https://spectator.org/john-bre...lly-sensitive-issue/

Under John Brennan, the CIA operated as an opposition research outfit for the Hillary Clinton campaign. It appears from leaked news stories in the British press that Brennan’s oafish spying on Trump began around April 2016, right after Trump’s biggest primary victories. As it became urgently clear to Brennan that Trump was going to face off against Hillary, Brennan turned to “intelligence partners” in Europe for dirt on Trump. But they didn’t have any, save some pretty skimpy material on “contacts” between Trump campaign officials and Russians.

Whatever Brennan collected was so insubstantial that Robert Mueller hasn’t even interviewed him about it. Consider that for a second: Mueller was supposedly appointed to complete the counterintelligence probe into Trumpworld, and he hasn’t felt the need to talk to the father of it. Brennan has tried to explain this astonishing discrepancy away by vaguely saying that whatever Mueller needs he could find in “CIA files.”

Brennan had his own partisan hunches, fueled by his feverish hatred of Trump and perhaps a few spit-balling conversations with other Trump-hating spy chiefs abroad (the “special relationship” had turned sinister against Trump, as evident from Britain’s sorry role in this mess), but he had no evidence to meet any reasonable threshold for a counterintelligence probe of a presidential campaign, especially one undertaken by an administration supporting that candidate’s opponent.

From April 2016 to July 2016, according to leaked stories in the British press, he assembled a multi-agency taskforce that served as the beginnings of a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign. During these months, he was “personally briefing” Obama on “Russian interference” — Brennan’s euphemism for spying on the Trump campaign — and was practically camped out at the White House

The FBI’s liaison to Brennan was Peter Strzok

Even after the FBI probe formally began in July 2016, Brennan was bringing CIA agents, FBI officials, and NSA officials into the same room at CIA headquarters to pool their anti-Trump hunches. To give these outrageous meetings a patina of respectability, Brennan invoked the post-9/11 rationale of interagency cooperation

So until election day, the “working group at Langley” was trying to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign and wasn’t coming up with any. But Brennan didn’t want his efforts to go to waste, so he leaked to Senator Harry Reid the existence of the counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign. He couldn’t leak any damning findings from that probe because there weren’t any. But he could inflict political damage by getting Reid to tell the press darkly of the probe’s existence. He also got Reid to write a public letter to Comey about the probe, which was designed to deepen the FBI’s reliance on Hillary’s paid dirt-digger, Christopher Steele. Reid, as a reliable Democratic hack in the tank for Hillary, went along with Brennan’s scheme, but he felt manipulated enough by Brennan that he complained to Corn and Isikoff about Brennan’s odd intensity — an “ulterior motive” that Reid sensed in Brennan.

The scope of that ulterior motive encompassed several elements: a hysterical hatred of Trump (now on display in Brennan’s unhinged tweets), a desire to continue as CIA director under Hillary, and a special animus toward Michael Flynn, whose determination to rip up Obama’s “re-set” with the Islamic world, a matter near and dear to Brennan’s heart, sent him into red-faced rages. Brennan, notorious for his Islamophilia, had refused to take his oath as CIA director on the Bible, regarding that practice as the disgusting relic of a once-Christian America. He had played a leading role in Obama’s outreach to the Islamic world and saw Flynn as an odious threat to that work. What Brennan’s “working group at Langley” couldn’t achieve in nailing Flynn was accomplished later by Sally Yates and Comey through entrapment and Mueller’s leveraged prosecution in which he got Flynn to confess to a crime he didn’t commit.

Many questions in all of this remain unanswered, but this much is clear: John Brennan’s transformation of the CIA into a branch office of the Hillary campaign will go down as one of the grossest abuses in the agency’s history.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://www.jewishpress.com/blo...th-islam/2013/01/22/

John Brennan's academic background includes the study of Arabic and Arab culture; he received a B.A. in political science from Fordham University, including a year abroad at the American University in Cairo, and an M.A. in Government specializing in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

He speaks Arabic ‘fluently.’

In February 2010, Brennan spoke to Muslim students at NYU

he says that Islam is “a faith of peace and tolerance and great diversity,”

he discusses at length the problem of prejudice against Muslims in America and the need to protect their rights

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

may explain why Brennan was a perfect choice for Barack Obama, and why Brennan hates Donald Trump

The FBI/DoJ/CIA conspiracy leakers keep feeding the NYT and Wash Post

Stefan Halper has been identified as the FBI spy in numerous blogs and on the Laura Ingraham Fox show.

