- White House trade czar Peter Navarro sought an ambassadorship for FBI informant Stefan Halper in 2017.
- Navarro said in an interview Wednesday he felt “duped” by Halper and referred to him as a “spy.”
- Halper was in contact with multiple Trump campaign officials.
White House trade czar Peter Navarro said he feels “duped” by Stefan Halper, the FBI informant who sought out members of President Donald Trump’s campaign and applied for an ambassadorship in Trump’s administration.
“I feel duped, yeah, pretty much,” Peter Navarro told Fox Radio’s Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday.
“It’s baffling,” Navarro added.
Halper, a former Cambridge professor with deep ties to the CIA and MI6, approached Navarro in 2017, seeking a nomination to an ambassadorship to an unidentified Asian country, Axios reported on May 21.
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The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is accusing Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson of giving “extremely misleading” statements, if not telling “outright lies,” during Senate testimony in 2017.
Simpson may have lied when he denied working for clients to investigate President Donald Trump after the 2016 election, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a May 24 letter made public on Tuesday.
Fusion GPS, which Simpson started in 2011, worked for the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Russia. The opposition research firm hired former British spy Christopher Steele, who would go on to write a dossier alleging Trump’s campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
Grassley noted that in his Aug. 22, 2017, testimony, Simpson claimed after the election, he was not working for a client to continue his Trump work.
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Former CIA Director Michael Hayden called out James Clapper on Sunday for claiming to know that Russians decided the 2016 election.
Clapper wrote in his new book that he has “no doubt” Russian meddling swung the election in favor of Trump, but during a Friday night CNN interview he all but admitted he has no evidence for the claim.
Hayden told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week” that it is “unknowable” how much Russians influenced the election and he knocked the former director of national intelligence for claiming otherwise.
“I agree that the Russians affected the election but how much they affected is not just unknown, it is unknowable and so we should stop talking about it,” Hayden asserted. “Donald Trump is the president.”
“You invite folks like us on your show because we’re the fact witnesses, not because we have opinions,” he added.
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Former CIA Director Michael Hayden called out James Clapper on Sunday for claiming to know that Russians decided the 2016 election.
Clapper wrote in his new book that he has “no doubt” Russian meddling swung the election in favor of Trump, but during a Friday night CNN interview he all but admitted he has no evidence for the claim.
Hayden told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week” that it is “unknowable” how much Russians influenced the election and he knocked the former director of national intelligence for claiming otherwise.
“I agree that the Russians affected the election but how much they affected is not just unknown, it is unknowable and so we should stop talking about it,” Hayden asserted. “Donald Trump is the president.”
“You invite folks like us on your show because we’re the fact witnesses, not because we have opinions,” he added.
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- The House IG said Democratic IT aides made unauthorized access to data, but prosecutors haven’t charged them
- Democrats appear to want to keep the case out of court; a trial could expose their reckless IT practices
- Capitol Police didn’t make arrests despite numerous red flags and then ‘inadvertently’ gave evidence to defense attorneys that was supposed to go to prosecutors
- Prosecutors appear to be sharing info with someone on Capitol Hill who is leaking details to the hacking suspect’s lawyer
The Capitol Police turned over a trove of evidence in the alleged Imran Awan House cyberbreach and theft case to the defense attorneys when they were supposed to deliver it to prosecutors instead, according to court documents and a source.
And hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation asked prosecutors about the disclosure, Awan’s lawyer said he had learned of the forthcoming story from a source on Capitol Hill. TheDCNF had not told anyone other than prosecutors about it.
“The cop came to [Awan’s defense attorney] Chris Gowen’s office with a stack of papers … Then he came back and said, ‘I thought you guys were the other party.’ He was very, very angry. But Gowen made copies,” the source, who’s familiar with The Awans, told The DCNF.
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- FBI informant Stefan Halper said Russians infiltrated the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar
- He flagged interactions between a Russian researcher and Mike Flynn
- People involved called Halper’s claims “false” and “absurd”
The FBI informant who made contact with members of the Trump campaign has made allegations of Russian spy infiltration at the University of Cambridge that people involved in the matters have called “false” and “absurd.”
A Russian academic who worked at Cambridge with the informant, Stefan Halper, said he made “false allegations” about her interactions with former national security adviser Michael Flynn at an event the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar (CIS) hosted in February 2014.
Halper’s claim in December 2016 that Russians infiltrated CIS has also been called “absurd” by Christopher Andrew, the official historian for MI5 and head of CIS, the Financial Times reported.
Halper told the Financial Times that he was resigning from CIS because of “unacceptable Russian influence on the group.” The evidence of Russian penetration was scant, with news reports citing a nearly $2,700 contribution to CIS from a Russia-based company called Veruscript.
