Let me start by saying there is a lot of misleading information circling current events, some of it by what CTH considers very dubious alt-right voices. I suggest just to be leery of “exclusive” insider information. There are motives and angles that are not obvious and would not be comfortable for those who follow events closely.
[As an example, the election/voting information -connected to the Intelligence Community- and recently outlined by John Solomon, is not new. What Solomon is rehashing is the background information exposed by Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote surrounding Chinese involvement in prior elections (Konnech etc.). Engelbrecht gave the FBI the data, the FBI buried it and eventually targeted Engelbrecht. The hidden data and FBI conduct is now resurfacing.]
As a result of datamining the FBI ‘prohibited access’ records Chuck Grassley has released an FD-302 from an FBI agent who was on the Mueller team and became a whistleblower about the motives and agenda of the Mueller participants. [SEE HERE]
One of the stories surfacing surrounds one of the Mueller targets, Walid Phares. [SEE HERE]
Walid Phares was the 5th target within the Weissmann/Mueller probe who were using Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) violations as targeting mechanisms.
The other four were Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
♦ Why Phares? This is a little complicated but becomes straightforward once you get it.
One of the first things President Obama did when he took office was to travel to Cairo, Egypt, give a speech to the Islamic world and trigger what later became known as the “Arab Spring.” Obama was an ideological ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, which positioned him in alignment with Qatar, Iran, Turkey and various factions of the more extremist Muslim community. The Muslim Brotherhood is political Islam.
Trying to keep it short, essentially Walid Phares was on the opposite side of that ideology. He was a critic of the Brotherhood, and a supporter of the person who eventually shut down the Arab Spring uprisings, Egyptian President Fattah al-Sisi.
After success in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya, President Obama was furious when Army General al-Sisi stepped up and removed Muslim Brotherhood aligned Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. That military uprising stopped the Arab Spring, and it stalled out thereafter.
Obama’s efforts to give increased power and voice to the Muslim Brotherhood was essentially stopped by Sisi, and that made anyone on the stability side of Islam an enemy of Obama. Without Egypt, Team Obama couldn’t trigger Syria – they did get extremism to expand via ISIS, but the coalition of Arab states al-Sisi put together pushed back on the extremists.
That’s the Muslim ideological part of the issue, and we could write a dozen deep articles about all of the ancillary issues within it. However, for the sake of reader time, we’ll just jump forward to the other, perhaps more important, issue.
Walid Phares was an advisor to Donald Trump, helping him to connect to middle east moderate Arab leaders like al-Sisi and frame policies to end the extremism aspect.
As a policy advisor Phares saw the structural flaws in the Obama Iran-deal and, more importantly, Phares saw the outline of a financial relationship that intersected with Obama policy.
The Obama Iran deal involved the U.S. dropping sanctions, feeding billions of dollars back to Iran (via Qatar) as part of the incentive for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to “eliminate Iran’s nuclear ambitions.” At least that was the forward face of the policy goal.
However, in the background there was a semi-opaque quid-pro-quo where Obama would transfer sanctioned funds back to Iran and then Iran would send a portion of the funds back to the Obama network. The problem was the return funds were contingent upon the success of the Iran deal.
By advising President Trump against the Iran deal, Walid Phares was essentially putting a stop to the quid-pro-quo that was contingent upon the deal’s success. In the bigger picture, that made Phares a target and the Weissmann-Mueller probe was the mechanism to target him, using FARA as the weapon.
[SIDEBAR – In a collaborative relationship between the Senate and the State Department, U.S. senators write foreign aid policy, rules and regulations thereby creating the financing mechanisms to transmit U.S. funds (think USAID). Those same senators then received a portion of the funds laundered back through their various “institutes” and business connections to the foreign government offices. Example Ukraine [Burisma to Biden] or The McCain Institute.
The U.S. State Dept. served as a distribution network for the authorization of the money laundering by granting DC conflict waivers, approvals for financing (think Clinton Global Initiative), and permission slips for the payment of foreign money. The officials within the State Dept. take a slice of the overall payments through a system of “indulgence fees”, junkets, gifts, expense payments from foreign dignitaries, and payments back to leadership pacs and structured political institutes.
If anyone gets too close to revealing or interrupting this process, they become a target of the apparatus. By all accounts, President Trump was considered an existential threat to this entire process. – END SIDEBAR]
President Obama was ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood (time spent in Pakistan as a young man), that made him sympathetic to Iran (Valerie Jarrett), and simultaneously team Obama had a financial motive.
The Mueller investigation was used by Obama-era officials, deep state embeds and eventually FBI investigators as a mechanism to block President Trump from executing a divergent foreign policy. The primary policy to protect was the Iran deal.
