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June 8, 2018
Judicial Watch Uncovers Hidden Strzok Emails in Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Documents
This is just too rich. We now have emails from notorious anti-Trump, pro-Hillary Clinton FBI officials who seem to confirm that James Comey and Loretta Lynch decided to let Hillary Clinton ride on her email abuses before she was even interviewed by the FBI.
The disclosure is found in 16 pages of FBI documents related to the infamous June 2016 tarmac meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton.
The FBI originally informed us it could not locate any records related to the tarmac meeting. However, in a related FOIA lawsuit, the Justice Department located emails in which Justice Department officials communicated with the FBI and wrote that they had communicated with the FBI. As a result, by letter dated August 10, 2017, the FBI stated, “Upon further review, we subsequently determined potentially responsive documents may exist. As a result, your [FOIA] request has been reopened …” This is the second batch of documents the FBI produced since telling us they had no tarmac-related records. So this makes two cover-ups!
We obtained the documents in response to our October 2016 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:16-cv-02046)) filed after the Justice Department failed to comply with our July 7, 2016, FOIA request for:
In a previously unseen email, on July 1, 2016, Strzok forwarded to Bill Priestap, assistant director of FBI counterintelligence, and other FBI officials an article in The New York Times titled, “Lynch to Remove Herself From Decision Over Clinton Emails, Official Says.” Priestap comments on it, saying: “The meeting in PX is all over CNN TV news this morning …” Strzok replies: “Timing’s not ideal in that it falsely adds to those seeking the ‘this is all choreographed’ narrative. But I don’t think it’s worth changing … later won’t be better.” Priestap responds: “Agreed.”
In November 2017, we revealed 29 pages of FBI documents showing officials were concerned about a leak that Bill Clinton delayed his aircraft taking off in order to “maneuver” a meeting with the attorney general. The resulting story in the Observer was discussed in this production of documents. The Strzok email was absent from this production.
Another Strzok email suggest the decision on the Clinton email matter has been under discussion since April 2016—three months before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he would recommend no prosecution.
On July 3, 2016, in an email with the subject line “Must Read Security Article” someone from the FBI's Security Division (SECD) forwards the article in the Observer and reveals concern:
I believe that the source quoted in the article is one of the local Phoenix LEO’s [law enforcement officers]. Needless to say that I have contacted the Phoenix office and will contact the local’s [sic] who assisted in an attempt to stem any further damage. This is exactly why our Discretion and Judgement are the foundation of the AG’s trust in our team, which is why we can never violate that trust, like the source did in this article.”
In a July 1, 2016, email from an unidentified official in the FBI Security Division sent to officials in several FBI offices with the subject line “Media Reports***Not for Dissemination***”, sent in the wake of the tarmac meeting, an FBI official warns his colleagues “Our job is to protect the boss from harm and embarrassment.” [Emphasis in original] He emphasizes that FBI officials should ask themselves: “What issues are currently being reported in the media? And what actions/interactions/situations that the Director may be in could impact them.” The official then cites an example of a public relations disaster near-miss when Comey’s plane “literally just missed Clinton’s plane” when they flew into the White Plains, NY, airport (HPN) a few months earlier, and saying, “Imagine the optics and the awkward situation we would have put the Director in we would have been at the FBO at the same time as Secretary Clinton.”
In a July 1, 2016, email exchange, FBI Section Chief Rachel Rojas warns a colleague to “stay away” from discussion of the Clinton Lynch tarmac meeting following publication of the meeting, unless they hear from a “higher up”. The colleague responds the next day, telling Rojas not to worry because, “I know better <winking.>” He/she adds that “it was DOJ opa [Office of Public Affairs] who threw us under the bus.” Rojas replies “Doj is likely overwhelmed so in [sic] hoping it wasn’t intentional. I know it wasn’t you guys because I know you have great judgement. Nothing good would come from that. Her staff should have avoided that scenario. The bu[reau] will be fine but obviously disappointed on how this is happening. Unfortunately, she’s taking heat from all over the place and I feel bad for her. I know she didn’t want this on her plate or for this to happen.” The colleague then concludes by saying that he/she thought the leaker was “a Phoenix cop assisting with the motorcade.”
