A lawsuit filed a week ago by Businessman Ed Butowsky, alleged that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News analyst Ellen Ratner the DNC leaked emails were received from Seth Rich and his brother Aaron. [Full Backstory Here]
Due to the scale of ramification, there was some valid skepticism about the Butowsky assertion.  However, recently unearthed footage from Ellen Ratner talking about her visit with Assange in November of 2016 seems to validate what the Butowsky’s lawsuit alleges.
In the video [Full Video Here] taken during a November 9th, 2016, Embry Riddle University symposium, Fox News analyst Ellen Ratner, representing the left, and former Congressman now Fox political analyst John Leboutillier, from the right, discussed the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election.  WATCH EXCERPT:

The excerpt is taken from 01:01:00 of the FULL VIDEO HERE

[h/t Michael Sheridan for the excerpt]  The date of the Ratner symposium November 9, 2016, aligns with the time-frame of Ratner’s travel and meeting with Assange as outlined by Butowsky in his lawsuit.   As noted Mrs. Ratner confirms that she did meet with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and that he did in fact tell her the leaked DNC emails came from inside the DNC.  It was not a Russian hack.
Hopefully this will spur the DOJ under Attorney General Bill Barr to launch an inquiry which must obviously start with the questioning of Ratner.
Accepting some enhanced credibility now exists, the details contained within the lawsuit filing (full pdf below) are stunning.
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Former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is involved in two heavily connected legal cases that came from the special counsel appointment of Robert Mueller.  One direct case is in DC District Court, Judge Emmet Sullivan; and one indirect case in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), Judge Anthony Trenga.

The DC case is the direct case against Michael Flynn where Flynn took a plea deal and has been in a rather tentacled sentencing phase since November 2017.  The EDVA case is the FARA case against Flynn’s former business associate Bijan Rafiekian where Flynn was going to be a witness (now cancelled).
While the larger issues connecting both cases are somewhat complex, some details released last week reveal a concerning bigger picture that originated long before Robert Mueller became special counsel in May 2017.  [Back story HERE and HERE and HERE]
I’m going to make the assumption the reader is familiar with the backstory noted above; and additionally, in full disclosure for the reader, this is openly written for the research benefit of the Flynn defense team – with whom I’ve had no contact.
Of particular interest to me was the revelation that DOJ National Security Division head David Laufman engaged with Flynn in January 2017, and was the lead point of contact within the DOJ-NSD when Flynn was filing FARA compliance documents, as part of the transition into the Trump administration.
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A new John Solomon article today, based on an interview with Russian Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, is essentially confirming a May 2018 article where it was presumed that Oleg had hired Christopher Steele at the same time Steele was working with Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS to write the Trump dossier.  Here’s the interview:

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The report on the FBI contacting Oleg Deripaska in September 2016 for help to structure a narrative of Russian involvement in the Trump Campaign via Paul Manafort has some ramifications.
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In March 2017 CTH first highlighted statements by Evelyn Farkas that described a coordinated effort from within the Obama administration to push political opposition research, gathered by the intelligence community, into the media.

Jay Sekulow now discovers documents that highlight the Obama administration’s efforts in their last days in office.  This effort backstops Farkas’s earlier statements.  First, from Sekulow:

(Via Fox Op-ed) – Stunning new information just released by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) shows that the Obama administration stepped up efforts – just days before President Trump took office – to undermine Trump and his administration.

The ACLJ, where I serve as chief counsel, has obtained records that show the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, under Director James Clapper, eagerly pushed to get new procedures as part of an anti-Trump effort. The procedures increased access to raw signals intelligence before the conclusion of the Obama administration, just days before President Trump was inaugurated.

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One of the reasons why the Flynn legal situation is so interesting is not really because of Flynn himself; but rather because the Flynn situation is a likely example of President Obama’s surveillance network in operation.

Tenuous legal theories (Logan Act) and obscure laws (technical FARA violations) appear to have been exploited by DOJ administration officials, in close ideological alignment with the Lawfare Group.  In association with overall Obama administration officials, the fellow travelers used the legal system to create a DC surveillance network.
At the 30,000 ft. level Obama’s surveillance network looks like this:

• White House identifies a target; •passes request to the DOJ National Security Division (middlemen); •who then use the auspices of possible FARA violations to pass the instructions to the FBI contractors; •who data-mine the NSA database.

