On day 149 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military is still looking for a breakthrough in eastern Ukraine. As the days pass without achieving significant advances, the Russian military’s combat capabilities are degrading.

Fighting in the Donbas 

In its daily estimate of the war, the British Ministry of Defense touched on the situation in the Donbas and the Russian attempts to capture Ukrainian critical infrastructure.

“In the Donbas, Ukrainian forces continue to repel Russian attempts to assault the Vuhlehirsk power plant. Russian artillery remains focused on areas around the cities of Kramatorsk and Siversk,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

Despite restarting its offensive in eastern Ukraine, the Russian military has failed to achieve anything significant over the past few days. Indeed, there is a theme here. Since the start of the renewed offensive in the Donbas in May, the Russian forces have advanced only between six and ten miles, according to the Pentagon.

What You’re Not Supposed to do with an S-400 Anti-Aircraft Missile 

But lack of advance on the ground isn’t the only problem for the Russian military. In its daily estimate of the conflict, the British Ministry of Defense also focused on the Russian military’s misuse of advanced, strategic anti-aircraft missiles against ground targets.

After nearly five months of conflict, the Russian high-precision arsenal is depleting. The Russian forces have launched more than 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles against Ukraine, and now they are being forced to use weapons that were made for different purposes.

“On 21 July 2022, Vitaly Kim, governor of Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, said that Russian forces had used seven air defence missiles to strike infrastructure, energy facilities and storage areas,” the British Ministry of Defense stated.

“Russia has increased its use of air defence missiles in a secondary ground attack mode because of critical shortages of dedicated ground-attack missiles. Russian [sic] has almost certainly deployed S-300 and S-400 strategic air defence systems, designed to shoot down aircraft and missiles at long ranges, near Ukraine from the start of invasion,” the British Ministry of Defense added.

But an S-300 or S-400 weapon systems are designed to take out F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-15 Strike Eagle, and other Western fighter jets and aircraft. They are not designed to strike command and control or ammunition depots with precision. And as a result, Russian strikes with these weapons can be way off—to be sure, Russian strikes with even the appropriate weapon systems have been way off, killing civilians).

“These weapons have relatively small warheads, designed to destroy aircraft. They could pose a significant threat against troops in the open and light buildings but are unlikely to penetrate hardened structures,” the British Ministry of Defense stated.

“There is a high chance of these weapons missing their intended targets and causing civilian casualties because the missiles they are not optimised for this role, and their crews will have little training for such missions,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

Russian Casualties 

The daily rate of Russian casualties remains relatively slow but the overall numbers are dizzying.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed that as of Friday, Ukrainian forces have killed approximately 39,000 Russian troops (and wounded approximately thrice that number), destroyed 221 fighter, attack, and transport jets, 188 attack and transport helicopters, 1,704 tanks, 863 artillery pieces, 3,920 armored personnel carriers, 251 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 15 boats and cutters, 2,803 vehicles and fuel tanks, 113 anti-aircraft batteries, 713 tactical unmanned aerial systems, 72 special equipment platforms, such as bridging vehicles, and four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems, and 167 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.

More Weapons For Ukraine 

The U.S. military is expected to announce another package of military aid to Ukraine, with four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). This security package will bring the number of Ukrainian HIMARS to 16.

“But Russia is keeping up its relentless shelling and that’s a cruel tactic that harkens back to the horrors of World War I. So Ukraine needs the firepower and the ammunition to withstand its barrage and to strike back at the Russian weapons launching these attacks from inside Ukraine’s own territory,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a press briefing.

“And so we understand the urgency and we’re pushing hard to maintain and intensify the momentum of donations. That includes many new announcements made this morning. We’re seeing countries from all around the world continue to step up with critically needed systems and ammunition. It has been truly an inspiring effort,” Lloyd added.

1945’s New Defense and National Security Columnist, Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

A series of recent attacks on Russian forces in southern Ukraine and its forcibly-annexed Crimean Peninsula reveal what Ukrainian officials say is a new strategy designed to take out supply lines in its occupied territories.

Mykhaylo Podolyak, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, recently described it as designed to create “chaos within Russian forces” and that such strikes could accelerate over the next two to three months.

Insurgent activity in occupied territories and stealthy strikes possibly carried out by partisans trained by the Ukrainian military have also intensified, with the use of car bombs, targeted shootings, and booby traps on the rise.

Ukraine’s summer campaign has thus far taken out Russian command centers, decimated ammunition depots, and crippled supply lines with strikes on key pieces of infrastructure across the southern Kherson region. A large-scale push to retake territory, however, has so far failed to materialize, with Ukrainian frontline forces in the south largely pinned down in trenches and facing Russian artillery barrages.

To find out more about what this shift in strategy could mean, RFE/RL spoke with George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.

RFE/RL: Ukrainian officials have claimed they are engaged in a strategy of creating “chaos within Russian forces” by launching a counteroffensive targeting Russian supply lines deep into occupied territory, including a spate of recent attacks in Crimea. Is this the southern counteroffensive that many observers of the war have been waiting for and how is this strategy likely to change the battle lines across Ukraine?

George Barros: This is part of the counteroffensive. These targeted precision strikes that the Ukrainians have been conducting against logistical targets throughout southern Ukraine, as well as in occupied Crimea, are part of a coherent Ukrainian counteroffensive in order to regain control of the west bank of the Dnieper River and the upper part of Kherson Oblast.

