Day: December 18, 2023

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By Steve Neavling

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, who is spreading debunked conspiracy theories about the FBI’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, said the bureau is “going down.”

In an interview with right-wing commentator Lara Logan,  the Louisiana Republican continued to advance his baseless theories about the FBI. This time, he claimed the FBI tracked Trump supporters just prior to the insurrection and treated them as terrorists. 

He also claimed, without providing proof, that the FBI put those Trump supporters on a list, and they are still being tracked by U.S. marshals, despite not being convicted of a crime. 

“We are in uncharted waters as it relates to the weaponization of our government against American people,” he said. 

He added, “I am not frightened of these people.”

Higgins said, “They are not going to take us without a fight. I am going to fight legally and peacefully and within the parameters of the U.S. Constitution.

“But they’re going down. These men in their high perch and their position of power and authority that are walking upon our entire history, our deepest core principles. They’re not going to get away with it.”

During a congressional hearing last month, Higgins claimed the FBI had confidential informants who arrived in “ghost buses” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

He asked Wray about the buses. 

“These buses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters, deployed onto our capital on January 6,” he said. “Your day is coming, Mr. Wray.”

Republicans have repeatedly claimed that the FBI was behind the Jan. 6 attack, a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked. 

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A binder containing highly classified information regarding Russia’s efforts to meddle with the 2016 election disappeared from the West Wing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency —- and has never been found, according to a report from CNN. 

The binder, described as 10 inches thick and containing a trove of information on the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” Russia investigation, was moved from the CIA’s headquarters to the White House days before Trump left office so the former president could declassify its contents.

According to a Jan. 2021 White House memo issued the day before President Biden’s inauguration, Trump wrote that he had personally requested and received “a binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Portions of the documents in the binder have remained classified and have not been released to the Congress or the public.” 

“I determined that the materials in that binder should be declassified to the maximum extent possible,” Trump wrote. 

Sources tell CNN that the declassification order caused chaos within the White House. The binder reportedly contained extremely sensitive, raw intelligence on Russia gathered by the U.S. and NATO allies. As White House lawyers scrambled to appropriately redact its contents — and retrieve improperly redacted copies — the original, unredacted binder vanished. 

Despite Trump’s order, the Justice Department has yet to make the documents available to the public. The binder was not identified among the hundreds of classified documents found in Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago during a 2022 search by the FBI.

According to transcripts released by the Jan. 6 committee last year, in closed-door testimony, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee she was “almost positive” the binder went home with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. 

“I don’t think that would have been something that he would have destroyed. It was not returned anywhere, and it never left our office to go internally anywhere. It stayed in our safe in the office safe most of the time,” Hutchinson said, adding that she realized the binder was no longer in the safe on her last day at the White House. 

Hutchinson also told the committee that Meadows had fiercely guarded the original, unredacted copy of the binder. “He wanted to keep that one close hold,” she said. “He didn’t want that one to be widely known about. I just know Mr. Meadows. He wouldn’t have had that one copied unless he did it on his own.” 

Attorneys for Meadows strongly denied the claims. “Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong,” Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger said in a statement to CNN.

While Trump has not been directly linked to the binder’s disappearance, Rolling Stone reported last year that in the final days of his presidency, Trump told advisers he needed to preserve documents related to Russia to prevent their destruction by his enemies. 

Sources told Rolling Stone that the former president raised concerns that the incoming Biden administration would seek to “shred,” bury, or destroy documents containing “evidence” that Trump was somehow wronged by federal investigations into Russian election interference. 

Intelligence officials had long resisted Trump’s efforts to declassify the document and continued to thwart him after he left office. Several of the hastily redacted versions of the binder are now housed in the National Archives, and it’s certainly possible that if Trump regains the presidency in 2024 he will revive his efforts to secure the release of their contents. 

The report found no collusion between Mr Trump and Putin, but it ruled that Mr Trump was “receptive” to offers of assistance from the Russians.

The binder is believed to have been held at the CIA, with intelligence officials requiring top-level clearance to handle it within the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

But it later went missing during a frantic attempt to declassify reports relating to Russian interference by Mr Trump and his aides as he prepared to leave office in January 2021, multiple sources told CNN.