It was previously reported that he met w Carter Page, Papadopoulos, and an unidentified senior Trump campaign person.

Now the Wash Post tells us who the senior campaign person was: Sam Clovis

But the Wash Post continues to be a shill for the FBI and DEMs by claiming that identifying the professor's name would be dangerous.

What a joke. His name is all over the internet.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.9dbc38e34073

Secret FBI source for Russia investigation met with three Trump advisers during campaign

In mid-July 2016, a retired American professor approached an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign at a symposium about the White House race held at a British university.

The professor took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with Carter Page, whom Trump had named a few months earlier as a foreign policy adviser.

But the professor was more than an academic interested in American politics — he was a longtime U.S. intelligence source. And, at some point in 2016, he began working as a secret informant for the FBI as it investigated Russia’s interference in the campaign, according to people familiar with his activities.

The role played by the source is now at the center of a battle that has pitted President Trump against his own Justice Department and fueled the president’s attacks on the special counsel’s investigation. In a Thursday tweet, he called the probe “a disgusting, illegal and unwarranted Witch Hunt.”

In recent days, Trump and his allies have escalated their claims that the FBI source improperly spied on the campaign.

“Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president,” he tweeted Friday. “It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a ‘hot’ Fake News story. If true — all time biggest political scandal!”

There is no evidence to suggest someone was planted with the campaign. The source in question engaged in a months-long pattern of seeking out and meeting three different Trump campaign officials.

The Washington Post — after speaking with people familiar with his role — has confirmed the identity of the FBI source who assisted the investigation, but is not reporting his name following warnings from U.S. intelligence officials that exposing him could endanger him or his contacts.

Page was one of three Trump advisers who the FBI informant contacted in the summer and fall of 2016 for brief talks and meetings that largely centered on foreign policy, according to people familiar with the encounters.

“There has been some speculation that he might have tried to reel me in,” Page, who had numerous encounters with the informant, told The Post in an interview. “At the time, I never had any such impression.”

In late summer, the professor met with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis for coffee in Northern Virginia, offering to provide foreign-policy expertise to the Trump effort. In September, he reached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign-policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper.

Many questions about the informant’s role in the Russia investigation remain unanswered. It is unclear how he first became involved in the case, the extent of the information he provided and the actions he took to obtain intelligence for the FBI. It is also unknown whether his July 2016 interaction with Page was brokered by the FBI or another intelligence agency.

The FBI commonly uses sources and informants to gather evidence and its regulations allow for use of informants even before a formal investigation has been opened. In many law enforcement investigations, the use of sources and informants precedes more invasive techniques such as electronic surveillance.

Earlier this month, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) issued a subpoena to the Justice Department for all documents related to the FBI informant. Justice Department officials have declined to provide the information, warning that exposing him could have severe consequences.

In a May 2 meeting, senior FBI and national intelligence officials warned the White House that information being sought by Nunes risked the source’s safety and that of his sources, and could damage U.S. relationships with its intelligence partners.

The stakes are so high that the FBI has been working over the past two weeks to mitigate the potential damage if the source’s identity were revealed, according to several people familiar with the matter. The bureau took steps to protect other live investigations that he has worked on and sought to lessen any danger to associates if his identity became known, said these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence operations.

For years, the professor has provided information to the FBI and the CIA, according to people familiar with the matter. He aided the Russia investigation both before and after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s appointment in May 2017 , according to people with knowledge of his activities.

The professor’s interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium.

Page recalled his conversation with the professor as pleasant, if not particularly memorable. It was the first interaction they ever had, he said.

Page and the FBI informant stayed in touch after the conference, meeting several times in the Washington area, Page said. Page said he did not recall exactly what the two men discussed.

“You are asking me about conversations I had almost two years ago,” he said. “We had extensive discussions. We talked about a bunch of different foreign-policy-related topics. For me to try and remember every nuance of every conversation is impossible.”

In late August 2016, the professor reached out to Clovis, asking if they could meet somewhere in the Washington area, according to Clovis’s attorney, Victoria Toensing.

“ He said he wanted to be helpful to the campaign” and lend the Trump team his foreign-policy experience , Toensing said.

