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The war between Trump and the CIA

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  • TopHatter
    replied
    John Durham Tried to Prove Trump’s Russiagate Theory. Instead He Debunked It.
    Trump’s prosecutor face-plants.

    Donald Trump and William Barr have spent years alleging that the Russia investigation was a criminal plot by the FBI. The Department of Justice’s inspector general found the Russia investigation was adequately predicated, but Barr disagreed. So he selected a prosecutor, John Durham, who would supposedly uncover this scheme and begin frog-marching its perpetrators to justice.

    By 2020, Barr was conceding that Durham might not reach all the way up to Barack Obama but would bring down his accomplices. “As to President Obama and Vice-President Biden,” he said that spring, “whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man. Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.” By the fall, Barr was reportedly “communicating that Durham is taking his investigation extremely seriously and is focused on winning prosecutions.”

    However focused he may be, Durham is not winning prosecutions. His investigation has produced one extremely small fish – a guilty plea by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith* for a likely immaterial error. And now he is losing prosecutions. Durham abused his authority by trying to prosecute Michael Sussmann, a lawyer working for Hillary Clinton, whom Durham tried to convict on a single perjury charge. And the case turns out to have been so pathetically threadbare that it resulted in a rapid acquittal.

    Sussmann went to the FBI in 2016 with evidence compiled by computer researchers that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia through a server run by the Russian bank Alfabank. The scientists were not sure if the server was a communications link between Trump and Russia and wanted the FBI to investigate. The link was never proven, and the FBI quickly decided not to pursue the thread, though Dexter Filkins has argued in detail that the case remains uncertain.

    The charge against Sussmann alleged that he misled the FBI by saying he was not working on behalf of a client when in fact he was working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Not only is a single charge of lying to the FBI weak tea for a prosecution, it was obvious all along that the evidence for even this small charge was tenuous. The prosecution hung its case on the testimony of one FBI official, James Baker, based entirely on his recollection of a conversation. Baker, however, was foggy on many of the specifics of his interactions with Sussmann, and even testified to Congress that he couldn’t remember if he knew who Sussmann was working for.

    The trial went badly enough for Durham that his fans in the right-wing media were already laying the groundwork for acquittal by blaming the judge for allowing a juror who believed (but wasn’t sure) she had contributed to Clinton’s campaign. That excuse might have held some water in the event of a hung jury. But the jury’s unanimous and extremely speedy verdict suggests a single possible former Clinton-donating juror is not the reason. The reason is that Durham didn’t have the goods.

    The fact Durham even had to bring this case was a testament to the failure of his probe. He had set out to uncover the FBI’s crimes against Mr. Trump. He was reduced to trying, and failing, to prosecute somebody for lying to the FBI.

    In the meantime, Durham supplied hours of commentary for Fox News personalities by filling his indictment with lurid claims that were not backed by evidence. Durham attempted to use the Sussmann trial to prove a version of the theory Trump claimed all along: that the Clinton campaign and the FBI had opened an investigation into Trump, knowing its evidence was fake, and then leaked the evidence of the investigation to the media in order to elect Hillary.

    Durham tried to use his charge against Sussmann as a hook for the larger conspiracy theory that he, Trump, and Barr have been expounding: that investigation was ginned up in order to smear Trump in the media before the election. “You can see what the plan was,” Assistant Special Counsel Andrew DeFilippis told the jury. “It was to create an October surprise by giving information both to the media and to the FBI to get the media to write that there was an FBI investigation.”

    There are several flaws with this theory. The first is that the Russia investigation was already underway before Sussmann approached the FBI with his suspicions about the server.

    The second is that the FBI never leaked its investigation until after Trump was elected.
    The only reporting on the whole matter before the election was in a New York Times report that the FBI “saw no clear link to Russia.” Meanwhile, the Hillary Clinton investigation had sprung leaks all over the place. So the Trump-Barr-Durham theory somehow posits that the FBI set up a phony investigation in order to leak it and then forgot to leak, instead doing the opposite by telling the Times that the Bureau did not suspect the Trump campaign.

    Indeed, the Sussmann trial revealed that the Clinton campaign did not want the FBI to open a probe into the Alfabank server because it feared an investigation would make it less likely that the media would write about the story at all. So to the extent Durham deepened the public understanding of Trump’s conspiracy theory of the Russia investigation, he inadvertently undermined it. I argued in 2020 that Joe Biden’s Justice Department was correct to let Durham continue his investigation because it would expose the hollowness of Trump’s allegations. And it has.

    The final, largest hole in the conspiracy theory is that there were in fact serious grounds for suspicion. By 2016 it was already apparent that Trump had hired as his campaign manager a guy who owed money to a Russian oligarch and who had previously managed the foreign campaign of a Russian puppet, had publicly asked Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, had exploited the results of that hack, among other things. The investigation turned up many more details, including a secret meeting where Trump’s campaign manager passed polling data on to a Russian agent, a secret business deal that promised to give Trump hundreds of millions of dollars in profit at no risk (and which he was exposing himself to Russian blackmail by denying in public), and so on.

    Why would Sussmann go to the FBI? No doubt he wanted Clinton to win. Durham presupposes this was his only motive. But Sussmann was also privy to an allegation whose technical details he wasn’t qualified to judge, but which had potentially alarming implications. The reason Sussmann was afraid Trump posed a security threat to the United States is that Trump posed a security threat to the United States.
    _________

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  • TopHatter
    replied
    John Durham continues investigating 2016 campaign and Trump, Russia accusations. What has he found?

    WASHINGTON – Special counsel John Durham drew the spotlight recently with a hotly contested court filing that sparked allegations of spying on former President Donald Trump, but it also revived questions about what he’s been doing during his nearly three-year investigation.

    His probe began as a review of what sparked the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The inquiry has grown to engulf some of the most contentious aspects of the campaign between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

    Durham's probe of the 2016 election is now far longer than the 22-month investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the campaign. So far, Durham has charged three people, each for allegedly lying to or for the FBI, which prompted Trump and lawmakers to question what he has been doing. Throughout the probe, Durham has kept a low profile and revelations in court documents provide few clues about where the investigation is headed.

    Durham's statements and legal filings occasionally spark criticism. In one pending case that's drawn fierce reaction from conservatives, Durham argued in a February court filing that a tech executive mined internet data related to Trump Tower, a Trump apartment building and the executive office of the president. Trump and right-wing publications called it proof Clinton spied on him.

    But the reason for the filing was the ho-hum subject of whether lawyers for the defendant, Michael Sussmann, had a conflict of interest in the case. Sussmann said he was aware of the potential conflict and would continue with the same lawyers.

    But his lawyers called the allegations irrelevant to the charge against him and false, “plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.”

    “This particular dustup strikes me as a sideshow," U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper told prosecutors March 10.

    Sussmann was acquitted May 31 of the charge after a jury trial.

    The flareup illustrated how opaque special counsel investigations are until charges are filed.

    “I can’t imagine the circumstances which would have required taking that long, which in turn lends itself to the appearance that it might be politically motivated or politically driven,” said Bruce Udolf, a criminal defense attorney in Florida who served as an associate independent counsel investigating President Bill Clinton in the 1990s over a land deal in Arkansas. “It makes it sound like it was an investigation in search of a crime."

    Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton, said clues about which way an investigation is headed are often revealed through public records such as subpoenas or court filings. He said the lack of announcements about subpoenas might suggest little activity in the probe.

    “We’ve seen very little of that, which suggests to me a relatively lower amount of activity in the Durham sphere,” said Rosenzweig, founder of Red Branch Consulting, which deals with homeland security and data privacy.

    Public revelations have been rare. Lawmakers want to know what the probe has found. Even Trump issued a statement more than a year ago, questioning the pace.

    “Where’s Durham?” Trump asked March 6, 2021. “Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?”

    Special counsel investigations can take a while
    Durham was tasked with leading a special counsel investigation of what started another special counsel investigation: the Mueller investigation.

    The attorney general can appoint a special counsel, or the predecessor post called independent counsel, to investigate potential criminal activity outside the typical Justice Department hierarchy to ensure it is free of interference from an administration.

    In Durham's case, Trump argued that the FBI and Mueller investigations of his administration were inappropriate.

    Such special investigations can take years. Starr spent five years investigating Clinton and independent counsel Lawrence Walsh spent nearly seven years investigating the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration. Durham spent $2.8 million during his first year as special counsel ending in September, the most recent period available. For comparison, Mueller's investigation cost about $16 million.

    Rosenzweig compared special counsels to Inspector Javert, the fictional police officer in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” who pursues a suspect for years.

    “Sometimes they get a bit of a Javert quality to them,” Rosenzweig said. “But these things tend to linger and they tend to linger because as a good special counsel, they feel like they need to be thorough."

    Based on initial findings, Barr appointed Durham in October 2020 to investigate whether anyone violated the law for intelligence gathering or law enforcement activities involving Trump, Mueller or the FBI investigation called Crossfire Hurricane into whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russian efforts to interfere in the election.

    Barr authorized Durham to prosecute federal crimes if necessary and submit a final report suitable for public release to the attorney general when the probe is concluded. But Barr set no deadline for completing the probe.

    Durham respected as career prosecutor of mafia, corruption
    Durham has pursued high-profile, difficult investigations for much of his 45-year career as a prosecutor. The assignments have come from Democratic and Republican administrations, and he's won praise from both for his thoroughness, whether they yielded headline-grabbing convictions or no charges at all.

    During the 1980s, Durham joined a Boston strike force fighting organized crime, where he prosecuted members of the Genovese, Gambino and Patriarca crime families.

    In the late 1990s, then-Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Durham to lead a task force investigating corrupt law enforcement officers associated with the Winter Hill Gang in Boston. Former FBI Supervisory Agent John Connolly and former Massachusetts State Police Lt. Richard Schneiderhan were convicted of feeding confidential police information to criminals James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi.

    In 2004, then-Connecticut Gov. John Rowland was indicted for theft of government services. Durham supervised the negotiations that led to his guilty plea and spending one year in prison.

    Then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey asked Durham in 2008 to investigate the CIA destruction of videotapes of detainee interrogations after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder expanded the investigation in 2009 to cover whether interrogation techniques violated the torture statute.

