News

Bombshell: The FBI’s Trump-Russia probe relied on a suspected Russian agent

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Left to right: Comey, Lynch, Clinton, McCabe
Left to right: Comey, Lynch, Clinton, McCabe

The source for today’s bombshell story is none other than the highly-respected, but left-leaning, Wall Street Journal. According to a story that was published last Friday evening, the main source for the Steele dossier – which was obtained by a Democrat PR firm, and paid for by a Democrat law firm – was a Russian agent. The FBI said that this man was “a threat to national security”.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday released newly declassified FBI documents that contain this stunner: The bureau relied on a suspected Russian agent for the information it used to obtain a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump adviser Carter Page.

[…]Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz last year revealed that former spook Christopher Steele relied on one primary “subsource” for most of his accusations against the Trump campaign. This subsource was later identified as Ukrainian-born Igor Danchenko, who worked as a research analyst from 2005 to 2010 at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The latest disclosures show that Mr. Danchenko was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011, based on concerns he was a Russian agent and “a threat to national security.”

According to the documents, Mr. Danchenko attempted to recruit two individuals connected to “an influential foreign policy advisor in the Obama administration.” He said that if they “did get a job in the government and had access to classified information,” he had a way for them “to make a little extra money.”

Further FBI investigation found Mr. Danchenko was an associate of two other “FBI counterintelligence subjects.” He also had contact with “the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers,” and the FBI went so far as to apply for a warrant to surveil Mr. Danchenko. The investigation ended because he left the country in September 2010, though the FBI said “consideration would be given to re-opening the investigation” if he returned.

This is the important part:

The FBI identified Mr. Danchenko as Mr. Steele’s source in December 2016, when senior bureau officials also became aware of the prior FBI investigation. The FBI’s realization that it was being fed potential Russian disinformation should have put an immediate halt to the Page probe, if not the entire collusion investigation.

Instead and incredibly, the FBI failed to disclose this information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in all three of its subsequent renewal applications against Mr. Page. U.S. Attorney John Durham first brought the Danchenko information to Attorney General Bill Barr’s attention and said its public release would not interfere with his investigation.

There was also a related story about how the FBI agents on the case were so concerned about being sued, that they actually got insurance policies.

The same WSJ article explains:

In related news Thursday, the Justice Department disclosed more FBI text messages and notes in the tainted Michael Flynn case. These also reflect horribly on the James Comey-era FBI. Agents (names redacted) express dismay and disdain in the messages for the broader collusion investigation (code-named Crossfire Hurricane) and for the probe of Mr. Flynn.

In October 2016 internal messages, agents refer to the “Crossfire Road Show” and one says: “I’m tell [sic] man, if this thing ever gets FOIA’d, there are going to be some tough questions asked.” Another responds that the problem is “a scope way outside the boundaries of logic,” to which an agent says one team member is engaged in “rabbit holes and conspiracy theories.”

Agents questioned the use of national security letters (subpoenas that don’t require judicial permission) to get Mr. Flynn’s financial records. One series of messages is from Jan. 5, 2017, the same day Mr. Comey briefed Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Susan Rice on the Flynn/Trump investigations.

“[W]hat’s the word on how [Obama’s] briefing went?” asks one agent. “Don’t know, but people here are scrambling for info to support certain things and it’s a mad house.” A few days later, an FBI employee reports that they “all went and purchased professional liability insurance” over concerns about DOJ/FBI leaks and that “the new AG might have some questions.”

Do you remember the details of the FBI-media collaboration on the Trump-Russia collusion story? I have a summary of it for you, below.

The Trump-Russia collusion story that was trumpeted by the progressive media was a joint effort between the Hillary Clinton campaign and high-ranking members of the FBI during the Obama administration.

The goal was to get the government to spy on the Trump campaign, in order neutralize his administration, if he won the 2016 election.

Here’s the left-leaning The Hill, reporting on an important finding from October 2018:

Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search warrant targeting Trump’s campaign.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm.