It’s a similar process in various foreign policy outcomes:
President Obama was positioned to make money from the Iran deal.
Vice President Biden was similarly positioned to make money from Ukraine.
Hillary Clinton (CGI) would make money from Haiti.
Donald Trump was a disruption to all of those ideological and financial constructs. President Trump would and did carry an entirely new foreign policy. This would result in ideological diminishment for the former policy teams, and financial losses for the former beneficiaries.
WASHINGTON – Carter Page wasn’t the only adviser from Trump’s first campaign wiretapped by the FBI. Walid Phares was electronically monitored for a 12-month period between 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington-based FBI agent who was assigned to investigate him as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia collusion probe.
As in Page’s case, the bureau withheld evidence exonerating Phares from the court to secure surveillance authorization, according to newly declassified FBI documents.
“I had no idea any of this was happening,” Phares told RealClearInvestigations in an exclusive interview Wednesday night. “This is shocking because they told my lawyer that I was only a ‘witness’ and that they just needed some information.”
“But these were huge abuses that I can see now,” he added. Phares said he intends to sue the FBI and Justice Department for damages.
The 68-year-old Lebanese-American scholar said case agents and prosecutors grilled him for months, questioned his employer, and even went after his bank records. As a result, he said he lost his job at a university, his livelihood, and even his bank accounts and credit card after Wells Fargo cancelled them.
“It was like a disaster for me financially and physically,” he said. “I also lost my Fox News contract” as an expert on terrorism and the Middle East, which he had held since 2007.
Phares was not hired by the Trump administration, even though he had been expected to land a high-level foreign policy position. “They scared the agencies from me so I would have problems with (obtaining) a security clearance,” he said.
Investigators could find “nothing” criminal on Phares during their probe, according to the lead case agent, and in fact, they concluded he was “honest.” Yet Mueller’s team continued to secretly spy on Phares – without providing the powerful federal spy court any of the exculpatory evidence that could clear Phares as required by law.
The agent told investigators in a separate 2020 internal FBI review that “there were no corroborating facts that tied Crosswind [the codename for Phares’ case] to certain facts that we thought were originally true,” according to a transcript of his testimony, released after more than five years of concealment.
He added that “nothing” collected from Phares’ communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, including phone messages and emails, “aided the investigation other than to prove the target was being honest with investigators,” who had interviewed him repeatedly.
Nonetheless, the FBI continued monitoring Phares as part of a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) investigation. He was never charged with any violations of the act. (read more)
Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave testimony to the Senate in June of 2020 {LINK}. Within Rosenstein’s election year and little covered testimony, he revealed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his main deputy Andrew Weissmann were completely in charge of Main Justice at the DOJ during the time the special counsel investigation was happening. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was recused, and DAG Rosenstein was in charge of how much power and authority Mueller and Weissmann’s team held in the DOJ.
Rosenstein testified the special counsel had full control over everything and anything related to Trump-Russia, including the Carter Page FISA application the special counsel had re-submitted for the third renewal on June 29, 2017.
Anything that remotely touched the Trump-Russia investigation was completely and unilaterally controlled by Mueller and Weissmann, including any ancillary investigation that would come as an outcome from anything to do with Trump-Russia
Rosenstein also testified he deferred everything to Mueller/Weissmann and never challenged any of their requests for expanded investigative scope or authority. Rosenstein felt the special counsel was in charge, and anything they wanted – they got. As Deputy AG Rosenstein said all the special counsel operations were part of their investigative authority, and he felt he had no place in questioning, challenging or refusing anything related to their investigative authority.
Mueller/Weissmann had full control.
So indict, prosecute, sentence, and actually put some of them in jail. America is waiting…
Thanks to Massie and MTG screaming ‘cover-up’ and calling for long-dormant Epstein files, Pam Bondi, who has already transferred dozens to political prosecutors to the criminal division, fired James Comey’s daughter and was hard at work removing the saboteurs, informers, and left-over Obama/Biden political hacks, had to divert huge resources to vette millions of pages of documents that no one cared about for six years. She proved it is too early to prosecute politicals when the open and shut case of Comey’s prosecution was thrown out on a technicality. Until she gets a ‘clean’ DoJ, she would be wasting time prosecuting Barry, Hillary, John Brennan, and a host of other miscreants because someone would ‘leak’ or sabotage evidence, or myriad other ways to help the defense from inside the prosecution. Pressure on Bondi is not helping. She has record criminal prosecutions so she is qualified; she just needs to get rid of the traitors. Law schools are not turning out the types of lawyers she needs, either. The Deep State is eternal.
Dear RametinDallas,
What you have pointed out, is so very crucial to the main point. Take a meaningless emotional issue and use it to divert national attention from the real crimes.
