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.
Figure 1: Protected 24/7. Cannot be second-guessed. Communist. Despises Trump and what he represents. Lover of the Deep State. In it for the Control. Regime builder. Power monger. Biased. Political. All the things you would never in a minute crave in a CIA Director and then some. Oh wait. Someone did.
John Owen Brennan was CIA Director under Barack Hussein Obama, from March of 2013 to January 20th of 2017, President Trump’s inauguration day. He is currently registered as an Independent (we’ll get to that later). He was Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) from August 2004 to August 2005 under Bush. He was Homeland Security Advisor from January of 2009 to March of 2013 under Obama. He hit the Big Leagues thereafter.
To this point it is my opinion that John Brennan is complicit — with many, many yet unindicted co-conspirators — in an attempt to unlawfully bring down a presidential nominee, a president-elect and subsequently an actual sitting president by means of surveillance, illegal warrant applications, intimidation, force, threats both implied and direct, purposeful ignorance, purposeful avoidance of one’s primary job, as well as the utilization of an infrastructure and architecture manifesting itself in and around the District of Columbia in an absolutely unprecedented manner — using technology as a power bludgeon only dreamed of, before this.
The forces, agendas, biases, agencies both overt and covert, budgets, networks both social and otherwise, historically-embedded power structures (otherwise now known as the Deep State, people whose incomes and retirements absolutely depend on the status quo to never change or be disturbed by even one molecule) arrayed against one person, Donald John Trump, the guy with the dead orange cat on his head, is absolutely unprecedented in American history.
In my opinion John Brennan is a major part of this.
Though they fully expected to win, the Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots, complicit all, were willing to take no chances. Their goal was to shatter Republicans into bitter shards. However, they — like others — were gobsmacked when, out of all 17 candidates, Donald Trump emerged with his sprayed-on orange glow from the political ruins.
This occurred at the veritable “last second” yet — they knew — plans were already in place “just in case.” Plans they hadn’t counted on utilizing. Then, yeah. Actual pants-shitting hysteria (or PSH as I call it) commenced late on November 8th, early November 9th. One reason John Podesta emerged on stage afterwards. Hillary was breaking mirrors and knocking down Long Island Ice Teas, in the back, at a prodigious rate.
Luckily for Demorats, many elements were already in place buttressed by any number of monolithic institutions already sympathetic to Leftists like, well, Leftists themselves, Demorats and the equally-complicit American Media Maggots in concert with, essentially, the rest of so-called Official Upper Education.
Subsequent riots then, sadly, proved that any number of law enforcement agencies like the City of Berkeley Police Department, the San Jose Police Department, the University of California at Berkeley Police Department and the Sacramento Police Department were on the side of literal anarchists. Good to know.
But what of John Brennan? Let’s truly get rolling with some information heretofore buried by people who apparently are big fans of cat boxes and Kitty Litter, one of my favorite California strippers from the 1970s.
John Brennan Entered CIA in 1980 Though Voted Communist in 1976
by Eric Zuesse
Barack Obama’s CIA chief, John Brennan, told the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, on 15 September 2016, in Washington DC, that when he had applied in 1980 to join the CIA, he admitted to them that in the 1976 Presidential election, when Jimmy Carter was running against Gerald Ford, Brennan had voted instead for the candidate of the US Communist Party, Gus Hall, and that he was then greatly relieved to find that this information didn’t cause rejection of his CIA-application. This had happened 11 years before the 1991 end of the Cold War (which ended actually only on the Russian side, but not also on the US-NATO side, where it continues without stop, and has accelerated since 2014, now finally being joined by both sides).
Greatly relieved indeed. But hell, he had Leftists on his side. Let this begin to settle into your cranial vault for a moment or three.
We already know the scruples and ethics of JOB are beyond reproach.
On 29 November 2015, Andrew Emett of Activist Post bannered “Obama Accepted $1.3M In Gifts Last Year From A Country Who Beheads More People Than ISIS” and he reported and documented that, “Although the State Department listed several gifts to CIA Director John Brennan and multiple anonymous agency employees, the donors’ names have been redacted because ‘such information could adversely affect United States intelligence sources or methods.’ Besides receiving a $10,000 Omega men’s watch, Brennan was also given a $7,500 decorative rug.” And, “the Saudi king gave President Obama and his family roughly $1.35 million in gifts last year.”
JOHN BRENNAN SWORN IN AS CIA DIRECTOR USING CONSTITUTION LACKING BILL OF RIGHTS
According to the White House, John Brennan was sworn in as CIA Director on a “first draft” of the Constitution including notations from George Washington, dating to 1787.
