BREAKING- House Judiciary and Oversight Committee postpones tomorrow’s hearing with Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein. #MAGA #TrumpTrain #Dobbs
JOHN SOLOMON BREAKING Breaking News: Papadopoulos told FBI source there was no Russia collusion …. before FISA warrant was obtained.
A convenient omission? Trump campaign adviser denied collusion to FBI source early on
Just weeks after the FBI opened a dramatic counterintelligence probe into Donald Trump and Russia, one of his presidential campaign advisers emphatically told an undercover bureau source there was no election collusion occurring because such activity would be treasonous.
George Papadopoulos says his spontaneous admission to London-based professor Stefan Halper occurred in mid-September 2016 — well before FBI agents and the Obama Justice Department sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant to collect Trump campaign communications in the final days before the election.
“He was there to probe me on the behest of somebody else,” Papadopoulos told me in an interview this week, recalling the Halper meeting. “He said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, it’s great that Russia is helping you and your campaign, right George?’”
Papadopoulos said Halper also suggested the Trump campaign was involved in the hacking and release of Hillary Clinton’s emails that summer. “I think I told him something along the lines of, ‘I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What you are talking about is treason. And I have nothing to do with that, so stop bothering me about it,’” Papadopoulos recalled.
The former campaign aide is set to testify behind closed doors Thursday before two House panels.
Sources who saw the FISA warrant and its three renewals tell me there is no mention of Papadopoulos’s denial, an omission of exculpatory evidence that GOP critics in Congress are likely to cite as having misled the court.
A source directly familiar with the Russia probe declined to discuss specifics of the Papadopoulos-Halper conversations but acknowledged the FBI possessed one or more transcripts that called into question the Trump campaign’s — and specifically Papadopoulos’s — alleged complicity with Russia.
The FBI officially opened the Trump-Russia case on July 31, 2016, based on suspicions that Papadopoulos had prior knowledge that Russia hacked Clinton’s emails, but it quickly pivoted by early fall 2016 to evidence such as the Democratic-funded dossier produced by Christopher Steele, and Trump campaign adviser Carter Page’s trips to Moscow. The FISA warrant was drafted to target surveillance at Page but also cited Papadopoulos in a section that suggested Russia was coordinating election collusion through Page and "perhaps other individuals associated" with Trump's campaign.
“The truth is, the Papadopoulos predicate went into reversal, but rather than shut down the probe at that point, the bureau turned to other leads like Steele and Page without giving the court a full picture,” one source said. more here…
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/412836-a-convenient-omission-trump-campaign-adviser-denied-collusion-to-fbi-source
Armies of lawyers are mobilizing to keep an eye on chaos at the polls
WASHINGTON
Fearing massive voter fraud and questionable vote counting, Republicans, Democrats and interest groups are all taking the unusual step of dispatching armies of lawyers in this non-presidential election year to ward off potential trouble at the polls.
“I’ve never seen anything like it for a midterm,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau. “It does look much more consistent with issues that we address in (presidential) elections. For a midterm election, it’s extraordinary. But this is an extraordinary time.”
Attorneys and poll watchers will be at voting sites and manning war rooms in nearly every state, looking at almost every aspect of the voting process and prepared act if they see something that they feel could hurt their candidate or cause.
The federal government also plans to be watching, as the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will send lawyers to several states. For the 2016 election, the department dispatched more than 500 employees to 67 jurisdictions in 28 states. The department has not detailed specific plans for this year.
Massive displays of legal force are common in presidential election years, but the large presence of attorneys in this year’s midterm election effort is unprecedented, several experts said.
The legal maneuvering is already underway. Voting rights and civil rights groups have filed lawsuits in the past week charging Georgia authorities with rejecting a disproportionate number of absentee ballots and with discrimination in verifying new voter registrations.
A second dispute centers on nearly 53,000 voter registrations that have been placed on a pending list because they do not satisfy an “exact match” requirement with a person’s Georgia driver license or Social Security card. The state’s Republican-controlled general assembly last year approved the exact match requirement.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican who is running against Democrat Stacey Abrams for governor, has defended his stewardship of the election. He says the voting issue is a manufactured crisis created by Abrams.
National Democratic and Republican Party officials declined to comment on their Election Day legal strategies other than to say they will be ready for whatever happens.
But some numbers show the emphasis that the parties and outside groups are putting on potential legal action this election cycle.
For the latest updates on the 2018 midterms, sign up for news alerts here. To support more elections coverage like this, click here for a digital-only subscription.
