I guess the war goes on, but you’d hardly know. A lot of good that did, shaking their fists in the air and shouting, “Death to America.” It’s so childish, but these people are not to be overestimated.  

How would you like to trade places with the former head of the FBI? He’s the only person on planet earth that didn’t know what those shells meant, and wouldn’t have dared… oh, what’s the use? It’s just too obvious to comment on.

There’s a picture of Comey crying, and he should be. He should have thought better before he took on the President. Trump’s not fooling around. Comey just happened upon those shells, and didn’t know what they meant, so he did the obvious thing, and posted it! I think you’ve got to have a screw loose to post on the internet, but I’m glad some intellectuals do. But Comey! He’s not THAT stupid.

Meanwhile we’re kicking the stuff out of Iran, and there’s nothing they can do about it. We don’t even know who to negotiate with, we’ve killed so many layers of leadership. Maybe that’s what we need, fourth stringers. Maybe they’ll understand. Us? We’re sleeping just fine.

The King of England was here, making speeches. I listened when he addressed Congress, it was good. But then he veered off into global warming and I changed the subject. Horse-feathers! But there’s no denying the friendship between Britain and America, though it didn’t start out too well. We can look back now and understand it all. We don’t have too many Jaguars or Rolls Royce’s, not in Texas anyway. Here, the pickup rules. Not to mention whoever is driving. We’ve got some rough tough hombres here, and that’s not going to change. In Plano they’re worried about Muslims getting a foothold in Texas. Not for long.

The media is still against Trump, that hasn’t changed, but they’re running out of things to complain about. They’ve complained about everything, even when they’re wrong. Trump keeps leaving tire tracks down their backs, but they’re not stopping! I like his style. I could be wrong, but I think God gave him to us.

But read the Bible, nothing lasts forever in this life.           

Mark Armstrong

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – May 1, 2026 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

We just got back from the Feast of Tabernacles and had a fantastic crowd at Panama City Beach. I spent the entire time there, and everybody was in high gear. I hope it went as well in all the sites. 

It’s almost like we haven’t been gone in the news. The negotiations that were going on as relates to Ukraine, still are. The next meeting is in Hungary, and in the meantime the war goes on.

Israeli hostages have been released in the war in Gaza. Those idiots better have learned their lesson, but probably not. It’s a different mentality over there, and nothing makes sense to you or me. Everybody knows what has transpired so far.

Trump apparently wants to be known as a peace-maker. I saw him brag about the wars he’s stopped in Africa, and he’s got bigger fish to fry. Who knows what Putin has in mind, or Zelensky for that matter. The war in Ukraine may be the hardest one to solve. There’s another meeting planned, but the principles have that look on their face. It won’t be easy.

The Arabs have released hostages that should have never been taken in the first place. Things haven’t changed that much, despite thousands of years. Apparently Donald Trump has everybody’s respect in a way that we’ve not seen before. They better agree before something else happens. The rabble-rousers must have taken a play from some former playbook, because they’re still saying things that make me remember how they used to talk, and that was the 70’s!

Nancy Pelosi may retire! But then again, maybe not. There is a backbench of hopefuls, one of them related, that may make life difficult for years to come. Let’s hope not.

Charges have been filed on Comey and Bolton, and they are not insignificant. Page after page of crimes. They thought they’d be in power forever, and so weren’t worried. I guess they never saw Trump coming, but now they’re in trouble.  

Vigils were held all over Europe for Charlie Kirk. Who knew they even cared? He was having an impact, and now even more. That shooter didn’t know what he would unleash. What do you want to bet that he realizes he made a big mistake, and will have to live with it. In prison.

We had a great and inspiring Feast. We hope you’ll start planning right now for next year’s Feast.  There used to be a thing about the “best Feast ever,” but whose memory goes back that far? We’re having some great ones, no doubt about it, and looking to the future. We’re not through yet!  

With God’s help, we may never be.

