Republican Gear Up to Investigate the FBI/DOJ Cabal against President Trump, While the Media Digs In and Brennan Seeks Cover by Saying He May Have Received 'Bad Information'

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND HIS SUPPORTERS ARE GEARING UP TO UNRAVEL THE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT ATTEMPTED COUP. • • • PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL RELEASE THE FISA DOCUMENTS. Fox News reported on Thursday about the President's interview with Sean Hannity to discuss to outcome of the Mueller report and the role the FISA abuse scandal played. The interview is available at : < http://video.foxnews.com/v/6018986517001 > and < http://video.foxnews.com/v/6018995725001 >. • President Trump told Hannity that he will release the full and unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and related documents used by the FBI to probe his campaign, saying he wants to "get to the bottom" of how the long-running Russia collusion narrative began. The President told anchor Sean Hannity : "I do, I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release. I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really didn't want me to do it early on....A lot of people wanted me to do it a long time ago. I'm glad I didn't do it. We got a great result without having to do it, but we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn't want me to do it, is they said, if I do it, they'll call it a form of obstruction. Frankly, thought it would be better if we held it to the end. But at the right time, we will be absolutely releasing." • President Trump also accused FBI officials of committing "treason" -- calling former FBI Director James Comey a "terrible guy," saying former CIA Director John Brennan is potentially mentally ill -- "I think Brennan's a sick person, I really do," Trump said. "I believe there's something wrong with him, for him to come out of the CIA and act that way was so disrespectful to the country and to the CIA. He was not considered good at what he did. He was never a respected guy." -- and labeling Democrat House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as a criminal. President Trump attacked Schiff, D-Calif., who has pushed strongly for investigations into possible Trump-Russia links : "Schiff is a bad guy, he knew he was lying -- he's not a dummy. For a year and a half he would just leak and call up CNN and others. You know, I watch him, so sanctimonious...He knew it was a lie, and he'd get in the back room with his friends in the Democrat Party, and they would laugh like hell. In one way, you could say it's a crime what he did -- he was making statements he knew were false. He's a disgrace to our country." • Fox News reminded us that : "Redacted versions of FISA documents already released have revealed that the FBI extensively relied on documents produced by Christopher Steele, an anti-Trump British ex-spy working for a firm funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, to surveil Trump aide Carter Page. At least one senior DOJ official had apparent concerns Steele was unreliable, according to text messages exclusively obtained last week by Fox News....The leaked Dossier, and related FBI surveillance, kickstarted a media frenzy on alleged Russia-Trump collusion that ended with a whimper on Sunday, when it was revealed special counsel Robert Mueller's probe concluded finding no evidence of such a conspiracy, despite several offers by Russians to help the Trump campaign. Page was never charged with wrongdoing, and he is currently suing the DNC for defamation." • President Trump also told Hannity : "When I said there could be somebody spying on my campaign, it went wild out there. They couldn't believe I could say such a thing. As it turned out, that was small potatoes compared to what went on....Millions and millions [spent] on the phony Dossier, and then they used the Dossier to start things. It was a fraud, paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats." • Fox News noted that : "Just hours earlier Wednesday, Trump made clear he was enthusiastic about the idea of appointing a second special counsel to review the origins of the Russia investigation when it came up during a meeting Tuesday with Republican Senators, a source familiar with the discussions told Fox News. The President also said he had doubts about the secretive and mysterious June 27, 2016 Phoenix airport tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch -- which was spotted while Lynch was overseeing the Hillary Clinton email probe : 'I had a lot of planes for a long time. I’ve never stopped the plane on the tarmac to let somebody on the plane. Bill Clinton said he was there to play golf, but I know the area very well. Arizona. It's a little warm at that time of year for golf, OK?" • The President's parting shot was : "If you wrote this as a novel, nobody would buy it; it would be a failure, because it would be too unbelievable. We're getting to the bottom of it. This can never, ever happen to a President again. That was a disgrace and an embarrassment to our country....Hopefully they won't get away with it. We'll have to see how it all started, but I'm going to leave that to other people, including the attorney general and others, to make that determination. Fifty years, 100 years from now -- if someone tries the same thing, they have to know the penalty will be very very great if and when they get caught." • • • SENATOR RAND PAUL SINGLES OUT JOHN BRENNAN. In a separate report, Fox News revealed : "Citing a high-level source, Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul late Wednesday tweeted that anti-Trump ex-CIA Director John Brennan had internally pushed the Dossier. Fox News has not independently verified Paul's source." BUT, Fox did say : "Brennan was one of the loudest and most virulent voices to trumpet the Russian collusion theory over the past two years, asserting falsely just weeks ago that Mueller was likely planning to indict members of the Trump administration's family....Trump, who revoked Brennan's security clearance last year amid concerns Brennan was improperly hinting that he had inside information about ongoing federal probes, called those remarks 'horrible' on Wednesday. Brennan has since acknowledged he was wrong, but has said inaccurately that Mueller merely could not find evidence meeting the high bar needed for a criminal prosecution -- when in fact Mueller found no evidence at all that the Trump team responded to Russians' numerous efforts to involve them in a conspiracy." • BlabberBuzz on Wednesday published a Breitbart Exclusive written by Matthew Boyle, in which Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said he wants to know if former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch were in on the decisions to spy on President Donald Trump’s campaign and lend credence to the phony Dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that gave way to what became the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. In the exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday, Senator Paul said he is not sure if Obama or Lynch were personally aware of everything going -- but demanded the production of documents that would prove it conclusively one way or the other : “You know, I don’t know. But I think we ought to know. The thing is like I say, when they release the information -- if the report is to come out, part of the release is they should have to release any documents from Loretta Lynch and any documents from the President that discuss or have information pertaining to the FISA warrant. If this went all the way up to President, to President Obama, yes we should know that. The only way you’ll get that is if Democrats really want to read all million pages of Mueller’s investigation and we tell them fine you’ll get that but only if we get all the information from the Obama administration on who was unmasking names, who was unmasking phone calls. Who was making the arguments for the FISA warrant and what were there arguments for it? Did President Obama get involved in it? Did Loretta Lynch get involved in it? So I think if we’re going to look at the Mueller report we should look at the origins of this Russian hoax investigation as well.” Senator Paul told Breitbart that there needs to be a full investigation into the origins of all of this, in particular what appears to be abuse by the Obama administration when it comes to using foreign surveillance wiretap powers : “Yeah, and the way you’ll find out about it like I say is if they’re demanding the full report come out and all of that information come out then we should demand in exchange for that all of the paper, all of the information that was transforming how and why they got those FISA warrants should be made public too. Everybody should be allowed to read who’s making the decisions and what were their arguments for why anybody should respect or believe this Dossier that was paid for by the Clinton campaign. So I think that from my point of view the only way I’ll agree to release more information from this Mueller investigation is they also need to release information that points to who in the Obama administration agreed to start this Russia hoax.” • Senator Paul also took on the mainstream media : "I think the left-wing media has no conscience. I don’t think that they’ll apologize. I think the left-wing media has no shame. They’ve been trumpeting this thing for two solid years. People were saying ‘the President is going to jail,’ that he ‘absolutely colluded,’ that the President is a spy, we’ve even had some in the media do the same to me. I think they should apologize but do I think they will apologize? No. If you go on the left-wing television sites and watch them they’re still concocting new stories and saying things like ‘we need to know about his tax returns.’ It’s endless. But I think the American people are catching on. Ever since the Catholic high school student who was in Washington that the left-wing media made this fake story about him disrespecting Native Americans -- ever since then I think people are catching on that the media doesn’t really care about the truth and is willing to concoct any story that fits their narrative. It’s the same thing with Trump. They hate Trump so they concocted this whole thing, and now they’ll move on to some other thing. So I think you’ll see rare if any apologies.” • Senator Paul, also in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News after the President’s complete exoneration, called for several other senior Obama officials like former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director James Brennan, and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, to be compelled to testify before Congress about their roles in perpetrating this hoax on the American public." • Fox News First reported on Thursday that Senator Rand Paul charged in a bombshell Tweet late Wednesday that an unidentified high-level source told him that anti-Trump ex-CIA Director John Brennan "insisted that the unverified and fake Steele Dossier" be included in a classified intelligence community