"FBI Caught Faking Documents To Russia-Gate!"
The Jimmy Dore Show (August 16, 2020)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74jrqI6a-rw

[Some comedic banter about journalists who like to publicize their workout routines]

Jimmy Dore: “We’re here with serious journalist and tan-man Aaron Maté, and we brought him on because there’s a story breaking. So, Russia-gate, we told you that the FBI lied many, many times to secure FISA warrants on a guy named Carter Page. And then, I learned through Bill Binney, former NSA code breaker, is [that] there is a ‘two hop’ rule when you get a FISA warrant. What is that? That means you have a warrant on this guy, Carter Page, we can listen to every phone call he makes, every text, every email. Now, anybody he talks to we also can listen to. That’s the ‘two hop’ rule. So if he talks to anybody inside the Trump administration, [the FBI/NSA] can listen to anything [those other people say, also]. Is that correct, Aaron?

[3:49] Aaron Maté: “That’s right. You can hop to anybody else. And you also can hop backwards, too. Anybody who Carter Page communicated with, what they talked about.”

[4:02] Jimmy Dore: “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that you could to backwards. Anyway, so the FBI lied, it was revealed. No one really talked about that on mainstream news. They’ll mention it on page 37 of the New York Times, but it’s not the headline: ‘FBI caught lying in Russia-gate probe,’ which is what it should be. But now they’re doing an investigation of the people who are investigating Trump. [shows screenshot of current headline]:

“... and William Barr, they’re starting to find criminality.”

[5:31] Jimmy Dore: “And that’s all a lie. If you know what the FBI does, they’re professional liars. And there’s an example of it.”

Steph Zamorano: “It sounds like he was overly confident.”

Jimmy Dore: “He was overly confident.” [reads again from Politico article]

“... and William Barr, they’re starting to find criminality.”

“So they [the FISA Court] were giving renewal warrants and after they found it [the lies, errors, and omissions] they took them away. When they say ‘riddled with errors and omissions,’ they mean lies. And lies of omissions. They don’t mean errors, like there should have been a comma, and, Oh, they had the wrong name, they transfixed a phone number. That’s not what they mean by error. They mean deliberate lies to mislead the court so they could do a criminal investigation criminally. So they, themselves, were the criminals. So by ‘omissions,’ they mean lies by omission. By information that would have been exculpatory or blown a hole through their case. They omitted that. They’re not supposed to do that. That’s illegal. That’s why someone should be going to jail. And, hopefully, it’s this guy Clinesmith. It should be James Comey.”

[7:00] [reads from screenshot of Politico article]

[8:02] Jimmy Dore: “So, let me just break it down for you, what this means is that the FBI was lying. They knew that Carter Page worked for the CIA. And they told the Court that he didn’t. And why is that important? Because if he did, that would really screw up their case against him being a Russian asset. Because he’s working for the CIA. So let’s bring in Aaron Maté, who has won awards with his meticulous debunking of Russia-gate conspiracy theory. What do you have to say about this?

[8:42] Aaron Maté: “Yeah, well, >it’s really funny that they’re still claiming that he made some kind of innocent mistake, his lawyers did, when what he was doing, as you point out, was fraud. And the fraud is important. This was for – they spied on Carter Page four times, in terms of warrants on him – four times. The first time they used it they applied for a spy warrant on Carter Page. They cited the Steele Dossier, none other than the garbage so-called “intelligence” that was paid for by Donald Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, a fact that the FBI also hid from the FISA Court. They didn’t tell them that, ‘Oh, yeah. This so-called intelligence we’re relying on happens to come from the campaign that Donald Trump is running against. So they concealed that.”

[9:31] Jimmy Dore: “So that would be an omission, an example of one of their “omissions.”

[8:42] Aaron Maté: “That’s an "omission". So, yeah.”

Jimmy Dore: “It’s not a lie, but if you withhold it’s a sin by omission. It’s a lie by omission because if they had made that information available to the Court, the Court probably wouldn’t have granted that knowing that that information was actually opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton.”

Aaron Maté: “Imagine if Dinesh D’Souza or whoever wrote up some crazy document alleging that Hillary Clinton is controlled by Iran, and is being blackmailed by them, and the FBI used that as a basis to spy on a member of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Everybody would be understandably upset. Basically, what the FBI did here, but against Trump, and because this has gotten so partisan because Russia-gate was such an elite-centric obsession, we’re not supposed to look at these facts because they’re inconvenient. Now we learn more about what this guy Clinesmith did where the FBI didn’t just rely on the Steele Dossier, they also relied on [still more] lies. When it came time to renew Carter Page’s FISA warrant for like the third or fourth time, Clinesmith was told by the CIA that, yes, he was our source and that Carter Page was also giving us intelligence about Russia. Clinesmith basically doctored that, changed the wording and then submitted that to the FISA Court. So, he committed fraud, and the question is, why? You know, it’s – was this something he just did on his own? I find that very hard to believe, that he was just some rogue agent here. Clinesmith was involved in a lot of other aspect of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign. And so the notion that he was acting on his own and that this was just a lie he decided to do himself, I find that hard to believe.