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – October 17, 2025 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Comey’s going to trial for lying, multiple times, to Congress and all of us. He’s sending out messages trying to say he isn’t concerned, but he is. He was part of the grand conspiracy to get rid of Trump once and for all. But the tables have been turned, and justice will be done. Trump can let the underlings do it while he worries about the United States.  

Sarkozy of France is in trouble too.  He’s got a supermodel, but she’s not going to do him any good where he’s going. The charges date back to his relationship with Kaddaffi, his sentence is five years, and he’s charged with trying to raise funds from Libya.  Not good.  He has a month to get his affairs in order before going for a five year sentence.

Did you see Trump’s visit to England?  I couldn’t help having my Dad’s words occur to me over and over: Ephraim and Manasseh.   

The outpouring of love over Charlie Kirk has been impossible to miss. Multiple commentators have said they’re going to keep having these meetings on university campuses and keep his movement going. Can you imagine what the little furry must think as he watches this play out? He probably made sure it would continue, rather than stamping it out. That fruit didn’t know what he was doing!

Charlie Kirk is being celebrated all over Europe. I encourage you to look up some of the ceremonies that have been held. Who knew? His videos were already coming often on my phone. Now they’re coming three at a time! Not that I mind. He seemed to put pretty much everybody in their place, and left them shaking their heads. They couldn’t argue with him so…

It looks like all of Europe is taking up for the Arabs in Gaza. Their Arab benefactors may have something to do with it. But here we are. I don’t think it’ll have any effect. Israel is cleaning out Gaza. Something people don’t know is that they position helpless women and children in positions they think will be targeted so they can carry on wailing when they are killed. These are probably the grandchildren of people I met a long time ago. But they’ve always reverted to disastrous tactics so they have something to be emotional about when the time comes. 

Trump says he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, and he’s working toward a cease-fire in Gaza. There are names being floated to preside over Gaza once it has been cleared. That’s a miserable situation, and who knows if it can be worked out? A bunch of imbeciles are boating off of Gaza, trying to pretend like they’re doing something. If they don’t get blown out of the water, they’ll have something to brag about the rest of their lives.

We are planning for the Feast of Tabernacles, and I hope you are too. My son Michael is flying to California to help out, to Branson and then to Panama City beach. I need to warn him about jet-lag.  

If WWIII doesn’t start, we’re in for a good ride.                        

Mark  

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – September 26, 2025  first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Comey for years has been a target of President Donald Trump, who fired him as FBI director early in his first term in the White House.

The post Former FBI Director Comey expected to be indicted soon in Virginia federal court: MSNBC first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Notwithstanding all the hysterical rhetoric surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, two critical things stand out. The first is that what happened was much more hoax than insurrection. In fact, in my judgment, it wasn’t an insurrection at all.

An “insurrection,” as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority. Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Hill Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that “got out of hand.”

At the rally preceding the events in question, Donald Trump had suggested that people march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically”—these were his exact words—in order to make their voices heard. He did not incite a riot; he stirred up a crowd. Was that, given the circumstances, imprudent? Probably. Was it an effort to overthrow the government? Hardly.

I know this is not the narrative that we have all been instructed to parrot. Indeed, to listen to the establishment media and our political masters, the January 6 protest was a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation: the worst assault on “our democracy” since 9/11, since Pearl Harbor, since the Civil War! (Really: Joe Biden said last April that the January 6 protest at the Capitol was “the worst attack attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”)

Note that phrase “our democracy”: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and various talking heads have repeated it ad nauseam. But you do not need an advanced degree in hermeneutics to understand that what they mean by “our democracy” is their oligarchy. Similarly, when Nancy Pelosi talks about “the people’s house,” she doesn’t mean a house that welcomes riff-raff like you and me.

I just alluded to Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed on January 6. Her fate brings me to the second critical thing to understand about the January 6 insurrection hoax. Namely, that it was not a stand-alone event.

