After House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) was cleared of ridiculous charges regarding classified information, Nunes and his Senate ally Charles Grassley (R-IA) have issued subpoenas to then director James Comey's number two Andrew McCabe regarding his conflicts of interest pertaining to his role in Clinton and Trump investigations, while his wife received hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from the Clinton's fundraiser Terry McAuliffe. The demotion of former FBI counterintelligence officer Peter Strzok (more on him below from Harley Schlanger) from Mueller's team, reportedly for sending derogatory messages about Trump to his mistress, Andrew McCabe's secretary, is just the tip of an iceberg. What's emerging is a long hidden iceberg of politicized agencies and an intelligence community corrupted under President Obama to the 'get Trump' agenda.

We know from The New York Times, Fox News (and former AP spied upon by the Obama White House) reporter(s) James Rosen, Sinclair's Sara A. Carter, and the Washington Examiner's Byron York that the 'counterintelligence/Russian expert' Strzok and his allies were at the center of promoting the Steele Dossier as a legitimate piece of raw intelligence. 'Ex' CIA officers like John Sipher and fired FBI director Jim Comey's pals at the Democrat deep state cheerleader site Lawfare continue to insist no FISA warrants were obtained to spy on Trump or his campaign associates like Carter Page using the sexed up partisan document as a pretext. But from the other side of the Atlantic, Steele's former British intelligence colleague Sir Andrew Wood, in a recent interview with Fox News, has sought to distance himself from the dossier which has now resulted in libel suits in U.S./UK courts against Buzzfeed which published it, and against the ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele who wrote it. In his interview Wood deflects responsibility for promoting the Steele Dossier to neocon Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his contacts at the FBI.

In a sign of how nervous he and his boss former CIA director John Brennan must be about their support for terrorists in Syria getting exposed, ex-deputy director Mike Morrell admitted that his support for Hillary Clinton upon leaving the Agency may have given Trump the impression that many spooks were out to get him. Gee, ya think Mike?

In his recent Congressional testimony, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has indirectly confirmed that there are ongoing Justice Department inspector general investigations of Comey's efforts to preemptively absolve Hillary Clinton over her illegal use of a classified home email server. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow is calling for a new special counsel to investigate what we now know were ties between the CIA's open source intel team, Democrat hired media manipulating guns Fusion GPS and Justice Department officials, led by the now-demoted official Bruce G. Ohr and his Agency OSINT analyst wife Nellie Ohr.

In a sign of how little trust there is among Congressional Republicans in career DoJ employees' ability to police partisan abuses of Americans Constitutional rights by present or former colleagues, some Congressmen are echoing Sekulow's calls for a special counsel to investigate the investigators tied to Mueller.  In other words, Washington's legal hunters are about to become the hunted, and Mueller and Comey aides, if not these ranking deep state servants themselves, could be facing criminal charges. At the very least, the efforts of LaRouchePAC, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and others are bearing fruit. There are now enough individuals in Congress and pressure from Fox News and organizations like LaRouchePAC to get to the bottom of real crimes and abuses of power committed during the 2016 presidential election. -- JWS

THE FLYNN GUILTY PLEA: ANOTHER PYRRHIC VICTORY FOR MUELLER AND THE ANTI-TRUMPERS Originally published in the German language LaRouche movement magazine Neue Solidarität 

Dec. 8 -- While those wishing for the ouster of President Donald Trump from the White House greeted the guilty plea of former Trump National Security Adviser Lt. General Michael Flynn with unrestrained glee, in their delusional excitement, they apparently failed to notice that the wheels are coming off the judicial railroad known as "Russiagate."  Legal observers noted that the Flynn plea, for a single count of "lying to the FBI", is similar to special counsel Robert Mueller's other "victories", a guilty plea from a minor figure, George Papadapoulos -- also for lying to the FBI -- and money laundering and sundry tax evasion charges against Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate, Rick Gates.  None of these charges bear a direct relation to the mandate originally assigned to Mueller, to discover if Trump and his campaign "colluded" with Russia to steal the election, and if he obstructed justice to cover up the collusion.   