People in general have become driven by their emotional senses instead of reason and logic in this age of instant gratification through headline manipulation. Everybody is the one true genius outraged by the lack of attention to their particular obsession. And it appears the national obsession is not-so-soft porn.
A nation that allowed the Mueller operation to almost destroy it, now has its hands on the soft porn of which it has always desired to be an outraged voyeur. Epstein is a strong delusion that allows the armchair judge to have access to their deepest darkness.
Thank you for pointing out the obvious to the oblivious.
Why do we never get to the why? Why was Obama aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood? What was Obama better yet whose orders was Obama following. Don’t buy he was religious (Islam) in any way.
To change the country demography, change our laws or use our laws to infiltrate the government and make demands contrary to our culture. Just look at Europe nowadays….between polygamy and welfare frauds, marriage between cousins, blocking the street for praying, halal (where is PITA btw?)imposing moslem holidays but they can’t have a manger in the town square or say merry xmas). Just yesterday fairfax county school had a day off for the end of Ramadan……
From the article, “President Obama was ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood (time spent in Pakistan as a young man), that made him sympathetic to Iran (Valerie Jarrett), and simultaneously team Obama had a financial motive.”
He grew up Muslim in Indonesia. He has said the sweetest sound in the world is the Muslim call to prayers. He is a deeply religious Muslim but his religion has a thing called ‘taquia’ where he may lie in the furthurence of Islam. Go online and search ‘Obama pro Islam’. Obviously you have made no attempt to know about statements and recording or you would be so doubtful of Obama’s devotion to Islam. Did you see his 90% bow to Grand Ayatollah Khomanei?
This would not happen if the FISC was more “careful”. The FISC and its staff are easily sophisticated enough to know that when representations of the DOJ/FBI arere phony. It couldn’t be possible that the FISC didn’t know the nominal Carter Page surveillance warrants were actually against candidate-then-President Donald Trump and the entire GOP by their “2-hop” warrants.
The warrants were extended 3 times. What kind of judges would issue and extend long term 2-hop warrants against a harmless Carter Page, who could not possibly endanger our National Security, without knowing the warrants were actually a trick to spy on the Republican Party and the President of the US without sworn, fully vetted, evidence?
The ‘willynilly’ seeking or issuance of multi-hop warrants on ‘nobodies’, with a real purpose of spying on others than the named person to-be-spied-on, should be a crime. Multi-hop warrants against up to millions of unknown people are easily abused (eg in a massive campaign and US Government Administration. This is a forseeable and now proven very weak link in the FISC system.
The FISC easily extended its secret warrant(s) AGAINST AN ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. There was no rush preventing sworn vetted evidence for 3 extensions. Especially after granting the first warrant, there was plenty of time for the FISC to get sworn evidence of ‘probable cause’ before extending any secret surveillance on the President of the United States.
Especially after the first warrant spying on a US President and his entire Administration, shouldn’t a Judge have cared enough to asked obvious questions before reissuing a warrant to continue spying on a US President without any sworn evidence as required by the Constitution?
Questions like:
“How many US Citizens, Congressmembers/candidates and Administration officials have been surveilled already? Have you been surveilling Carter Page actually communicating with now-President Trump?” If so, what did you find that endangers this Country?”
“Have you surveilled Donald Trump or any other elected state or federal official, any candidate for state or federal office, any state or federal political campaign official, or any political party donor, when they were NOT communicating with Carter Page? Who, why, and what is their threat to the National Security? ”
“Have you been surveilling the President of the United States or his Administration when not communicating with Carter Page? Tell us why, who has received any of this surveillance information, what have they done with it, and what security threats to the nation have you have uncovered.”
“You are spying on the President of the United States. Your story had better be solid or you will be heavily sanctioned for bamboozeling this court.”
It was very easy for the FISC to question the justification for political spying on the US President, but perhaps the FISC judges didn’t want to know the answers? They are certainly smart enough, but they didn’t do that. In fact, the record seems to show that the FISC doesn’t even require any sworn evidence to SPY ON THE PRESIDENT OF THE US. Just some “pee tape” BS and the unverified Steel Dossier was good enough for the FISC to reissue a warrant with multiple ‘hops’ to the President of the US and thousands/millions of other people unknown to the FISC. The FISC as a secret court, admits an extraheavy duty to protect unknown, unrepresented citizens. If the 4th and 5th Amendments apply to protect anyone, they apply to protect the US President from political spying. How does the FISC know FBI/DOJ prsonnel aren’t working for a foreign country? It has happened !!
There was no rush to prevent the FISC from requiring sworn vetted threat evidence for at least the 3 warrant extension requests, and any “hops” covering a US President and his entire administration.