That’s the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to secretly pay research firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.

The article notes that Perkins Coie is the “Democratic National Committee’s private law firm”.

The Washington Post reported last week that Perkins Coie, an international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Though many of the claims in the dossier have been directly refuted, none of the dossier’s allegations of collusion have been independently verified. Lawyers for Steele admitted in court filings last April that his work was not verified and was never meant to be made public.

In addition, Fox News reports that the FBI paid Christopher Steele ELEVEN TIMES in 2016.

But why would the FBI and the FISA court accept the Democrat-funded dossier as a basis to spy on the Democrat’s main political rival? Answer: there were Democrats in the FBI who covered up the source of funding for the Steele dossier, as well as the anti-Trump bias of the dossier’s author.

The Washington Examiner reported on the released text messages from highly-placed anti-Trump Democrat Lisa Page within the FBI in March 2019:

The text messages, between then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, who was later fired, and former FBI attorney Lisa Page — who was having an affair with FBI agent Peter Strzok — were obtained by Fox News.

[…]Then-Director of the FBI James Comey ultimately signed off on the application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to surveil Carter Page. It was dated nine days after the Page-McCabe texts: Oct. 21 2016.

The specific funding of Steele’s dossier was never mentioned to the FISA court, either during that first application or during three subsequent FISA renewals. Steele’s anti-Trump fervor and determination to provide his dossier to the media and members of the U.S. government later became well known.

Do you remember any of the news media shows telling us any of this during their trumpeting of Trump-Russia conspiracies? I don’t.

Mentoring

A new series of posts about the adventures of an effective Christian woman

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If you want to have conversations with people, prepare
If you want to have conversations about Christianity, then prepare

I try to encourage my Christian friends to study topics related to the Christian worldview, and to make connections between the Christian worldview and topics like economics, science, politics, etc. I want them to have deep conversations with non-Christians. Well, I just noticed that Laura, who writes at An Affair With Reason, started a series of posts about her experiences having these conversations.

She has two posts so far. In the first, she provides an introduction to the series:

By the grace of God, an ordinary day for me includes at least one significant spiritual conversation. The conversations are spontaneous, and the people I talk to are those I come across in the mundane activities of life: construction workers I see while walking my dog, neighbors out mowing their lawn, CrossFit coaches and athletes, my husband’s coworkers, the pest control man, the UPS man, the woman at the grocery store, and the customer service representative who took my call.

[…]Because spiritual conversations are so fun for me, I enjoy sharing them with others. People ask me often, “How did you get into that conversation?” and “How does this happen to you nearly every single day?”

In one sense these conversations do “happen to me” in that I don’t plan them, but it would be far more accurate to say that I create these conversations by living my life in a way that causes me to always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks me for a reason for the hope that is in me, and then paying attention for opportunities to get a foot in the door. Hence, many people have suggested that I publicly share what I’m doing with others so that they may benefit from practical, real life examples of conversations that they may seek to emulate in their own lives.

I’m so delighted with this, because I am always urging my Christian friends to read more, listen to more podcasts, and watch more debates, so that they are equipped to have these sorts of adventures.

Laura posted the first conversation in the series, with her previous pastor:

For two years I had tried to persuade my pastor to allow me to teach a small group or conference on apologetics. I set up appointments so he and his staff could get to know me. I shared my background and experiences, gave them opportunities to ask me questions, and even offered references from other churches where I had taught. I offered to show videos and facilitate discussions on the teachings of well-known apologists like Greg Koukl, Frank Turek, and J. Warner Wallace so the church leadership wouldn’t need to worry about platforming a heretic, and I shared my blog so they could see my work for themselves. Several months later, the entire church leadership admitted they had not read my blog and probably never would.

Over the next couple of years I continued to offer to introduce apologetics to our congregation through any format deemed appropriate, but nothing came of it. Eventually, my husband was relocated and our pastor, along with a dozen others, helped us load our moving truck in exchange for pizza, soda, and one last evening of fellowship.

