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More about St John's College on whose board I served for 8 years. (See 1 below.)
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Petulant Pelosi ripped up Trump's SOTU because he lied. Here is a fact check of 11 items. (See 2 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Another Rant. (See 3 below.)
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Again, Trump was correct to distrust our intelligent agencies. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE NEWS
Stay up-to-date on all things St. John’s with stories about our students, faculty, alumni, and more.
ANNAPOLIS ALUM EXPLORES THE ETHICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Jamaal Sebastian-Barnes (A10) has pursued a technology career at companies like Google and Novartis, always focusing on one big question: How do we explore the ethics of artificial intelligence?
A CONVERSATION WITH DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER LUCAS SMITH (SF07)
Since graduating from St. John’s, Santa Fe alum Lucas Smith (SF07) has worked on documentaries that premiered at DOC NYC film festival and the Museum of Modern Art. He reflects on St. John’s, his career, and the Johnnie practice of questioning the status quo.
JOHNNIE COMBINES GREAT BOOKS, CONTENT CREATION AT THE CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND
Jay Tram (A20) used a Hodson internship to work as a digital marketing intern at the CDF last summer.
LEARNING, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE AT MIDDLEBURY
Thanks to a General Pathways Fellowship, Sebastian Huerta (SF20) spent his summer immersed in French at Middlebury Language Schools.
HODSON BOATHOUSE BRINGS OYSTER GARDENING PROGRAM TO ST. JOHN’S
Hodson Boathouse manager Mike Waters and his team of student boathouse stewards are growing oysters off the boathouse docks to help restore the Chesapeake Bay.
TUTORS TALK BOOKS: CARY STICKNEY ON MOBY DICK AND MORE
Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney (A75) reflects on Moby Dick, Alice Munro, and what he calls “out of the frying pan and into the fire” books.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE
View the Winter 2019 Freeing Minds impact report and see how campaign gifts are benefiting Johnnies on both campuses.
ST. JOHN’S IN THE NEWS
At the end of 2019, St. John’s was named “Four-Year College of the Year” by Education Dive, a leading education news publisher. Education Dive acknowledged the college’s new financial approach—described by author Natalie Schwartz as “switching to a philanthropy-supported financial model and cutting down on administrative expenses”—as a progressive initiative designed to provide an affordable education for all students and put the college in a secure position moving into the future.
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2)In a night of high emotion, President Donald Trump used his third State of the Union address to tout the “great American comeback” during his first three years in office.
Before the night was over, Trump had staged the surprise reunion of a soldier deployed to Afghanistan with his family and announced a scholarship for the daughter of a single mother; first lady Melania Trump had presented legendary talk radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had ripped up a copy of the president’s remarks.
Trump delivered the address Tuesday night before a joint session of Congress on the eve of his likely acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial. He is only the second president in history, after Bill Clinton in 1999, to make the annual speech during an impeachment trial.
Amid all the emotion, here are some fact checks of key parts of the president’s speech, which lasted about an hour and 18 minutes.
In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>
1. “We are restoring our nation’s manufacturing might, even though predictions were that this could never be done. After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America has now gained 12,000 new factories under my administration.”
According to Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact in 2017, “the United States has lost more than 60,000 factories since 2001.”
Trump made a similar claim in 2017, mentioned by PolitiFact, laying the blame on China’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 for the decline in factories. The president said at a rally in Kentucky: “Since China joined—that’s another beauty—the WTO in 2001, the U.S. has lost many more than 60,000 factories.”
In 2001, there were 397,552 factories in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2016, there were 343,687. That’s a difference of roughly 54,000.
The first quarter of 2013 saw the lowest number of factories during the George W. Bush-Barack Obama years: 333,565. However, the number of factories began to increase during the final years of the Obama administration.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 356,046 manufacturing establishments existed in the second quarter of 2019, the most recent quarter available.
In the first quarter of 2017, when Trump took office, there were 343,972. That means there’s now an additional 12,074 new factories.
2. “ … the United States has become the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas in the world, by far.”
