90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

SECOND HASSAN STAFFER ALLEGEDLY HELPED AIDE STEAL MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF SENATE DATA

A former Senate IT aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan, Jackson Cosko, admitted he stole tens of thousands of documents, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and the contents of the entire network drive from the New Hampshire Democrat.

Cosko allegedly used stolen private data about senators to “doxx” Republicans during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

In a plea deal, Cosko — whom Hassan had fired for other misconduct before the theft — said he worked with an accomplice who helped him gain access and wiped his fingerprints.

A court case has been opened against Samantha DeForest-Davis, a former Hassan aide who a source with knowledge of the situation said is the alleged accomplice.

A second onetime aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan is implicated in former IT staffer Jackson Cosko’s massive data-theft scheme that was ultimately used to “intimidate” Republican senators by “doxxing” them during a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, prosecutors said.

Samantha G. DeForest-Davis, at the time a staff assistant to Hassan, was the aide who allegedly helped Cosko conduct his scheme, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Court records show a case naming her has been opened, and the source confirmed it relates to her alleged role in the data theft.

She filed an affidavit that can be used to assess her eligibility for a public defender, but she has not been charged with any crimes, court records show.

Cosko pleaded guilty April 5 to masterminding what prosecutors said was “an extraordinarily extensive data-theft scheme, copying entire network drives, sorting and organizing sensitive data, and exploring ways to use that data to his benefit.” He admitted to stealing tens of thousands of documents and emails from Hassan’s office, in addition to credit card information and Social Security numbers belonging to Senate employees.

The data also included a master list of senators’ private information that Cosko posted to Wikipedia out of “anger” at Republicans during the Supreme Court nomination hearings, prosecutors said.

Note from Jackson Cosko entered as evidence in court. (US District Court)

Cosko’s lawyer said drugs contributed to his admitted crimes. But a statement of facts prosecutors filed as part of Cosko’s plea agreement describes an elaborate, months-long scheme involving two people.

The data was stolen from Hassan’s office in months of late-night burglaries between July and October 2018 after Cosko was fired that May for different misconduct that Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, has declined to explain, according to the statement.

DeForest-Davis — identified in court documents only as SUBJECT A — allegedly repeatedly provided Cosko a key that he used to enter the office at night and install tiny devices that capture every keystroke, including passwords that were then used to access...

Allowing People That Hate You Into Your Country, Can Never Have Good Results...

Top FBI Lawyer Testified Rosenstein Discussed Removing Trump From Office

James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, testified to members of Congress last fall that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and other FBI officials discussed wearing a wire in meetings with President Trump and removing him from office, according to a transcript of Baker’s testimony released on Tuesday.

In a joint committee on October 3, 2018, Baker was questioned in a closed-door interview on his knowledge of the Christopher Steele dossier, classified information leaked to the media, and invoking the 25th Amendment against President Trump.

Baker’s testimony confirmed what former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe previously said about national security officials strategizing to remove President Trump from office. Baker said Rosenstein made a serious suggestion to wear a wire when near the president in order to collect evidence that the president obstructed the investigation on Russian collusion. Baker also said he suspected Rosenstein was acting in response to the firing of James Comey, and that he felt he had been “used” by the president in his justification for firing Comey.

Baker said he was told that at the time “there were two members of the Cabinet who were willing to go down this road already,” regarding conversations about invoking the 25th Amendment.

Baker testified that he met with a lawyer for Perkins Coie, the law firm hired by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to do opposition research on Donald Trump, named Michael Sussmann. He said Sussmann did not provide him information about the...

The special counsel’s report on Russia’s election meddling will be released with redactions within a week, and the results of a separate probe into alleged Justice Department misconduct is coming within two months, Attorney General William Barr told a House panel Tuesday.

House Democrats, who weren’t happy to hear about redactions in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, also grilled the attorney general on other issues such as the Justice Department’s position on states’ litigation over Obamacare.

Barr delivered an opening statement on the Justice Department’s budget priorities, under the purview of the House Appropriations subcommittee. Aside from that, though, there was little talk about fiscal issues.

Here’s a look at four big issues that came up during Barr’s first hearing before Congress since Mueller completed his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, which found no conspiracy between Moscow and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

1. FISA Abuse Probe

In the next two months, the Justice Department will complete an internal investigation into domestic spying on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, Barr said.

Some contend that the Obama administration action started the Russian probe, and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee argue the basis for the warrant to surveil Page was an unverified opposition research document written by a former British spy, Christopher Steele.

Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee, asked Barr about the matter.

Barr said DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is looking into the question of whether officials abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Horowitz is being aided in the probe by John Huber, U.S. attorney for the District of Utah.

“The Office of the Inspector General has a pending investigation of the FISA process in the Russia investigation,” Barr told lawmakers. “I expect that that will be complete probably in May or June, I am told.”

Last week, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, made a criminal referral to the Justice Department seeking an investigation into alleged misconduct by the Justice Department and FBI during the initial Trump-Russia probe in 2016, well before Mueller’s appointment as special counsel.

One day after Barr’s letter about the conclusions of the Mueller report, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called for a new special counsel to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted in the summer of 2016,” Barr said.

