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Jim Jordan

Jim Jordan Threatens To 'Investigate' Clintons In Fox Meltdown (VIDEO)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, threatened to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton.

During a Sunday interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked an animated Jordan if he would consider opening an investigation into the Clintons.

"Do you want to see another investigation of Hillary and Bill Clinton?" Bartiromo wondered. "Because in the Durham report, John Durham wrote that while they were pursuing Trump, they made no effort to investigate the claim that Hillary Clinton was taking money from foreigners for her Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation."

"They not only didn't investigate her like they did President Trump, they gave her campaign a defensive briefing!" Jordan exclaimed. "They should have done the same for President Trump because they literally had no evidence."

Jordan said he would talk with his attorneys and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) before proceeding.

"We're going to give that a good hard look," he insisted. "But nothing is off the table because it is critical the American people understand how their government, their agencies have been turned on, them the taxpayer, and we get all the facts out there."

Watch the video below from Fox News or at this link.

via Fox News

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Durham Probe's Failure Debunks 'Deep State' Mythology (And Barr's Reputation)

Durham Probe's Failure Debunks 'Deep State' Mythology (And Barr's Reputation)

The two most common themes of MAGA sorehead emails I received last year were the inevitability of an anti-Biden landslide in 2022, and the certainty of Hillary Clinton’s prosecution by “independent counsel” John Durham supposedly for falsifying evidence against Donald Trump during the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” as Trump styles it.

Almost needless to say, neither happened. What has taken place instead is the total collapse of Durham’s ballyhooed probe along with his reputation for probity and competence. Along with that of former Attorney General Bill Barr, who comes off looking like…

Well, have these two jokers never heard of Kenneth Starr, another would-be Republican Torquemada, 15th century mastermind of the Spanish Inquisition? For a time, Starr managed to preserve the appearance of probity among his adoring fans among the Beltway media.

How many times did we see the soft-handed house-husband dutifully taking out the trash on TV and assuring reporters “our job is to do our job”?

Until, that is, the public reaction to his prurient, porn-accented report on the dalliance between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. (Written by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.) This unfortunate document sent the eminent Judge Starr off to Baylor University, where as college president he took to wearing cheerleader costumes and helping cover up sexual assaults by football players, resulting in his firing.

Lawyers who work for Donald Trump, of course, are rarely paid and often end up facing disbarment—Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, etc. William Barr, a veteran GOP operative, should have known better.

But then he and his running buddy Durham are True Believers, seemingly falling into the most seductive of traps: believing their own bullshit, to use one of Barr’s favorite words. This has long been Barr’s calling card; he’s the kind of idealogue who’s often in error, never in doubt. A blowhard who makes a great show of his Catholic piety.

Durham’s motives appear similar. A recent detailed New York Times expose depicts the pair as making a mockery of the “independent” part of “independent counsel,” drinking and dining together regularly, and jointly embarking to Europe on a futile quest to prove an imaginary “Deep State” conspiracy against Trump.

Instead, Italian authorities presented them with evidence of financial crimes by Trump himself, prompting a criminal investigation that should never have been entrusted to Durham. The Times and other news outlets erroneously reported that Durham’s review of the Trump-Russia probe had morphed into a criminal investigation. Fox News flogged it like the Second Coming. Neither Barr nor Durham did anything to correct the record. Hence the excitement among my MAGA correspondents.

What the Italian allegations consisted of or what Durham’s investigation concluded remains unknown. How current Attorney General Merrick Garland can allow Durham to persist in his role, given the revelations in the Times’s voluminous article is similarly mysterious.

Former Attorney General Barr, of course, has cunningly attempted to salvage his own reputation by turning against Trump—dismissing his claims of election fraud as “bullshit” and telling the January 6 committee and pretty much anybody who will listen about the former president’s intellectual, temperamental and moral unfitness for office. Geez, you think?

Would it surprise you to learn that Trump’s domineering Attorney General has never prosecuted a court case? Durham has, but appears to have succumbed entirely to partisan zeal.

After Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a report concluding that FBI investigators had properly opened an probe of the Trump campaign after an Australian diplomat tipped them that a Trump aide revealed advance knowledge that Russian spies had Hillary Clinton’s emails, Barr and Durham did all they could to debunk it.