On the contrary, what happened that afternoon, and what happened afterwards, is only intelligible when seen as a chapter in the long-running effort to discredit and, ultimately, to dispose of Donald Trump—as well as what Hillary Clinton might call the “deplorable” populist sentiment that brought Trump to power.

In other words, to understand the January 6 insurrection hoax, you also have to understand that other long-running hoax, the Russia collusion hoax. The story of that hoax begins back in 2015, when the resources of the federal government were first mobilized to spy on the Trump campaign, to frame various people close to Trump, and eventually to launch a full-throated criminal investigation of the Trump administration.

From before Trump took office, the Russia collusion hoax was used as a pretext to create a parallel administration shadowing the elected administration. Remember the Steele Dossier, the fantastical document confected by the “well-regarded” British spy Christopher Steele? We know now that it was the only relevant predicate for ordering FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page and other American citizens.

But in truth, the Steele Dossier was just opposition dirt covertly paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. From beginning to end, it was a tissue of lies and fabrications. Everyone involved knew all along it was garbage—rumors and fantasies fed to a gullible Steele by shady Russian sources. But it was nonetheless used to deploy, illegally, the awesome coercive power of the state against a presidential candidate of whom the ruling bureaucracy and their favored candidate disapproved.

The public learned that the Democratic National Committee paid for the manufactured evidence only because of a court order. James Comey, the disgraced former director of the FBI, publicly denied knowing who paid for it, but emails from a year earlier prove that he knew all along. And what was the penalty for lying in Comey’s case? He got a huge book deal and toured the country denouncing Trump to the gleeful satisfaction of his anti-Trump audiences.

What was true of Comey was also true of the entire intelligence apparat, from former CIA Director John Brennan to Adam Schiff and other Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee to senior members of the FBI. All these people said publicly that they had seen clear evidence of collusion with Russia. But they admitted under oath behind closed doors that they hadn’t.

General Mike Flynn had his career ruined and was bankrupted as part of a political vendetta. Meanwhile James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, John Brennan, Peter Strzok, and all the rest of the crew at the FBI, the CIA, and other intel agencies suffered nothing. When it came to light that an FBI lawyer altered an email in order to help get a FISA warrant—in other words, that he doctored evidence to spy on a political opponent, which is a felony—he got probation. Andrew McCabe, meanwhile, a former FBI deputy director, just got his pension restored notwithstanding the fact that an Inspector General’s report concluded that he lied multiple times under oath.

The recent news that Special Counsel John Durham has indicted Michael Sussman, a lawyer who covertly worked for the Clinton campaign and lied to the FBI, is welcome news. Granted, it is too early to say where Durham’s investigation will ultimately go, but Sussman’s indictment seems like small beer given the rampant higher-level corruption that saturated the Russia Collusion hoax.

At least 74 million citizens voted for Donald Trump in 2020, which is at least 11 million more than voted for him in 2016. Many of those voters are profoundly disillusioned and increasingly angry about this entire story—the years-long Robert Mueller “investigation,” the two impeachments of President Trump, the cloud of unknowing that surrounds the 2020 election, and the many questions that have emerged not only from the January 6 protest at the Capitol but, even more, from the government’s response to that protest.

Which brings me back to Ashli Babbitt, the long-serving Air Force vet who was shot and killed by a nervous Capitol Hill Police officer. Babbitt was a useful prop when the media was in overdrive describing the January 6 events as an “armed insurrection” in which wild supporters of Donald Trump, supposedly at his instigation, attacked the Capitol with the intention of overturning the 2020 election.

According to that narrative, five people, including Babbitt, died in the skirmish. Moreover, it was said, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by a raging Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher. That gem of a story about the fire extinguisher, reported in our former paper of record, The New York Times, was instantly picked up by other media outlets and spread like a Chinese virus.

