Former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo didn’t listen to Dr. Zev Zelenko about Covid-19. Don’t be a Cuomo. Dr. Zelenko’s new Z-Dtox and Z-Stack nutraceuticals come highly recommended by many doctors.
The indictment of Washington attorney Michael Sussman — accused of lying to the FBI in order to smear Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign — reveals the ace up the sleeve of high-powered Democrats. It’s a card they played time and again to advance the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory: friends in high places.
They used friends in law enforcement to launch secret investigations; they used friends in the federal government to broaden those investigations; and they used friends in the media to spread the word about Trump and his organization being under investigation.
The Russia fiasco metastasized in large part because those involved in advancing the false allegations had important connections. They used friendships with powerful federal officials to encourage investigations against team Trump. Those targeted by Sussmann and others were unabashed outsiders, and as such lacked the sort of connections the insiders exploited so adroitly.
Sussmann was a partner at the Washington law firm Perkins Coie in 2016, which represented the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. But, according to the indictment handed down by Special Counsel John Durham last week, when he met with the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, to allege that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians, Sussmann claimed he was representing another client. The indictment alleges this was false.
Securing a meeting with the FBI’s top lawyer can’t have been easy. But for Sussmann it was.
Not just anyone can call up the bureau’s general counsel and, with amorphous claims of conspiratorial criminality by a presidential candidate, promptly get a private sit-down. And yet that is exactly what Sussmann did. How? Because, as Baker told congressional investigators, Sussmann came to him “based on a preexisting relationship.”
In closed-door congressional testimony Oct. 18, 2018, Baker told lawmakers about Sussmann’s convoluted claim that a computer server at Trump Tower was in secret contact with a possible Russian government cutout, Alfa Bank. “So he was describing a – what appeared to be a surreptitious channel of communications – communication between some part of President Trump’s, I’ll say organization but it could be his businesses. I don’t mean like The Trump Organization, per se. I mean his enterprises with which he was associated. Some part of that and a – an organization associated with – a Russian organization associated with the Russian government,” and it was “conducted in a way so as to make it a covert communications channel.”
When Baker asked him how he came upon this information, Sussmann, according to Baker, said “that there were some cyber experts that somehow would come across this information and brought it somehow to his attention, and that they were alarmed at what it showed, and that, therefore, they wanted to bring it to the attention of the FBI.”
Build your own med-kit by filling it with various Med Packs of your choosing. You know what you need.
Asked for the names of the “experts,” Baker said, “I don’t think I ever found out who these experts were.”
Faced with flimsy sourcing for an abstruse allegation, Baker might have been expected to ask a lawyer whose firm was closely aligned with the Democratic Party some probing questions. But if he did, that’s now lost in a cloud of foggy recollection. “I can’t remember,” Baker told members of Congress when asked if he knew Sussmann was billing the DNC and the Clinton campaign for his time talking with Baker. “I don’t specifically remember when I learned that. So I don’t know that I had that in my head when he showed up in my office. I just can’t remember.”
“I just find that unbelievable,” Rep. Jim Jordan replied, “that the guy representing the Clinton campaign, the Democrat National Committee, shows up with information that says we got this, and you don’t ask where he got it, you didn’t know how he got it. But he got it from some, you know, quote, expert.”
Jordan asked Baker whether Sussmann ever mentioned he “may have got some of this information from the Democratic National Committee?”
“I am not sure what I knew about that at the time,” Baker said – a failure of memory that Sussmann’s lawyers are sure to take advantage of.
Baker suggested it was a mystery why Sussmann reached out to him – and then repeatedly made it clear exactly why Sussmann saw him as a possible collaborator. “I had a personal relationship with Michael,” Baker said, but “you’d have to ask him why he decided to pick me.”
“And so what you’re saying is you were the intermediary between Perkins Coie and the FBI because of your personal relationship with that attorney?” then-Rep. Mark Meadows asked.
“I believe so,” Baker answered – but he did so with the caveat: “You’d have to ask Michael why he came to me.” One plausible answer Sussmann could have given was that going to Baker was the best way to achieve his goal – after all, Baker did pass the information on to bureau investigators, and there would soon be stories in Slate and the New York Times telling of an FBI “probe” into Trump and Russia.
We don’t allow Google ads here. We won’t post foot fungus treatments or soft-porn ads like other conservative news outlets. We WILL support MyPillow because they love America. You can support them and me by using promo code “JDR” at checkout.
For his part, Sussmann told congressional investigators that when he met with Baker, he told him “I wasn’t looking for the FBI to do anything. I had no ask. I had no requests.”
Sussmann wasn’t the only old friend feeding Russia conspiracy stories to James Baker. In the fall of 2016, another Washingtonian with the general counsel’s ear was David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones.
“David had part of what is now referred to as the Steele dossier and he talked to me about that and wanted to provide that to the FBI,” Baker told lawmakers. “And so, even though he was my friend, I was also an FBI official. He knew that. And so he wanted to somehow get that into the hands of the FBI.”
How did a Mother Jones reporter/columnist get chosen to drop a dime on Trump with the FBI?
