by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 8, 2020) — In the wake of what is suspected by many Americans and the president himself to be large-scale fraud in the November 3 general election, an internet frenzy has ensued in which those seeking answers are at one point or another taking notice of the claim that an alleged government super-computer dubbed “The Hammer” was used to alter votes from Donald Trump to Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the wee hours of November 4, 2020.

Credible claims of vote manipulation have been made by Attys. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, both of whom have filed cases against the​ state of Georgia alleging widespread, systemic election fraud involving Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic equipment, among other causes.

Powell has filed federal lawsuits in Wisconsi​n and​ Michigan​ alleging similar malfeasance and voter disenfranchisement. In the Michigan case, one of Powell’s affiants, Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia, invoked “The​ Hammer,” quoting former NSA program developer J. Kirk Wiebe, Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (Ret), and Dennis Montgomery, who the affiant incorrectly identified as a “former CIA analyst.”

Montgomery is, in fact, the only source of the uncorroborated “Hammer” narrative, which dates back to at least 2013. A former NSA and CIA contractor, Montgomery emerged in late 2013, four months​ after Edward Snowden revealed​ the extent of the NSA’s data-collection on average Americans, to claim “The Hammer,” a computer surveillance system Montgomery claims he built for the CIA, had performed a similar function, including spying on Donald Trump, 156 federal judges, “Infowars” host Alex Jones, then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, Supreme Court justices and other prominent figures.

In October 2013, Montgomery contacted ​Arpaio with the claim that he possessed documentation showing that more than 150,000 of his constituents were victims of government-initiated bank-account breaches.  Believing the information Montgomery initially provided warranted an investigation, Arpaio hired Montgomery as a confidential informant, an arrangement which lasted through 2014, during which time Det. Brian Mackiewicz and “Cold Case Posse” lead investigator Mike Zullo were appointed to oversee the project.

Up to that point, Montgomery’s background included the infamous label by Playboy Magazin​e​ of “The Man Who Conned the Pentagon” for allegedly claiming to have invented software with the ability to detect hidden messages in al-Jazeera broadcasts at a time when the nation and world remained on high alert following the attacks of 9/11.  Montgomery’s 2006 split with eTreppid co-founder Warren Trepp ended in an undisclosed settlement of the company’s assets following an FBI investigation ​into the company’s Air Force contracts during which Montgomery’s former coworkers expressed concerns about his conduct and ultimate disappearance, after which they discovered the source code to their computers to be missing.

In September 2008, Montgomery was arrested for allegedly writing a million-dollar check to a Las Vegas casino with insufficient funds.  The 2010 indictment on five felony counts remains open, with the next hearing scheduled for March 2021, according to the district attorney’s office.  All criminal defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

In a new twist on a seven-year-old narrative, Montgomery now reportedly claims that while he was employed as a government contractor, he invented software for the CIA called “Scorecard” which operates on The Hammer super-computer and can alter vote tabulations by surreptitiously breaching election servers remotely, changing the count for the preferred candidate without leaving a digital footprint and thereby making the operation undetectable. Montgomery claims his software was used in the 2020 presidential election, albeit without producing any evidence to support the claim.

Zullo has told The Post & Email that Montgomery has made multiple claims in the past but has been unable to produce any critical​ evidence​ supporting his claims even after he has promised to do so. Thus far, this most recent claim appears to be following that pattern.

For the last nearly-four years, Mary Fanning and Alan Jones, writing for The American Report​, have presented “The Hammer” narrative against the backdrop of the Obama regime as well as current events. Until very recently, Fanning and Jones accurately claime​d their first​ article concerning “The Hammer” was published March 17, 2017, but they now say they “broke the story in 2015,” a claim that Zullo contends, and we will prove, is absolutely false.   

In an interview with “Crowdsource the Truth” host Jason Goodman in July of last year, Fanning and Jones claimed  they have been reporting on “The Hammer” “since 2014.” 

“That’s laughable, because in 2014, the investigation was unfolding;  there’s no way she could have known,” Zullo remarked.  “Only five people in the sheriff’s office knew what we were doing.”