Also, it’s important to remember that strikes against Crimea do not violate Ukrainian commitments to Western partners about Ukraine’s nonuse of Western weaponry against Russian territory because this is territory that Russia illegally took, back in 2014. Since then, Crimea has become a massive Russian military stronghold, from the Black Sea Fleet to airborne forces. It is also where Russian supply lines run directly between Russia itself via the Kerch Strait bridge into southern Kherson, which directly supports Russian frontline troops.

Therefore, if [Kyiv] is seeking to hollow out Russian forces [in that area], the Ukrainians are doing a smart job by targeting [various strategic infrastructure] that can degrade Russia’s ability to be able to move heavy military equipment.

A lot of the Western observers have been expecting to see a grandiose, large-scale Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson, but the Russians have reinforced this territory now and brought in lots of equipment and more units [and] they’ve created multiple prepared defensive lines.

The Ukrainian response has since been to degrade the supply lines required to sustain those frontline positions so that over time they might be able to actually break through.

RFE/RL: I’ve seen some observers of the war say that Ukraine is doing these attacks because they can’t muster the manpower and material needed for this big counteroffensive. But it seems you’re saying that this is a deliberate Ukrainian strategy to first weaken and degrade Russian forces and then make a push for territory?

Barros: The Ukrainians don’t want to engage the Russian defenses head on. What they want to do is to degrade it to the point where it actually becomes manageable.

George Barros

The example of how the Ukrainians retook Snake Island is useful here.

The Ukrainians did not retake Snake Island by sending airborne forces or launching an amphibious force to physically go clear the island.

Instead, they did consistent strikes on Russian assets that were on the island to make it so that holding the island was extremely costly for the Russians until Russian commanders decided that the costs were greater than the utility of holding it.

We’re seeing a similar approach now in the south around Kherson and to a degree in Crimea as well.

RFE/RL: We’ve seen some Russian attacks on Ukrainian forces in the south and in the north, but one of the big questions for a long time has been what is Moscow’s ability to muster enough manpower to sustain itself over time and meet the objectives that it has set for itself. How is Russia dealing with those issues?

Barros: The Russians are trying to continue to gather what forces they can through these different force-generation efforts.

[At ISW] we’ve identified a couple of different distinct lines of effort. For example, Russia has a concept of what they call national battalions, which are essentially an effort for various oblasts and regions to generate volunteer units. They usually call them battalions, but they’re putting together groups of between 300 to 400 troops per unit. They’re often recruiting people with no prior military experience and in some cases are sending them to the front line with just 30 days of training. In some cases they’re also not even able to muster a full 400-man unit and are instead just sending them in piecemeal.

That’s not going to generate enough effective combat power and it certainly takes far more than 30 days [of training] to create a good soldier that is capable of operating in a combined arms mechanized war, which is what the Russians are conducting. There are also other parallel [recruiting] efforts under way, from granting clemency to convicted prisoners if they’re willing to deploy to Ukraine to using dirty tactics to effectively [trick] young recruits into signing a contract to go to the front line.

That’s all to say that Russia will have difficulties mustering enough forces for effective combat power but will continue to try all it can to get soldiers without actually calling for a mass mobilization.

RFE/RL: So where does that leave us in the weeks and months ahead? We are seeing reports of Ukraine training partisans and using special forces selectively behind Russian lines and the Kremlin appears to be moving forward with its referendum plans for parts of Ukraine. What else is likely to shape the situation on the ground and elsewhere?

Barros: One question is if Ukraine can successfully get this counteroffensive going in the next six to eight weeks and get to the point where they can sufficiently degrade Russian forces and hollow them out. I’d also expect an uptick in more coordinated partisan efforts from Ukraine and we’ve already seen Ukrainian officials set the conditions for them to potentially be part of the counteroffensive.

With regards to Russian efforts to take different areas, the Russians are somewhat frantically trying to annex these territories with sham referendums. People should remember that the Kremlin’s stated objective has been consistent: to gain full political and territorial control over Ukraine. While we might hear statements from officials that they are only really focused on the Donbas or the south, it’s about all of Ukraine.

Even if Moscow doesn’t succeed in doing this all at once, any foothold they can maintain in Ukraine will be used in the future to continue what was already started.

Amid escalating demands by Republican lawmakers for the release of all documents relating to the August 8 FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida compound, the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday opposed the unsealing of the affidavit that was used to obtain the warrant sanctioning the seizure of classified documents held illegally by the ex-president.

The thirteen-page brief was filed in US District Court by US Attorney Juan Gonzalez and Jay Bratt, chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the National Security Division of the Justice Department. It made clear that Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department are proceeding aggressively in their criminal investigation of Trump’s violations of long-standing and rigorously-enforced rules and procedures safeguarding state secrets.

The government’s filing underscored the unprecedented character of the crisis of the American political system, which shows no signs of abating.

The government’s brief was filed in response to requests from newspapers and media outlets that District Judge Bruce Reinhart unseal the affidavit, the detailed presentation of evidence submitted by the FBI to substantiate the assertion of probable cause to prosecute Trump for violating federal statutes, including the Espionage Act.

It is highly unusual for an affidavit to be unsealed before an indictment laying out criminal charges has been issued, as in the current investigation of Trump.

The DoJ argued that unsealing the affidavit at this stage would jeopardize its investigation. It wrote: “There remain compelling reasons, including to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security, that support keeping the affidavit sealed.”