[11:26] “But John Durham, the prosecutor in this indictment today, doesn’t give us any information. Which is unfortunate because we would love to know more, but, on the other hand, it’s a striking contrast to all of the indictments we got from the Mueller team. They would write these elaborate – they were basically content producers. You know, how people work in content. They produce content for, like, TV, film, whatever. That’s what the Mueller team basically was. They were content producers for the media. To write these long indictments suggesting that there was some grand conspiracy plot until you get to the very last section where it reads, Oh, yeah. And he was indicted for a false statement about a totally trivial matter such as, like, getting a date wrong or not remembering whether or not sanctions were discussed.

[12:15] “So, in contrast to like this innuendo and narrative management by the Mueller team, Durham gives us nothing today. He doesn’t give us any indication as to what Clinesmith’s motivation was, whether this was done in cooperation with someone else. So we’ll have to wait and see. But for anybody who watched this case as we did from the start, we could tell that it was a fraud, based on how disingenuous the Mueller team was, and how ridiculous these Trump-Russia conspiracy allegations were. It’s a first step towards hopefully some kind of accountability.”

[12:45] Jimmy Dore: “You know, I wish I didn’t leave my computer out in the rain when I did in June because very quickly right now I would go to the video of the Inspector General saying that there were many, many – no one should feel “absolved” that there’s lots of problems. He, you know, didn’t say anybody was a criminal, but he said a lot of malfeasance was happening. Again, I’m paraphrasing. I wish I had the video because it was very powerful. He pushed back against the senator, saying “No. Nobody is exonerated here. This exonerates no one. The FBI, James Comey is not exonerated, and that everybody’s got their hand in this fuckery. And that’s basically what the Inspector General was saying. And if I didn’t leave my computer out in the rain, I could show you that instead of telling you about it, and this would be a much better segment. But I apologize. I’m falling down on the job. But you remember that, right, Aaron?

[13:47] Aaron Maté: “I do remember that. And people need to remember how all this was obvious from the start. But there were just too few people in media willing to tell the truth. And that’s why, Jimmy, if you go back and look at all the coverage we did, to toot our own horn for a second, we were like, all the segments we did on your show and also when you were at TYT on Aggressive Progressives, which I like to call Actual Progressives. We were pointing out how fraudulent everything was and that the Mueller team was duping people into believing that there was something there, but there never was. And we were also warning, from the start, that when all this inevitably collapsed, because it would eventually, then it would hand Trump not only the gift of exoneration, but then Trump would then dig into how all this actually began, and would investigate the investigators and would use these revelations for his re-election.

[14:47] “So these people who pretended that they were opposing Trump by championing this dumb Russian conspiracy theory handed him a massive gift. And the indictment today is the gift that keeps on giving for Trump, because this is probably not the last one. Some people will like to think that this is, but I don’t think it stops at Kevin Clinesmith. I imagine that the fraud continues, and whether there are more indictments or there’s just a report showing just how disingenuous the Mueller team was, I mean, no matter what, this will be good for Trump because there is so much to cover. These people lied over and over. The basis of the investigation was ridiculous. They got a tip from an Australian diplomat that this low-level campaign volunteer George Papadapoulus heard some kind of suggestion of a suggestion that Russia might be able to help them. Didn’t even mention the stolen emails that are at the heart of this entire Russia thing. So they got the vaguest tip possible, they launched an investigation based on that. And after they launched the investigation, they were like, ‘Right. Well, who else in the Trump campaign might be associated with Russia? Well, there’s this guy Carter Page. He says nice things about Russia in public. Let’s spy on him. And Paul Manafort, he worked in Ukraine. And, yeah, he was actually pushing an anti-Russian policy in Ukraine, but let’s forget that and investigate him anyway. And yeah, Michael Flynn, he went to this dinner, this gala in public along with a lot of other people in 2015 for RT, the Russian network. So, yeah, why not? Let’s investigate him, as well.’

