Only One Question Remains : What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THE QUESTION WHETHER THE OBAMA SMOKING GUN JUST SHOWED UP. Fox News reported on Wednesday that : "Thousands of newly uncovered text messages between two alleged anti-Trump FBI agents reviewed by Fox News raise new questions about political bias and conflicts of interest within the bureau and about the Hillary Clinton email investigation...FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page have been under the microscope after it was revealed that the two former members of Robert Mueller's team exchanged a series of anti-Trump texts during the presidential campaign." Never ,ind thatthey called Virginia voters who didn't vote for Jill McCabe -- Andrew McCabe's wife whose campaign was supported to the tune of $500,000 by Hillary pal Terry McAuliffe -- "ignorant hillbillys." THE key information is in another email released by Senator Ron Johnson, along with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, as part of a report titled, "The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI's Investigation of It." In a text exchange, Page writes to Strzok on September 2, 2016 about preparing talking points for FBI Director Comey because, "POTUS wants to know everything we're doing." Senate investigators tell Fox News this text raises questions about President Obama's personal involvement in the Clinton email investigation. • IS THIS the OBAMA SMOKING GUN??? I asked last week whether Comey talked to James Clapper or Susan Rice or President Obama before signing the FISA surveillance application for Carter Page. Does this text message answer that question with a 'Yes'? Are we finally getting close to naming the leaders of the ProgDem cabal against the duly elected President of the United States? • • • MARK LEVIN SAYS HILLARY "PAID" FOR THE FISA WARRANT. The Washington Examiner reported on Tuesday that Mark Levin told Fox News Hillary Clinton "paid for a warrant" to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page during the 2016 presidential election. During his Monday night appearance on Fox News, Levin also claimed Clinton colluded with the Russians : “Hillary Clinton paid for a warrant. That's the easiest way we can put it. Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians. But it appears the FBI at the senior-most levels colluded with the Russians, too. Whether it was witting or unwitting, it doesn't matter. That's a fact." Levin also declared that Americans “have been subjected to a massive propaganda campaign and misinformation campaign” by Clinton’s campaign and the Obama administration. Levin asked : “Who are they trying to protect? Hillary Clinton. Who else are they trying to protect? Barack Obama.” • • • THE STATE DEPARTMENT IS NEXT ON THE GOP LIST. TheHill reported Monday that : "Republicans have former President Obama’s State Department in their crosshairs as they question whether FBI and Justice Department investigations into President Trump were tainted by political bias and influence from key figures in Hillary Clinton's orbit. Congressional Republicans have signaled that they are looking at whether the State Department, then run by John Kerry, passed along information from Clinton’s allies that may have been used by the FBI to launch an investigation into whether the Trump campaign had improper contacts with Russia." TheHill cites "A highly redacted criminal referral from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein" that offers new clues about the GOP probes. In the referral, The Hill says that Grassley writes that former British intelligence official Christopher Steele crafted a second memo in addition to the infamous Russia Dossier of opposition research on Trump funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Grassley has referred Steele to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation, alleging that he lied to the FBI about his contacts with the media. The second memo, dated October 19, was given to Steele by a contact at the State Department and was based on information provided by “a friend of the Clintons,” Grassley said. TheHill says the contents of the October memo are redacted and its allegations are unknown, but Grassley said he was troubled that people linked to Clinton were providing Steele with the information : “It is troubling enough that the Clinton campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about credibility.” • House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, who is at the center of GOP arguments that the FBI acted inappropriately, told Fox News on Monday that “phase two” of his investigation could focus on the State Department : “What we’re looking at now is the State Department and some of the irregularities there, and we have several other areas we’re looking at.” The Nunes Memo released Friday alleges that the Steele, i.e., Russia, Dossier had been inappropriately used to obtain a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign official and that the FBI and Justice Department had hidden from the surveillance court that the information had been paid for in part by Democrats. The documents released by Grassley and Nunes’s comments suggest their probes will now open another front by investigating the State Department, which suggests that Nunes and Grassely believe officials there inappropriately circulated information to Steele that was then used by the FBI. • Although Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, talked to CNN Monday, accusing Trump and the Republicans of seeking to demonize anyone seeking information about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, President Trump earlier on Monday accused “Little Adam Schiff” of leaking confidential information, saying he was “desperate to run for higher office” and “one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington....Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!” Trump tweeted. • The State Department "leakers" appear to be two longtime Clinton confidants -- Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer -- as the likely sources for the October memo, which they believe reached Steele through his contact at the Obama State Department, Jonathan Winer. • The Hillary-Obama coterie put the spin on this new second-memo information when former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland under Obama told CBS that Steele had unilaterally reached out to the State Department because he had become alarmed by what he was learning about Trump. Nuland said : “Chris had a friend at the State Department and he offered us that reporting free so that we could also benefit from it. It was one of, you know, hundreds of sources that we were using to try to understand what was going on. He passed two- to four-pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That's something for the FBI to investigate. And that was our reaction when we saw this.” • Adding to the spin, the Washington Post and the Guardian have previously reported on the existence of a possible “second dossier” and the State Department’s contacts with Steele. The Guardian reported last week about the existence of a second dossier, which it said had been compiled by Shearer, who was known to be close with the Clintons in the 1990s. The Guardian says the FBI is still assessing claims made in Shearer’s memo that are believed to track closely with those in the original Steele Dossier, which alleges that Trump is compromised by deep ties to the Kremlin. The WP had previously reported that Steele had extensive contacts with Kerry’s State Department, which relied on him in an unofficial capacity for intelligence about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The WP also reported that Steele sent monthly reports to Winer, who later prepared a summary of the information he’d received from Steele about Trump and briefed Kerry on the findings in the fall of 2016. The WP said that Kerry did not act on the information because the FBI had already been in contact with Steele. State Department officials quoted in the WP story insisted there was nothing nefarious about the agency’s contacts with Steele. At the time, he was a well-respected intelligence source and had not become the political lightning rod he is today. • BUT, the House Intelligence Committee memo says that the FBI cut Steele loose as an informant in mid-October, 2016, after it discovered he had briefed news outlets on his findings about Trump and had divulged to reporters that he was an FBI source. And the end of the FBI relationship with Steele is in the same timeframe as the State Department's use of Steele as an 'unofficial' source of information. Did the FBI's Comey and McCabe pass Steele on to Kerry after they were unable to continue using his information? Was this a sleight-of-hand move to save Steele as a source for Fake dirt on Trump after the FBI had to let him go??? • • • GOWDY OPENS ANOTHER HILLARY DOOR WITH A HINT ABOUT SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL. Legal Insurrection's William A. Jacobson has published an article filling in some gaps in the State Department investigation. Jacobson states that when Trey Gowdy was interviewed by Fox News tonight by Martha MacCallum, he strongly suggested that Hillary Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal fed information to Steele weeks before the 2016 election. • Trey Gowdy was asked by Martha MacCallum about whether “weeks before the election, somebody in the Obama State Department was feeding information from a foreign source to Christopher Steele.” MacCallum had previously asked a question about whether Gowdy knew anything about “a source who gave an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton who then gave information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department who then gave the information to Steele.” Gowdy replied : “When you hear who the source, one of the sources of that information is, you’re going to think, oh, my gosh, I’ve heard that name somewhere before. Where could it possibly have been.” When asked whether it was a foreign source, Gowdy said it was domestic : “I’m trying to think of how Secretary Clinton defined him. I think she said he was an old friend who emailed her from time to time." The last sentence in the segment makes it pretty clear, says Jacobson, that Gowdy is acknowledging Blumenthal’s involvement : "Representative Trey Gowdy strongly implied to Fox News Tuesday night that Clinton family confidant Sidney Blumenthal was a key link in a chain of information that helped create the controversial Trump-Russia dossier." • Jacobson wrote on Tuesday : "Russia collusion smear campaign looking more and more like a Clinton operation." Sidney Blumenthal is the consummate Clinton hatchet man, dating back to the 1990s, according to Jacobson, who says : "It’s not a big surprise that Sidney is being tied to the Russian-conspiracy campaign against Trump, because that hysteria increasingly appears to be a Clinton operation. We now know that the Clinton campaign and DNC paid for the Steele Dossier. We also recently found out that there was a second dossier prepared by Clinton operative Cody Shearer, and an additional Steele dossier that included information from the State Department." Jacobson cites Judicial Watch, which observed that Sidney Blumenthal could not be far behind : "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." • We should note that it was Blumenthal who was mixed up in the Benghazi affair. He often emailed Secretary Hillary, and told her after the Benghazi attacks that they were triggered by a "sacrilegious Internet video" in an email she forwarded to trusted aide Jake Sullivan. A former aide in the Bill Clinton White House turned Clinton Foundation employee, Blumenthal emailed Hillary Clinton regularly with memos while she was Secretary of State. His close relationship with Hillary Clinton was exposed by the House Benghazi Committee during its probe as Republicans accused Clinton of welcoming questionable information from Blumenthal while Ambassador Chris Stevens didn’t have similar access to Clinton. Chairman Trey Gowdy raised Blumenthal's name during the October 22, 2015, full committee public questioning of Hillary Clinton regarding the Benghazi incident. Gowdy named Blumenthal as one of the alleged sources of Clinton's intelligence, and during the hearing Democratic members asked that Blumenthal's deposition transcript be made public in order to palce the comments in context. The request was denied, but the transcript shows that Hillary shared Blumenthal advice, through Sullivan, with senior State Department personnel. Evne some Democrats asked why Hillary would rely on Blunenthal, whom they considered a minor-league conspiracy creep. In the form of intelligence briefings, the memos sometimes touted his business associates and, at times contained inaccurate information. BUT, when the Commlittee Democrats released their final conclusions form the Committee hearings, they mistakenly included the until-then hidden information that Blumenthal, a longtime confidant of Hillary Clinton's, ahd told congressional investigators he earned "about $200,000 a year" from the Clinton Foundation. • Now