How the FBI chief laundered intel to media (08-13-2025--Hour1)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three 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 vpekclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, rite to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Another day, another dump of declassified documents. I do not know where these documents came from. Perhaps they lived in the burn bags stored away in this secret room the FBI headquarters that people were not aware of, and for some reason the bags never got burned. But a whole bunch of documents keep coming out. They keep declassifying under Cash Betel's leadership. And yesterday we went over the report by John Solomon at Justthnews dot com. And by the way, John Solomon has been a longtime journalist in DC. I believe he used to work for The Hill a long time ago, and then he went on his own. I believe it may have been sometime around twenty sixteen, during the first Trump run or administration when it began or something, but just the news has been around for a while. John Solomon is a highly credentialed and respected journalist. Yesterday he had the big write up headlined Democrat whistleblower told FBI that shift Okade leaking classified intel to hurt Trump. Covered that piece that he wrote yesterday. So if you didn't hear it, go back and get the podcast WBT dot com or thepeatpod dot com. It's on all of the podcasting platforms. Today. We have another story this headline. Komy's media mole told FBI he shaped Russia narrative and needed to discount or needed a discount rather to deny leaking intel. And I did not understand what that meant. This was an odd use of the word discount. But essentially, when the FBI finally got around to talking to him about whether or not he was acting as a cutout for Komy to leak classified information to the media, the cutout guy, his name is Daniel Richmond or rich Man north of Richmond. He said, Oh, I'm one hundred percent sure, one hundred percent sure that I never provided any classified intelligence to reporters, But I could only say I'm one hundred percent sure with a discount. What does that mean. It means he's not one hundred percent sure. He doesn't know. So what's the story about. Well, now we have the reports that the FBI generated when they investigated many, many, many leaks, and the leaks were published in multiple stories at the beginning of Trump's first term in twenty seventeen. And so this is much along the lines of what the whistleblower report yesterday documented, which was in twenty seventeen. This Democrat staffer who's an intelligence officer, but he's a Democrat staffer on the House Intelligence Committee. He was told in various ways at various meetings by Adam Schiff, then the ranking minority member on the Intelligence Committee, then he became the chair of the Intel Committee as well as Shift's chief of staff or the leadership on the committee, rather to leak to their favored media people, and the purpose of those leaks was to smear Donald Trump as a Russian asset. This was articulated in the meetings, and this whistleblower went to the DOJ, went to the FBI and told them about this. Of course, the FBI already knew about the attempts to smear Donald Trump as a Russian agent because they knew of the Clinton intelligence plan as it was called, during the twenty sixteen race, and so they never did anything with it. They interviewed the guy like six times over the course of six years, and nothing ever came of it. And so then we got so we got that report yesterday. Oh and by the way, that that whistleblower also named Eric Swalwell, also a Democrat representative from California. Swallwell, I just saw this has responded. This would have been well about two hours ago. He took to the Twitter machine and he said, this whistleblower made this bleep up when Trump was president. If they had anything, they would have indicted me. Trump would have done anything to destroy me if he could have. They didn't indict me. Therefore they had nothing. What's next? And this is the circular logic used in order to defend this criminal activity, which is what that the people that were in charge of these agencies at the time when the whistleblower first came forward were the people that were put in place prior to Trump's arrival, and they had buried this stuff with the super duper top secret clearance or a classification system, and they put them in burn bags and hid them so nobody could actually access the documents. So no, it doesn't prove that. But if I were to adopt his logic, then I guess that means all of his rantings about Trump being in the Epstein files. That doesn't hold any water either, right, because wouldn't have Joe Biden used it against Trump this So this is just a silly argument that he's making because he feels protected by the people that were in charge at that time. That's why they didn't care that he was leaking. Everybody wanted them to leak. This cabal wanted the leaks out there. So no, they're not going to indict you. Also, as we went over yesterday, there was this impression among Shift and Swallwell that they could leak whatever they wanted to because they were covered under a law that protects lawmakers in the House and Senate from libel. Basically, they could go onto the House floor, the Senate floor, they could say whatever they want to. That's why you know, Harry Reid accused Mitt Romney of not paying his taxes, even though that wasn't true, it didn't matter. Harry Reid was protected because when you are on the floor of the House or Senate, you can impugne people, you can smear them, you can libel, slander people, I should say suld you can slander them because it's protected speech. And that's what these guys, these guys thought covered them too. I'm not aware of any court rulings that back up that assertion, but that's what they believed and apparently still do believe, or at least that's what they're going with still because they don't want to get in trouble. So today, the FBI concluded numerous legacy news media stories that crafted the false Russian collusion narrative. These