•The FBI results are then passed back to the DOJ-NSD; •who weaponize the information for FISA applications (becomes legal cover); and •pass the authorized surveillance (spying) results back to the White House etc.

It’s a circle of surveillance activity that could encompass almost every politician in Washington DC as they network with foreign lobbyists and special interests.
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The foundation for the Russian election interference narrative is built on the claim of Russians hacking the servers of the Democrat National Committee (DNC), and subsequently releasing damaging emails that showed the DNC worked to help Hillary Clinton and eliminate Bernie Sanders.
Despite the Russian ‘hacking’ claim the DOJ previously admitted the DNC would not let FBI investigators review the DNC server.  Instead the DNC provided the FBI with analysis of a technical review done through a cyber-security contract with Crowdstrike.

The narrative around the DNC hack claim was always sketchy; many people believe the DNC email data was downloaded onto a flash drive and leaked.  In a court filing (full pdf below) the scale of sketchy has increased exponentially.
Suspecting they could prove the Russian hacking claim was false, lawyers representing Roger Stone requested the full Crowdstrike report on the DNC hack.  When the DOJ responded to the Stone motion they made a rather significant admission.  Not only did the FBI not review the DNC server, the FBI/DOJ never even saw the Crowdstrike report.
Yes, that is correct.  The FBI and DOJ were only allowed to see a “draft” report prepared by Crowdstrike, and that report was redacted… and that redacted draft is the “last version of the report produced”; meaning, there are no unredacted & final versions.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot!
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HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes appears with judiciary committee member Mark Meadows to discuss today’s HPSCI hearing, corruption within the DOJ/FBI, and the current NYT story about AG Bill Barr questioning the CIA construct of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.
Notice in Mr. Nunes statements: “corrupt rank and file“? {CURIOUS}; also Fusion GPS and the FBI operating on “parallel tracks“? {CURIOUS x 2}  Additionally, from Rep. Mark Meadows we hear this:

“We are now getting a lot of whistle-blowers” … “people who knew this was wrong are coming forward now” …

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Also from Nunes, confirmation that Rosenstein’s original scope memo was based on empowering/authorizing Weissmann and Mueller to investigate (ie. ‘utilize’) the dossier manufactured by Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele.
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Responding to a request from Chairman Jerry Nadler, Attorney General William Barr has sent a letter (full pdf below)explaining the scope of the DOJ review of intelligence activities in the 2016 presidential campaign.  According to the letter AG Barr says the review is “broad in scope and multifaceted,” and includes examining actions by US and foreign intelligence agencies, “as well as non-governmental organizations and individuals.”
Here’s the letter:

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This interview is interesting from a few aspects.  First, Carter Page states he was a long-standing source of information for the intelligence apparatus, specifically for the CIA for decades.  Secondly, the framework by Page as outlined, and the underlying motive of the FBI to use him as an unwitting target for the FISA application, is essentially confirmation of our prior reconciled point on why the FBI exploited him.  [Watch]

It never made sense that U.S. Person Carter Page was an FBI witness from 2013 through to March/May 2016 and yet in October 2016, to achieve a FISA warrant, the FBI called him an agent of a foreign government.  [FISA APPLICATION]  It never made sense until with more information about the Mueller investigation we realized the FISA warrant was essentially irrelevant; what the Obama intel apparatus needed for their “insurance policy” was The Dossier.
Fusion GPS was not contracted in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. The intelligence community was already doing unlawful NSA-database surveillance and political spy operations. They already knew everything about the Trump campaign. The Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification, an insurance policy of sorts, for pre-existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion-GPS fulfilled that contract by delivering the Steele Dossier.
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In federal court yesterday (Friday, June 7). In a FOIA case ruling (full pdf below)  Judge James Boasberg was deciding public release over two issues related to the memos of former FBI Director James Comey.  Backstory HERE and HERE.

Judge Boasberg was deciding what could be publicly released, meaning current redactions removed, based on two connected events: (#1) The content of the Comey Memos; and (#2) the declarations of lead FBI agent for Robert Mueller’s special counsel, David Archey, in describing those memos.  CNN had filed a lawsuit to gain full access.
[Note: the descriptions of the Comey memos by FBI agent David Archey are known as the “Archey Declarations” – Read Here.]
For those who may not be aware, there are so many memos (dozens) when assembled they seem to make up an actual diary of moment-by-moment events, during the FBI investigation of Donald Trump, as documented by FBI Director James Comey.
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