The Trump administration has taken steps to deregulate the oil industry, and the industry has been booming because of technological innovation.
Oil production in particular has exploded in the past decade, thanks largely to the revolution in hydraulic fracking technology that has allowed oil drillers to tap into massive shale oil reserves.
According to The Wall Street Journal, in late 2018 the U.S. became a net exporter of oil for the first time in nearly 75 years:
The U.S. exported 3.2 million barrels of oil a day during the week that ended on Nov. 30, along with about 5.8 million barrels a day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other products. Those exports exceeded combined imports of 8.8 million barrels a day in the week, making the country a net exporter, according to the EIA. This is the first time the U.S. has been a net exporter since at least 1973, federal data show.
More than that, the U.S. also became the world’s largest producer of oil in 2018, according to the Energy Information Administration, as a result of a rapid increase in production that began in 2011.
“U.S. crude oil production, particularly from light sweet crude oil grades, has rapidly increased since 2011,” according to EIA. “Much of the recent growth has occurred in areas such as the Permian region in western Texas and eastern New Mexico, the Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico, and the Bakken region in North Dakota and Montana.”
The U.S. briefly surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil exporter in June.
In August, the EIA reported, “The United States surpassed Russia in 2011 to become the world’s largest producer of natural gas and surpassed Saudi Arabia in 2018 to become the world’s largest producer of petroleum.”
3. “The unemployment rates for African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans have reached the lowest levels in history. African American youth unemployment has reached an all-time low. The African American poverty rate has declined to the lowest rate ever recorded.”
The Hispanic unemployment rate fell to 3.9% at the end of the the third quarter of 2019, a record low, according to CNBC, which also reported a record low for unemployment for African Americans at 5.5%.
Last year, African American youth unemployment reportedly dropped to the lowest rate since it was first tracked in the early 1970s. In July, the unemployment rate for blacks between ages 16 and 19 dropped to 17.7%.
A total of 762,000 young African Americans had jobs in July 2019. The labor force participation rate fell from 36.3% in July 2018 to 38.8% in July 2019.
The unemployment rate for Asian Americans hit a record low in July 2019, according to the Associated Press, falling to 2.1%.
Trump has talked many times before about the decline in the poverty rate for African Americans. PolitiFact, in 2018, said this is accurate.
4. “Under the last administration, more than 10 million people were added to the food stamp rolls. Under my administration, 7 million Americans have come off of food stamps.”
According to numbers from the Department of Agriculture, 10.7 million more Americans were on food stamps when President Barack Obama left office in January 2017 after eight years. (The official name of the program is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.)
“In 2009, when Obama entered office, 33,490,000 Americans were on food stamps. Eight years later that number had increased to 44,219,000, an increase of nearly 11 million,” reported The Washington Free Beacon. “Recipients of the program received a monthly benefit of about $125. The Department of Agriculture has noted that changes to food stamp policies made it easier to receive benefits.”
The Agriculture Department recently released numbers showing that 7.7 million fewer Americans receive SNAP benefits than when Trump took office.
The Trump administration restored stricter work requirements for welfare recipients that had been curtailed during Obama’s presidency.
5. “After decades of flat and falling incomes, wages are rising fast, and, wonderfully, they are rising fastest for low-income workers, who have seen a 16% pay increase since my election. This is a blue-collar boom.”
Incomes for low-wage workers have been rising faster than incomes for low-wage workers, a reversal of a long-term trend, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
At the end of 2019, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s wage-growth tracker showed that “the lowest-paid workers have been experiencing higher median wage growth.”
“[F]or workers in lower-wage jobs, their relative median wage over the 2000s has deteriorated, and that erosion has reversed course only in the last few years,” the Atlanta Federal Reserve said.
“This reverses the pattern seen in the wake of the Great Recession, when median wage growth for lower-paid workers slowed by more than for workers overall.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in December:
Pay for the bottom 25% of wage earners rose 4.5% in November from a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Wages for the top 25% of earners rose 2.9%. Similarly, the Atlanta Fed found wages for low-skilled workers have accelerated since early 2018, and last month matched the pace of high-skill workers for the first time since 2010.