stories contained illegally leaked classified intelligence, but they failed to definitively identify the leakers. They had multiple leak investigations running in that one year, the first year of Trump, they had multiple leak investigations. While they were unable to identify the leakers. According to their reports, agents did force a pretty stunning admission from James Comy, the former FBI director, which is that he used a special conduit to The New York Times, a cutout, as I call them, and the intelligence community would call them too, write these cutouts, So I'm not directly doing this thing, but I'm going to give you the information. You then give it to this other person. And the other person was a New York Times reporter who won a pulletzer for his Russia Gate Russia hoax coverage, and the reason he did this was to polish his image and push for a special prosecutor to take out President Trump. That was the intention. That was the. Stated goal, was to get a special prosecutor so they could indict and impeach and remove from office Donald Trump. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You could 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 fifteen percent off any 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. Got a message on the WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick gmc pete, could you explain what a burn bag is? So Craig and Belmont asking what is a burn bag on the text line, These are bags that you burn, Okay, Um, so you stuff a bunch of you stuff a bunch of classified material into a burn bag in the intelligence agencies, right, and they keep these bags and just stuff, you know, papers, thumb drives, whatever you put stuff in there, and it's supposed to get incinerated, to be destroyed. But for some reason when they were when they came in Cash Betel and his team when they got into the FBI, they found what did they call it a previously unknown skiff, which is a was it secure compartmentalized information facility I think is what it stands for SCIF. And this is where you go into a you go into a room and you can't have a phone, like, you can't take pictures, can't make notes or anything like that. Like you go in there and you just read the documents or view the files or something, and then you leave. And unless you're seeing burglar, you know, Clinton's old aid who smuggled a bunch of documents out of the National Archives. I believe it was because it linked Clinton to nine to eleven failures, and so he stole a bunch of papers and got to slap on the wrist, of course because he's a Democrat. But unless you're Sandy Berger, you're not allowed to take anything out of those rooms. And yeah, so they had piled a bunch of burn bags into this room that was a I think previously unknown or undisclosed skiff. So they found this room and when they started going through this stuff, and that's why we're seeing all of these documents now being declassified. And I think this has got a lot of these conspirators very, very worried as well. It should as well, it should, And I know Democrats don't like seeing these stories and they don't want they just let's just move on. Let's move on. You know, Donald Trump is a threat to the Democrats. He like, that's what they would like to talk about. Ebstein files, Ebstein files, right, because these are the smoking guns. That's why I keep doing these stories whenever this stuff comes out and it confirms rumors that we had heard or previous anonymous based reporting. These are the documents that are proving that this was true. This stuff was true, and the Russia collusion hoax was in fact a hoax and it was perpetrated on the American public by the top intelligence agency leaders and the former president. So who was the cutout for Jim Comey to feed classified intelligence to the New York Times and the Washington Post. It was this guy, Daniel Richman, who's a Columbia University law professor who admit to agents and interviews that he routinely communicated on behalf of Komi, who was a longtime friend of his, and he would communicate on Komy's behalf too. The New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, whose work was among the newspapers twenty eighteen Pulitzer winning stories on Russian election interference Pulitzers, I would point out that they have never returned. They have never returned those Pulitzers, despite the fact that their reporting was incorrect. The goal, according to Richmond, who said this to the FBI, was quote to correct stories critical of Komy the FBI and to shape future press coverage outside of the bureau's official press office. These reports, by the way, newly declassified memos and such were delivered to Congress this week. While Richmond was known to have publicly quoted to have been publicly quoted in news stories as an advocate for Comy, he admitted to the FBI agents who were part of an inquiry that was dubbed Arctic Hayes. That was the name of the investigation, Arctic Hayes. He admitted to these agents that he was given access by Comy to what turned out to be highly classified information and sometimes then provided information to reporters on an anonymous basis. In the end, the Justice Department decided not to pursue any criminal charges against Comy or any of his lieutenants or now Senator Adam Schiff for Brains. None of them are being pursued were pursued for criminal charges potential evidence of leaks, saying that they just they couldn't be sure who leaked what and when. So we know we've got these leakers. We know we have a whistleblower who told us that they were leaking, but we don't know which person on the House Selected Intelligence Committee, and Jim Colemey and John Brennan and James Clapper, we don't know specifically who leaked what piece of information. And so because we can't make that exact connection, we just can't charge our boss. Just The News also revealed this week that a career intel officer who worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for more than a decade repeatedly warned the FBI beginning in twenty seventeen, that Adam Schiff for Brains, had approved leaking classified