Clovis, an Iowa political figure and former Air Force officer, met the source and chatted briefly with him over coffee, on either Aug. 31 or Sept. 1, at a hotel cafe in Crystal City, she said. Most of the discussion involved him asking Clovis his views on China.

“It was two academics discussing China,” Toensing said. “Russia never came up.”

The professor asked Clovis if they could meet again, but Clovis was too busy with the campaign. After the election, the professor sent him a note of congratulations, Toensing said.

Clovis did not view the interactions as suspicious at the time, Toensing said, but now is unsettled that the professor never mentioned his contacts with other Trump aides.

Days later, on Sept. 2, 2016, the professor reached out to a third Trump aide, emailing Papadopoulos.

People familiar with his outreach to Papadopoulos said it was done as part of the FBI’s investigation.

“Please pardon my sudden intrusion just before the Labor Day weekend,” the professor wrote to Papadopoulos in a message described to The Post.

He said he was leading a project examining relations between Turkey and the European Union. He offered to pay Papadopoulos $3,000 to write a paper about the oil fields off the coast of Turkey, Israel and Cyprus, “a topic on which you are a recognized expert.”

It is a long-standing practice of intelligence operatives to try to develop a source by first offering the target money for innocuous research or writing.

The professor invited Papadopoulos to come to London later that month to discuss the paper, offering to pay the costs of his travel. “I understand that this is rather sudden but thought given your expertise, it might be of interest to you,” he wrote.

Papadopoulos accepted. While in London, he met for drinks with a woman who identified herself as the professor’s assistant, before meeting on Sept. 15 with the professor at the Traveler’s Club, a 200-year-old private club that is a favorite of foreign diplomats stationed in London, according to the emails described to The Post.

After Papadopoulos returned to the United States and sent his research document, the professor responded: “Enjoyed your paper. Just what we wanted. $3,000 wired to your account. Pls confirm receipt.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Question: are there implications here re the Mueller investigation? Given that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign?

and the FBI spy offered the campaign "help" ?

Is this the craziest crap you ever heard ?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sdy,

I don’t think these dates line up with the dates referred to in the accusation of Papadopoulos I posted the link to the other day in the other thread.

Papadopoulos had his contacts and meetings in the spring of 2016 with the professor and the Russian female.

Here is the link again.

These stories are useless w/o pics of said Russian female.

JALLEN,

Here is my cut at key dates



Note the "professor" in spring 2016 is not Stefan Halper. It was Mifsud in Spring 2016. (there were two mysterious professors. Mifsud may be even stranger than Halper)

Of course they wont release his name. They are on it. If the FBI and DOJ goes down so does whats left of the newspaper's integrity.

There have been lots of comments from DoJ about how sensitive the name is on the EC. Things like it could endanger the informant's life and have consequences with foreign intel agencies.

There is a reporter who has done a good job of covering this mess. His name is Chuck Ross.

From this Ross article (a very good article):

http://dailycaller.com/2018/03...oulos-london-emails/

you can see some of the possible
"sensitivities".

I normally would not post this type of info. But it is in the public domain, and Ross has attempted to get guidance from the FBI. He says they ignored him.

from the article:

Fitting with Papadopoulos’s theory of Halper’s outreach is the professor’s longstanding connections to both British and American intelligence agency officials. He also worked at the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and in three presidential administrations.

Halper is a close associate of Sir Richard Dearlove — the former MI6 chief.

In December 2016, Halper, Dearlove and espionage historian Peter Morland made international news when they announced they were leaving an organization called the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar due to concerns Russian operatives had infiltrated the group.

Months earlier, in early fall 2016, Dearlove reportedly met with dossier author Steele. Steele sought out Dearlove’s advice on how to proceed with information he gathered on Trump’s ties to Russia, The Washington Post reported.

****************

several reports have questioned the role of UK intel agencies in this conspiracy.

You can also learn a lot by scanning Chuck Ross twitter

https://twitter.com/ChuckRossD...serp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

So, not to name names, but it appears Professor Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper are two names the FBI would like to hide from the public.

Do we know where Professor Mifsud is now?

This Professor May Hold The Key To When The FBI Began Surveiling The Trump Campaign

quote:

Originally posted by kimber1911:
So, not to name names, but it appears Professor Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper are two names the FBI would like to hide from the public.

Do we know where Professor Mifsud is now?

This Professor May Hold The Key To When The FBI Began Surveiling The Trump Campaign

Thanks for bringing that to our attention. I read Federalist every morning, and recall seeing it but either overlooked it or never got back to it in the press of other concerns.