6. “Before I took office, health insurance premiums had more than doubled in just five years. I moved quickly to provide affordable alternatives. Our new plans are up to 60% less expensive.”
Trump was citing numbers from a Department of Health and Human Services study from May 2017 that found average health insurance premiums had doubled since 2013.
The analysis, under the Trump administration, was based on data compiled during the Obama administration and produced by the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
Specifically, the analysis found that average premiums in the individual market on HealthCare.gov went from an annual $2,784 in 2013 to $5,712 in 2017—an increase of 105%.
In addition, all 39 states using the Obamacare exchanges on HealthCare.gov saw an increase in individual market premiums from 2013 to 2017. Three states—Alaska, Alabama, and Oklahoma—saw premiums triple, the HHS analysis found.
With regard to plans costing 60% less under the Trump administration, the president was referring to a new rule in 2018 that allowed Americans to buy short-term health insurance plans to last for 364 days, and renewable for up to three years.
7. “One hundred thirty-two lawmakers in this room have endorsed legislation to impose a socialist takeover of our health care system, wiping out the private health insurance plans of 180 million Americans.”
In April, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a “Medicare for All” bill alongside 13 other senators.
Unlike Obamacare, which was sold as a program that would not cause Americans to lose their private insurance, the Medicare for All proposal specifically would eliminate private insurance.
Heritage Foundation health care expert Robert Moffit wrote: “Under Section 107, the bill would outlaw private health coverage, including employer-sponsored coverage, that ‘duplicates’ the coverage provided under the government health plan. Approximately 181 million Americans would lose their existing private coverage.”
8. “Over 130 legislators in this chamber have endorsed legislation that would bankrupt our nation by providing free taxpayer-funded health care to millions of illegal aliens, forcing taxpayers to subsidize free care for anyone in the world who unlawfully crosses our borders. “
During a debate in June 2019, every Democratic presidential candidate raised their hands when asked whether they supported taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants.
California became the first state to pass taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants. The New York Times reported that in six states and the District of Columbia, Medicaid covers children regardless of immigration status. So of more than 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States, about 6 million would need health care.
A study by the Center for Immigration Studies determined that government-provided health insurance for illegal immigrants would cost $23 billion per year.
9. “This will be a tremendous boon to our already very strongly guarded southern border where, as we speak, a long, tall, and very powerful wall is being built. We have now completed over 100 miles and will have over 500 miles fully completed by early next year.”
On Jan. 10, Trump’s administration announced a completed 100 miles of wall along the nation’s southern border with Mexico.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said: “As of today, we have completed the first 100 miles of new border wall system on the southwest border. New wall has been constructed in every border state from California to Texas.”
10. “Last year, our brave ICE officers arrested more than 120,000 criminal aliens charged with nearly 10,000 burglaries, 5,000 sexual assaults, 45,000 violent assaults, and 2,000 murders.”
In January, Matthew Albence, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said:
We arrested 123,000 people convicted of, or charged with, criminal offenses, and these criminals accounted for almost 500,000 convictions and criminal charges, to include 1,900 homicides 10,000 sexual offenses, 1,800 kidnappings, 45,000 assaults, 74,000 DUIs, 67,000 drug-related offenses, and 8,000 gang members.
According to an ICE report last year, among the 123,000 arrests, 4,736 offenses—including charges and convictions—were related to robbery.
11. “Three years ago, the barbarians of ISIS [also known as the Islamic State] held over 20,000 square miles of territory in Iraq and Syria. Today, the ISIS territorial caliphate has been 100% destroyed, and the founder and leader of ISIS—the bloodthirsty killer [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi—is dead.”
The Defense Department reported in December 2018 that the U.S. military, with its partners in the region, “has liberated more than 20,000 square miles of previously held ISIS territory in Syria.”
On Oct. 26, 2019, the Army’s Delta Force killed al-Baghdadi in Syria.