info to smear then President Donald Trump over the now debunked Russia Gates scandal. Chef has denied the allegation. Newly declassified FBI memos also include details on investigations into other leaks that were classified in nature, and those were dubbed tropic Vortex Foggy Falls riding hood, Sirens, lure echoes, Fate, and Genetic Christmas, which I'm a little that one's a little weird to me. Genetic Christmas I had read a long time ago, like about how they name the operation Enduring Freedom, right, Like how did they come up with these names? And I remember reading a story this was twenty years ago. I want to say, where there's there's like some random generator of letters or something that they just spits out, and so they use the letters and then they just use words to plug in there or something. I don't know if they still do that. I don't know if that's why they called this that. I don't know how they come up with these names, but Janeta Christmas is a weird one. Like GC you could have, like, there are a lot of other things you could have called that anyway. I mean tropic vortex, foggy I mean foggy bottom. That kind of makes some sense. But so they add what one, two, three, four, five, six, seven total leak investigations, and every single one of them they just came up dry. Just never could trace that stuff back America's premier law enforcement agency. Everybody some bang up work. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. 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Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. So I got a. Tweet from Russ who says the naming of FBI operations sounds like they're letting the theater kids do the naming. Or maybe they're subcontracting the names to the same people who make up the names for all of the new pharmaceutical products that are possible sounds possible from the text line Bain says, not being able to make the connection, thus not being able to identify leakers reminds me of Hillary Clinton's tactic of requiring all of her aids to have law licenses. Then if the aid is ever called to testify, he or she would refuse citing attorney client privilege. Creating a lot of moving parts or just overwhelming a system in just about any situation makes it so much easier to deflect and deny in the public simply gets worn out trying to follow along, so little ever happens. Sadly. In fact, Bain, this guy Rich Shman, who was friends with Komy and was his cutout to give classified information to reporters. When Comy was fired by Donald Trump, Comy hired Richmond as his lawyer. He did precisely that. Yeah, like that, that's pretty standard. So who are these reporters at the New York Times. You've got Mike Schmidt, You've got Matt Opuzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau at the Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima, Karun Demerjian, and Devlen Barrett at the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins Junior. Richmond always defended Comy, and he said he saw his role as this is him talking about Jim Comy. Jim saw his role as a political and independent and the okay and the FBI director, even as he reports to the Aty attorney general often has to stand apart from his boss. See, this is the myth that like, I'm separate, I'm I'm not Obama's wingman like Eric Holder was when he was Attorney general. Right, Like, this is a separate position, no outside influence. You can't have the president influencing these chiefs of the Intel agencies, unless, of course, your name is Barack Obama and you want to create a smear of Donald Trump that will then dovetail into the leaking of the Clinton intelligence plan, which was the Steele dossier, the Alpha Bank smear, the all of that. The Times article wrongly argued that in the case of the Trump Russia investigation, Comy conducted the investigation by the book, right, And we know that that was not true because of the investigations into the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. It was not done by the book. We have been detailing it now with the release of more declassified information that no, actually it wasn't by the book, which was why only three out of the like nearly two dozen intelligence agencies signed off on the Intelligence Community assessment that was then leaked to the media to smear Trump and to get the Steele dossier into circulation. Only the DNI James Clapper, the CIA John Brennan, and the FBI Jim Comey. Those are the only ones that signed off on it. And they were also those agencies were the ones that met with Obama in October. They were like, we have to we have to redo this or sorry, excuse me. In December and they said we have to redraft the Intelligence Community assessment because it did not include the Steele dossier, and it did not go far enough in making this lie of a connection between Putin and Trump. The FBI closed the investigation into the leak in early September twenty twenty one. So they investigated this leak for four years. The FBI said that quote, investigators learned that FBI Office of Public Affairs was told also to assist The New York Times with the April twenty seventeen article. That Comy either directed or otherwise authorized FBI's official assistance to the New York Times. So he ordered you know who, he ordered, by the way, to give what was called an investigative brief into the New York Times. There were two people. There were two people that he sent, Peter Struck and Lisa Page. That's who he sent to brief the New York Times. Yeah, the disgraced and fired FBI special agent Peter Struck, who now has a nifty gig as a talking head an analyst over at either is it I forget? Is it CNN or MSNBC I forget? Along with his paramore, his colleague with whom he was having an affair, the FBI lawyer Lisa Page. They appear to have been involved in the briefing of the Times. According to the FBI memos, Dean, Welcome to the show. Hello Dean, how are you man? What do you say? Their teeth? How's it going, tom? No, you know, I'm not bleeding from my years and I'm vertical, So like that's that's a. Good day, Always a good day. So Hey, I had an opportunity to