more information is coming out suggesting Blumenthal direct involvement with Steele. The Daily Caller reported on comments by Representative Jim Jordan : "Republican Reppresentative 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. Talk about rigging the game and putting together a document that will serve your purposes as an opposition research document.” • Nunes has said : "Phase one of our investigation was getting to the FISA abuse. What we’re looking at now is the State Department and some of the irregularities there.” Nunes added on Monday that the committee has “several other areas” to probe. • • • DEAR READERS, while the Gowdy suggestions are getting a lot of coverage, another Trump supporter, Sean Hannity, released on Wednesday morning a review of the "2nd memo," saying in plain wrods that it exposes Deep State corruption. Hannity said : "Former British spy Christopher Steele was working on a second anti-Trump dossier that contained allegations that were fed to him by Clinton associates and the Obama State Department. Hot on the heels of the House [Nunes] Memo exposing Deep State corruption comes an equally explosive document from the Senate that shows the story behind the phony Dossier is even worse than you thought. Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham have released a heavily redacted, yet very revealing copy of their criminal referral against ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dubious Dossier we now know was parlayed into a FISA warrant by Trump-hating operatives at the Justice Department. Grassley and Graham tell us that, while working on a second dossier for Clinton opposition research firm Fusion GPS, Steele was being fed information directly from the Obama State Department and from Clinton allies as well as his usual, sketchy Russian sources. That’s right, teams Clinton and Obama were working with a foreign spy to undermine then-candidate Donald Trump. • The "Obama State Department" and "Clinton allies" includes Sidney Blumenthal, according ot the very stron hint Trey Gowdy gave Fox News' Martha MacCallum. • Hannity quotes the Grassley-Graham letter : "...Mr. Steele's memorandum states that his company received this report from (redacted), US State Department, and that the report was the second in the series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub source who is in touch with a contact of (redacted), a friend of the Clintons who passed it to (redacted)....it's troubling enough that the Clinton campaign funded Mr. Steele's work, but [worse] that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele's allegations. It raises huge additional concerns about his credibility." • So, says Hannity : "In addition to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paying $12 million for a phony, fake-news Russian propaganda Dossier to influence the election, we now learn that her associates and the Obama State Department teamed up with Russian sources to funnel allegations to Steele for a second dossier. The Senators are also accusing Christopher Steele of lying either to the FBI or to the British courts. 'There is substantial evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele materially misled the FBI about a key aspect of his Dossier efforts, one which bears on his credibility,' they wrote. This Grassley-Graham memo also details how Steele was using his first phony Dossier to brief several mainstream media outlets, you know, the folks who bring you fake news, in the summer and the fall of 2016. British court records show Steele acknowledged he peddled his memo to The New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and, of course, CNN." However, according ot Hannity : "since he was working for the FBI, he would have been barred from leaking to the media. In fact, the FBI later cut ties with him when it learned he had broken the rule." So, asks Hannity : "Who did he lie to, the FBI or the British courts? It’s hard to keep all the memos and dossiers straight. If you’re scoring at home, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a Memo [the Nunes Memo] over the objections of Democrats and the media that showed how the FBI used Steele’s first [Russia] Dossier to get a federal warrant to spy on people close to Trump. The Democrats hope to release their own “memo,” which is not a memo at all but just a sour-grapes rebuttal to the committee’s. The Grassley-Graham memo is a third document that tells us Obama and Clinton operatives fed Steele information to try to damage Trump. The dossiers, and there are apparently two of them, were cooked up by Steele and are completely unverified claptrap. Yet, the FBI marched one of them into a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and presented it as evidence. Months later, then-FBI Director James Comey admitted it was completely unverified. And here's what the left and your corrupt media won't tell you : the FISA judge was never told that Hillary Clinton was paying for the phony dossier containing Russian intelligence lies about Donald Trump. And they don’t seem to care that it was first used to try to influence an election, then to get a warrant to spy on an opposition candidate." • A lot of what Hannity said on Wednesday morning was already known, but he has the facility of putting this tangled web of information into an easy-to-understand format. His conclusion shows this : "The incestuous ties between Fusion, Steele, the Clinton campaign and the Obama Justice Department are alarming. Clinton hired Fusion, which hired Steele. Steele was working with the FBI at the same time. The wife of a top Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion to work with Steele. The goal of the whole, unseemly syndicate? To launder Russian lies about Donald Trump through the US government, so they could weaponize our own intelligence and law enforcement network against the man who now sits in the Oval Office. You should be scared. And disgusted." • AND, now we learn that Lisa Page wrote to Peter Strzok on September 2, 2016, about preparing talking points for FBI Director Comey because, "POTUS wants to know everything we're doing." • WHAT DID OBAMA KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? When is the Justice Department going to ask him this one remaining question? • Harry Truman was taking presidential responsibility when he said 'the buck stops here." But, in the case of Barack Obama, who tried to dodge responsibility for everything, the "buck" will, it now seems, "stop" at his Oval Office desk -- you know, the Lincoln desk he liked to put his shoes on as if it were his foot stool.