Showing posts with label soft coup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soft coup. Show all posts

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Scot free? FBI declares it has no records of discipline against lawyers in Russia FISA case — John Solomon

Just days after it was sharply rebuked for its conduct in the Russia collusion investigation, the FBI is declaring it possesses no records of any disciplinary action taken against lawyers who pursued a deeply flawed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting the Trump campaign.
The declaration was made Thursday in a U.S. District Court motionseeking to dismiss an open records lawsuit brought by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm that frequently argues cases before the Supreme Court.
The foundation’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit sought any records from the FBI of actions taken with or communicated to the FISA judges or other disciplinary bodies against lawyers involved in the surveillance warrant that was obtained against Trump adviser Carter Page in October 2016 and renewed three times in 2017.
“The FBI informed Plaintiff that it was ‘unable to identify records responsive to’ the FOIA request,” the government’s motion seeking dismissal states. “Because the search requested by Plaintiff in the FOIA request and the Complaint has been conducted, Plaintiff’s claim is now moot.”
The FBI’s claim is certain to touch off new concerns amongst civil liberties experts and conservatives, who fear the bureau has not taken any disciplinary action against the lawyers and supervisors who submitted a deeply inaccurate, flawed application for the warrant....
"Inaccurate" and "flawed," or falsified?

Can We Impeach The FBI Now? — Peter Van Buren

On a personal note, if any of this is news to you, you may want to ask why you are only learning about it now. The American Conservative has been one of the few outlets that’s consistently exposed the Steele Dossier as part of an information op nearly since it was unveiled, and which has explained how the FISA court was manipulated, and which has steadily raised the question of political interference in our last election by American intelligence services. We claim no magical powers or inside information. To those of us who have been on the fringes of intelligence work, what was obvious just from the publicly available information was, well, obvious.
If you are reading any of this for the first time, or know people who are reading bastardized MSM versions of it for the first time, you might ask yourself why those outlets went along with Steele, et al. Their journalists are no dumber or smarter than ours. They do, however, write with a different agenda. Keep that in mind as we flip the calendar page to 2020....
The so-called liberal side is still in the dark and in denial of this. I doubt that they will ever be able to take off the blinders and see the obvious.

The American Conservative
Can We Impeach The FBI Now?
Peter Van Buren, 24-year State Department veteran

The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media — Glenn Greenwald

JUST AS WAS TRUE when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday’s issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds.
Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI’s gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.
If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that’s what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course....
Glenn Greenwald reminds us that not only is the outrageous, it is nothing new. It's what security agencies do, both abroad and domestically. And no one is allowed to talk about it, the press tasked with the narrative in particular.

The Intercept
The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media
Glenn Greenwald

This is not isolated to the attempted soft coup, either.
Will anyone, ever get to be held responsible? If not, then the country is done. America's last test is the "impeachment" saga—if no one [coup plotters] gets an indictment and spends the rest of their lives behind bars for treason, there will be nothing to fall back in the remnants of once proud Republic. It will be over because the system ceases to operate. What comes after is a whole other story altogether.
Reminiscence of the Future
If Ain't Boeing, I Am.... Going.
Andrei Martyanov

The Hidden Hand — Charles S. (Sam) Faddis

The essence of a coup, which some might refer to as covert action, is the hidden hand. One does not announce that a foreign power is overthrowing the government and installing a new government. One pulls strings as if from behind a curtain, making events that are all part of a carefully orchestrated plan appear disconnected, spontaneous and serendipitous.
As I read through the recently released IG report for the second time, as someone with a great deal of experience in military and intelligence matters, I see that hand everywhere.
Not just the recently released report. Anyone that has been following this soft coup closely as it unfolded, as we have here at MNE, can't miss the not-so-hidden hand.

What the post reveals is that what Horowitz criticized as incompetence was actually related to manufacture the rationale for the coup attempt.

There was a conspiracy all right but not where the fingers pointed. It was the fingers themselves.