What became of Mifsud?

Well we have some clarification on the Steele deposition.

There will be a videotaped Steele deposition on 18 June.

Unfortunately, even if the deposition is made public, we may not learn much. The deposition will focus just on the dossier claims about Gubarev and his company.


http://www.foxnews.com/politic...ition-in-london.html

In a procedural ruling Friday before the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, former British spy Christopher Steele was ordered to appear for a videotaped deposition in London on June 18 for ongoing civil litigation brought against Buzzfeed by a Russian technology executive, Aleksej Gubarev.

A last-ditch effort by Buzzfeed's legal team was denied today in their efforts to expand and question Steele about "the dossier as a whole" instead of a more limited area of questioning in the ongoing civil litigation in the UK.

In the 15-page ruling obtained and reviewed by Fox News, Mr. Justice Jay wrote that the Buzzfeed appeal "should be dismissed on all grounds."

Civil litigation is weaving through courts on both sides of the Atlantic, including Florida, as Gubarev, whose companies XBT Holdings SA and Webzilla, was named in the 35-page unverified dossier authored by Steele on the direction of American company Fusion GPS and its founder Glenn Simpson. Steele and his London company Orbis Business Intelligence Limited were paid $168,000 to write a series of memos suggesting the Kremlin's influence on Donald Trump and promote such information to select journalists.

Buzzfeed published the entire dossier in January 2017. The FBI also used the dossier.

Fusion GPS billed $1.8 million for its opposition work on Trump to the Washington law firm Perkins Coie, which represented the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

Gubarev's companies were described in the December 2016 memo authored by Steele as using "botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'alerting operations' against the Democratic Party leadership."

but never charged by Mueller ???
and it is not "alerting", the dossier said "altering"

Evan Fray-Witzer, a Boston-based attorney representing Gubarev, emailed a statement to Fox News stressing, "The British court correctly noted that the allegations about Gubarev, Webzilla and XBT were unsolicited, unverified raw intelligence. The court made a point of stating that these types of unverified allegations should have been "handled with care."

"Buzzfeed did anything but that when it decided to publish allegations about the Plaintiffs that it knew hadn't been verified and, indeed, which they had themselves done nothing to verify."

reminder: this is the same unverified dossier that the FBI used to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page

As for Steele, Fray-Witzer is looking forward to deposing the former MI6 spy in the case, “We're pleased that this means we can move ahead with the videotaped deposition of Mr. Steele on June 18 and that the discovery phase of the case is drawing to a close. Mr. Gubarev's reputation was seriously damaged by the publication of the dossier and he is anxious to have the opportunity to clear his name at trial."

there are several things in the UK court ruling that sound fishy.

In the ruling Mr. Justice Jay wrote about Steele's role, noting that "I cannot suppress the observation that the notion that Mr Steele should be probed about the steps he took to assess the reliability of his source or sources has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it, and offends reality and common sense. Mr. Steele has made clear
at all material times that this was intelligence. The U.S. defendants (Buzzfeed) have never said that they asked Mr. Steele any questions about it."

As reported by Fox News, Steele is also facing a possible criminal investigation by the Justice Department after two senior Republican senators, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) sent a criminal referral on Steele to the department in January. Sarah Isgur Flores, director of the DOJ Public Affairs Office, told Fox in email that "we don't confirm or deny the existence of investigations."

Mystery still swirls around the role of former McCain Institute staffer David J. Kramer in the handoff of the unverified dossier to the FBI and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Kramer pleaded the Fifth before Congress, denying voluntary testimony, and his videotaped deposition in Florida litigation against Buzzfeed remains sealed.

We continue to believe that Mr. Steele’s testimony about his work on the dossier is essential to the public’s understanding of a critical document that was circulating and informing decisions at the highest level of government," said Matt Mittenthal, spokesperson for BuzzFeed News.

*************

what a strange statement:

"I cannot suppress the observation that the notion that Mr Steele should be probed about the steps he took to assess the reliability of his source or sources has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it, and offends reality and common sense. Mr. Steele has made clear
at all material times that this was intelligence."

It offends common sense that Steele should be probed about the reliability of his sources because this is "intelligence" ?????