The brief listed aspects of the investigation detailed in the affidavit that would be compromised, including “highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government; specific investigative techniques; and information required by law to be kept under seal pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure.”

It continued: “If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise further investigative steps. In addition, information about witnesses is particularly sensitive given the high-profile nature of this matter and the risk that the revelation of witness identities would impact their willingness to cooperate with the investigation.”

It attached a footnote, stating: “This is not merely a hypothetical concern, given the widely reported threats made against law enforcement personnel in the wake of the August 8 search.” The footnote cited last Thursday’s attack on an FBI field office in Cincinnati by an armed pro-Trump gunman and various press reports of threats from Trump supporters.

It argued further that disclosure of the affidavit would “chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations.” The phrase about “other investigations” was an oblique but pointed reference to the ongoing DoJ investigation of Trump’s January 6 coup conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 elections and seize dictatorial power.

Late Monday, Trump posted a demand on his social media platform for the release of the affidavit “in the interest of TRANSPARENCY.” He wrote: “I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN.”

As the World Socialist Web Site explained in “Trump, state secrets and the crisis of the American state,” there is a stark contrast between the aggressiveness with which the Justice Department and the Biden administration have moved on the question of state secrets and national security, which raises no issues of basic democratic rights, and their timid and ambivalent approach to investigating the first attempt in US history to overthrow the government and establish a dictatorship. The decision to pursue Trump on the issue of state secrets reflects the basic orientation of Biden and the Democrats, centered on escalating the confrontation with Russia and China.

The WSWS wrote:

However, these events expose what the real priorities of the ruling class are. The state cannot tolerate Trump’s disruption of its war effort. The Democrats’ appeal is to the military and repressive state apparatus, as it has been since Trump’s election. Biden’s strategy has always been to appeal to military brass and to “save” his “colleagues” in the Republican Party through an alliance based on imperialist bellicosity and “bipartisanship…

Its primary aim is to forge ruling class unity to prosecute the war and crush opposition from below, with no surprises from the unpredictable Trump.

This analysis was rapidly confirmed by an editorial posted Monday by the New York Times, the most prominent media mouthpiece of the Democratic Party. Addressing Tuesday’s Republican primary elections in Wyoming and Alaska, where two of the few Republican critics of Trump and January 6, Liz Cheney and Lisa Murkowski, respectively, are facing challenges from Trump-endorsed election deniers, the newspaper lauded the two right-wing war hawks as models of “political bravery.”

The Times called Cheney, who voted with Trump nearly 93 percent of the time and whose father, Dick Cheney, is one of the main war criminals in the near-genocidal invasion and occupation of Iraq, a “consistent conservative.”

The editorial went on praise Mitt Romney for casting the sole Republican vote to convict Trump in the Senate trial following the Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump. That impeachment was over Trump’s temporary suspension of military aid to the right-wing puppet government in Ukraine, which interrupted preparations for the current US/NATO war against Russia.

The Times did not fail, moreover, to include the late war-mongering Senator John McCain in its honor roll of “profiles in courage.”

This is why, in the struggle against Trump and his fascist allies, the working class can give no support to Biden and the Democratic Party, and must instead expand its class struggle and consciously direct it against the source of war, social inequality, mass death from pandemics and the threat of dictatorship—the capitalist system.

Former President Donald J. Trump has embraced the verbal sparring of legal depositions in the past, but now faces significant risk.

Illustration: David Gothard

Alex Berenson is back on Twitter after being banned for nearly a year over Covid-19 “misinformation.” Last week the former New York Times reporter settled his lawsuit against the social-media company, which admitted error and restored his account. “The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter,” Mr. Berenson wrote last week on Substack. But because the Biden administration brought pressure to bear on Twitter, he believes he has a case that his constitutional rights were violated. He’s right.

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Can the FBI be trusted? A Federalist analysis of agency lies over the last decade is an unequivocal no.

FISA Warrants

In the summer of 2016, FBI bureaucrats launched a deep-state operation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, to thwart then-candidate Trump’s presidential ambitions. It began by targeting Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos and quickly branched out as bureaucrats expanded their surveillance. The spy agency used the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as a legal pretext to investigate and spy on Papadopoulos, in addition to former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former Trump adviser Carter Page. Several were interviewed by undercover FBI informant Stefan Halper, whose own investigation would prove a bust.

According to a declassified transcript between Papadopoulos and a Crossfire Hurricane confidential human source (CHS), Papadopoulos repeatedly denied the Trump campaign was working with Russian-backed entities to capture the 2016 election. The FBI, however, wrote off Papadopoulos’s recorded answers as rehearsed and omitted his denials of campaign collusion with overseas actors in FISA court warrant applications and renewals. These were two of the 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” identified in the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general’s blockbuster report on the investigation in December 2019.

Papadopoulos, who pled guilty to making a false statement to the FBI in a perjury trap, was far from the only individual to face political persecution from the federal government’s dystopian investigation.

Not one of the four FISA warrants obtained by the FBI was legally justified, according to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report. In fact, at least two of the warrant applications to spy on Page were declared illegal by a federal judge. Following Horowitz’s blistering report outlining FBI misconduct throughout the entire operation, another federal judge declared that agency malfeasance “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”

Subsequent reporting revealed gross abuses of power within the FBI to prosecute political opponents. According to Horowitz, the FBI’s FISA warrants “relied entirely” on DNC-funded opposition research compiled by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele known as the “Steele dossier.” The dossier, which outlined supposed Trump-Russia collusion and has since been thoroughly debunked, included salacious allegations such as supposed “pee tapes” featuring Trump engaging in golden showers with Russian prostitutes at a Moscow hotel.