The president took on The Swap, otherwise known as The Blob, and encountered more resistance that he probably expected. It has consumed his presidency and undermined what was left of democracy in the US, making a mockery of press freedom, for instance, which is the foundation of liberal democracy. A liberal democracy depends on an informed electoral and that is negated by a compromised press whose job is shaping the narrative. One particular aspect of negation of press freedom is the unstated rule that the intelligence services shall never be mentioned without their instigation or approval even if the matter is not classified.

This is an excellent post by operational insider that knows the ropes. His account reads like a spy novel written by someone with intimate knowledge of espionage.

AND Magazine
The Hidden Hand
Charles S. (Sam) Faddis, Senior Partner- Artemis, LLC, former CIA operations officer with thirty years  of experience (retired 2008) in the conduct of intelligence operations in the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. Except it is not a novel. The post makes us wonder if some people are going to jail.

Taibbi nails it. While IG Horowitz found that the FBI had reason to pursue their investigation, he fails to pursue the grounds of the reason, which were apparently manufactured to conduct a coup against he democratically elected president. A strong element of the rationale for the coup was the DJT as not actually elected democratically since he conspired with the Russians to undermine the opposition candidate, HRC. As Taibbi shows that plot has exploded. It should have exploded as soon as it was known that the HRC campaign was behind the Steele dossier and that Carter Page was a CIA asset. 

Rolling Stone
The Steele Dossier Was Always a Joke
Matt Taibbi

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Tony Kevin— Maria Butina Endgame

It seems she was not physically tortured in the strict sense of the word but her prolonged harsh and vindictive treatment waiting over five months for her repeatedly delayed trial amounted to ‘torture’. We do not know what interrogation techniques were used. We will be told one day.
She was and is a political prisoner and has been treated like a terrorist. Politically aware Russians will remember this case with particular rage. No American imprisoned in Russia on whatever charge has ever thus been treated by the Government of Russia.
This case has done great damage to prospects for improved Russia-US relations. What has been gained by the US ? Nothing.
I have to disagree. Of course, this was physical torture as well as psychological. This is not confined to Ms. Butina. It is standard US practice in the "criminal justice" system.

Trump is just as acquiescent as Obama to the power of the deep state (including military). It recalls, Sen Schumer's remark at the outset of the Trump presidency to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.
"Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."
Butina is pawn in a plan to effect a soft coup in the US by weakening and if possible, removing, the elected president. I am not a fan the president and certainly did not vote for him (or HRC either). However, this attack by the deep state on the democratic process is not only un-American, it won't end well either. It's another step toward fascism.

OffGuardian
Maria Butina Endgame
Alex Henderson

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Pepe Escobar — ‘Resistance’ runs amok in the US Deep Throat War

The current Deep Throat War is more like the case of a fractioned Deep State out for revenge on Trump via its media arm. The one-two tie-in – Woodward’s book and the “resistance” Op-Ed – looks increasingly like a sophisticated psy-ops – a prelude for a Deep State white coup....
It would be hard to dismiss the President when he says: “I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back.”
It would be hard to dismiss the President when he says: “I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back.”...

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Crispian Balmer — U.S. President Trump facing a 'coup': Bannon


Steve Bannon goes there, after being out of the headlines for some time.
“What you saw the other day was as serious as it can get. This is a direct attack on the institutions,” Bannon said during a flying visit to Italy. “This is a coup, okay”.…
“This is a crisis. The country has only ever had such a crisis in the summer of 1862 when General McClellan and the senior generals, all Democrats in the Union Army, deemed that Abraham Lincoln was not fit and not competent to be commander in chief,” Bannon said.
The US corporate media, led by the Grey Lady, is not only propagandizing another Iraq WMD story about Syria now, but also promoting a soft coup against POTUS.

So where does this all lead? Is looking the republic is in trouble?

Reuters
U.S. President Trump facing a 'coup': Bannon
Crispian Balmer

Anatoli Karlin — Case Against Maria Butina Continues Falling Apart


Another trumped-up charge (pun-intended).