It has been nearly seven months since Mueller was appointed special counsel.  During that time, he has spent almost $7 million to conduct what President Trump calls a "witch hunt."  In addition to his team of investigators, many of whom have served as prosecutors and FBI officials, he has had the full cooperation of the U.S. intelligence community, which began the initial investigation into charges of "Russian meddling" in late spring 2016, working from a game plan drafted by British intelligence's GCHQ, begun in June 2015.  Their investigation resulted in a finding, released by Obama's Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper on January 6, 2017, that stated that the U.S. intelligence community had concluded, "with high confidence", that Russia engaged in a campaign to influence the 2016 election.

Mueller has also had the full support of the mainstream media in the U.S., which has deployed teams of investigative reporters to "find the truth."  These media have consistently used "anonymous sources" and "high level leaks" to bolster Mueller's case, repeating endlessly the mantra that "there is no doubt that there was Russian meddling," because the U.S. intelligence community has certified it.  The major media in Europe, led by the pack of liars in the British press, have been dutiful in echoing this theme, that there is no doubt that Russia meddled and Trump colluded, and that it is only a matter of time until he is either driven out of office by impeachment, the 25th amendment, or assassination!

Given these confident assertions, would it be too much to ask, "With all these charges, can we finally see some evidence?"

THE FLYNN CASE

The plea bargain by Michael Flynn proves again that there is no evidence to back the charges against Russian President Putin and Donald Trump.  The original anti-Putin/anti-Trump narrative claimed that the computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were hacked by Russians, directed by Putin, who then released the hacked emails, which were harmful to Hillary Clinton, to Wikileaks. The Trump campaign, the story goes, then used these documents to discredit her candidacy. 

Yet this narrative is hardly heard anymore.  Though there was scant coverage of the report by experts with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which showed that there was no Russian hacking, but an internal download of documents, the VIPS report effectively discredited the hacking narrative.  Further, Wikileaks' Assange has insisted that the emails were not delivered to him by anyone associated with Russian intelligence.

Instead, Mueller now is focusing on squeezing Trump associates, trying to "flip" them, so they will offer concocted stories which confirm the charge of collusion, or obstruction of justice.  This is why the case of Flynn was greeted with such delight by the never-Trumpers.  Aha, they say, Flynn lied about a discussion with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S.  This must prove collusion!  And Trump's request to FBI Director Comey that he "go easy on Flynn" must therefore prove obstruction, especially after Trump fired Comey.

In fact, what it demonstrates is the desperation of Mueller to make some sort of case.  There is no dispute that Flynn had several conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador, at the end of December 2016.  There is also no dispute that Flynn asked the Russians on December 22 for help in stopping a U.N. Security Council Resolution against Israel, which the Russians did not do.  In a second conversation, on December 29, after President Obama imposed new sanctions against Russia, to penalize them for "meddling," Flynn asked the Russians to respond cautiously to Obama's sanctions.  In this conversation, Kislyak told him that Russia had chosen "to moderate its response" to the sanctions, which Putin announced the next day.  Both calls were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, and became the basis for the interrogation of Flynn, by the FBI, 

That interrogation took place on January 24.  Given that the FBI had transcripts of these calls, why did they conduct an interrogation?  Obviously, to entrap him, in the hope that he might say something which contradicted the text in the transcript.  And according to the charge filed by Mueller, Flynn did.

But was there anything illegal about Flynn's calls to Kislyak?   The answer is "NO."  Flynn was not acting as a private citizen, but as a representative of a newly elected administration, during the transition period, when members of a new administration routinely have contact with other governments. Not only were the calls legal, they were based on fulfilling the mandate Trump was given by the voters, to break decisively with the anti-Russian policy course of Obama, which Hillary Clinton had pledged to continue, or even escalate. 

That top Trump operatives were aware that the whole Russian narrative was designed to sabotage the President-Elect's efforts to forge a new course of cooperation with Russia is clear from another feature of the Flynn case.  In attempting to prove that officials close to Trump knew that Flynn would speak to Kislyak, an email has been produced from a national security appointee to the transition team, K.T. McFarland.  In that email, as reported by the {New York Times}, McFarland described Obama's sanctions policy as a "last-minute attempt to discredit Mr. Trump's victory, box him in diplomatically and provoke him into a potentially damaging statement in Russia's defense." 

