Image 01 Image 03

Trump Russia Tag

Fox News has reported that the DOJ inspector general has announced that they have located the missing text messages:
Text messages from a critical five-month period between Trump-bashing FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who both served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, have been located, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
*This is a breaking story. MORE TO COME.

Text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page came to light last month due to the anti-Trump rhetoric involved. Now the FBI claims that the department "failed to preserve" five months of text messages between them. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) have sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to demand answers over the missing text messages between Strzok and Page.

A memo compiled by the House Intelligence Committee has several Republican Congressmen rattled. Thursday afternoon, lawmakers began demanding declassification of key points of a FISA Memo which they say "raise serious questions about the upper echelon of the Obama DOJ and Comey FBI" in the Russia/collusion investigation.

Michael Cohen, the personal attorney for President Donald Trump, has filed two defamation lawsuits over the dossier against then-candidate Trump. He filed the suit against Fusion GPS, which produced the dossier, in federal court and filed the suit against Buzzfeed, which published the dossier in January 2017, in state court.

Ranking Judiciary Committee Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released the closed testimony of Glenn Simpson, a founder of Fusion GPS, which produced the dossier in 2016 of then-candidate Donald Trump, along with his attorney Josh Levy. From The New York Times:
“The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves,” Ms. Feinstein said. “The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public.”

Back in December, the media published texts between FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who was involved in the Russia investigation, and FBI attorney Lisa Page demeaning then-candidate Donald Trump and hoping that failed Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton would win. Special Counsel Robert Mueller quietly removed Strzok from the investigation after he discovered the texts. However, some of the texts also mentioned "specific reporters, news organizations and articles." These texts have spawned a congressional probe into whether those involved "had contacts with the news media that resulted in improper leaks."

After Trump fired him, James Comey leaked four (4) of seven (7) internal FBI memos he created regarding his interactions with Trump to a Columbia Law School professor, for the purpose of passing on the contents to a reporter. The professor did just that, and it created the basis for NY Times reporting that Trump had demanded a "loyalty" pledge and also raised the issue of shutting down the investigation into Michael Flynn. Comey would testify to the same effect before Congress, which is when the fact of his leak came out under questioning by Susan Collins, almost by accident, and without any meaningful follow up to the bombshell testimony.

One of the concerns about the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel is that from the get go his investigation has appeared to go far afield of the "Russia collusion" that was the basis for his appointment. I made this point in an earlier post with regard to the guilty plea of Michael Flynn for lying with regard to post-election transition matters, Why is Robert Mueller even investigating the presidential transition?

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has decided to retire by March as he has come under fire from Republicans in Congress due to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia. McCabe took over the FBI after Trump fired James Comey in May, but he has surfaced in the news recently after he supposedly appeared in anti-Trump texts between two FBI employees. He spent seven hours in front of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week, frustrating Republicans with his non-answers.

The House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) grilled FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for seven hours over the dossier published against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and the FBI's investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server. Unfortunately, he could not give them much information and actually contradicted testimony of former witnesses, which has led the committee to issue new subpoenas.