The Unz Review
Case Against Maria Butina Continues Falling Apart
Anatoli Karlin

Saturday, September 8, 2018

Patrick J. Buchanan — Regime Change – American Style

For what is afoot here is something America specializes in — regime change. Only the regime our establishment and media mean to change is the government of the United States. What is afoot is the overthrow of America’s democratically elected head of state....
Patrick J. Buchanan Official Website
Regime Change — American Style
Patrick J. Buchanan

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Curt Mills — The Coup Against Trump


The president's "trump card" is the war card.

The National Interest
The Coup Against Trump
Curt Mills | foreign affairs reporter at The National Interest, where he covers the State Department, National Security Council, and the Trump presidency.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Cody Fenwick — Conservative Writer Max Boot Declares Trump an 'Illegitimate President' Who Won in a Fraudulent Election


The push is on to remove Donald Trump from the White House. Republican establishment joins with the Democratic "Resistance."

Sparks set to fly, igniting many fires. The reality show is heating up.
In light of the newest credible allegations against President Donald Trump, conservative writer Max Boot declared what many have long believed: Trump's presidency is illegitimate because his election was a "fraud."
He made this claim based on the fact Trump was elected after having directed his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to make illegal campaign payments of hush money to two women who say they had affairs with the president, according to Cohen's testimony Tuesday. Cohen's lawyer has also indicated he may have more damning evidence against the president.
"In short, there is growing evidence that the president is, to use the word favored by Richard Nixon, 'a crook,'" wrote Boot Wednesday in the Washington Post. "Even buying the silence of his reputed playmates could by itself have been enough to swing an exceedingly close election decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. Trump certainly would not have authorized the payments unless he thought it was politically imperative to do so. There is also considerable evidence, as I previously argued, that Russia’s intervention on Trump’s behalf affected the outcome. Even more than Nixon, Trump is now an illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud."
Many Davis, longtime Democratic operative and Michael Cohen's lawyer, is spearheading a similar movement from the Democratic side.

Expect an establishment and deep state pile-on. Also expect furious pushback from loyal Trump supporters.

American democracy is the victim. It's over, folks. The country is now hopeless divided with no possibility of repair any time soon in sight. It's getting to be time for a war to manufacture some "national unity."

AlterNet
Conservative Writer Max Boot Declares Trump an 'Illegitimate President' Who Won in a Fraudulent Election
Cody Fenwick

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Publius Tacitus — DOJ IG, Horowitz, Fails to Admit What He Proves

IG Horowitz is adopting a very narrow legal interpretation while opting to give DOJ and FBI officials the benefit of the doubt. In other words, unless he was presented with "documents" or "testimony" that political bias was influencing decisions, Horowitz decided to assume that everyone was acting in good faith. I suspect this was introduced into his draft by DOJ and FBI reviewers who were alarmed at the obvious conclusion an objective reader would reach if they only read the facts-the DOJ and FBI were crooked…
When I worked with the CIA we used to call this No Shit Analysis. Thank you Captain Obvious. Why in the world would you assign the same people who were working on the Hillary Clinton investigation on the Trump/Russia Collusion investigation when both cases were still active? This is more than a problem of appearance. This is circumstantial evidence of an attempted political coup. I give Horowitz credit for at least putting this fact on the record. But his refusal to call this out for what it is can be attributed to his caution of not appearing to be partisan....
Sic Semper Tyrannis
DOJ IG, Horowitz, Fails to Admit What He Proves
Publius Tacitus

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Mike Whitney — Is This Trump's "Samson Moment"?

