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Donald Trump Jr. met with a group of Russians on June 9, 2016, after an associate contacted him offering information on Hillary Clinton.

“If it is what you say I love it,” Trump Jr. responded to the associate, a music publicist who worked for Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov.

Trump Jr. and Trump have both claimed publicly Trump was not aware of the meeting before it occurred.

Democrats claimed the meeting was an attempt by the campaign to collude with Russia. But Trump Jr. and members of the Russian delegation asserted nothing came of the meeting. They said the Russian lawyer who led the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, failed to produce any information on Clinton. She also used Clinton dirt as a pretext to discuss rolling back the Magnitsky Act, a sanctions law vehemently opposed by the Kremlin.

Veseltnitskaya at the time also happened to be working on a Magnitsky-related project with Fusion GPS, the Democrat-funded opposition research firm that commissioned the infamous Steele dossier. (RELATED: Fusion GPS Founder Met With Russian At Center Of Trump Tower Saga)

Whether Stone told Trump or others on the campaign about WikiLeaks’ plans to release emails has been a major part of the investigation.

Prosecutors want to know whether the campaign directed or had prior knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Stone is under investigation because of some of his public comments that showed he had some insight into WikiLeaks’ activities. But the longtime GOP operative has insisted he had no contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and he did not know Podesta’s emails had been stolen until WikiLeaks released them Oct. 7, 2016.

Stone claims he received some tips about WikiLeaks’ plans from Randy Credico, a left-wing activist who claimed to be close friends with a lawyer for WikiLeaks. Credico has denied being Stone’s conduit, but Stone released text messages Nov. 14 that showed Credico provided him with insight into the significance and timing of WikiLeaks’ releases.

Their actions on behalf of one political campaign, colluding with a corrupt DOJ and FBI to target a political opponent, are not supposed to happen in a country based on the rule of law as administered by supposedly impartial judges.  Empowered to safeguard our national security against foreign actors, they essentially served as an extra-constitutional arm of the Hillary Clinton campaign as it colluded with foreign actors to stage a Deep-State coup against a duly elected president, Donald J. Trump?  Aiding and abetting the legacy of Barack Obama seems like something an "Obama judge" would do.

Chief Justice Roberts is the one who gets to appoint judges to the FISA court – every last one of them, judges like Rudolph Contreras, who granted a previously denied Michael Flynn FISA warrant.  His appointees are the ones who swallowed whole the contentions of the Obama administration using unverified material put together by a British agent and his Russian sources to aid one political party at the expense of another.

The FISA court and its star chamber judges make for a borderline example of the prophetic warning about trading a little liberty for a little security and winding up with neither.  The potential abuse of FISA powers is enormous, and the damage that has been done to our republic and our politics has been staggering.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court deals with some of the most sensitive matters of national security – terror threats and espionage.  Its work for the most part cannot be examined by the American public, by order of the Congress and the President.  It is a tribunal that is completely secret (or supposed to be), its structure largely one-sided, and its members unilaterally chosen by one person.

A rotating panel of federal judges at the FISC decides whether to grant certain types of government requests – wiretapping, data analysis, and other monitoring for "foreign intelligence purposes" of suspected terrorists and spies operating in the United States.

... [T]he 11 judges are appointed exclusively by the Chief Justice of the United States, without any supplemental confirmation from the other two branches of government.  John Roberts has named every member of the current court, as a well as a separate three-judge panel to hear appeals of FISC orders, known as the Court of Review.

So how could a court over which Chief Justice John Roberts has complete control allow frauds to be committed upon it in a manner more fitting in a banana republic?  With pressure on President Trump to declassify and release the FISA warrants and substantiating documents, if any, could Justice Roberts be getting nervous about what might be found?

It was astonishing, for example, to find out from Judicial Watch that these FISA warrants used against Team Trump were issued without any hearings being held, starting with the one issued against Carter Page:

The Justice Department admitted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court never held a hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act spy warrant applications on Carter Page.

Judicial Watch announced the DOJ revealed in a court finding Thursday that "there were no records, electronic or paper, responsive to [Judicial Watch's] FOIA request with regard to Carter Page," and that the FISA Court  "considered the Page warrant applications based upon written submissions and did not hold any hearings."

The infamous Christopher Steele dossier of unverified documents regarding President Trump was the basis for the four controversial FISA warrants on Page, the former Trump campaign advisor.

"It's astonishing and disturbing that these courts couldn't bother to hold hearings on spy warrants targeting Donald Trump," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Jason Chaffetz who was sitting in for Sean Hannity on Fox News' "Hannity" on Friday.

Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein misled the FISA court and signed off on the FISA application to spy on Trump's campaign adviser, Carter Page, actions documented in a four-page House Intelligence Committee memo:

A secret, highly contentious Republican memo reveals that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein approved an application to extend surveillance of a former Trump campaign associate shortly after taking office last spring, according to three people familiar with it.

The renewal shows that the Justice Department under President Trump saw reason to believe that the associate, Carter Page, was acting as a Russian agent[.] ...

The memo's primary contention is that F.B.I. and Justice Department officials failed to adequately explain to an intelligence court judge in initially seeking a warrant for surveillance of Mr. Page that they were relying in part on research by an investigator, Christopher Steele, that had been financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign[.]

As we now know, and as has been copiously documented, Rod Rosenstein committed a self-evident fraud upon the FISA Court.  And now his subordinate is going to investigate him?  Can the swamp drain itself?  Page has vehemently denied the allegations in the dossier and has sought the release of the memo to show its falseness and to show that the DOJ of Rod Rosenstein and the FBI of Andrew McCabe colluded with the Democrats to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House:

The former Trump campaign adviser who was spied on by the U.S. government prior to the 2016 election is "very much" in favor of the release of a controversial congressional memo alleging abuses of the surveillance warrant application process[.] ...

Page pressed for the release the FISA application in a May 14 letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

"If FISA warrants indeed exist as has been extensively reported, wide-ranging false evidence will be inevitably revealed in light of the fact that I have never done anything remotely unlawful in Russia or with any Russian person at any point in my life," he wrote.

What remains unanswered about the application for the warrant on Page is how heavily it relied on the dossier and whether the FBI and DOJ vetted the allegations made about him by Steele[.] ...

Page has vehemently denied the allegations made against him in the dossier, which was put together by former British spy Christopher Steele, commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, and financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC.

Would Justice Roberts approve of releasing the FISA warrants and explain how the judges he appointed could ever approve them?  Consider that former FBI director James Comey, in testimony given under oath in June 2017, said the Steele dossier was "salacious and unverified."  Yet Comey signed off on at least one, if not four, FISA warrant applications based on the "salacious and unverified" dossier.  Either he was lying to Congress or he was lying to the FISA Court judge.  In any event, he was out to get Trump, and the FISA abuse and his plot to set up Robert Mueller as a special counsel without a crime to investigate or any evidence of collusion were both parts of his conspiracy.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) says McCabe testified that if it weren't for material from Steele's fraudulent dossier, there would have been no FISA requests and no surveillance of Team Trump:

"McCabe did in fact testify under oath that there would not have been a FISA warrant if not for the dossier. It was recorded," Rep. Zeldin tweeted.

Without Comey's FBI submitting false FISA requests, which Roberts's appointees allowed, including at least one signed off on by Comey himself, there would have been no surveillance of Team Trump and no special counsel.  The mystery in all this is the silence of the FISA Court that was lied to, judges who sat as a fraud was committed on the court, and a Chief Justice John Roberts who harrumphs that judges have no political birthmarks even as the judges he put on the FISA court participated in an attempted political coup by the Obama administration against its successor.