The discussions with Kislyak actually prove that the incoming Trump administration was taking a responsible diplomatic course to prevent further confrontation with Russia, which was the intent of Obama's new sanctions.  The targeting of Flynn is thus a prime example of attempting to use the special counsel's powers to criminalize an effort to achieve cooperation with the other major nuclear power on the planet, instead of poking them in the eye with a stick! 

So why did Flynn plead guilty?  The consensus among legal experts not employed by the FBI or the mainstream media, is that Mueller was applying the white collar prosecutor's most powerful tools, of driving up the cost of legal defense, and threatening the target's family, to force them to cooperate with the prosecution.  Facing bankruptcy and the prospect of a long prison term for his son, Flynn caved in.

Yet, the hollowness of this "victory" is reflected in the charge itself.  If Mueller is able to get Flynn to agree to a story implicating Trump, by offering a reduced sentence for his cooperation, how reliable is testimony from a witness who pleaded guilty to lying?

THE CORRUPTION OF THE PROSECUTION

The other emerging story which discredits Mueller and the whole of Russiagate is that of top FBI agent Peter Strzok, who briefly served as a member of Mueller's team.  Strzok was the number two counterintelligence official of the FBI, specializing in Russia.  He has been key to the unfolding of Russiagate from the beginning, as the general timeline which follows demonstrates (some dates are not specific, as Mueller and the FBI have not provided the information requested by the Congress):

June 2016 -- Strzok represents the FBI in signing the initial document opening the investigation into Russian meddling.  In his capacity with FBI counterintelligence, he had served as a liaison to Obama's CIA Director Brennan, who is another leading instigator of the Russiagate investigation.

July 2, 2016 -- Strzok was part of the team which interviewed Hillary Clinton, in investigating her use of a private email server.  Days later, FBI Director Comey declined to recommend prosecution of Clinton.  It is now known that Strzok convinced Comey to change the wording on Clinton, from saying she was "grossly negligent", which could have led to criminal charges, to "extremely careless," heading off any charges.

July-August 2016 -- In July, he was brought in by Comey to lead the Russia probe.  Two committees of Congress are now demanding that Strzok be compelled to testify on his role, which includes his involvement in the initial FBI engagement with Fusion GPS and its hireling, "ex"-MI6 operative Christopher Steele, on the "dodgy dossier" which alleges Trump is subject to blackmail by Putin, due to sexual improprieties captured on tape in a Moscow hotel.  Though Steele's memos have been discredited, Mueller is continuing to pursue them, seeking a "smoking gun."  Representative Devin Nunes of California and Iowa Senator Charles Grassley are demanding to know whether Strzok's involvement with Fusion GPS was part of the FBI filing which led to authorization of a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign during the election!  The Fusion GPS/Steele dossier was paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

January 24, 2017 -- Strzok was involved in the interrogation of Flynn, which led to his entrapment.

July 13, 2017 -- Strzok joins Mueller's team.

August 2017 -- Strzok is removed from Mueller's team after the FBI Inspector General reveals that text messages from Strzok to his mistress, an attorney with the FBI, have been found, which denigrate Trump and are favorable to Clinton.  This was not made public until the first week of December, months after his removal, when investigators from Congress recommended that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI be held in contempt for refusing to allow Strzok to be interrogated.  Rep. Nunes said of the Strzok affair that, "By hiding from Congress and the American people documented political bias by a key FBI investigator for both the Russia collusion probe and the Clinton email investigation, the FBI and DOJ engaged in a willful attempt to thwart Congress' constitutional oversight responsibility."

Further, both Strzok and his mistress worked under Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, whose wife received nearly $700,000 for her campaign for a Virginia State Senate seat, from Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton confidante, and other Clinton supporters.  McCabe had been scheduled to testify before a House Committee on December 7, but refused to appear.  There is also an investigation into reports, filed by three FBI officials, that McCabe had expressed a personal animus toward Flynn going back to Flynn's time as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Even before the Strzok story broke, a new poll for CBS News found that 48% of Americans believe the Russiagate investigation is "politically motivated", that is, has nothing to do with "Russian meddling."  The revelations emerging around Strzok make clear that, as we have reported from the beginning, Russiagate is nothing but an attempted coup d'état, to overturn the intent of the American people, by electing Donald Trump, to put an end to sixteen years of the dangerous and provocative Bush and Obama policies of endless war, bailouts of the bankrupt financial system, and murderous austerity against the people; and to prevent President Trump from bringing the U.S. into strategic cooperation with Russia and China.  The new revelations demonstrate further the web of corruption behind this whole process, including the dishonest and dirty role of Mueller himself (as documented in the LaRouchePAC dossier, "Robert Mueller is an Amoral Legal Assassin"), his investigation, the FBI, the Clinton campaign, the lying media, etc.