2. Making the Mueller Report Public

Subcommittee Chairman Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., stressed the need for Barr to make the full report public, despite law and regulations preventing that because of considerations such as the presumption of innocence and grand jury deliberations.

“The American people have been left with many unanswered questions; serious concerns about the process by which you formulated your letter; and uncertainty about when we can expect to see the full report,” Serrano said during the hearing.

“I believe the American people deserve to see the full Mueller report, and to be trusted to make their own determinations on the merits based on what the special counsel has presented,” he said.

Barr informed Congress on March 22 that Mueller had completed and delivered his report. The attorney general provided a four-page letter informing Congress of Mueller’s main conclusions March 24.

The special counsel determined that neither Trump nor his campaign nor any American conspired with Russians to affect the election, Barr wrote, but did not make a determination on whether Trump tried to obstruct justice.

Barr explained Tuesday that the redacted report won’t be available until mid-April because the Clinton administration’s Justice Department determined new rules after independent counsel Ken Starr’s yearslong investigation of President Bill Clinton. Congress released the complete Starr report, including some lurid details, to the public.

“This whole mechanism for the special counsel, as I said, was established during the Clinton administration in the wake of Ken Starr’s report,” Barr said, adding:

That’s why the current rule says the report should be kept confidential, because there was a lot of reaction against the publication of Ken Starr’s report, and many of the people who are right now calling for release of this report were basically castigating Ken Starr and others for releasing the Starr report. …

You will recognize that I’m operating under a regulation that was put together during the Clinton administration and does not provide for the publication of the report, but I am relying on my own discretion to make as much public as I can.

Although some Democrats said they wanted a quicker release, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said she wanted to know how the attorney general distilled 300-plus pages of the Mueller report into a four-page letter to Congress in such a short time.

“You received a serious, detailed report and released your memo in less than 48 hours,” said Lowey, who is chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. “To me, to do this, it seems like your mind was made up.”

Barr replied that the findings were not a surprise because top Justice Department officials had met March 5 with Mueller.

“The work of the special counsel was not a mystery to the people at the Department of Justice,” Barr said, adding, “There was some inkling into the thinking of the special counsel.”

The attorney general said the report that goes public will redact grand jury information, national security secrets, information that touches on ongoing investigations, and information that would harm the privacy or reputation of peripheral figures in the probe.

Barr added that he would return to Capitol Hill to testify to both the Senate and House judiciary committees about the report as quickly as the committee chairmen—Graham and Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.—wanted him to.

“The DOJ’s policy and practice is that [if] we don’t charge someone then we don’t go out and discuss the bad and derogatory information,” Barr said.

Barr seemed not to be clear at times during the hearing as to whether the White House had prior knowledge of the findings of the Mueller report. Eventually he said the Justice Department notified the White House counsel’s office before releasing the four-page letter to Congress and the public.

“From my standpoint, within a week I will be in a position to release the report to the public,” Barr told the panel.

But he replied to several other questions with words such as “I’m not going to say anything more about it until the report is out.”

The Justice Department offered the Mueller team a chance to review the letters to Congress, and the special counsel declined, Barr said.

He stressed that the four-page letter was about “bottom-line conclusions,” which is not the same as a summary.

“I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize, because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of being underinclusive or overinclusive, but also would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should await everything coming out at once,” Barr said.

Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., expressed curiosity about the Democrats’ preoccupation with the completed Mueller report.

“The conclusions were simple: no collusion, no obstruction,” Graves said. “Is there anything new you have seen that would change your conclusions?”

According to Barr’s letter, the Mueller report did not “exonerate” Trump of obstruction of justice but also did not find he had committed obstruction.

In response to Graves’ question, Barr replied: “No, I tried to use much of the special counsel’s own language that I could. The letter speaks for itself.”

3. Obamacare Lawsuit

Democrats also were upset that the Trump Justice Department...

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

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Muslim Teen pleads guilty to plotting mass-murder terror attack at Texas mall

A suburban Dallas teenager has pleaded guilty to plotting an Islamic State group-inspired mass shooting at a North Texas mall.

A state judge sentenced Matin Azizi-Yarand to 20 years in prison Monday for solicitation of capital murder and making a terroristic threat, state and federal prosecutors announced. The 18-year-old is eligible for parole after serving 10 years.

Azizi-Yarand was arrested last May for plotting to shoot civilians and police at a Frisco mall in a rampage authorities said he was timing to coincide with Ramadan. IS has called on its supporters to carry out attacks during the Muslim holy month.

The then-high school student had been recruiting others to participate in the shooting and planned to explain it with the release of a "Message to America," according to prosecutors. He spent more than $1,400 buying weapons and tactical gear, and had been conducting surveillance of the mall.

Azizi-Yarand believes his plea agreement is a "fair deal" and is ready to begin his prison term, his lawyer, Mitch Nolte, told The Associated Press.

Azizi-Yarand was indicted in July , but his age presented a challenge for prosecutors.

Terrorism cases are typically brought in federal court. But because Azizi-Yarand was 17 at the time of the crime and a minor under federal law, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Texas was limited in the...