Of course, it is absolutely critical to the Democratic Party narrative that the January 6 incident be made to seem as violent and crazed as possible. Hence the crazed comparisons to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. Only thus can pro-Trump Americans be excluded from “our democracy” by being branded as “domestic extremists” if not, indeed, “domestic terrorists.”

The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution accords American citizens the right to a speedy trial. But most of the political prisoners of January 6—many of whom have been kept in solitary confinement—are still waiting to be brought to trial. And although the media was full of predictions that they would be found guilty of criminal sedition, none has.

Indeed, the prosecution’s cases seem to be falling apart. Most of the hundreds who have been arrested are being charged with trespassing. Another charge being leveled against them is “disrupting an official proceeding.” This is a felony charge designed not for ceremonial procedures like the January 6 certification of the vote, but rather for disrupting Congressional inquiries—for example, by shredding documents relevant to a Congressional investigation. It originated during the George W. Bush administration to deal with the Enron case.

The indisputable fact about January 6 is that although five people died at or near the Capitol on that day or soon thereafter, none of these deaths was brought about by the protesters. The shot fired Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd that hit Ashli Babbitt in the neck and killed her was the only shot fired at the Capitol that day. No guns were recovered from the Capitol on January 6. Zero.

The liberal commentator Glenn Greenwald further diminished the “armed insurrection” meme in an important column last February titled “The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.” The title says it all. Kevin Greeson, Greenwald notes, was killed not by the protesters but died of a heart attack outside the Capitol. Benjamin Philips, the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo, died of a stroke that day. Rosanne Boyland, another Trump supporter, was reported by The New York Times to have been inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.” But later video shows that, far from that, the police pushed protesters on top of Boyland and would not allow fellow protesters to pull her out.

Four of the five who died, then, were pro-Trump protesters. And the fifth? Well, that was Officer Sicknick—also a Trump supporter, as it turned out—who, contrary to the false report from The New York Times that went viral, went home, told his family he felt fine, but died a day later from, as The Washington Post eventually and grudgingly reported, “natural causes.” No fire extinguishers were involved in his demise.

***********

The January 6 insurrection hoax prompts lots of questions.

Why, for example, did the government mobilize 26,000 federal troops from all across the country to surround “the people’s house” following January 6? Why were those troops subjected to loyalty tests, with those discovered to be Trump supporters sent packing?

Why is there some 14,000 hours of video footage of the event on January 6 that the government refuses to release? What are they afraid of letting the public see? More scenes of security guards actually opening doors and politely ushering in protestors? More pictures of FBI informants (read: “fomenters”) covertly salted among the crowd?

My own view is that turning Washington into an armed camp was mostly theater. There was no threat that the Washington police could not have handled. But it was also a show of force and an act of intimidation. The message was: “We’re in charge now, rubes, and don’t you forget it.”

In truth, there is little threat of domestic terrorism in this country. But there is plenty of domestic conservatism. And that conservatism is the real focus of the establishment’s ire.

It is important to note that while the government provides the muscle for this war on dissent, the elite culture at large is a willing accomplice. Consider, for example, the open letter, signed by more than 500 “publishing professionals” (authors, editors, designers, and so on), calling on the industry to reject books written by anyone who had anything to do with the Trump administration.

These paragons pledged to do whatever they could to stop “enriching the monsters among us.” But here’s their problem: approximately 75 million people voted for Trump. That’s a lot of monsters.

Many people have been quoting Benjamin Franklin’s famous response when asked what sort of government they had come up with at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.” Right now, it looks like we couldn’t. It looks as if the American constitutional republic has given way, at least temporarily, to an American oligarchy.

As the years go by, historians, if the censors allow them access to the documents and give them leave to publish their findings, may well count the 2016 presidential election as the last fair and open democratic election in U.S. history. I know we are not supposed to say that. I know that the heads of Twitter and Facebook and other woke guardians of the status quo call this view “The Big Lie” and do all they can to suppress it. But every honest person knows that the 2020 election was tainted.

