And here’s an interesting note. Is it due to the focus on FISA courts or is it because of a disinterest in working with the Trump administration? From ZDNet.com:
In Trump’s first year, FISA court denied record number of surveillance orders
by Zack Whittaker
More surveillance orders were denied during President Donald Trump’s first year in office than in the court’s history.
In its first year, the Trump administration kept one little-known courtroom in the capital busy.
A secretive Washington DC-based court that oversees the US government’s foreign spy programs denied more surveillance orders during President Donald Trump’s first year than in the court’s 40-year history, according to newly released figures.
Why would that be?
Annual data published Wednesday by the US Courts shows that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court last year denied 26 applications in full, and 50 applications in part.
That’s compared to 21 orders between when the court was first formed in 1978 and President Barack Obama’s final year in office in 2016.
That’s a rejection rate of 0.11 percent to date.
Okay, why?
Specific reasons for the modifications were not given, but they can include changing who or what is surveilled and for what length.
Or is it simply a Deep State political reaction?
What you may not know is this: going to the FISA court customarily equated to a Grand Jury and a ham sandwich.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton instructed the Justice Department to immediately begin producing records about DOJ communications with Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr. Nellie Ohr worked for Clinton campaign vendor Fusion GPS on the anti-Trump Dossier campaign document.
The DOJ didn’t even want to begin a search for six months, following Judicial Watch winning a lawsuit which demanded records. DOJ historically has frittered time away, purposely, on the back end — now they wanted to fritter time away on the front endand then fritter time away on the back end.
Judge Walton rejected a Justice Department request to begin producing documents six months from now and ordered the DOJ to begin producing documents immediately on a rolling basis over the next two months. Judge Walton also rejected DOJ’s efforts to restrict their search to only 2016.
Judge Walton said this on the June 14th hearing. He wasn’t happy.
I think if it’s been almost, since December when the initial request was made more should have been done by now. And it seems to me if you have someone who’s going to come into office and they say they’re going to be a disrupter, that they should appreciate there’s going to be a lot of FOIA requests and therefore, should gear up to deal with those requests. So I’m not real sympathetic to the position that you have limited staff and therefore, you can’t comply with these requests. So I think you’re going to have to get some more people.
That’s called triage. That’s called prioritizing your workload.
The original issue was this:
In December 2017, Bruce Ohr was removed from his position as U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General after it was revealed that he conducted undisclosed meetings with anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steel and Glenn Simpson, principal of Fusion GPS. A House Intelligence Committee memo released by Chairman Devin Nunes on February 2 noted that Ohr’s wife, Nellie, was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump” and that Bruce Ohr passed the results of that research, which was paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign, to the FBI.
Let me conclude with this thought.
Can you tell me any other private agency or business that would be able to somehow get away with deferring immediate reaction or production of documents in terms of response to the loss of a lawsuit? Your business or agency would produce the documents or find yourselves in contempt of the issuing court and then subsequently invaded by law enforcement officers confiscating whatever was demanded by the court itself.
Telling some court that, nah, you know what? We’ll get on that in about half a year?
Yes, certainly, I knew John McCain was pretty much an unmitigated asshole who customarily made any issue about him and should have simply been honest and changed his (R) to a (D) and been done with it. It’s no secret that McCain threatened to step across the aisle to the Demorat side.
Hell, John McCain has essentially been a functional Demorat for years.
So this should truly come as not much of a surprise, from the WashingtonTimes.com:
McCain’s office urged IRS to use audits as weapons to destroy political advocacy groups
by Larry O’Connor
A new report from Judicial Watch reveals a concerted effort from Sen. John McCain’s office to urge the IRS under Lois Lerner to strike out against political advocacy groups, including tea party organizations.
Thanks to the results of an extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that has been delayed for many years, Judicial Watch has obtained several key emails from 2013 that chronicle McCain’s and Democrat Sen. Carl Levin’s efforts to reign in the advocacy groups that sprouted immediately following the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court.
Wondrous. John McCain keeping his end of the bargain to ensure his application to the Demorat Party isn’t round filed.
The documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include notes from a high-level meeting on April 30, 2013 between powerful members of McCain’s and Levin’s staffs and Lerner, then-director of tax exempt organizations at the IRS under Barack Obama. The notes reveal the suggestions from McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner who urges Lerner to use IRS audits on the advocacy groups to financially ruin them.
Lerner and other IRS officials met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the “worst decisions I have ever seen.”
Except, well, it was the law.
In the full notes of an April 30 meeting, McCain’s high-ranking staffer Kerner recommends harassing non-profit groups until they are unable to continue operating. Kerner tells Lerner, Steve Miller, then chief of staff to IRS commissioner, Nikole Flax, and other IRS officials, “Maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous.” In response, Lerner responded that “it is her job to oversee it all:”
Are you finally, after all these years, beginning to understand that no matter how many lesions John McCain has on his face and whatever sympathy he’s managed to draw for his current tumor status, he was operating in not only his own interests but actively against Conservatives and the Republican Party for years and years?
Yes, I’m sure you’ve all heard the various reasons to let John McCain be: “He served his country. He was taken prisoner. He flew jets. He was in the US Navy.” All true and all verifiable. Yet I judge him in the same fashion that everyone judges BZ: “what have you done for me lately?”
Lately — hell, in at least the past decade (I’ll play nice for a while) — John McCain has been working overtly and covertly against Conservatism and against the Republicans. If John McCain isn’t the center of attention and it isn’t about him, he’s not going for it.
When anyone even mentions the word RINO, my brainulus immediately conjures an image of John McCain.
Figure 1: FLOTUS Michelle Obama walking John McCain during the Obama Administration, outside the White House.
Back to Judicial Watch and the politically-motivated bias under the Obama Despotism Administration.
Judicial Watch previously reported on the 2013 meeting. Senator McCain then issued a statement decrying “false reports claiming that his office was somehow involved in IRS targeting of conservative groups.” The IRS previously blacked out the notes of the meeting but Judicial Watch found the notes among subsequent documents released by the agency.
Judicial Watch separately uncovered that Lerner was under significant pressure from both Democrats in Congress and the Obama DOJ and FBI to prosecute and jail the groups the IRS was already improperly targeting. In discussing pressure from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat-Rhode Island) to prosecute these “political groups,” Lerner admitted, “it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”
Lois Lerner admitted screwing over the TEA Party and various Conservative groups.
So here’s the bottom line for this story:
“The Obama IRS scandal is bipartisan – McCain and Democrats who wanted to regulate political speech lost at the Supreme Court, so they sought to use the IRS to harass innocent Americans,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Obama IRS scandal is not over – as Judicial Watch continues to uncover smoking gun documents that raise questions about how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS, the FEC, FBI, and DOJ to target the First Amendment rights of Americans.”
So BZ, just cut John McCain some slack.
Yeah. Like all the slack people will cut me when I’m about to kak.
Featuring Right thinking from a left brain, doing the job the American Media Maggots won’t, embracing ubiquitous, sagacious perspicacity and broadcasting behind enemy lines in Occupied Fornicalia from the veritable Belly of the Beast, the Bill Mill in Sacramento, Fornicalia, I continue to proffer my thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to utilize their studio and hijack their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, thanks to my shameless contract, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show each Wednesday evening.
I labeled this the Skewer Leftists Night because, after all, I skewered Leftists. Not difficult, as they exposed their soft white underbelly to me. They always do. Most recently much worse than normal.
Tonight in the Saloon:
Chief of Staff John Kelly responds to Lunatic Hat Lady;
James Comey lies his arse off;
Trey Gowdy exposes the truth;
Comey drafted his exculpatory speech months before he exonerated Hillary Clinton; just why would that be? A politicized FBI beyond redemption?
The “fix” was “in” and everyone knew it;
More First Amendment regulatory threats;
Leftists want to shut down the informational flow of truth by any means necessary;
It keeps their corruption in the dark, purposefully;
Drudge, Facebook, NYT readers could face libel suits for sharing “fake news”;
There is so much more to come;
If you care to listen to the show in Spreaker, please click on the yellow start button at the upper left.
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Everyone remembers the meeting between Demorat former president William Jefferson Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona on June 26th, 2016.