The FISC does not even protect the integrity and respectability of its own proceedings, by appropriately sanctioning/sentencing unsworn false filings and shenanigans. Their approach is sort of “Oh, you tricked us again into issuing and extending warrants covering a US President, you silly tricksters – We will write a report about your illegal spying activities !!! (wink wink)”
Were they tricked, or in cahoots with this scheme, which would not have been accomplished without the FISC permitting it? At least it is clear we need better judges.
James Boasburg.
Your answer: Boasberg.
Cahoots. With one Chief Justice as the head of the snake.
Rosenstein is a swine or would be if I didn’t have a little respect for swine.
Essentially, Trump is killing Barry’s dream of Islam take over and Caliphates everywhere. Can we say that maybe, JUST MAYBE, Barry is the anti-Christ?
Both Sessions (even if recused) and Rosenstein had OVERSIGHT authority to review Mueller’s efforts for Legality as well as Constitutional Compliance.
Recusal for Sessions only involved DIRECTION of day to day operations … Sessions had the authority to review their efforts and work as an oversight functions. It is a fine nuance but that nuance existed.
There is no defense for the negligent inaction of these two. They do/did deserve to be investigated as co-conspirators to Mueller’s illegal efforts.
You mean these guys?
Bagpipes Billie Barr (aka Bondo Barr) committed a different form of infamy … he actually exercised his oversight authority to shut down Mueller and then proceeded to run the cover-up operation and went on to ignore all the election fraud in 2020.
robert s mueller dead at age 81, how convenient and if you believe this, I’m a giraffe: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/03/breaking-former-special-counsel-robert-mueller-dead-81/
Any chance it was Boasberg approving these warrants??
All of these stories need to be considered within the context of what the Trump 2016 campaign really was: a shoestring operation, run by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. It featured a revolving door of hired help brought in for temporary purposes as needed, who would then be replaced by others as the need arose.
Carter Page was never much of anything other than a name on a list Trump and Kushner made up to present to a a newspaper editorial board as his “foreign policy team“. Page was a member of a group that never met one single time. It was all smoking mirrors.
Remember his campaign manager, Paul Manafort? He was hired for one specific purpose, to manage the delegates at the convention. This was because metaphor was a seasoned operator and was brought in to prevent delegates from being stolen or some other chicanery to blow up the Republican national convention and take the nomination away from Trump.
I compare the FBI “crossfire hurricane“ investigation to the Tom Hanks comedy the man with one red shoe. That movie is a comedy of errors about the FBI, pursuing an innocent man in the belief that he is a super spy. A misconception based solely on the fact that when Hanks’s character got off of a plane, he was wearing mismatched shoes, one of them red.
That’s basically what the FBI was doing chasing shadows of the Trump campaign. They were trying to penetrate an organization that really didn’t exist.
Mueller died today. Hope he went straight to hell.
Also, do not discount that Walid Phares likely had a hand on shaping President Trump’s efforts to effect regimes changes among GCC members (2017-2020) as well as in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Those two efforts have had massive impacts on the actions of the GCC Governments, especially v/v Israel … and earned him even more scrutiny and inflicted pain by the Mueller Gang.
I was cringing after seeing PDJT’s comment on Mueller’s demise right before I read this. Now I wish I still drank so I could open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the transfer of that dirty, rotten scoundrel from here to Hell.
It is unfortunate that so many will use POTUS’ comments against him as “cruel” and “heartless”. I might have phrased my response as less a reaction to his death, but rather something like “his legacy of abuse of the system…” etc. I am neither given joy by Mueller’s death, nor am I in any mood to pull punches on his record as a dirty cop. He may have one family member somewhere who doesn’t deserve the “glad he is dead” comment. But the world does need to be reminded one final time of this swamp rat’s deeds.
SOS/DD
It’s all about:
Power and money
And
Money and Power
Nothing changes in this regard.
Who else thinks Phil Haney did not off himself?
The goal was to have Hillary become President and push Ukraine to start a war with Russia in 2017 or 2018 instead of 2022. Since Europe thrived on Russian oil there would need to be an alternative; a cheap replacement that could sustain Europe while the Russian oil industry was strangled. Iran could be controlled through European machination at the IAEA (think pliable bureaucrats like Grossi) to make sure that they stayed in line. It would also keep Iran away from China especially, and maintain a little daylight between China and Russia during the war. All of that would allow the US to “pivot” to Asia to directly confront China and leave Europe to manage Iran.
It all fell apart though when DJT stormed the barricades and won the election. Biden got that policy back on track and the institutionalists expected to manage Trump during this second term and keep the Ukraine conflict in place. This Iran “excursion” has thrown a monkey wrench in that plan as well. Europe is being strangled not Russia and the longer this goes on the worse it gets for them. At this rate Europe won’t make it to the turn of the new year. Not that anything’s wrong with that.