    Durham reviewed the interrogation of 101 detainees and recommended in 2011 the full criminal investigation of two individuals who died in custody. But Holder closed the investigation in 2012 without charges.

    Holder commended Durham and his team for working “tirelessly to conduct extraordinarily thorough and complete” investigations.
    Attorney General Eric Holder testifies June 25, 2009, on Capitol Hill in Washington before the Senate Judiciary Committee about whether to appoint a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation practices.
    Durham is famously taciturn. “He’s notoriously shy about speaking about himself or what he does,” said Leonard Boyle, a longtime fellow prosecutor who introduced Durham for a rare speech in March 2018.

    In that speech, Durham acknowledged the power that prosecutors wield and said it must be used appropriately.

    “Issuing a subpoena, we can destroy somebody’s reputation, we can damage their business, we can hurt their families,” Durham said at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, Connecticut. “This flies a little bit in the face of the constant demand that the public has for information.”
    Former FBI Director James Comey testifying before Congress in 2016.

    Durham was tapped to lead divisive probe of Crossfire Hurricane
    Durham's latest assignment is a politically fraught probe, with officials on all sides invested in the outcome. His review ran parallel to a Justice Department inspector general's probe, signaling a lack of trust from the administration.

    "Spying on a campaign is a big deal," Barr told a Senate panel in April 2019. "I think spying did occur," Barr added, though he questioned whether there was enough evidence to justify the surveillance.

    Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, issued a scathing report in December 2019 that criticized how the FBI won court orders to wiretap Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser.

    Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty as part of Durham's review to falsifying an email used to support the surveillance of Page.

    But Horowitz rejected Trump’s accusations that FBI leaders were trying to sabotage his campaign.

    “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” the decision to wiretap Page, the 478-page report said.

    Durham issued a rare statement Dec. 9, 2019, disputing Horowitz's report without specifying the disagreements. While the investigation continued, Durham said "last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with the some of the report's conclusions."

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed Durham the next day for what he called a political statement serving as "a henchman of Mr. Barr" rather than as a "dispassionate, nonpolitical observer."

    The intelligence community concluded Russia exerted influence during the campaign to help Trump, but not that his campaign colluded with Russia.

    What was the Steele dossier?
    Another contentious facet of the 2016 campaign was known as the Steele Dossier. Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled the report as opposition research about Trump’s connections to Russia for the Clinton campaign.

    Steele passed along the report to the FBI. But many of the anonymous allegations were debunked and Trump dismissed it as “fake news.”

    One of the men Durham charged is Igor Danchenko, a Russian citizen living in Virginia, who allegedly provided material for Steele’s report. Danchenko, who pleaded not guilty, was charged in November and faces trial in October on five counts of making false statements to the FBI.

    Rosenzweig characterized charges against Danchenko and Sussmann as peripheral to Durham's investigation.

    “The two charges are clearly very derivative charges about lying to people during the course of activities, not the primary offenses," Rosenzweig said. "Both of them, by any stretch of the imagination, are peripheral to the gravamen of the ultimate charge or what he is supposed to be investigating."


    President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Danang, Vietnam, in 2017.

    Sussman filing sparks attention, criticism
    Durham generated more headlines in the case against Sussmann, a national security lawyer, who served as counsel to Clinton’s campaign. The indictment alleges Sussman told the FBI he wasn’t providing the tip “on behalf of any client,” such as the Clinton campaign. But his lawyers contended he “did not make any false statement to the FBI."

    Sussman had met Sept. 16, 2016, with FBI general counsel James Baker to offer a tip alleging a secret channel of communications between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank. Sussman also met Feb. 9, 2017, with CIA officials to discuss Trump.

    A flurry of coverage followed a Durham filing Feb. 11 arguing Sussmann’s lawyers had a conflict of interest. To bolster the case, the filing described an unnamed tech executive mining internet data from Trump Tower, a Trump apartment building in New York and the executive office of the president.

    Fox News, the New York Post and Washington Examiner each reported the filing was evidence the Clinton campaign was spying on Trump as a candidate and as president.

    Trump, who wrongly called the special counsel "Robert Durham" in a statement, said the filing “provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia.” He suggested the crime could be “punishable by death.”

    But Sussmann’s lawyers said the document contained false allegations irrelevant to the charge in the case. The February 2017 meeting dealt with data from when Barack Obama was president, the lawyers said. Prosecutors haven’t charged the tech executive.

    Andrew DeFilippis, an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, told the judge at the March 10 hearing the information was included to "be extra careful" and there was no need to clarify or correct the record.

    "We don’t want to enter that game of correcting misinterpretations that may be out there," DeFilippis said. "We are being very careful to be accurate with the court."

    Cooper, the judge presiding over the case, told prosecutors the tech allegations weren't necessary because he could have simply asked Sussmann about the potential conflict at a routine hearing, as he did that day. He reminded prosecutors their arguments "are under a microscope" and would draw publicity in the high-profile case.

    “Until we swear a jury in this case, you folks have an audience of one," Cooper said. "That’s me."
    __________

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  • Parihaka
    replied
    and the opposing view

    Michael Sussmann has been acquitted.

    The acquittal is no surprise. This is a DC jury, after all. In the Roger Stone case, for example, we documented how a juror lied to get on the panel. (That judge didn’t care.) Making matters worse, the Sussmann judge wrongly allowed for a woman to remain on the jury, despite the fact that her daughter and Sussmann’s are on the same high school crew team. One can’t help but think that juror had her own daughter’s interests in mind – the cohesion of the crew team – when she reached a decision.

    After the verdict was announced, the jury’s forewoman held court before the media and expressed her displeasure that the Special Counsel prosecute a false statement case: “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”

    On the facts, there was more than sufficient evidence to prove Sussmann’s guilt. Sussmann lied to then-FBI general counsel James Baker in order to get a meeting to pass the Alfa Bank hoax materials to the FBI. Sussmann lied again during the meeting – stating he was not there on behalf of a client – in order to get the FBI to open an investigation into the Trump Organization’s purported ties with Alfa Bank. Later, during testimony to Congress, Sussmann admitted he met with Baker on behalf of a client. Billing records proved he had been working on the Alfa Bank project on behalf of the Clinton Campaign.
    Sussmann’s text to Baker


    I won’t say the verdict doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. It would have proven that a DC jury can convict one of their own. It would have resulted in accountability for lying to the FBI. Not the gravest of crimes, but it is still a crime.

    In large part, the prosecution of Sussmann was hamstrung by the FBI’s investigation into the Alfa Bank allegations. That goes to materiality. How can the lies be material if the FBI’s investigation was so sloppy? (Answer: they were material because the lies helped open the investigation in the first place.)

    On the issue of materiality, look to the testimony of FBI Special Agent Curtis Heide, whose repeated requests to interview the source of the Alfa Bank information were denied by headquarters. FBI Headquarters didn’t want this thing thoroughly vetted - even though they demanded the investigation be opened. As we stated during the trial:
    Relatively early on in the investigation - on September 26, 2016 - Agent Heide sent a message to Pientka, requesting an interview of the source of the Alfa Bank white papers. By that time, Heide knew the white paper was bunk. He received no response from Pientka. He repeated this request on October 3, 2016. Agent Heide’s requests were rebuffed by his liaison at FBI headquarters:

    That’s not the say the public hasn’t benefited from the trial. The information disclosed during the trial was important to understand the broader Clinton/Fusion GPS/Perkins Coie effort to poison the public, the press, and the FBI with their Trump/Russia lies. This included:
    1. Data from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, including data from the Trumansition period, was exploited by Sussmann and Rodney Joffe and then passed to the CIA.
    2. Rodney Joffe was a longtime Confidential Human Source (CHS) – and generally a resource – for the FBI. Joffe worked with the FBI on cyber threats from countries like Russia. From former FBI Agent Grasso: “I’m sure the work that [Joffe] did touched on matters having to do with Russia.”
    3. Joffe went to great lengths to make sure the Alfa Bank information he provided to the FBI did not go through his official FBI handler.
    4. The decision to open the investigation came from FBI Leadership. According to one FBI Agent, “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”
    5. Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias provided updates on the Fusion GPS “research” to the Clinton Campaign.
    6. And - Hillary Clinton herself approved of the strategy to disseminate the Alfa Bank allegations to the media. Per Robby Mook:
      Q: Mr. Mook, before the break you had testified that there was a conversation in which you told Ms. Clinton about the proposed plan to provide the Alfa-Bank allegations to the media; is that correct?

      A: Correct.

      Q: And what was her response?

      A: All I remember is that she agreed with the decision.

    Then there are the trial exhibits. As Aaron Maté observed, Sussmann edited an FBI press release on the DNC hacking because the FBI’s proposed statement “undermines” the DNC hacking narrative:
    Aaron Maté @aaronjmate
    Sussmann trial exhibits have been released. (documentcloud.org/projects/sussm…) Includes some Crowdstrike-FBI-DNC exchanges on the alleged DNC hack. Here Sussmann edits an FBI press release because the original wording "undermines" the DNC's hacking narrative:s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2204…




    May 31st 2022
    307 Retweets484 Likes
    Where does Durham go from here? That’s the real question. We already know that the investigation into Rodney Joffe remains open and that Igor Danchenko faces trial this year. Whether there is more remains to be seen.

