AP Reporters Pushed FBI to Prosecute
Manafort; Benghazi Docs Confirm Clinton Cover-Up; State Dept. Monitored
People It Didn't Like
AP Reporters Pushed FBI to Prosecute Manafort
The Associated Press, founded in 1846 as a cooperative association of
newspapers, has enjoyed a reputation for independence and fairness over the
years. Lately, however, it has come under criticism
for what some see as a left/liberal bias.
Certainly, what we have just learned about its dealings with anti-Trump
partisans in the Justice Department does nothing to improve our perception
of the news service.
We have released two sets of heavily redacted FBI documents – 28
pages and 38
pages –about an April 11,
2017, “off-the-record” meeting set
up by then-Chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud
Section Andrew Weissmann.
The meeting included representatives of the DOJ, the FBI and the
Associated Press in which AP reporters provided information on former
Trump Campaign Director Paul Manafort, including the numeric code to
Manafort’s storage locker.
Two months later, in
early June, Weissmann was hired to work on Robert Mueller’s special
counsel operation against President Trump. Weissman then reportedly
spearheaded the subsequent investigation and prosecution of Manafort.
Included among the new documents are two typed write-ups of the meeting’s
proceedings and handwritten notes taken during the meeting by two FBI
special agents.
According to a June 11, 2017, FBI
write-up:
The purpose of the meeting, as it was explained
to SSA [supervisory special agent, redacted] was to obtain
documents from the AP reporters that were related to their investigative
reports on Paul Manafort.
No such documents were included in the documents released to
us.
During the meeting, the AP reporters provided the FBI information about a
storage locker of Manafort (the Mueller special counsel operation raided
the locker on May
26, 2017):
The AP reporters advised that they had located a storage facility in
Virginia that belonged to Manafort…The code to the lock on the locker is
40944859. The reporters were aware of the Unit number and address, but they
declined to share that information.
The reporters shared the information that “payments for the locker
were made from the DM Partners account that received money from the
[Ukraine] Party of Regions.”
The notes suggest the AP pushed for criminal prosecution of
Manafort:
AP believes Manafort is in violation of the Foreign Agents
Registration Act (FARA), in that Manafort send [sic] internal U. S.
documents to officials in Ukraine AP has documentation proving this, as
well as Manafort noting his understanding doing so would get him into
trouble.
AP asked about the U.S. government charging Manafort with violating
Title 18, section 1001 for lying to government officials, and have asked if
the FBI has interviewed Manafort. FBI and DOJ had no comment on this
question.
Also, according to the FBI write-up, “The AP reporters asked about FARA
[Foreign Agents Registration Act] violations and they were generally told
that they are enforceable.”
Although, according to the FBI write-up, “no commitments were made [by
DOJ] to assist the reporters,” Andrew Weissmann asked the AP to contact
foreign authorities to follow up:
[A]fter the meeting was started and it was explained to the
reporters that there was nothing that the FBI could provide to them, the
reporters opted to ask a series of questions to see if the FBI would
provide clarification. No commitments were made to assist the reporters in
their further investigation into the life and activities of Paul Manafort
and the AP reporters understood that the meeting would be off the
record.
***
They [AP reporters] reiterated what they had written in their article,
which was a response from the Cypriot Anti-Money Laundering Authority
(MOKAS) that they [MOKAS] had fully responded to Department of Treasury
agents in response to [Treasury’s] request. The AP reporters were
interested in how this arrangement worked and if the U.S. had made a formal
request. FBI/DOJ did not respond, but Andrew Weissman [sic] suggested that
they ask the Cypriots if they had provided everything to which they had
access or if they only provided what they were legally required to
provide.
***
The AP reporters asked if we [DOJ/FBI] would be willing to tell them if
they were off based [sic] or on the wrong traack [sic] and they were
advised that they appeared to have a good understanding of Manafort’s
business dealings.
The reporters asked about any DOJ request for the assistance of foreign
governments in the U.S. Government’s investigation of Manafort:
The AP reporters asked if there had been any official requests to
other countries. FBI/DOJ declined to discuss specifics, except to state
that the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty requests are negotiated by
diplomats, so they should remain at that level.
AP reporters told the FBI about payments in the “black
ledger,” a Ukrainian record of allegedly illegal off-the-books
payments:
The reporters advised that their next
report, which was scheduled to come out in the next day or so after the
meeting, would focus on confirming, to the extent that they could payments
in the so called “black ledger” that were allegedly made to
Manafort.
