We have made public 90 pages of heavily redacted U.S. Department of
State documents showing Obama State Department officials’ efforts to
disseminate classified information to multiple U.S. Senators
immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

[INSIDE JW]

[Watch]
[[link removed]]

DOCUMENTS REVEAL STATE DEPARTMENT EFFORTS TO UNDERMINE TRUMP

We have made public 90 pages
[[link removed]]
of
heavily redacted U.S. Department of State documents showing Obama
State Department officials’ efforts to disseminate classified
information to multiple U.S. Senators immediately prior to President
Donald Trump’s inauguration.


The information, which included raw intelligence, purported to show
“malign
[[link removed]
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Among the
senators receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner
(D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN).


We obtained the documents through our June 2018 Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department after it failed
to respond to a February 2018 request seeking records of the Obama
State Department’s last-minute efforts to share classified
information about Russia election interference issues with Democratic
Senator Ben Cardin (_Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State _
[[link removed].
1:18-cv-01381)).


A January 13, 2017, email from Hera Abbasi,
[[link removed]]
a former congressional
advisor in the State Department’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs,
suggests that the intelligence community was providing “raw intel
[[link removed]
to Sen. Warner. Such an exchange almost certainly would have been
coordinated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
(ODNI): “Yes, that is correct. Warner/raw intel stuff is going thru
IC channels.” (Abbasi previously worked in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
office and was a 2017 Next Generation National Security Fellow at the
liberal Center for a New American Security. Abbasi donated $725
[[link removed]]
to
the Clinton campaign and Act Blue during the 2016 election cycle.)


The documents we uncovered show early in the process of gathering and
clearing classified information – beginning a day after Sen. Mark
Warner (D-VA) formally asked Secretary of State John Kerry for
“intelligence products
[[link removed]
and “raw intelligence” on Russian involvement in the 2016 election
– Assistant Secretary of State Julia Frifield brings Senior Advisor
and Investigations Counsel Zachary Schram into the loop in a January
5, 2017, email chain, in which she says Schram would help “figure
out the best way
[[link removed]]
to
get these to the Hill.” Frifield was an Obama appointee who
previously served as Maryland Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski’s
Chief of Staff. (Frifield contributed $2,700
[[link removed]]
to the
2016 Clinton campaign.)


On January 11, 2017, former State Department Senior Congressional
Advisor Katherine Harris
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sends
an email to Abbasi; Naz Durakoglu
[[link removed]],
who was a senior advisor
to the Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs; Kathleen
Kavalec, and others: “If we are not going through our standard CDP
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[Collection
Due Process] process, others in H need to weigh in on how to move
these to the Hill.”


In emails written on January 10 and 11, 2017, from Abbasi to Durakoglu
and Kavalec, Abassi expresses the need to get the documents cleared
“as soon as possible (ASAP
[[link removed]


On January 17, 2017, three days before Trump’s inauguration, Kavalec
emails Abbasi, Durakoglu and others emphasizing, again, that getting
the documents to Cardin and Warner is a priority
[[link removed]]
and
urges the process to be sped up:


Agree this is a priority… and I don’t see why lengthy reviews are
required. I would suggest we send up the things that can go
immediately, and if there is any concern about specific internal
documents, those be adjudicated separately and sent up as a follow-on.


In a January 18, 2017, email from Naz Durakoglu to Elizabeth Lawrence,
Abbasi, Kerem Bilge, and others regarding the processing of the
request, Durakoglu writes, “there is a time sensitivity
[[link removed]]
to
these docs.”


Shedding additional light on possible irregularities in the release
process, a January 17, 2017, email reveals that ODNI, then led by
James Clapper, was involved in clearing cables
[[link removed]]
for
release to the Hill. State Department official Cody Walsh emails
Schram and Lauren Gills that the ODNI is “fine” with the State
Department “sharing … cables with the Hill.”


On January 13, 2017, at 10:27 a.m., Durakoglu emails more than a dozen
State Department employees, invoking the name of then-State Department
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to reiterate the need
to accelerate the process
[[link removed]]
of
getting materials prepared to go to the Hill: “Hi All. This is a
priority for our Assistant Secretary…Is there anything we can do to
better facilitate the process?”


Two minutes later, Durakoglu emails Kerem Bilge and two others:
“Where are we on clearances? Do I need to ask Toria to raise with
Julia? The clock is ticking
[[link removed]
Durakoglu,
at the time, was a senior adviser to Nuland. Durakoglu currently works
for The Atlantic Council. She contributed $1,600
[[link removed]]
to
the Clinton campaign in 2016.


The concluding, unredacted section of an otherwise heavily redacted
email sent on Friday, January 13, 2017, by former Foreign Service
Officer Kerem Bilge to numerous State employees indicates the
intense time pressure
[[link removed]]
under
which State officials were operating to beat the Inauguration-Day
deadline:

> **** PLEASE CLEAR THE ACTION MEMO BY NOON TUESDAY [Jan. 17].