“The Hammer” Broke in Phoenix in November 2015

Present during Arpaio’s federal trial in Phoenix in November​ 2015, reporter Stephen Lemons, who then wrote for The Phoenix New Times​ and closely followed the trial, on November 16, 2015 published an article​ in which he quoted from recordings played during court proceedings referring to Montgomery and “The Hammer.” Lemons additionally uploaded the recordings, which Zullo had made in an official law-enforcement capacity of Montgomery’s interactions with Zullo and Mackiewicz during the Sheriff’s Office investigation.

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/joe-arpaios-posse-investigatormike-zullos-secret-recordings-7823417

Lemons had mentioned “The Hammer” once before, in June 2014, quoting a source claiming to know the nature of Montgomery’s work for the MCSO. “‘[Montgomery] says he worked for the CIA on a project called Hammer [and] collected data similar to Snowden’s,’ the source says,” Lemons wrote, with his source referring to former CIA and NSA employee Edward Snowden.

James Risen, author of the 2014 book, “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,” dedicated a full chapter to Montgomery’s ultimately-unsubstantiated claim to the U.S. intelligence community about his invention of the al-Jazeera-decoding software. While not invoking “The Hammer,” on page 53, summarizing Montgomery’s claims and the government response, Risen wrote:

Today, Dennis Montgomery continues to argue that he is not a fraud, that his technology is genuine, and that he performed highly sensitive and valuable work for the CIA and the Pentagon. After former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents from the NSA’s domestic surveillance operations in 2013, Montgomery suggested to me that he could provide the documents that would prove not only that he had been telling the truth, but that he had also been used used by top intelligence officials in highly questionable intelligence operations.

But Montgomery has never provided the documents to back up his assertions.

Following the publication of Risen’s book, Montgomery would file suit, claiming Rison defamed him by stating that Montgomery’s claims about his software were unsubstantiated. However, an order from a federal magistrate to Montgomery to produce the software in question, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote in an opinion on July 15, 2016, resulted in Montgomery’s “objections” to the order. Contreras dismissed Montgomery’s claims and, on appeal, his decision was upheld. Of their reasoning, the three-judge appellate panel wrote, in part:

Faced with a court order directing Montgomery to provide the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) with instructions on how to pinpoint the relevant software among the volumes of software in its possession, and requiring that he turn over the software to Risen within a ten-day period, Montgomery failed to comply…

The recordings played in court and leaked to Lemons, Zullo said, were not all-inclusive and “were never supposed to be made public. In their first article on the subject in March 2017, Fanning and Jones dubbed those same recordings “The Whistleblower Tapes,” launching a far-reaching narrative claiming that “The Hammer is the Key to the Coup” and, ultimately, the 2020 presidential election, citing no source other than Dennis Montgomery.

The American Report omits any credit to Lemons for uploading the recordings both to his article and his SoundCloud account the same day after they were leaked to him, which Zullo said, and recounted again to The Post & Email recently, a plaintiff’s attorney admitted to during a court hearing.

The Post & Email provided frequent updates on the Arpaio trial in​ early November that year, including Zullo’s testimony as to the nature of the work for which Montgomery was contracted.

The evening of November 16, 2015, The Post & Email published an article referring to Lemons’s revelations, followed by a November 17​  article referencing ​ it a second time.

We published a third column invoking Lemons’s release of the tapes on​ November 18, 2015, and during a November 20, 2015 interview with Mike Volin of WOBC radio, Fanning called i​n to the show to ask a​ question about “The Hammer.” 

At that point, as we openly told Fanning during her call to the show, The Post & Email had not researched the “The Hammer,” and with good reason, as Lemons had broken the story only four days earlier in Phoenix. 

In addition to Fanning and Jones falsely claiming to have “broken” the story, they have not disclosed that their original source of information on “The Hammer” was Zullo and that were it not for Zullo’s i-phone, “The Whistleblower Tapes” would not exist.

