This episode is presented by Create A Video – Newly declassified documents show the FBI and DOJ did not prosecute a woman for lying to Congress about the role she played in promoting the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. But that's not even the worst part.
Subscribe to the podcast at: https://ThePetePod.com/
All the links to Pete's Prep are free: https://patreon.com/petekalinershow
Media Bias Check: If you choose to subscribe, get 15% off here!
Advertising and Booking inquiries: Pete@ThePeteKalinerShow.com
Get exclusive content here!: https://thepetekalinershow.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.
[00:00:28] I just want to go on record. Chuck Grassley is a national treasure, OK? And this is why during all of the Biden cognitive decline coverage, I always point out it's not about his age. It's about his cognitive functioning, right? Because you could be very old and still be sharp as a tack, as we were told Joe Biden was, but apparently was not.
[00:00:55] And I do mean apparently. It was apparent. Chuck Grassley, on the other hand, I think he's like 142 now. And he still is doing what he has been doing for decades. Protecting whistleblowers, rooting out, you know, lies and corruption inside of the government.
[00:01:19] And I'm not sure if people because of all of the, you know, Elon and Donald and they're fighting and all of this. But there's some actual big news that has come out over the last week, week and a half that isn't getting really any attention. It started on May 28th.
[00:01:38] When Chuck Grassley's office put out a press release and a report, a memo, an internal FBI analysis that was declassified, he had asked for this from Kash Patel, the FBI director, and Pam Bondi, attorney general. And he got it.
[00:01:57] So I'm going to walk through this sort of this timeline here, because on May 28th, he puts out the press release that the FBI and the DOJ failed to prosecute Nellie Orr. Does that name ring a bell? Nellie Orr. O-H-R. She was a Fusion GPS contractor.
[00:02:24] She testified in front of Congress and lied to Congress about her role in advancing the FBI and DOJ's crossfire hurricane investigation. This is according to, not Chuck Grassley, but an internal FBI analysis that confirmed her false congressional testimony.
[00:02:49] The 2019 FBI analysis obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, and now declassified at his request, provides detailed evidence that Orr lied to Congress during sworn testimony and, as a result, obstructed ongoing congressional investigations, violating federal statutes as she did so.
[00:03:14] This FBI analysis also exposes how the FBI prevented agents from reviewing all relevant information necessary to perform a full analysis of the extent of her false testimony and her role in the fake Russia collusion investigation. So there are two components here. Right? The first is what's in the report, the analysis.
[00:03:40] The second is that this analysis was shielded. And that shielding, that's actually the bigger scandal. All right, so I'm going to take them in two separate parts here.
[00:03:54] First, the FBI analysis about Nellie Orr and the DOJ's failure to hold her accountable for appearing to commit multiple felonies and its obstructive conduct against agents that sought additional information. He says, this reveals the agency's deeply disturbing political bias.
[00:04:19] Nellie Orr never suffered any consequences for advancing the phony Trump-Russia narrative and attempting to cover up her involvement in the hoax. Again, this is from the FBI's own analysis. So here's the background. She was employed by the political opposition research firm called Fusion GPS. I'm sure if you're listening to this program, you are aware of what Fusion GPS does. Right?
[00:04:48] She worked for them between 2015 and 2016, and she was performing what they call open-source research in an attempt to connect then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to Russian organized crime. This research was paid for by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee, the DNC.
[00:05:14] Both of these organizations ultimately settled with the Federal Election Commission, the FEC, after allegations of campaign finance violations for intentionally misreporting the true purpose of the payments. At the time, while Orr was employed by Fusion GPS, you may recall her husband, Bruce Orr.
[00:05:41] Bruce was an associate deputy attorney general at the DOJ. Both Nellie and Bruce testified to the House Committee on the Judiciary and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In 2018, they testified as part of those committees' oversight of the FBI's bogus 2016 crossfire hurricane investigation into Trump's disproven collusion with Russia.
[00:06:10] A year later, not even, then-Congressman, Mark Meadows, who was a member of the House Oversight Committee, filed a criminal referral with the DOJ and asserted that Nellie Orr knowingly provided false testimony to the House committees, to both of them.
