90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, February 5, 2018

Remember When Hillary Clinton Illegally Procured 900 FBI Files On Her Opposition?

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Banana Republic? The ABSOLUTE STATE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Girls With Guns

A good Samaritan with a concealed firearm stopped and helped a Utah police officer who was being beaten in the street. It all started Friday when the officer saw a man pulling clothing out of a donation bin and asked him to get out. From Fox 13:

Just before 2 p.m., an officer spotted a pair of feet dangling from a Tabitha’s Way donation bin along Main Street in Springville. He pulled over and asked the person to get out of the bin.

That person was Paul Douglas Anderson. Anderson eventually got out of the bin, leaving clothes and shoes on the ground, but he kept his hands in his pockets.

Springville Police said that officer asked Anderson multiple times to remove his hands from his pockets, for fear he had a weapon. When Anderson finally removed his hands, he used them to punch the officer in the face.

Derek Meyer happened to be driving by at that moment and saw the lone officer under attack. He made a quick U-turn, got out of his car and pulled his concealed weapon:

He told Fox 13 he got out of his car, drew his weapon and pointed it at Anderson, yelling at him to get off the officer and stop assaulting him.

Meyer said when Anderson saw the gun, he...

An Afghan refugee was arrested in Athens last week. The man possessed seven detonators for explosives and was apprehended by a Greek anti-terror police unit.

The special police unit was mobilised after a regular research revealed that the man possessed explosive materials. An initial research took place after the home owner complained about the man not paying his rent.

During a house visit seven detonators and numerous small butane gas containers were found. The man was arrested near the area of Lycabettus Hill in central Athens.

The suspect was given asylum in Greece after he said he needed “international protection”.

The four-page House Intelligence Committee memo alleging abuse of surveillance authority raises immediate questions about the specific role of former FBI Director James Comey in utilizing the infamous, largely discredited 35-page anti-Trump dossier to fuel an investigation into unsubstantiated claims of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Below, in no particular order, are nine new questions about Comey’s actions following disclosures in the memo crafted by House Republicans and released this past Friday:

1 – Why did Comey utilize the largely discredited anti-Trump dossier as purported evidence to sign FISA documents to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, who briefly served as a volunteer campaign foreign policy adviser?

The memo documents that on October 21, 2016, the FBI and Justice Department sought and received the FISA order against Page, and that the agencies sought the renewal of the order every 90 days in accordance with court requirements. Renewals require separate finding of probable cause each time, the memo relates.

According to the memo, Comey “signed three FISA applications in question on behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one.” The memo relates that the FBI utilized the anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele as evidence against Page in order to obtain the FISA warrant.

2 – Why didn’t Comey tell the FISA court that Steele’s dossier was reportedly funded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)?

“Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials,” the memo states.

In October, the Washington Post reported that in April 2016, attorney Marc E. Elias and his law firm Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS to conduct the firm’s anti-Trump work on behalf of both Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Clinton’s campaign and the DNC both were clients of Perkins Coie.

Instead of Fusion GPS receiving lump sums from Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified in November that he believes his firm expensed Steele’s payments directly to Perkins Coie. Simpson stated that bank records show Fusion GPS paid Steele about $160,000. Simpson’s November 14 testimony was released last month.

While it is not clear how much the Clinton campaign or the DNC paid Fusion GPS, the UK Independent, citing campaign finance records, reported that the Clinton campaign doled out $5.6 million to Perkins Coie from June 2015 to December 2016. Records show that since November 2015, the DNC paid the law firm $3.6 million in “legal and compliance consulting.”

3 – Why didn’t Comey tell the FISA court the dossier he allegedly relied upon to request a warrant to monitor Page was a product of the controversial Fusion GPS firm?

The memo relates that the initial application notes Steele worked for a “named U.S. person,” but does not name Fusion GPS or its founder Simpson. Breitbart News has released a series of articles documenting credibility issues faced by Fusion GPS and its leadership.

4 – Why didn’t Comey tell the FISA court that Steele reportedly met with Yahoo News at the direction of Fusion GPS?

A Yahoo News article about an alleged trip by Page to Moscow was cited as purported evidence against Page in the FISA warrant, according to the memo.

5 – How did Comey justify relying upon the dossier to monitor Page when he personally called the information contained in Steele’s dossier “salacious and unverified” months later?

Comey first filed the FISA application citing the dossier on October 21, 2016, according to the memo. Yet during his June 8, 2017 prepared remarks before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey referred to the anti-Trump dossier as containing “salacious and unverified” material.

6 – How did Comey justify relying upon the dossier to monitor Page when his own FBI determined the document was “only minimally corroborated”?