In fact, with the exception of one Facebook post in 2016, their narrative completely omits any mention of Zullo, Arpaio, the investigation or the fact that Montgomery’s claims made to the MCSO were never substantiated despite Montgomery’s having been paid $120,000 to produce the evidence.

At that point, Fanning referenced Lemons’s uploading of the recordings to his Soundcloud account. 

Fanning also claims that General McInerney broke the “Hammer” story on the public airwaves on March 19, 2017. However, that claim is fully​ disproven here.

Further discrediting Fanning’s account is the fact that on December 11, 2015, Carl Gallups introduced the “Hammer” narrative for the first time​ on radio on his “Freedom Friday” show on WEBY AM. On that broadcast, Gallups played snippets of the audio-recordings Zullo made of Montgomery some four years before Dave Janda ever heard of The Hammer. Zullo confirmed this, as he was asked to appear on the show but declined due to the ongoing litigation and, as he was under subpoena, his awareness that he could have been called back to testify​          on the matter. 

The following day, December 12, 2015, The P&E wrote about the initial​ Gallups disclosure of the recordings, which came more than a year​ before Fanning made her first pen stroke on the topic.

One week later, on December 18, 2015, Gallups dedicated an entire broadcast ​delving into the Zullo recordings.

On November 13, 2020, with “The Hammer” again in the news, Gallups did a recap of the events on his “Freedom Friday” show.​ http://www.carlgallups.com/ffr/11-13-20.mp3

Zullo told The P&E that “there is no way” Fanning could have done any firsthand reporting on “The Hammer” in 2015, as he was the only person with direct knowledge publicly speaking about it. “The only outlets covering the story at the time were Gallups’s radio show and The P&E,” said Zullo, who had been a frequent guest on “Freedom Friday” for years prior, when Gallups covered the Obama Birth Certificate investigation Zullo was conducting for then-Sheriff Arpaio.

Zullo was the direct source for all P&E reports on both the Birth Certificate and the Montgomery/Hammer investigations, and he was the initial source for Mary Fanning some years later, a fact she fails to mention. 

Our research has found ​The American Report​’s ​Facebook page​ of December 20, 2015 shows a version of the graphic Fanning and Jones featured in their ​August 8, 2019​ and ​October 31, 2020​ articles with photos of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the “long-form” birth certificate image bearing the name “Barack Hussein Obama II” which Arpaio’s and Zullo’s​ investigation found to be fraudulent.  

The Facebook post can hardly be called exclusive reporting, as its title​ was taken from an articl​e of The Post & Email’s.  The text below is​ simply a recap of the claims Montgomery and his associate, Tim Blixseth, are heard making about “The Hammer ” on the recordings​ Zullo made, which were released by Lemons more than a month earlier.​     

“Fanning has latched onto the recordings I created during an official investigation of Montgomery’s allegations,” Zullo said. “She claims she transcribed them over the years. However, in the body of her deceptive post, stealing your headline to give the false appearance of some in-depth work performed on her part in 2015, she states a patriot, a ‘guest’ transcribed them, not her. She didn’t even do the work. 

“Fanning latched on to the recordings which she did not discover; she did not break the story; she did not report on the recording for over a year, and she did not transcribe them; someone else did.  Exactly what has Fanning done?  She has prostituted those records; my official work product, for her own gain.”

https://theamericanreport.org/2019/08/08/hours-after-trump-tweet-accused-obama-of-wiretapping-trump-the-american-report-tweet-warned-trump-brennan-and-clapper-wiretapped-you-a-zillion-times/

“To set the record straight, Carl Gallups was the first broadcaster to air​ anything about The Hammer or Montgomery on radio, not Dave Janda,”​ Zullo continued.  “I know because I gave the information to Gallups. In addition, Gallups was a friend and close confidant allowing us to use his platform as a media outlet for Sheriff Arpaio and me.  He was aware of some confidential aspects of the investigation in 2014 before anything was made public.

