Well, the publication of those text messages was damn inconvenient. //
It is the height of arrogance, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the structure of government, for anyone in the Executive Branch in general, and the FBI in particular — including Jim Comey — to think it was acceptable for them to consider the question of whether a duly elected President of the United States was a “threat” to national security.
By constitutional principle, and by virtue of the fundamental organization of the Executive, the President can NEVER be a threat to the national security of the United States because in the final analysis the President — and not the FBI Director or the Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence — is empowered to make the judgment about what is or is not in the national security interests of the United States. It is a fundamental part of his job to make that determination. As a subordinate, it is the FBI Director’s job to carry out US policy — not to express his own views on such policy or pursue matters in the manner in which he believes they should be pursued. //
On that day we grappled with an especially troubling question, one that none of us could have anticipated in our wildest imaginations: whether to open a counterintelligence case against the president himself.
In my opinion, even entertaining that question was a firing offense for everyone in the room. Their obligation under the Constitution was to take their concerns to the Executive, and make their views known. Then await instructions and do nothing. If no instructions came, then move on to something else. //
Substitute “top leadership of the FBI” in Strzok’s description with “top leadership of the Pentagon” and consider the same concerns. What are you then discussing? Right — a coup de etat. //
Later the NPR author quotes him as admitting he was “naive” about the possibility his communications with Page would become public.
“Naive”?? ROFLMAO.
Stupid, uninformed and ill-suited for his job are better descriptors.
Or, as has been said to me many times by people in the FBI I trust — agents who spend their career in counter-intelligence lack any perspective on the concept of “discoverable material” as it relates to criminal cases. They never undergo cross-examination where their words from a particular document are force-fed back to them by an effective cross-examiner. You only need to learn the lessons from that kind of embarrassment one time and then you realize the foolishness of committing thoughts to writing without first considering the degree to which you would be ready to stand behind those written words on a witness stand in front of a judge and jury.
To the liberal media, special counsel Robert Mueller was the sharp, seasoned, no-nonsense prosecutor who would get to the bottom of “collusion.” But when Mueller testified before Congress on July 24, 2019, many were stunned to see a man struggling to answer basic questions.
Had his cognitive abilities declined during the probe?
How does the Woods File — stored electronically in the FBI’s Sentinel database — get “lost”? And at what point in time did the SCO decide it was necessary to “reconstruct” a replacement Woods File by reverse engineering it through analyzing the applications to determine the specific factual allegations needed source documentation — other than the Steele Memos — in order to justify their inclusion in the third application to extend.
Was the ACTUAL Woods File so lacking — or so dependent on the allegations of the Steele Memos — that someone in the SCO realized it was a “ticking time bomb” waiting to be uncovered once an authorized investigator was given the responsibility to sort things out? //
And now we have Sara Carter’s report that the “Woods File” for the Page FISA application was at some undetermined point in time “recreated” by the Special Counsel’s Office after the original file was “lost” in an electronic database that doesn’t “lose” things.
John Brennan, James Clapper, and now Robert Mueller are allowed to lie to Congress -- Roger Stone has questions about that.
Obama administration holdovers and partisan career employees succeeded in causing the ouster of the new administration’s pick for national security advisor. //
Flynn’s fate, however, was sealed when Yates conveyed to the White House that Flynn had lied to Pence and had been questioned by the FBI. Even then, had Yates conveyed the truth—that the agents believed Flynn had not lied—the Trump administration might have resolved the situation differently.
Instead, though, Obama administration holdovers and partisan career employees succeeded in causing the ouster of the new administration’s pick for national security advisor. And that plot only succeeded because of illegally leaked classified intel. These facts shake the foundation of our constitutional republic and threaten the peaceful transitions of power, and will be a blot on our country’s history long after Flynn obtains some semblance of justice. //
Further, the targeting of Flynn was but one thread of the Obama-Biden administration’s attempt to interfere with the Trump administration. The spying on the transition team, the failure to provide Trump defensive briefings, the attempt to sidestep Trump’s attorneys general—successful with Jeff Sessions, but not Barr—and the weaponization of whistleblowing laws to impeach the duly elected president represent the most destructive attack on our government ever.
