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Major changes to SBIR program debated as reauthorization deadline nears

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The reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research program is caught in a tug-of-war.

The new-age venture capitalists want to transform the 43-year-old program to meet what they say is the 21st century approach to research and development.

Long-time program supporters say those changes, as proposed by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in her INNOVATE Act, are trying to solve problems that generally do not exist and would harm both small businesses and the agencies that depend on the program, most particularly the Defense Department.

This debate over the future of the SBIR is the undercurrent to the fact that the program’s current three-year authorization expires on Sept. 30. If Congress doesn’t act this month, programs at the Defense Department, NASA, the Energy Department and eight other agencies will be put on hold pending action by lawmakers.

“My sense is that it will ultimately be reauthorized, but I am concerned,” said Emily Murphy, a former administrator of the General Services Administration, Hill staff member who worked to reauthorize the SBIR program and now a senior fellow at the George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting. “We’re going to see the problem we’ve seen the last few times we’ve had a reauthorization, where there is a lapse in authorization and it sets the program back, not by months but by years, because Phase 1 awards can’t go out, Phase 2 awards can’t go out and Phase 3s can’t be awarded. Companies that have been working on their proposals or hit a critical point in their research and development can’t go and get the additional level of funding they need. New technologies can’t be ingested through the Phase 1 awards. It slows things down. While I understand Congress’ incredible need and desire to make sure that there’s appropriate oversight of the program, that protections are strengthened, that the program’s funds are going to the companies that Congress intends, I just hope that they get it done quickly.”

The debate over reauthorizing the SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs is centered around the changes Ernst’s bill would bring.

Ernst Town HallSen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is the chairwoman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“While we’ve seen a measure of success over the years through the committee’s oversight efforts, agency studies and GAO reports, it is clear SBIR is in need of additional reforms to safeguard taxpayer funds and enable this program to meet its full potential,” Ernst said back in March when introducing the bill.

Among the changes the Investing in National Next-Generation Opportunities for Venture Acceleration and Technological Excellence (INNOVATE) Act is proposing are:

  • To reserve 2.5% of the SBIR allocation for smaller, one-time $40,000 awards to new applicants with a shorter, streamlined application focused on the commercialization potential of their innovation.
  • To impose a $75 million lifetime cap on awards for companies in the SBIR program.
  • To increase the total set aside for SBIR to 3.45% from 3.25% starting in fiscal 2026 for agencies with annual extramural R&D budgets over $100 million.
  • To initiate one-time strategic breakthrough Phase 2 awards of up to $30 million to scale the strongest technologies.
  • To establish default fixed price contracts.
  • To strengthen the due diligence of companies to prevent adversary-linked companies from exploiting program dollars.
  • To reform the application process to make it easier for small firms to apply for SBIR/STTR awards.

“The INNOVATE Act ensures that SBIR/STTR award dollars go to the best and brightest that are developing technology supporting our warfighters. For too long, SBIR mills have gamed the system by taking in hundreds of millions of award dollars, but too often produced nothing more than policy white papers,” said a spokesman for Sen. Ernst in an email to Federal News Network. “Firms producing mission-critical and commercially viable technology will thrive under Chairwoman Ernst’s legislation, and those leeching off taxpayers will be exposed.”

The legislation hasn’t moved out of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, of which Ernst is the chairwoman. Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), chairman of the Small Business Committee, introduced a companion bill in July.

There is a second bill to reauthorize the SBIR program permanently. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Nydia Velazquez’s (D-N.Y.) legislation also would make some other changes to broaden participation of small businesses and protect federal investments. This bill also hasn’t moved out of committee.

Experts say the most logical way for Congress to reauthorize SBIR will be by attaching one of these two bills or some compromise version to the 2026 Defense Authorization bill.

Future of SBIR being contested

Until then, the debate around the future of the SBIR program will continue to heat up.

On one side of the debate are the supporters of Ernst’s bill, who believe the SBIR/STTR programs are stuck in the 1980s, don’t set up the DoD and other agencies to compete with China and other nation states and say both programs have created cottage industries of consultants and a small number of companies who make their living off SBIR awards.

David Rothzeid, a principal of investments at Sheild Capital, which invests in small businesses, including those in the SBIR program, said the approach to research and development used to be the domain of the government labs, which is how Congress set up the program in 1982.