Sen Grassley has sent another letter to Rosenstein

link:

https://www.judiciary.senate.g...&%20Regulations).pdf

It can be a heavy read in parts, but here is my layman summary:

Sen Grassley is asking Rosenstein what authority he had to initiate a special counsel counterintelligence investigation.

You really need to read the questions and the letter to appreciate it.

I will post just a few of the questions (but it is a small part of the 7 page letter)








adding: this letter was seen at:

https://www.redstate.com/strei...knows-holy-hell-hes/

Chuck Grassley Questions Whether Rod Rosenstein Knows What In The Holy Hell He’s Doing?

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Sen Grassley has sent another letter to Rosenstein

link:

https://www.judiciary.senate.g...&%20Regulations).pdf

It can be a heavy read in parts, but here is my layman summary:

Sen Grassley is asking Rosenstein what authority he had to initiate a special counsel counterintelligence investigation.

You really need to read the questions and the letter to appreciate it.

I will post just a few of the questions (but it is a small part of the 7 page letter)

Those are very good questions. We’ll see if DOJ has very good answers.

Here is another example of how attention to details can render seemingly simple things very complicated.

Or, as we sometimes admit to each other who work in this sausage factory, “one man’s exception is another man’s loophole.”

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JALLEN,

Serious question: why doesn’t trump just declassify the Carter Page FISA application? The Prez can declassify anything by law. Couldn’t he straighten this whole debate out with that? Couldn’t he declassify all the stuff some people think is being improperly classified and kept from Congress?

quote:

Serious question: why doesn’t trump just declassify the Carter Page FISA application?

While I don't know how the process would work, I completely agree in spirit.

There would be howls of protest that he is interfering w Mueller.

What the country has gone through the last 2 years should overwhelm "national security" concerns about this particular FISA warrant.

Especially because I suspect there are no national security issues at risk in revealing the warrant details. On the contrary, real national security might be significantly increased when the details become public.

I think the details of the warrant will come out at some point in time. If what Sen Grassley has reported is true, that will be devastating to the FBI.

quote:

Originally posted by ilikefirearms:
Serious question: why doesn’t trump just declassify the Carter Page FISA application? The Prez can declassify anything by law. Couldn’t he straighten this whole debate out with that? Couldn’t he declassify all the stuff some people think is being improperly classified and kept from Congress?

random guess but it has to deal with impartiality when dealing with this since he is the "target" of the dossier.

I also think there is a slow-walk of all this for midterms. Consider all the work and obstruction that has happened for 2 years only to find out that trump was innocent the whole time and the O administration was spying on a rival candidate. That would make trump the hero in all this and the dems the bad guys to independent voters.

Optimist in me is that DOJ and Trump could work out a deal on interview, declassify relevant docs and get this over with one way or another. While I have disagreed with many on this thread and lean towards trusting Mueller, they need to wrap this up this year. The cynic in me is worried that Trump knows declassifying this stuff won’t support his claims so he is wanting to keep it hidden and just bitch about it on Twitter. Either way everyone needs to move this thing along for the good of the country.

This is a post I had put up before, but then took down. I wasn't confident enough it was true. But after doing some further digging, it seems to be accurate.

Melissa Hodgman is the wife of Peter Strzok.

She has been a govt lawyer for some time.

During the Obama administration, her salary increased from $139k per year to $246k per year

from 2008 to 2016, she also received a total of $17,750 in bonus money.

In October 2016, she was promoted to Associate Director of the Security Exchange Commission Enforcement Division.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From Reddit:

On 2 Dec 2017 it became public about the Strzok/Lisa Page text messages.

On 3 Dec 2017, her facebook page (listed as Melissa Hman) was copied. See below




then on 5 Dec 2017, it was captured again:

There is a timeline of events in the colusion against Trump story prepared by Sharyl Attkisson, mostly accurate.

Link

Here is another Federalist piece about why Mueller keeps going....


One Year In, The Russia Investigations Keep Leading Back To The Investigators

What was once a no-downside case for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has now become one with little upside.

By Ben Weingarten
May 17, 2018

In February I wrote that the Russiagate collusion-mongers were hurting America far worse than the sole group of Russians the special counsel indicted. The rationale was that in effectively waging a mass disinformation, lawfare, and political campaign against a sitting president, collusion-mongers had already done more damage to our government and society than anything Vladimir Putin could have cooked up.