The forces responsible for the taint had tried before. Hitherto, their efforts had met with only limited success. But a perfect storm of forces conspired to make 2020 the first oligarchic installation of a president. It would not have happened, I think, absent the panic over the Chinese virus. But that panic, folded in a lover’s embrace by the Democratic establishment, was not only a splendid pretext to clamp down on civil liberties; it also provided an inarguable excuse to alter the rules for elections in several key states.

“Inarguable” is not quite the right word. There could have been plenty of arguments, and many lawsuits, against the way the executive branch in these states usurped the constitutionally guaranteed prerogative of state legislatures to set the election rules when they intervened to allow massive mail-in voting. But the Trump administration, though foreseeing and complaining about the executive interventions, did too little too late to make a difference.

Among the many sobering realities that the 2020 election brought home is that in our current and particular form of oligarchy, the people do have a voice, but it is a voice that is everywhere pressured, cajoled, shaped, and bullied. The people also have a choice, but only among a roster of candidates approved by the elite consensus.

The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected president without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the bipartisan oligarchy that governs us. That was his unforgivable offense. Trump was the greatest threat in history to the credentialed class and the globalist administrative state upon which they feed. Representatives of that oligarchy tried for four years to destroy Trump. Remember that the first mention of impeachment came 19 minutes after his inauguration, an event that was met not only by a widespread Democratic boycott and hysterical claims by Nancy Pelosi and others that the election had been hijacked, but also by riots in Washington, D.C. that saw at least six policemen injured, numerous cars torched, and other property destroyed.

You will search in vain for media or other ruling class denunciations of that violence, or for bulletins from corporate America advising their customers of their solidarity with the newly installed Trump administration. As the commentator Howie Carr noted, some riots are more equal than others. Some get you the approval of people like Nancy Pelosi and at least the grudging acceptance of oligarchs of the other party. Others get the FBI sweeping the country for “domestic terrorists” and the lords of Big Tech canceling people who defend the protesters’ cause.

Someday—maybe someday soon—this witches’ sabbath, this festival of scapegoating, and what George Orwell called the “hideous ecstasy” of hate will be at an end. Perhaps someday people will be aghast, and some will be ashamed, of what they did to the president of the United States and people who supported him: proposing, for instance, to put Senator Ted Cruz on a “no fly” list, or Simon & Schuster canceling Senator Josh Hawley’s book contract. Donald Trump is the Emmanuel Goldstein (the designated principal enemy of the totalitarian state Oceania in “1984”) of the movement. But minor public enemies are legion. Anyone harboring “Trumpist” inclinations is suspect, hence the widespread calls for “deprogramming” his supporters, who are routinely said to be “marching toward sedition.”

Michael Barone, one of our most perceptive political commentators, got it right when he wrote of the rapid movement “from impeaching incitement to canceling conservatism.” That is the path our oligarchs are inviting us to travel now, criminalizing political dissent and transforming policy differences into a species of heresy. You don’t debate heretics, after all. You seek to destroy them.

Donald Trump’s accomplishments as president were nothing less than stunning. Trump was, and is, a rude force of nature. He accomplished an immense amount. But he lacked one thing. Some say it was self-discipline or finesse. I agree with a friend of mine who suggested that Trump’s critical flaw was a deficit in guile. That sounds odd, no doubt, since Trump is supposed to be the tough guy who mastered “the art of the deal.” But I think my friend is probably right. Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the “Oath Keepers,” a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers. They arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett came from his home in Florida to join the Trump January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have been branded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Hayek’s overriding concern in The Road to Serfdom was to combat the forces that were pushing people further along that road to servitude. His chief concern was unchecked state power. The Road To Serfdom was first published in 1944. In a new preface in 1956, Hayek noted that one of the book’s “main points” was to document how “extensive government control produces a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.”

“This means,” Hayek said, “that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.”

This dismal situation, Hayek continues, can be averted, but only if the spirit of liberty “reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course.” Note the power of that little word “if.”