[16:15] “And they continue to pursue this with fraud after fraud, relying on the Steele Dossier, lying to the FISA Court. In the case of Michael Flynn they were going to drop the case, but then they decided to entrap him. Then, when they couldn’t even detect him lying to them at all, they basically lied about what he said to them, and they claimed in their indictment that he lied to them about sanctions, when we only recently got the transcript of the Flynn Kislyak call with the Russian ambassador which he was indicted about. And they don’t even talk about sanctions. It’s mentioned once in passing and Flynn doesn’t even say anything.

[16:51] “So there are countless instances of them withholding information from the public and lying about it. Of course there’s Crowdstrike where the Crowdstrike president told the House Intelligence Committe: ‘Yeah, we actually don’t have any evidence that Russian hackers took anything.’ But we never heard about that when all this was happening. We only got this a few months ago, and nearly three years after he said it. So, it’s just fraud after fraud after fraud. And we’ll see how much malfeasance Durham can uncover and how much Trump can capitalize on this, which I think will be substantially.

[17:19] Jimmy Dore:“The silver lining is that half of the country now kind of realizes that the FBI are a bunch of professional fucking liars. And you better not get on the wrong side of them because they’ll use every illegal, unethical way to put you in jail if they don’t like you. Because the last thing the /FBI is doing is defending the Constitution. What they’re doing is fuckery on a daily basis. They’re a propaganda organization run for its own benefit. They are not out there helping America. The FBI are a bunch of lying cocksuckers and this reveals them to be that from the tippy top. James Comey the worst. Go watch his interview where Chris Wallace dismantled. Chris Wallace dismantled James Comey. Chris Wallace. The bad Wallace. Dismantled James Comey, effortlessly. they’re all corrupt. Just like everyone in Congress is corrupt. Just like everyone at MSNBC and CNN is corrupt. Just like everyone at the editorial boards of the Washington Post and the New York Times is corrupt. Corrupt. The only thing is that the New York Times cannot directly put you in jail. But they can write a bullshit story that gets you arrested.

[18:48] Like, did you see how Politico wrote this? Did you see the mealy mouth? They didn’t even tell you what actually happened. That’s why people have to come to this show so that we can tell them what actually happened in this story. ‘Oh, Clinesmith said … what? The guy altered a document, a completely falsified document that they submitted to a court to get the most insidious kind of spying you can get in America, that’s unconstitutional. They had to lie to get it on purpose. And they did it 17 times. They lied 17 times, at least. And they got this guy for one of those lies. One. And by the way, you’re right, Aaron, we debunked this in real time. It wasn’t hard. I was doing it at aggressive progressives, or as you call it, Actual Progressives at The Young Turks. While they were doing Russia-gate bullshit at the top of their fucking lungs, I was doing good journalism on the regular in their own studio, and they couldn’t give a shit. And still, to this day, they don’t give a shit. I had Cenk Uygar in here and begged him to stop Russia-gating. It hurts the Left. It’s not going to help anything. It’s going to help Trump. I begged him. Still fucking doing it a hundred percent.”

[20:12] Aaron Maté: “And that’s the saddest part for progressives who are genuinely committed to a better world got enlisted, got duped into parroting a conspiracy theory, a crazy fixation that was designed, in part, to preserve the power of the neo-liberals that progressives oppose. Because, after 2016, the obvious lesson was that this should become the party of Bernie Sanders. A fake anti-establishment candidate won the election by presenting himself as being the person who was going to drain the swamp and stop foreign wars. That was all con. So the obvious lesson is why not give people a genuine anti-establishment candidate. But doing that would have threatened the power of the people who lost the election. So they came up with this Russia thing to help deflect any responsibility, any self-reflection. And they successfully enlisted people like Cenk and other progressives into their cause. And it’s sad that even now after it has all collapsed, they still refuse to acknowledge that. But, whatever. It just means that we’re not going to stop doing what we do, and there will be plenty more opportunities to point out just what a fraud this was because we have not learned the last of it.”

[21:26] Jimmy Dore: “Russia is MSNBC still Russia-gating at the top of their lungs. And anybody who guest-hosts for them also, FYI, is forced to Russia-gate at the top of their lungs. And they do it for money. People who previously said they didn’t believe in Russia-gate, they get a guest-host job on MSNBC and they are forced to Russia-gate and they do it gladly. Why? Because they don’t have integrity and they are fucking shallow people. That’s why. You know, politics and show business attracts the most mediocre of people to begin with. At least some people have talent in show business.