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3)Here are some predictions and happenings on Corona virus from some professional economists and think tanks that I have access to. How accurate, we have to wait to see. Nobody really knows how bad it is in China, so the eventual impact is very hard to predict. It is almost surely much worse than they tell anyone. Lunar New Year has ended, but tens of millions are not going back home, or to work. Shanghai is reported by an acquaintance to be a ghost town now. Almost all the expats are gone. Many factories and offices remain closed for now, as the holiday ends. The US trade war inflicted some real damage, as did the deleveraging campaign XI had initiated, but this will be on top of all of that, so the impact on China's economy is likely to be material. SAARS was bad, but this is far worse. China was economically relatively small 20 years ago, and now it is number two, and the disease seems to be much worse, so the impact will be much worse for China. China is 1/5 of total global manufacturing output. A cut of 1% in Chinese GDP will result in a .4% reduction in the world economy, leaving new forecasts of world GDP for 2020 at 2.4%-2.5% or less, down from 2.8%. SE Asia is getting killed by the lack of Chinese tourists and the coming cutback in manufacturing, leaving a big cutback in the demand for raw materials and other parts. Many of these countries have excessive dollar denominated debt, plus excessive debt from Chinese banks for Belt&Road projects. If the cutback lasts long, there will be real stress in emerging market debt. Watch this as it could morph into a bigger problem depending on how long China is shut down. Latin America is also going to be hurt by a drop in demand for ag and raw materials exports to China. That will just exacerbate protests there over weak economies, especially in Argentina and Chile. Oil is also off 20% and getting worse, leading OPEC to panic. Production will be cut again. China was buying some Iranian oil. That will now end most likely, so Iran gets badly hurt. It will take months for all these impacts to lessen and China to ramp up back to normal once the emergency is ended, which may not be for several more months. A lot of US companies have either shut down China operations altogether, or mostly, and have no immediate plans to reopen until things are far better and more clear. In China there is no knowing when reports will be true about the disease or economy, but assume they are hurting like never before.
China is in real crisis now. China claims almost 30,000 but experts say it could 2,3 or more times that. There are stories of people turned away from overwhelmed hospitals, so it is likely the real number could be 100,000 or more. They are, at the moment, in no position to help Iran or Kim, who remains strangely very quiet for many weeks.
Next up for the US is a tentative deal with the Taliban, and maybe something new with Kim. Nobody can feel safe now, and they are scared of what Trump might do next. Nobody is in any position right now to challenge the US. Ending impeachment just makes Trump much stronger in foreign affairs. Keep in mind my reference to Trump being like the mob with his NYC development background, a few weeks ago- mess with my people and you will die. The bad guys now know he really means it. Soleimani, Baghdadi, the top guy in Yemen, and the top guy in the Iraq militias-all dead in a few week period. Nobody can hide, and nobody is safe from us.
For the US, Chinese tourism was 3 million travelers. Losing that will hurt hotels and restaurants, and related suppliers. US hotels are already seeing flattening to declines in revenue and cash flow, and that is before the travel restrictions. Millions more Chinese traveled to Europe and around Asia. The big US hotel brands were beginning to see a real slowdown, and now will be into a downturn. Hotels are the worst performing property type after retail, and that is about to get a lot worse. Corona will be a .05% hit to US GDP from lost tourism. The overall hit to US GDP from Corona is forecast to only be .15%. Hong Kong will be very badly hit on top of the protests. Overall, the impact on the US is not expected to be material, and the stock market has recovered from its silly panic. Hopefully you were a buyer last Friday and Monday. Just look at what is already happening. For perspective, Boeing alone is expected to have a .5% hit to GDP 1st half all by itself vs .15 for the China impact. In summary, China is going to suffer a major hit as are countries dependent on selling to China, but the impact on the US is likely to be very minimal. CDC acted fast and we will be safe other than people who just returned from the Wuhan area, but they are being instantly isolated. US GDP and the stock market are likely to see very good numbers as we get into Q3 and Boeing is back, and Trump appears to be the likely winner.