“But as Mr. Durham’s inquiry proceeded,” The Times reports “he never presented any evidence contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s factual findings about the basis on which F.B.I. officials opened the investigation.” Then, after independent counsel Robert Mueller’s report revealed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign and detailed both how hard Moscow worked to elect Trump, and how eagerly wanted their help,” Barr composed a weasel-worded summary that distracted public attention.

Robert Mueller didn’t indict Trump but he convicted both his campaign manager Paul Manafort, who owed millions to close Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, and also his dirty tricks chieftain Roger Stone.

John Durham convicted nobody. Over the resignations of career prosecutors who objected to his bullying methods, he charged two Democratic operatives for allegedly lying to the FBI. “The two cases,” Josh Marshall writes “were mainly vehicles for airing tendentious conspiracy theories he couldn’t prove and had no real evidence for. The actual cases were laughed out of court with speedy acquittals.”

So now we have the GOP House’s so-called “weaponization” committee which will put on a great show of trying to prove what Durham and Barr could not about the mythical “Deep State.”

Look for it to blow up in Republican faces.

An Impartial Jury Debunks Trump's 'Russia Russia Russia' Lies -- Again

An Impartial Jury Debunks Trump's 'Russia Russia Russia' Lies -- Again

One of Donald Trump’s Big Lies has just been debunked, no less than by a federal jury. For years, Trump has been claiming that he is the blameless victim of what he derides as the “Russia Russia Russia hoax” – a sinister conspiracy perpetrated by former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as well as a host of other Democrats, aided by shadowy figures in the FBI.

Now America can be certain that this is all untrue because, after days andweeks and months of costly probes and prosecutions, a jury has decisively rejected Trump’s conspiracy claims this week – for the second time. It was a humiliating verdict, with ramifications both domestic and global.

Three years ago, William Barr, then the United States attorney general, appointed John Durham, the US Attorney in Connecticut, as a Justice Department special counsel to investigate Trump’s“hoax” claims against the FBI. The mere announcement of Durham’s appointment immediately lent an undeserved patina of plausibility, at least on Fox News, to the notion that something was very wrong in 2016 when FBI counterintelligence officials opened a file on Trump’s Russia connections. Supposedly, Durham’s investigation would prove it.

Unfortunately for Durham (and Trump), both of the major cases he brought against individuals who blew the whistle on Trump’s disturbing relationship with the Kremlin ended badly.: The first acquittal came five months ago, when a jury rejected charges that an attorney named Michael Sussmann had lied about the identity of his client when reporting his concerns about Trump to the bureau. The second came on October 18, when another jury acquitted Igor Danchenko, charged with lying to the FBI about the sources behind the legendary “dossier” about Trump and Russia assembled by former MI5 agent Christopher Steele. (Durham did win a guilty plea from an FBI lawyer for misrepresenting minor details in an email seeking a surveillance warrant, but that plea resulted in no jail time.)

The jury deliberations in both of these convoluted cases required only hours, not days. When Durham summed up his case to the jury in the Danchenko case by unfurling the “Russia hoax” conspiracy theory, he was rebuked by the judge and silenced.

So, despite millions of dollars spent, with all the resources of the Justice Department behind him, Durham failed to prove any of his big claims. The only thing he established beyond doubt is that his own judgment was seriously flawed. He The prosecutor in the

In the Danchenko case he did contrive, no doubt by mistake, to show that the FBI had very sound reasons to investigate Trump’s Russia ties that had nothing to do with the Steele dossier. When asked by the prosecution why the counterintelligence division opened that case, FBI analyst Brian Auten gave a simple and, truthful answer: The United States had received a reliable tip from a friendly foreign government about a Trump campaign aide who bragged that the Russians had offered to help defeat Hillary Clinton. In that moment, Auten exploded Trump’s outrageously false attacks on the US intelligence and law enforcement, along with the entire rationale for Durham’s snipe hunt.