Leftists swear it was nothing more than an innocent meeting between Clinton and Lynch, who stopped to simply catch up on grandkids and such.
Those of a more free-thinking and questioning spirit looked upon the meeting as an update or a decision proffered to Clinton by Lynch regarding his wife Hillary Clinton, who was then in the midst of her home-grown email server scandal. The FBI Director at that time, James Comey, had not yet released his opinion on the investigation of Hillary Clinton. That was done only a week later on Tuesday, July 5th.
Total coincidence. To those with weak and uninquisitive minds, such as Leftists, Demorats and specifically the American Media Maggots.
Despite the fact that James Comey stated under oath he became “influenced” by the tarmac meeting between Lynch and Clinton. And by Lynch insisting that Comey refer to the Hillary Clinton investigation as a “matter.”
“You have been criticized on your Clinton email decision. Did you learn anything that would have changed how you chose to inform the American people?” Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr, R-N.C., asked the fired FBI director.
“Honestly, no,” Comey answered. “It caused a lot of personal pain for me – I think it was the best way to protect the justice institution—including the FBI.”
Translation: it was the best way to protect James Comey. No one else. The FBI can and always will take a second seat to his own personal protection. Have you ever heard of an FBI director undermining an investigation publicly?
James Comey subsequently became influenced to the point where he believed he was going to leak FBI documents in order to instigate an investigation — which became that which Robert Mueller is spearheading.
To those with questions, however, like Judicial Watch, the situation required answers in order to discover if there was a provable link between Comey’s decision at the FBI and the meeting between Clinton and Lynch. Was the “fix” already “in” at least a week prior to the announcement by then-FBI Director James Comey?
Meanwhile, FBI agents expressed their “disappointment” over FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to recommend charges against Clinton, sources close to the matter told The Post.
“FBI agents believe there was an inside deal put in place after the Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton tarmac meeting,” said one source.
Another source from the Justice Department was “furious” with Comey, saying he’s “managed to piss off right and left.”
Let us also remember that in Edward Klein’s book Guilty As Sin, he wrote:
Bill Clinton’s private jet was cleared for takeoff and was taxiing toward the active runway at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport when a Secret Service agent informed him that Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s plane was coming in for a landing.
“Don’t take off!” Bill barked.
Instigated by William Jefferson Clinton? Apparently so.
As his plane skidded to a halt and then headed back to its parking space, Bill grabbed a phone and called an old friend — one of his most trusted legal advisers.
It was June 27, 2016 — one year into the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“Bill said, ‘I want to bushwhack Loretta,’ ” the adviser recalled. “ ‘I’m going to board her plane. What do you think?’ And I said, ‘There’s no downside for you, but she’s going to take a pounding if she’s crazy enough to let you on her plane.’
“He knew it would be a huge embarrassment to Loretta when people found out that she had talked to the husband of a woman — the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party — who was under criminal investigation by the FBI,” the adviser continued. “But he didn’t give a damn. He wanted to intimidate Loretta and discredit [FBI Director James] Comey’s investigation of Hillary’s emails, which was giving Hillary’s campaign agita.”
Bill hung up the phone and turned to a Secret Service agent.
“As soon as her plane lands,” he said, “get the attorney general on the phone and say the president would like to have a word with her.”
Once inside Lynch’s plane, Bill turned on the Clinton charm. He gave Lynch’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze and shook hands with her husband, Stephen Hargove.
“Bill said he could tell that Loretta knew from the get-go that she’d made a huge mistake,” his adviser said. “She was literally trembling, shaking with nervousness. Her husband tried to comfort her; he kept patting her hand and rubbing her back.
Translated: Lynch knew precisely what she’d done and how it would look.
“Bill made small talk about golf and grandchildren and [former Attorney General] Janet Reno, and he kept at it for nearly a half-hour. It didn’t make any difference what they talked about; all he wanted to do was send a message to everyone at Justice and the FBI that Hillary had the full weight of the Clinton machine, the Democratic Party, and the White House behind her.
“It was clearly tortuous for Loretta. Bill told me later that he noticed there were beads of sweat on her upper lip.”
Message sent and received? But wait; there’s more.