Supposedly investing in funds that are labeled ESG-environmental, social and governance, has been increasing. To me that is utter nonsense. If you have money to throw around, contribute to whatever your favorite cause may be and make a difference. However investing is about making the maximum profit you can, not doing good. Philanthropy is for doing good. Do these investors really think their investing a stock fund that invests in some supposedly environmentally focused companies really does anything . Invest to make money, and then you can choose to donate the profits to whatever non-profit or start-up you choose. It is analogous to my belief that it is far better to not over tax the wealthy and let the government decide how to spend it, but to let the wealthy individuals invest in, or contribute, to whatever cause, company or start-up they like. Capital needs to applied efficiently by the private sector, and not wasted by giving to the government to waste.
Keep in mind when judging GDP growth in 2019 that .5%, approximately, is due to Boeing, and another small piece of the lower GDP number was due to GM strike, possibly .2%. So were it not for those two major producers, GDP likely would have been materially higher in Q4. We now see that manufacturing has already picked up partly due to GM and partly due to the end of the trade disputes. It should get better from here depending on how long Corona lasts and impacts supply chain problems from China, or reduced buying by foreigners who are more impacted by the virus. The ADP number this week was a blow out, suggesting the BLS number Friday may also be much better than forecast. If so the market goes higher.
I have stayed away from Tesla. I don't understand all of what is happening other than short covering, and euphoria that may result in a lot of investors losing a lot in the next week. Not the sort of play I am comfortable with.
You cannot make up the fiasco in Iowa. They never tested the system, never trained local people on how to use the system, and never set up phone banks as a back up to take the numbers person to person. Idiots, and we are supposed to vote for them to run the government??? They used Hilary's computer people to design the app. Maybe they got confused and thought they were supposed to make the results disappear if Bernie won, so the results are now sitting with the deleted emails of Hilary. This is great news for Trump and Republicans. They just need to say, these are who you want to run your healthcare and cyber security!. The Dems will never be able to fully recover from this. They could not even pull off having local results called into headquarters. Maybe they forgot how to use old fashioned phones and talking to humans. They just look like the fools they are. Now, of course, they are blaming Trump supporters for calling in the on the phone lines.
Butta boy may have won Iowa, but that is where he ends. He is nothing more than a radical left wing failed gay mayor of a small town in Indiana. Blacks will not vote for him. The press now touts him as the "moderate". He wants to eliminate the electoral college, pack the Supreme Court, and install other far left ideology. I guess compared to Pocahontas he is deemed moderate, but I think it is really that the Dems need to make him appear moderate, so the press goes along. . Biden is done. Bernie owns the field for now. Bloomberg now has a real shot at getting the nomination out of desperation by the DNC establishment who will again rig the convention. By the end of super Tuesday it will only be Bernie and Bloomberg left standing. If that happens a lot of young people will stay home. More blacks will vote for Trump. He is delivering jobs and wages, and a ticket out of jail, as opposed to Obama who delivered racial rhetoric. The Dems are in a real hole now, and they keep digging. The impeachment hearings meant to hurt Trump wiped out Biden by clearly showing the corruption of his family and him. The Dems now are in a chaotic mess, with the bartender from the Bronx as a leader of the pack. Prediction, the Dems lose the House. Don't be surprised if Deval Patrick is suddenly floated out at the convention as the compromise. He s Obama's man
Pelosi committed what I view as the most disrespectful action of any Speaker in history at a state of the union when, as Trump closed his remarks, she ripped up the speech and flung it at her speakers desk, even as Trump was still standing there. It was clearly intentional and disgraceful. And she expects Trump to cooperate with her between that and impeachment?? What a contrast -the list of accomplishments, and the impeachment vote the next day. Then we had the Dem women in white who rose up in the middle of the speech to have some sort of demonstration which he and even the press rightly ignored. The Dems have reached a new low in politics. And they want to run Bernie?? Take away the brainwashed college kids who love supposedly free everything, and Bernie would be back in the pack. Trump won the impeachment war. Nancy lost big. Now getting Trump is personal for her. Good news, the election is in only 9 months. The Durham indictments will be in maybe 3 -4 months.