    Leave a comment:


  • TopHatter
    replied
    Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post

    Remind me how Mueller did again?
    What? He didn't find or accomplish anything. Well, except for:

    The Special Counsel investigation uncovered extensive criminal activity:
    • The investigation produced 37 indictments; seven guilty pleas or convictions; and compelling evidence that the president obstructed justice on multiple occasions. Mueller also uncovered and referred 14 criminal matters to other components of the Department of Justice.
    • Trump associates repeatedly lied to investigators about their contacts with Russians, and President Trump refused to answer questions about his efforts to impede federal proceedings and influence the testimony of witnesses.
    • A statement signed by over 1,000 former federal prosecutors concluded that if any other American engaged in the same efforts to impede federal proceedings the way Trump did, they would likely be indicted for multiple charges of obstruction of justice.
    Russia engaged in extensive attacks on the U.S. election system in 2016:
    • Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”
    • Major attack avenues included a social media “information warfare” campaign that “favored” candidate Trump and the hacking of Clinton campaign-related databases and release of stolen materials through Russian-created entities and Wikileaks.
    • Russia also targeted databases in many states related to administering elections gaining access to information for millions of registered voters.[4]
    The investigation “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” and established that the Trump Campaign “showed interest in WikiLeaks's releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton”:
    • In 2015 and 2016, Michael Cohen pursued a hotel/residence project in Moscow on behalf of Trump while he was campaigning for President. Then-candidate Trump personally signed a letter of intent.
    • Senior members of the Trump campaign, including Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner took a June 9, 2016, meeting with Russian nationals at Trump Tower, New York, after outreach from an intermediary informed Trump, Jr., that the Russians had derogatory information on Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
    • Beginning in June 2016, a Trump associate “forecast to senior [Trump] Campaign officials that WikiLeaks would release information damaging to candidate Clinton.” A section of the Report that remains heavily redacted suggests that Roger Stone was this associate and that he had significant contacts with the campaign about Wikileaks.
    • The Report described multiple occasions where Trump associates lied to investigators about Trump associate contacts with Russia. Trump associates George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Michael Cohen all admitted that they made false statements to federal investigators or to Congress about their contacts. In addition, Roger Stone faces trial this fall for obstruction of justice, five counts of making false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
    • The Report contains no evidence that any Trump campaign official reported their contacts with Russia or WikiLeaks to U.S. law enforcement authorities during the campaign or presidential transition, despite public reports on Russian hacking starting in June 2016 and candidate Trump’s August 2016 intelligence briefing warning him that Russia was seeking to interfere in the election.
    • The Report raised questions about why Trump associates and then-candidate Trump repeatedly asserted Trump had no connections to Russia.

    Special Counsel Mueller declined to exonerate President Trump and instead detailed multiple episodes in which he engaged in obstructive conduct:
    • The Mueller Report states that if the Special Counsel’s Office felt they could clear the president of wrongdoing, they would have said so. Instead, the Report explicitly states that it “does not exonerate” the President and explains that the Office of Special Counsel “accepted” the Department of Justice policy that a sitting President cannot be indicted.
    • The Mueller report details multiple episodes in which there is evidence that the President obstructed justice. The pattern of conduct and the manner in which the President sought to impede investigations—including through one-on-one meetings with senior officials—is damning to the President.
    • Five episodes of obstructive conduct stand out as being particularly serious:
      • In June 2017 President Trump directed White House Counsel Don McGahn to order the firing of the Special Counsel after press reports that Mueller was investigating the President for obstruction of justice; months later Trump asked McGahn to falsely refute press accounts reporting this directive and create a false paper record on this issue – all of which McGahn refused to do.
      • After National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was fired in February 2017 for lying to FBI investigators about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, Trump cleared his office for a one-on-one meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey and asked Comey to “let [Flynn] go;” he also asked then-Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland to draft an internal memo saying Trump did not direct Flynn to call Kislyak, which McFarland did not do because she did not know whether that was true.
      • In July 2017, the President directed former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to instruct the Attorney General to limit Mueller’s investigation, a step the Report asserted “was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.”
      • In 2017 and 2018, the President asked the Attorney General to “un-recuse” himself from the Mueller inquiry, actions from which a “reasonable inference” could be made that “the President believed that an unrecused Attorney General would play a protective role and could shield the President from the ongoing Russia Investigation.”
      • The Report raises questions about whether the President, by and through his private attorneys, floated the possibility of pardons for the purpose of influencing the cooperation of Flynn, Manafort, and an unnamed person with law enforcement.\
    Summary
    • The redactions of the Mueller Report appear to conceal the extent to which the Trump campaign had advance knowledge of the release of hacked emails by WikiLeaks. For instance, redactions conceal content of discussions that the Report states occurred between Trump, Cohen, and Manafort in July 2016 shortly after Wikileaks released hacked emails; the Report further notes, “Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming,” but redacts the contextual information around that statement.
    • A second issue the Report does not examine is the fact that the President was involved in conduct that was the subject of a case the Special Counsel referred to the Southern District of New York – which the Report notes “ultimately led to the conviction of Cohen in the Southern District of New York for campaign-finance offenses related to payments he said he made at the direction of the President.”
    • The Report also redacts in entirety its discussion of 12 of the 14 matters Mueller referred to other law enforcement authorities.
    • Further, the Report details non-cooperation with the inquiry by the President, including refusing requests by the Special Counsel for an interview; providing written responses that the Office of the Special Counsel considered “incomplete” and “imprecise” and that involved the President stating on “more than 30 occasions that he ‘does not recall’ or ‘remember’ or ‘have an independent recollection.’”

    Leave a comment:


  • Albany Rifles
    replied
    Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
    6 hours to acquit.

    Not entirely sure why Trump's Army of Apologists was creaming their jeans over this anyway....after all, it was only a "process crime". The same thing that they were so dismissive about when Flynn was charged with the same thing.
    Remind me how Mueller did again?

    Leave a comment:


  • TopHatter
    replied
    Sussmann acquitted on charge brought by special counsel Durham

    The first courtroom test for Special Counsel John Durham ended in defeat Tuesday as a federal jury found a Democratic attorney not guilty of making a false statement to the FBI about allegations of computer links between Donald Trump and Russia.

    The jury deliberated for about six hours before acquitting Michael Sussmann, 57, on the single felony charge he faced: that he lied when he allegedly denied he was acting on behalf of any client in alerting the FBI to claims that a secret server linked Trump and a Moscow bank with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    During a two-week trial in federal court in Washington, Durham’s prosecutors argued that Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and an internet executive when he took two thumb drives of data and white papers on the purported link to FBI General Counsel James Baker about six weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

    Sussmann’s defense said the case was flawed on a variety of grounds, including that prosecutors could not prove with certainty exactly what the cybersecurity lawyer and former federal prosecutor said to Baker.

    Sussmann’s attorneys also stressed that there was no evidence the Clinton campaign authorized Sussmann to go to the FBI, although he and researchers working for Clinton appeared to have spent an extensive amount of time dealing with the server allegations and were actively encouraging The New York Times to write about the issue in the closing weeks of the presidential race.

    Sussmann showed no evident reaction to the not guilty verdict, although he was masked as most trial participants have been throughout. A prosecutor asked that all 12 jurors be polled and they all confirmed the acquittal.

    After U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper gaveled out the trial, Sussmann’s two lead attorneys, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, embraced.

    The FBI concluded that the evidence Sussmann presented didn’t support the notion of a link between Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Some agents assigned to the investigation found that the hints of such contacts found in domain name system records were actually caused by a marketing email server sending out spam message, but during the trial, Sussmann’s defense called the FBI’s probe “shoddy” and at least one agent involved conceded it was “incomplete.”

    It’s unclear how the high-profile courtroom setback will impact Durham’s ongoing probe or his ability to bring future charges in his broad investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe. Some Durham supporters have praised his pursuit of Sussmann as providing a useful vehicle to publicly air the involvement of the Clinton campaign in efforts to publicize the purported server link and for releasing evidence suggesting that some technical experts who advanced the allegations harbored doubts about them.

    However, Justice Department policy generally bars prosecutors from using a criminal case to lay out a broader narrative unless they believe they have the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence needed to get a conviction.

    Senior Justice Department officials have been vague about what level of supervision is in place over Durham’s probe, which former Attorney General Bill Barr gave special-counsel status a few weeks before the 2020 election. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the department is adhering to regulations governing the special counsel’s autonomy, but has declined to elaborate.

    Some potential witnesses who declined to testify at Sussmann’s trial and were involved in handling of the server allegations cited concerns that Durham might try to prosecute them.

    Durham’s probe, which began in May 2019, has produced two other criminal cases.

    Last fall, Durham brought a broader, five-count felony case against a Russian-born researcher for allegedly feeding false information to the FBI in the Trump-Russia probe. The researcher, Igor Danchenko, has pleaded not guilty and is set to go on trial in October in federal court in Alexandria, Va.

    In 2020, Durham obtained a guilty plea from a former FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, to a charge that he deliberately altered an email used to obtain secret-court surveillance warrants against Carter Page, an energy analyst who had formerly served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

    Clinesmith conceded altering an email he received and forwarded, but insisted that he believed the information he inserted was true. Durham’s team urged that Clinesmith receive between three and six months in prison, but a judge sentenced him to one year of probation instead.
    ______________

    6 hours to acquit.

    Not entirely sure why Trump's Army of Apologists was creaming their jeans over this anyway....after all, it was only a "process crime". The same thing that they were so dismissive about when Flynn was charged with the same thing.

    Leave a comment:


  • Parihaka
    replied
    Then of course, we have this from the court

    FBI brass were 'fired up' about now-debunked Trump-Russia ties: texts, testimony (nypost.com)


    FBI leaders, including then-Director James Comey, were “fired up” about a potential connection between the Trump campaign and Russia — which ultimately was proven false, text messages and court testimony revealed Tuesday.

    On Sept. 21, 2016, two days after Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann gave then-FBI General Counsel James Baker info about a supposed digital back channel between the Trump Organization and Moscow-based Alfa Bank, agent Joe Pientka texted colleague Curtis Heide: “People on 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”

    The “7th floor” refers to the most senior FBI agents and officials, who have their offices on the seventh floor of bureau headquarters in Washington.
    FBI leaders including Director James Comey were “fired up” about a probe on potential ties between Donald Trump and Russia, according to text messages and testimony in the trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

    “Did you guys open a case? Reachout [sic] and put tools on?” Pientka asked. “If not I will call Dan as Priestap says its [sic] not an option – we must do it.”

    Bill Priestap was the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division at the time.

    “[R]oger,” Heide replied. “we are opening a [counterintelligence] case today.”

    Leaders at the FBI demanded a case be opened two days after Sussmann gave then-FBI General Counsel James Baker information about an alleged connection between Trump and Russia.AP Photo/Evan Vucci
    Later in the day, Pientka told Heide that a unit would be assigned to the case shortly, adding, “go forth and conquer.” He then referred Heide to FBI agent Nate Batty, who Pientka said was in possession of thumb drives handed over to Baker by Sussmann.

    “[C]an you hit him up?” Pientka asked.

    “[A]lright,” Heide answered, “we’ll get him to push them to us … he’ll know how to do that.”