One week later, Barack Obama invited Hillary to fly with him to North Carolina for a campaign rally. He wouldn’t have let her use two of the greatest symbols of presidential power — Air Force One and the podium with the Seal of the President of the United States — if he thought there was even the slightest chance she was going to be indicted. But Attorney General Lynch had privately assured him that she wouldn’t let that happen, and that the fix was in.
Oh my, the fix was so in.
Now, almost one year later, we discover the FBI made a discovery. Some cabinet door or desk drawer was opened and, magically, here we now have 30 pages of documents related to that tarmac meeting that — zounds — the Department of Justice just couldn’t. A lot of shoulder-shrugging at DOJ.
Is the DOJ incompetent? Or did the DOJ simply lie? It’s one or the other. It’s no oversight or mistake.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, one of my favorite analysts, weighed in on October 16th. He repeats BZ’s DC Axiom:
“It’s an institutional culture in government. We don’t want to go after our predecessors because we don’t want our successors to come after us.”
Oh, but wait, Judge Napolitano. There is so much more.
Judicial Watch says FBI has found Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting documents
by Brooke Singman
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch said Friday that the FBI has uncovered 30 pages of documents related to the controversial 2016 tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
The newly uncovered documents will be sent to Judicial Watch by the end of November in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, a spokesman for the group told Fox News.
Judicial Watch originally filed a FOIA request in July 2016 — which the Justice Department did not comply with — seeking “all records of communications between any agent, employee, or representative” of the FBI for the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server use, and all records related to the June 27, 2016 meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton.
“We presume they are new documents. We won’t know what’s in them until we see them, unfortunately,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News in an email Friday. “The fact they just ‘found’ them is yet another scandal.”
But wait; there’s more. Again from FoxNews.com:
Judicial Watch clashes with DOJ over ‘talking points’ from Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting
by Brooke Singman
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch is clashing with the Trump Justice Department over access to “talking points” the DOJ prepared under the Obama administration to explain the controversial tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton last year.
Judicial Watch is seeking the documents as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The group complained late Wednesday that it had received “heavily redacted” emails pertaining to the department’s internal preparations last year to press inquiries on the Lynch-Clinton meeting.
Judicial Watch says Peter Kadzik, then-assistant attorney general, was involved in handling the Justice Department’s response to media inquiries regarding the tarmac meeting at the time. But one email exchange shows a redacted response from him to an email with the subject line: “DRAFT: Statement/Talking Points” on June 28, 2016.
Another email shows then-director of the Justice Department Public Affairs Office Melanie Newman emailing with colleagues to “flag a story” about a “casual, unscheduled meeting between former President Bill Clinton and the AG.”
I want you to see and hear just how incredibly rife with corruption is your government and more pointedly and even more sadly, your federal law enforcement agencies.
First, it is crystal clear from the evidence released by the FBI after the first investigation that the former Secretary of State used a private email server to transmit national security information rather than safeguard such information, as required by law, and that she subsequently made statements contrary to the facts as we continue to learn.
Second, the real actor in this Theater of the Absurd is the Justice Department’s decision to commence an investigation that was a sham from the very beginning. After all, it was the Justice Department that failed to convene a grand jury, issue search warrants for computers, place witnesses under oath and appoint a special prosecutor who could operate free from conflicts of interest. Hey, just like Robert Mueller, right?
Comey admits that Clinton lied. But here is the difference (that we won’t know precisely because there was no oath and no recording).
You can lie publicly all you want, if people are sufficiently stupid to believe it — like much of the electorate and the American Media Maggots are doltish enough. But you should not lie to the FBI. My guess is that Hillary Clinton came relatively clean in 3.5 hours. And that is why I believe she was not placed under oath and the interview was not recorded. Things like that make it easier to dispute later when politically necessary.
But James Comey outed himself to Jason Chaffetz:
Chaffetz then asked whether it was that he was just not able to prosecute it or that Clinton broke the law.
“Well, I don’t want to give an overly lawyerly answer,” Comey said. “The question I always look at is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conduct that violated a criminal statute, and my judgment here is there is not. “
And this is how James Comey attempts to rationalize his decision. He states he does not believe his case established guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
NEWSFLASH: It is not UP to YOU, Director Comey, to assemble a case that yields a determination of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That threshold is up to the DOJ or more pointedly a Grand Jury, not you or your organization. All you need to compile a case for submission is “probable cause.” That’s what real cops and real DAs in America do. Their jobs. They stay in their lanes and do their jobs.
