Powell: Dominion Server Removed From Fulton County While Lawyers Sought Restraining Order
Report: IRGC commander killed in airstrike at Iraq-Syria border
Iraqi officials said that the vehicle in which the commander and three other men were killed was carrying weapons into Syria.
(December 1, 2020 / JNS) A commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed in an airstrike at the Iraq-Syria border, Iraqi security and local militia officials said on Monday, Reuters reported.
According to the report, the identity of the IRGC commander, who was killed in a vehicle with three other men, had not been confirmed.
But two Iraqi officials claimed that the vehicle had been transporting weapons across the border and was hit in the airstrike after it entered Syria. The officials said that Iran-backed Iraqi militias helped retrieve the bodies.
The incident comes on the heels of the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran. Fakhrizadeh’s funeral was held on Monday in Mashhad, Iran.
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Apparently, Durham investigation is alive and Barr is seeking to prevent or make it more difficult for Biden's Atty General from killing the pursuit of criminal bahviour.
Barr appoints John Durham as special counsel to investigate further criminality in Russia inquiry
December 01, 2020 03:48 PM
Days before the November presidential election, Attorney General William Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to serve as a special counsel tasked with investigating any violations of law related to the inquiries conducted by the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation and, later, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
An order making Durham special counsel, which was revealed on Tuesday, provides the federal prosecutor further protection against the prospect of President-elect Joe Biden trying to shut down the criminal inquiry into the origins and conduct of the FBI's investigation. So far, the president-elect has not been asked about and has not said whether he would allow Durham's work to continue during his administration. It also remains to be seen how Biden will handle Durham’s selection as special counsel.
“On May 13, 2019, I directed United States Attorney John Durham to conduct a preliminary review into certain matters related to the 2016 presidential election campaigns, and Mr. Durham’s review subsequently developed into a criminal investigation, which remains ongoing. Following consultation with Mr. Durham, I have determined that, in light of the extraordinary circumstances relating to these matters, the public interest warrants Mr. Durham continuing this investigation pursuant to the powers and independence afforded by the Special Counsel regulations,” Barr said in the appointment order, which was dated Oct. 19, 2020.
“The Special Counsel is authorized to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counterintelligence, or law enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III," Barr's newly revealed order added. "If the Special Counsel believes it is necessary and appropriate, the Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from his investigation of these matters.”
The attorney general also said that Durham should submit interim reports as he deems appropriate as well as a final report once he has concluded his investigation so that the public can learn what he has uncovered. Despite rampant speculation that Durham might release a report prior to the November election, that didn’t happen amid concerns about undue influence to the contest.
Trump had floated appointing a “special prosecutor” to investigate the Trump-Russia investigators during a weekend interview with Fox News. A DOJ official told the Washington Examiner that the White House was not made aware of Durham's selection until today.
Early reactions from Congress show Republicans cheering the appointment while Democrats pegged it as a continuation of a politically motivated investigation that will linger after Trump leaves office.
Durham's inquiry has already led to one guilty plea, with Kevin Clinesmith admitting that he fraudulently changed the wording of a CIA email to say that former Trump campaign associate Carter Page was “not a source” for the agency despite the FBI being informed that Page had been an “operational contact” for the CIA for years.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in December 2019 that concluded the FBI’s investigation was filled with serious missteps and concealed exculpatory information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. Horowitz criticized the bureau for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” in its surveillance of Page and for its reliance upon a discredited and Democratic-funded dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele.
Horowitz said FBI interviews with Steele's main source, U.S.-based and Russian-trained lawyer Igor Danchenko, “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting." Declassified footnotes showed that the FBI was aware that Steele’s dossier might have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
In addition, Horowitz wrote in his lengthy December report that Crossfire Hurricane was “opened for an authorized investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication.” But Durham, along with Barr, disagreed with the assertion that the opening of the investigation was justified.
“Our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham said in a rare public statement last year. “Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
Barr agreed, saying that Horowitz's report “makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken."
Barr further explained his decision to appoint Durham as special counsel in a Tuesday letter sent to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
“Although I had expected Mr. Durham to complete his work by the summer of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as additional information he uncovered, prevented him from doing so,” Barr wrote. “In advance of the presidential election, I decided to appoint Mr. Durham as a Special Counsel to provide him and his team with the assurance that they could complete their work, without regard to the outcome of the election.”
Barr said he only notified the congressional leaders now, instead of in October, because he “previously determined that it was in the public interest to toll notification given the proximity to the presidential election.”
In Barr’s appointment order, he cited the regulations governing special counsels, namely 28 C.F.R. § 600, which notes that “the Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government” and that “Special Counsels shall agree that their responsibilities as Special Counsel shall take first precedence in their professional lives, and that it may be necessary to devote their full time to the investigation.”
An official with the Justice Department defended Barr’s actions, telling the Washington Examiner that “attorneys general have often appointed prosecutors to act as special investigators, either under the special counsel regulations or outside them.”
The DOJ official said that sometimes attorneys general have picked people from inside the Justice Department, as with Durham’s service as a special prosecutor starting in 2008 and 2009 and former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s time as special counsel beginning in 2003, and other times the appointees have come from outside of DOJ, as with Jack Danforth’s selection in 1999 and Mueller’s in 2017.