“Dual use technology meant that it spilled out into the commercial sector, and businesses were built around it. Today it’s going in the opposite direction. It’s commercial driven companies who then have national security applications, and so the government would be better off pulling it in versus pushing it out,” said Rothzeid, who also testified in March in support of the INNOVATE Act. “If you go back to 1960s, which predates the SBIR program, 36% of all the world’s research and development funding was rooted in the Department of Defense. That’s a lot. Today, it’s less than 1.5%. Your purchasing power around these technologies is just a very different equation, and it’s the venture capital community who are able to provide very patient capital around the technology that’s going to matter for the future. We are also willing to take risk.”

Rothzeid said the program, as currently designed, makes it too difficult for that pull of technology into DoD to happen, in part because there is a belief that the program is rigged or too difficult for new entrants.

“The INNOVATE Act targets and modernizes the program to be more relevant to how technology is built. It is listening to the national security apparatus that you could say should just be able to help themselves. If they don’t want to award all of these contracts to these multi-time award winners, or what other people call SBIR mills, then don’t,” he said. “It’s really challenging for the agencies without certain guardrails and the relationships that the SBIR mills enjoy with the national labs and the universities to partner on the STTRs. That’s a large core competency that they enjoy. By putting things like ratios and caps and a small set aside to help first-time award winners, I think this is really meeting the spirit of what President [Barack] Obama called the Seed Capital Fund for the United States with the end goal of we need more commercial companies that recognize and understand the national security apparatus and are intent to building companies that can withstand market forces, versus again, staying artificially constrained so that you can win against these small business set asides.”

Rothzeid, who spent about a dozen years on active duty as an Air Force acquisition officer and currently is a reservist in the Pentagon under the Air Force’s senior acquisition executive, added the success of  the Air Force AFWERX, the Defense Innovation Unit and other similar organizations have demonstrated the limitations of the SBIR program.

Ben Van Roo is the co-founder and CEO of Legion Intelligence, which has won two SBIR Phase 1 awards totaling about $100,000.

He said the changes to the SBIR program would open the door to more companies like his who have technologies that would benefit the government.

“It would undoubtedly benefit the 98% of companies in the program today. It will put a real constraint on how the [SBIR mills] operate as it will force them to be held accountable to make money outside of the SBIR program in the DoD,” Van Roo said. “The 98% will actually have really interesting opportunities to have pathways for them to grow. Part of this money will be allowed to have them accelerate and go through valley of death.”

One of the most successful programs

On the other side of the debate are those who believe the current SBIR program is not only one of the most successful programs in the government’s history, but has evolved and transformed to address the potential and real problems of the past.

Jere Glover, the executive director of the Small Business Technology Council, which is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting America’s high-tech, innovative small companies, said the INNOVATE Act would promote the concept of “picking winners and losers,” which is something the government has never been good at. He said it would push the SBIR program to look too much like the investment model used by venture capitalists.

Jere Glover is the executive director of the Small Business Technology Council.

“They want to refocus it to later stage, venture-type investments, and for a lot of reasons, that doesn’t work. Quite frankly, the multiple award issue has been floated around since the first 10 years of the program, but as the data all shows, multiple award winners have been a very successful and integral part of the program. They’ve been critical strategic partners for the Department of Defense in particular, and a lot of great technology has been developed because you need to have the expertise, the equipment, the scientists that know specific areas of the government that’s being developed,” said Glover, who helped write the SBIR law in the early 1980s. “That has been a concern raised by Congress, and lawmakers changed that by increasing the focus on commercialization. Maybe 15 years ago, the evaluation criteria said if you don’t commercialize at least 25% then you get kicked out of the program. By and large, the companies that have exited the program have always been acquired because their technology became critical.”

Alec Orban, staff member of the Small Business Technology Council, added Ernst’s bill places too big of a focus on companies that produce a single technology and then tries to commercialize it quickly.

“Those types of companies are great to have in the program. We don’t want to exclude them, but they shouldn’t be the only type of company that can compete in SBIR, because there are other types of companies who have technologies, who have research that the government needs, particularly the DoD,” Orban said. “DoD has historically pushed back on any cap for multiple award winners, and the Ernst bill basically throws everything at the wall trying to get something to stick. If you can’t ban them this way, then we’ll try to ban them that way or this other way.”

