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US official: IS leader believed dead in US military assault
The Associated Press
ROBERT BURNS AND ERIC TUCKER
Oct 27th 2019 8:23AM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group who presided over its global jihad and became arguably the world's most wanted man, is believed dead after being targeted by a U.S. military raid in Syria.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press late Saturday that al-Baghdadi was targeted in Syria's northwestern Idlib province. The official said confirmation that the IS chief was killed in an explosion was pending. No other details were available. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the strike and spoke on condition of anonymity.
President Donald Trump teased a major announcement, tweeting Saturday night that "Something very big has just happened!" A White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, said Trump would make a "major statement" at 9 a.m. EDT Sunday.
A senior Iraqi security official told the AP that Iraqi intelligence played a part in the operation. Al-Baghdadi and his wife detonated explosive vests they were wearing during the U.S. commando operation, according to the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive information and spoke on condition of anonymity. He added that other IS leaders were killed in the attack.
If confirmed, the operation's success could prove a major boost for Trump. The recent pullback of U.S. troops he ordered from northeastern Syria raised a storm of bipartisan criticism in Washington that the militant group could regain strength after it had lost vast stretches of territory it had once controlled.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Syria war monitor, reported an attack carried out by a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by a warplane belonging to the international coalition on positions of the Hurras al-Deen, an al-Qaida-linked group, in the Barisha area north of Idlib city, after midnight on Saturday. IS operatives were believed to be hiding in the area, it said.
It said the helicopters targeted IS positions with heavy strikes for about 120 minutes, during which jihadists fired at the aircraft with heavy weapons. The Britain-based Observatory, which operates through a network of activists on the ground, documented the death of 9 people as a result of the coalition helicopter attack. It was not immediately known whether al-Baghdadi was one of them, it said.
Al-Baghdadi's presence in the village, a few kilometers from the Turkish border, would come as a surprise, even if some IS leaders are believed to have fled to Idlib after losing their last sliver of territory in Syria to U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in March. The surrounding areas are largely controlled by an IS rival, the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, although other jihadi groups sympathetic to IS operate there. Unverified video circulated online by Syrian groups appeared to support the Observatory claim that the operation occurred in Barisha.
The intelligence source on the militant leader's whereabouts could not be immediately confirmed, but both Iraqi and Kurdish officials claimed a role. The Turkish military also tweeted that before the operation in Idlib, it exchanged "information" and coordinated with U.S. military authorities.
Kurdish forces appeared ready to portray al-Baghdadi's death as a joint victory for their faltering alliance with the U.S., weeks after Trump ordered American forces to withdraw from northeastern Syria, all but abandoning Washington's allies to a wide-ranging Turkish assault.
The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, tweeted: "Successful& historical operation due to a joint intelligence work with the United States of America."
Al-Baghdadi has led IS for the last five years, presiding over its ascendancy as it cultivated a reputation for beheadings and attracted tens of thousands of followers to a sprawling and self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria. He remained among the few IS commanders still at large despite multiple claims in recent years about his death and even as his so-called caliphate dramatically shrank, with many supporters who joined the cause either imprisoned or jailed.
Mark S. Zaid
@MarkSZaidEsq
Replying to
@POTUS
#coup has started. As one falls, two more will take their place. #rebellion #impeachment
10:52 PM · Jan 30, 2017·Twitter for Android
De Dragon wrote:All those commenting on the very likely failure of impeachment to succeed in the Senate are failing to realize that the Democrats knew that from the outset. The strategy part in this impeachment is all about the optics.
Ilhan Omar Accused of Being a Paid Agent of Qatar and Accessing Sensitive Info for Iran: Court Testimony
Avatar by Kristinn Taylor November 25, 2019
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has been accused of being a paid agent of the government of Qatar and using her position in Congress to access sensitive information for the benefit of Iran, according to testimony in a civil suit in Florida.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, screen image.
Alan Bender, a Kuwaiti-born Canadian businessman, made the accusations in video-conference testimony on October 23 from Toronto for a civil case filed in Florida against the brother of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani, over allegations the Sheikh ordered his American bodyguard to murder two people and that he held his American paramedic hostage.
Bender’s deposition was reported Monday by Al Arabiya
…In explosive testimony made by video link from Toronto, Canada to a Florida District Court on October 23, Kuwaiti-born Alan Bender claims to have deep ties with governments and royal officials across the Middle East including Qatar. In his statement, he says he met Qatar’s Secretary to the Emir for Security Affairs Mohammad bin Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Masnad and two other senior Qatari officials.
The three allegedly claimed credit for the meteoric rise of Omar, saying: “If it wasn’t for our cash, Ilhan Omar would be just another black Somali refugee in America collecting welfare and serving tables on weekends,” according to Bender’s sworn deposition. The deposition was obtained by Al Arabiya English and authenticated by the attorney for the plaintiffs.