These emails are simply astonishing. No wonder the FBI hid them from the court and us. They show anti-Trump, pro-Clinton FBI Agent Peter Strzok admitting the decision not to prosecute the Clinton email issue was made back in April 2016 – long before Hillary Clinton was interviewed. And the new emails show that the FBI security had the political objective of protecting then-Director Comey from ‘embarrassment’—which is, frankly, disturbing.
Here’s additional background: On June 27, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton on board a parked plane at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. The meeting occurred during the then-ongoing investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email server, and only a few days before she was interviewed the Justice Department and FBI. (We filed a request on June 30 that the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General investigate that meeting).
The tarmac meeting also came just days before former FBI Director James Comey held the July 5, 2016, press conference in which he announced that no charges would be filed against Mrs. Clinton. In his subsequent May 3, 2017, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey said the Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting was the “capper” among “a number of things” that had caused him to determine that Department of Justice leadership “could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the justice system.”
These latest documents are more evidence that the arrogant FBI assumed its secrets would never see the light of day. Judicial Watch proved them wrong.
Court Hearing Ordered for Our Suit Seeking DOJ Fusion GPS Records
Piece by piece we’re dismantling the Rube Goldberg conspiracy to take down a president. At every step the Justice Department is putting up roadblocks, an indication that the Deep State is still alive and well and now being accommodated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Here’s a piece of our effort. A federal court ordered a hearing for next week for in our lawsuit for communications of the Office of the Attorney General with Nellie Ohr, the wife of former Senior DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, who was critical to the Clinton/DNC dossier authored by Christopher Steele (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:18-cv-00491)). The suit is before U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton.
Outrageously, the Justice Department is resisting our request to search Attorney General Sessions’ office and otherwise is stonewalling searching for and releasing records.
We filed the lawsuit on March 1, 2018, after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 12, 2017, FOIA request seeking:
All records of contact or communication, including but not limited to emails, text messages, and instant chats, between DOJ officials in the Attorney General’s Office and Fusion GPS employee or contractor Nellie Ohr.
In December 2017, Bruce Ohr was removed from his position as U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General after it was revealed he conducted undisclosed meetings with dossier author Christopher Steel and Glenn Simpson, principal of Fusion GPS.
A House Intelligence Committee memo released by Chairman Devin Nunes on February 2 notes that Nellie Ohr 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.
The Ohr scandal is bad enough, but it beyond belief we have to battle the Sessions DOJ in federal court for basic information about this Spygate-related scandal.
China Syndrome: Rise & Fall of a Clinton Conspirator
The liberal media and much of the DC Establishment would like Americans to forget how China-connected money helped set up and keep the Clintons in power. A story by our own Micah Morrison details the rise and fall of one the Clintons’ China connections in this must read piece from JW’s Investigative Bulletin:
“The leopard does not change his spots” is a favorite saying of prosecutors and the rise and fall of Clinton-era conspirator Ng Lap Seng proves the point. Ng cut a colorful swath through the 1996 Clinton campaign finance scandal. At the time, he was a mere millionaire with connections to the Chinese government and Asian organized crime. Now he is a billionaire. Last month, more than twenty years after he first appeared on the U.S. scene, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York nailed him in a bribery scheme and put him away for four years.
In the bribery case, Ng showered two United Nations ambassadors—Francis Lorenzo of the Dominican Republic and John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda—with cash. He needed their support for a multi-billion-dollar UN conference center he wanted to build in Macau. Ng envisioned the conference center as the cornerstone of a grandiose plan to turn the obscure gambling enclave into the “Geneva of Asia,” prosecutors said. Ng spent $1.5 million in the illegal effort. He set up a phony NGO and funneled $30,000 a month to Ambassador Lorenzo. More payments flowed to Lorenzo’s brother, to Ambassador Ashe, and to Ashe’s wife. In return, the ambassadors put a UN imprimatur on Ng’s construction plan. They drafted and circulated official UN documents in support of Ng and the Macau conference center.