[00:06:32] The FBI did an analysis in 2019 to see if there's evidence that she, in fact, lied. Here are the key findings of the FBI's analysis. Nellie Orr may have been involved in drafting aspects of the Steele dossier and conspired with her husband, Bruce, to ensure high-level FBI officials received her work product,
[00:06:59] while Fusion GPS coordinated with the media to legitimize the FBI's opening of its now discredited Trump-Russia investigation. Nellie Orr may have falsely testified to Congress that she had no knowledge of the DOJ's Trump-Russia investigation. Why would the FBI think that she may have falsely testified?
[00:07:23] Well, she gave a thumb drive containing her Fusion GPS work to her husband, Bruce. He then provided that to the FBI as part of its ongoing investigation. So when she said she had no knowledge of the investigation, why would she give the thumb drive to her husband, who is an associate deputy attorney general at DOJ?
[00:07:51] Did Bruce ask for it and say, I can't tell you why I'm asking for it? Oh, hey, I'd love to see your work product. And then he just like scurried away and handed it off and she had no idea? Probably not because her email traffic also showed she emailed her Russian investigative research directly to her husband. She sent him an email with it all.
[00:08:13] Bruce only shared information with the FBI relating to the Trump-Russia investigation after receiving it from his wife. So this wasn't anything that he was sharing with them prior. He didn't know about this stuff prior. He didn't have it in a format to hand it off to the FBI. No, no, it was only after his wife gave him all of this stuff.
[00:08:38] Nellie and Bruce met personally with British intelligence officer and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele. They met with him in 2016, which kind of obliterates the whole idea that she would have no idea that there's an investigation going on if her husband Bruce is with her. Fusion GPS pitched Nellie Orr's research to the Department of State for additional investigation per Department of State emails.
[00:09:07] Maybe she wasn't aware that her employer was taking her work and trying to give it to the Department of State. Nellie Orr then deleted emails with Russia-focused DOJ prosecutors, which I don't know about you, but to me indicates an effort to conceal her exchanges with DOJ officials involved in the Trump-Russia investigation. There's a reason this looks like she was aware of the investigation.
[00:09:37] It's because she was aware of the investigation. Of course she was. And so when she went in front of Congress and said she was not aware, that was a lie. That's perjury. And that's obstruction of a congressional investigation. She also may have testified falsely to Congress that she was not involved in drafting the Steele dossier. See, because she made an error, an analytical error in her research. And that same error, identical error, was in the Steele dossier.
[00:10:07] Somebody's copying somebody's work. And the FBI knew it. In 2019, they knew it. All right, so spring is here. A time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by, are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, 8mm films, photos, slides?
[00:10:36] Are they preserved? Because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help you protect what matters most. Their expert team digitizes your cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive, freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for generations to come. I urge you, do not wait until it's too late. This spring, celebrate your past.
[00:11:01] Visit Creative Video today and let them preserve your legacy with the love and care that it deserves. Create a video preserving family memories since 1997. Located in Mint Hill, just off 485. Mail orders are accepted too. Get all the details at createavideo.com. So reading from Chuck Grassley's news release, which is based off of the FBI's internal analysis,
[00:11:29] dating back to 2019, that has now been declassified at the request of Chuck Grassley, declassified by Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. And it's about Nellie Orr, who was working for Fusion GPS, and how the FBI did an analysis after Mark Meadows, then a congressman,
[00:11:52] Mark Meadows asked for a criminal referral for perjury, accusing her of lying under oath. And so the FBI did this analysis. And they determined that, yeah, it's likely she lied. Because she said she had nothing to do with the Steele dossier. She had nothing to do with the Department of Justice investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
[00:12:17] When she did, in direct contradiction to her congressional testimony, Nellie Orr disseminated Fusion GPS research to DOJ prosecutors beyond those that she identified in her testimony. So she gave it to more people than she let on. Also in direct contradiction to her congressional testimony,
[00:12:43] Nellie Orr took six ham radio classes. No tomato classes, just the ham. Not even lettuce. And took the classes and the exam during her time as a Fusion GPS employee. Now why is this important? Ham radios can facilitate international communication without the use of a cell signal.