If you want to understand what is really happening to make students so left wing- read this. The NYT in conjunction with a radical black woman professor, has devised what claims to be an American history course called the 1619 Project that it is peddling to high schools and colleges. It starts by claiming that America was founded in 1619 when supposedly the first slaves were brought to America by, I presume, the Spanish. It goes on from there to denigrate America and its true history. It claims the revolutionary war was really fought to keep Britain from ending slavery. You get the picture. The problem is that despite almost all professional historians pointing out numerous false claims in the content, the NYT ignores them and has sold this misleading tripe to 3500 school districts, none of whom has bothered to question the obvious blatant misstatements in the course material. They buy into it as the social justice, politically correct thing to teach the kiddies. And you wonder what is happening to America, and why so much emphasis on race and everyone being a racist. Ask your school district if they use this history course, and if so demand that they cease as it is a social justice left wing diatribe against America filled with materially false statements. This is how the young people are being brainwashed in high school and college today. It is why Bernie and the left are so popular with the young. The 1619 Project fits nicely with the rest of the anti-white, anti-male classes they get now in university.
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4)
Revealed: FBI Had Multiple Informants on Trump Campaign
By Jim Hayek
The FBI team investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election cultivated and maintained numerous sources close to Donald Trump during the election and the transition period when Trump was entering the White House.
The FBI sources include one person who was in direct contact with Trump and who was utilized by one FBI agent to, “obtain insight into the incoming Trump administration.” Another source was described as voluntarily providing the FBI team probing Trump with large volumes of documents.
Yet another FBI source held a position in the Trump campaign and another was described as a Trump “supporter.” Another source was documented as attending a private gathering with Trump.
These disclosures and others were made inside the Justice Department’s previously released 476-page Inspector General report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane.
Some of the generalities of the use of these sources were outlined in the executive summary at the opening of the IG report. The executive summary, however, states, “We found no evidence that the FBI placed any CHSs or UCEs within the Trump campaign or tasked any CHSs or UCEs to report on the Trump campaign.”
Both the summary itself and the larger section on the use of CHS’s deep inside the report detail a more complicated picture. While the FBI may not have officially tasked sources to report on the Trump campaign, it did accept information from sources who volunteered to provide the details, the IG report relates. Also an FBI agent contacted a source to “obtain insight” into the incoming Trump administration and another source provided information on Trump campaign officials. Another source was documented as being scheduled to obtain a briefing with Trump and it wasn’t clear whether that source reported back with any information.
The section of the report about the sources has not received significant news media attention.
The largely overlooked revelations raise major questions about the longstanding claim that the FBI did not spy on the Trump campaign, showing the extent to which the agency run by James Comey maintained a bevy of informants within Trump’ orbit. This in addition to obtaining successive warrants to spy on Carter Page, the energy consultant who temporarily served as a tangential Trump campaign adviser.
A section on page 336 of the extensive report reveals the IG’s team learned during its review that the FBI maintained Confidential Human Sources (CHS’s) who had “either a connection to candidate Trump or a role in the Trump campaign.” CHS’s are utilized by the FBI to gather information on a target.
One source was described as holding a position that was redacted from the public version of the report and another source was documented whose details were also redacted.
One of these sources surrounding Trump is described as voluntarily bringing the FBI vast sums of information and documentation that the source was not officially tasked with providing. The Handling Agent for that source, described in this article as Source #1, told the IG that this source regularly provides “a ton of information on all sorts of things” to the FBI without being tasked to do so. Source #1 also brings “reams of information” to into meetings with the handling agent.
In March 2017, Source #1 voluntarily provided his/her Handling Agent with five sets of documents on a series of topics. The Handling Agent said that Source #1 provided documents and information because he/she “thought it was of interest to the U.S. government.”