Mike  Whitney lays out the plot for a soft coup.
It is Donald Trump’s duty to defend the office of the President and the right of the American people to choose their own leaders through democratic elections. Both of those institutions are currently under attack, and there is a real danger that the republican system of government, which we have enjoyed for over 200 years, is about to be lost. So let’s cut to the chase: The results of the 2016 election have never been accepted by a small group of oligarchs, politicos, intelligence honchos and career bureaucrats. The presidential election did not produce the outcome they wanted, so they agreed to use their power to try to change the result.
With that end in mind, this group of fifth columnists settled on a plan for disposing of Trump by creating an Office of the Grand Inquisitor, an undemocratic, supra-legal agency that operates independent of Congress, the White House or the American people. The Mueller Inquisition is an entity unto itself, a fourth branch of government created by deep-state coup-member and perennial Trump antagonist, Rod Rosenstein, the duplicitous insider whose maneuverings have helped pave the way for an indictment of the president and, eventually, regime change. Like Comey, Brennan, Clapper and the rest, Rosenstein is neither committed to the president nor to the political system that guarantees representative government. His loyalties lie with the largely invisible group of establishment powerbrokers who manipulate policy through their agents that are spread across the bureaucracy. As we have seen in the last year, this group has infiltrated the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and the DOJ. They control nearly all the media and use it to shape a narrative that best suits their broader political objectives. These are the omniscient puppetmasters who despise Trump and are determined to remove him from office....
I don't hold out much hope. I think that the American system of government has been exposed and its soft power pretty much finished. Nice work, folks.

Not that this is new. What is happening now is the culmination of a process that began at the end of WWII with the creation of the CIA (think Allen Dulles), the politicization of the FBI (think J. Edgar Hoover) and the rise of the military-industrial complex during the Cold War for starters.

There is a lot more to it, of course. In fact, it was the almost inevitable outcome of the choice of the founders to short-circuit democracy and establish a government based on oligarchy (establishment rule) out of fear of "the rabble" rising to power. This then morphed into an establishment fear of "socialism," and now "populism."

So in a way, America never got off the ground  as a real democracy anyway as government of, by and for the people (pace Lincoln).

To be sure, at the founding America was a lot better than anything in Europe or elsewhere in the world at the time. And since then the feudal monarchies and landed aristocracies are largely history.

However, now it is time to move on as digitization makes participatory democracy feasible technically. And that is what the Establishment is afraid of and are trying to prevent in order to maintain control. Trump happens to be a piece in that game.

The Unz Review
Is This Trump's "Samson Moment"?
Mike Whitney

See also
Rich Whitney, an attorney and writer, sought to compare Freedom House’s rating systemof political rights for 2015 to the U.S. government’s provision of military assistance – military training,military aidand weapons sales– to foreign nations that same year. Whitney’s stated goal was to determine whether the U.S. government actually opposes dictatorships and champions democracy at a global level, as is often claimed. His independent analysis found that the U.S. has actually manifested the opposite of its stated intention, by providing military assistance to 36 of the world’s 49 dictatorships. In other words, more than 73% of the world’s dictatorships currently receive military assistance from the United States.
For his analysis, Whitney used a commonly accepted definition of dictatorship: “a system of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute state power, thereby directing all national policies and major acts — leaving the people powerless to alter those decisions or replace those in power by any method short of revolution or coup.” He chose Freedom House’s Freedom in the World annual reports, citing it as the best source for a comprehensive list of dictatorships and “free” societies. Whitney, however, noted that the ostensibly independent organization has a “decidedly pro-US-ruling-class bias.”
Freedom House’s bias makes the results of Whitney’s analysis even more damning. The organization is funded bya combination of Western government and nongovernmental-organization sources, including the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. Thus, its categorization of nations as dictatorships or as free societies is largely analogous to how the U.S. State Department classifies such nations — meaning that U.S. monetary support of such dictatorships is a knowing and willful repudiation of democracy promotion abroad....
The Free Thought Project
‘Promoting Democracy’? US Gives Military Aid to More Than 70% of World’s Dictatorships

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Tom Luongo — "The Coup Is Complete - Trump Is Done"

If there is one thing the last 48 hours have proved to me, it’s this. Donald Trump is no longer acting President. The coup against Trump has been completed.
May as well have elected HRC.