> **** PLEASE CLEAR ON THE ACTUAL PACKAGE OF DOCUMENTS, IF YOU HAVE
> NOT DONE SO ALREADY, BY NOON TUESDAY [Jan. 17].[Emphasis in
> original]

> I want to get the whole package into the EUR front office today.
> This means we can get it out of EUR and to M [Undersecretary for
> Management] on Wednesday [Jan. 18], then H can courier it to the
> Hill on Thursday [Jan 19].

In a January 18, 2017, email, as time was running out, Elizabeth
Lawrence described getting the package of cables to Cardin and Warner
as “urgent
[[link removed]
“This is an urgent package from EUR that they’re trying to get to
the Hill ASAP. Please review so we can get it up to M.” (Lawrence is
a career foreign service
[[link removed]]
officer, now the Consul
in New Delhi, and was previously a Foreign Policy Advisor to Illinois
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin. A D.C.-based State Department employee
with her name is on record as having donated a cumulative total
of $1,000
[[link removed]]
to
the Clinton campaign in 2016.)


The final batch of cables was stored in Kavalec’s safe
[[link removed]].


President Trump was inaugurated less than 24 hours later.


These documents show how the Obama State Department, staffed by
Clinton donors, improperly, and perhaps illegally, rushed classified
information to their anti-Trump allies in the U.S. Senate. The Obama
State Department was central to the conspiracy to smear President
Trump with Russiagate lies and innuendo. The Justice Department must
expand any Spygate criminal investigation to include this agency.


We previously released documents
[[link removed]]
showing
classified information was researched and disseminated to multiple
U.S. Senators by the Obama administration immediately prior to
President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The documents reveal that
among those receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner
(D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN). A
January 19, 2017, email
[[link removed]]
from
Durakoglu, sums it up: “We made the deadline! Thank you everyone
for what was truly a Department-wide effort!”


We also previously released an email exchange between then-Assistant
Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya
Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher
Steele, discussing a “face-to-face
[[link removed]
meeting on a “Russian matter.”


In May 2019, we uncovered documents
[[link removed]]
showing
a conversation between Kavalec and former Associate Deputy Attorney
General Bruce Ohr, discussing the targeting of Donald Trump with
Steele dossier material.


In June, we made public documents
[[link removed]]
revealing
that State Department “Special Coordinator for Libya” Jonathan
Winer played a key role in facilitating Steele’s access to other top
government officials, prominent international business executives.
Winer was even approached by a movie producer about making a movie
about the Russiagate targeting of President Trump.


We also uncovered documents
[[link removed]]
showing
Nuland and Winer coordinating with then-House Minority Whip Steny
Hoyer’s (D-MD) national security advisor, Daniel Silverberg to work
on Russia dossier materials provided by Steele.


REVEALED: DOJ DISCUSSIONS ON ROSENSTEIN WEARING WIRE TO GET TRUMP


If you had any doubts that top Justice Department officials were
plotting to remove President Donald Trump, and that Rod Rosenstein was
involved, you need to read the latest emails we have uncovered.


We have released 14 pages
[[link removed]]
of
records from the Department of Justice showing officials’ efforts in
responding to media inquiries centering on talks within the DOJ/FBI
allegedly invoking the 25th Amendment to “remove” President
Donald Trump from office and former Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein offering to wear a “wire” to record his conversations
with the president.


The records show that, following a September 21, 2018, report
[[link removed]]
on
Rosenstein suggesting he would wear a wire to secretly record Trump
and his discussions on using the 25th Amendment, Rosenstein sought to
ensure the media would have “difficulty” finding anyone in the DOJ
to comment and a concerted effort within the DOJ to frame the
reporting as “inaccurate” and “factually incorrect.”


The records show DOJ officials had also discussed characterizing
Rosenstein’s reported offer of wearing a wire to record Trump as
merely “sarcastic.”


Additionally, the records show DOJ Public Affairs officer Sarah Isgur
Flores, after conferring with other top DOJ officials and
Rosenstein’s office about her email exchange with _New York
Times_ reporter Adam Goldman, waited 12 hours to forward the email
exchange to DOJ Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker. Former White House
Chief of Staff John Kelly had referred to Whitaker as the
president’s “eyes and ears
[[link removed]
in the DOJ.


We obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) lawsuit
[[link removed]]
filed
after the Justice Department failed to respond to three separate FOIA
requests dated September 21, 2018 (_Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department
of Justice_
[[link removed]
_(No.
1:19-cv-00388)). The lawsuit seeks all written and audio/visual
records of any FBI/DOJ discussions regarding the 25th Amendment and
plans to secretly record President Trump in the Oval Office.