…In the testimony, Bender claims to have been asked to recruit American politicians and journalists to be Qatari assets. He says he objected and the Qatari officials responded by saying that several American politicians and journalists were already on the payroll—most prominently Omar, who was allegedly described as the “jewel of the crown”, according to the deposition.
…Bender’s accusations go much further. According to his testimony, Al-Masnad said that Qatar “recruited Ilhan Omar from even way before she thought about becoming a government official.… They groomed her and arranged the foundation, the grounds, for her to get into politics way before she even showed interest. They convinced her.” For her part, Omar cooperated with the Qataris and received cash payments, he alleges in the deposition.
…Bender claims that once Omar took office, she used her position in the House of Representatives to access sensitive information which she relayed to Qatar, and through them to Iran.
End excerpt. Please read the complete Al Arabiya article at https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2019/11/25/US-rep-Ilhan-Omar-accused-of-being-a-foreign-agent-legal-deposition.html.
Imam Tawhidi, known as the Imamofpeace on Twitter has been working for months to expose Omar as a foreign agent. He posted a blind item thread in July starting with this tweet:
In September, Tawhidi named Omar as an agent of Qatar in a new Twitter thread:
In this tweet thread, Tawhidi wrote about the lawsuit and that Bender had been subpoenaed to testify. Tawhidi indicated he planned to leverage the case to expose Omar’s ties to Qatar by suggesting questions to the plaintiff’s attorney, which he apparently has succeeded in doing. (Tawhidi also accused Linda Sarsour of being involved with Qatar.)
IG Report: FBI Doctored Evidence To Falsely Paint Carter Page As Russian Spy
The Department of Justice's inspector general found that a top FBI lawyer blatantly doctored evidence to falsely smear Carter Page as a Russian spy.
DECEMBER 9, 2019 By Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway
A wide-ranging investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general (IG) found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) deliberately doctored evidence it presented to the nation’s top spy court in order to gain authority to spy on a key Trump affiliate.
The 476-page report from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the FBI falsely claimed to the FISA Court not only that Carter Page was a Russian agent, but also falsely claimed that an unnamed intelligence agency had told the FBI that Page was “not a source” in their efforts to surveil and curtail Russian intelligence efforts.
Page, who had previously been an informant and witness for the United States in a federal espionage case against a Russian intelligence official, was targeted by the Obama FBI as a Russian spy helping Putin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton in 2016. According to the IG report, before the FBI and DOJ went to the FISA Court to apply for a warrant to spy on Page, an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency had told the FBI that Carter Page had previously assisted that agency’s efforts against Russian spies. Although exculpatory information about potential spy targets is required in spy warrant applications, Obama’s FBI and DOJ deliberately withheld that information from the spy court in order to paint Page in the worst possible light.
The FBI’s malfeasance in the matter did not stop there. Ahead of an application to renew the spy warrant in 2017, a top FBI lawyer doctored evidence from the unnamed agency which confirmed that contrary to FBI claims that he was a Russian spy, Page had in fact assisted the United States in its efforts to counter Russian operations. An e-mail from the agency that clearly stated Page was “a source” for them was doctored by Kevin Clinesmith, a top FBI national security lawyer, to give the opposite impression to the federal spy court.
“The [Office of General Counsel] Attorney altered and sent the e-mail to a [supervisory special agent], who thereafter relied on it to swear out the third FISA application,” the IG report notes. Upon learning that a top FBI lawyer doctored evidence against a former Trump campaign affiliate to justify spying on him, the IG referred the attorney to DOJ for criminal prosecution.
Text messages from that same lawyer after the 2016 election revealed that he was an anti-Trump activist. “Viva la Resistance!” he texted on November 22, 2016, while in the midst of investigating Trump. He would later be terminated from the Mueller probe for conduct which a previous IG report said “brought discredit” to the FBI. Of FBI documents he approved authorizing spying on Trump campaign, Clinesmith wrote “[M]y god damned name is all over the legal documents investigating his staff.”
“[W]ho knows if that breaks to him what he is going to do,” Clinesmith continued, apparently worried about the ramifications of his illicit behavior against the Trump campaign. It is unclear whether he doctored evidence against Trump to protect his own career and reputation or simply because of anti-Trump animus. At the time, Clinesmith worked under James Baker, the FBI General Counsel who was a close confidant of fired former director James Comey. Baker was one of a slew of former deputies who resigned or were fired as the Russia collusion hoax imploded.
In his report, the Horowitz referred Clinesmith to DOJ authorities for criminal prosecution. Spanning more than 476 pages, the report cited countless examples of corruption and deceit committed by employees throughout the FBI and Department of Justice related to the Trump-Russia probe, confirming that the investigation against Trump was unusually aggressive, politically tainted, and bore no fruit. Despite its claims about Page being a traitorous Russian spy, the former Trump foreign policy affiliate was never charged with any wrongdoing since there was no evidence that he was working for the Russians.
