RUTHFULLY YOURS

America has been inundated by the words dossier, memo, collusion, FISA, Carter Page. They all come back to the actions of one man: Christopher Steele. Which is why the only news that matters this week is that the former British spy’s credibility has been dismantled.

To the extent the U.S. press has focused on Mr. Steele, it has been to portray him in heroic epic style. A Washington Post profile told how Mr. Steele, a former MI6 agent who left in 2009 to start his own firm, felt “professional obligations” to take his dossier to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s how “worried” and “rattled” and “alarmed” he was about the Trump -Kremlin “plot.” The FBI welcomed this “well-trusted” source, who had provided information in the past, as a “peer”—only later to let our hero down.

This is the narrative put forward by Mr. Steele and his paymaster, Fusion GPS. They and their press friends have an obvious interest in propagating it. But the new facts about Mr. Steele’s behavior destroy this tale, and show how badly the FBI got snookered.

To be sure, the FBI should have known better. Even if Mr. Steele had previously been helpful, the bureau had every reason to be wary in 2016. This wasn’t like prior collaborations. He was coming to the FBI as a paid political operative, hired by Fusion, as a subcontractor for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Opposition researchers are not retained to present considered judgment. They are retained to slime an opponent and benefit a client.

The FBI also had reason to view his research with skepticism—on grounds of its tabloid-like allegations, and also on the near-fantastical claim of skill that underlay it. To wit, that a man who had been out of official spy rings for seven years was nonetheless able, in a matter of weeks and with just a few calls from London, where he lives, to unravel an international conspiracy that had eluded the CIA, FBI, MI6 and every other Western intelligence agency, all of which have access to the globe’s most sophisticated surveillance tools.

But rather than proceed with caution, the FBI swallowed the whole package. According to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s declassified criminal referral, former Director James Comey testified that the bureau couldn’t meaningfully corroborate the dossier, but used it in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court proceedings anyway because Mr. Steele had previously provided “reliable” information. CONTINUE AT SITE

When Rep. Keith Ellison ran for Democratic National Committee chairman, he faced questions about past associations with the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in December 2016, Mr. Ellison angrily accused his critics of a “smear campaign” for “talking about something that happened in 1995,” when Mr. Ellison was 32. It turns out Mr. Ellison—who lost his bid but is now the DNC’s deputy chairman—wasn’t telling the full story.

In 2006, during his first run for Congress from Minnesota, Mr. Ellison conceded he had worked with the Nation of Islam for 18 months before the October 1995 Million Man March. In a letter, he assured Jewish groups: “I reject and condemn the anti-Semitic statements and actions of the Nation of Islam [and] Louis Farrakhan. ”

A decade later, during the DNC leadership contest, he accused Mr. Farrakhan and his organization of sowing “hatred and division, including, anti-Semitism, homophobia and a chauvinistic model of manhood. I disavowed them long ago, condemned their views, and apologized.”

In September 2013, however, Messrs. Ellison and Farrakhan dined together. The occasion was a visit by Iran’s newly elected President Hassan Rouhani to the United Nations. Mr. Rouhani invited Muslim leaders from around the U.S. to dinner after addressing the U.N. General Assembly. Contemporaneous news reports placed Mr. Farrakhan at the dinner. Unreported by mainstream outlets was the presence of Mr. Ellison, along with Reps. Gregory Meeks of New York and Andre Carson of Indiana. (All three are Democrats; Messrs. Ellison and Carson are Muslim.)

The Nation of Islam website documents the event, noting that Mr. Rouhani “hosted the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Muslim leaders from different Islamic communities and members of the U.S. Congress at a private meeting . . . at the One UN Hotel in Manhattan Sept. 24, 2013 across the street from the UN headquarters.” The Final Call, a Nation of Islam publication, added that “ Keith Ellison of Minnesota . . . participated in the dialogue” after dinner and includes photos of Messrs. Farrakhan and Ellison at the tables. The Michigan-based Islamic House of Wisdom also reported on the meeting, with additional photos. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/02/08/glazov-moment-the-memo-and-the-lefts-national-security-lie/

In this new edition of the Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie focuses onThe Memo and the Left’s “National Security” Lie, exposing the Left’s bizarre and contradictory protests about Nunes’ memo.

Don’t miss it!

The Associated Press is trying to make hay out of a non-issue, highlighting that former President George W. Bush is somehow at odds with the Trump administration over the issue of Russian election meddling.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Former President George W. Bush said on Thursday that “there’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled” in the 2016 American presidential election, forcefully rebutting fellow Republican Donald Trump’s denials of Moscow trying to affect the vote.

While never mentioning President Trump by name, Bush appeared to be pushing back on Trump’s attempts to have warmer relations with Russia, as well as his comments on immigration.

Actually, none of this describes reality. Did he really forcefully push? AP gave no evidence of that in its story. Meanwhile, Trump, via his United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, and others, has condemned in downright overharsh terms the Russian electoral meddling problem. What’s more, relations with Russia are the frostiest they’ve ever been, as the full shutdown of the Russian consulates in San Francisco and elsewhere – as well as the word of my own Russian sources – would suggest. There’s no daylight on the issue, so score nothing on the ignorant and ideologically motivated Associated Press piece.

Actually, it sounds like the AP was trying to make news out of a lot of non-news. The subject at hand was George W. Bush’s speaking engagement in Abu Dhabi, which was put on by the Milken Institute. Though I suspect he was paid well to attend this event, which was dubbed ‘A Conversation with George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States.’ I couldn’t find any evidence of quid pro quo, the delayed bribery of high-paid speeches that made his father as well as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama so famous in their post-presidencies. The Milken Institute is reputable and so far as I can tell, there wasn’t any. The AP didn’t have any news there.

Former President Obama wanted “to know everything” the FBI was doing in its investigation into claims that Russia was interfering in the 2016 election, a new report suggests, raising the specter of a sitting president becoming involved in a plot to rig the 2016 election.

It was a year ago the outlines of a Watergate-like conspiracy emerged in which a term-limited Democrat president used the privacy-invading apparatus of the state to spy on a Republican presidential candidate. Watergate differed in that President Nixon didn’t get involved in the plot against the Democratic National Committee until later as an accomplice after the fact.

But this new evidence suggests Obama may have been part of a sinister anti-democratic cabal from the beginning.

The assertion that Obama wanted “to know everything we’re doing” came in a private Sept. 2, 2016, text message from FBI lawyer Lisa Page to FBI agent Peter Strzok, with whom she was having an extramarital affair at the time. (The exact message, time-stamped 1:50 p.m., reads “Yes, bc potus wants to know everything we are doing.”) In a separate, previously revealed text message to Page, Strzok wrote something cryptic about an “insurance policy” in case Donald Trump got elected. Some have speculated he was referring to the salacious, unverified dossier the DNC paid rent-a-spy Christopher Steele to compile that purports to show Trump’s nefarious links to Russia.

At one point, the foul-mouthed Trump-hating duo whose text messages show a visceral contempt for Republican voters, both worked for Special Counsel Robert Mueller who has been investigating the still-unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that then-candidate Donald Trump somehow colluded with Russia to throw the presidential contest his way.