[00:13:11] And she had claimed, in her testimony, that her ham radio training occurred before she went to work for Fusion GPS. But records from the Fairfax Fire and Rescue Department, as well as the FCC,
[00:13:32] records show that Nellie Orr's entire ham radio training occurred between March 2016 through May of 2016. And that was while she was working for Fusion GPS. So she lied about that too. Clearly. And the FBI knew it. In 2019, they knew it. Stephen Richards, writing at JustTheNews.com,
[00:14:01] says the memo shows the Bureau assessed that Nellie Orr likely lied to Congress in her testimony about the genesis of the infamous Steele dossier, her interactions with DOJ officials, and her knowledge of the Trump-Russia probe. Crossfire hurricane. Orr originally told investigators in October 2018 that she had no knowledge,
[00:14:27] but the memo shows that she shared investigative materials with various people. Fusion GPS acted as the coordinating hub of a multi-pronged effort to spread the Russia collusion allegations into the FBI. That's what Fusion GPS was doing. Politico reported on this in 2017, that according to unnamed sources, the Democrat National Committee, as well as...
[00:14:58] You know who I'm going to say. Mark Elias. He's loathsome. He's just loathsome. Elias, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton who represented the DNC, as well as the Clinton campaign, and hired Fusion GPS, helped to bankroll the research. The DNC and Mark Elias bankrolled the research. That's why I call him the bag man.
[00:15:27] Which led to the dossier. The memo details how a second Trump-Russia dossier was authored by longtime Clinton associate Cody Shearer, which also ended up in FBI hands. That memo, the second memo, was passed to the FBI through Christopher Steele, who received it from a State Department official. Hmm, I wonder who that was.
[00:15:53] The FBI investigator who drafted the declassified memo noted that this second dossier, which the Bureau called the FSB memo, bore signs of close coordination between Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele. The second memo was reported in the media as a potential source of corroborating evidence to vouch for the later discredited Steele dossier.
[00:16:24] They manufactured a corroborating source. So this way the media could say that there are multiple sources. This is laundering. That's what's going on. They're laundering the Steele dossier through the FBI. They launder it through media. They give, you know, on background, anonymous sourcing, confirmation. Oh yeah, this is happening. Oh yeah, we have, we've seen two different memos, memos, two different reports.
[00:16:52] They corroborate each other. You can totally trust me. Remember, what, two days ago, I mentioned how Alex Thompson burned one of his sources because she lied about her work for Corinne Jean-Pierre. And so when it turned out now that they're admitting that, oh, she was working, she's like a PR person. Oh, she, she was actually working and she lied to Alex Thompson.
[00:17:21] Thompson then burned her on Twitter. Posted up the screenshots of the email exchanges of her denying that she was working with KJP. Right? That's what you do when an unnamed source, when somebody comes to you and says, I will give you the information, but it's, you can't use my name, but this is all true. And then you find out that they lied to you, you burn them, which has not happened yet with any of these sources. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special
[00:17:50] and secluded getaway in Western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breathtaking 14,000 acres of the Pisgah National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
[00:18:19] Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, it's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions. With hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi-Fi, grills, outdoor tables, and your own private covered porch, choose from 13 cabins, 6 cottages, 2 villas, and a great lodge with 11 king-sized bedrooms, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion. And they have
[00:18:48] pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068 or check out all there is to offer at CabinsOfAsheville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. The FBI and the DOJ failed to prosecute Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Orr for lying to Congress about her role in advancing the crossfire hurricane investigation. This is according to an internal FBI analysis confirming her false congressional testimony.
[00:19:18] Chuck Grassley's office, Senator Grassley's office, released the analysis and this is the story over at JustTheNews.com by Stephen Richards talking about there was a second dossier besides the Steele dossier. There was a second one that was referred to as the FSB memo and that was reported in the media as a potential source of corroborating evidence
[00:19:48] to vouch for the Steele dossier. The declassified FBI memo shows the Bureau viewed the second memo, the FSB memo, the FBI determined it was, quote, obviously fictitious, citing its wild claims and divergence from the usual characteristics of reports from confidential human sources. This analysis was from 2019. So the FBI knew. Additionally,
[00:20:18] the FBI assessed that the second dossier though purportedly independently produced appeared to be coordinated by Fusion GPS. Specifically, the FBI investigators found a deleted copy of the FSB memo on a thumb drive owned by Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS. The declassified memo from the FBI shows that the agency
[00:20:47] believed it was likely that Orr's research served as a basis for many of the Trump-Russia documents that ended up in the FBI's possession and formed the basis for the crossfire hurricane investigation. So, Orr lied to Congress. But, the statute of limitations for her crimes five years.