During our conversation, as we were sitting on the empty floor, eating pizza on paper plates and drinking soda from plastic cups, my pastor mentioned that he frequently visited a certain coffee shop in the area that was very unfriendly to Christianity. The owners even had a sign on the wall that said, “No crazy talk”, which they had made clear included talk of Jesus, miracles, and the gospel. I commented that it seemed like the ideal place to share truth with people who needed to hear it, and I asked if that had been his experience.

“How do you even begin to discuss those things in an environment where the gospel isn’t welcome,” he replied.

“Personally, I would go with the Cosmological Argument, but you could always share the Teleological Argument. If you’re talking to college students, though, I’d definitely look for opportunities to share the Moral Argument. Young people seem to relate most to that line of reasoning,” I said.

“Sorry, what did you say,” he asked, as if I had just begun speaking in tongues in front of his Presbyterian congregation.

“The Cosmological Argument,” I repeated.

Blank stare.

“And the Teleological Argument”

“Teleo-what,” he asked quizzically.

“It means having a purpose or a design,” I explained.

“So how would you go about sharing these arguments with non-Christians,” he asked.

It was getting late and we were all exhausted, but this was important. This is what I had wanted to share for two straight years. I looked at my watch and told them I needed four minutes per argument in order to explain adequately. I was given the green light, and for the next twelve minutes I summarized for my pastor and about ten others what I had not been able to share with the congregation.

So she doesn’t really spend much time describing the conversation, because that’s not what this series is about. You can ask her for book recommendations if you want to handle it like she did. But the rest of the post explains why she prepared to have this conversation, and what pastors can do to equip people in the church to have these conversations.

This is not the first time I’ve linked to her, I also did here for her post about apologetics and here for her post about talking to Muslims. What I like about her is that she has a mature view of the Christian life that I really respect. When I read her writing, I can tell that she is not involved in Christianity to feel good or to be liked. She has a goal in mind, and she has done hard things to be prepared to reach it.

I have also tried to get apologetics into the church. I normally try to bring in the Focus on the Family True U DVDs, which feature Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. Without success. In my experience, pastors tend to not really understand challenges to Christianity, or they don’t know how to respond to them, or they just don’t want people in the church to get upset by having to do work. Read the rest of Laura’s post to get her solution to the problem.

Polemics

Dr. Walter Bradley lectures on scientific evidence for the creation and design of the universe

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Dr. Walter L. Bradley
Dr. Walter L. Bradley

This lecture is special to me, because I bought a VHS tape of it from Access Research Network just after I started working full-time, and watched it a million times. A lot of people come to their convictions about God’s existence because of parents or church or intuitions, but for me it’s all about the scientific evidence. This lecture changed my life. I wish more people taught their children about this evidence! This lecture was delivered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

About the speaker:

Dr. Bradley received his B.S. in Engineering Science and his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Texas in Austin.

Dr. Bradley taught for eight years at the Colorado School of Mines before assuming a position as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in 1976.

During his 24 years at Texas A&M, Dr. Bradley served as Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University and as Director of the Polymer Technology Center, and received five College of Engineering Research Awards. He has received over $4,500,000 in research grants and has published over 140 technical articles and book chapters. He has also co-authored “The Mystery Of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Materials and of the American Scientific Affiliation and serves as a consultant for many Fortune 500 companies.

He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University.