The documents and information from Source #1 were placed in FBI files and were provided to the Crossfire Hurricane team investigating Trump, the IG report documents. Regarding the materials from Source #1, the Crossfire Hurricane team did not find “anything significant” in something that was redacted from the public report.
One human source, referred to in this article as source #2, provided the Crossfire Hurricane team with what the IG report characterized as “general information” in August 2016 about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser Carter Page.
Page was the subject of government surveillance using successive FISA warrants that partially relied upon the infamous dossier as justification for the spying. The dossier was financed by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee.
Source #2 was described as someone who “knew candidate Trump and had been in contact with the candidate.” The Handling Agent claimed this source provided information about Page that was “open-source information” that could be found “[a]II over the Internet.” The IG report does not describe what Source #2 provided the FBI about Manafort.
The IG report further relates that an FBI agent contacted the handling agent for Source #2 immediately after Trump won the November 2016 election and asked for “a read-out from” Source #2 “regarding possible positions in administration.”
In late November 2016, the Handling Agent met Source #2 and penned an official document stating one purpose of the meeting was “to obtain insight regarding the incoming Trump Administration following the recent U.S. Presidential elections.”
The unnamed FBI agent who sent the Handling Agent to that meeting claimed to the IG that he made the request because he thought Source #2 could be given “a position somewhere in the administration” which would become a “sensitive matter that we would need to handle differently.”
The Handling Agent claimed in his interview with the IG that to him the phrase “obtain insight” into the incoming Trump administration was really just about asking Source #2 for his “[p]ersonal opinion,” and he was just making “small talk” with Source #2. The Handling Agent claimed the information he gleaned from Source #2 was “not investigative in nature” and wasn’t put into any FBI case file.
The FBI’s top counterintelligence agent, Bill Priestap, told the IG that if he had known about the contact with Source #2 to “obtain insight” into the incoming Trump administration such action would have raised concerns.
Referring to the phrase “obtain insight,” Priestap said he “hope[d] it was misstated [in the document], because we don’t, well, it’s not what we should be doing.”
The IG also discovered an October 2016 email written by an Intelligence Analyst on the Crossfire Hurricane team that contained information about another Confidential Human Source, described here as Source #3.
The email copied information from a case file for Source #3, stating the source was “scheduled to attend a ‘private’ national security forum with Donald Trump” in October 2016, after which Source #3 will provide “an update on the Trump meeting.”
The IG could not get to the bottom of what transpired with Source #3. None of the Crossfire Hurricane case agents told the IG they had any recollection of knowing that any source was scheduled to attend a gathering with Trump.
One FBI agent claimed he did not remember Source #3 “at all.”
The Handling Agent for Source #3 sought to clarify that the information in the email describing the source as going to attend a gathering at a hotel. The agent claimed the gathering was “more of a … campaign speech or campaign discussion” and “more like a campaign stop than a meeting.”
The Handling Agent claimed he could not recall if Source #3 actually attended the gathering with Trump, adding that he “would certainly not be tasking a source to go attend some private meeting with a candidate, any candidate, for president or for other office, to collect the information on what that candidate is saying.”
The IG could not find evidence that Source #3 told the FBI about any meeting or event with Trump.
Meanwhile, another FBI Confidential Human Source, characterized here as Source #4, was described as holding a position in the Trump campaign at one point. The IG report shows that by the time Source #4 told his/her Handling Agent about the campaign role that source was no longer part of the Trump campaign.
An FBI internal document says Source #4 would be utilized only as a “passive listening post regarding any observations [he/she] has of the campaign so far” and that the source would not be tasked for anything further at the time the document was written.
The IG report describes yet another source as being a Trump supporter.
The IG report says that although the Crossfire Hurricane team was aware of all these sources during the2016 presidential campaign, the FBI team felt the Trump informants would not have furthered the investigation and so they were purportedly not tasked further.
One FBI agent was quoted in the IG report as saying that members of the Crossfire Hurricane team “never [had] any intent, never any desire … to collect…campaign or privileged information with regard to the presidential election.”
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