report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections -- a decision that ultimately lent credibility to the Dossier and may have played a key role in fomenting unfounded fears of Russia collusion for two years....Paul called on Brennan to testify under oath immediately, as Republicans continue to aggressively seek out the origins of the collusion narrative. Fox News had not independently verified Paul's source, and Brennan has not replied to Fox News' requests for comment." • The Gateway Pundit quoted Senator Paul : "Well my source tells me that the intelligence community, Obama’s intelligence community, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, they were frustrated because they had this Russian Dossier but no one believed it was real. It wasn’t verifiable, they couldn’t get anything out of it, so they sent spies into the Trump campaign, they tried to entrap Trump officials [into] admitting that they were working for Russia, but it wasn’t working. So finally what they decided is we have to attach this Dossier, this fake Dossier, to the intelligence reports [given to Obama]." • The Gateway Pundit explained that in late summer of 2016 : "then-FBI Director James Comey was notified that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would be sending him a letter asking him to investigate the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Harry Reid’s letter was written a week after he met with John Brennan -- raising suspicion that Brennan briefed Reid on the fake Steele Dossier -- Reid’s letter was then leaked to the New York Times just before election day. John Brennan said during a February 2018 appearance on “Meet the Press” that he learned about the Dossier in December of 2016 and that 'it did not play any role whatsoever in the intelligence community assessment that was done that was presented to then-President Obama and then-President elect Trump.' [BUT] It gets worse....John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee [earlier] in a May 2017 hearing that the Dossier was not a part of the intelligence used to assess Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Dossier, Brennan testified, 'was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.' Former House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes is reportedly investigating whether Brennan perjured himself during his 2017 testimony to the Committee. Rand Paul is right -- it’s time for Congress to drag Brennan in again and question him under oath ASAP." • The Washington Examiner wrote a similar article about Brennan on Thursday, stating : "In an earlier tweet Wednesday, Paul called for wide investigation into former President Barack Obama and his team : 'I agree with @kimguilfoyle Time for Congress to investigate. What did President Obama know and when? How did this hoax go on for so long unabated? https://t.co/fgJZaqR6cI — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 27, 2019' Paul said the topic of a probe into the Dossier 'keeps coming up for discussion. How did all this get started.' He added that Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Lindsay Graham has indicated it would open a probe. Brennan has denied in the past that he included the salacious Dossier, generated at the request of the Democrats, in Intelligence Community Assessment reports on Russian interference in the 2016 election during the final months of the Obama administration. But at least two other top intelligence officials said he did. And Washington Post editor Bob Woodward also said that Brennan endorsed the Dossier from Christopher Steele when he got a copy in late 2016. Woodward said that Brennan felt it matched the Russia collusion charges he had heard. The Dossier was never considered true until it was recognized in intelligence assessments and only after the late Senator John McCain and top Obama officials helped circulate it, said Paul....The Dossier was underwritten by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. By indicating the Kremlin interfered in the election, it helped to fuel false allegations of foreign collusion with the Trump campaign, leading to two years of nonstop investigations." • The Examiner also quoted Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin, who has demanded a probe into the efforts by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign to spy on the Trump campaign : “I’m very concerned that it’s becoming more clear that the Obama administration was able to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on our campaign based on phony opposition research from the Clinton campaign. Having federal law enforcement spy on a presidential campaign based on phony campaign research is really distressing and the true untold story." • • • BRENNAN SAYS HE HAD 'BAD INFORMATION.' Daily Caller's Chuck Ross wrote on Thursday : "Former CIA Director John Brennan’s recent admission he received 'bad information' that led him to inaccurately predict conspiracy indictments in the Mueller probe is raising questions about claims he made to Congress about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. Brennan told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in May 2017 the CIA provided the FBI with information on contacts between Russian officials and Trump campaign figures. Brennan said he was 'concerned' about the contacts because of known Russian efforts to 'suborn' Trump campaign associates. 