The lecture: (63 minutes lecture, 25 minutes audience Q&A)

Summary slide:

This slide summarizes the content of the lecture
This slide summarizes the content of the lecture

Introduction:

  • At the beginning of the 20th century, people believed that the progress of science was pointing away from an intelligent Creator and Designer, and towards naturalism
  • A stream of new discoveries has shifted the support of science towards theism, and away from naturalism
  • Richard Dawkins, an atheist, says that nature only has the appearance of design, but that if you look closer, naturalistic mechanisms can account for the appearance of design
  • When deciding between design and apparent design (“designoid”), it matters whether you think there is an intelligence there to do the designing

Evidence #1: The Big Bang:

  • an eternal “steady state” universe is more compatible with naturalism, but a created universe is more compatible with a Creator
  • In 1929, Hubble used telescopes to observe that the light from distant galaxies was redshifted. The further away galaxies were, the faster they were moving away. Therefore, space is expanding in all directions, suggesting an explosive origin of the universe
  • In 1965, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation matched a prediction of the Big Bang cosmology, and of the creation event
  • In 1992, the COBE space telescope allowed us to test four specific predictions of the Big Bang model, especially the predictions for light element abundances (hydrogen and helium), which matched the predictions of the creation model

Evidence #2: Simple mathematical structure of the physical laws

  • the simple mathematical structure of natural laws allows us to understand these laws, make discoveries, and engineer solutions to problems
  • early scientists saw the mathematical structure of the universe to mean that nature was designed by an intelligent to be understood
  • the fundamental equations of the laws of the universe can be easily written on one side of one sheet of paper
  • Eugene Wigner’s famous paper, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences” makes the point that this simple structure is an unexpected gift that allows is to do science

Evidence #3: fine-tuning of the physical constants and quantities

  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stars that provide energy within specific ranges for long periods of time
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need planets with stable orbits that will not suffer from extreme temperature swings as it varies in distance from its star
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stable atomic structure
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need to have chemical diversity and correct relative abundances of each element
  • organic life has minimum requirements: process energy, store information, replicate, and you can’t fulfill those functions if there is only one element, e.g. – hydrogen
  • the energy level from the photons from the sun have to match the energy levels of the different elements in order to drive the chemical bonding needed for life
  • These requirements for life of any imaginable type depend on the values of the constants and quantities. The constants and quantities cannot vary much from what they are, or the universe will lose the characteristics (above) that allow it to support complex life of any imaginable time
  • For example, ratio of strong force to electromagnetic force:
    – if 2% larger, then no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no compounds containing hydrogen, e.g. – water
    – if 5% smaller, no stable stars, heavy hydrogen would be unstable, few elements other than hydrogen

Evidence #4: initial conditions for habitability

  • Universe: expansion rate of the universe must be fast enough to avoid a re-collapse, but slow enough to allow matter to clump together and form stars and planets for complex life to live on
  • Planet: right distance from the star to get the right climate
  • Planet: right mass to retain the right atmosphere

Evidence #5: origin of life and information theory

  • It’s possible to explain every process in an automobile engine using plain old naturalistic mechanisms – no supernatural explanation is necessary to understand the processes
  • But the existence of engine itself: engineering all the parts has to be explained by the work of an intelligence
  • Similarly, we can understand how living systems work, but the existence of the living systems requires an intelligence
  • Even the simplest living system has to perform minimal function: capture energy, store information and replicate
  • Living systems are composed of objects like proteins that are composed of sequences of components complex such that the order of the components gives the overall structure function
  • Developing the components for a simple living cell is very improbable – even given the large number of galaxies, stars and planets in the universe, it is unlikely that complex, embodied life would exist anywhere in the universe

Evidence #6: more initial conditions for habitability

  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be away from the center of the galaxy, because the explosions from dying stars, and excessive radiation will kill life
  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be close enough to the center in order catch the heavy elements you need for life from the explosions of other stars
  • Location within the galaxy: the best location is between two arms of  a spiral galaxy, where you can get the heavy elements you need from dying stars, but without being hit with explosions and harmful radiation
  • Star mass: determines rate at which the sun burns, determines the energy level of photons that are used to drive chemical bonding reactions, determines the length of time the star will be stable
  • Star mass: star mass must be the correct value in order to allow liquid water on the planet’s surface, while still preserving stable orbit

I wish there was more curiosity about science in churches, and young Christians understood how critical science is for grounding the rationality of the Christian worldview. We need to be training up more scientists who think about the big questions, like Dr. Walter Bradley.