Atty. Larry Klayman: DNI Resignation “Likely” Spurred by Former NSA Contractor Dennis Montgomery

“THE POTENTIAL FOR COERCION AND BLACKMAIL”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Nov. 17, 2016) — In an email notification to subscribers and a post on his “Freedom Watch” website on Thursday, former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman stated that the resignation of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper Wednesday evening is “likely” connected to former NSA and CIA contractor Dennis Montgomery.

After former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed to The Guardian in June 2013 that the NSA was collecting virtually all email and telephonic communications of American citizens whether or not they are suspected of having committed a crime, Klayman filed a lawsuit citing Fourth Amendment violations on the part of Verizon Business cellular telephone customers, of whom he was one. In a December 2013 landmark decision, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon sided with Klayman.

Klayman believes the ruling, although appealed by the government, led to the replacement of the USA Patriot Act, passed just after the 9/11 attacks, with the USA Freedom Act last year.

“There is likely an untold story about this apparently forced resignation,” Klayman wrote. “Notwithstanding that Freedom Watch, our clients and I succeeded in filing suit against the NSA for the unconstitutional Fourth Amendment violations involved, and obtained two preliminary injunctions in the last three years after the revelations of Edward Snowden, a client of Freedom Watch, Dennis Montgomery, a former NSA/CIA contractor, had during this time come forward to FBI Director James Comey and his staff and disclosed that Clapper has been involved in additional massive illegal spying on hundreds of judges, including the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, prominent businessmen and tens of thousands of others. Montgomery received immunity to come forward to the FBI, and he turned over and testified about scores of hard drives he turned over showing Clapper’s involvement in large part with the illegal spying, that has the potential for coercion and blackmail.”

Further, Klayman described Clapper’s departure as a “surprise.”

Klayman represents Montgomery in a defamation lawsuit against New York Times writer and book author James Risen as well as in Montgomery’s meetings last year with the FBI, when Mongtomery was granted two separate immunity agreements by the agency.

On January 1, 2016, Klayman wrote in a WNC column that Montgomery possessed “explosive information about the sort of criminal conduct disclosed by not just Edward Snowden, but now the Wall Street Journal,” which at the time The Post & Email described as “referring to an article…contending that the Obama regime used the National Security Agency‘s spying capabilities to capture conversations among Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, American Jewish organizations, and members of Congress, particularly in regard to the Iranian nuclear “deal” the Obama regime negotiated last year.”

Directly after Snowden made his revelations to The Guardian, there was speculation that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, mentioned in Klayman’s press release today, could have been a victim of “blackmail” or “intimidation” when he reportedly reversed his stance on the “individual mandate” of the Affordable Care Act, identified as Obama’s “signature” legislation, the previous June when he upheld the mandate using a rationale not presented during oral argument.

In June 2015, Roberts upheld the ACA’s provision of a federal healthcare exchange despite the law’s wording specifying “exchanges created by the state.”

For approximately a year between March 2014 and March 2015, Montgomery worked as a confidential informant to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) after contacting Sheriff Joseph Arpaio and alleging that a government entity or entities had breached more than 150,000 bank accounts of his constituents.  Arpaio had also been told that the MCSO’s telephones and the email accounts of a number of federal judges, including Snow, had been breached.

Montgomery’s work for the MCSO became a flashpoint during hearings last year in a racial profiling case presided over by U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow, after which Snow found Arpaio and three of his deputies in civil contempt of court.  Snow then made a referral for criminal contempt, which is currently being pursued by the U.S. Justice Department.

While the local media speculated as to whether or not a criminal contempt referral with the possible ramifications of fines and jail time would emerge from the hearings in the civil suit, it showed no curiosity as to whose bank accounts might have been compromised or when.

The Justice Department announced that it would prosecute Arpaio on the same day on which early voting commenced in Arizona.  Arpaio had been seeking a seventh term as Maricopa County sheriff, a bid he lost to Democrat Paul Penzone on November 8.

In September 2011, Arpaio commissioned his volunteer “Cold Case Posse” to investigate the origins of the long-form birth certificate image posted on the White House website purported to be that of Barack Hussein Obama after several experts condemned it as a poor forgery.

In March 2012, Zullo and Arpaio had announced in a press conference that after six months of investigation, they had concluded that there was probable cause to believe that the long-form birth certificate is a “computer-generated forgery.” The investigation remains ongoing but is expected to conclude before January 1, 2017.

In an interview last Thursday, CCP lead investigator Mike Zullo told radio show host Carl Gallups that Snow had “blown up” the investigatory work Montgomery had been performing by demanding answers from Arpaio and others to questions during the civil contempt hearings.  Snow also demanded that Montgomery’s work product be turned over to him as well as to the monitor Snow had assigned to oversee the MCSO’s compliance with his orders issued earlier in the case.

Represented by Klayman, Montgomery had attempted to intervene during the hearings to protest Snow’s order, a request denied by both Snow and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Zullo has confirmed that although Arpaio stated that Montgomery had produced “junk” to the MCSO, some of the information he provided proved useful. “Montgomery did have some things,” Zullo told The Post & Email last December.

In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 11, 2013, just after Snowden made his information public, Clapper responded to the question “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” with “Not wittingly.”

In his press release on Thursday, Klayman said that Clapper “perjured himself before Congress by testifying under oath that the National Security (NSA) and other intelligence agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were not collecting massive amounts of telephonic and internet metadata on hundreds of millions of innocent American citizens.”

According to the AP, “Clapper had intended to resign by end [sic] of Obama Administration.” While NBC News stated that Clapper’s resignation is “not a surprise,” Business Insider reported that “Clapper was expected to leave his post after President Barack Obama finished his term, but the announcement of his resignation came earlier than anticipated.”

The resignation states that he will leave his post on January 17.