“David is a friend of mine”
“Longtime friend?”
“Longtime friend.”
“When did you first meet Mr. Corn?”
When preparing for societal collapse, don’t forget the water!
“Years and years and years ago,” Baker said to congressional investigators. “Our kids carpooled together. We carpooled with them when our kids were little.”
As with the materials from Sussmann, Baker took dossier sections from David Corn and passed them on to FBI counterintelligence agents.
Having such relationships was seen not as a liability, not as a risk of bias, but instead as something that boosts the credibility of those passing along information.
Consider former British agent Christopher Steele, who had a knack for cultivating friends in high places. In 2007 he met Bruce Ohr at an organized crime conference. They would continue to meet about once or twice a year, whenever Ohr was in London or Steele was in Washington. Orbis, the private intelligence firm Steele formed after he left MI6, produced a steady stream of short reports; Steele shared them with Ohr. Their friendship developed to the point that, in the spring of 2010, Ohr connected Steele with the FBI and “pushed” for the bureau to make his friend a paid FBI informant, a “confidential human source.” The relationship he built over the years with Ohr would prove helpful when Ohr became one of the highest ranking career officials at the Department of Justice, associate deputy attorney general – especially since Steele wasn’t the only one cultivating a connection with Bruce Ohr.
Ohr had also become “personally acquainted” with Glenn Simpson at the same sort of policy conferences year after year. That relationship was reinforced when the opposition research firm Simpson co-founded, Fusion GPS, hired Ohr’s wife, Nellie, as an independent contractor.
When it came time for Steele to tap Ohr in launching a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Steele used all the trappings of friendship among international sophisticates: He took the Ohrs to breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
Not long before the 2016 election, Christopher Steele had a falling out with the FBI, which had discovered he was not honoring the “confidential” part of his agreement to be a confidential human source. But thanks to Steele and Simpson’s relationships with Bruce Ohr, Steele’s ability to influence the FBI was not lost. He began to funnel his spurious tales through Bruce Ohr to the bureau. Lawmakers asked James Baker why the FBI — having shut down Steele as an official source — turned to Bruce Ohr as a way to continue gathering information from Steele. Baker saw Ohr’s friendship with Steele as an asset, not a liability: “Bruce,” Baker said, “had some type of preexisting relationship with the source.”
Ohr wasn’t the only official Steele cultivated; he had also become pals with Jonathan Winer sometime around 2000. During the Obama administration, Winer was a top State Department officer. And while at Foggy Bottom, Winer didn’t forget his old friend from London. For years, Winer encouraged colleagues at State to read the research reports produced by Steele’s private intel company, Orbis. Winer distributed well over 100 of Steele’s intel memos to Victoria Nuland’s State Department Eurasia team.
The economy is tanking. We recommend two America First precious metals companies. Our Gold Guy delivers personal service with no gimmicks. JD GoldCo offers a wide array of products. You can’t go wrong with either (or both).
He also promoted Steele himself: “Toria and Paul, Three reports from Orbis,” Winer wrote in a November 2014 email, showing his nickname and first-name basis with “Toria” Nuland and Paul W. Jones, her deputy. He added, “The man behind them and Orbis, Chris Steele (as previously mentioned, former MI6 Russia expert, and a trusted friend of mine) is in DC next couple of days. If you’d like to meet with him, let me know and I can put it together.” Winer promoted Steele’s dossier with no less vigor and enthusiasm, distributing it among his friends at State.
From Michael Sussmann’s relationship with the FBI’s general counsel, Jim Baker, to Baker’s friendship with David Corn of Mother Jones; from Bruce Ohr’s long connection with Christopher Steele to Steele’s decade-long association with Jonathan Winer, the stealthy dissemination of allegations against Trump, his businesses and his staff remains a blueprint of how Washington works.
Image by Victoria Jones/AP Photo. Article cross-posted from Real Clear Investigations.
Too Few Are Telling the Truth
Not long ago, conservative media was not beholden to anyone. Today, most sites are stuck on the Big Tech gravy train.
I’ll keep this short. The rise of Pandemic Panic Theater, massive voter fraud, and other “taboo” topics have neutered a majority of conservative news sites. You’ll notice they are very careful about what topics they tackle. Sure, they’ll attack Critical Race Theory, Antifa, and the Biden-Harris regime, but you won’t see them going after George Soros, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, or the Deep State, among others.
The reason is simple. They are beholden to Big Tech, and Big Tech doesn’t allow certain topics to be discussed or they’ll cut you off. Far too many conservative news outlets rely on Google, Facebook, and Twitter for the bulk of their traffic. They depend on big checks from Google ads to keep the sites running. I don’t necessarily hold it against them. We all do what we need to do to survive. I just wish more would do like we have, which is to cut out Big Tech altogether.
We don’t get Google checks. We don’t have Facebook or Twitter buttons on our stories. We don’t have a YouTube Channel (banned), and Instagram profile (never made one), or a TikTok (no thanks, CCO). We’re not perfect, but we’re doing everything we can to not owe anything to anyone… other than our readers. We owe YOU the truth. We owe YOU the facts that others won’t reveal about topics that others won’t tackle. And we owe America, this great land that allows us to take hold of these opportunities.
