Confirmed: Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal helped spread Russia collusion fever before…

Legal Insurrection

William A Jacobson

via Free Republic

 

The Clintons created a media and law enforcement echo chamber of Russia collusion.

Earlier this week we wrote about the possible involvement of Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal in feeding information to Christoper Steele, author of the infamous Clinton/DNC funded dossier. That dossier formed a key part of the FBI’s presentation to the FISA court to obtain a warrant to surveil Carter Page.

One of the key links in the Blumenthal-Steele stories was former State Department employee Jonathan Winer:

The Russian Dossier: Enter, Sid

JUDICIAL WATCH

The strange case of the Russian dossier got even stranger this week with a new report from the Guardian raising a name from the seamy side of Clinton past. A “second Trump-Russia dossier” has been turned over to the FBI, the Guardian reported. The second dossier was compiled by Cody Shearer, who the Guardian identifies as a “a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the Clinton White House in the 1990s.”

That’s putting it mildly. Shearer in fact has long been linked to the sleaziest aspects of the Clinton operation, mainly through his close relationship with Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. Longtime observers of the Clinton ecosystem know that when Cody appears, Sid Blumenthal is not far behind. A ceaseless schemer, Blumenthal was so offensive to the Obama White House that he was banned from an official role at Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. But that barely slowed him down. As documented by Judicial Watch and others, Blumenthal was a constant presence by Mrs. Clinton’s side during her State Department years.

Blumenthal and Shearer are connected to a global network of intelligence and military freelancers. They played a dangerous game meddling in Libyan affairs after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. They supplied intelligence to Secretary of State Clinton in the weeks leading up to the Benghazi debacle and pitched deals to make money off the Libyan turmoil. ProPublica reports at length on the Blumenthal and Shearer’s Libyan efforts here. According to Judicial Watch’s reporting, during Mrs. Clinton’s State Department tenure, Blumenthal also promoted African business deals and meddled in European Union elections.

As for Shearer, he has a long history of dirty tricks. He’s been linked to Whitewater-era efforts to dirty up Bill Clinton critics; to shakedown politics involving the Cheyenne-Arapaho Indian tribe; and to fronting for Bosnian Serb butcher Radovan Karadzic. Read more about it here and here.

The Guardian reports that the new Shearer document makes some of the same allegations about Mr. Trump as the original Christopher Steele dossier, including “lewd acts at a five-star hotel” in Moscow. It also notes that Steele passed on the Shearer report to the FBI in October 2016, but would not vouch for its accuracy. That’s worth pausing over.

According to the Guardian, Steele provided “a copy [of the Shearer report] because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.” If the reporting here is accurate, that’s quite a coincidence-that Cody Shearer and Christopher Steele were hearing the same things from different sources at pretty much the same time. A closer look at timelines and sources might be revealing. If Sid and Cody are behind the original Russian dossier sources, that would be big news indeed.

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-russian-dossier-enter-sid?f=must_reads#ixzz56VnVFRK5
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Jim Jordan Reveals Key Figure Involved In Benghazi Involved In Steele Dossier

The Daily Caller

by Nick Givas

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan accused key Clinton allies of helping craft a second anti-Trump dossier and accused them of “rigging the game,” Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.”

Jordan was asked about a possible second dossier and said Clinton operatives Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer had paid Christopher Steele to do opposition research, but then told Steele which specific details to include.

“The names we keep hearing are Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer — people who have been around the Clintons as being a part of this. But I also think it’s kind of interesting because what it looks like is, they paid Steele to put together the dossier and told him what to put in,” Jordan said. “Talk about rigging the game and putting together a document that will serve your purposes as an opposition research document.”

“That is what the Clinton team did and then when you see names like Sidney Blumenthal coming up. We deposed this guy during the Benghazi hearings,” Jordan continued. “He has been with the Clintons forever. He was knee deep in the whole Libya, Benghazi story, particularly the story where they weren’t square with the American people about what was the actual catalyst of the attack, and they tried to blame it on video.”

Jordan expressed outrage at how the government omitted information about the dossier while seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant and said it was vital for the American public to have seen the GOP’s recently released FISA memo.

“That dossier was taken to a secret court to get a secret warrant to spy on fellow citizen and they weren’t clear with the court who paid for it, who was involved with, and the fact that they had already fired Chris Steele from any type of relationship with the FBI because he broke a fundamental trust. He went to the press and told them he was working with the FBI. And yet they still used this work product, this dossier,” Jordan concluded. “That’s what’s so ridiculous about how they handled this, and why that memo last week from the Republicans was so important that the American people see.”