***
The impression that their sources give is that Manafort was not precise
about his finances, specifically as it related to the “black ledger.”
The AP reporters calculated that he received $60 to $80 million from his
work in Ukraine, during the time period the ledger was kept. According to
their review of the ledger, it appears that there is a slightly lesser
amount documented based on all of the entries. The AP reporters accessed a
copy of the ledger online, describing it as “public” document (Agent's
note - the ledger has been published in its entirety by the National
Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, after it was given to them by Sergei
Leshenko, Ukrainian RADA member [Ukrainian parliament] and investigative
reporter.)
The AP reporters discussed an extensive list of issues, companies, and
individuals that they felt should be investigated for possible criminal
activity, including a $50,000 payment to a men’s clothing store; a 2007
meeting with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; Loav Ltd., which was possibly
incorporated by Manafort; NeoCom, which the AP reporters implied was
incorporated solely to cover up money laundering; and other
matters.
The reporters described an “internal U.S. work product that had been sent
to Ukraine.” The reporters described it as an “internal White House
document.” The FBI report stated that it “was not clear if the document
was classified.”
Evidently referring to these documents, Manafort’s lawyers alleged that
Weissmann provided guidance and leaked grand jury testimony to
the AP reporters investigating Manafort.
This document production comes in our April, 2019 Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) lawsuit against
the U.S. Department of Justice (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.
1:19-cv-00879)) filed after the FBI failed to respond to a July 5,
2018, FOIA request for:
- All records concerning the April 2017 meeting between Department of
Justice and FBI personnel and representatives of The Associated Press. This
request includes all notes, reports, memoranda, briefing materials, or
other records created in preparation for, during, and/or pursuant to the
meeting.
- All records of communication between any representative of the
Department of Justice and any of the individuals present at the
aforementioned meeting.
Under Mueller, Weissmann became known
as “the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman
Paul Manafort,” which produced no evidence of collusion between Manafort,
the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. It indicted Manafort on
unrelated charges.
In an October 2017 article describing Weissmann as Mueller’s “Pit
Bull,” The New York Times wrote, “He is a top lieutenant
to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian
interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign.
Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into
collaborators — with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness,
depending on one’s perspective.” Weissman oversaw the pre-dawn home
raid of Manafort in what one former federal prosecutor described as
“textbook Weissmann terrorism.” Weissmann reportedly also attended
Hillary Clinton’s Election
Night party in New York.
In May 2019, we uncovered 73
pages of records from the DOJ containing text messages and calendar entries
of Weissmann showing he led the hiring effort for the investigation that
targeted President Trump.
In December 2017, we made
public two productions of DOJ documents showing strong support by
top DOJ officials for former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ refusal
to enforce President Trump’s Middle East travel ban executive order. In
one email, Weissmann applauds Yates, writing:
“I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest
respects.”
These latest shocking FBI reports evidence a corrupt collusion between the
DOJ and the media, specifically The Associated Press, to target Paul
Manafort. These reports are further reason for President Trump to pardon
Manafort and others caught up in Mueller’s abusive web.
This new evidence strengthens the widespread belief that the media are in
league with the anti-Trumpers in the administration and in the Congress.
New Benghazi Documents Confirm Clinton Email Cover-Up
Foggy Bottom, the nickname given to the State Department’s neighborhood
in the District of Columbia, would seem an appropriate term for the fog its
bureaucrats create and use to cover the email irregularities of former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Here’s the latest. We released new Clinton emails
on the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and would
have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email account if they had been released
when the State Department first uncovered them in 2014.
The long withheld email, clearly responsive to our lawsuit seeking
records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack,”
contains Clinton’s private email address and a conversation about the
YouTube video that sparked the Benghazi talking points scandal (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Our
FOIA lawsuit led
directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in
2015.
The Clinton email cover-up led to court-ordered
discovery into three specific areas: whether Secretary Clinton’s
use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the
State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015
amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately
searched for records responsive to our request. The court also authorized
discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of
Clinton’s email. (The court ruled that
the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to
government transparency.”)
The September 2012 email chain begins with an email to Clinton at her
private email address, “[email protected],” from Jacob
Sullivan, Clinton’s then-senior advisor and deputy chief of staff. The
email was copied to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then-chief of
staff, and then was forwarded to then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
for Strategic Communications and Clinton advisor Phillipe Reines:
From: Sullivan, Jacob J
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2012 11 :09 AM
To: ' [email protected]'
< [email protected]>
Cc: Mills, Cheryl D
Subject: Key points
HRC, Cheryl -
Below is my stab at tp’s for the Senator call. Cheryl, I've left the last
point blank for you. These are rough but you get the point.