Like I said, I don’t hold other conservative sites under too much scrutiny over their choices. It’s easy for people to point fingers when we’re not the ones paying their bills or supporting their families. I just wish there were more who would break away. Today, only a handful of other major conservative news outlets have broken away from the Big Tech teat. Of course, we need help.
The best way you can help us grow and continue to bring proper news and opinions to the people is by donating. We appreciate everything, whether a dollar or $10,000. Anything brings us closer to a point of stability when we can hire writers, editors, and support staff to make the America First message louder. Our Giving Fuel page makes it easy to donate one-time or monthly. Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal or Bitcoin as well. Bitcoin: 3A1ELVhGgrwrypwTJhPwnaTVGmuqyQrMB8
Build your own med-kit by filling it with various Med Packs of your choosing. You know what you need.
Our network is currently comprised of nine sites:
- NOQ Report
- Conservative Playlist
- Truth. Based. Media.
- Freedom First Network
- Based Underground
- Uncanceled News
- American Conservative Movement
- Conservative Playbook
- Our Gold Guy
We are also building partnerships with great conservative sites like The Liberty Daily and The Epoch Times to advance the message as loudly as possible, and we’re always looking for others with which to partner.
Also, we could use contributions of content. If you write or want to start writing and you share our patriotic, conservative, America First ideology, contact us. The contact form on this and all pages on the site goes directly to me.
Some of our content is spread across multiple sites. Other pieces of content are unique. We write most of what we post but we also draw from those willing to allow us to share their quality articles, videos, and podcasts. We collect the best content from fellow conservative sites that give us permission to republish them. We’re not ego-driven; I’d much rather post a properly attributed story written by experts like Dr. Joseph Mercola or Natural News than rewrite it like so many outlets like to do. We’re not here to take credit. We’re here to spread the truth.
While donations are the best way to help, you can also support us by buying through our sponsors:
- MyPillow: Use promo code “NOQ” to get up to 66% off AND you’ll be helping a patriotic, America First company.
- Freedom Phone: Use promo code “MAGA” and get $50 off AND you’ll be helping a patriotic, America First company.
- OurGoldGuy: Tell them we sent you in your request to buy gold and it will help us… AND (wait for it) you’ll be helping a patriotic, America First company.
We know we could make a lot more money if we sold out like so many “conservative” publications out there. You won’t find Google ads on our site for a reason. Yes, they’re lucrative, but I don’t like getting paid by minions of Satan (I don’t like Google very much if you couldn’t tell).
Time is short. As the world spirals towards The Great Reset, the need for truthful journalism has never been greater. But in these times, we need as many conservative media voices as possible. Please help keep NOQ Report and the other sites in the network going. Our promise is this: We will never sell out America. If that means we’re going to struggle for a while or even indefinitely, so be it. Integrity first. Truth first. America first.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
Calories = Survival. Buy 364,720 Calories of delicious food today. Heck, buy two.
Bitcoin: 32SeW2Ajn86g4dATWtWreABhEkiqxsKUGn
Yes, We Need Your Help
I hate being “that guy” who asks people to donate because I think our conservative news network is so crucial, but here I am…
When I left my cushy corporate job in 2017, I did so knowing that my family would have to make sacrifices. But I couldn’t continue to watch the nation slip into oblivion and was inspired by President Trump’s willingness to fight the good fight even at his own personal expense. What I didn’t realize then is that conservative media would be so heavily attacked, canceled, and defunded that the sacrifices would be extreme.
Many in this nation are struggling right now even though we weren’t struggling just a few years ago. I’m not alone. But I wake up every morning and operate the sites we’ve been able to build because there’s really no other choice. I refuse to be beholden to Big Tech like so many other conservative news outlets, which is why you won’t see Google ads here. With that said, it’s often challenging to pay the bills and it’s even harder to expand so we can get the America First message out to a wider audience.
The economic downturn has forced me to make a plea for help. Between cancel culture, lockdowns, and diminishing ad revenue, we need financial assistance in order to continue to spread the truth. We ask all who have the means, please donate through our new GiveSendGo. Your generosity is what keeps these sites running and allows us to expand our reach so the truth can get to the masses. We’ve had great success in growing but we know we can do more with your assistance.
We currently operate:
- NOQ Report
- Conservative Playlist
- Uncanceled News
- Based Underground
- Truth Based Media
- Five other conservative news sites
I would even be willing to entertain investments and partnerships at this stage. I’ve turned them down in the past because editorial purity is extremely important. I’ll turn them down again if anyone wants us to start supporting RINOs or avoid “taboo” topics like voter fraud, vaccines, or transgender supremacy. But I’d talk to fellow America First patriots who want to help any (or all) of our 10 news sites. Hit me up at jdrucker (at) substack (dot) com if you’re interested.
For those who have the means and just want to help keep the mission of spreading a conservative, Christian message to the nation, please consider a generous donation.
Right now MyPillow, is BOGO. Use promo code “JDR” at checkout for maximum discounts and Ultra MAGA.