work at the Defense Intelligence Agency for a while as a as a sit in intelligence analyst. As you might say, just a little backstory. I'm a retired Green Beret and I had been in the country of Columbia, and so in order to keep the civilians that work on a day to day basis in the specific country areas, DIA likes to put people in their departments that have been on the ground and kind of have an idea of what's actually happening happening in that country. So I heard a question about a burn bag. If you picture that you're some type of a desk bound person that deals with intelligence sensitive items, you can't get up and leave your desk three hundred times a day and burn a piece of information that might be sensitive that doesn't need to be put in a storage cabinet. So you would have a bag that is specially marked in certain ways that everybody knows the classification of the information that's put in that bag, whether it's stop secret or secret, or higher or lower. And so once you get all that weeks build up or day build up, whatever it is, then you close that bag and you take it to someone who's actually in an incinerator room or a firebarrel. But it's a collection point for sensitive information that needs to be burned on a timely basis. How about that. There you go. That's a good explanation, Dean. Good to hear from you, my man, I got to run. I appreciate it, No problem, all right, buddy, Yeah, that's aye, the burn bag system. Somebody was asking about that on the text line. All the information I know about a burn bag now now comes from Dean. Before that, it was just movies. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven, in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com so you may recall the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. He wrote a report. It was released in August of twenty nineteen. I'm old enough to remember this. I know it's ancient history. He criticized Jim Comey's decision to leak his so called comy memos, including details about Trump's alleged comments about Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. He leaked these to the media in twenty seventeen, in an effort by the then fired FBI director to spur the appointment of a special council. That's how that happened. Horowitz wrote that his investigation interviewed seventeen witnesses, including former Director Comy and his cutout, Daniel Richmond, the individual who, at Komy's request, shared the contents of one of Comy's memos with a reporter. Remember, Comy did this interview where he was like, I get out of the meeting with the President. I would just think, Oh my gosh, I can't believe he said that stuff. And he just started taking notes about everything. Those were his memos, and then he handed him off to Richmond, and Richmond handed him off to The New York Times. Komy told Horowitz that the day after being fired by Trump, he retained Richmond as an attorney. Quote. We had previously faulted Comy for acting unilaterally and inconsistent with department policy, Horrowitz wrote in the report. Comy's unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information about the Flynn investigation merits similar criticism. Coomy admitted in twenty seventeen that he had hoped that leaking the information would prompt the appointment of a special council. Horowitz concluded Comy's leaks quote were an attempt to force the Department to take official investigative actions. Horowitz sent a criminal referral to the DOJ over Jim Comey's memos. At the time, the DOJ did not prosecute him. Komy's efforts were successful because Robert Muller was appointed Special counsel within days of the Komy memo leaks that were published in The New York Times. So it worked much like Harry Reid's lie against Mitt Romney. And when asked about the lie, he said, well, he didn't win. Did he see the ends justify the means? An article in The Times written by Michael Schmidt was titled Comy memo says Trump asked him to end Flynn investigation right because Trump was saying, why are you going after Mike Flynn? And by the way, what was Mike Flynn accused of doing? You remember talking about sanctions with the Russian ambassador or Russian guy or whatever, when in fact, what Mike Flynn was saying was, Hey, you know we're coming in. It's going to be a new administration, and you know, don't retaliate against these sanctions that Obama just slapped on you on his way out the door in order to jam up Trump. But like just pulled off. You know, we're coming in. There. Weren't any promises made or anything like that. An article in The Times. That article in The Times was then used by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Muller as a special counsel the very next day. After two years. Muller did not establish any criminal Trump Russia collusion. Oh and by the way, I did get a message on the text line of Joe Biden. Remember, moved stuff out of the skiff too. It wasn't just Sandy Berger. Newly declassified FBI memos also detail a host of other failed or botched classified leak's investigations, which all made their way into legacy media. Tropic vortex. This was March twenty seventeen. Thisy're all the same timeframe, this one year. This one was led to a New York Times story. Komy asks Justice Department to reject Trump's wiretapping claims that was a leak and Trump's claim was correct, right. The predicate was a lie. The guy who filled out the FIS of court warrant application was disbarred. I mean he's a Democrat, so he's back practicing again, but he was disbarred for lying on the warrant about carter Page. Foggy Falls was a Washington Post investigation based on their mid April twenty seventeen story FBI obtained PIS a warrant to monitor former Trump advisor Carter Page. See, all of these leaks were all done to shut down and shut down any kind of opposition to what they were doing, what they were engaged in into smear Trump as a Russian agent. It's all very clear. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support 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 could also be I'm a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.