Russia investigation
May 23, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Adam Goldman was part of a team of New York Times journalists that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting on the Russia hoax. Goldman and his Times colleagues promoted the hoax. They and their sources seemed not to notice that the Steele Dossier was a farce on its face and the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation something worse. The Times was itself a key player in the hoax.
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May 20, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Rotten apples or rotten to the core? That is the question raised about the FBI yesterday by Kim Strassel’s weekly Wall Street Journal column on the Durham report. John excerpted her column in a nearby post. John’s post really helps to bring the question into focus. In my own “Note on the Durham report” I asserted that the FBI needed to be torn down and rebuilt. I quoted the FBI’s
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May 19, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In the Wall Street Journal, relying in part on the Durham report, Kim Strassel argues that the FBI is not fundamentally rotten. Rather, the problems lay at the top: Readers won’t find many direct quotes in the report from former Director James Comey or former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe—both refused to cooperate with Mr. Durham. Mr. Comey has publicly distanced himself from events, honing his mastery of “I don’t recall.”
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May 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
John Durham’s detailed report on the Russia hoax should destroy the (positive) reputation of the FBI. It is devastating. One has to go beyond the four corners of the report to assess the impact it should have on the (positive) reputation of the establishment press, though its positive reputation has been crumbling for decades. The press was of course an integral part of the Russia hoax all along the way.
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May 16, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The 306-page report issued by Special Counsel John Durham seems a bit muted to me. The Durham report renders judgment in his report’s executive summary: “Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.” You don’t say.
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January 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday afternoon Matt Taibbi posted a 40-part thread that stands as the fourteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It can be accessed via the first tweet in the thread below. The thread is unrolled here on the Thread Reader app. Taibbi comments on the thread in the related post at his TK News site on Substack in “America Needs Truth and Reconciliation on Russiagate.” 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14THE RUSSIAGATE LIESOne:
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October 12, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The FBI filed its first application for a FISA warrant on Carter Page on October 21, 2016. According to the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General review, the application was based in relevant part on the Steele Dossier that it had obtained the previous month. The OIG review determined that the FBI omitted many material facts from the application. In addition to the previously identified omissions, we now learn
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June 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
How about a congressional investigation of the perversion of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the service of the Russia hoax intended to take out Donald Trump? The FBI, FISA, and the FISA court should be shut down until we get some answers about the abuse of the law in the service of the hoax. It is all unfinished business, although the Democrats are doing their best to make
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May 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
With perfect timing Christopher Caldwell reviews what we have learned about Watergate in the past 50 years. Caldwell’s First Things essay is titled “Regime change, American style.” The occasion of Caldwell’s essay is the publication of Garrett Graff’s Watergate: A New History. Caldwell’s essay usefully reminds us that, 50 years later, we still have no idea what the Watergate burglars were looking for. Whatever it was, however, they came away
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April 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Special Counsel John Durham’s false statement charge against former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussman is scheduled to go to trial next month. Durham has subpoenaed documents from Fusion GPS, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign in connection with the trial. A funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse. Everyone involved has asserted attorney-client privilege to withhold documents. Perkins Coie of course served as a cutout in
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April 21, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Russia collusion hoax was exposed long ago as a fraud, but these Rasmussen survey results suggest that it was one of the most effective fake news campaigns ever. Rasmussen asked: Hillary Clinton has said that “Russia succeeded” in influencing the 2016 presidential election. How likely is it that Russian interference changed the outcome of the 2016 election? The results: Democratic voters overwhelmingly agree with Hillary Clinton that Russia is
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April 20, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Whether or not justice is ever rendered in the Russia hoax perpetrated by the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign, the Perkins Coie law firm, Fusion GPS, Rodney Joffe, Christopher Steele, and others, there is more to be learned. As Special Counsel John Durham approaches the trial of former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussman next month, they are getting nervous in the Clinton service. So nervous that everyone who can is
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March 30, 2022 — John Hinderaker
We have known for years that the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the fraudulent Steele “dossier” that badly damaged Donald Trump’s presidency. They laundered their payments to Fusion GPS through the corrupt Perkins Coie law firm, falsely describing them as payments for legal services. I have asked the question, on this site, whether that wasn’t obviously illegal, and whether criminal charges should have been
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March 24, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Today Donald Trump sued the perpetrators of the Russia collusion hoax in the federal court for the Southern District of Florida. The Complaint is here. Trump sued the whole cast of characters: Hillary R. Clinton, HFACC, Inc., the Democratic National Committee, DNC Services Corporation, Perkins Coie, LLC, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Halliday Dolan, Jr., Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Robert E. Mook, Phillipe Reines, Fusion GPS, Glenn
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February 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Byron York’s February 21 Washington Examiner column provides a handy “Guide to Clinton dirty tricks” falsely tying Trump to Russia. Byron’s column is triggered both by the recent revelations from the Durham probe and Clinton’s response to them as reported by FOX News. The column does a good job summarizing information in the public domain (with relevant links) and breaking it down into three major dirty tricks. Taken together, with
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February 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Perhaps in honor of the dubious holiday today, the New York Post runs an unusual editorial under the heading “The absurd ‘Russiagate’ Pulitzer of the NY Times and Washington Post.” Beginning with the Pulitzer board’s bloviation in honor of the winners, the editorial reviews the 20 award-winning stories. The editors preface their review: [R]eading these pieces four years later, one is struck not only by how irrelevant they are, but
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February 16, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Hillary Clinton has finally commented on the latest revelations from the Durham investigation, which we summarized here. She denies the whole thing, deriding the news story as a “fake scandal” attributable to Donald Trump and Fox News. For support, she relies on a “good debunking” from–who else?–Vanity Fair. Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones. So it's a day that ends
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