    “[W]ord,” Pientka responded, later adding in subsequent messages: “[S]weet. [T]hanks from us to all.”

    “[N]ah,” Heide responded, “just what we can.”

    Sussmann provided a “white paper” that claimed to show a back channel between Trump and Alfa Bank in Russia.

    Two days later, Heide and fellow FBI agent Allison Sands drafted an electronic communication to investigators incorrectly stating the Justice Department had referred the matter to the FBI on Sept. 19, the day Sussmann met with Baker.

    Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI when he met with Baker and turned over a “white paper” that showed the purported tie between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.

    Sussmann said he was providing the information on his own when, according to prosecutors, he was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client, tech executive Rodney Joffe.

    Curtis Heide confirmed to fellow agent Joe Pientka that a counterintelligence was going to be opened on Trump, according to text messages.

    Despite the enthusiasm of their bosses, rank-and-file agents quickly became convinced the data handed over by Sussmann was worthless. Last week, FBI supervisory agent Scott Hellman testified of the white paper: “I thought perhaps the person who drafted this document was suffering from a mental disability.”

    By Sept. 26, one week after Sussmann met with Baker, Heide said his team was leaning toward the conclusion that the allegations were “bunk.”

    When asked by prosecutor Jonathan Algor why he kept up with the investigation if he believed there was no evidence to back it, Heide answered: “Headquarters told us that not investigating the matter was not an option.”

    Sussmann’s defense had raised the messages in an attempt to show the FBI opened a full investigation into the Alfa Bank allegation, but went no further than they would have under a “preliminary investigation.”

    I would almost think Sussmann's defence team were working for Durham, but of course they know the lefts effort to push full responsibility on Sussmann and absolve the intelligence community, and so are portraying him as the victim of a much more powerful cabal/cult.
    Last edited by Parihaka; 25 May 22,, 07:14. Reason: Syntax

    Leave a comment:


  • Parihaka
    replied
    Here is then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe confirming it via twitter and highlighting far left Politico in 2020 denying this occurred even after he released the documents



    John Ratcliffe

    @JohnRatcliffe
    Correct. The role of Hillary and Dems in creating the fake Russian collusion narrative was known by intel agencies, FBI and DOJ since July 28, 2016. The American public found out in Sept 2020 when I declassified it. But then Dems and media lied about it…https://politico.com/news/2020/09/29/john-ratcliffe-hillary-clinton-russia-423022…
    Quote Tweet

    Jonathan Turley
    @JonathanTurley
    · May 22
    For Democrats and many in the media, Hillary Clinton has long held a Voldemort-like status as “She who must not be named” in scandals. Yet, her former aide Robby Mook told a jury that Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the Alfa bank claims. https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciar...candal/…
    Show this thread


    Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified a Russian intelligence assessment that was previously rejected by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee as having no factual basis, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    The extraordinary disclosure, released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) earlier Tuesday, rankled Democrats, who said the move effectively put Russian disinformation into the public sphere in order to boost President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the government’s efforts to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

    “It’s very disturbing to me that, 35 days before an election, the director of national intelligence would release unverified Russian rumint,” or rumor intelligence, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) told reporters.

    And several former senior intelligence officials described Ratcliffe’s move as incendiary and irresponsible, given the manner in which he was publicly releasing unverified information that originatedfrom a foreign adversary.

    The assessment claims that Hillary Clinton, then a Democratic candidate for president, personally approved an effort “to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.” But in his letter to Graham, Ratcliffe noted that the U.S. intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”
    So even though the Director of National Intelligence stated it as fact, Politico and it's fake news left wing cabal still denied it, and continue to do so until this day, despite the declassifications and court records.

    Leave a comment:


  • Parihaka
    replied
    Yes well....


    The trial of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann crossed a critical threshold Friday when a key witness uttered the name “Hillary Clinton” in conjunction with a plan to spread the false Alfa Bank Russian collusion claim before the 2016 presidential election.

    For Democrats and many in the media, Hillary Clinton has long held a Voldemort-like status as “She who must not be named” in scandals. Yet, there was her former campaign manager, Robby Mook, telling a jury that Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the claim of covert communications between the Trump organization and the Russian bank. It was one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in American politics, and Mook implicated Clinton as green-lighting the gas-lighting of the electorate.

    The mere mention of Clinton’s name sent shockwaves through Washington. In past scandals, the Clintons have always evaded direct responsibility as aides were investigated or convicted, from the Whitewater land dealings to cattle futures. Even when long-sought documents in Whitewater were discovered outside of the family quarters and bearing Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints, Washington quickly moved on.

    Clinton was not supposed to be the object of the Sussmann trial, because Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, issued a series of orders limiting the scope of the trial and its evidence. The orders were viewed as “spar[ing] the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee … potential embarrassment.”

    Yet, even after winning such limiting orders, it was the defense that called Mook to the stand — out of order, in the midst of the prosecution’s case, because he was scheduled to leave on vacation — and he proceeded to confirm that Clinton herself approved of the tactic.

    It was Washington’s worst-kept but least-acknowledged secret.

    On July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged plan to tie Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” Obama reportedly was told how Clinton allegedly approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

    Thus, Mook testified that Clinton did precisely what Brennan warned Obama was being planned.

    The date of Brennan’s warning is important: It was three days before the FBI’s collusion investigation began. It also was a couple of months before Sussmann contacted then-FBI general counsel Jim Baker while claiming he was not representing any client. (He was counsel to the Clinton campaign and, according to prosecutors, billed the meeting time to the campaign.)

    There is a strikingly familiar pattern in both the Steele dossier — which became the basis for the Russia collusion investigation — and the Alfa Bank tale. Campaign associates developed both claims while actively seeking to conceal their connections from the public and the government, including reportedly denying the funding of the Steele dossier and concealing that funding as legal costs.

    The campaign then pushed these unfounded claims to the media and the FBI. Indeed, prosecutors this week contended that Sussmann continued to push the Alfa Bank claims after Trump was elected, in an apparent effort to fuel the Russia collusion claims being breathlessly reported in the media at the time.

    When Clinton allegedly approved this effort, at least some people connected to her campaign were aware that the Alfa Bank theory was never viewed as credible by researchers tasked with supporting it. Those researchers had warned that it would be easy to “poke several holes” in the claim, according to prosecutors, and that the data could be seen as “a red herring.” Yet, trial witnesses admitted that they hoped the media would make the claims stick.

    Despite a record of Clinton associates pushing unfounded allegations to the FBI on both the Steele dossier and Alfa Bank, Mook and another witness, Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias, insisted they preferred to use the media for such efforts. The campaign found a conduit in one liberal magazine, for example, whose story was then cited as a “bombshell” report, as if the campaign had had nothing to do with it.

    For her part, Clinton not only approved using the Alpha Bank claim but helped to portray it as an established fact, tweeting: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

    That claim was then further amplified by one of her campaign advisers, Jake Sullivan, who now serves as President Biden’s national security adviser. Sullivan declared at the time: “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” Sullivan added that he could “only assume federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia’s meddling in our elections.”

    As the FBI’s Baker and other witnesses told jurors this week, there was in fact “nothing there.”

    Months after approving the Alpha Bank strategy, Clinton called in December 2016 to censor opponents whom she accused of spreading falsehoods to try to influence elections. She declared that “it’s now clear that so-called ‘fake news’ can have real-world consequences.” Indeed, Clinton has pushed for state and corporate censorship while demanding a “global reckoning” with those who spread disinformation. Of course, Sussmann could still face the real consequence of conviction given the strength of the evidence against him. Yet, there will likely not be consequences — let alone a “reckoning” — for Hillary Clinton.

    Leave a comment:


  • TopHatter
    replied
    The Alfa Bank Hoax Hoax
    MAGAs once again think they have proof Hillary did the Russia scandal—and once again they are full of shit.

    More than six years after the Russian government began a wide-ranging cyber attack on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and our political system, MAGA Republicans believe they finally have evidence that this scheme’s guilty party was neither Russia nor the Trump campaign that cheered on the attack, but Clinton herself.

    This latest attempt at victim-blaming is premised on information revealed during the trial of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who has been charged with lying to the FBI when he did not reveal his association with Clinton at a meeting during which he turned over data to the bureau that purported to show additional ties between Trump and Russia. Sussmann denies that he was working on behalf of the campaign.

    The specific evidence Sussmann was providing demonstrated that there was an unusual connection between servers affiliated with the Trump organization and those connected to Alfa Bank—Russia’s largest private financial-services company. The evidence presented was based on Domain Name System (DNS) logs identified by a team of computer scientists.

    Whether there was anything nefarious going on between Alfa and Trump remains a bit of a mystery. The FBI eventually closed the book on this lead—more on this a moment—resulting in a presumption that any suggestion of impropriety was false. But a satisfactory explanation for the DNS pings has never really been provided. If you want to nerd out on the various possibilities ranging from “random coincidence” to “there’s something fishy here,” the New Yorker did a deep dive on the available evidence back in 2018.

    The part of Sussmann’s trial that has the Trump crowd rubbing their nipples is testimony from Clinton 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook in which he revealed that the candidate was briefed on the potentially dubious Alfa Bank accusations and was fine with the campaign’s decision to share the information with reporters. (Point of fact: Many in the Trump orbit have stated that Clinton approved the Alfa Bank oppo’s dissemination, but Mook testified that he told her only after the campaign had shared it with a reporter.)

    This rather mundane bit of opposition-research dissemination was treated as a bombshell in the conservative press, where it has been presented as the long-yearned-for evidence that when it comes to Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, it was Hillary who perpetrated a scheme on poor innocent Donny Trump, not the other way around.

    “Hillary Clinton Did It,” screamed the headline from the wizened graybeards of the Wall Street Journal editorial board over the weekend. According to the WSJ, Mook’s testimony about sharing the undeveloped Alfa Bank information with the press proves that “Vladimir Putin never came close to doing as much disinformation damage” as Hillary. Интересная претензия, Comrades!

    Lil’ Donny Trump Jr. chimed in, arguing that Mook’s testimony somehow proves that Hillary was “behind the Russia, Russia, Russia smears against Trump.” Elon Musk tweeted that she advanced a “hoax.” And myriad troll accounts started retweeting my old article mocking the MAGAverse’s Russia Hoax false-flag theories (which you should really treat yourself to if you haven’t).