“To his credit, Carl really put himself out there on the reporting exclusively on this topic for many years, not only of The Hammer but the Birth Certificate investigation as well. He took a lot of heat and had his reputation assaulted, not to mention the amount of hate mail and harassment from government operatives that comes along with this. His work has been out there since 2015, but Gallups had a deeper knowledge and insight into the investigation, The Hammer and Montgomery starting in 2014 due to his affiliation with the Sheriff’s Office as a media outlet, while Mary Fanning was still in the dark.” 

On March 4, 2017, President Trump tweeted that his campaign was spied upon by the Obama regime, invoking the word “wiretapped​.”  On March 14, 2017, Fanning spoke with Zullo and this writer in separate phone calls seeking information on “The Hammer.” 

“Mary Fanning did not arrive on the scene in any considerable way until March 4th, 2017,” Zullo recalled. “It was around that time that I had a phone conversation with her and Alan Jones and told them that I was​ about to break some major information regarding The Hammer.  I had a​ prior conversation with them on the subject, but they were chasing some shipping container story at that time.

“In early March 2017, Alex Jones was really going to step up the game. ​  He took an amazing amount of heat for airing the stories involving Corsi and me and bringing Montgomery’s​ information forward all the way to​ the White House. “

Zullo disclosed to The P&E that he reached out to Dr. Corsi on Sunday, March 5, 2017 and told him that he wanted to release information regarding the possible covert illegal government surveillance of the President and his family starting in 2004 based on the initial documentation Montgomery had provided the MCSO. Zullo recalled discussing with Corsi that he was concerned about Montgomery’s credibility issue, but he explained to Corsi that if there was even the slightest possibility the information was true, “it needs to get to the​ President as soon as possible.” 

“Corsi agreed,” Zullo said. ​ “This plan was two weeks in the making and all hell started to break loose in the days prior to the release on the live Infowars broadcast, as Corsi was making inroads to the White House with the information in hand a week before airing the story.”​

“Mary Fanning knew when I spoke with her in early March 2017 that I​ was going to appear on Alex Jones’s Infowars within days of our conversation.  I told her I could not share what we were doing and that she would find out.  What she apparently tried to do was preempt me by re-releasing “The Whistleblower Tapes” story using the very recordings I made and were released by Lemons, written about by The P&E and aired by Gallups over a year earlier.     

“Her new spin was claiming to have transcribed them, as if that was somehow an achievement of journalistic excellence,” Zullo said. “So her attempt to put this information out with General McInerney was really nothing more than repackaging and regurgitating old news and positioning herself on the map if something bigger was to be released to me later that week. While it might have been new to Dave Janda and the General, the facts are it wasn’t new.”

“Two days before the Infowars broadcast on March 19, 2017, she knew it was coming,” Zullo said, “so they posted their article on March 17.” 

Zullo said his March 19, 2017 appearance​ with Corsi was a planned event of “a few​  weeks.” He recalled he was contemplating canceling the interview as he was suffering from a migraine from the night before.  However, he decided he needed to do an interview out of security concerns.  Zullo and Dr. Jerome Corsi appeared on Alex Jones’s “Infowars” show,​ providing some of the initial documentation from Montgomery under the “Project Dragnet” moniker.  Zullo and Corsi’s interview begins at the 1:11:13 mark, with Corsi speaking first.

Infowars 3/19/2017  See the interview yourself:   https://tvassets.infowars.com/index/display/id/7802

At 1:06:45, Jones introduced Corsi and provided some background information. Citing “Reuters” and “the Associated Press” as two of his sources on government data-collection of private​ citizens, Jones used the term “parallel construction” to describe surveillance​ of Americans “where they use the NSA spy systems to look at Americans, then they go and formulate investigations after they have the data…to get indictments.” 

Jones invited Zullo and Corsi to​ return to the show the following day to continue the conversation.

Infowars 3/20/2017 https://tvassets.infowars.com/index/display/category/dailyshows/page/99 /id/7804

“In the broadcast on the 20^th, Alex Jones said from that Sunday to that Monday, roughly 24 hours, his website got a million views of that story,” Zullo said.  “So that’s a million views compared to Janda’s 20,000 listeners.”

In an interview late last week, Zullo reminded The Post & Email of Corsi’s claim during the live interview disclosing, “I got it to the​ president last week.” And, according to Zullo, “The president​ responded.” 