It was not so long ago that an American could contemplate totalitarian regimes and say, “Thank God we’ve escaped that.” It’s not at all clear that we can entertain that happy conviction any longer.

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity will be increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

Bingo.

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author or editor of many books, most recently, “Who Rules: Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the Twenty-First Century” (Encounter Books, 2020).

Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/10/31/the_january_6_insurrection_hoax_146663.html#!

The post The January 6 Insurrection Hoax first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President Trump on Tuesday said he has “fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents” related to the Russia investigation and the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

“I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!” The president tweeted Tuesday night.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!

Paul Sperry@paulsperry_
When all the documents are finally declassified, and all the redactions removed from reports, the nation will see that the FBI and CIA not only knew the Russia “collusion” allegations against Trump were a political dirty trick, but that they were in on the trick.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
“All Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago,” Trump tweeted. “Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country.”

He added: “Act!!!”

Last year, the president gave Attorney General Bill Barr authority to declassify any documents related to surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016. Trump, at the time, also ordered members of the intelligence community to cooperate with Barr’s probe.

Allies of the president, including Republicans on Capitol Hill leading their own investigations into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, have criticized officials like FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel, claiming that the directors have been blocking the release of documents.

The president’s tweets come after Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified documents that revealed former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s purported “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server” ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

DNI DECLASSIFIES BRENNAN NOTES, CIA MEMO ON HILLARY CLINTON ‘STIRRING UP’ SCANDAL BETWEEN TRUMP, RUSSIA

Fox News first reported that Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes – which were taken after he briefed Obama on the intelligence the CIA received – and a CIA memo, which revealed that officials referred the matter to the FBI for potential investigative action.

“Today, at the direction of President Trump, I declassified additional documents relevant to ongoing Congressional oversight and investigative activities,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to Fox News Tuesday.

A source familiar with the documents explained that Brennan’s handwritten notes were taken after briefing Obama on the matter.

“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED],” Brennan notes read. “CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service,” Brennan’s notes read.

The notes state “on 28 of July.” In the margin, Brennan writes “POTUS,” but that section of the notes is redacted.

“Any evidence of collaboration between Trump campaign + Russia,” the notes read.

The remainder of the notes are redacted, except in the margins, which reads: “JC,” “Denis,” and “Susan.”

The notes don’t spell out the full names but “JC” could be referring to then-FBI Director James Comey, “Susan” could refer to National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and “Denis” could refer to then-Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough.

The declassification comes after Ratcliffe, last week, shared newly-declassified information with the Senate Judiciary Committee which revealed that in September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral on Hillary Clinton purportedly approving “a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” in order to distract the public from her email scandal.

That referral was sent to Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok.

“The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate,” the CIA memo to Comey and Strzok stated.

“This memorandum contains sensitive information that could be source revealing. It should be handled with particular attention to compartmentation and need-to-know. To avoid the possible compromise of the source, any investigative action taken in response to the information below should be coordinated in advance with Chief Counterintelligence Mission Center, Legal,” the memo, which was sent to Comey and Strzok, read. “It may not be used in any legal proceeding—including FISA applications—without prior approval…”

“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the memo continued. ““An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

The memo is heavily redacted.

Ratcliffe informed the committee last week that the Obama administration obtained Russian intelligence in July 2016 with allegations against Clinton, but cautioned that the intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the text to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”

According to Ratcliffe’s letter, the intelligence included the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

Nick Merrill, Clinton’s spokesperson, called the allegations “baseless b———t” last week. A spokesman for Clinton did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment on the declassified documents.

But Ratcliffe, in a statement released after the information was made public, pushed back on the idea he was advancing “Russian disinformation.”

DURHAM ASSUMED PARTS OF HUBER’S CLINTON INVESTIGATION

“To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to Fox News. “I’ll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days.”