Zero Hedge
Luongo: "The Coup Is Complete - Trump Is Done"
Tom Luongo

See also
The choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has turned out to be no choice at all.
Niki Halley is also a good surrogate for Samantha Power.
Doug Bandow | senior fellow at the Cato Institute, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire

See also
Mark Bowden

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Coleen Rowley — McCabe: A War on (or in) the FBI?

Andrew McCabe’s claim that his firing amounts to a “war on the FBI” doesn’t make sense considering it was the FBI’s own internal affairs office that recommended he be fired, as FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley explains....
About more than just McCabe.
The real problem that most of the mainstream media don’t want to even mention is how unprecedented it was to have both Presidential campaigns under serious criminal investigation in the weeks before the 2016 election! In all fairness, even if these now-fired FBI Directors were trying to do the right thing – which would not be in line with their rather sordid track records – it wouldn’t really be possible to walk that political mine field without a faux pas one way or the other. Seen in that light, it’s possible to even sympathize a little with any FBI Director when the public corruption at the highest levels in Washington DC has become so bad (and fully bipartisan), that it’s hard to know where to start.
Consortium News
McCabe: A War on (or in) the FBI?
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI special agent, division legal counsel and law enforcement ethics instructor who testified in connection with the 9-11 Joint Intelligence Committee’s Inquiry, the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation and Department of Justice Inspector General’s investigation, exposing some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Publius Tacitus — Pieces of the Coup Puzzle Fall Into Place

Most people, including many of you, have the memory of an Alzheimer's patient when it comes to putting events into their proper historical context. So let me help....
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Pieces of the Coup Puzzle Fall Into Place
Publius Tacitus
Soon the investigative crosshairs will settle on Brennan. He’d better have the right answers.
The Unz Review
Is John Brennan the Mastermind Behind Russiagate?
Mike Whitney

Related
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly blocked Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., from briefing President Donald Trump about a meeting he had in London in August with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Rohrabacher told The Intercept.
Rohrabacher claimed Assange had shown him and his traveling companion, Charles Johnson, definitive proof that Russia was not the source of the Democratic Party communications that WikiLeaks published during the 2016 campaign. Assange was willing to share that information with American officials, Rohrabacher said, but he was never able to present the offer to the president....
The Intercept
Congressman Says He Tried to Brief Trump on WikiLeaks and Russia After Meeting With Julian Assange, But John Kelly Blocked Him
Ryan Grim

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Harper — Is This Fisc Document Part Of The Nunes File?


Is this a shoe dropping, or maybe a hammer?

The Alt Right is going ape over this, while the Democrats are taking steps to head it off at the pass by discrediting it before it is released.

I haven't posted on it previously, since it has been speculative and the reporting most biased by the side doing the "reporting."

Harper provides a piece that is of interest. I suspect we will be hearing a lot more about this as the drama unfolds.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Harper: Is This FISC Document Part Of The Nunes File?

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Publius Tacitus — The Trump Dossier Timeline, A Democrat Disaster Looming

When the entire episode about the creation of the Trump dossier (by former Brit spy, Christopher Steele) and its dissemination (by Steele and the Democrat hired contractor, FUSION GPS,) to the FBI and the press, is fully exposed, the American people will be confronted with the stark dilemma of how to deal with the fact that there was a failed domestic coup attempted by members of the U.S. intel and law enforcement community. The facts will show that the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the CIA and the FBI conspired and meddled in the 2016 Presidential election. They lied to a Federal judge about the origins of the dossier and used those lies to get permission to spy on Trump and members of his campaign staff.
Here are the facts as we know them now. (Please note, these facts are sourced and are not my opinion).
PT concludes that yes, folks, there was collusion to influence American politics.
The failure of the FBI and the CIA to disclose to members of Congress and the President that the information they briefed from the dossier had been paid for by the Clinton campaign is much more than gross negligence and incompetence. It is prima facie evidence of collusion and meddling in a U.S. domestic election. Only the culprits weren't the Russians. As Pogo once said, "we have met the enemy and he is us."
Sic Semper Tyrannis
The Trump Dossier Timeline, A Democrat Disaster Looming
Publius Tacitus