Of the striking series of events leading up to, during and after the Infowars interviews, Zullo said:

Alex Jones in the March 19th broadcast confirmed the phone numbers, including his secret phone number, and Donald Trump’s very private cell phone number was confirmed by Roger Stone to in fact belong to Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.

Corsi disclosed that he made sure the President, White House and select members of Congress had received the information. He made it clear that he, Sheriff Arpaio and I ​were trying to advance the Montgomery allegations by offering to go to DC for meetings. 

The next day, Monday, March 20, 2017, Jones revealed the pressure asserted on him from high-level government officials and the White House a week before the March 19th broadcast warning him not to proceed with the disclosure. 

The story broke Sunday, March 19​^th​, 2017 with that Infowars interview, and Alex Jones reported the story was immediately picked up and reported on the top page of The Drudge Report and went national that very evening, garnering a million views in less than 24 hours.  

The Infowars broadcast aired on March 19 at 12:00 p.m. EST, and Janda’s first show on the subject featuring McInerney reading Fanning and Jones’s article on “The Hammer” aired sometime after that on AM radio; I believe it was around 5:00 p.m. 

Again, Mary Fanning broke nothing new; it’s simply a regurgitation of three-year-old information previously reported on by others.​ As for her claim that her reporting and McInerney’s appearance on Dave Janda’s tiny radio show caused frantic reactions in Washington, it is just utterly not true.  Corsi had the information I provided him and was sharing it in DC a week earlier, prompting a lot of activity in Washington a week before the broadcast. Corsi caused the adverse reaction, not Fanning; this went right into the White House. 

Zullo had one last conversation with Fanning after the broadcast, he said, after which he told The P&E she was “ranting and raving,” accusing him of stealing her story and threatening to sue him. Zullo told us that he was “shocked at the illogical premise of Fanning’s outrage,” telling her that she had no story, and that in fact he never gave her a story and that he was the story in bringing forth the documents. “So just as she has tried to take credit for the recordings because she allegedly transcribed them, she wants to take credit for a story she was never given, and she wants to take credit for any White House or Deep State reaction,” he said. “Does she really think because of Dave Janda’s radio show the government panicked? She had zero to do with any of it and zero claim to any of this.”

The Post & Email reported ​ on Jones’s March 19, 2017 show in two articles the same day in which Jones responded to Trump’s March​ 4, 2017 claim on Twitter that his campaign was “wiretapped” by the Obama regime. That claim, which the mainstream media disparaged and ridiculed, citing Trump’s lack of “evidence,” was later proven accurate, resulting in the appointment of a U.S. attorney, now a Special Counsel, to investigate the origins of a full-fledged FBI probe into the 2016 Trump campaign for alleged “collusion” with Russia.

“Mary Fanning did not break the story on The Hammer,” Zullo said.  “Mary Fanning didn’t know anything about The Hammer until after Arpaio disclosed it in the federal trial and Montgomery got immunity. In fact, it was Lemons who had to point her in the direction of the recordings by posting on her Facebook page. She even points to Gallups’s 12/18/2015 radio broadcast on her post. She did zero investigation on this topic; she just piggybacked off of everyone else’s work. Her rendition of events is pure fiction.

“If my memory serves, I believe Mary Fanning’s curiosity into The Hammer or the Montgomery story was piqued by a conversation I had with her after Arpaio’s trial had concluded sometime in early 2016.  If my memory serves correctly she told me she was going to take that information and check it out with her military sources. She did report back to me that they had confirmed The Hammer existed, but that was not revelatory because the Sheriff’s Office had independently confirmed that years earlier. 

“I want to be absolutely clear, as I have stated this many times in the past.  I believe some of what Montgomery says has some elements of truth. We don’t know how he obtained it or if in fact he was the individual who actually obtained it from government sources. 

“How do we know Montgomery is not a middle man being fed this information from others still in government service?  We simply don’t because he could not prove the origin of any of it. 