The FBI knew the dossier lacked credibility as early as January 2017 and knew Steele’s material itself contained Russian disinformation. Desperate to continue their deep-state operation, however, officials lied to the FISA court about Steele’s credibility and hid incriminating info related to the former British intelligence official who was later fired over leaks to the press. An 18th omission, overlooked by the inspector general’s report but documented by Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland, was that Steele’s sources did not include the ones he developed as a British official.

Even after Steele’s termination as a reliable source, DOJ attorney Bruce Ohr continued to feed information from Steele to the FBI over the course of its investigation. Steele met with Ohr 12 times after the former’s tenure ended as a confidential human source for the bureau, according to the inspector general. Ohr also promoted his wife’s opposition research to FBI investigators and did not disclose she was paid by Fusion GPS, the DNC-contracted firm that commissioned the Steele dossier.

The FBI never told the FISA court that the Trump dossier written by a source who was fired for lying, did not undergo independent verification, and was funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

Despite the overt abuse of the nation’s surveillance apparatus to spy on political opponents, only one FBI official has faced criminal conviction for his role in the probe. In January last year, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to just 12 months probation after pleading guilty to fabricating evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. By December, Clinesmith was re-admitted to the D.C. Bar Association in good standing.

Steele’s primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, was indicted in November on five counts of making false statements to the FBI. In May, a D.C. jury acquitted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann on charges of lying to the FBI when submitting supposed evidence of Trump-Russian collusion to federal investigators.

Misleading Congress

Following the collapse of the grand Russia-collusion hoax, lawmakers on Capitol Hill began demanding answers about FBI misconduct. Former FBI Director James Comey lied to Congress, claiming the bureau was just investigating four individuals, not the Trump campaign, in a dubious spin.

“Late July of 2016, the FBI did, in fact, open a counterintelligence investigation into, is it fair to say the Trump campaign or Donald Trump himself?” asked then-Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a 2018 hearing.

“It’s not fair to say either of those things, in my recollection,” Comey said. “We opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference efforts. And those four Americans did not include the candidate.”

Horowitz also contradicted the FBI in a December 2019 hearing on the release of his report documenting FISA abuses. In September 2017, the FBI told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that the bureau gave the Trump campaign a defensive briefing about Russian interference in the 2016 race.

“In August of 2016 the FBI provided a counterintelligence defensive briefing to then candidate Donald Trump and other senior campaign officials,” wrote FBI Assistant Director of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower in response to a letter from Grassley. “This defensive briefing was conducted by an experienced FBI counterintelligence agent and focused on the broad range of threats posed by foreign intelligence entities.”

Horowitz testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no briefing given.

Misleading DOJ Leaders

Not only was Congress led astray as FBI officials conducted a rogue operation to defend the incumbent regime, but so was senior leadership in President Trump’s DOJ.

Handwritten notes revealed in the Sussmann trial exposed how FBI agents sought to cover up malicious misconduct, wherein DOJ leaders tasked with FBI oversight were misled about the investigation’s progress. The notes show FBI agent Peter Strzok wrongly told DOJ supervisors the surveillance warrant on Page had been “fruitful.” Strzok also concealed knowledge that Steele’s sources were not credible and claimed instead that the dossier was “CROWN reporting” from MI6, the FBI’s British counterpart. The FBI said the dossier was being used to examine the RNC and Trump campaign’s effort to soften the GOP platform on NATO and Crimea for Russian energy stocks, but the document made no mention of NATO or Crimea.

Strzok also said Trump’s 2016 joke about Russia uncovering Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails triggered Crossfire Hurricane, with an Australian diplomat tipping off the government about Papadopoulos at the American embassy in London. The tip that Papdopoulos was coordinating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, however, came before Trump made the joke.

Strzok is the same agent whose text messages show he conspired with his mistress and FBI colleague, attorney Lisa Page. Strzok, a lead investigator for Crossfire Hurricane, assured Page of a mysterious “insurance policy” in place if Trump were to be elected, likely in reference to the agency’s inside operations. Page, according to the DOJ inspector general’s 2019 report, told colleagues to go easy on investigating Clinton because “she might be our next president.”

When Page fretted that Trump might actually win the 2016 contest, Strzok assured his romantic partner, “we’ll stop it.”

Misleading Trump

Comey thought the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was important enough to brief outgoing President Barack Obama on the probe but kept Trump in the dark. In fact, Comey later confirmed that he told Trump three times the president was not being investigated and refused to tell him Clinton funded the dossier.

Michael Flynn

In June 2020, a federal judge ordered that all charges be dropped against Flynn, whom Trump subsequently pardoned in the waning days of his administration. Prior to his exoneration, Flynn was facing heavy fines and prison time for making false statements to federal officials in another perjury trap orchestrated by Comey, who bragged about the setup in the first week of the Trump White House.

According to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Flynn lied to a pair of FBI agents about conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak as the incoming national security adviser. Flynn, prosecutors claimed, spoke with Kislyak about financial sanctions against Russian individuals after the 2016 election and then lied about it during an interview with Comey’s agents. Sending a pair of agents to question a senior White House official in the Situation Room, Comey said at a 2018 conference, was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or even gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration.”