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Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed Tuesday that he “made a mistake,” but that he didn’t lie when he told Sen. Ron Wyden in 2013 that the National Security Agency doesn’t collect data on Americans.
Clapper was defending himself on “The View” after President Donald Trump called him a “lying machine.”
A report from The Guardian later that year showed that Clapper’s statement was false, that the NSA does collect phone metadata on millions of Americans.
“He was asking me about one [thing], and I was thinking about another,” Clapper said of Wyden. “So, I made a mistake, but I didn’t lie.”
When co-host Meghan McCain pressed him on whether it was a lie, he doubled back on his first answer.
“No, it isn’t a lie. I was thinking about something else, another program” — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he said.
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The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking the Justice Department for a trove of records regarding a former top agency official’s contacts with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the salacious and unverified dossier alleging collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia’s government.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is also asking Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to make the official, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, available for a transcribed interview following the production of the documents.
Grassley, a Republican, wants Ohr’s personal and work emails, phone logs, handwritten notes and text messages related to his interactions with Steele.
Ohr met with Steele numerous times before and after the 2016 election regarding the ex-MI6 officer’s investigation of Trump. He also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, the founder of the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC.
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Former Donald Trump adviser Sam Nunberg predicted Sunday on MSNBC that long-time Trump ally Roger Stone would probably face an indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team.
“He will get indicted on some stupid financial thing.”
Nunberg, who has referred to Stone as a mentor and even a father figure, told MSNBC’s Alex Witt that he called Stone just before his own grand jury appearance to warn him that his name was already involved. “My last phone conversation with Roger was the Saturday before my Friday grand jury appearance where I explained to Roger that I had received a subpoena and his name is one that I would have to hand over all communications,” he said.
Claiming that Mueller’s team was treating President Donald Trump and his associates like members of the mafia, Nunberg complained that gangster-turned-FBI-informant Whitey Bulger received better treatment from Mueller.
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Days after Carter Page’s high-profile trip to Moscow in July 2016, the Trump campaign adviser had his first encounter with Stefan Halper, a University of Cambridge professor with CIA and MI6 contacts.
The conversation seemed innocent enough, Page tells The Daily Caller News Foundation. He recalls nothing of substance being discussed other than Halper’s passing mention that he knew then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. But the interaction was one of many that the pair would have over the next 14 months, through a period of time when Page was under the watchful eye of the U.S. government.
Their relationship included a number of in-person meetings, including at Halper’s farm in Virginia.
Page’s encounters with Halper were quite different from those that another Trump campaign adviser had during the campaign with the 73-year-old academic. As The DCNF reported exclusively in March, Halper and George Papadopoulos met several times over a period of a few days in Sept. 2016. Several days earlier, Halper contacted and met with a third Trump campaign official. That official, who has requested anonymity, told The DCNF that Halper expressed interest in helping the campaign.
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Michael Avenatti, porn star Stormy Daniels’ attorney, is being investigated by the California State Bar, a new report reveals.
Seattle attorney David Nold filed a complaint against Avenatti on March 26, as The Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported. Nold accused Avenatti of defrauding the state and federal government as the owner of a Seattle coffee chain.
“In essence, he bought a company out of bankruptcy and then used it for a ‘pump and dump’ scheme to deprive federal and state taxing authorities of millions of dollars,” Nold said in the complaint.
An April 18 letter Fox News obtained on Wednesday shows Avenatti is now under investigation. The state bar only launches a “full investigation” if the attorney reviewing the complaint “sees evidence of a serious violation,” according to its website.
“The complaint against attorney Michael J. Avenatti has been reviewed and forwarded to the Enforcement Unit for further investigation and prosecution, if warranted,” the letter states, according to Fox News.
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of California said the Trump campaign might have been set up by the federal government back in 2016.
“Let’s talk about how did this get started? You had Fusion GPS that was hired by the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign to draw up a dossier on the president — or as the president was running for president,” Nunes said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.” “What happened with that is that in [Glen Simpson’s] testimony he mentioned that there was a source within the campaign.”
Nunes said Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, told Congress he was being truthful about a mole within the Trump campaign and predicted the fallout would tarnish the FBI and DOJ.
“Glenn Simpson said that in what was closed testimony. Then it became public. Now he’s confirmed that he was telling Congress the truth, which is probably a good idea,” Nunes continued. “We believe he was telling the truth. And what we’re trying to do is get the documents to figure out — did they actually have, what methods were used to open this counter intelligence investigation?”
“I think what it really means, I think it will look badly on the Department of Justice and the FBI on how they conducted this investigation,” Nunes said.