“How can we be certain that this is not the result of some other hacking group breaching databases? We just don’t know. The difference between Snowden and Montgomery is that Snowden brought the goods. Montgomery has brought some information and a tantalizing story with no proof as to how the information was obtained or who obtained it.  There’s a major distinction between the two.

“I believe The Hammer did exist at one time and that Montgomery had some involvement with it, if nothing more than being the guy who strung all the wires and plugged the computer in the wall. That being said, Montgomery can’t prove the origin of his claim or any ownership of software capable of doing what he says or any evidence that it was utilized in the fashion he claims, despite always claiming he has it and he can prove it. Montgomery never mentioned Scorecard in 2014 as one of the programs he takes credit for creating; it wasn’t mentioned until 2020. That is problematic. 

“Montgomery’s difficult relationship with the truth and his erratic behavior, including manufacturing evidence, goes back decades and is extremely detrimental to his credibility.  But Fanning just sits at his feet, swallows every word he says and spits it right out as if it is gospel truth.  Objectiveness is out the window.”

In a new revelation, Zullo told The Post & Email that as recently as “last year,” he continued to make an effort to provide the initial documentation Montgomery produced to Congress for​ investigation.  His attempt was witnessed by a third party, he said. In addition Zullo supplied email exchanges between him and Kirk Wiebe in June of 2019 discussing Montgomery and bringing forward the portion of Montgomery’s information that Zullo believed to be creditable for possible investigation.

Zullo also revealed to The P&E that in late 2018, he began to look deeply into Montgomery’s background and found decades of troubling information in court records describing Montgomery and activities that mirrored the same type of behaviors Montgomery displayed and Zullo and Mackiewicz encountered during the year-long MCSO investigation.

“The court documentation regarding Montgomery is troubling information and changed my opinion, opening new alarming concerns about Montgomery’s truthfulness,” Zullo said.  “This new information was not previously known to the Sheriff’s Office during the 2014 investigation.”

“But the truth is, some of the initial information Montgomery provided did not have source information, meaning you cannot prove what computer system or software was used to garner the information,” Zullo said.  “However, some of the initial information was verifiable, but lacking the source makes it very difficult to determine how it was acquired.

“Montgomery was well aware that if he could provide evidence to prove his allegations, Sheriff Arpaio was more than willing to hand-carry it to the President. And don’t think he couldn’t do that because he had the president’s private phone number on speed-dial.  We invested a year’s-worth of time and paid Montgomery $120,000 for that very purpose, but he failed to produce.  This is evidenced in court documents and testimony.

“As far as Fanning is concerned, she has not been truthful in either her own personal timeline of events or in her representations of breaking the story. She was deceptive in using your title, without a byline, and then doctoring up an image on her Facebook page trying to claim she broke a story. 

“Notable is Fanning’s willful omission of any background reporting on Montgomery’s own deceptive conduct when he was contracted as a confidential informant with the Sheriff’s Office, and unethically omitting any reporting on Montgomery’s problematic past, including his​ frauds perpetrated against the federal government and the Sheriff’s Office, easily found in public court documents.  And now it is even easier for her to find because of the many articles you have written disclosing the information.  She has been both intellectually dishonest, journalistically derelict and willingly deceptive, omitting pertinent information about her current source, Montgomery, keeping the facts from the public.

“Omission is an act of deception, and deception is lying.  Fanning is lying by creating false narratives to prop up herself and the man she hails as a national hero. 

“For their part, Dave Janda and Kirk Wiebe are well aware of Montgomery’s background yet remain silent on it. They, too, are culpable. I can tell you I personally had conversations with Wiebe as late as 2019 and sent him information I had discovered a year ago relating to Montgomery. Wiebe knows, but this is the same guy who called Montgomery a fraud in 2014 but now calls him a hero. Something is very wrong with a group of people.” 

On December 7, 2020, The Post & Email contacted Fanning and Jones by email with five questions, including an explanation for their use of our article title with their text on December 20, 2015 which they now claim to be their exclusive reporting. As of press time, we have received no response.