Jonathan Winer, a former top aide to Secretary of State John Kerry, worked as a lobbyist for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in years preceding Russiagate.
Crisis communications.
conducting the interview at the CIA facility is an interesting decision. Why not question him at DOJ or FBI HQ? //
DOJ and the FBI HQ are in Washington DC. CIA Headquarters is in Langley, Virginia.
If you are geographically challenged, you can read the distinction as “United States District Court for the District of Columbia” v. “United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.” If John Brennan offered any false answers to the investigators during the interview, the venue for that “false statement” crime is in the EDVA, not in DC federal court. //
let’s take a moment to address the whole “Target” v. “Subject” v. “Witness” construct the press is so happy to report about.
Labeling an individual a “target” has a clear meaning in federal criminal prosecutions. It refers to someone about whom the prosecutor believes there is already sufficient admissible evidence to seek an indictment from a grand jury, and obtain a conviction at trial. The investigation is ongoing, but the grand jury already has identified a “target” for eventual prosecution.
When you receive a “Target” letter it advises you that a federal grand jury has already received evidence upon which criminal charges may be issued in the future. It advises the “Target” that they should seek counsel, and if they cannot afford counsel they should contact the Federal Defender’s Office in their district for legal representation. Once they have secured counsel, their lawyer should contact the prosecutor to discuss the matter.
The purpose behind a “subject” letter is merely to instill fear in the recipient and to “encourage” them to talk about others before others talk about them — as information from others might push them closer to the “target” category. Unwitting lawyers think there is meaning behind the “subject” designation but there is not. Fear is a great motivator. “Doing unto others before they do unto you” is sort of a universal maxim among the idiot criminal class.
So if you are not a “target” — meaning there isn’t sufficient evidence at this time to charge you with a crime — then by default you are a “witness.”
But “witnesses” can, and often do talk themselves into being “targets” during such interviews. That was the purpose of the interview, Mr. Brennan, not because you have some wonderful insights to provide Mr. Durham and his investigators to make their job easier.
One important distinction between “target” and “witness” that is not well understood, but might be in play here, is that it is against DOJ policy to issue a grand jury subpoena to someone who is already a “target”.
A grand jury subpoena is a court order, under threat of contempt, to appear and answer questions under oath without the presence of counsel. If a person is already a “Target”, the subpoena intrudes upon their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and to be represented by counsel while undergoing “custodial” interrogation — they are under subpoena after all. Witnesses before the grand jury are allowed to assert their Fifth Amendment right, but it forces them to assert that right before the grand jurors considering charges against them. The government is not allowed to call a criminal defendant to take the stand in his trial and force him to assert his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in front of the jury. It is deemed prejudicial, and suggest to the jury that the defendant has something to hide. The same principle applies to calling a “Target” in front of a grand jury and forcing them to assert their right to remain silent in front of the grand jurors without counsel present.
So, if John Brennan isn’t at least a potential “target,” why was he not called to explain historical events to the grand jury? //
John Durham and his team did not come to the decision to interview Brennan over the course of eight hours for the purpose of “filling in the blanks” on “events that are under review.”
The purpose of the interview was to get Brennan to confirm or deny information that others have provided up to this point about Brennan, and what he instructed others to do.
John Brennan was placed into a perjury trap yesterday because he’s shown himself willing to perjure himself in the past in order to evade scrutiny.
Yesterday, the ability to avoid the trap was completely within his control — all he had to do was tell the truth. For the most part, Durham’s investigators knew the truth.
John Brennan doesn’t come from a world of objective “truths” and “lies”. For Brennan, the “truth” is always malleable to fit his needs at any given moment.