He also said the entire investigation into President Donald Trump lacked credibility from the start.
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In September 2016, FBI agents approached Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to ask about allegations President Donald Trump’s campaign was colluding with the Russian government to influence the election, according to a new report.
Deripaska, who was at his apartment in New York City for the interview, waived the three agents off of the collusion theory, saying there was no coordination between the Trump team and Kremlin, The Hill reported Monday.
The agents, one of whom Deripaska knew from a previous FBI case, said they believed former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was involved in the conspiracy, an allegation made in the infamous Steele dossier.
“Deripaska laughed but realized, despite the joviality, that they were serious,” Adam Waldman, a former lawyer for Deripaska, told The Hill. “So he told them in his informed opinion the idea they were proposing was false.”
“You are trying to create something out of nothing,” Deripaska told the agents, according to Waldman.
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The top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledged in a recent interview that contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russians could be “a set of coincidences” rather than collusion.
“I’m reserving my final judgement until we’ve seen all the witnesses we need to see, and we’ve gotten all the facts. So I’m going to hold off,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick when asked whether he believes that Trump associates conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Warner and North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chair of the Senate panel, have since Jan. 2017 led an investigation into Russian interference in the election.
Warner said that the committee is still receiving documents and information for the investigation. The panel is also still conducting interviews of Trump associates. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg is set to be interviewed this week.
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Lawyers for Russian company Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, formally entered a “not guilty” plea in federal court Monday in a case special counsel Robert Mueller probably never thought would happen.
Mueller, weathering significant criticism that his Russian collusion case was thin, unveiled a grandiose indictment Feb. 16 against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies. The 13 Russians in question were charged with waging “information warfare” in the United States, interfering with the 2016 presidential election, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Mueller generated headlines with the February indictment, safe in the knowledge the 13 Russians were beyond U.S. jurisdiction. Therefore, there would be no trial — only sensational Russian collusion accusations.
Mueller may now have to try the case, and Concord’s lawyers have put the special counsel on notice. The Russian company’s lawyers intend to invoke “discovery” to obtain U.S. intelligence about what they knew of Russian activities.
“I guess Mueller thought it was a freebie, for sure,” former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy told The Daily Caller News Foundation after the court proceeding.
“He thought it could make this association (of Russian collusion) and it would never be challenged in court,” McCarthy, also a National Review contributing editor, said.
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House Republicans are again battling with the Justice Department over information related to the Russia investigation, this time over documents the intelligence community said involves a top-secret source who has provided information to the CIA and FBI.
The mysterious source has also gathered information that was given to Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to The Washington Post.
WaPo reported Justice Department and intelligence community officials issued a stark warning to the White House on May 2 against a request from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. Nunes had submitted a subpoena to the Justice Department on April 24 for records related to the Russia probe.
Justice Department and intelligence community officials argued to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that complying with the subpoena would reveal the identity of a top-secret source and would undermine protocol regarding intelligence sources, according to WaPo.
WaPo provided one small clue about the source: he or she is American.
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Democrats are facing a dilemma as they decide whether or not to return money they raised with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
At least two Democratic 2020 hopefuls, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have held high-dollar fundraisers with Schneiderman. Schneiderman resigned from AG on Monday after four women accused him of being physically and emotionally abusive to them.
That same year, in October, Schneiderman and George Soros hosted a fundraiser for Warren’s Senate campaign. Suggested contributions ranged from $1000 to $5000.
“New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has emerged as a skeptic of a proposed settlement between the states and big banks, will be introducing Warren at the event at the home of former candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Dennis Mehiel, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side,” Politico reported at the time.
Warren’s GOP challenger for her Senate seat, John Kingston, is already calling on her to return the money fundraised with the help of Schneiderman.
“Sen. Warren must immediately do the right thing and return, or donate to an appropriate non-profit, all the donations raised for her campaign by Eric Schneiderman,” Kingston said. “Condemning harassment and abuse cannot be a partisan issue and Warren should immediately condemn Schneiderman, return the campaign cash raised by him and call on her fellow Democrats to do the same.”
“If Sen. Warren hesitates or refuses to return her contributions raised by Schneiderman, it will underscore her long-established pattern of putting her political self-interest before what is right,” he added.
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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is accused of being physically and emotionally abusive toward four women, has deep ties to Democratic hopefuls in the 2020 presidential race.
The New Yorker reported Monday that four women are accusing Schneiderman of physical abuse, including violent slapping and choking, and emotional abuse.
Schneiderman, an avowed anti-Trumper, has been considered a champion of the #MeToo movement for pushing legal action against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and demanding his victims get additional compensation. The AG’s supposed progressivism has earned him clout with top Democrats.
Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have been identified as potential front-runners to be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, all have extensive histories with Schneiderman.
Harris, a senator from California, reportedly attended a 2016 DNC delegation breakfast with the New York AG and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, although the event has apparently been scrubbed from the NY Dems website.
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Federal Judge T.S. Ellis III, a Reagan appointee, could be the ultimate nightmare for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who may lose his legal case against Paul Manafort, according to an extraordinary May 4 exchange in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia.
A dismissal could be a major wrecking ball to Mueller’s overall case in his Russian collusion case against President Donald Trump.
Amid Friday’s legal event, Ellis was best known for invoking an NFL term to dismiss Mueller’s legal posture, saying “C’mon man!” as he challenged the special counsel’s attempt to drag an unrelated bank fraud case back in 2005 to indict Manafort. Those charges are well beyond Mueller’s original mandate to investigate alleged collusion with Russia in 2016 and had to be dismissed, the judge said, according to the hearing transcript.
“If I look at the indictment, none of that information has anything to do with links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump,” he lectured Michael Dreebeen, Mueller’s lawyer in the court room. “So I don’t see what relation this indictment has with anything the special prosecutor is authorized to investigate.”
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The latest addition to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to federal campaign records.
Uzo Asonye, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is joining Mueller’s stable of prosecutors to work as local counsel on the case against Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman who has been indicted on money laundering and bank fraud charges.
Asonye worked at the firm O’Melveny & Myers before joining the U.S. attorney’s office in 2010. Asonye donated $900 to Clinton’s presidential campaign from January to April 2008, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has not donated to any other national political campaigns since then.
Asonye is just the latest Democrat to join Mueller’s team.
As The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported, none of Mueller’s prosecutors, which number nearly 20 in all, are registered Republicans. As of February, 13 Mueller lawyers were registered Democrats. A public records search shows Asonye has registered to vote as a Democrat.
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The Senate Ethics Committee has “severely admonished” Robert Menendez, once again demonstrating its uselessness. Of course, the committee did not have the authority to put Menendez where he really belongs — in prison — but it could have recommended something of a little more consequence, like censure or expulsion.
Once again, the Senate has proven that it is the world’s most exclusive club, and membership has its privileges. The Ethics Committee — chaired by Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) and consisting of three members of each party — probably never wanted to render judgment on Menendez and probably never thought they would have to.
The Senate investigation began in late 2012 but was put on hold when the Justice Department initiated a criminal probe. It resumed late last year when the criminal trial in New Jersey resulted in a hung jury. The Justice Department first declared that it would retry Menendez and then, stunningly, announced that it would not. Menendez was off the hook, and certainly knew that he had nothing to fear from his Senate colleagues.
Of course, the Ethics Committee does not enforce criminal statutes, but it certainly could have placed Menendez’ Senate Rules violations in their proper context. His actions were part of a larger scheme whereby Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye doctor, ripped off Medicare and shared some of the loot with Menendez who then did his best to make sure authorities stayed away from Melgen.
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- The special counsel’s office has said it does not have evidence of any contacts between Paul Manafort and Russian government and intelligence officials
- Manafort is a longtime political consultant who has been indicted on money laundering and bank fraud charges
- The former Trump campaign chairman laundered millions of dollars and failed to properly register as a foreign agent, prosecutors say
The special counsel’s office has told lawyers for Paul Manafort that it does not have evidence of any contacts between the former Trump campaign chairman and Russian government and intelligence officials.
That’s at least according to Manafort’s attorneys, who disclosed details of the interactions in court papers filed on Monday night.
The lawyers say they want a hearing to look into government officials’ leaks to the media regarding Manafort, a longtime political consultant who has been indicted on money laundering and bank fraud charges.
“By their actions, it is self-evident that the objective of these government sources was to create unfair prejudice against Mr. Manafort and thereby deprive him of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights,” wrote Manafort lawyers Kevin M. Downing and Thomas E. Zehnle.
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A new report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence backs up testimony from Attorney General Jeff Sessions about a hotly contested exchange he had during the 2016 presidential campaign with Trump adviser George Papadopoulos.
Reuters reported three anonymous sources have disputed Sessions’ claim that during a March 31, 2016, meeting of the Trump foreign policy team, he rebuffed a suggestion from Papadopoulos that members of the Trump campaign meet with Russian government officials.
“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House Committee on the Judiciary during a Nov. 14 hearing.
Sessions told the House Intelligence Committee during a closed-door interview on Nov. 30: “I felt like, and I’m the chairman of this group — I should not do anything that indicated to Mr. Papadopoulos that he was authorized to go to Russia or anyplace else to represent the Trump campaign and do some sort of negotiations. So I pushed back pretty sharply on that.”
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