[22:11] Aaron Maté: “You know, Jimmy, what bothers me is, for anybody who couldn’t see it before, how this was being used to prop up the neoliberal centrists of the party to push the party even more to the right in basically defining anti-Trump resistance as being willing to like be even more aggressive against Russia than Trump wanted to be, impeaching him over the fact that he briefly froze some weapon sales to Ukraine just as Obama basically did when Obama refused to sell weapons to Ukraine. And also worshipping the CIA and the FBI, these organizations that have been attacking the Left for decades which is what they’re pretty much designed to do. Even if you couldn’t see it then, when on the eve of the Nevada caucus when they Russia-gated Bernie when he was doing well and they brought out this leak that Russia was favoring Bernie Sanders which is [that] the motivation is so transparent. People within the national security state don’t like Bernie Sanders. So what are they going to do? Just say that Russia wants him to win and every liberal will freak out and MSNBC will air this nonstop. This means that they don’t even tell us how Russia wants Bernie to win, what they’re going to do for him. It doesn’t matter. It’s like a monster under the bed. They can just say that this thing exists and everybody is conditioned to believe it because we’re supposed to worship what the intelligence community says, especially about Russia. So they use it to sabotage Bernie and still. And even Bernie himself won’t stop Russia-gating. And Bernie’s advisers won’t see how this was used against them as well. It’s tragic.”

[23:46] Jimmy Dore: “Bernie is the ultimate cuck, as Kyle Kulinski says. He didn’t say ‘ultimate.’ He just called him a cuck. I put [in] the ‘ultimate.’ I’ve seen cuckold videos, and none of those people have a following. None of those guys in the hoods and getting kicked by the ladies in the nuts, roped up, whatever, none of them have a movement behind them. They’re just cucks. What I’m saying is that Bernie could be topping from the bottom, and he’s not.

“How are things going for you. When I say, you know, [that] The Nation still publishes your work. And your work is always factual. It wins awards. But everybody at The Nation hates it except the editor. Because you’re making them look like the children they are, and you realize that’s why they don’t want those articles in The Nation magazine because the people who read their bullshit for the last three fucking years, and then read your article and go: ‘What? You mean everything I’ve been reading is bullshit? All these other people aren’t really journalists?’ That’s why they don’t want you printed in the fucking Nation magazine. Because it reveals their mediocrity. And thank god there’s a real editor over there who isn’t mediocre, the only one, I think, in the entirety of fucking journalism. That’s just one. That’s it. That’s one. In the entire country. One.

[25:20] Aaron Maté: “There are people at The Nation who don’t agree with my views. But, you know, look. One of its slogans is ‘The Place for Debate on the Left.’ And they allow debate. It’s great. And I’m happy that they publish people whose viewpoints differ from mine, and I appreciate that they welcome my point of view. Recently they published a piece I did about the OPCW scandal. Where – you’ve covered this – the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons basically there was a cover-up alleged by two whistle-blowers where they investigated an alleged chemical attack in Syria. They found evidence that, basically, the attack was staged. It was a fraud. And the OPCW then dismissed their evidence to accuse Syria in order to justify Trump’s airstrikes on Syria which he did based on the chemical weapons allegations. In The Nation – There’s been a complete media censorship of this story. A complete media blockade. Every so-called adversarial website including The Intercept has ignored the story even though they initially promoted the pro-Trump, pro-war narrative. But The Nation let me publish an article about these whistle-blowers. Where else can you do that in mainstream adjacent media right now. So I’m very grateful for that.

[26:31] Jimmy Dore: “Nowhere. You can’t do it anywhere. That’s it. That’s why I said ‘hats off’ to Katrina Vandenhoeval over at The Nation. She’s a real editor. And she does that. She does not betray their motto of The Place for Debate on the Left, if that’s what their motto is. I didn’t even know that’s what it was. It’s nice to see that everyone else is betraying them. Even places like The Intercept. Just garbage when it comes to reporting on Russia. Can’t even do as good a job as a pot-head in his garage. They’re just the worst and they do it on purpose. Like if we were getting it wrong accidentally, that’s one thing. They’re getting it wrong on purpose. And they know they’re doing it wrong now. They know what they’re doing. They’re gutless cowards.”

[27:14] Aaron Maté: “Yeah. Well, Glenn Greenwald out the gate was one of the first Russia-gate skeptics. And that got The Intercept a lot of, you know, negative attention from mainstream publications, everybody attacking The Intercept. So to compensate for Glenn’s accurate journalism, they went full Russia-gate with everybody else. They brought in James Risen and other people to attack Julian Assange, to push the Russia-gate narrative, just shameless, for the crime of publishing Glenn Greenwald’s accurate journalism. It’s a really funny window into how the media works. Even so-called adversarial media.”

[27:48] Jimmy Dore: “Media is garbage in America. It’s absolute garbage. And it’s a good thing that you’re doing it independently so you could actually do real news.”