Citizen Submits Jander/OMB Article to U.S. Attorney John Durham

IS TRUMP BEING “FRAMED” BY THE “DEEP STATE?”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 16, 2019) — On Monday morning, New York State citizen Robert Laity submitted a “Citizen’s Complaint Form” to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham containing a reference and link to an article published Sunday evening at The Post & Email titled, “OMB is Framing Trump for Impeachment and Removal” written by retired attorney “Ren Jander.”

At the direction of Attorney General William Barr, Durham is conducting a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative which was proven unsubstantiated by a 22-month-long, $35 million investigation led by former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.

Jander’s most recent article alleges that in a December 11, 2019 letter from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) General Counsel Mark Paoletta to Government Accountability Office (GAO) General Counsel Tom Armstrong, Paoletta “lied to the GAO’s General Counsel by inventing, out of thin air, a non-existent statutory requirement that DoS issue a CN fifteen-days before apportioning the FMF funds” where “DoS” is “Department of State”; “CN” stands for “Congressional Notification”; and “FMF” signifies “Foreign Military Financing.”

In a series of recent posts, Jander has contended that President Trump did not delay the delivery of funds appropriated by Congress to Ukraine for “security assistance,” as Democrats in the House of Representatives have claimed and upon which two Articles of Impeachment passing out of the House Judiciary Committee Friday are now based.

In an article published Thursday, Jander wrote, “For fiscal year 2019, the Department of Defense (DoD) appropriations act gave $250 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI).  And in the 2019 Department of State (DoS) appropriations act, $115 million was granted to Ukraine for the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program.”

In Sunday’s article, he further expounded:

Before 2019 FMF funds were appropriated by Congress for Ukraine, the Department of State was required to justify its request for Ukraine’s allotment prior to enactment legislation.  Congress considered the DoS request then drafted legislation based upon their own considerations as well, and eventually the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019 was passed.  $115 million to Ukraine for FMF is specifically provided in an allocation table of the Conference Report attached to the legislation.  As such, this amount does not require any separate CN prior to apportionment and subsequent obligation.  Paoletta’s letter – in a desperately bold falsehood – states that a CN was required prior to apportionment.

On December 9, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report faulting the FBI for failing to report all relevant information to Justice Department officials when the agency applied for four continuous FISA warrants on 2016 Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last Wednesday and under questioning by Chairman Lindsey Graham, Horowitz stated that the omissions and other erroneous information submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) were “pretty bad.”

Following the release of the Horowitz report, both Barr and Durham issued statements taking issue with Horowitz’s conclusion that the FBI’s counterintelligence probe of the 2016 Trump campaign appeared to have been properly predicated.  Horowitz’s report stated that his investigators “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page” (p. 11 of PDF).

One referral for criminal investigation of an FBI attorney was made as a result of his probe, Horowitz testified, after the individual was found to have altered an email to presumably add credence to the surveillance warrant application for Page.

In addition, Horowitz found that a “sub-source” for a set of reports known as the “Steele dossier” used as the main evidence to obtain the Page warrants cast credible doubt on the dossier’s contents in January 2017, but the FBI continued to seek surveillance capabilities on Page through the middle of that year, approximately six months into Donald Trump’s presidency.

In his Sunday article, Jander expressed his belief that “the DoS, DoD, and most blatantly, the OMB, are using technical double-speak to frame President Trump for impeachment and removal by the Senate for holding back security assistance from Ukraine, when, truth be told, Trump actually increased Ukraine FMF funding from $115 million to $141.5 million,” terming those involved “arrogant deep state actors.”

Laity’s submission to Durham’s office reads as follows (The Post & Email redacted personal information):

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