Concerns over SBIR mills also are overstated, Glover and others say.

Kenan Ezal is the vice president and director of antenna and radio frequency systems at the Toyon Research Corporation. He said Toyon is one of those so-called “SBIR mills.”

He said while winning SBIR awards are important, they account for less than 20% of the company’s revenue. But what it allows Toyon to do is dabble in cutting edge technology to solve problems for warfighters.

“Most of our work is for the military and we tend not to take technology and push into commercial realm. It requires a different kind of set up to do that because we primarily are trying to solve problems for warfighters and it costs money to do work in the classified world like we do. Building a sensitive compartmented information facility is expensive,” Ezal said. “The problem I see with Ernst’s bill is it’s premised on something that is complete false. There is this belief that there are companies like us that we have it wired. I lose far more proposals than I win. On average we win one out of six for Phase 1. Across all of DoD, the win rate for Phase 1 is like 16%. There are cases where DoD gets 30-to-40 proposals per SBIR topic, and if I win, I’m one of several companies that win. It’s cutthroat. The SBIR program has gotten far more complicated and many agencies have added more layers of requirements for proposals.”

Problems are with agency implementation

The Government Accountability Office found in a March 2024 report that repeat winners were, generally, not a problem for the SBIR/STTR programs. Between 2011 and 2020, GAO found 22 small businesses received 50 or more Phase 2 awards, accounting for less than 1% of all awardees. These firms received about 10% of the total Phase 2 award dollars.

“In 2022, Congress increased standards for small businesses that receive the highest numbers of awards — like requiring them to make sales related to the funded research. However, we found that most businesses meet the new standards, and few face meaningful consequences if they don’t,” GAO said.

Along with the SBTC, other organizations are against the INNOVATE Act. The New England Innovation Alliance, an organization of entrepreneurial companies focused on transitioning innovative technologies to government and commercial use, said the bill would immediately remove more than 54 companies in 17 states from further participation in the program by capping contract awards.

“It uses an unfair ex-post-facto approach that retroactively penalizes our members for following the program’s rules and being competitively selected for awards over the history of the program,” the Alliance wrote in a release earlier this summer.

Bob Smith, the former director of the Navy’s SBIR/STTR programs, said the problem the INNOVATE Act is trying to solve by pushing for more commercialization of these technologies is grounded in the Defense Department and other federal agencies processes rather than the companies themselves.

He said agencies have to incentivize program and acquisition offices to use the technologies that come out of SBIR.

“The program is doing what it’s supposed to, but it still runs up against the Valley of Death. Ernst’s bill expects the SBIR program to get that poor company across the Valley of Death, versus encouraging and directing acquisition to use those solutions,” he said. “Congress hasn’t held agencies accountable for that. Why aren’t you agencies using their successful SBIR companies? Why aren’t agencies giving preference to the SBIR firms that solved their problem? Where we really need a fund is in the valley of death. The program is flawed. It’s a federal program. Is anything perfect? But if you look at the statistics, if you look at solid programs like the Navy’s or the Army’s, it’s getting better, SBIR can and does work quite well.”

Better ways to measure SBIR’s impact

Smith said the Navy helped address this issue many years ago by working with the acquisition offices who had to provide a 3% “fee” for the SBIR program.

In return, Smith said, the program offices could control how the SBIR office spent the funds.

“I don’t want to call it a tax assessment, but they have the right of first refusal on what they’re going to use that SBIR for. So it’s aligned to their acquisition programs, so they already know if it works, where it’s going to go versus if you hand it to disconnected program managers,” he said. “There’s now a connection to people that have big checkbooks.”

Murphy, the former Hill staff member and GSA administrator, said there are several questions that the INNOVATE Act raises that would need to be answered during implementation, including the details around the caps and how they would apply governmentwide, or just to specific agencies.

But she said the SBIR program is more nuanced than most recognize.