    Among the problems with the reaction from the WSJ, Jr. and assorted other MAGA media influencers: Mook’s admission didn’t come close to proving any scheme orchestrated by Hillary. The only new information he provided is that the candidate said she was okay with her campaign having shared research with reporters about potential ties between Trump and Russia amid an unprecedented cyberattack on her which had been perpetrated by Russia and, at minimum, weaponized by her opponent. (As a former Republican opposition research aficionado, I can testify that passing along not-fully-verified information to journalists in the hopes that they could suss out more details is a time-honored, bipartisan practice.)

    In short: The MAGA crowd’s big gotcha is that Hillary was okay with her campaign sharing rumors of questionable veracity about her political opponent with reporters and then tweeting the published information.

    Seriously, that’s all they have.

    The friends of Donald Trump are upset that someone might have made an accusation that they weren’t completely, totally certain was true.

    Donald Trump.

    A man who can barely open his mouth without passing along a “people are saying” smear. The king of apophasis himself.

    Try not to go blind from the eye-roll.


    I recognize that it’s not exactly a breaking news story that these assholes are acting in bad faith.

    But the problem is that these smears work. People hear little bits of info out of context and it plays into the broader narrative that Trump was the victim of some elite cabal that was out to get him—a narrative which Trump and his media whores have been pimping since the very beginning.

    But this is where the Alfa Bank saga gets really interesting: If you learn how the DNS server revelations actually came to light, what is revealed is that the Alfa Bank story completely undermines this “Russia collusion hoax” narrative that the Trumpists have successfully imposed on the American public.

    So if your constitution is sturdy enough to survive some PTSD, then saddle up. I want to go back to 2016 and revisit how, exactly, the “Deep State” addressed these accusations.

    By the time the Alfa Bank/Trump connection had been identified in the summer of 2016, the Russia op against the Clinton campaign was long underway. The phishing emails and DNC hack took place in the spring and the Clinton campaign was desperately trying to get the media and the public to take seriously the notion that Russia was conducting a full-scale effort to interfere in the election in order to push Donald Trump into the White House.

    According to an interview with the New Yorker, the independent researchers who uncovered the Alfa Bank/Trump link decided to hand over what they found to Eric Lichtblau, a reporter at the New York Times, in August 2020. A month later Sussmann brought data suggesting this connection to a friend who was working at the FBI. Sussmann claims it was provided to him by Rodney Joffe, a tech executive and data scientist who was his client at the time.

    In the intervening month, Lichtblau had been sharing the data with other cybersecurity experts. He told the New Yorker in 2018 that those conversations led him to believe that “Not only is there clearly something there but there’s clearly something that someone has gone to great lengths to conceal.”

    In late September 2016, Lichtblau had determined that he had enough information to write a story about the servers. On September 21, he reached out to Alfa Bank’s lobbyists in D.C. about it. Two days later the Trump domain that had been the recipient of the Alfa Bank DNS lookups disappeared from the internet. Within a week the connection stopped.

    What a coincidence!

    As this reporting was underway, Lichtblau was called by an FBI official who asked him to come to the bureau’s headquarters. During that meeting the FBI asked Lichtblau to delay his story about the servers, as it might interfere with their ongoing investigation into the potential relationship between the Russians who were interfering in our elections and domestic contacts possibly associated with Trump.

    The Times decided to honor this request after what executive editor Dean Baquet described as “a really intense debate,” since the paper had not determined the underlying reason for the server connection.

    For the next month the Alfa Bank affair went dark. In the meantime the Clinton campaign was hit with a barrage of stories about the information in the emails that had been hacked by the Russians. Trump famously asked Russia to continue the hack, if they were listening and he would reference the leaked emails over 160 times on the campaign trail.

    During this period the New York Times was not shy about covering the hacked materials. On October 10 the Times published “highlights” from the Clinton campaign emails. The word Russia does not appear in this article. The same day, the Times ran another article about the topic: “Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Strained to Hone Her Message, Hacked Emails Show.” The only time the word Russia appears in this article is in reference to a quote from Clinton’s spokesman.

    So throughout the final month before the 2016 election the paper of record sat on evidence of potential ties between Trump and Russia, doing nothing with it at the FBI’s behest—yet it reported extensively on the emails resulting from the Russian operation and how they were harming the Clinton campaign.

    Meanwhile, the same FBI that had pressured the Times to avoid making public any information relevant to their investigation of ties between Trump and Russia did not show that same circumspection when it came to Clinton. The Comey letter to Congress about reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server was published on October 28.

    Sure doesn’t seem like all the players in this pro-Hillary cOnSpiRaCy were on the same page.

    Alfa Bank came back into the picture on October 30, 2016, after a frustrated Harry Reid penned an outraged letter to the FBI charging that the bureau was withholding information about the ties between Trump and Russia related to the email hacks.

    The next day, on Halloween, Slate’s Franklin Foer provided some of that evidence, reporting on the data initially presented to Lichtblau—which had been shared with him by the Clinton campaign, though he developed additional sources, including one of the original data scientists.

    Foer’s article was not at all like the Gateway Pundit-style fabrications targeting Hillary that were saturating the internet at the time. He was meticulous about presenting the evidence available and highlighting the possible holes. He wrote:
    .
    One scientist, who wasn’t involved in the effort to compile and analyze the logs, ticked off a list of other possibilities: an errant piece of spam caroming between servers, a misdirected email that kept trying to reach its destination, which created the impression of sustained communication. “I’m seeing a preponderance of the evidence, but not a smoking gun,” he said. . . .

    What the scientists amassed wasn’t a smoking gun. It’s a suggestive body of evidence that doesn’t absolutely preclude alternative explanations. But this evidence arrives in the broader context of the campaign and everything else that has come to light: The efforts of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager to bring Ukraine into Vladimir Putin’s orbit; the other Trump adviser whose communications with senior Russian officials have worried intelligence officials; the Russian hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email.

    We don’t yet know what this server was for, but it deserves further explanation.

    Two days later Foer wrote a follow-up article that provided a “public airing” of the “valuable objections and credible alternative theories” that were presented after the article was published.

    This—this!—is the Slate content that led the WSJ ed board over the weekend to claim that Hillary spread more disinformation than Putin.

    It’s unclear if these people are idiots, villains, or crazies.

    Meanwhile, back in 2016 the Times story on Alfa bank which was published that same day did not share Foer’s curiosity as to what underscored this connection.

    The paper’s headline read “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” (That didn’t turn out to be quite right, seeing as the Mueller probe would go on to either indict or get plea deals from six Trump advisers). The Times story mentions Alfa Bank in paragraph 13, saying the FBI had dismissed the connection as possibly “innocuous.”

    The NYT is the gold standard when it comes to investigative reporting. Seriously. But if the paper had been actively on Trump’s side, it’s not clear what it would have done differently in this case.

    So here’s the output from the elite media and deep state’s supposed plot to frame Donald Trump.

    Clinton’s campaign was materially damaged, day in and day out, by stories about emails that had been hacked by Russia. At the same time, Trump’s campaign repeatedly used these stories to brand Clinton as “crooked,” lied about its attempts to coordinate with the Russians, defamed a dead DNC staffer who had nothing to do with the leak, and suffered no consequences for being the dissemination arm of a cyberattack by America’s enemies.

    Also: The Clinton campaign’s attempts to push back on this through their supposed allies in the press and the deep state were completely rebuffed. Not only did the FBI refrain from using the Alfa Bank information to try to take down Trump—they went out of their way to block the New York Times from reporting the story. And then the bureau provided sourcing that the Times used to preemptively exonerate Trump.

    Meanwhile, the FBI publicly announced the reopening of its investigation into Clinton, which the Times giddily covered, alongside every development from the leaked emails.

    And then, even Franklin Foer—the supposed vehicle for disseminating this anti-Trump “disinformation”—produced a balanced, well-sourced story about the strange Alfa Bank/Trump server connection that presented more questions than accusations and followed it up with another piece that more thoroughly addressed the doubts that it demonstrated foul play.

    The true story of the Alfa Bank saga is that all the players at these much maligned Elite Institutions acted with extreme discretion in not overplaying speculative information during the heat of the campaign. And yet they are still smeared by conspiracists who showed no such discretion themselves at the time and are still looking for any excuse to justify their complicity in Russia’s successful attack on our political process.
    _________

    Leave a comment:


  • TopHatter
    replied
    Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
    Dispute the points made, most of which are now backed by court record, or stick your extreme left agitprop up your arse.
    OK. You've earned yourself a three day vacation.

    This has been a long time in coming. I don't know for certain what's brought you and I to this point but your playtime is over.
    I'm done with you talking to me that way. I've tolerated a lot of shit from you for years now, things that would've earned anyone else an instant ban.

    When you return, don't ever refer to me as anything even approaching an "leftist/extreme leftist".
    I'm nothing of the kind, nor do I post "agitprop" of any kind.
    You on the other hand seem to live in that world now.

    Speaking of which, the same goes for using "sources" like The Epoch Times. We may not be the same board as in the past, but we haven't been reduced to posting links to far-right trash like that.


    In case it isn't clear, I'm not tolerating any more of your delusional slander or insults. The same goes for you zraver

    No more warnings will be issued.

    If you feel you've been treated unfairly, then you can PM Eric or Buck.

    If there is anyone who wants to discuss this, then please PM me, Eric or Buck. As always, we ask that you not to talk about moderating issues in the public forum. Thank you.

    Leave a comment:


  • Parihaka
    replied
    Democrat party disinformation news outlet CNN goes into damage control claiming the Clinton campaign didn't know the Alpha Bank allegations and pee tape dossier were fake, even though it is again public record via the courts that they in fact wrote them.

    (CNN)Hillary Clinton personally approved her campaign's plans in fall 2016 to share information with a reporter about an uncorroborated alleged server backchannel between Donald Trump and a top Russian bank, her former campaign manager testified Friday in federal court.