'It raised questions in my mind...whether or not the Russians were ever able to gain cooperation of those individuals. I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign,' he added, noting he had not seen evidence of collusion between the Trump associates and Russians. Brennan did not identify the Trump officials or add any other details about the alleged contacts, other than that they occurred in 2016. Whatever contacts there might have been did not involve a conspiracy to influence the election, as special counsel Robert Mueller has determined. Mueller ended his investigation without issuing any new indictments in the case. Mueller also found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian government, according to a summary of the investigation that Attorney General William Barr submitted to Congress Sunday. Brennan acknowledged after Barr’s revelation that he may have relied on 'bad information' when he recently predicted conspiracy indictments against Trump associates in the Mueller probe : 'Well, I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was. I am relieved that it’s been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election. I think that is good news for the country.' Brennan said in his May 2017 testimony he could not reveal the Trump campaign contacts because the information was classified. He said the Intelligence panel was aware of the information." • I have to say that when the Director of the CIA chooses as his first line of defense that he relied on "bad information," he is in big trouble and he knows it. • • • REPUBLICANS TELL SCHIFF TO RESIGN. Fox News published on Thursday a letter asking Adam Schiff to step down. The letter was written and signed by all the GOP members on House Intelligence Committee. Catherine Herridge reported from Washington ; "Every Republican on the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday demanded Representative Adam Schiff step down as chairman over the California Democrat’s repeated claims to have evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. In a letter, obtained by Fox News and signed by every Republican on the committee, the lawmakers slammed Schiff for his claims in the media that there was 'more than circumstantial evidence' of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. 'Your actions both past and present are incompatible with your duty as Chairman of this Committee,' the letter states. 'We have no faith in your ability to discharge your duties in a manner consistent with your Constitutional responsibility and urge your immediate resignation as Chairman of this Committee.' ” The entire letter was posted by Fox News on Scribd and is available at < https://www.scribd.com/document/403481639/GOP-Letter-to-Schiff >. Herridge wrote : "The letter follows the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, which turned up no evidence of collusion between Trump campaign members and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. President Trump himself went even further than congressional Republicans Thursday morning, tweeting : 'Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!' Schiff, a vocal critic of the President, has doubled down on his claim that Trump and his administration colluded with foreign powers despite Mueller’s findings. 'Undoubtedly, there is collusion,' Schiff told the Washington Post after Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of Mueller's investigation was released Sunday. He told the paper that the question of whether Trump or the people around him were compromised by a hostile foreign power was not in any part of Mueller’s report." • TheHill reported that : "House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) aggressively pushed back at calls for him to step down from President Trump and other Republicans, defending his past comments by lighting into the President and his family and campaign over its contacts with Russia. Schiff at the opening of an Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia listed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia that he described as being 'not OK,' signaling he'll fiercely defend himself from the calls to end his chairmanship. 'My colleagues may think it is OK the President's son was offered dirt as part of an effort to help Trump,' Schiff said in his statement. 'You might think it is OK. I don’t,' Schiff added, his voice rising as he went on." • NOTICE that Schiff did not say that the President's son accepted the "dirt" or entered inot a collusive arrangement -- he was merely "offered dirt." • BUT, TheHill stretched the truth a bit when it said : "Schiff spoke after ONE of the panel's senior members, in a striking display called for him to step down. Representative Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said Schiff had lost confidence in the panel by promoting a 'demonstrably false' narrative that has damaged the 'integrity' of their panel. NO MENTION by TheHill of the letter signed by all GOP Committee members. • • • NATIONAL REVIEW'S DAVID FRENCH CALLED THE DOSSIER A 'MALIGNANT GIFT TO AMERICA.' National Review's David French wrote : "The Dossier, characterized by James Comey under oath as “salacious and unverified,” consisted of opposition research compiled by a former British intelligence officer and commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Taken as whole, it undermined the credibility of American intelligence agencies, corrupted elements of the media, and distorted the public debate. It may well be one of the most malignant documents in modern American history. I’m not going to link to the Dossier, but it’s worth remembering its core claim. As explained in this December analysis in Lawfare, the document not only contained claims that Russia possessed lurid, compromising