“Given the number of applications and given the volume of dollars that are going through the SBIR program, without having some additional expertise that said, we’ve got a lot of new technology like AI and things along those lines, it’d be really interesting to see if technology might actually be part of the solution to our R&D problem, where we could do a better job of assessing and coming up with some more meaningful metrics as to what it means to be successful in the SBIR program,” she said. “Commercialization is one measure of success. We consider a Phase 3 award to be commercialization, but the patents that come out of it could be another measure of success. Contributing to an overall body of knowledge, especially at a low dollar value, could be another one. It’s clear no one’s getting rich on a $40,000 Phase 1A award or if the AFWERX has done a great job of doing a lot of $50,000 awards and trying to see what sticks on those smaller dollar value SBIRs. How can we better align the Phase 1s and Phase 2s with the ultimate Phase 3, so making sure that is part of the Phase 1 submission a company has to detail if this were to ultimately be commercialized? Having those things track along so that we’re better able to get to a successful company at the end of the day and a successful technology being deployed than we are right now.”

The post Major changes to SBIR program debated as reauthorization deadline nears first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Helena City Commission Candidate That Left THREATENING Voicemail for GOP Senator Loses Race

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Helena, Montana, city commission candidate Haley McKnight is under fire after a threatening voicemail she left for Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy was released on Monday. (@libsoftiktok / X screen shot)

The Gateway Pundit reported that Helena, Montana,  city commissioner candidate Haley McKnight left a threatening voicemail on Sen. Tim Sheehy’s (R-MT) in July following his vote to pass the Once Big Beautiful Bill Act.

In the message, McKnight wished pancreatic cancer on the Senator, hoping he would “die in the street like a dog.”

Apparently, the unhinged rant did not help McKnight at the ballot box, and she garnered only 20% of the vote.

During the roughly minute-long expletive-filled rant, McKnight raged, “Hi, this is Haley McKnight. I’m a constituent in Helena, Montana.”

“I just wanted to let you know that you are the most insufferable kind of coward and thief. You just stripped away healthcare for 17 million Americans, and I hope you’re really proud of that. I hope that one day you get pancreatic cancer, and it spreads throughout your body so fast that they can’t even treat you for it.”

“I hope you die in the street like a dog,” she continued.

“One day, you’re going to live to regret this. I hope that your children never forgive you. I hope that you are infertile. I hope that you manage to never get a boner ever again. You are the worst piece of s— I have ever, ever, ever had the misfortune of looking at … God forbid that you ever meet me on the streets because I will make you regret it. F— you. I hope you die.”

National Review Online reporter Audrey Fahlberg asked McNight if she thought the vile voicemail “went too far.”

McKnight replied, “No, I don’t think so.” McKnight then expressed puzzlement that her voicemail from July was “newsworthy.”

Fox News reports:

But that blue wave wasn’t enough to carry local candidates like McKnight to victory. She garnered only 20% of the vote, falling in third among a field of four candidates. Those who beat McKnight to obtain the two city commissioner seats up for grabs were Melinda Reed and Ben Rigby. Reed obtained 36.5% of the vote, while Rigby garnered 31.2%. The candidate who came in fourth garnered 11.5% and write-ins got 0.52% of the vote.

Speaking to Fox News earlier in the week about her voicemail, McKnight answered “no comment” when pressed if she stood by her rhetoric. She did note that her intention was not to threaten, or hurt, the senator, but added that she believed her rage was justifiable.

“I wanted to drive home the struggles that people that I know are going through because of his policies. I think people were kind of shocked at my specificity, but these are things that are affecting people in my community,” McKnight told Fox News Digital, adding that Sheehy was spending too much time blocking the release of “the Epstein files” as opposed to understanding the struggles Montanans are going through.

Listen to McKnight’s voicemail:

The post Helena City Commission Candidate That Left THREATENING Voicemail for GOP Senator Loses Race appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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ABLECHILD: “We Know Nothing” – Eric Trump Slams PA State and FBI Silence on Butler Assassination Attempt

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“We Know Nothing” – Eric Trump Slams PA State and FBI Silence on Butler Assassination Attempt

Republished with permission from AbleChild. 

Eric Trump is demanding that investigators solve the mystery behind the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, who reportedly tried to kill his father at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania more than a year ago. For those who for months have been asking for the FBI to release its investigation of the assassination attempt, Eric’s demands seem fair.

The President’s son reports during an interview on Pod Force One with Miranda Devine that “I’m very far away from being a conspiracy theorist, but nothing about it looks right,” and he continued “we know nothing.”  “In fact,” Eric says, “not only am I unsatisfied, but I’m also wholly pissed off about it, and I remain pissed off about it.”  Good.