    Robby Mook said he attended a meeting with other senior campaign officials where they learned about strange cyberactivity that suggested a relationship between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which is based in Moscow. The group decided to share the information with a reporter, and Mook subsequently ran that decision by Clinton herself.
    "We discussed it with Hillary," Mook said, later adding that "she agreed with the decision."
    Takeaways from a critical witness in the John Durham probe's first trial
    A campaign staffer later passed the information to a reporter from Slate magazine, which the campaign hoped the reporter would "vet it out, and write what they believe is true," Mook said.Slate published a story on October 31, 2016, raising questions about the odd Trump-Alfa cyber links. After that story came out, Clinton tweeted about it, and posted a news release that said, "This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia."
    The testimony came in the criminal trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who is being prosecuted by the Trump-era special counsel John Durham. Durham is investigating potential misconduct tied to the FBI's Trump-Russia probe. The trial has shed light on the dark arts of political opposition research -- and how campaigns dig up dirt and plant stories in the press.
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    Federal investigators ultimately concluded there weren't any improper Trump-Alfa cyber links.Clinton officials say they didn't authorize FBI meeting


    Sussmann passed along the same information about Trump and Alfa Bank to an FBI official in September 2016. Prosecutors charged him with lying to the FBI and allege that he falsely told the FBI official that he wasn't there for a client, even though he was there on Clinton's behalf.
    He has pleaded not guilty and maintains that he went "to help the FBI" as a concerned citizen, and that the Clinton campaign wouldn't have wanted him to meet with the FBI in the first place.
    Mook and another top Clinton campaign official, general counsel Marc Elias, reinforced that assertion this week on the witness stand. They both testified they didn't authorize or direct Sussmann to go to the FBI with the explosive Trump tip. Mook said Friday that he didn't even know who Sussmann was during the 2016 campaign, and would've opposed an FBI meeting.
    "Going to the FBI does not seem like an effective way to get information out to the public," Mook said. "You do that through the media, which is why the information was shared with the media."

    Leave a comment:


  • Parihaka
    replied
    Originally posted by TopHatter View Post

    The Epoch Times....for fuck's sake...are you serious? Yes, yes you are. What a stupid question.

    Do us all a favor if you're going to insist on using batshit crazy sources and just to stick to the supermarket tabloids. They're much more respectable.

    No really, keep this trash off the WAB please. Thank you.
    Dispute the points made, most of which are now backed by court record, or stick your extreme left agitprop up your arse.

    Leave a comment:


  • TopHatter
    replied
    Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
    Surprisingly good summary given it was written in 2018. The current narrative of course is that the FBI, the DNC, the Obama Administration and the CIA were unwitting victims rather than active participants in the scam, hence the insistence in tying it to Clinton alone.
    The Epoch Times....for fuck's sake...are you serious? Yes, yes you are. What a stupid question.

    Do us all a favor if you're going to insist on using batshit crazy sources and just to stick to the supermarket tabloids. They're much more respectable.

    No really, keep this trash off the WAB please. Thank you.

    Leave a comment:


  • Parihaka
    replied
    Surprisingly good summary given it was written in 2018. The current narrative of course is that the FBI, the DNC, the Obama Administration and the CIA were unwitting victims rather than active participants in the scam, hence the insistence in tying it to Clinton alone.

    Although the details remain complex, the structure underlying Spygate—the creation of the false narrative that candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia, and the spying on his presidential campaign—remains surprisingly simple:

    1. CIA Director John Brennan, with some assistance from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, gathered foreign intelligence and fed it throughout our domestic Intelligence Community.

    2. The FBI became the handler of Brennan’s intelligence and engaged in the more practical elements of surveillance.

    3. The Department of Justice facilitated investigations by the FBI and legal maneuverings while providing a crucial shield of nondisclosure.

    4. The Department of State became a mechanism of information dissemination and leaks.

    5. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided funding, support, and media collusion.

    6. Obama administration officials were complicit, and engaged in unmasking and intelligence gathering and dissemination.

    7. The media was the most corrosive element in many respects. None of these events could have transpired without their willing participation. Stories were pushed, facts were ignored, and narratives were promoted.

    Let’s start with a simple premise: The candidacy of Trump presented both an opportunity and a threat.

    Initially not viewed with any real seriousness, Trump’s campaign was seen as an opportunistic wedge in the election process. At the same time, and particularly as the viability of his candidacy increased, Trump was seen as an existential threat to the established political system.

    The sudden legitimacy of Trump’s candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment. Here was a true political outsider who held no traditional allegiances. He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn’t be bought, and he didn’t care what others thought of him—he trusted himself.

    Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried. Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy, regulations, and the power of special interests. He challenged Congress. He challenged the United Nations and the European Union. He questioned everything.
    CIA Director John Brennan on March 13, 2015. Brennan played a crucial role in the creation of the Russia-collusion narrative. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)
    CIA Director John Brennan took unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates—primarily from the UK, but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia.

    In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan—head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the National Security Agency)—traveled to Washington to meet with Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

    On Jan. 23, 2017—three days after Trump’s inauguration—Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement. The Guardian openly speculated that Hannigan’s resignation was directly related to the sharing of UK intelligence.

    One method used to help establish evidence of collusion was the employment of “spy traps.” Prominent among these were ones set for Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The intent was to provide or establish connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The content and context mattered little as long as a connection could be established that could then be publicized. The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was another such attempt.

    Western intelligence assets were used to initiate and establish these connections, particularly in the cases of Papadopoulos and Page.

    Ultimately, Brennan formed an inter-agency task force comprising an estimated six agencies and/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry into Trump and possible Russia connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency (NSA) handled foreign and intelligence aspects.

    Brennan’s inter-agency task force is not to be confused with the July 2016 FBI counterintelligence investigation, which was formed later at Brennan’s urging.

    During this time, Brennan also employed the use of reverse targeting, which relates to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen. This effort was uncovered and made public by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in a March 2017 press conference:
    “I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were monitored and disseminated out in intelligence-reporting channels. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign-intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.

    “From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don’t know exactly how that was picked up but we’re trying to get to the bottom of it.”

    As this foreign intelligence—unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels—was gathered, Brennan began a process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation. Brennan repeatedly noted this during a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony:
    “I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the [FBI].”

    Brennan also admitted that his intelligence helped establish the FBI investigation:

    “I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred.”

    This admission is important, as no official intelligence was used to open the FBI’s investigation.

    Once the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, Brennan shifted his focus. Through a series of meetings in August and September 2016, Brennan informed the congressional Gang of Eight regarding intelligence and information he had gathered. Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately, calling into question whether each of the members received the same information. Efforts to block the release of the transcripts from each meeting remain ongoing.

    The last major segment of Brennan’s efforts involved a series of three reports and greater participation from Clapper. The first report, the “Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security,” was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The second report, “GRIZZLY STEPPE —Russian Malicious Cyber Activity,” was released on Dec. 29, 2016. The third report, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections”—also known as the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)—was released on Jan. 6, 2017.

    This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump. Notably, Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning only a moderate confidence level.
    Click on infographic to enlarge.Federal Bureau of Investigation


    Although the FBI is technically part of the DOJ, it is best for the purposes of this article that the FBI and DOJ be viewed as separate entities, each with its own related ties.

    The FBI itself was comprised of various factions, with a particularly active element that has come to be known as the “insurance policy group.” It appears that this faction was led by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and comprised other notable names such as FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and FBI general counsel James Baker.

    The FBI established the counterintelligence investigation into alleged Russia collusion with the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016. Comey initially refused to say whether the FBI was investigating possible connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. He would continue to refuse to provide answers until March 20, 2017, when he disclosed the existence of the FBI investigation during congressional testimony.

    Comey also testified that he did not provide notification to the Gang of Eight until early March 2017—less than one month earlier. This admission was in stark contrast to actions taken by Brennan, who had notified members of the Gang of Eight individually during August and September 2016. It’s likely that Brennan never informed Comey that he had briefed the Gang of Eight in 2016. Comey did note that the DOJ “had been aware” of the investigation all along.
    Former FBI Director James Comey on June 8, 2017. Comey opened the counterintelligence investigation into Trump on the urging of CIA Director John Brennan. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
    Following Comey’s firing on May 9, 2017, the FBI’s investigation was transferred to special counsel Robert Mueller. The Mueller investigation remains ongoing.

    The FBI’s formal involvement with the Steele dossier began on July 5, 2016, when Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the US Embassy in Rome, was dispatched to visit former MI6 spy Christopher Steele in London. Gaeta would return from this meeting with a copy of Steele’s first memo. This memo was given to Victoria Nuland at the State Department, who passed it along to the FBI.

    Gaeta, who also headed the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime unit, had known Steele since at least 2010, when Steele had provided assistance to the FBI’s investigation into the FIFA corruption scandal.

    Prior to the London meeting, Gaeta may also have met on a less formal basis with Steele several weeks earlier. “In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA,” The Guardian reported. “His information started to reach the bureau in Washington.”

    It’s worth noting that there was no “dossier” until it was fully compiled in December 2016. There was only a sequence of documents from Steele—documents that were passed on individually—as they were created. Therefore, from the FBI’s legal perspective, they didn’t use the dossier. They used individual documents.

    For the next month and a half, there appeared to be little contact between Steele and the FBI. However, the FBI’s interest in the dossier suddenly accelerated in late August 2016, when the bureau asked Steele “for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources.”

    In September 2016, Steele traveled back to Rome to meet with the FBI’s Eurasian squad once again. It’s likely that the meeting included several other FBI officials as well. According to a House Intelligence Committee minority memo, Steele’s reporting reached the FBI counterintelligence team in mid-September 2016—the same time as Steele’s September trip to Rome.

    The reason for the FBI’s renewed interest had to do with an adviser to the Trump campaign—Carter Page—who had been in contact with Stefan Halper, a CIA and FBI source, since July 2016. Halper arranged to meet with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium, just three days after Page took a trip to Moscow. Speakers at the symposium included Madeleine Albright, Vin Webber, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.