A subsequent investigation by Robert Mueller similarly found zero evidence of treasonous collusion with Russia by Trump or his campaign to steal the 2016 election.
Durham Disagrees With Some Conclusions in Inspector General’s Report
BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV
December 9, 2019 Updated: December 9, 2019Share
The U.S. attorney tasked with investigating the origins of the investigation of the Trump campaign issued a rare statement on Dec. 9 disagreeing with some of the conclusions in the highly anticipated Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on the surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.
Attorney General William Barr assigned U.S. Attorney John Durham earlier this year to probe the origins of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign and to assess whether the surveillance of Trump-campaign associate Carter Page was free of improper motive. In a statement issued on Dec. 9, Durham noted that his investigation—unlike the one concluded by the DOJ inspector general—reaches beyond “component parts of the Justice Department” and includes persons outside the United States.
“Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened,” Durham said in a statement.
Durham’s review recently evolved into a criminal inquiry. The report by Department of Justice Inspector General (DOJ IG) Michael Horowitz, meanwhile, is limited to violations of FBI and Justice Department policies.
Since March 2018, Horowitz’s office has been investigating the actions taken by the FBI and the DOJ in relation to the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The DOJ IG report concluded that the applications contained 17 significant errors. The errors and other failures in the process amounted to “serious performance failures” by the supervisory and non-supervisory FBI agents who handled the warrant applications, the report states.
In a statement issued shortly after the release of the DOJ IG report, Barr assessed that the surveillance of Page constituted a “clear abuse” of the FISA process.
“In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source,” Barr said.
“The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory. While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.”
Barr added that FBI Director Christopher Wray is “dismayed” by the handling of the FISA applications. Wray is expected to announce a comprehensive set of reforms on Dec. 9, according to Barr.
The FBI launched a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign in late July 2016. Barr concluded that the investigation was “intrusive” and was initiated based “on the thinnest of suspicions.” The suspicions were “insufficient” to justify the steps the bureau went on to take, Barr said.
“Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration,” Barr said.
In late October 2016, the FBI secured a FISA warrant to surveil Page. The bureau renewed the warrant three times, surveilling the Trump-campaign associate for a total of 12 months.
The FISA warrant applications featured claims from an unverified dossier of opposition research on Trump. Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled the dossier by using second- and third-hand sources with ties to the Kremlin.
“Steele himself was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting. Steele instead relied on a Primary Sub-source for information, who used his/her network of sub-sources to gather information that was then passed to Steele,” the IG report states.
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee ultimately paid for Steele’s work, a fact the FBI did not disclose in the warrant application.
While the extent of the surveillance granted in Page’s case remains classified, FISA warrants allow for some of the most intrusive spying under the law. Under the so-called “two-hop” rule, investigators could collect the communications of every person Page interacted with as well every person who communicated with Page’s contacts. As a result, it is possible that the FBI obtained the communications of the entire Trump campaign, both retroactively and in real-time.
A number of FBI officials directly involved in preparing and signing the FISA warrants have all either left or been fired from the bureau, including Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok.
The scandal surrounding the surveillance warrants was amplified by the discovery of biased text messages between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair. Strzok and Page vented their hatred of Trump, spoke of his slim chances of winning the election, committed to stopping him from being elected, discussed an “insurance policy” in the unlikely event of a Trump victory and mulled “impeachment” once around the time they joined special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
Strzok led the investigation of the Trump campaign and the probe of Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized private email server for government work. In a report on the review of the Clinton-email probe, Horowitz concluded that Strzok and Page’s biased messages “cast a cloud” over the investigation, but was unable to find evidence to support the claim that the bias had an effect on any investigative decisions.
Horowitz formally announced the investigation into the Carter Page FISA in March 2018. He submitted a draft report to the DOJ in September. Horowitz said at the time that his team reviewed more than 1 million documents and interviewed more than 100 witnesses.
DECEMBER 9TH, 2019
IG Report: Here Are The 17 Specific ‘Inaccuracies And Omissions’ In The FBI’s FISA Warrants Against Carter Page
By Ashe Schow
DailyWire.com
A lot is being written about the Department of Justice Inspector General’s (IG) report about the FBI’s abuse of the FISA application process to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Talking heads will quibble about whether this exonerates or implicates the FBI under the Obama administration and whether it supports or refutes President Donald Trump and his supporters’ claims of Deep State meddling.