President Trump offered his own pithy summary to this turn of events in a tweet: "Now it all starts to make sense." KEEP VICTORY IN OUR SIGHTS! Originally published at LaRouchePAC.com on December 12, 2017

This is a unique moment. The old paradigm of geopolitics is crumbling, even though it is still kicking and dangerous, as in the case of the current chaos around Jerusalem. But the New Paradigm of mutual advantage is rapidly gaining ground; and the potential alliance of China, Russia, and the United States signifies the potential for an epic advancement for mankind. We should keep victory in our sights.

In the U.S., there are now howls from the Washington and London empire crowd, that their Mueller Russia-gate ploy is failing to bring down Trump and the American presidency. The Washington Post and the London Guardian are moaning that Robert Mueller and his team are no longer "respected," and not seen as possessing "legitimate authority."

What's happening to Robert Mueller shows the "Ibycus Principle" at work, referring to Friedrich Schiller's famous poem, the "Cranes of Ibycus." Schiller Institute Chairman Helga Zepp Larouche pointed this out today. For a long while, Mueller got away with his crimes—for jailing Lyndon LaRouche and associates, for complicity and cover-up of the Saudi Arabian involvement in 9/11, and so on. But now, the cranes of Ibycus are circling. Mueller is coming down.

In Southwest Asia, there are positive developments, giving hope for the future, despite the atrocities of the U.S. and U.K.-supported Saudi attacks on Yemen. Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin was at the Russian airbase in Syria, where he thanked Russian soldiers for their service in Syria, and announced that contingents and equipment are now ordered to go back home. "We will never forget about the deaths and losses sustained in the anti-terror fight both here in Syria and in Russia...this memory will give us an additional force to eradicate that absolute evil—international terrorism..." Syrian President Bashar al Assad thanked Putin personally for aiding Syria. Putin then met in Cairo with Egyptian Pres. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, where economic deals were signed, including for Russia to proceed on construction of the four-reactor nuclear power plant site on the coast, and to collaborate on the Suez Canal industrial zone.

At the same time, the region is in turmoil over the Dec. 6 announcement that the U.S. would move its embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump's statement on this—tempered later by Sec. of State Rex Tillerson, comes amidst a months-long, hyper-activation of televangelist, so-called Christian fundamentalist networks, calling for "standing by Israel." These networks are a long-standing capability of British dirty operations, going back decades. Vice President Mike Pence, deep in these circles, and Amb. to the U.N. Nikki Haley, pushed for Trump to make this provocative initiative, before Pence's planned trip to Israel (Dec. 17-18,) and Egypt (Dec. 19-20.) The trip—once billed as a way to further Trump's desire for a peace process, is now in shambles before it occurs. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has cancelled a scheduled meeting with Pence, as have Egyptian Coptic Patriarch Pope Tawadros II and Egypt's top Muslim cleric, Ahmed al-Tayeb.

These kinds of actions to create conflict—pitting Israel against Palestine, Jews against Muslims, Sunni against Shia, and other geopolitical games, are the Old Paradigm at work. There is no way for security for anyone—including Israel—in this system of orchestrated strife. The only way out is through a new era of win-win relations among nations, in the "Silk Road Spirit." This is spelled out beautifully in the new Schiller Institute book, "Extending the New Silk Road to Southwest Asia and Africa: A Vision of an Economic Renaissance." (Soon available for order in the U.S.)

The intervention in the U.S. in the same vein, by LaRouche associates, is proceeding towards a goal of a policy shift by the time of the Jan. 30, 2018, Trump State of the Union address. As today's LPAC TV Update said, "50 Days to Shape the Next 50 Years."