information on Donald Trump, it also made the sensational allegation that there existed a 'well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [Trump and his associates] and the Russian leadership,' including an 'intelligence exchange [that] had been running between them for at least 8 years.' The very existence of this allegation detonated like a bomb in the American body politic....The Nunes memo notes that 'Deputy Director McCabe testified....that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Dossier information.' In addition, elements of the Dossier made it to lawmakers including Harry Reid and John McCain, and the FBI ultimately even briefed then-President-Elect Trump about its contents. While the summary it provided Trump is still largely redacted, it is easy to imagine how the existence of such a document could enrage the President....But even in the face of widespread rumors, responsible journalists -- or journalists who aspire to responsibility -- do not print the rumor, at least not without verifying or debunking it. They should not print the rumor even if they know that law enforcement is looking into it....Well, if you’re BuzzFeed, that’s exactly what you do. While it may well be newsworthy that the FBI is looking into claims that Trump is 'compromised,' there’s a vast difference between that factual report and just tossing a raw opposition-research file into the public square and telling people to 'make up their own minds.' That makes no sense. None. Between taking kids to soccer practice and dance lessons, parents aren’t able to determine whether Michael Cohen went to Prague. As I wrote at the time, 'individual Americans aren’t free-standing intelligence agencies, ready and able to investigate alleged Russian operations in Moscow.' If a journalist hears a claim, he should investigate. Not punt to the public. BuzzFeed’s decision had two immediate effects. First, it demonstrated the extent to which an influential media outlet would depart from best practices when it possessed negative allegations against Trump. Second, the instant the claims were published, millions of Americans became convinced they were true....a veritable industry sprang up that attempted to tie the entire Trump-Russia investigation to the Dossier....The Dossier was the chief weapon in the effort to delegitimize the investigation itself, and it was a potent weapon indeed. For all of their other accomplishments, the Clintons are leaving American public life with a legacy of lies and lawlessness. Bill Clinton’s shameless behavior, perjury, and obstruction of justice led to his impeachment. Hillary’s serial deceptions and her grotesque mishandling of classified information led to her defeat. The Dossier, however, in its sheer negative impact on American public life, may be her most infamous achievement.' Her campaign -- and ultimately Hillary herself -- bears responsibility for the chaos it sowed. But key members of the media and the government share in that responsibility. The Dossier redefined the debate. It was a cancer, and it sickened American culture and politics. Our nation is weaker because that document entered the bloodstream of the body politic." • AND, in news just in, Representative Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo that he plans to submit criminal referrals to the Justice Department on accusations both the DOJ and the FBI made false claims while they investigated allegations of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election. Nunes said, according to Newsmax, that referrals to DOJ are likely next week over the Russia probe : "We think will grab everybody that we need to grab to make sure that there is a proper investigation." Nunes told Newsmax that the FBI and the DOJ used counterintelligence capabilities while investigating Trump that would normally be used to go after "terrorists and other bad guys. They turned it on a political campaign. This is where they first went wrong....Congress should not tolerate it, the American people should not tolerate it, and the Democrats should not tolerate it." He added that the FBI and DOJ had claimed their investigation did not begin until late July 2016, but "We now know for certain that that's not true. We are still trying to get to the bottom of that. Of course, there are still documents that need to come out." He said while he expects the referral to be delivered by next week, as more information surfaces, it might need to be supplemented : "There are documents that need to come out, but, we are prepared and are now drafting a criminal referral. We can't force them to do an investigation, but we will give appropriate names to some crimes." • • • DEAR READERS, to finish, and with a big thank-you to Thomas Lifson and Rick Moran, I offer you another pinch of fertilizer for your ever-blooming release and relief catharsis following the American tragedy that presented itself as the Mueller probe and ended with the ZERO result of collusion or obstruction findings for President Trump and America. Watch the definitive takedown of CNN by Tucker Carlson on Fox News Wednesday evening. It will make you shed tears of cathartic joy. It is available at < https://youtu.be/V0zf7oEI9uM >. And, then, because a good laugh is the best catharsis I know of, watch "the walls are closing in" You Tube that covers the last two years of media hysteria in trying to "'Get Trump". This one is available at < https://youtu.be/qjUvfZj-Fm0 >. As Rick Moran says, save this one for later, too, to re-watch when the media becomes too much to take -- those moments when "the walls are closing in."