“We placed a call to Flynn and said, ‘Hey, we’re sending a couple guys over, hope you’ll talk to them.’ He said ‘sure,’” Comey explained at the 92nd Street Y conference. “Nobody else was there, they interviewed him in a conference room at the White House situation room, and he lied to them.”

Flynn initially pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI before firing his attorneys and hiring new representation to withdraw his guilty plea. His reversal followed the release of declassified transcripts, which revealed Flynn never spoke with Kislyak about sanctions. The two only discussed expulsions of Russian individuals under a different process. Handwritten notes from the FBI agents also revealed the sole purpose of their questioning was “to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired.” A bizarre 2017 inauguration day email by Susan Rice to herself also revealed Comey knew there was no legitimate reason to question Flynn.

Andrew McCabe

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired from his top role at the bureau for lying to the agency inspector general four times over multiple abuses during his tenure in senior leadership. Those abuses included efforts to set up former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for obstruction charges, the sabotage of an investigation into Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop before the 2016 election, and failure to report conflicts of interest. While running for a Virginia state Senate seat in 2015, McCabe’s wife accepted a political donation from a close Clinton ally as her husband was tasked with investigating the former secretary of state.

A 2018 DOJ inspector general report blasted McCabe as a serial leaker who lied about it. That same year, a letter from Grassley shined a spotlight on McCabe’s purchase of a $70,000 table on taxpayers’ dime that the agency sought to cover up.

Clinton Emails

The FBI repeatedly told journalists there was no evidence that a foreign power had reviewed Clinton’s emails that she improperly handled on a private server. According to an inspector general report in 2018, however, texts show they almost certainly did, “at least one of them classified,” as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi wrote.

“It is more accurate to say,” read a text from Strzok, “that we know foreign actors obtained access to some of her emails (including at least one Secret one) via compromises of the private email accounts of some of her staffers.”

Weiner Laptop

In 2018, Comey told lawmakers over the course of the investigation into Clinton’s emails that agency officials thoroughly reviewed the laptop belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her now-ex husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI was able to accomplish such a feat within a short timeframe “thanks to the wizardry of our technology” enabling agents who worked “night after night after night” to comb through the remaining material before the 2016 election.

“But virtually none of his account was true,” explained RealClearInvestigations’ Paul Sperry.

In fact, a technical glitch prevented FBI technicians from accurately comparing the new emails with the old emails. Only 3,077 of the 694,000 emails were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information. Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges.

Roger Stone

In 2019, former Trump associate Roger Stone was raided by the FBI after being indicted by Mueller. A CNN camera crew happened to be the only network present at Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home before the sunrise raid, suggesting the friendly press had been tipped off in advance. The FBI, however, refused to comply with a Federalist open records request for any and all emails to or from CNN on the day of the raid.

Jan. 6 Capitol Riot

The Jan. 6 saga has become the sequel in Democrats’ efforts to indict Trump, before FBI agents hatched a plot to go after the former president over supposed espionage.

In October, the bureau refused to offer House Republicans conducting their own independent investigation of the Capitol riot the same material given to congressional Democrats. The FBI’s refusal, the agency claimed, was because officials were already working with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6. Pelosi’s committee, however, was established in violation of House rules. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the minority appointment as ranking member, is entitled to the documents presented to Democrats.

Senior FBI officials have also refused lawmakers’ questions about how many informants were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and stonewalled inquiries surrounding Ray Epps, the mysterious figure who disappeared from the most-wanted list after he encouraged rioters to swarm the Capitol.

At an Aug. 4 Senate hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray sought to downplay agency negligence, claiming “we did not have any credible intelligence that pointed to thousands of people breaching the Capitol.” But according to Newsweek, the agency deployed commandos with “shoot to kill authority,” and even Capitol Hill parking attendants knew there were going to be mass protests. The FBI has also been less than forthcoming about a pair of pipe bombs planted at the RNC and DNC headquarters.

At the same time, the FBI has embarked on a nationwide manhunt, to incarcerating demonstrators who have been declared such a threat to the republic over trespassing that they’ve been denied a fair and speedy trial and held in detention for more than 18 months.

Julian Khater, one of two accused of assaulting a Capitol Police officer with pepper spray and whose case has been documented by Julie Kelly at American Greatness, appears to have been outright coerced into making an unconstitutional confession. Khater was detained in March 2021 and has remained in federal custody ever since after intense interrogation without an attorney present.

Kamala Harris on Jan. 6

The presence of Vice President Mike Pence and then-Sen. Kamala Harris at the U.S. Capitol has been the basis for nearly 800 people being charged with at least one count of violating 18 U.S. Code, section 1752, according to Kelly, which indicates that any building or complex hosting the vice president is a restricted area and therefore closed to the public.

“But the Justice Department recently was forced to admit that Harris was not in the building for most of the day on January 6,” Kelly reported, highlighting that Harris, at the time, remained a U.S. senator, not vice president. In the late morning, Harris was moved to the DNC headquarters where a pipe bomb had supposedly been planted.

“Prosecutors have begun amending language in court filings to reflect the fact Harris was not inside the Capitol despite making the assertion in thousands of charging documents,” Kelly wrote.

March 4, 2021

The FBI released a joint memo with the Department of Homeland Security warning that “domestic extremists” were preparing to launch an insurrection by overwhelming the Capitol and removing Democratic lawmakers “on or about the 4th of March.”