“THE HAMMER” TIMELINE​     

06/04/2014:  Stephen Lemons of The Phoenix New Times reports that a Sheriff’s Office source informed him that Montgomery had made claims about “The Hammer” to Arpaio
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/joe-arpaios-investigating-federal-judge-g-murray-snow-doj-sources-say-and-using-a-seattle-scammer-to-do-it-6630628

11/10/2015-11/13/2015:​  Mike Zullo testifies in federal civil-rights trial of Sheriff Arpaio.  November 11 was Veterans’ Day and court was closed. https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/12/11/what-did-mike-zullo-say-in-court-on-november-12/

11/16/2015:  Stephen Lemons of The Phoenix New Times releases article &​ recordings on “The Hammer”:  https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/joe-arpaios-posse-investigator-mike-zullos-secret-recordings-7823417

11-17-2015: P&E reports on Montgomery recordings:​https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/11/17/media-flees-from-arpaio-confidential-in formant-recordings/

11/18/2015:​  P&E first mentions “The Hammer” in re recordings, Arpaio  – https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/11/18/the-post-email-issues-clarification-on-arpaio-government-statement/

11/23/2015:​  Lemons, PNT, more on recordings:  https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/10-damning-audio-clips-from-joe-arpaios-seattle-investigation-7843330

12/10/2015:​  Carl Gallups discussed Zullo’s testimony in Melendres​ and the Montgomery investigation: https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/12/12/freedom-friday-recaps-zullo-transcripts-nexus-with-birth-certificate-investigation/

12/11/2015:​  P&E – Zullo testimony: https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/12/11/what-did-mike-zullo-say-in-court-on-november-12/

12/13/2015:​  P&E – Dennis Montgomery case against Risen with Klayman comments: https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/12/13/lawsuit-arpaio-confidential-informant-a-material-witness-for-federal-government/

12/18/2015:​  P&E interviews with Mark Gillar on Zullo testimony: https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/12/18/tea-party-power-hour-interviews-the-post-email-about-arpaio-case-zullo-testimony-judicial-corruption/

12/18/2015:​  Carl Gallups hosts Mike Zullo, first mention by MZ of “The Hammer”: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27I8xrw6UuqekZwNlphNVl2Smc/view

12/20/2015: P&E writes synopsis of Gallups’s 12/18 show:​https://www.thepostemail.com/2015/12/20/does-former-confidential-informant-have-evidence-of-vote-rigging/
(Article whose title The American Report took, placing its own “bullet points” below it)

03/04/2017:​  In a Facebook post, Fanning and Jones write, in part, “The Hammer​ computer illegally accessed millions of American’s bank accounts and tapped DONALD J. TRUMP ‘a zillion times.’  This information was revealed on the audio tapes that Judge G. Murray Snow released in his Maricopa County Courtroom.” https://www.facebook.com/TheAmericanReport.org/posts/1899498663596190

03/14/2017:​  By phone, Fanning and Jones grill P&E, Zullo, at different times about “The Hammer.”  Zullo tells them to “lay low” on publishing anything since he is working on something.  (In an email on 11/18/2020, Zullo reveals to P&E that on the same day, documentation from Dennis Montgomery was delivered to the president. “The president responded“)

03/17/2017:​  Fanning and Jones release their first article at ​ The American​ Report​ on “The Hammer,” again erroneously stating that “Federal Judge G. Murray Snow” released the recordings, which are uploaded to their article and Soundcloud account.  The recordings were made by Zullo, a fact Fanning and Jones omit.  https://theamericanreport.org/2017/03/17/whistleblower-tapes-trump-wiretapped-zillion-times-hammer-brennans-clappers-secret-computer-system/embed/#?secret=yKznjTaWYK

03/19/2017:​  Dr. Jerome Corsi and Mike Zullo appear on Alex Jones’s show to discuss “Project Dragnet,” Dennis Montgomery documentation and the information was relayed to “the president.” https://tvassets.infowars.com/index/display/id/7802 https://www.thepostemail.com/2017/03/19/dr-jerome-corsi-mike-zullo-speak-dragnet-database/

An email from Mike Zullo to P&E dated 11-18-2020 reads:  “1hr:47 Jones Starts checking out info I supplied on Monday 13 2017. Jones gets calls on the following days threatening calls from those under the President to stop.” 