That means, when Brennan vowed to protect and defend the Constitution, he was swearing on one that did not include the First, Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments — or any of the other Amendments now included in our Constitution. The Bill of Rights did not become part of our Constitution until 1791, 4 years after the Constitution that Brennan took his oath on.
This is important for a very good reason.
Swearing-in ceremonies are anticipated, scheduled, and not conducted at the last second. They are planned and those promoted have any number of options available. They aren’t just conjured out of thin air. They possess a very significant meaning.
When I was promoted to Sergeant from deputy, for example, I had any number of options available to include my choice of who would pin on my new badge. I chose my father. This was highly important to me because, frankly, my mother thought from the very beginning that I was never strong enough to be a law enforcement officer much less be recognized by a promotion. She told me so. The choice of my father was, thusly, a very important and very personal unspoken statement by me, for me.
So too did John Brennan make an unspoken statement and, to my way of thinking, in his mind, he justified what he did or did not do from that point onward via his oath of office. He was excused. You just had to see it and understand it. He was hiding in plain sight.
Congress Doesn’t Really Care That The CIA Chief Once Voted Communist
by Ali Watkins
“I think I’m going to let that one go.”
WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Brennan can breathe a sigh of relief: 40 years after casting his ballot, Congress has let him off the hook for voting for the Communist USA party during the height of the Cold War.
Brennan copped to the vote in little-noticed remarks last week at the Congressional Black Caucus’s annual conference. The spy chief spoke of his stomach-turning fear while undergoing the vetting process to be employed at the CIA in 1980 — strapped to a polygraph during the height of the Cold War, Brennan was asked if he had ever worked with or for a group that was working to overthrow the United States.
“I froze,” Brennan said. “This was back in 1980, and I thought back to a previous election where I voted, and I voted for the Communist Party candidate…we’ve all had indiscretions in our past.”
Brennan said he came clean about the his 1976 ballot during the polygraph, expecting it to disqualify him from a clearance. But to the director’s surprise, he was offered admission to the agency, and, nearly 40 years later, landed in the top office.
Republicans and Demorats both responded:
“I think [Brennan’s] the only one who can comment on that,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee leaving a briefing Thursday.
“I really am not interested in how the CIA Director voted decades ago,” said Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) leaving a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing Thursday.
“I continue to be troubled about his skewed and distorted views about the separation of powers,” Wyden added.
We knew that John Brennan was a Leftist hack when he said that “America will triumph over you” in response to Andrew McCabe being fired.
The problem with that is that the US government IG (Inspector General) made the recommendation for termination, not Donald Trump. Something unexplained and left dead on the ground by the American Media Maggots. Purposefully, of course.
Give the governor a harumph! We have to protect our phony-baloney jobs!
What Obama’s high priest of targeted killings doesn’t want you to know.
Last week, I introduced readers to John Brennan, the U.S. president’s closest advisor for intelligence and counterterrorism issues. Although Americans know little about Brennan, he plays an essential role in shaping and implementing the expansive, unprecedented targeted killing of suspected terrorists and militants. He is, the New York Timesreported, citing administration officials, the “priest whose blessing has become indispensable” to Obama. After Brennan lost out on the nomination for CIA director, he became the White House’s homeland security advisor and deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism. As Michael Hayden — the holdover CIA director until Leon Panetta was confirmed — once observed, “John Brennan’s the actual national intelligence director.”
Ah yes. Power only exists when others fail to fill a vacuum.
Stephanopoulos: “Do you stand by the statement you have made in the past that, as effective as they have been, they have not killed a single civilian? That seems hard to believe.”
Brennan: “What I said was that over a period of time before my public remarks that we had no information about a single civilian, a noncombatant being killed. Unfortunately, in war, there are casualties, including among the civilian population.… And unfortunately, sometimes you have to take life to save lives.” (This Week with George Stephanopoulos, April 29, 2012)
Isn’t it odd that the Washington Post (whose motto “Democracy dies in darkness” should be changed to “Democracy dies in DC”) wrote the following in 2014 yet, now, holds Brennan up as an anti-Trump lion?
Obama should fire John Brennan
by James Downie
In March, at the Council on Foreign Relations, CIA Director John Brennan was asked by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell whether the CIA had illegally accessed Senate Intelligence Committee staff computers “to thwart an investigation by the committee into” the agency’s past interrogation techniques. The accusation had been made earlier that day by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said the CIA had “violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution.” Brennan answered:
As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s — that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do. {…}
And, you know, when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.