That’s CIA tradecraft. He sees himself as a master of such “dark arts” based on his decades in DC. Others have long viewed him as a clown.
That’s why, as a prosecutor, you save a liar like John Brennan for last. He can’t help you because you can’t rely on what he tells you.
So your interview is not done for the purpose of helping your case.
And you do it in Virginia and not DC because of what you plan to do next.
Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to falsifying a document to justify surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser as part of the 2016 investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.
They gaslit the country.
Suggests Durham has a broad set of "targets." //
Clinesmith was a member of the FBI General Counsel’s Office (FBI OGC) who was assigned to work on the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) investigation. The function of FBI OGC attorneys is not expected to be surrogates or replacements for DOJ prosecutors with regard to criminal violations and investigative options, but to advise FBI investigators with respect to their compliance with FBI procedures and policies as they go about conducting investigations. Information contained in the IG report suggests that the FBI personnel conducting the CH investigation looked to Clinesmith for guidance and legal judgments outside what would normally be appropriate.
Clinesmith altered an email from the CIA in response to an inquiry from the CH investigators about the status of Carter Page’s relationship with the CIA. When the CH team was preparing the FISA application for Carter Page, it had already been reported publicly that Page claimed he had cooperated in the past with the CIA on contacts he had as part of his job with suspected members of Russian intelligence. When the CH team reached out to the CIA to confirm that information, the CIA responded with an email to Clinesmith. That message confirmed that Page had been a cooperative source of information for the CIA in the past — including a period of time being relied upon by the CH investigation to contend that Page was an “Agent of a Foreign Power” for FISA surveillance purposes. The email stated that Page was not currently in contact with the CIA, but that any information from him would be favorably received by the CIA.
This information from the CIA should have stopped the Page FISA application in its tracks. The CIA told the FBI that Page had been a friendly source of information in the past about Russian intelligence activities, and Page would be treated as a friendly source of intelligence in the future if he offered additional information. That was contrary to what the FISA application ended up representing to the FISC about Page’s status as a “Russian Agent.” Clinesmith certainly recognized the implications of the CIA communication, as he opened up the message in a way such that he could edit it, and he changed the language to make it say the exact opposite of what the CIA had reported to the CH. Clinesmith made it read that Page was NOT a friendly source of information for the CIA, and he forwarded the altered message to the CH case agent to be included in the Page FISA application.
One important fact getting overlooked in all the discussion of whether FBI Attorney Kevin Clinesmith’s guilty plea represents the sacrifice of a minor criminal so the ringleaders can escape justice or the beginning of the end for those who were running the show is exactly whose show Clinesmith was a part of when the crime he’s admitted committing occurred.
One problem with getting systematically assaulted by extraordinarily unscrupulous foes is that their malevolence provides a lazy way to dispense with any puzzles about their motives.
Bad guys gonna be bad, after all.
So, why bother looking for any pattern that might reveal a single underlying thread that connects and illuminates all the many disparate parts of their criminal conspiracy when you can explain as much of it as you like by appealing to pure malice?
FBI Internal "Talking Points" memo described plan to mislead Senate Intelligence Committee about reliability of sources for Steele memos //
A stunning FBI document was released by the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier today.
The document is titled “SSCI Briefing on Former Employee of Christopher Steele”, and subtitled “Draft Talking Points As Of 14 February 2018.”
A general characterization of the content of the document would be that it lays out ways to address the issue of the FBI’s knowledge of Steele’s “Primary Subsource”, now known to have been Igor Danchenko. A 57 page “electronic communication” detailing the late January 2017 interview of Danchenko, lasting over a period of 3 days, has previously been declassified and released by the Senate. I wrote about the contents of the EC here.
That “EC” revealed that Danchenko’s “network” of sources for the information he delivered to Steele was nothing more than childhood friends and drinking buddies, none of whom were in positions in Russia that brought them into the orbit of Russian intelligence services, or had access to any insider information from the Putin government as was portrayed in Steele’s memos.