The records we obtained include a September 21, 2018, email
[[link removed]]
from
Assistant U.S. Attorney (DOJ/NSD) Harvey Eisenberg to Rosenstein
informing the DAG that Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima had
called inquiring about a _New York Times_ report on the
25thAmendment/wire discussion, Rosenstein responds: “Thanks!
Hopefully we are being successful, and the reporters are having
difficulty finding anybody to comment about things. [Remainder of
email redacted.]” Apparently in response to the redacted portion of
Rosenstein’s reply, Eisenberg responds, “I’m aware. Besides
letting you know, [redacted]. My best to you and the family.”
Rosenstein replies, “I don’t mean about me. [Redacted.]”


The emails also detail the DOJ’s response
[[link removed]]
to
the initial story as it was being prepared by the_ New York Times_.
On September 20, 2018, the _Times_’ Goldman emails DOJ’s Flores
that he and fellow reporter Mike Schmidt were working on a story and
wanted a DOJ response to certain questions, including that at a May
16, 2017, meeting of senior federal law enforcement officials,
Rosenstein offered to wear a “wire” to record his conversations
with Trump. “He also said McCabe could wear a wire.”


In a second request for comment, Goldman alleges that in a separate
conversation between Rosenstein and McCabe, they discussed using the
25th Amendment “to remove President Trump” and “Rosenstein said
that he may be able to get (then-Attorney General Jeff) Sessions and
Kelly to go along with the plan.”


In a third request for comment, Goldman said he’d learned that
Rosenstein in a May 12, 2017, conversation at the DOJ Command Center
“appeared ‘upset’ and ‘emotional’ over the Comey firing.”


In a fourth request for comment, Goldman said that in a May 14, 2017,
conversation with McCabe, “Rosenstein asked McCabe to reach out to
Comey to seek advice about appointing a special counsel. McCabe
believed that was a bad idea.”


In a fifth and final request for which he sought DOJ comment, Goldman
wrote, “Rosenstein considered appointing (former Deputy Attorney
General) Jim Cole as the special counsel.”


On Sept 20, 2018, Flores forwarded the Goldman email to “Annie”
and “Bill” — apparently White House Deputy Counsel Annie
Donaldson
[[link removed]]
and White
House Communications Director Bill Shine — telling Donaldson,
“Boss calling Don re the below – if you think appropriate, share
with Don [presumably referring to White House Counsel Don McGahn]”.
She tells Shine, “We’ve sent a response from the DAG that’s
below and had someone in the room dispute the ‘wire’ part noting
the dag was being sarcastic.” She then includes the DAG response,
which reads, “The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and
factually incorrect. I will not further comment on a story based on
anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the Department and
are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about
this: based on my personal dealings with the President, there is no
basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”


Shine thanks Flores and asks her to “share with Elliott ASAP.”
Flores responds that if Shine is directing her to share with Elliott,
“I don’t think I know who that is referring to.” Flores sent
that response at 10:09 PM on September 20, but Flores waits until
10:00 a.m. the next day to forward the entire exchange to DOJ Chief of
Staff Whitaker, saying: “Should have sent this to you last night.”


In a mostly redacted email exchange
[[link removed]]
on
the evening of September 20, 2018, shows the efforts of officials in
the Public Affairs and DAG’s office to produce a response to the
impending news article. DOJ Official Bradley Weinsheimer forwarded to
Flores the “DAG response” to the allegations in the article,
saying “DAG has cleared this, which is what we just discussed.” He
then provides the official DAG response about the allegations over
Rosenstein wanting to invoke the 25th Amendment against Trump as
being “inaccurate and factually incorrect.” Deputy Attorney
General’s office official Ed O’Callaghan responds, “Think
good.” The rest of his response is redacted under (b)(5) –
deliberative process.


In the final draft of the official DAG response approved by
O’Callaghan, the statement is changed from “Based on my dealings
with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment”
to “Based on my personal dealings with the President, there is no
basis to invoke the 25thAmendment.”


It is remarkable that we have done more to investigate the DOJ/FBI’s
discussions about overthrowing President Trump than the DOJ or
Congress. These documents essentially confirm the coup discussions
about wearing a wire when speaking with President Trump and plans to
remove him under the 25h Amendment.


NORTH CAROLINA FREES HUNDREDS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WANTED BY FEDS


What is going on in North Carolina? Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog
has been following developments, and now has the latest:


Weeks after Judicial Watch REPORTED
[[link removed]]
that
the sheriff of North Carolina’s biggest county released numerous
violent illegal immigrant criminals from custody, new federal stats
reveal that the problem is statewide. Nearly 500 offenders with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers have been
discharged into communities throughout the Tar Heel State this fiscal
year, which doesn’t end until next month so the number is likely to
grow. A Charlotte NEWS OUTLET
[[link removed]]
obtained
the latest figures from ICE, which operates under the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). In the article a senior DHS source condemns
North Carolina law enforcement officials, reminding them that they are
obstructing federal law and endangering the American public.