As I have said time and again, there are two kinds of crimes as written by statute: those of general intent and those of specific intent. Comey stated that HRC had to have possessed a very specific intent to commit her crimes. EXCEPT that the US codes applicable are not those of specific intent because they do not include the phrase “with the intent to.”
That is how a crime of specific intent is crafted. It is stated.
Even more disturbing: Attorney General Lynch did not recuse herself from the final decision on whether to prosecute the case — nor did she give that decision to a career prosecutor at the Department of Justice. She instead prejudged the case by supposedly blindly accepting the FBI’s recommendation.
“[AG Lynch] said…she would accept whatever recommendations career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director made…” –NYTimes July 1, 2016
Of course she would. The fix was in. And Comey was predestined to take whatever fall occurred, not her. After all, he is white and male; she is black and female.
Comey drafted letter on Clinton email investigation before completing interviews, FBI confirms
The FBI released documents Monday proving former FBI Director James Comey began drafting a letter regarding Hillary Clinton’s email investigation months before conducting several key interviews, including speaking to Clinton herself.
The document release was titled “Drafts of Director Comeys July 5, 2016 Statement Regarding Email Server Investigation Part 01 of 01.”
The contents of the email were largely unclear as nearly all of it was redacted. The now-public records show the email titled “Midyear Exam — UNCLASSIFIED” was sent by Comey on May 2, 2016, to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, general counsel James Baker and chief of staff and senior counselor James Rybicki.
On May 16, the documents showed a response email from Rybicki, saying “Please send me any comments on this statement so we may roll into a master doc for discussion with the Director at a future date. Thanks, Jim.”
Hello. “Fix,” meet “in.” Shake hands and keep dissembling.
The existence of the documents, reported by Newsweek, were first brought to light by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also a member of the committee, after they reviewed transcripts of interviews with top Comey aides who alluded to the email’s existence. The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating Comey in his role as FBI director and President Trump’s decision to fire him in May.
The senators penned a letter on Aug. 30 to newly-appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray noting their findings, saying that “it appears that in April or early May of 2016, Mr. Comey had already decided he would issue a statement exonerating Secretary Clinton. That was long before FBI agents finished their work,” the letter said. “The outcome of an investigation should not be prejudged while FBI agents are still hard at work trying to gather the facts.”
Apparently it was the dog who ate Samantha Powers’ homework.
And why have you not heard that astounding information trumpeted all across the fruited plain by the American Media Maggots? You know why. Agenda. Narrative.
I said and wrote this back in late 2016 and, with each passing week, I find myself more vindicated. I stated that with this false emphasis on President Donald Trump and Russia, in order to account for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s absolutely corrupt and disastrous abortion of a campaign — and because the Demorats and Leftists haven’t yet even stepped into November 9th — the insistence of narrative pressure will surely arc back like a fine bladed boomerang and embed itself in their asses.
It has.
We are discovering more, with each passing day, how the Demorats are like putty in the hands of Russians, as we certainly believed, and that the exposure isn’t on the side of Trump or his team, it’s with the Demorats.
Hillary Clinton’s Russian uranium, anyone?
Hello? Bladed boomerang meet Demorat, Leftist and American Media Maggot ass.
Tom Fitton,
First, the story from 
Yes, certainly, I knew John McCain was pretty much an unmitigated asshole who customarily made any issue about him and should have simply been honest and changed his (R) to a (D) and been done with it. It’s no secret that 
Featuring Right thinking from a left brain, doing the job the American Media Maggots won’t, embracing ubiquitous, sagacious perspicacity and broadcasting behind enemy lines in Occupied Fornicalia from the veritable Belly of the Beast, the Bill Mill in Sacramento, Fornicalia, I continue to proffer my thanks to the 
Everyone remembers the meeting between Demorat former president William Jefferson Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona on June 26th, 2016.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, one of my favorite analysts, weighed in on October 16th. He repeats