Coming a year after Danchenko had been interviewed, and after none of the most meaningfully claims made in the Steele memos based on Danchenko’s reporting had been verified or independently corroborated, to tell the Senate that the FBI had confidence in Danchenko’s information, that his sources had access to the type of information he was attributing to them, and that his work constituted reasonably sound tradecraft is duplicitous and dishonest beyond comprehension.
Billionaire Ukrainian oligarchs have their property seized and subject to forfeiture, but are not under arrest?
DC Circuit Order hints that Judge Sullivan might be removed from the case. //
The Order today suggests that two possible paths to this outcome are under consideration. One would be to simply find that Judge Sullivan’s conduct has created a circumstance where his partiality can reasonably be called into question. That is a basis for mandatory reassignment under Sec. 455 that I referenced above.
The second option would be the more benign approach of finding that in pursuing the Petition for Rehearing En Banc, Judge Sullivan has now made himself a nominal “party.” As such, he can no longer preside over the case.
There was never any reason to give credence to any of the salacious allegations in Christopher Steele's dossier. That didn't stop corporate media. //
It turns out Christopher Steele wasn’t 007.
For years, the media assured Americans that the dossier alleging treasonous collusion between Donald Trump and Russia was based on the scrupulous work of a mastermind British ex-spy and his vast network of credible and well-connected sources spread throughout Europe. It wasn’t true. //
Steele did not personally collect any of the factual information in his reports. The “vast network” was instead a “social circle” of an American-based former Brookings Institute junior staffer, recently identified for the first time as Igor Danchenko. The friends didn’t have well-documented claims so much as rumors, drunken gossip, and outright brainstorming, conjecture, and speculation. Even that information was “multiple layers of hearsay upon hearsay” before it got to Steele, who then hyperbolically overstated it. And the damning claims of “collusion” appear to have been scandalously misattributed or invented out of whole cloth. //
The media have a problem, then, given that they repeatedly led viewers and readers to believe Steele was a master spy. They can almost get away with ignoring the recent news that once again shows their previous reporting was catastrophically wrong. In fact, some media outlets did just that.
These weren't mistakes. //
The FBI said Thursday that the bureau found just two “material” errors in an audit of 29 applications to surveil American citizens, an error rate that pales in comparison to the 17 “significant” problems discovered in applications for surveillance orders against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
The primary source for the infamous Steele dossier was a business analyst from Russia who lived in Washington, the source’s attorney confirmed to The Epoch Times on July 26.
Following the lead of open-source reporting by internet sleuths, The Epoch Times identified and contacted the analyst, Igor Danchenko, on July 19, but received no response and refrained from publicizing his identity.
“Igor Danchenko has been identified as one of the sources who provided data and analysis to Orbis Business Intelligence,” March Schamel, Danchenko’s attorney, wrote in an email.
Orbis Business Intelligence is the company co-founded by former British intelligence office Christopher Steele. //
While Schamel did not say his client was Steele’s primary source, the confirmation that Danchenko is one of the sources is sufficient to establish that he is the primary source based on the recently declassified record of Danchenko’s January 2017 interview with the FBI.
Steele claimed that he based the vast majority of his dossier on reports from Danchenko, who in turn had a network of sub-sources. The dossier played a central role in the FBI’s decision to secure a warrant to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page in October 2016.
The Department of Justice inspector general determined that the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications were riddled with errors, some of the most egregious of which had to do with Steele falsifying and overhyping what he had learned from Danchenko. Steele also presented rumors Danchenko had passed on as credible claims.
The FBI interviewed Danchenko for three days in late January 2017. During the interview, Danchenko disputed some of the claims attributed to him in the dossier and told agents that allegations Steele had presented as credible were merely bar rumors.
The nature of the interview and how it came to happen are highly suggestive of the fact that Obama holders in DOJ and FBI wanted Steele's subsource to provide information directly to Crossfire Hurricane investigators.