New State Department Emails Reveal Blumenthal Advised Clinton that former Rep. Eric Cantor Committed a Possible ‘Felony’ by Disclosing Petraeus Classified Information

Judicial Watch

 

‘Will a grand jury be empaneled by the Justice Department? When will Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee… begin an investigation of this matter?’ – November 13, 2012

 Blumenthal advised top Obama debate advisor that Romney would ‘falsify, distort, and mangle facts;’ advised Clinton on Libya turmoil disclosed in ‘internal govt discussions high level’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on January 7, 2016, it obtained a new batch of documents from the Department of State, including a “Confidential” memo from Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal to the former secretary of state suggesting that a grand jury and the Senate Judiciary Committee should investigate whether former Rep. Eric Cantor or his staff violated the Espionage Act by disclosing classified information related to the FBI investigation of former CIA Director David Petraeus.

According to the Blumenthal-to-Clinton email, if classified information was discussed by Cantor, his staff, or anyone “inside or outside the bureau,” it “is a felony” in violation of the Espionage Act. Many legal analysts now believe that if the FBI concludes that Clinton kept classified information on her non-state.gov server, that may be also be a criminal violation of the Espionage Act.

New Emails Show Hillary Slept Through Meeting Day After Benghazi Attacks

Photo via Fellowship of the Minds

 

Newsmax

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slept in on Saturday following the Benghazi, Libya attacks, missing a staff meeting that was being set up about intelligence issues and the Presidential Daily Brief, according to a new batch of her emails released Thursday by conservative watchdogs Judicial Watch.

“These new Benghazi emails are disturbing and show why Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration had to be forced to disclose them,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a release to Newsmax.
“Hillary Clinton, despite knowing that terrorists were responsible for the attack, allowed her spokesman to go to the Arab world and blame an Internet film.”

Further, he maintained that the emails show Clinton “trafficked in fantastical conspiracy theories” suggesting that American conservatives and Israel were to blame for the Benghazi attack and jihadist violence.

“And the crazed email from Sidney Blumenthal shows that she was taking direction on her Benghazi spin based upon attack-style presidential campaign politics,” said Fitton.

“Finally, the ‘I just got up’ email shows that, smack dab in the middle of the Benghazi crisis, Hillary Clinton fell behind and may have not been fully briefed as she began an intense round of phone calls to foreign leaders.”

Report: FBI probe of Hillary is focused on Section 793(f) of Espionage Act

Powerline

Some weeks ago, I attempted a preliminary analysis of whether Hillary Clinton violated 18 U.S.C. Section 793(f). This provision states:

Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document. . .relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer, Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Now, Fox News reports that “an intelligence source familiar with the [FBI] investigation of Clinton” says the Bureau is focused on whether there were violations of this very provision of the Espionage Act. The intelligence source points out that Section 793(f) says nothing about classified information, but instead is triggered by lawful possession of national defense information when a security clearance holder “through gross negligence,” such as the use of an unsecure computer network, permits the material to be removed or abstracted from its proper, secure location.

That sounds a lot like what Hillary Clinton did.

Records show Clinton withheld emails about oil, terrorism

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaks at a Jefferson Jackson event hosted by the Democratic Party of Virginia at George Mason University’s Patriot Center, in Fairfax, Va., Friday, June 26, 2015. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Washington Examiner

Hillary Clinton withheld Benghazi-related emails from the State Department that detailed her knowledge of the scramble for oil contracts in Libya and the shortcomings of the NATO-led military intervention for which she advocated.

Clinton removed specific portions of other emails she sent to State, suggesting the messages were screened closely enough to determine which paragraphs were unfit to be seen by the public.

For example, one email Clinton kept from the State Department indicates Libyan leaders were “well aware” of which “major oil companies and international banks” supported them during the rebellion, information they would “factor into decisions” about about who would be given access to the country’s rich oil reserves.

The email, which Clinton subsequently scrubbed from her server, indicated Clinton was aware that involvement in the controversial conflict could have a significant financial benefit to firms that were friendly to the Libyan rebels.

 

Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network, Which Included Activity In Libya…

Weasel Zippers

Hillary was running her own clandestine operation in Libya.

Via ProPublica

Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.

The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya’s civil war raged in 2011.

Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations. They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal’s account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators.[…]

The dispatches from Blumenthal to Clinton’s private email address were posted online after Blumenthal’s account was hacked in 2013 by Romanian hacker Marcel-Lehel Lazar, who went by the name Guccifer. Lazar also broke into accounts belonging to George W. Bush’s sister, Colin Powell, and others. He’s now serving a seven-year sentence in his home country and was charged in a U.S. indictment last year.[…]

It’s unclear who tasked Blumenthal, known for his fierce loyalty to the Clintons, with preparing detailed intelligence briefs. It’s also not known who was paying him, or where the operation got its money. The memos were marked “confidential” and relied in many cases on “sensitive” sources in the Libyan opposition and Western intelligence and security services. Other reports focused on Egypt, Germany, and Turkey.

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