So far 489 illegal aliens with ICE detainers have been discharged from
North Carolina jails in the last ten months, including those charged
with serious crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, arson and sex
offenses. The new data does not break down which county jail the
perpetrators were released from, but we know from previous disclosures
that Mecklenburg County, the state’s largest, is notorious for
protecting illegal aliens from the feds. In fact, when the current
sheriff, Garry McFadden got elected in 2018, he immediately ended a
program known as 287(G)
[[link removed]]
that notifies ICE
of jail inmates in the country illegally. The program enhances the
safety and security of communities by creating partnerships with state
and local law enforcement agencies to identify and remove aliens who
are amenable to removal from the United States. It is a mutually
beneficial agreement, ICE says, that identifies, arrests and serves
warrants and detainers of incarcerated foreign-born criminals. The
program has identified and removed from the U.S. gang members, sex
offenders and murderers and has reduced the number of criminal
offenders that are released back into communities. “Federal, state
and local officers working together provide a tremendous benefit to
public safety through increased law enforcement communication and
overall community policing effectiveness,” according to ICE.


But Mecklenburg County proudly offers illegal aliens sanctuary and
evidently that includes violent offenders. ICE recently DISCLOSED
[[link removed]]
that
McFadden’s agency has freed more than 20 serious criminals,
including rapists, child molesters, kidnappers, burglars, and those
charged with gun-related and drug crimes. Most of the illegal
immigrants are from Central America and Mexico, but a few are from
India, Afghanistan, Liberia and Sri Lanka. Among them is Oscar
Pacheco-Leonardo, a previously deported Honduran charged with rape and
child sex offenses. Thankfully, ICE arrested him last month during a
targeted enforcement operation because Mecklenburg County law
enforcement officials released him from custody despite his violent
history. The federal agency accused Mecklenburg County of releasing a
serious public safety threat onto the streets of Charlotte where he
was free to potentially harm others for nearly two months until his
capture by ICE. “The Mecklenburg County sheriff’s decision to
restrict cooperation with ICE serves as an open invitation to aliens
who commit criminal offenses that Mecklenburg County is a safe haven
for persons seeking to evade federal authorities, and residents of
Mecklenburg County are less safe today than last year due these
policies,” the agency’s regional director said in a STATEMENT
[[link removed]].


Incredibly, a growing number of local municipalities offer illegal
immigrants sanctuary and refuse to cooperate with federal authorities,
even when it involves dangerous criminals. Just a few months ago
Judicial Watch REPORTED
[[link removed]]
that
various California law enforcement agencies released 16 illegal
immigrants with criminal records during a three-month period. Some
were arrested and released multiple times by the same local law
enforcement agency after committing felonies. In all of the cases, ICE
issued detainers but local police ignored the federal agency to
protect the illegal alien from deportation, instead freeing the
perpetrator back into the community. Offenders include Mexican,
Honduran and Salvadoran nationals charged with murder, rape, assault
with a deadly weapon, spousal abuse, driving under the influence of
alcohol, possession of illegal drugs and other serious crimes. One
23-year-old Honduran man was booked and released in San Francisco ten
times in less than a year for crimes ranging from burglary, vehicle
theft and driving without a license. In each of the arrests, ICE
issued a detainer but the San Francisco Police Department disregarded
it and let the man go.


“ON WATCH WITH CHRIS FARRELL” ADDRESSES THE SECOND AMENDMENT


A special edition of “On Watch with Chris Farrell” with an expert
panel will be broadcast on the One America News Network on both
Saturday and Sunday at 5 pm ET.


This week’s discussion focuses on the attacks on your Second
Amendment rights. American companies are caving-in to pressure from
the anti-gun crowd. Some presidential candidates are talking about gun
buy-back schemes. And, San Francisco recently labeled the NRA a
“domestic terrorist organization.”


This week’s guests are Cam Edwards, the former NRATV host, and now
the new editor of the website BEARING ARMS
[[link removed]
Dr. John R. Lott Jr., a world-recognized
expert on guns and crime and founder of the CRIME PREVENTION RESEARCH
CENTER
[[link removed]
and Rachel Bovard, senior
director of policy at the CONSERVATIVE PARTNERSHIP INSTITUTE
[[link removed]].


Watch One America News this Saturday and Sunday at 5 pm ET. Check
local listings for show times in your
area
[link removed]
[[link removed]]





Until next week …


The post New Evidence of State Department Efforts to Undermine Trump
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appeared first on Judicial Watch
[[link removed]].



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