I look forward to sitting down and having a Hillary~to-John conversation
about what we know. l know you were frustrated by the briefing we did and
I'm sorry our hands were tied in that setting.
It's important we see each other in person, but over the phone today I just
wanted to make a few points.
First, we have been taking this deadly seriously, as we should. I set up
the ARB in record time, with serious people on it. l will get to the bottom
of all the security questions. We are also in overdrive working to track
down the killers, and not just through the FBI. We will get this right.
Second, the White House and Susan were not making things up. They were
going with what they were told by the IC [Intelligence community].
The real story may have been obvious to you from the start (and indeed I
called it an assault by heavily armed militants in my first statement), but
the IC gave us very different information. They were unanimous about it.
Let me read you an email from the day before Susan went on the shows. It
provides the talking points for HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence] and for her public appearance. It's from a very senior
official at CIA, copying his counterparts at DNI [Director of National
Intelligence], NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center], and FBI:
Here are the talking points ...
--The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in
Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in
Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and
subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated
in the violent demonstrations.
-This assessment may change as additional information is collected and
analyzed and as currently available information continues to be
evaluated.
--The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with
Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths US
citizens.
That is exactly what Susan said, following the guidance from the IC. She
obviously got bad advice. But she was not shading the truth.
Third, you have to remember that the video WAS important. We had four
embassies breached because of protests inspired by it. Cairo, Tunis,
Khartoum, and Sanaa. We had serious security challenges in Pakistan and
Chennai and some other places. All this was happening at the same time. So
many of the contemporaneous comments about the video weren't referring in
any way to Benghazi. Now of course even in those countries it was about
much much more than the video, but the video was certainly a piece of it
one we felt we had to speak to so that our allies in those countries would
back us up.
(In fact, as we famously uncovered in 2014, the “talking points” that
provided the basis for Susan Rice’s false statements were created
by the Obama White House.)
We requested records related to the Benghazi talking points in May 2014. In
July 2014, we filed
suit. The Clinton email finally released this month was first
identified by the State Department in September, 2014 but was withheld
from us despite it specifically referencing talking points. After it was
specifically described in an Office of the Inspector General report,
the court ordered its production. It was only after we informed the
State Department that we were prepared to file a motion with the court to
compel production of the records that the Department relented and produced
the 2012 email in question.
(In an August 22, 2019, hearing,
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered production of the record in
granting us significant new discovery in the case. Judge
Lamberth said, “There is no FOIA exemption for political expedience,
nor is there one for bureaucratic incompetence.” The judge also stated
that the government has mishandled this case and the discovery of
information including former Secretary Clinton’s emails so poorly that
Judicial Watch may have the ability to prove they acted in “bad
faith.”)
This email is a twofer – it shows Hillary Clinton misled the U.S. Senate
on Benghazi and that the State Department wanted to hide the Benghazi
connection to the Clinton email scheme. Rather than defending her email
misconduct, the Justice Department has more than enough evidence to reopen
its investigations into Hillary Clinton.
The court is
considering whether to allow us to question Hillary Clinton and her top
aide in person and under oath about the email and Benghazi
controversies.
Last month, the State Department, under court order, finally provided us
a previously hidden email,
which shows top State Department officials used and were aware of Hillary
Clinton’s email account.
Our discovery over the last several months found many more details about
the scope of the Clinton email scandal and cover-up:
- John Hackett, former Director of Information Programs and Services
(IPS) testified
under oath that he had raised concerns that former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton’s staff may have “culled out 30,000” of the
secretary’s “personal” emails without following strict National
Archives standards. He also revealed that he believed there was
interference with the formal FOIA review process related to the
classification of Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails.
- Heather Samuelson, Clinton’s White House liaison at the State
Department, and later Clinton’s personal lawyer, admitted
under oath that she was granted immunity by the Department of Justice in
June 2016.
- Justin Cooper, former aide to President Bill Clinton and Clinton
Foundation employee who registered the domain name of the unsecure
clintonemail.com server that Clinton used while serving as Secretary of
State, testified
he worked with Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, to create
the non-government email system.
- In the interrogatory
responses of E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI
Counterintelligence Division, he stated that the agency found Clinton email
records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the
President.