03/19/2017:​  Gen. McInerney (Ret) appears on Dave Janda’s “Operation​  Freedom” claiming to release new information on “The Hammer” https://theamericanreport.org/2017/03/22/general-thomas-mcinernery-discusses-hammer-wiretapping-donald-trump-zillion-times-secret-super-computer-brennan-clapper/

03/20/2017:​  Zullo and Corsi appear for the second consecutive day on Jones’s show to continue “Project Dragnet” discussion https://www.thepostemail.com/2017/03/20/corsi-deep-state-charge/

https://tvassets.infowars.com/index/display/category/dailyshows/page/99/id/7804

03/20/2017:​  P&E issues second article on Corsi/Zullo/Jones broadcast: https://www.thepostemail.com/2017/03/20/mike-zullo-dr-jerome-corsi-infowars-live-monday-afternoon/

05/12/2019:​  Fanning & Jones incorrectly report that the FBI’s “Russian Collusion investigation” was launched on March 20, 2019, the day after Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (Ret) was a guest on “Operation Freedom” speaking to host Dave Janda about “The Whistleblower Tapes.”  https://theamericanreport.org/2019/05/12/comey-launched-trump-russia-investigation-day-after-general-exposed-the-hammer/

According to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December 9, 2019 report detailing the FBI’s actions in regard to its obtaining of surveillance warrants on former 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, “Crossfire Hurricane” was officially launched on July 31, 2016. 

According to Rep. Devin Nunes, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, Crossfire could have been launched earlier than July 31, 2016.
https://www.thepostemail.com/2019/04/10/nunes-fbi-trump-probe-began-much-earlier-than-claimed/

08/09/2019:​  Fanning and Jones reference P&E 11-16-2015 article, accurately reporting no mention of “The Hammer,” but neglect to inform of P&E article dated 11-18-2015 in which “The Hammer” was identified. https://theamericanreport.org/2019/08/08/hours-after-trump-tweet-accused-obama-of-wiretapping-trump-the-american-report-tweet-warned-trump-brennan-and-clapp er-wiretapped-you-a-zillion-times/

Fanning & Jones claim to have reported on The Hammer “fourteen months earlier” than March 4, 2017, “in a December 20, 2015 post at The American Report’s official Facebook page:” but do not reveal that the title used is The P&E’s.  The “bullet points” below summarize the recordings released by Lemons on 11-16-2015.  Lemons was in the courtroom during the Melendres​  trial, according to Zullo.

12/02/2019:​  The P&E reports: https://www.thepostemail.com/2019/12/02/zullo-mary-fanning-attempts-to-mislead-the-president-of-the-united-states/

12/24/2019:​  The American report claims that “March 17, 2017” is the “date “THE HAMMER” CIA/FBI WIRE TAP ON TRUMP WAS EXPOSED…” 
https://theamericanreport.org/2019/12/24/fisa-judge-rosemary-collyers-order-destr oy-surveillance-data-collected-on-and-before-march-17-2017-date-the-hammer-cia-fbi-wiretap-on-trump-was-exposed/

11/13/2020:​  Fanning & Jones claim they “broke the story” of The Hammer in 2015: https://theamericanreport.org/2020/11/13/dhs-cyber-director-chris-krebs-and-deputy-director-matt-travis-tied-to-clapper-who-commandeered-hammer-scorecard/embed/#?secret=ydVazln1Sv

11/13/2020:​   At the beginning of his 5:00 p.m. ET “Freedom Friday” show, Carl Gallups acknowledged recent internet chatter about “The Hammer” and told his audience that as a guest years before, Zullo “broke the story” of “The Hammer.” 
http://www.carlgallups.com/ffr/11-13-20.mp3

“Mike Zullo and I have been reporting on this for years,” Gallups said, playing a sound clip from Zullo speaking in what Gallups believed to be 2017, which Gallups described as a “recapping” of previous events.