A source familiar with the documents told Fox News on Tuesday that the allegation was “not disinformation.”  “This is not Russian disinformation. Even Brennan knew, or he wouldn’t be briefing the president of the United States on it,” the source said. “There is a high threshold to orally brief the president of the United States and he clearly felt this met that threshold.”

Another source familiar with the documents told Fox News that “this information has been sought by hundreds of congressional requests for legitimate oversight purposes and was withheld for political spite—and the belief that they’d never get caught.”

The source added that the Brennan notes are significant because it is “their own words, written and memorialized in real time.”

Meanwhile, last week, during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey was asked whether he received an investigative referral on Clinton from 2016, but he said it didn’t “ring any bells.”

“You don’t remember getting an investigatory lead from the intelligence community? Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to James Comey and Strzok regarding Clinton’s approval of a plan [about] Trump…as a means of distraction?” Graham asked Comey.

“That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” Comey said.

Graham questioned “how far-fetched is that,” citing the fact that Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS and ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to author and compile information for the controversial and unverified anti-Trump dossier.The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS and ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to author and compile information for the controversial and unverified anti-Trump dossier.

The dossier contains claims about alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia that served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants obtained against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Attorney General Bill Barr last year appointed U.S. Attorney of Connecticut John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller completed his years-long investigation into whether the campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.

It is unclear whether this information will be considered part of Durham’s investigation, or whether the president’s declassification will affect Durham’s investigation.

Last month, Fox News reported, though, that Durham had assumed aspects of U.S. Attorney John Huber’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

A source familiar with Durham’s investigation told Fox News last month that parts of what Huber was investigating in 2017 — involving the Clinton Foundation — have been incorporated in Durham’s investigation.

In November 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed Huber, the U.S. attorney for Utah, and other senior prosecutors to evaluate “certain issues” involving the sale of Uranium One, and other dealings related to the Clinton Foundation. Sessions tapped Huber after requests by congressional Republicans, who had been calling for the appointment of a special counsel to review the matters. Huber was also tasked with reviewing the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe, including allegations that the Justice Department and FBI “policies or procedures” were not followed.

It has been unclear, for years, the status of Huber’s investigation, but another source told Fox News Thursday that Huber has faced mounting criticism from the Justice Department and White House over his progress.

It is unclear whether any aspects of the Clinton email investigation were included in Huber’s review.

Brooke Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeSingman.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-authorizes-declassification-of-all-russia-collusion-hillary-clinton-email-probe-documents

The post Trump authorizes declassification of all Russia collusion, Hillary Clinton email probe documents first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post President Trump goes one-on-one with Chris Wallace | Full Interview first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Donald Trump meets with Republican members of Congress on Friday. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump continued to fume over the Russia investigation on Sunday, more than a year after special counsel Robert Mueller filed his report without recommending charges against the president but only three days after the justice department said it would drop its case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

“The biggest political crime in American history, by far!” the president wrote in a tweet accompanying a conservative talk show host’s claim that Barack Obama “used his last weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage the new administration”.

The tweet echoed previous messages retweeted by Trump, which earned rebukes for relaying conspiracy theories. On Sunday afternoon the president continued to send out a stream of tweets of memes and rightwing talking heads claiming an anti-Trump conspiracy. One tweet by Trump simply read: “OBAMAGATE!”

Trump fired Flynn, a retired general, in early 2017, for lying to Vice-President Mike Pence about conversations with the Russian ambassador regarding sanctions levied by the Obama administration in retaliation for interference in the 2016 election.

The US intelligence community has long held that such efforts were meant to tip the election towards Trump and away from Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI – which Trump has acknowledged – and co-operated with Mueller, who was appointed to take over the investigation of Russian interference after Trump fired FBI director James Comey.

Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy but did lay out extensive links between Trump and Moscow and instances of possible obstruction of justice by the president.

Flynn sought to change his plea while awaiting sentencing and the president championed his case, floating a possible pardon. On Thursday, in an act that stunned the US media, attorney general William Barr said the justice department would drop the case entirely.