The NAACP, the Brennan Center of Justice at New York University School of Law, and Common Cause are partnering with the liberal-leaning Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which says it has 4,000 attorneys who have volunteered to work the elections.
Some of those lawyers will man a nationwide voter hotline and local call centers on Election Day in key states like Florida, Georgia and Texas, said Marcia Johnson-Blanco, co-director of the committee’s Voting Rights Project.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/midterms/article220481405.html
263 San Francisco Bay Area priests alleged to be sexual predators
By Corky Siemaszko and Alex Johnson
The attorney for a California clergy abuse survivor accused the leaders of three San Francisco Bay Area dioceses on Tuesday of engaging in an "institutional cover-up of an enormous magnitude" and released a list of 263 local priests whom they branded sexual predators.
The priests named in the 66-page report, compiled by the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates of St. Paul, Minnesota, are from the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the dioceses of Oakland and San Jose.
Anderson has sued all 11 dioceses in California on behalf of Tom Emens, 50, who has said he was 10 years old when a priest who died in 2002 repeatedly molested him. Earlier this month, he released a separate 120-page report on clerical sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles that named more than 300 alleged clerical offenders.
Anderson said at a news conference Tuesday that the new names were culled from publicly available documents. He said he believed the bishops had the names of other sexually abusive priests whom "they have not told the public about, that they have not told the public about."
"There is a culture of secrecy, and every single bishop in California has made a conscious choice to keep the names that they know to be criminals, who are sexual predators," he said.
Emens claimed the priests in the report were just the tip of the iceberg.
"What happened to me should not happen to any child," he said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/263-san-francisco-bay-area-priests-branded-sexual-abusers-survivor-n923506?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
Some in migrant caravan 'have significant criminal histories,' from regions including Mideast: Homeland Security
Homeland Security officials said Tuesday that among the thousands of migrants heading for the United States border are some “gang members” and people with “significant criminal histories.”
Department spokesperson Tyler Houlton said on Twitter that the caravan, 7,000 migrants strong by some estimates, includes citizens not only of Central American countries, but also of the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and “elsewhere.”
“.@DHSgov can confirm that there are individuals within the caravan who are gang members or have significant criminal histories,” another tweet read. He did not offer more specifics.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/some-in-caravan-have-significant-criminal-histories-from-regions-including-mideast-dhs-says
Judicial Watch released 49 pages of newly obtained docs from the State Department about the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its overseas taxpayer funding of George Soros’s left-wing nonprofit organizations in the nation of Albania.
U.S. Embassy Officials in Albania Shown Working Directly with Soros Operatives to Channel Grant Money into Left-Wing Operations that Attack Traditional, Pro-American Groups, Governments and Policies in Name of ‘Civil Society’
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 49 pages of new documents obtained from the U.S. Department of State about U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding for George Soros’s left-wing nonprofit organizations in Albania. The documents deal primarily with the activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the director of Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents show U.S. grant money flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional, pro-American groups, governments and policies.
Judicial Watch filed a May 26, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and USAID after they failed to respond to March 31, 2017, FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-01012)).
The records reveal that Soros operative Dobrushi was the first person on a list of invitees by then U.S. Ambassador to Albania Donald Lu to attend an “election rollout event” held at the U.S. Embassy on April 27, 2015. The event was intended to “launch U.S. assistance for the June local elections,” being held in Tirana, Albania. As Judicial Watch previously reported in an April 4, 2018, press release, Ambassador Lu has been closely associated with Soros and the socialist government in Albania, which he assisted by denying U.S. visas to conservative jurists from the conservative party in Albania. Lu has since been nominated by the Trump administration to become US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan. more here
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-documents-show-state-department-and-usaid-working-with-soros-group-to-channel-money-to-mercenary-army-of-far-left-activists-in-albania/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=press%20release
NEW: Judicial Watch EXCLUSIVE RAW Video: Caravan Migrants "From All Over The World."
https://youtu.be/I4Kj8pHwVCk
BREAKING: First Baptist Church in Wakefield is on fire and it doesn't look good
https://twitter.com/LiamWBZ/status/1054883423070945280
Judicial Watch filed its FOIA lawsuit w/ the Defense Department seeking information on the September 2016 contract between the Defense Department and the prominent Spygate figure Stefan Halper — who allegedly spied on @realDonaldTrump's campaign.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sues-defense-department-for-details-of-contracts-with-anti-trump-spygate-figure-stefan-halper/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=press%20release