Why does this still matter? In a world imperiled by Russian aggression, not only its invasion of Ukraine but also its continuing disinformation campaigns against democracies, the resilience and unity of Western governments remain our best defense against an increasingly grim, authoritarian future. At the core of that defense is NATO, an alliance that depends on the steadfastness of the United States. As midterm elections approach, the painstaking effort by President Joe Biden to maintain NATO support to Ukraine against the war criminal Vladimir Putin is under threat from a potential Republican Congress.

Trump’s lies about Russia, which damaged US relations with Ukraine during his presidency, were always designed to conceal his dubious relationship with Putin. He and his semi-fascist MAGA Republicans, who will hold important positions if the Republicans win control, talk about abandoning Ukraine and perhaps wrecking NATO, all in service of the Kremlin. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the man who would become Speaker, has said that his caucus would reduce or eliminate military aid to Ukraine – a diplomatic disaster of historic dimensions.

In his quest for power, the spineless McCarthy has cast aside his own insight into Donald Trump’s character and loyalty, which he privately disclosed to Republican members in June 2016, when he told them that he believed Putin was paying Trump, and added, “Swear to God.” Trump’s subservience to Putin and his sway over the Republican Party’s “semi-fascist”leadership matter enormously. The real investigations of “Russia Russia Russia” have revealed a grave threat to US and world security – and that threat has not receded an inch.

The Corruption That John Durham Ignores In His Own Backyard

The Corruption That John Durham Ignores In His Own Backyard

The way land records work is pretty simple. Owners file a deed in the city, county or town’s clerk’s office and the deed states that the first owner, or grantor, is conveying the property to the new owner or grantee. Usually the new deed lists the page and volume number of the first owner’s deed. The deeds form a chain, connecting one to another in a way that can be tracked.

Except in East Haven, there’s a small piece of property, 105 McLay Avenue, where the land records offer two chains of title. One owner has a chain going back to 1924. The other owner doesn’t. That second owner’s chain starts in 2005 where the Town of East Haven simply appears as the owner of 105 McLay Avenue and conveys the property to a Connecticut corporation.There’s no deed conveying the property to the town and yet the town went and granted it — for unknown consideration — to a local business. It’s almost like the Town of East Haven stole the land.

Indeed, something is rotten in the Town of East Haven. I know; I’ve watched it unfold because one of the owners of 105 McLay Avenue is my father.

My father reported these problems to then-United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, John Durham. Connecticut’s Assistant Attorney General, Sandra Arenas, and also referred the matter to Durham’s office by letter. No one from Durham’s office ever contacted my father.

People who don’t live in Connecticut already know who Durham is. He’s the special counsel secretly appointed to ”investigate matters related to intelligence activities and investigations arising out of the 2016 presidential campaigns” by former Attorney General William P. Barr in October 2020. The first trial in that investigation against Michael Sussman, an attorney for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, ended when a jury acquitted Sussman of lying to the FBI on May 31.

Even with that special counsel assignment, Durham had time to take action here in Connecticut; he learned about problems in East Haven in October 2019; he didn’t resign from his Connecticut post until February 2021.

For context on the Sussmann acquittal and how easy it would have been for Durham to win if he actually had a case, only two percent of defendants in federal criminal cases insist on a trial. Of that two percent, only one percent prevail and are found not guilty.

It appears Durham would rather tilt at Trump’s windmills than look into corruption in his former home district.

The FBI would be the agency to investigate for the US Attorney’s office and it doesn’t confirm whether an investigation is ongoing or not, so it’s possible that the United States Attorneys office and/or the FBI are looking into this situation.

But inquiries like this don’t take that long or run into he-said-she-said forks in the investigative path; it’s not an issue of credibility. Public land records contain all the evidence and in East Haven they’re available online. A federal prosecutor could decide whether there’s a case or not sitting in his pajamas at home.

It’s not like Durham’s office was or is unaware of problems that plague East Haven; the town is known for corruption and chaos. In 2009, then-Mayor April Capone and her assistant were arrested for interfering with police. Neither was convicted.

In 2020, three town employees were arrested for “double-dipping” — collecting pandemic unemployment assistance while still being paid their salaries. One of the accused is former Mayor Joseph Maturo’s daughter and the former mayor has been noted for allegedly trying to influence the investigation into his child.