CIA Director John O. Brennan has apologized to leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee after an agency investigation determined that its employees improperly searched computers used by committee staff to review classified files on interrogations of prisoners. {…}
A statement released by the CIA on Tuesday acknowledged that agency employees had searched areas of that computer network that were supposed to be accessible only to committee investigators. Agency employees were attempting to discover how congressional aides had obtained a secret CIA internal report on the interrogation program.
“Some employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached” between the CIA and lawmakers in 2009, when the committee investigation was launched, according to the agency statement, which cited a review by the CIA’s inspector general. The CIA statement was first reported by McClatchy.
That committee’s investigation is said to be sharply critical of the CIA, finding that it exaggerated the effectiveness of harsh interrogation measures and repeatedly misled members of Congress and the executive branch. The findings are expected to be released publicly within weeks.
After briefing committee leaders, Brennan “apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the [inspector general] report,” the agency statement said. Brennan also ordered the creation of an internal personnel board, led by former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), to review the agency employees’ conduct and determine “potential disciplinary measures.”
By anyone’s measure this would mean John Brennan LIED baldly and nakedly in front of Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots as he was working against Demorats. Yet he is now, oddly, lionized by Demorats. How does one reconcile these conflicts?
Wait wait wait. I know. Because Donald John Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, is instead sitting where Hillary Rodham Clinton should rightfully be sitting.
Brennan was called upon to resign. Of course he didn’t.
Anyone beginning to identify a pattern here? Bueller? Mueller?
Do Mueller and Brennan have too much power?
Did John Brennan, like most every other operative in the Barack Hussein Obama administration, leak? From the DailyCaller.com:
Congressional Investigators ‘Trying To Get To The Bottom’ Of Brennan’s Role In Russia Investigation
by Chuck Ross
Brennan played a ‘prominent role’ in Russia probe.
He briefed Harry Reid about Trump associates’ contacts with Russians.
Reid believed that Brennan had an ‘ulterior motive.’
A book published in March offered a startling but little-noticed revelation about former CIA Director John Brennan. According to “Russian Roulette,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid believed Brennan was using him as a conduit to publicize possible links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government.
Brennan’s contacts with Reid — and other activities during the 2016 presidential campaign — are of “significant” interest to congressional investigators trying to figure out the ex-spy’s early role in the Russia investigation, The Daily Caller News Foundation is told.
“By his own account, Brennan played a prominent role in starting the investigation of Trump’s team,” a congressional source with direct knowledge of the House of Representatives’ Russia investigations tells TheDCNF.
Figure 2: John Brennan and James Clapper, two leakers in one spot. Two liars in one spot. Two Leftists in one spot. Birds of a feather. That day.
I hope you don’t think I’m finished yet. This from Dan Bongino:
There was this interesting point from GatewayPundit.com on April 20th:
Developing: Obama CIA Chief John Brennan Made Secret Visit to Russia Around Same Time as Fusion GPS Produced anti-Trump Memos
by Jim Holt
Obama CIA Chief John Brennan, who is fiercely anti-Trump, made a secret visit to Moscow in March 2016
According to a report earlier this month former Senate Minority leader Harry Reid believed Brennan was using him in order to publicize pretend links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government.
The Russian papers reported on the visit at the time.
John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), made a secret visit to Moscow in March, according to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov. The visit, he said, had nothing to do with Russia’s decision two weeks ago to begin withdrawing from Syria.
“It’s no secret that Brennan was here,” Syromolotov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Monday. “But he didn’t visit the Foreign Ministry. I know for sure that he met with the Federal Security Service (the successor agency to the Soviet KGB), and someone else.”
It wasn’t clear why Brennan visited Moscow, but the trip appears to have coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s surprise March 14 announcement that Russia’s combat operation in Syria was ending, and Moscow would soon withdraw a portion of its forces from the country after conducting 167 air strikes.
Today John Brennan is one of the most vocal Trump critics.
More? More actual collusion? More actual conspiracies? More facts, more evidence? You want actual crimes with facts and witnesses? Listen to Obama’s Inspector General Charles McCullough.
Just a couple of very basic questions to wrap things up.
When CIA Directors retire, they clam up. When FBI Directors retire, they clam up. And so on with various Alphabet Agency heads. Until now. I am tasked, then, with asking: why the personal fights?
Wait. Is there more?
Which begs the central question: what do they have to hide?
By anyone’s current DC metrics, John Brennan is clearly someone you should trust. He has no political leanings, biases, or motivations to lie whatsoever. Nothing about him is questionable.
So sayeth the Demorats, Leftists and American Media Maggots.
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 
The problem with that is that the US government IG (Inspector General) made the recommendation for termination, not Donald Trump. Something unexplained and left dead on the ground by the American Media Maggots. Purposefully, of course.