The memo relates that after dossier author Christopher Steele was terminated months earlier as an FBI source a “source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated.” Still, Comey saw fit, according to the memo, to utilize the dossier in the FISA documents and he briefed Trump and Obama on the dossier contents.

7 –Why did Comey push back against a request from President Donald Trump to possibly investigate the origins of claims made inside the dossier?

According to the memo, senior officials at the FBI were aware that Clinton and ...

Remember in 1993 when 400 FBI confidential files on Reagan and Bush appointees turned up in the White House?

It has all the elements of a polarizing scandal, with none other than Hillary Clinton at center stage — plus highly sensitive confidential documents, unexplained actions involving the FBI, and allegations that federal investigators were weaponized for partisan political purposes.

No, this is not the infamous Christopher Steele dossier containing multiple allegations about Donald Trump’s relationships with shadowy Russian business tycoons and spies. Nor is it about the Steele dossier’s deceitful use by rogue FBI executives to put campaign operatives for the 2016 Republican presidential nominee under official surveillance.

That Hillary Clinton/FBI scandal began just last year.

The Hillary Clinton/FBI scandal described in the lead paragraph above began in 1993, only months after she and husband Bill began what turned out to be an eight-year residency in the White House. You see, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s use of the FBI for political gain is nothing new.

Here’s how the Weekly Standard summarized the Clintons’ 1993 “Filegate” scandal when it became the focus of a special counsel investigation in 1996:

The good news is that Whitewater special counsel Kenneth Starr is now looking into the circumstances under which the Clinton White House improperly secured and reviewed highly confidential background information from the FBI on more than 400 Reagan- and Bush-administration employees. A full accounting of this atrocious invasion of privacy may eventually become public.

But the bad news is that, in the meantime, the whole story is being set up to disappear. A separate FBI analysis of the “Filegate” caper has now been released. It is highly critical of the entire enterprise — which seems to have victimized 71 more individuals than had previously been identified.

But the FBI inquiry does not address the question of White House conduct. Were Clinton’s aides on a dirt-digging expedition? Those aides continue to maintain, in the president’s words, that ‘it was just an innocent bureaucratic snafu’: computer glitches and procedural carelessness, with no malign intent and no disclosure of personal information.

In short: no harm, no foul.

That’s long been the Clinton pattern — laws bent, broken or ignored, political opponents smeared, self-righteous protests of innocence when exposed, trusting supporters used and abused, and endless obfuscations, often punctuated by artless evasions, such as Hillary’s bemused response when...

DEL RIO, TX (KSAT) – U.S. Border Patrol agents from the Comstock and Eagle Pass stations arrested two convicted sex offenders with extensive criminal histories who had previously been removed from the U.S., officials said.

On Sunday, an agent assigned to the Comstock Station apprehended Hector Vargas-Pineda, 41, who was in the United States illegally.

During processing, agents discovered that Vargas-Pineda was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in Denton County in 1997, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

He was deported to Mexico in 2002.

Two days later, agents assigned to the Eagle Pass Station apprehended Santos Sanchez-Diaz, 41, who also was illegally present in the U.S., officials said.

During processing, record checks revealed that Sanchez-Diaz was convicted of criminal sexual conduct in...

Steve King’s Memo Warning: ‘Watch Closely for Barack Obama’s Fingerprints’

“Watch closely for Barack Obama’s fingerprints,” said Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Saturday, suggesting the recent alleged partisan weaponization of state surveillance powers could be connected to the 44th president. “[Democrats and their allies] will defend Barack Obama at all costs, and they’ll defend Hillary Clinton almost at all costs unless they have to sacrifice her to protect Barack Obama,” he added.

King offered his remarks during an interview with Breitbart News’s Deputy Political Editor Amanda House on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday.

Against the backdrop of Friday’s released memo from the House Intelligence Committee (HIC), King called for further investigation into what role, if any, Obama and his cabinet officials played in procuring state surveillance of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos (two peripheral operatives of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign) via Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications submitted before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

The HIC memo alleges the commission of abuses of power by the FBI and Justice Department (DOJ) under the Obama administration in surveilling Page and Papadopoulos.

“Look at all of these investigations now,” said King. “Look closely for Barack Obama’s fingerprints. I’ve just identified some that I think are fingerprints, and I think this trail leads to the Obama presidency, to Barack Obama himself, but it’s going to take some time if we get there, and I’m not certain that the evidence trail necessarily leads there. There’s an indication trail that says we need to take a look and find out. But if it’s not Barack Obama, then who is it? Well, it’s Loretta Lynch, for example, and James Comey, and McCabe, and that cast of characters from...