But Michael Horowitz’s IG report lays out a whopping 17 “inaccuracies and omissions” that were not brought to the attention of the Office of Intelligence prior to the fourth and last FISA application being filed in June 2017. Further, National Security Division (NSD) officials were not even aware of the issues when they prepared and reviewed the first FISA application, meaning at the very least, due diligence was not performed. Seven of the inaccuracies and omissions related to the first FISA application, and these errors were carried on the three subsequent applications, along with additional errors. Below are the seven specific inaccuracies and omissions from the first application:
Omitted information from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an operational contact for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application;
Included a source characterization statement asserting that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings,” which overstated the significance of Steele’s past reporting and was not approved by Steele’s FBI handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures;
Omitted information relevant to the reliability of Person 1, a key Steele sub-source (who, as previously noted, was attributed with providing the information in Report 95 and some of the information in Reports 80 and 102 relied upon in the application), namely that (1) Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that Person 1 was a “boaster” and an “egoist” and “may engage in some embellishment” and (2) [redacted]
Asserted that the FBI had assessed that Steele did not directly provide to the press information in the September 23 Yahoo News article, based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI that he only shared his election-related research with the FBI and [Fusion GPS Founder Glenn] Simpson; this premise was factually incorrect (Steele had provided direct information to Yahoo News) and also contradicted by documentation in the Woods File-Steele had told the FBI that he also gave his information to the State Department;
Omitted Papadopoulos’s statements to an FBI CHS in September 2016 denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like WikiLeaks in the release of emails;
Omitted Page’s statements to an FBI CHS [Confidential Human Source] in August 2016 that Page had “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort and that Manafort had not responded to any of Page’s emails; if true, those statements were in tension with claims in Steele’s Report 95 that Page was participating in a “conspiracy” with Russia by acting as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign; and
Selectively included Page’s statements to an FBI CHS in October 2016 that the FBI believed supported its theory that Page was an agent of Russia but omitted other statements Page made, including denying having met with Sechin and Divyekin, or even knowing who Divyekin was; if true, those statements contradicted the claims in Steele’s Report 94 that Page had met secretly with Sechin and Divyekin about future cooperation with Russia and shared derogatory information about candidate Clinton.
An additional 10 errors were included in one or more of the renewal applications, which also all contained the original seven errors:
Omitted the fact that Steele’s Primary Sub-source, who the FBI found credible, had made statements in January 2017 raising significant questions about the reliability of allegations included in the FISA applications, including, for example, that he/she had no discussion with Person 1 concerning WikiLeaks and there was “nothing bad” about the communications between the Kremlin and the Trump team, and that he/she did not report to Steele in July 2016 that Page had met with Sechin;
Omitted Page’s prior relationship with another U.S. government agency, despite being reminded by the other agency in June 2017, prior to the filing of the final renewal application, about Page’s past status with that other agency; instead of including this information in the final renewal application, the FBI OGC [Office of the General Counsel] Attorney altered an email from the other agency so that the email stated that Page was “not a source” for the other agency, which the FBI affiant relied upon in signing the final renewal application;
Omitted information provided by persons with direct knowledge of Steele’s work-related performance in a prior position about Steele’s professional judgment, including statements that Steele had held a “moderately senior” position (not “high-ranking” as noted in the applications), had no history of reporting in bad faith but demonstrated “poor judgment,” “pursued people with political risk but no intelligence value,” “didn’t always exercise great judgment,” and it was “not clear what he would have done to validate” his reporting;
Omitted information from Department attorney Bruce Ohr about Steele and his election reporting, including that (1) Steele’s reporting was going to Clinton’s presidential campaign and others, (2) Simpson was paying Steele to discuss his reporting with the media, and (3) Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President”;
Failed to update the description of Steele after information became known to the Crossfire Hurricane team, not only from Ohr but from others, that provided greater clarity on the political origins and connections of Steele’s reporting, including that Simpson was hired by someone associated with the Democratic Party and/or the DNC;
Failed to correct the assertion in the first FISA application that the FBI did not believe that Steele directly provided information to the reporter who wrote the September 23 Yahoo News article, even though there was no information in the Woods File to support this claim and even after certain FBI officials involved in Crossfire Hurricane learned in 2017, before the third renewal application, of an admission that Steele made in a court filing about his interactions with the news media in the late summer and early fall of 2016;
Omitted the finding from a formal FBI source validation report that Steele was suitable for continued operation but that his past contributions to the FBI’s criminal program had been “minimally corroborated,” and instead continued to assert in the source characterization statement that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings”;
Omitted Papadopoulos’s statements to an FBI CHS in late October 2016 (after the first application was filed) denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the circumstances of the DNC email hack;
Omitted Joseph Mifsud’s denials to the FBI that he supplied Papadopoulos with the information Papadopoulos shared with the FFG (suggesting that the campaign received an offer or suggestion of assistance from Russia); and
Omitted evidence indicating that Page played no role in the Republican platform change on Russia’s annexation of Ukraine as alleged in Steele Report 95, which was inconsistent with a factual assertion relied upon to support probable cause in all four FISA applications.
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