    Page was now the FBI’s chosen target for a FISA warrant that would be obtained on Oct. 21, 2016. The Steele dossier would be the primary evidence used in obtaining the FISA warrant, which would be renewed three separate times, including after Trump took office, finally expiring in September 2017.
    Former volunteer Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Nov. 2, 2017. The FBI obtained a retroactive FISA spy warrant on Page. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
    After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General.
    Peter Strzok and Lisa Page


    Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were two prominent members of the FBI’s “insurance policy” group. Strzok, a senior FBI agent, was the deputy assistant director of FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, served as special counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

    Strzok was in charge of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business. He helped FBI Director James Comey draft the statement exonerating Clinton and was personally responsible for changing specific wording within that statement that reduced Clinton’s legal liability. Specifically, Strzok changed the words “grossly negligent,” which could be a criminal offense, to “extremely careless.”

    Strzok also personally led the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the alleged Trump–Russia collusion and signed the documents that opened the investigation on July 31, 2016. He was one of the FBI agents who interviewed Trump’s national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Strzok met multiple times with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and received information from Steele at those meetings.

    Following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Strzok would join the team of special counsel Robert Mueller. Two months later, he was removed from that team after the DOJ inspector general discovered a lengthy series of texts between Strzok and Page that contained politically charged messages. Strzok would be fired from the FBI in August 2018.
    Then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok on July 12, 2018. Strzok oversaw both the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
    Both Strzok and Page engaged in strategic leaking to the press. Page did so at the direction of McCabe, who directly authorized Page to share information with Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett. That information was used in an Oct. 30, 2016, article headlined “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.” Page leaked to Barrett thinking she had been granted legal and official authorization to do so.

    McCabe would later initially deny providing such authorization to the Office of Inspector General. Page, when confronted with McCabe’s denials, produced texts refuting his statement. It was these texts that led to the inspector general uncovering the texts between Strzok and Page.

    The two exchanged thousands of texts, some of them indicating surveillance activities, over a two-year period. Texts sent between Aug. 21, 2015, and June 25, 2017, have been made public. The series comes to an end with a final text by Page telling Strzok, “Don’t ever text me again.”

    On Aug. 8, 2016, Stzrok wrote that they would prevent candidate Trump from becoming president:
    Page: ”[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

    Strzok: ”No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

    On Aug. 15, 2016, Strzok sent a text referring to an “insurance policy”:
    “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. … It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

    The “insurance policy” appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump–Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation, led by McCabe, could continue unhindered.
    Department of Justice


    The Department of Justice, which comprises 60 agencies, was transformed during the Obama years. The department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political affiliation.

    However, a series of investigative articles by PJ Media published during Eric Holder’s tenure as attorney general revealed an unsettling pattern of ideological conformity among new hires at the DOJ: Only lawyers from the progressive left were hired. Not one single moderate or conservative lawyer made the cut. This is significant as the DOJ enjoys significant latitude in determining who will be subject to prosecution.

    The DOJ’s job in Spygate was to facilitate the legal side of surveillance while providing a protective layer of cover for all those involved. The department became a repository of information and provided a protective wall between the investigative efforts of the FBI and the legislative branch. Importantly, it also served as the firewall within the executive branch, serving as the insulating barrier between the FBI and Obama officials. The department had become legendary for its stonewalling tactics with Congress.
    DOJ Official Bruce Ohr on Aug. 28, 2018. Ohr passed on information from Christopher Steele to the FBI. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
    The DOJ, which was fully aware of the actions being taken by James Comey and the FBI, also became an active element acting against members of the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, along with Mary McCord, the head of the DOJ’s National Security Division, was actively involved in efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn from his position as national security adviser to President Trump.

    To this day, it remains unknown which individual was responsible for making public Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to a process crime: lying to the FBI. There have been questions raised in Congress regarding the possible alteration of FD-302s, the written notes of Flynn’s FBI interviews. Special counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly deferred Flynn’s sentencing hearing.

    David Laufman, deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterintelligence at the DOJ’s National Security Division, played a key role in both the Clinton email server and Russia hacking investigations. Laufman is currently the attorney for Monica McLean, the long-time friend of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while in high school. McLean was also employed by the FBI for 24 years.

    Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a key role in Spygate. Ohr held two important positions at the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. As associate deputy attorney general, Ohr was just four offices away from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and he reported directly to her. As director of the task force, he was in charge of a program described as “the centerpiece of the attorney general’s drug strategy.”

    Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known since at least 2006, well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr, an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working for Fusion GPS sometime in late 2015. Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier.

    According to testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok, he and Ohr met at least five times during 2016 and 2017. Strzok was working directly with then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

    Additionally, Ohr met with the FBI at least 12 times between late November 2016 and May 2017 for a series of interviews. These meetings could have been used to transmit information from Steele to the FBI. This came after the FBI had formally severed contact with Steele in late October or early November 2016.

    John Carlin is another notable figure with the DOJ. Carlin was an assistant attorney general and the head of the DOJ’s National Security Division until October 2016. His role will be discussed below in the section on FISA abuse.
    The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe


    Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as “Spygate.” He directed the activities of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous “insurance policy” text message.

    McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.

    On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He was placed into a somewhat chaotic situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months earlier, on March 2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.

    Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased scrutiny as the result of actions taken leading up to and following the election, particularly Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation.

    On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject of the memo was “Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI.” Comey was fired that day.

    McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration for the permanent position.

    On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the FBI’s Inspection Division (INSD) regarding apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal article, “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe” by Devlin Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, “A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.”

    At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the darker aspects of McCabe’s role in Spygate fully known.

    In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions, regarding potential lack of candor before Congress in relation to Sessions’s contacts with Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.

    Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.

    On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly record President Trump. This remark was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former FBI general counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence. Rosenstein issued a statement denying the accusations.

    The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was “pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president.”

    An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the conversation somewhat differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying, “What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?”

    Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met with Mueller, reportedly as an interview for the FBI director job.

    On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump’s meeting with Mueller—and the day after Rosenstein’s encounters with McCabe—Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.

    The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any expansion of Mueller’s investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.

    Interestingly, without Comey’s memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed—the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would have remained in charge of the Russia investigation. McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was reportedly under consideration. Regardless, without Comey’s leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement and the FBI would have retained control.

    On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.

    On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on “the scope of investigation and definition of authority” that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the new FBI director.

    Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray were tasked with overseeing all leak investigations.

    That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove any residual FBI influence—specifically that of McCabe—from the Russia investigation. The appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely neutralized.

    On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.
    State Department


    The State Department, with its many contacts within foreign governments, became a conduit for the flow of information. The transfer of Christopher Steele’s first dossier memo was personally facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy.

    Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele’s involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he began to provide reports informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a “private client” but were “shared widely within the U.S. State Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine,” the Guardian reported.
    State Department official Victoria Nuland on Nov. 4, 2015. Nuland passed on parts of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
    In July 2016, when the FBI wanted to send Gaeta to visit Steele in London, the bureau sought permission from the office of Nuland, who provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018, appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation”:
    “In the middle of July, when [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate.”

    Steele also met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy for Libya. Steele and Winer had known each other since at least 2010. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Winer wrote the following:
    “In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the ‘dossier.’ Steele’s sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign.”

    In a strange turn of events, Winer also received a separate dossier, very similar to Steele’s, from long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This “second dossier” had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer then met with Steele in late September 2016 and gave Steele a copy of the “second dossier.” Steele went on to share this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it to corroborate his dossier.
    State Department official Jonathan Winer. Winer passed on memos from Christopher Steele to Victoria Nuland. (State Department)
    Other foreign officials also used conduits into the State Department. Alexander Downer, Australia’s high commissioner to the UK, reportedly funneled his conversation with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos—later used as a reason to open the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation—directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.

    “The Downer details landed with the embassy’s then-chargé d’affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton’s State Department,” The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote in a May 31, 2018, article.

    If true, this would mean that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.

    Curiously, details surprisingly similar to the Papadopoulos–Downer conversation show up in the first memo written by Steele on June 20, 2016:
    “A dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls. … It has not yet been distributed abroad, including to Trump.”
    Clinton Campaign and the DNC


    The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee both occupied a unique position. They had the most to gain but they also had the most to lose. And they stood willing and ready to do whatever was necessary to win. Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, is credited with being the first to raise the specter of candidate Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia.

    The entire Clinton campaign willfully promoted the narrative of Russia–Trump collusion despite the uncomfortable fact that they were the ones who had engaged the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele through their law firm Perkins Coie. Information flowed from the campaign—sometimes through Perkins Coie, other times through affiliates—ultimately making its way into the media and sometimes to the FBI. Information from the Clinton campaign may also have ended up in the Steele dossier.

    Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign, in tandem with Jake Sullivan, the senior policy adviser to the campaign, took the lead in briefing the press on the Trump–Russia collusion story.
    Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, on Oct. 28, 2016. Palmieri helped promote the Russia-collusion narrative. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
    Another example of this behavior can be seen from an instance when Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann leaked information from Steele and Fusion GPS to Franklin Foer of Slate magazine. This event is described in the House Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russian active measures, in footnote 43 on page 57. Foer then published the article “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?” on Oct. 31, 2016. The article concerns allegations regarding a server in the Trump Tower.

    The Slate article managed to attract the immediate attention of Clinton, who posted a tweet on the same day the article was published:
    “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

    Attached to her tweet was a statement from Sullivan:
    “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.

    “This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists.”

    These statements, which were later proven to be incorrect, are all the more disturbing with the hindsight knowledge that it was a senior Clinton/DNC lawyer who helped plant the story. And given the prepared statement by Sullivan, the Clinton campaign knew this.

    This type of behavior would be engaged in repeatedly—damning leaks leading to media stories, followed by ready attacks from the Clinton campaign.

    Alexandra Chalupa is a Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee. Chalupa met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia. Chalupa began investigating Manafort in 2014. In late 2015, Chalupa expanded her opposition research on Manafort to include Trump’s ties to Russia. In January 2016, Chalupa shared her information with a senior DNC official.

    Chalupa’s meetings with DNC and Ukrainian officials would continue. On April 26, 2016, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff published a story on Yahoo News about Manafort’s business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a DNC email leaked by Wikileaks that Chalupa had been working with Isikoff—the same journalist Christopher Steele leaked to in September 2016. Manafort would later be indicted for Foreign Agents Registration Act violations that occurred during the Obama administration.
    Perkins Coie


    International law firm Perkins Coie served as the legal arm for both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Ties to Perkins Coie extended beyond the DNC into the Obama White House.