Nothing happened.

Hunter Biden Suppression

In July, Grassley’s office published a blockbuster whistleblower report wherein senior agency officials alleged that the bureau is actively trying to sabotage Trump and provide cover for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

“Multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions,” Grassley’s office wrote in a press release, “are raising the alarm about tampering by senior FBI and Justice Department officials in politically sensitive investigations ranging from election and campaign finance probes across multiple election cycles.”

Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and Director of Election Crimes Branch Richard Pilger, the whistleblowers alleged, coordinated to amplify defamatory information against Trump while giving cover to Hunter Biden, dismissing Biden intelligence as disinformation.

The agency reportedly knew of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop full of incriminating information on the first family as early as 2019, and Grassley’s whistleblower report highlights how officials may have undermined DOJ investigations into Hunter Biden’s finances in Delaware and Pittsburgh. In March, FBI Assistant Director of the Cyber Division Bryan Vorndran told lawmakers he did not know the whereabouts of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Gretchen Whitmer Plot

In October 2020, the FBI revealed that a plot to kidnap Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had been heroically foiled by federal law enforcement. A group of far-right militiamen, the story goes, conspired to kidnap the governor and try her as a “tyrant” in Wisconsin. In July last year, however, BuzzFeed revealed that at least 12 people involved were FBI informants orchestrating another entrapment.

“The problem with the case is that it appears the FBI, through informants and undercover agents, hatched the kidnapping plot, served in the key leadership positions of the militia group, trained the militia members in military tactics, actively recruited participants, and funded much of the militia’s activities,” reported former CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer Max Morton. “Then, when various members of the Watchman militia became uncomfortable with the kidnapping plot, with several quitting, the FBI’s primary informant pushed the plot along, eventually becoming the militia group’s leader.”

In April, a jury refused to convict four of the 14 defendants charged. Two were found not guilty, another two concluded the trial with no verdict, and another two took plea deals.

Ralph Northam Plot

Dan Chappel, the primary informant in the Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy, targeted a senior disabled veteran named Frank Butler using the same formula to go after then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, another Democrat.

“Just as in the Whitmer plot, Chappel lured Frank Butler into attempting to build an explosive device,” Kelly explained in American Greatness. “Chappel also invited Butler to a field training exercise in Wisconsin during the last weekend in October, an excursion attended by some defendants in the Whitmer caper.”

Unlike the FBI’s victims in the Whitmer plot, however, Butler did not participate and has not been charged with any crime.

Sen. Ted Stevens’ Conviction

Former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, became the victim of FBI corruption in 2008 when forced to defend himself on charges of false statements to federal officials. Stevens lost his seat as the scandal played out, only to be later exonerated when a judge conducting an independent investigation concluded that prosecutors inappropriately hid evidence.

Prosecutors indicted Stevens on charges that he had concealed that he did not pay full value for renovations on an Alaskan cabin less than 100 days out from the 2008 election.

“In fact, Ted Stevens and his wife had paid more than $160,000 for renovations that independent appraisers valued at less than $125,000 at the time,” Roll Call reported.

Prosecutors, however, secured a conviction by hiding evidence that incriminated their own witnesses, one of whom came up with testimony right before trial, with inconsistent statements concealed from the defense, according to the D.C. paper.

Likewise, the government concealed evidence that its star witness had suborned perjury from an underage prostitute with whom the star witness had an illegal sexual relationship. And the government concealed evidence that another witness — whom the government flew back to Alaska away from the Washington, D.C., trial after their mock cross-examination of him went poorly — had told the senator that the bills he received and promptly paid included all of the work that was done. Government prosecutors mocked Stevens when he explained that on the stand — all the while knowing that they had a witness who would have supported him, but whom they had removed from the trial.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s Conviction

Former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., was sentenced to two years of probation with a $25,000 fine and 320 hours of community service in March after a Los Angeles jury convicted him of lying to the federal government after he was entrapped by the FBI.

The saga began in 2019 when a pair of FBI agents showed up at Fortenberry’s Nebraska home ostensibly over a national security issue, not a criminal investigation. Prosecutors ultimately convicted Fortenberry for scheming to conceal material facts to federal officials and two false statements to the FBI.

One false statement was attributed to Forteberry not recognizing a person whose 10-year-old picture was presented to him by agents on their trip to his Nebraska residence. In July 2019, the FBI lied to Fortenberry and his attorney, Gowdy, claiming Fortenberry was not under federal investigation when he was. Fortenberry resigned from the House during his ninth term following conviction.

Pulse Nightclub Shooting

In June 2016, a 29-year-old gunman named Omar Mateen stormed the gay Orlando nightclub Pulse, killing 49 and injuring 53 more in the name of Islamic terrorists killed in Iraq and Syria. Mateen’s father, Seddique, was an FBI informant, whom documents published by The Intercept suggest convinced the bureau to stop investigating his son.

The bureau turned instead to charging Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman, with material support and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors sought to conceal the father’s status as an FBI informant, according to the Intercept, in pursuit of Salman’s conviction.