[00:21:17] Which means that the time for her being indicted expired in 2023. But, she may not be out of the woods. So, I'm not really sure how this goes. But, because criminal law allows an exception to the statute of limitations called the discovery rule. This discovery rule postpones the start of the statute of limitations. So, if you think of it like a clock running for the five years,
[00:21:46] it didn't start when the crime was committed. Under the discovery rule, it could start when the police or prosecutors later discover the crime. It's not clear yet whether Attorney General Pam Bondi or the FBI Director Kash Patel intend to pursue that line of legal attack. The crimes each carry a five-year jail term and are also subject to a maximum fine of $10,000. But wait,
[00:22:16] there's more. And it's worse. So, I mentioned there were two different issues, right? The first is the one that I've just covered. The Nellie Orr lying to Congress and obstructing their investigation back in 2018. The FBI had done this analysis. They were like, yeah, she probably lied. Here's all the evidence for it. and they failed to prosecute. Refused to prosecute. That's the first part.
[00:22:47] There's a case management system that the FBI uses internally. It's called Sentinel. Okay? And this is where you would put all the information for any of your cases. You put them into this database. This way, if you're working on some investigation and I'm working on a different investigation in a different city, but there is a connection made between our two cases,
[00:23:16] you would be able to run a search in the Sentinel database in this case management system and you would find out, oh, Pete's working a case and has some of the same suspects or patterns or whatever, victims, businesses. You would be able to find nexus points. And so this system has different levels of secrecy.
[00:23:46] So there's the unrestricted where anybody can see it inside the FBI. There is restricted for sensitive cases and information. Right? But if you go to Sentinel and you type in, you know, let's say you're looking to bust the Hamburglar and so you type in Hamburglar and you would get some results that come back in your search through the database that find, oh, Pete's working a case against the Hamburglar
[00:24:16] also. Okay? Oh, no, Pete's case is restricted and you may not have the ability then to see it. So you would have to ask me or ask your superiors or whatever to get access to the file. But here's the key. You know the file exists. You know there is an investigation. You know there's a case because it pops up in your search. But the details are hidden because it's restricted. But what if I
[00:24:45] told you there's a third level? Because there is. It's called prohibited access. And that means it doesn't even show up in your search results. So if I don't want anybody to know that I'm investigating the Hamburglar and you run a search for Hamburglar you're not even going to see my cases pop. It allows agents
[00:25:15] the sentinel system allows agents to hide the existence of relevant investigative reports from other authorized users of the database. You see where this is going don't you? During the Russia collusion hoax special counsel Robert Mueller's team used the sentinel search functionality to keep potentially relevant documents
[00:25:45] hidden from other FBI agents who were investigating whether a fusion GPS contractor lied to Congress Nellie Orr. So when the FBI agents were doing that internal memo or the analysis rather when they were doing their analysis of whether or not Orr lied to Congress they did not get access nor were they even aware of a whole bunch of stuff because it was
[00:26:15] tagged as prohibited. The significance of these two facts according to Margo Cleveland at the federalist dot com she says can't be overstated because now in question is whether the federal government complies with the constitutional mandate in criminal cases to provide defendants all material exculpatory and impeachment evidence as well as its discovery obligations in
[00:26:45] civil litigation right when you go to trial the prosecution has to give you everything that they have if you right you're the defendant you go to trial you're accused of something your lawyers get through the process called discovery the state has to turn over everything that they have against you so you can prepare a defense and if they have been marking things as prohibited access it
[00:27:15] doesn't even show up if they're trying requests or investigations inside the FBI itself agents don't even know if there's other stuff going on in other departments or field offices or whatever they are blinded to this work to this information this now could jeopardize criminal
[00:27:44] prosecutions right civil matters anything in this database that's been marked as prohibited this is going to get very bad I suspect all right if you're listening to this show you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events and
[00:28:18] you can check it out at check dot ground dot news slash Pete I put the link in the podcast description too I started using ground news a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom the blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right see for yourself check dot ground dot news slash Pete subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any