An East Haven School Board member was charged with fraud. His wife was removed from her post as the director of the preschool program amid a federal probe and she was cited for allegedly shoplifting $150 worth of goods from a local supermarket.
And that’s just the chicanery outside real estate and property matters.

East Haven land records have been the subject of investigation before. A local zoning officer was placed on paid administrative leave in September 2020 and resigned a few months later and no one’s provided a reason why. In 2015, East Haven zoning official Frank Biancur was charged with extorting money from a resident, telling him he would make the resident tear down an addition on his house if he didn’t pay.

Michael Milici, while serving as the town’s tax assessor, was placed on administrative leave last year for allegedly not paying employees overtime; Milici himself brought this issue to town officials. He retired soon after, but he had worked as the assessor for 31 years and oversaw the tax records related to 105 McLay Avenue. Milici was sued in 2004 when he was a member of the neighboring town of Branford’s Board of Assessment Appeals. Plaintiffs claimed Milici inflated the value of their house and received a reduced valuation on his own home in the town.

The entities that ended up with 105 McLay Avenue are Statewide Construction, Inc. and Connecticut contractor Robert Pesapane, a man who paid for an attorney to represent the assistant to former East Haven mayor Joseph Maturo to sue Maturo for sexual harassment. Maturo had blocked one of Pesapane’s construction projects.

Yet, even with this history of pandemonium, Durham’s office has done nothing.

To be fair, there are other people who could have intervened and corrected this situation. For one, Durham had attorneys working for him. The courts have consistently sided with the town but their findings don’t make sense; the trial court found that the two competing chains of title were “the same” even though one has three deeds and the other eleven. More litigation is planned.

Joseph Carfora, the mayor of East Haven, is aware of the matter. He received a certified letter about it in May 2020 that he never answered. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

I emailed the FBI’s then-Community Liaison Charlie Grady and asked for assistance with the matter. Grady’s response was that he wasn’t sure how the tip line worked but I should continue to use it. He ended his answer with “Good luck!”

Luck is what East Haven homeowners need if no one from the U.S. Attorney's office will step in.

By itself, deed fraud isn’t a crime. But when it’s done by a town employee, it indicates corruption. Deed fraud is also one of the most underreported thefts, according to former FBI agent Arthur Pfizenmeyer in an interview with Law.com.

But deed fraud is enough of a problem in Connecticut that the Connecticut General Assembly passed a law in 2017 making the filing of false deeds actionable in a very specific way.

While there’s no testimony on record supporting the bill and there was no opposition to it — it was placed on what’s called a consent calendar which means that it was combined with other bills that wouldn’t require debate — false deeds must be a problem in Connecticut in places other than East Haven. After all, three state representatives and two state senators didn’t draft a bill and see it through to passage for no reason.

The law also classified filing a false deed as a Class D felony, which means that what’s happening is in fact a criminal matter involving the town, an issue of potential public corruption, landing it right in Durham’s and the FBI’s wheelhouse.

The problems that can arise from these deeds extend beyond criminal investigation. According to Connecticut’s Marketable Record Title Act, if a party doesn’t have an unbroken chain of title to their property, they’re technically not the owner of it. That means that sales of certain real property may not be possible unless this is stopped. In fact, it may even invalidate certain deeds, meaning people could lose their homes.

Trump’s effect on real estate extends beyond New York. His obsession with Hillary Clinton distracted Justice Department officials and seduced Durham into pursuing these popcorn fart cases instead of dealing with crimes right in front of him in Connecticut.

Durham’s got another trial scheduled for October 2022, against Igor Danchenko, over lies Danchenko supposedly uttered to FBI agents over the Steele dossier. Durham’s priorities are clear; he’d prefer to chase phantom charges against Trump’s enemies than protect the residents of the district he once oversaw as the chief federal prosecutor.

Chandra Bozelko did time in a maximum-security facility in Connecticut. While inside she became the first incarcerated person with a regular byline in a publication outside of the facility. Her “Prison Diaries" column ran in The New Haven Independent, and she later established a blog under the same name that earned several professional awards. Her columns now appear regularly in The National Memo.