“Seddique Mateen has not faced criminal charges despite a tip to the FBI that he raised money for terrorism in Pakistan, and an ongoing investigation into money transfers he allegedly made to Turkey and Afghanistan,” the Intercept reported. “Omar Mateen was researching flights to Turkey at the same time that his father was sending payments there, according to defense lawyers’ summary of FBI evidence.” Salmon was apparently unaware of their possible plans to travel to either country.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Salmon’s 2018 trial:

Testimony from an F.B.I. agent revealed that prosecutors knew early on, but did not reveal, that one of their crucial initial pieces of evidence — that Ms. Salman had admitted driving by the nightclub with her husband in the days before the attack — most likely did not happen.

Salmon was ultimately acquitted after a 12-hour jury deliberation.

Texas Synagogue Attack

On Jan. 15, 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram took hostages in a Texas synagogue near Dallas and demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national also known as “Lady Al Qaeda” serving an 86-year sentence for assault and attempted murder of federal agents and military personnel.

Matthew J. DeSarno, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Dallas field office, said the attack on a synagogue had nothing to do with targeting Jews.

“We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community,” DeSarno said at a press conference.

But as Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation reported, Akram “was heard to say via the live stream that operated from the synagogue for much of the incident that he chose it because he thought it was the closest assemblage of Jews to the federal facility holding Siddiqui.”

“There are about 1,000 churches in the Fort Worth area within a half-hour drive of Siddiqui’s place of incarceration, compared to seven Jewish centers of worship,” DeVore wrote. “But sure, Special Agent DeSarno, the terrorism was ‘not specifically threatening to the Jewish community.’”

Congressional Baseball Shooter

The FBI designated the death of a shooter who attempted to gun down Republican lawmakers at a 2017 congressional baseball practice as motivated by a desire to commit “suicide by cop.” Last year, the bureau doubled down on the designation.

“It’s fair to say the shooter was motivated by a desire to commit an attack on members of Congress and then knowing by doing so he would likely be killed in the process,” Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director of the FBI, told the House Appropriations subcommittee.

“The FBI still doesn’t know exactly what the shooter was up to,” McCabe, now a CNN contributor, said last summer. “They never really uncovered the sort of detailed evidence that laid out a specific plot or an objective.”

On the contrary, the 66-year-old shooter who almost killed House GOP Whip Steve Scalise left behind a long record of extremist social media posts dripping with contempt for Republicans, even branding them as the “Taliban of the USA” on Facebook. The FBI also found a list of six congressmen in a rented Virginia storage locker but refused to call it a “hit list.”

Inflating Extremism Cases

Whistleblowers claim the FBI is inflating the number of “domestic violent extremism” cases to fit President Biden’s overarching narrative that home-grown extremism is the nation’s worst national security threat.

“From recent protected disclosures, we have learned that FBI officials are pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in July, detailing whistleblower allegations in a letter to Wray. “Given the narrative pushed by the Biden Administration that domestic violent extremism is the ‘greatest threat’ facing our country, the revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous.”

Ignoring Larry Nassar Abuse

The FBI turned a blind eye as former USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar abused dozens of young female athletes. According to the DOJ inspector general last year, “senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse of athletes by former USA Gymnastics physician Lawrence Gerard Nassar with the urgency that the allegations required.”

“We also found that the FBI Indianapolis Field Office made fundamental errors when it did respond to the allegations, failed to notify the appropriate FBI field office (the Lansing Resident Agency) or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar,” the inspector general added.

Kyle Rittenhouse

Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of politicized charges brought against him last summer when he shot three men in self-defense. Two died, and contrary to the media’s racialized coverage of the trial, all three were white.

During the proceedings, wherein an 18-year-old Rittenhouse (now 19) faced life in prison, prosecutors used aerial footage from FBI surveillance in their effort to convict Rittenhouse. When the defense tried to access “the rest” of the FBI footage from the night in question, however, the bureau claimed it no longer existed.

Demonizing James Rosen

In 2010, the Obama administration began aggressive surveillance of journalist James Rosen who was working for Fox News at the time. The Justice Department tracked Rosen by falsely claiming the reporter was a potential terrorist collaborator and accused him of violating the Espionage Act.

The Obama administration tracked Rosen’s movements and, according to Fox News, even seized the phone records of his parents.

Deadly Wrongful Conviction

A 2007 ruling against the government cost the FBI $102 million after agency misconduct resulted in the deaths of two men. In order to protect a mob informant, the FBI was caught deliberately withholding evidence in a case that led to the wrongful convictions of four men, three of which were sentenced to death, two of whom died before true justice was served.

Martha Stewart

Most Americans today believe Martha Stewart was convicted 20 years ago on charges of “insider trading.” Her actual conviction that sent her to federal prison was conspiracy to lie about the crime for which she was never charged over a trade that had already taken place.

Stewart’s quarter-million-dollar sale of ImClone stock served as the pretext for which federal prosecutors, led by none other than Comey, went after the media mogul. Comey’s case, however, was so weak that prosecutors pursued a novel legal theory to secure a conviction.

According to the theory they pursued, Stewart engaged in “securities fraud” when she declared that she was innocent, which prosecutors said was designed to prop up the value of her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. In other words, Stewart’s proclamation of innocence was declared a crime by federal law enforcement, and she spent six months incarcerated.

Mar-a-Lago Raid

The Department of Justice appears to be following the same playbook agency officials have used for years in the Democrats’ series of manufactured scandals to bring down Trump.