[00:28:48] subscription I use the vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature your subscription then not only helps my podcast but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent I have a Pete tweet from Alan who says Pete leave the Hamburglar alone hasn't he been through enough take him off the cross Pete all right it was merely an example I have no ill will towards the Hamburg but he just looks guilty I mean
[00:29:17] right doesn't he okay so the problem with masking the database so people don't know if there's actual information in the FBI database presents a lot of really bad problems as I mentioned you have your discovery obligations in criminal cases that the feds may bring also in civil litigation discovery obligations but also
[00:29:48] did special counsel John Durham did he have all of this information the inspector general the agents investigating the members of crossfire hurricane right when the investigation into the investigation occurred right did those teams have access did they even know about the prohibited access classification
[00:30:17] whether the DOJ and the FBI provided congressional oversight committees with requested documents or even subpoenaed documents when when Congress would say give us all your documents on crossfire hurricane did they get the stuff in the super secret classified files apparently not and whether freedom of
[00:31:29] told the Federalist that he was not aware of the prohibited access classification and shared that many of his colleagues likewise had never heard of it. He says it's a staggering revelation for nearly all of us. This is a former U.S. attorney who did not know what the FBI was doing with their case management system, Sentinel. The federal government is legally obligated in a variety
[00:31:59] of circumstances to produce information, but it cannot produce something that it does not know exists. For instance, in criminal cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution's due process guarantee requires the government to disclose material exculpatory and impeachment evidence, right? So material as in like important, very relevant, right? Exculpatory means things that
[00:32:25] may prove you're innocent or impeachment evidence, which is stuff that may undermine the credibility of an agent or a source, a witness. The Department of Justice may rely on the FBI, or sorry, must rely. The DOJ has to rely on the FBI to provide this constitutionally required evidence. This is known
[00:32:51] informally as the Brady slash Giglio evidence named after cases. Giglio, you may have heard this term more locally because a Giglio ruling against a like a detective or like a sheriff who used to be a detective, whatever, like a Giglio ruling would mean that you can't testify because you have something in
[00:33:16] your background. Some, you know, offense, some malpractice that you committed that now makes you an unreliable witness on the stand. And if you get a Giglio on you as a as a cop, like you're basically done because you can never be called to testify. But the FBI cannot possibly properly gather all of this material, this exculpatory and impeachment evidence. If the evidence is invisible to the searcher of the Sentinel database because the
[00:33:45] material is coded prohibited access. While the Brady Giglio rule only applies in the criminal context, the federal government's discovery obligations in civil litigation raise similar concerns. If documents responsive to a discovery request are hidden behind the prohibited access designation, the DOJ might not even know the material exists and thus can't possibly provide it in response to discovery requests.
[00:34:16] Think about all of the litigation that the federal government has been in. And if there is anything in any of those cases that has been withheld from one of the parties that's suing the federal government, I mean, think about environmental projects, right, or litigation without knowing when or why or how often the FBI designates files as prohibited access and whether and if so how the Bureau ensures it provides
[00:34:45] prohibited access evidence, we don't know. It's impossible to assess the scope of the issue. And that is a huge problem. The ramifications of invisible records maintained within Sentinel by use of the prohibited access. The prohibited access designation extend far beyond the realm of criminal prosecutions and civil litigation. The prohibited access designation also thwarts the investigation of potential crimes
[00:35:14] like Nellie or that's what they did. That's what they just found out with the release of the FBI analysis. This thing was prohibited access. It was only through a whistleblower that this came to be known. The FBI knew. The DOJ should have known, right? The FBI should have known. They should have told the DOJ.
[00:35:41] But it was prohibited access. If Sentinel won't even show the existence of responsive documents that are tagged prohibited access, the federal government cannot possibly produce the material in response to FOIA requests. It's like running your own server and then wiping it, you know, like with a cloth, right? When you control who gets to see the stuff
[00:36:10] and then you get to delete stuff out of there when people come snooping around, like that's prima facie evidence. That's the smoking gun. That's why everyone said, oh, you know, where's the smoking gun on Hillary's emails? The existence of the server is the smoking gun. It always was. I wonder if there's anything in the prohibited access files about that. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support
[00:36:38] and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.