There’s lots to be concerned about beginning with the identification of the alleged shooter. How was Thomas Matthew Crooks identified, either by the Butler County Coroner or the Allegheny County Medical Examiner (ME)? The fact is the document that has been made public by the Butler Coroner, William F. Young III, is incorrect. Contrary to July 13th being the day the Butler County coroner viewed the body of the alleged shooter; Coroner Young did not view the body of the alleged shooter that lay on the AGR Building until 6a.m on July 14th.

Further, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner also does not provide the investigative method used to identify the body of the alleged shooter, Crooks. Why? Why does neither of the men who handled the alleged shooter’s body, provide documentation as to its the identity, you know, maybe DNA? It seems odd, especially in light of the fact that the alleged shooter’s body lay on the AGR building roof all night with no mention as to what investigative entity had evidentiary control over the body.

Eric may want to know if the Butler County Coroner wrote investigative notes about the crime scene, position of body, was alleged weapon still on the roof, what documentation was found on the deceased and were photographs taken before transport to Allegheny County?

The President and his son may want to know about the ballistics associated with the alleged attempted assassination. For example, the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, reports that the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office stated, “all reviewable evidence collected from the AGR roof and from the subject’s body are consistent with the round fired by the Secret Service sniper.”

First, what was the evidence collected from the AGR roof, and the round fired and collected from the alleged shooter’s body is only “consistent” with the round fired by the sniper? The round fired by the sniper either matches the sniper’s weapon or it doesn’t. Of course, the ballistics report that the FBI surely has completed would provide detailed information about the recovered projectiles. And this says nothing about the need for evidence about projectiles recovered that allegedly were fired at Trump and recovered from the late Corey Comperatore. Do those recovered projectiles match Crooks’ alleged weapon or are they just “consistent” with that type of projectile fired from the alleged weapon?

So far, there is no physical evidence that has been made public that reveals how Crooks was identified as the alleged shooter nor any evidence that proves that Crooks held or fired the alleged weapon. And there is no physical evidence publicly available that proves that the projectiles that allegedly hit the President and others in the crowd match Crooks alleged weapon. The FBI ballistics report, if ever released, should answer all of the ballistics questions and, perhaps, provide conclusive detail about the identification of the alleged shooter.

Other physical evidence that may be of interest to the President’s son deals with the tests conducted by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner (ME).  Based on the information provided by the ME, it appears he failed to test the alleged shooter’s body for prescription psychiatric drugs. Studies show that blood tests are not sufficient to detect all psychiatric drugs and the ME does not provide detailed information about what prescription drug tests were conducted if any. Why? Was the alleged shooter taking psychiatric drugs? That information may never be known as Crooks body was cremated within days of the shooting.

Moving along, Eric Trump may also want to know how Crooks’ parents, behavioral health experts, failed to realize their son was building bombs in his basement bedroom. It has been reported that Crooks’ father told investigators that within a year of the shooting, he had observed his son “dancing in his bedroom throughout the night.”

Did Crooks’ dad ask why he was dancing in his bedroom throughout the night? Who knows. But it seems odd that behavioral health experts failed to notice that bomb making items were being delivered to their home and their son was making bombs in his bedroom, acting strangely and never thought to question this behavior.

The FBI investigation would surely provide detailed information about the parent’s possible role in the assassination attempt. Afterall, it was Crooks’ father that provided the weapon allegedly used in the shooting. One would feel confident that the FBI had lots of questions for these seemingly out of touch mental health experts.

Let’s be honest, one would assume the President need only ask his FBI Director, Kash Patel or maybe Dan Bongino, for a copy of the investigation.

According to an interview that Patel and Bongino gave to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo last May, there are two reasons the investigation cannot be released. First says Patel, “two open, on going prosecutions… we can’t get ahead of the federal court case.”  It would have been extremely informative, but Bartiromo did not bother to ask what the two federal cases were. Nevertheless, Patel assured Bartiromo that “we have both seen the firearm and physically held it.” What does that mean? Who cares if Patel and Bongino held the weapon?  What’s important is whether Crook’s DNA and fingerprints are on the weapon, and did the recovered projectiles match that weapon?

Bongino was even more insulting when he explained to Bartiromo that “I’m not going to tell people what they want to hear. I’m going to tell people the truth.” Bongino said that there is no ‘there’ there. “If it was there,” said Bongino, “we would have told you.”