- Jacob “Jake” Sullivan, Clinton’s senior advisor and deputy chief
of staff when she was secretary of state, testified
that both he and Clinton used her unsecure non-government email system to
conduct official State Department business.
- Eric Boswell, former assistant secretary of state for diplomatic
security during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, testified
that Clinton was warned twice against using unsecure BlackBerry’s and
personal emails to transmit classified material.
The Deep State has a secure home at the State Department.
Deep State Targets Trump Family, Lawyer, Journalists with Illicit
Spy Op?
George Orwell call your office. Then call George Soros’ office.
Obama lieutenants – planted throughout the government – used powerful
tools to spy on just about everyone not in their control. Remember UN
Ambassador Samantha Power allegedly unmasking
hundreds of Americans caught up in NSA tracking?
Now, as our Corruption Chronicles blog continues to report,
we have details on illicit targeting of President Trump’s son, lawyer,
and key journalists – all seemingly in an effort to protect Biden and,
yes, George Soros:
The State Department utilized a powerful Facebook-owned social media
tracking tool linked to leftist billionaire George Soros to unlawfully
monitor prominent U.S. conservative figures, journalists and persons with
ties to President Donald Trump, according to an agency source. The State
Department veteran identified Crowdtangle as the tool used to closely watch
more than a dozen U.S. citizens, including the president’s son, personal
attorney and popular television personalities such as Sean Hannity and
Laura Ingraham, among others.
Last week Judicial Watch launched an investigation
into the unlawful monitoring, which State Department sources say was
conducted by the agency in Ukraine at the request of ousted U.S. Ambassador
Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama appointee. Judicial Watch has obtained
information indicating Yovanovitch may have violated laws and government
regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons using
State Department resources. Yovanovitch reportedly ordered monitoring keyed
to the following search terms: Biden, Giuliani, Soros and
Yovanovitch. Judicial Watch filed a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department last week
and continues gathering facts from government sources. This week Judicial
Watch filed another FOIA
request for information related to the State Department’s use of
Crowdtangle.
A private, invitation-only engine, Crowdtangle describes itself as a
leading content discovery and social monitoring platform that can help identify
influencers and track rivals. It was launched in 2011 to organize
activism via social media and Facebook purchased it in 2016. Crowdtangle
monitors more than 5 million social media accounts and uses dashboards to
track keywords, data and specific topics across platforms. For years
Facebook has made Crowdtangle available to the mainstream media and in
January founder and CEO Brandon Silverman announced
he will give access to select academics and researchers in order to help
counter misinformation and abuse of social media platforms. “To date,
Crowdtangle has been available primarily to help newsrooms and media
publishers understand what is happening on the platform,” Silverman
writes. “We’re eager to make it available to this important new
set of partners and help continue to provide more transparency into how
information is being spread on social media.”
A leftwing, Soros-funded organization called Social Science Research Center
(SSRC) is charged with determining who is granted access to Crowdtangle.
Earlier this year Facebook announced
that SSRC will pick researchers who will gain access to its cherished
“privacy-protected” data. The statement assures that “Facebook did
not play any role in the selection of the individuals or their projects and
will have no role in directing the findings or conclusions of the
research.” That is left up to the SSRC, which claims that selected
researchers will use privacy-protected Facebook data to “ study
the platform’s impact on democracy worldwide” The nonprofit
describes itself as an international organization guided
by the belief that “justice, prosperity, and democracy all require better
understanding of complex social, cultural, economic, and political
processes.” In 2016 Soros’s Open Society Foundations gave the
SSRC nearly
$500,000 for a Latin America human rights and public health
initiative and a global “equality and antidiscrimination” program.
The 2018 Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy report confirms
that the State Department uses Crowdtangle and considers it an important
tool for social media managers to conduct official agency business
worldwide. The State Department’s head of Public Diplomacy training also
encourages the use of Crowdtangle to educate personnel about polling data
consumption and “the difference between impression and reach.” The
State Department’s Bureau
of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) actually includes a link
to Crowdtangle and reveals the agency uses it to track social media posts.
Nevertheless, ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons, as
sources say Yovanovitch did, using State Department resources would
constitute a violation of laws and government regulations. “This is not
an obscure rule, everyone in public diplomacy or public affairs knows they
can’t make lists and monitor U.S. citizens unless there is a major
national security reason,” a senior State Department official told
Judicial Watch last week when the story broke.
Until next week …
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