    Bob Bauer, a partner at the law firm and founder of its political law practice, served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama throughout 2010 and 2011. Bauer was also general counsel to Obama’s campaign organization, Obama for America, in 2008 and 2012.

    Perkins Coie partners Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann each played critical roles and were the ones who hired Fusion GPS and Steele. Sussmann personally handled the alleged hack of the DNC server. He also transmitted information, likely from Steele and Fusion GPS, to James Baker, then-chief counsel at the FBI, and to several members of the press.
    Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann. Sussmann transmitted information to FBI chief counsel James Baker and several journalists. (Courtesy Perkins Coie)
    According to a letter dated Oct. 24, 2017, written by Matthew Gehringer, general counsel at Perkins Coie, the firm was approached by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson in early March 2016 regarding the possibility of hiring Fusion GPS to continue opposition research into the Trump campaign. Simpson’s overtures were successful, and in April 2016, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC.

    Sometime in April or May 2016, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele. During this same period, Fusion also reportedly hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele would complete his first memo on June 20, 2016, and send it to Fusion via enciphered mail.

    Perkins Coie appears to have also been acting as a conduit between the DNC and the FBI. Documents suggest that Sussmann was feeding information to FBI general counsel James Baker and at least one journalist ahead of the FBI’s application for a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.

    The information provided by Sussmann may have been used by the FBI as “corroborating information.”
    Obama Administration


    The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333, also known as Obama’s data-sharing order. With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.

    Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn’t sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.

    The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.

    An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017, MSNBC interview, where she detailed how the Obama administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:
    “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill … ‘Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.’

    “The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians, [they] would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. … That’s why you have the leaking.”
    Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia Evelyn Farkas on May 6, 2014. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
    Many of the Obama administration’s efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.

    DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the attorney general’s office. According to congressional testimony by Horowitz:
    “We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. … It was simply a decision by the General Counsel’s Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren’t going to give us that information.”

    These new restrictions were put in place by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

    On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015, with a 58-page memorandum. The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III—including intercepted communications and national security letters.

    The New York Times recently disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.

    At other times, the Obama administration’s efforts were more direct. The Intelligence Community assessment was released internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email documenting the meeting.

    The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.

    Comey would only inform Trump of the “salacious” details contained within the dossier. He later explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview why:
    “Because that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about.”

    Shortly after Comey’s meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The significance of the meeting was material, as Comey noted in a Jan. 7 memo he wrote:
    “Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material.”
    Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Nov. 17, 2016. Clapper leaked information to CNN, after which he publicly condemned the leaks. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
    The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey briefed Trump that CNN reported on the dossier. It was later revealed that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey’s meeting with Trump to CNN.

    The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of intelligence unmaskings, the process whereby a U.S. citizen’s identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.

    The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ’s National Security Division, led that effort.
    Executive Order 13762


    President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ. The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.

    Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold the president’s executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.

    Obama’s executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department’s senior leadership. The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.

    Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office. Phillips, after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

    It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming under intense scrutiny.

    The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates’s efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian ambassador.

    Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.

    Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama’s prior order.

    On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings appear to have been unexpected.
    Media


    In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a series of payments to several as-of-yet-unnamed reporters.

    The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

    Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In September 2016, he met with a number of U.S. journalists for “The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN,” according to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.

    In mid-October 2016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother Jones reporter David Corn.

    Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant—likely the unredacted version—has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.

    On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article “A Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy.” In the article, she identified “Male-1,” referred to in court documents relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, “FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page,” confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA warrant.

    The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and charged with one count of lying to the FBI. Wolfe’s indictment alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.
    Reporter Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.
    It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application.

    According to the indictment, Wolfe exchanged 82 text messages with Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call.

    The original Page FISA application is 83 pages long, including one final signatory page.

    In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.

    Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.

    House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly stated that evidence within the FISA application shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.

    Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit their complicity.
    Foreign Intelligence


    UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.

    Britain’s GCHQ was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to meet personally with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.
    Former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan in this file photo. Hannigan transmitted information regarding Donald Trump to John Brennan in the summer of 2016. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)
    Hannigan’s meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn’t Hannigan’s counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017—three days after Trump’s inauguration.

    As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos—some repeatedly so.

    Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove.

    Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter Page to attend.

    Dearlove knows Halper through their mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt, which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services.

    Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books.

    Downer, who met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.

    The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017, statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.

    Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations—including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application—received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, “Please, can we talk.” Those “allies” were almost certainly the UK and Australia.

    In a Twitter post, Trump wrote that the “key Allies called to ask not to release” the documents.

    Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?

    Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release appears to be because they don’t want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.
    Fusion GPS/Orbis/Christopher Steele


    Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.
    Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS. The company was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC–through law firm Perkins Coie–to produce the dossier on Trump.
    Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele maintains contact with British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.

    Steele appears to have been represented by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from texts sent by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:
    “Hi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort. I will be with him next tuesday for a week.”

    Steele also appears to have lobbied on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently disclosed by the Washington Examiner:
    “Steele said he was ‘circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting’ on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a ‘tool’ of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email.”

    Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler, who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, at which she discussed the Magnitsky Act.

    Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson met with Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

    A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans’ communications. The FBI specifically provided outside contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.

    Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.

    Nellie Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS to work on the dossier on Trump.
    Bruce and Nellie Ohr have known Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a DOJ report in 2010. In that report, Nellie Ohr’s biography lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr before and after the 2016 election.

    Bruce Ohr had been in contact repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign—while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump’s presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s—memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.
    Spy Traps


    In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has ties to Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.

    Papadopoulos and Mifsud both worked at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around November 2015. Papadopoulos reportedly joined LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson’s presidential campaign. However, some reports indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths until March 14, 2016, in Italy.

    Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as “Putin’s niece,” and Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.

    Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.

    Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting has been portrayed as a chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.

    Papadopoulos was introduced to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened to be in London at exactly the same time: the FBI’s head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap’s visit remains unknown.

    The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting was later used to establish the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. It was repeatedly reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton’s emails. This is incorrect.
    Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign was approached by several individuals with ties to UK and U.S. intelligence agencies. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
    According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

    “During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,’’ Downer told The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article. “He didn’t say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn’t say what it was.”

    Downer, while serving as Australia’s foreign minister, was responsible for one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.

    Unconfirmed media reports, including a Jan. 12, 2017, BBC article, have suggested that the FBI attempted to obtain two FISA warrants in June and July 2016 that were denied by the FISA court. It’s likely that Papadopoulos was an intended target of these failed FISAs.

    Interestingly, there is no mention of Papadopoulos in the Steele dossier. Paul Manafort, Carter Page, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are all listed in the Steele dossier.

    Papadopoulos may have started out assisting the FBI or CIA and later discovered that he was being set up for surveillance himself.

    After failing to obtain a spy warrant on the Trump campaign using Papadopoulos, the FBI set its sights on campaign volunteer Carter Page. By this time, the counterintelligence investigation was in the process of being established, and we know now that it was formalized with no official intelligence. The FBI needed some sort of legal cover. They needed a retroactive warrant. And they got one on Oct. 21, 2016. The Page FISA warrant would be renewed three times and remain in force until September 2017.

    Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium, just three days after Page’s July 2016 Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known each other for years and maintain several mutual associations.

    Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with Page. Current information suggests there was only one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named in the Buryakov case.

    Page, who cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016—nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case—and was sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was deported to Russia.
    FBI informant Stefan Halper approached Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.
    House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in August that exculpatory evidence on Page exists that wasn’t included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence likely relates specifically to Page’s role in the Buryakov case.

    If the FBI failed to disclose Page’s cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI’s Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated.

    Page has not been arrested or charged with any crime related to the investigation.
    FISA Abuse


    Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page unsealed FISA court ruling. As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:
    “The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, … to private contractors.

    “Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.

    “Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI’s requests.”

    The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:
    “The Court is concerned about the FBI’s apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported.”

    The FISA Court disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to the NSA database. Once in the contractors’ possession, the data couldn’t be traced.

    In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of improper contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he directed the NSA’s Office of Compliance to conduct a “fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702.”

    On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information—specifically outside contractors working for the FBI.
    Then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on May 23, 2017. Rogers uncovered widespread abuse of FISA data by the FBI. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
    DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government’s proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the Office of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers’s ongoing Section 702 compliance review.

    The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.

    After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing numerous “about query” violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all “about query” activity the next day and reported his findings to the DOJ. “About queries” are searches based on communications containing a reference “about” a surveillance target but that are not “to” or “from” the target.

    On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISA Court.

    At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.

    On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings of his audit.

    The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.

    Carlin didn’t disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.

    The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers’s investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

    While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.

    The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016—exactly when Rogers was preparing to present his findings to the FISA Court.
    The Insurance Policy


    Ever since the release of FBI text messages revealing the existence of an “insurance policy,” the term has been the subject of wide speculation.

    Some observers have suggested that the insurance policy was the FISA spy warrant used to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and, by extension, other members of the Trump campaign. This interpretation is too narrow and fails to capture the underlying meaning of the text.

    The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative.

    It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper’s leaks of James Comey’s briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump campaign.

    The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation.

    The Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, served as the foundation for the Russia narrative.

    The intelligence community, led by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, used the dossier as a launching pad for creating their Intelligence Community assessment.

    This report, which was presented to Obama in December 2016, despite NSA Director Mike Rogers having only moderate confidence in its assessment, became one of the core pieces of the narrative that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.

    Through intelligence community leaks, and in collusion with willing media outlets, the narrative that Russia helped Trump win the elections was aggressively pushed throughout 2017.
    Spygate


    Spygate represents the biggest political scandal in our nation’s history. A sitting administration actively colluded with a political campaign to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Government agencies were weaponized and a complicit media spread intelligence community leaks as facts.

    But a larger question remains: How long has the United States been subject to interference from the intelligence community and our political agencies? Was the 2016 presidential election a one-time aberration, or is this episode symptomatic of a larger pattern extending back decades?

    The intensity, scale, and coordination suggest something greater than overzealous actions taken during a single election. They represent a unified reaction of the establishment to a threat posed by a true outsider—a reaction that has come to be known as Spygate.

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