Last week, the FBI executed an unprecedented raid of the former president’s Florida residence ostensibly conducted to enforce the Presidential Records Act. Federal officials confiscated more than a dozen boxes from the 128-room mansion pursuant to the rarely prosecuted law, claiming Trump harbored classified information related to the nation’s nuclear secrets. Leaked claims to the Washington Post that Trump possessed sensitive nuclear records, which came hours after Attorney General Merrick Garland professed the agency’s professionalism, however, showcase the sensationalism crafted by officials desperate to justify the raid, which included more than 30 agents.

At a press conference last week, Garland admitted to personally signing off on the raid he called “narrowly scope[d].” An examination of the warrant, however, reveals that it authorized FBI agents to seize any and every document Trump came into contact with as president. Furthermore, none of the three criminal statutes the DOJ cited in the warrant required the material to be classified, according to Cleveland.

The FBI also attempted to dispel claims that federal officials stripped the president of his passports, telling CBS News that the agency was not in possession of the documents after Trump blasted that they had been confiscated. An email made public by Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich, however, exposed the FBI’s lie. The email from Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section in the DOJ’s National Security Division, confirms that “the filter agents seized three passports belonging to President Trump, two expired and one being his active diplomatic passport.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

ALEXANDROUPOLI – Few ships had used it but Greece’s northern port city of Alexandroupoli, 11 miles from the Turkish border, has suddenly become a hub-bub of activity, with the United States using it as a staging area for arms after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, creating a geopolitical chessboard.

It seems like an unlikely spot for diplomatic showdowns, said The New York Times in a feature by Niki Kitsantonis and Anatoly Kurmanaev about how it’s turned into a face-off between competing interests and countries, and businesses with ties to the US and Russia vying for control.

There’s a bear in the ointment though.

The port is going to be sold and bidders for a controlling stake, similar to the Chinese company COSCO running Greece’s biggest port of Piraeus adjacent to Athens, are four groups of companies – two from the US and two tied to Russia.

In the growing Cool War between the US and Russia, Greece has become a nexus at the same time that relations between Greece and Russia have been strained over Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ backing Ukraine and sending arms and equipment there before pulling back.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, already furious that Mitsotakis in an address to the US Congress asked lawmakers to veto President Joe Biden’s plan to sell more F-16s to Turkey, spun further out of control over Alexandroupoli as part of a growing American military presence in Greece.

“Against whom were they established?” Erdogan said of US military posts in Greece that could see more under a renewed miltary co-operation pact between Athens and Washington as relations tightened.

“The answer they give is ‘against Russia.’ We don’t buy it,” said Erdogan but his always volatile nature has further demonstrated the intensity of the tug ‘o war over who will control the port, and if Greece would be left out.

Adding to the brouhaha is that Turkey rejected European Union sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine and bought Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems that could be used against Greece in a conflict and undermine NATO.

The port has suddenly appeared on the radar screen in Moscow, Ankara and Washington, especially after US Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, made a surprise visit there, underscoring its importance.

The US sent 14 times more war goods through the port in 2021 – before the invasion of Ukraine – but that has seen even more pouring through, some 3,100 pieces including ammunition and tanks, the report said.

The US said it’s not destined for Ukraine but American military units stationed in Eastern and Northern Europe but that matters little to Russia or companies tied to Moscow who want a big piece of the port.

RED GAS

“What we have done is transform the port into a dynamic military operations hub,” said Andre Cameron, who oversees U.S. military logistics at the port. “Nothing like it has been done here before.”

That’s not been lost on the companies who want to run it.

They include a group run by billionaire Russian-Greek businessman Ivan Savvidis, who already runs Greece’s second-largest port in Thessaloniki and has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Savvidis is a player in Greece, so much so that there’s been a warrant for his arrest out since March of 2018 for carrying a gun onto the playing field of a soccer match involving the team he owns PAOK, but not executed.

His spokesperson wouldn’t comment to the Times, the paper said.

Another bidder is Greece’s Copelouzos Group, which is a partner with the state-owned Russian gas company Gazprom that was exempted from EU sanctions because the 27-member bloc, including Greece, is dependent on Russian supplies, amid fears they could be curtailed this winter.

Copelouzos’s competitors and critics said the company is susceptible the kind of crushing blackmail type of pressure that Putin can bring and would compromise its role if awarded the control of Alexandroupoli.

“There are significant concerns because the situation with Russia can deteriorate,” John Charalambakis, an owner of BlackSummit Financial Group, an American asset management firm that’s also bidding said.

“The fact that Russia is using energy as a weapon is an important factor,” he told the paper and that already has emerged with the EU and Greece trying to pare back usage of electricity and looking for alternatives to Russian energy.

The paper, citing unnamed Congressional staff sources, said there’s worry on Capitol Hill in Washington about Putin behind the scenes putting his hand on the port’s operation, citing the bidders with Russian links.

“The group has many cooperations across the world with many companies,” said Ioannis Arapoglou, the Copelouzos Group’s General Manager, adding that its partnership with Gazprom “is just one of those, and a relatively small one for the size of the company.”

He noted that the Copelouzos family is investing  in a project to build a liquid natural gas terminal near Alexandroupoli, aimed at reducing Balkan countries reliance on Russian gas by bringing in more supplies from the US.

Local officials and businessmen said they hope the invasion of Ukraine and regional tensions will turn the port into an alternate supply route getting around the Turkish-controlled straits to the Black Sea.

Konstantinos Chatzikonstantinou, the chief executive of the Alexandroupoli Port Authority told the paper: “Every crisis creates opportunities.”