Well, meh…apparently not. With all due respect to Bongino and Patel, the FBI has failed to provide any update since August of 2024…a month after the shooting.” The FBI has the physical evidence and, yet, more than a year after the assassination attempt, the public still has not been provided the physical evidence that proves whether Crooks was or wasn’t the shooter.

But the FBI isn’t alone in its refusal to release investigative information about the assassination attempt. The Pennsylvania State Police refuse to release its report on the shooting incident, the Butler Coroner has not released his death investigation notes, the House Task Force has not released any of the physical evidence mentioned in its report so what’s the big secret?

Perhaps the President’s son could pick up the phone and request these investigative materials. It’s one thing to question not having any information, but surely, unlike the mere peasants, the son of the President of the United States, the man who was the target of the shooting, should be able to get his hands on these investigative results. AbleChild appreciates Eric’s frustrations and is hopeful he’ll succeed in these efforts…and then shares the results.

The post ABLECHILD: “We Know Nothing” – Eric Trump Slams PA State and FBI Silence on Butler Assassination Attempt appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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The Biggest Crime in the Conspiracy Against President Trump Might Be in the ICIG Interview Hidden by Adam Schiff

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What was said in the former ICIG Atkinson’s interview regarding the first Trump impeachment, that Adam Schiff did all he could to keep it hidden to this date?

We know:

We knew that the interview with ICIG Atkinson must have been bad because Adam Schiff kept it hidden till this date.

Back in 2019, when the Democrats went after President Trump for discussing the Biden actions in Ukraine, one interview was covered up by corrupt Rep. Adam Schiff.  Where is this testimony that apparently exonerates President Trump of any wrongdoing?

President Trump fired ICIG Atkinson in April of 2020 after he could no longer be trusted.  Atkinson had gone after the President to apparently cover-up his own crimes.

I wrote about this at TGP at that time.

Here are some highlights from this piece:

President Trump announced in 2020 that he was firing ICIG Atkinson because he could no longer be trusted. The President had lost all confidence in Atkinson.

Here is the President’s letter to the US Senate announcing the move:

Atkinson was identified in the FISA abuse report by the DOJ IG Horowitz as one of the individuals who was involved in FISA abuse which provides President Trump cover for firing Atkinson:

But corrupt politicians like lying Adam Schiff, who pushed forward the unconstitutional and criminal impeachment of President Trump were up in arms about the President’s action:

Schiff was scared.  His actions related to President Trump’s impeachment were corrupt and horrendous. Schiff ran with a story pushed by a whistleblower that was likely put together by Deep State attorney Mary McCord, fired ICIG Atkinson’s former boss:

Prior to becoming IC Inspector General, Michael Atkinson was the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division, Mary McCord.

It is very safe to say Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson have a working relationship from their time together in 2016 and 2017 at the DOJ-NSD. Atkinson was Mary McCord’s senior legal counsel; essentially her lawyer.

McCord was the senior intelligence officer who accompanied Sally Yates to the White House in 2017 to confront then White House Counsel Don McGahn about the issues with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the drummed up controversy over the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak phone call.

Additionally, Mary McCord, Sally Yates and Michael Atkinson worked together to promote the narrative around the incoming Trump administration “Logan Act” violations. This silly claim (undermining Obama policy during the transition) was the heavily promoted, albeit manufactured, reason why Yates and McCord were presumably concerned about Flynn’s contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. It was nonsense.

McCord and Atkinson were involved also in the bogus FISA warrants investigated by the DOJ IG.

We reported that Atkinson took the ICIG position after working for McCord at the DOJ. McCord on the other hand found a position working for lying Adam Schiff.

We then reported that Atkinson changed the IC whistleblower form in September of 2019 shortly after a CIA Agent, who was spying in the Trump White House, drafted a complaint on President Trump.

Margot Cleveland at the Federalist noted the following about the timing of when Atkinson changed the form and requirements that complaints be based on first-hand information:

As Davis noted, the revised form “was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed,” and the whistleblower’s complaint was dated August 12, 2019.

It is unclear whether the whistleblower submitted a form with his nine-page dossier, and if so what form, as none was declassified. One suggestion that a form was submitted is the OIG’s summary of the complaint: “According to the ICIG, statements made by the President during the call could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of the campaign-finance laws.”