“Each time, the attorney general has made his or her decision based upon the surrounding circumstances and in the interests of the Justice Department,” the DOJ official said. “Here, the attorney general determined that it was appropriate for special counsel Durham, who is in the department, to continue his investigation with the independence and autonomy provided under existing regulations.”
Durham, whose title had been special attorney to the attorney general, is widely regardedas a fair and dogged prosecutor, famously leading the prosecution of mobsters, includinga series of high-profile convictions of the notorious New England Mafia. His corruption investigation of former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland resulted in the Republican finding himself behind bars following a guilty plea. He was also appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno in 1999 to investigate the corrupt connections between law enforcement officers in Boston with James “Whitey” Bulger and other associates of the Irish mob’s Winter Hill Gang.
Durham also took on a sensitive and controversial investigation into the actions taken by members of the U.S. government when then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed him special prosecutor in 2008 to look into the CIA’s destruction of tapes of detainee interrogations. He was then selected by Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a broader investigation into the CIA’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
Mueller released a report in 2019 concluding that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion" but "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government." Roger Stone and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, both targets of the Russia investigation, were pardonedby Trump.
The former special counsel also laid out 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice, but Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded Trump had not obstructed justice.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Biden flirts with rejoining Iran Deal.
Biden: US will rejoin Iran nuclear deal if Tehran returns to strict compliance
President-elect says Iran’s terror proxies must be curbed, raises concern of Mideast nuclear arms race; Rouhani rejects his parliament’s ‘harmful’ bill to boost uranium enrichment
US President-elect Joe Biden said that the US would rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran if Tehran went back to strict compliance with the agreement, and promised to take steps to curb the influence of the Islamic Republic’s regional proxies.
Biden told The New York Times in an interview published overnight Tuesday that “there’s a lot of talk about precision missiles and all range of other things that are destabilizing the region,” but “the best way to achieve getting some stability in the region” is to address those issues within the nuclear program.
“In consultation with our allies and partners, we’re going to engage in negotiations and follow-on agreements to tighten and lengthen Iran’s nuclear constraints, as well as address the missile program,” he said, noting that the US always has the option to return to sanctions if necessary.
He raised concerns that if Iran were to get a nuclear bomb, it would increase pressure on Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and other nations in the region to acquire such weapons.
“And the last goddamn thing we need in that part of the world is a buildup of nuclear capability,” Biden said.
“It’s going to be hard, but yeah,” Biden told the Times when specifically asked about an essay he wrote that was published in September.
Biden wrote in the article for CNN prior to the election that “if Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”
According to the Times report, Biden and his team are working on the premise that if the deal is restored on both sides there will need to be new negotiations on the length of time for restrictions on the production of the fissile material necessary for producing a bomb, originally set at 15 years under the 2015 the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.
The US imposed crippling sanctions on Iran after US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018. In response, Iran began publicly exceeding limits set by the agreement while saying it would quickly return to compliance if the United States did the same.
Additionally, Biden said, steps would need to be taken to address Tehran’s terror activities through regional proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
The report said that the future Biden administration would want the talks with Tehran to include not only the original parties to the deal — Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union — but also key regional players Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The comments came as Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday rejected a bill approved by parliament that would have suspended UN inspections and boosted uranium enrichment, saying it was “harmful” to diplomatic efforts aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal and easing US sanctions.
The tug-of-war over the bill, which gained momentum after the killing of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist last month, allegedly by Israel, reflects the rivalry between Rouhani and hardline lawmakers who dominate parliament and favor a more confrontational approach to the West.
The bill would have suspended UN inspections and required the government to resume enriching uranium to 20 percent if European nations failed to provide relief from crippling US sanctions on the country’s oil and banking sectors. That level falls short of the threshold needed for nuclear weapons but is higher than that required for civilian purposes.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Rouhani said his administration “does not agree with that and considers it harmful for the trend of diplomatic activities.” He implied the lawmakers were positioning themselves ahead of Iran’s elections planned for June.
He added that “today, we are more powerful in the nuclear field than at any other time.”
The bill is expected to have little if any impact, as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say on all major policies, including those related to the nuclear program. Rather, it appeared to be a show of defiance after Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a key figure in Iran’s nuclear program, was killed in an attack Iranian officials have blamed on Israel.
Some analysts have argued the killing was aimed at making it more difficult for Biden to reenter the nuclear deal with Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned about the threat posed by Fakhrizadeh as early as 2018 and just days ago cautioned against Biden’s plans to reenter the nuclear accord.
Military personnel stand near the flag-draped coffin of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist who was killed on Friday, during a funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, November 30, 2020. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)
Fakhrizadeh headed a program that Israel and the West have alleged was a military operation looking at the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that the “structured program” ended in 2003, while Israel says Iran is still aiming to develop nuclear weapons, pointing to its work on ballistic missiles and other technologies.
Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, though a trove of Iranian documents stolen from Tehran by the Mossad, which were revealed by Netanyahu in 2018, showed plans by Iran to attach a nuclear warhead to a ballistic missile.
Iran has suffered several devastating attacks this year, including the killing of top general Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in January, and a mysterious explosion and fire in the summer that crippled an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, which is widely believed to have been an act of sabotage.
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