One aide to Mark Meadows, Mr Trump’s chief of staff, has testified to Congress that she is “almost positive it went home with [him]”. Mr Meadows denies that allegation.

The binder had not been found in Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where other classified documents were discovered, despite aides’ attempts to track it down, according to the report.

The existence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has since become the subject of a federal indictment against Mr Trump, who faces trial in Florida.

While the disappearance of classified documents at the end of Mr Trump’s tenure in the White House has been previously reported and investigated, the disappearance of the Russian interference binder was revealed yesterday.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, appeared to suggest that the Kremlin is hoping Mr Trump will win next year’s presidential election.

Rare interview

Mr Peskov told NBC in a rare interview with foreign press that the Russian president wants a more constructive relationship with the US built on the “importance of dialogue”.

Asked directly about Mr Trump, Mr Peskov said Putin wants to work with “anyone who will understand that from now on, you have to be more careful with Russia, and you have to take into account its concerns”.

Mr Trump has previously been criticised for his approach to Russia, and has described Putin as “smart” and a “genius” for his approach to the invasion of Ukraine.

He has also promised to end the war in Ukraine “in one day” if he was elected president, by brokering negotiations between the two countries.

In return, Putin has said he “cannot help but feel happy” about Mr Trump’s plan to “resolve all burning issues within several days”. The former US president responded: “I like that he said that, because that means what I’m saying is right.”

However, on Friday, Mr Peskov said the conflict was “too complicated” to end so quickly, and admitted for the first time it was a “war” rather than a “special military operation” – the phrase Russia has used until now to describe its activity in Ukraine.

Attacking the US, the Russian spokesman said the Biden administration was fuelling the war and putting Ukrainians at risk.

He said: “You are telling them: ‘Go and die. Don’t worry, we will give you enough money and enough armaments, but you should go and die.’ And you know pretty well that they cannot win.”

A Russian intelligence file that reportedly went missing at the end of Donald Trump‘s presidency could “get somebody killed” if it had fallen into the hands of Moscow, a former FBI official has warned.

A binder containing U.S. and NATO-ally “raw intelligence” on Russia and Russian agents was reportedly last seen at the White House during the former president’s final days in office.

Only lawmakers and congressional aides with top-secret security clearances could view the 10-inch-thick “Crossfire Hurricane” document related to Russian meddling in the 2016 election at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the election, while Trump has called the FBI‘s investigation into the claims a hoax.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and former President Donald Trump in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi said a Russian intelligence file that went missing near the end of Trump’s presidency could compromise U.S. assets. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images

The disappearance of the document, has sparked fears that sensitive information could be shared, with a U.S. official telling The New York Timesthe matter was of such concern that the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed about it.

“We’ve got to know what happened with this binder and more importantly, whether this was a mere accident or whether the intention was to hand it to Russia to expose US Intel sources and methods against Russia,” Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, told MSNBC.

“A person who’s positioned and knows who’s reading this, like maybe a Russian official can easily discern sources and methods from it,” he told the network for which he is a contributor. “For example, if it says, ‘on this date, Vladimir Putin had this conversation with this person’— that reveals who the human sources or whether there’s a microphone in Putin’s office or not.

“All of that could literally get somebody killed or cause us to lose well-placed technical methods that that are in place,” he said.

Trump issued an order with the aim of declassifying most of the binder’s contents before he left office, with a source close to the former president telling the New York Times that the binder’s contents captured his attention. A redacted version is available on the FBI website.

During the segment, Figliuzzi suggested there should be a warrant issued to search the home of former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who has been blamed for the document’s disappearance by both White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and Trump himself.

George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Meadows, told the Times the former chief of staff was not responsible and “never took any copy of that binder home at any time.” Newsweek has contacted Terwilliger and the Trump team for comment.

Last week, the former president’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, alleged in a blog post that the former president may have sold or given the document to Russia, without providing any evidence. As previously reported by Newsweek, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek he rejected the claim, saying: “what proof do you have?”