The case was closely watched in Washington. “Corruption at any level of government undermines the rule of law and cannot be tolerated,” said Department of Justice Criminal Division chief John Cronan. “But corruption is especially corrosive when it occurs at an international body like the United Nations. By paying bribes to two UN ambassadors to advance his interest in obtaining support for the Macau conference center, Ng Lap Seng tried to manipulate the functions of the United Nations.”
Ng is no stranger to controversy and crime. He has been a major player in Macau for decades. The former Portuguese colony, turned over to China in 1999, was a hub of legalized gambling and prostitution, and a center of money laundering, extortion, drugs and gang wars. Ng cultivated the China connection and rose through the Macau ranks, becoming owner of the Fortuna Hotel, a night club in the gambling district favored by officials of the People’s Liberation Army and the organized crime Wo On Lok Triad.
Ng has denied any connection with Asian organized crime. In 1997, he told the South China Morning Post that he was “very upset” about the “allegation that I am linked to organized crime. It is absolutely untrue and has no basis in fact.”
By 1994, Ng had set his sights on the Clintons. Finding a partner in Little Rock restaurateur Charlie Trie, Ng wired more than $1 million from accounts in Macau and Hong Kong to Trie’s accounts. Ng and Trie funneled “hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign funds” to the Democratic National Committee, according to a Senate report on the campaign finance scandal. This generosity won Ng ten visits to the White House between 1994 and 1996, including at least one with President Clinton. In 1995, Ng and Trie organized a reception for then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown at Hong Kong’s Hotel Shangri-La. In 1996, they were seated next to the president at a fund-raiser in Washington.
Ng vanished when the campaign finance scandal heated up. “The source of Ng’s funds what he or those behind him hoped to gain through Trie remains unknown,” the Senate report concluded. But Beijing seemed pleased with Mr. Ng. In 1998, it named him to a post at the largely ceremonial but influential Chinese People’s Consultative Conference. Twenty years later, he’s still there.
If you’d like to know why there is credible evidence the Russians used millions to bribe the Clintons, look no further than their dealings with China….
Until next week …
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton
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Airboat goose capture and banding in the marshes
What: It’s an experience unlike any other: You’re lying on your stomach, stretched off the front end of an airboat that’s zipping across the water. The driver slows down, approaching a group of wary geese, and it’s time! With a quick scoop, you pluck a young goose out of the water and hand it to the volunteer waiting behind you. The goose goes into one of the crates stacked in the middle of the boat, and you drop back into position to be ready for the next bird. This will be a scene playing out across northern Utah’s marshes next week as DWR biologists and volunteers work together to capture wild geese. The geese are flightless this time of the year, which makes this wetland rodeo possible! When they get the geese back to shore, the biologists examine and band the birds, and then set them free. The banding work provides important information about Canada goose populations in Utah
Electrofishing and spawning Bonneville cutthroat trout
What: Utah’s Bonneville cutthroat trout are beautiful fish that are easy to catch and good to eat. (They’re also the State Fish of Utah!) To keep their populations thriving, DWR biologists temporarily stun the fish — using a low-level electric current — and then collect their eggs and milt (sperm). The biologists will use the milt to fertilize the eggs, which will then be taken to hatcheries. Later this year, the young trout will be stocked in dozens of Utah fisheries. Some will even be dropped into high-mountain lakes from airplanes
Trapping and spawning native cutthroat trout
What: Utah’s native cutthroat trout populations were once limited to a handful of streams. Now, these fish inhabit thousands of miles of streams in Utah and the surrounding states. In early June, DWR biologists in southern Utah will trap two different subspecies of cutthroat and then collect their eggs and milt (sperm). The biologists will use the milt to fertilize the eggs and then take the fertilized eggs to state fish hatcheries. Later this year, the young trout will be stocked in dozens of Utah fisheries.