Yet nothing in the whistleblower’s complaint mentioned potential foreign campaign contributions. Was that the ICIG’s gloss of the complaint, or was that the summary the whistleblower used on the form?

While the whistleblower’s plot to manipulate the ICWPA is obvious from the complaint, and so is his inaccurate partial quote of the statutory definition of “urgent concern,” the change in the form suggests complicity in the ICIG’s office. The director of national intelligence, who oversees the ICIG, should immediately investigate the investigator and determine whether there was a change in policy, when it occurred, why it occurred, and who initiated the change.

President Trump spoke about Atkinson, and he said that the White House offered to provide a copy of the discussion the President had with the newly elected President of Ukraine, which was the object of the ‘whistleblower’s’ complaint, but instead, Atkinson went to Congress with the application:

The whistleblower attempted to edit the form he originally provided. The original form stated that the whistleblower did not talk to Congress before filing the form but after it was discovered that he had met with Adam Schiff’s team in Congress, the whistleblower attempted to edit his form.

President Trump questioned what about the leaker who was on the call and who provided the whistleblower with the bogus story about President Trump.  President Trump also asks, what happened to the second whistleblower which was discussed right before the President released the transcript of the call with the Ukraine.  Why did Atkinson not bring this individual forward?  The President indicates that the second whistleblower could be the corrupt and dishonest Adam Schiff!

The most repulsive action by the Democrats and the Deep State is withholding ICIG Atkinson’s testimony in the House basement during the Schiff impeachment sham. This testimony is reportedly damning and will exonerate President Trump while highlighting the criminal activities of Schiff, Ciaramella, Atkinson, McCord and other crooks in the Deep State.

The Conservative Treehouse has revisited this entire narrative saying Atkinson’s testimony is the key to the CIA’s targeting of President Trump.  [this read is exceptional]

♦ Now, things are going to start getting a little dark here, because the implications are serious, and the aspect of ICIG Atkinson’s testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) being sealed is a little more than alarming when you consider what they were trying to do – impeach a sitting USA President on a fabricated issue.  Some context is needed.

Inspectors General do not operate in a vacuum.  They are authorized to conduct investigative oversight, as an outcome of permissions from the cabinet agency heads themselves.  The ICIG office, formerly headed by Michael Atkinson, falls under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

As the Inspector General of the Dept of Justice does not operate without the expressed permission of the U.S. Attorney General, so too is it required for the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to have permission to operate in CIA functions with the expressed permission of the CIA Director…

♦ The two key points here are: #1) ICIG Michael Atkinson does not make unilateral decisions to change the internal rules within the CIA, without the expressed permission of the CIA Director, CIA Deputy Director and CIA General Counsel. #2) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) would also know of the changed rules and arrangement therein.

♦ On October 4, 2019, ICIG Michael Atkinson gave closed-door testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) as part of their impeachment investigation.  One of the key questions to Atkinson surrounded the authority of his office changing the CIA whistleblower rules that permitted Eric Ciaramella to remain anonymous.

That Atkinson testimony was then “classified” and sealed under the auspices of “national security” by HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff, the same guy who Ciaramella talked to before filing the complaint.

If congress, or more importantly the American public, had known CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella was both the key author of the fraudulent 2016 ICA and the later 2019 CIA complaint, it’s doubtful any impeachment effort would have moved forward.

From within the CIA, Eric Ciaramella was the impeachment narrative creator and the Russian interference narrative creator.  In short, a political fabricator of intelligence within the CIA.

Again, ICIG Atkinson could not change the ‘whistleblower’ regulations on his own.  Someone had to sign-off on that, giving him the authority. Additionally, Atkinson a former legal counsel to the Deputy Asst Attorney General within the DOJ-NSD, is not going to go out on such a limb without a cya to protect himself.

The only person likely to give that authority within the structures and confines that operate inside our government was then CIA Director, Gina Haspel.  The Deputy CIA Director is not going to make that kind of a decision, especially given the circumstances, and the CIA General Counsel was not touching it.

That outline of events means the 2016/2017 CIA ‘stop-Trump’ operation under CIA Director John Brennan, was effectively continued by CIA Director Gina Haspel in 2019/2020.

It’s time for America to see this document.

The post The Biggest Crime in the Conspiracy Against President Trump Might Be in the ICIG Interview Hidden by Adam Schiff appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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