Michael Flynn at a campaign event in Virginia Beach in September 2016. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

Trump and his supporters have loudly trumpeted the decision and across Saturday and Sunday, the president unleashed a storm of retweets of supporters and conservative commentators attacking targets including Obama, Mueller, Comey, and House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff.

The talk show host retweeted by the president, Buck Sexton, is a former CIA analyst who now hosts a show which he says “speaks truth to power, and cuts through the liberal nonsense coming from the mainstream media”.

In another message retweeted by the president, Sexton called former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe – who Trump fired just short of retirement – “a dishonorable partisan scumbag who has done incalculable damage to the reputation of the FBI and should be sitting in a cell for lying under oath”.

In February, the US justice department said it would not charge McCabe over claims he lied to investigators about a media leak.

Like Comey, McCabe released a book in which he was highly critical of Trump, who he said acted like a mob boss. McCabe also wrote that Trump had unleashed a “strain of insanity” in American public life.

In his own tweets, Trump did not directly address comments by Obama himself which were reported by Yahoo News. The former president told associates the Flynn decision was “the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic – not just institutional norms – but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk”.

But Trump’s anger was evident.

“When are the Fake Journalists,” he wrote on Sunday, “who received unwarranted Pulitzer Prizes for Russia, Russia, Russia, and the Impeachment Scam, going to turn in their tarnished awards so they can be given to the real journalists who got it right. I’ll give you the names, there are plenty of them!”

The president did not immediately name anyone.

But in 2018 the Pulitzer committee did, awarding its prize for national reporting jointly to the Washington Post and the New York Times for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the president-elect’s transition team, and his eventual administration.”

Trump has further reason to resent the Pulitzer committee and question its choices.

In 2019, for example, a New York Times team won a Pulitzer for an “exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges”.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, was rewarded for “uncovering President Trump’s secret payoffs to two women during his campaign who claimed to have had affairs with him, and the web of supporters who facilitated the transactions, triggering criminal inquiries and calls for impeachment”.

Trump’s actual impeachment, which he survived at trial in the Senate in February, concerned his attempts to have Ukraine investigate his political rivals. No reporter or news outlet won a 2020 Pulitzer, announced this week, for its coverage of that affair.

Trump’s focus on Sunday remained largely on the Russia investigation despite continuing developments in the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 1.3m Americans and killed nearly 80,000.

With cases confirmed among White House aides close to the president, top public health experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci in quarantine and Trump reported by the New York Times to be “spooked”, the president claimed in a rare non-Russia-related tweet: “We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic.”

He also attacked Obama and his vice-president, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president this year, over their response to the “disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu” in 2009.

Trump also marked a special day in the calendar, tweeting in trademark capitals: “HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/trump-obama-biggest-political-american-history-russia-michael-flynn

The post Trump charges Obama with ‘biggest political crime in American history’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The announcement came in a court filing, with the department saying it is dropping the case “after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.” The DOJ said it had concluded that Flynn’s interview by the FBI was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the interview was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”

READ: DOJ MOTION TO DISMISS FLYNN CASE

The federal judge overseeing the case would have to make the final determination to dismiss the case.

The retired Army lieutenant general for months has been trying to withdraw his plea, aided by a new attorney who has aggressively challenged the prosecution’s case and conduct. But the case has been plodding through the court system with no resolution ever since his original plea, even amid speculation about whether President Trump himself could extend a pardon.

MUELLER PROSECUTOR WITHDRAWS FROM FLYNN CASE AFTER QUESTIONS SURFACE CONCERNING HIS COMPLIANCE WITH COURT ORDER

The DOJ decision would appear to put an end to that process.

Earlier Thursday, the top prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, abruptly withdrew from the case, without explanation, in a brief filing with the court.

The post DOJ drops case against Michael Flynn, in wake of internal memo release first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Graham opens IG hearing with scathing take on FISA report: The system failed first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.