This is true at a broader level as well. The political establishment that wishes to bring down the Trump presidency daily shows itself willing to eviscerate all norms, from corrupting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court and violating Department of Justice procedures, to perhaps even planting FBI informants inside the Trump campaign. It has exhibited a willingness to undermine national security in the form of gross intelligence and law enforcement politicization, game-playing with redactions, and endless leaks. The establishment has taken such actions under the guise of defending “norms” and protecting “national security.”

In short, we are witnessing an episode of mass projection. Why? Because given that they are increasingly exposed, the Left must keep this charade going, grasping at every possible straw while hoping against hope the Trump administration makes a grave misstep under the heat of various spotlights. Otherwise, they risk their own downfall. The boomerang is real.

How do these folks reconcile their belief in the president’s lawlessness and recklessness with the fact that, after a campaign waged by the entire Clinton machine, months and months of efforts to uncover a smoking gun by the most skilled and hungry of prosecutors, surrounded by swamp creatures who wish to destroy President Trump at every turn, there appears to be no “there” there? The Facebook ads Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released really are not cutting it.
The February Indictment Returns

Let us return to the special counsel, arguably the leading edge of Russiagate, and its February indictment. The increasingly narrow Moscow-specific angle to the investigation has suddenly re-emerged. When the singular litigation effort to date directly implicating the Kremlin with mischief in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—and arguably the sole case remotely squaring with the special counsel’s mandate—comes into question, we best take notice.

Recall that the indictment charged 13 Russians and three front companies with “committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system.” The first of the eight counts for which the defendants were charged hewed the closest to the idea that Russian actors “meddled” or “interfered in” the 2016 election, though absent any “coordination” or “collusion” with the Trump campaign: “Criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States…by impairing the lawful functions of the Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of State in administering federal requirements for disclosure of foreign involvement in certain domestic activities.”

While the media hailed it as proving a pro-Trump Russian bias, the indictment chronicles the conspirators’ creation and dissemination of social media content and a handful of rallies supporting both sides of contentious issues as well as presidential candidates across the political spectrum, describing the conspirators’ ultimate “strategic goal” as seeking to “sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

The evidence cited in the indictment illustrated a sort of clownishness and crudeness to these efforts, as if the Kremlin was either winking at us, or its agents were about as able as a Lada. It also revealed just how paltry in price and minimal in reach these efforts were in context of a multi-billion-dollar election in this age of 24/7 media. What a return on investment they have received.
A Slam Dunk Turned Into a Slam

Regardless, Special Counsel Robert Mueller surely believed his team had a slam dunk. This was arguably the most justified indictment specifically relating to Russian attempts to impact our election. Even better, those charged would likely never appear in court, let alone challenge the charges. Case closed.

As Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor and clarion legal voice in the ongoing Russiagate travails, asserted at the time of the special counsel’s victory lap:

When prosecutors are serious about nabbing law-breakers who are at large, they do not file an indictment publicly. That would just induce the offenders to flee to or remain in their safe havens. Instead, prosecutors file their indictment under seal, ask the court to issue arrest warrants, and quietly go about the business of locating and apprehending the defendants charged. In the Russia case, however, the indictment was filed publicly even though the defendants are at large. That is because the Justice Department and the special counsel know the Russians will stay safely in Russia.

Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court. That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument.

Stunningly, the assumption that Mueller’s allegations would never be tested in court has proven false, illustrating the cunning of Russians in adapting their tactics to the conditions the collusion-mongers have provided them.
Russians Call Mueller’s Bluff

In April, lawyers for one of the Russian entities charged in the indictment filed an appearance in federal court. According to reports, the attorneys for Concord Management proceeded to make discovery requests demanding what the special counsel attorneys described as “sensitive intelligence gathering, national security, and foreign affairs information.”

In early May, the federal judge overseeing the case struck down the special counsel’s request to delay arraignment by a month, a delay sought because the Mueller team had argued it was unclear whether Concord had formally accepted its summonses that were to be conveyed to them by way of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia. You don’t say.

The case has now proceeded, with Concord Management filing a not-guilty plea. Its lawyers have started to hammer at the credibility of the indictment and thus the special counsel itself, alleging that one of the three entities charged, “Concord Catering,” did not even exist during the period of activity the indictment covers.

As Politico’s Josh Gerstein foretold in an April article on the appearance of Concord’s lawyers:

[B]y appearing in court through counsel, Concord could force prosecutors to turn over discovery about how the case was assembled as well as evidence that might undermine the prosecution’s theories. In addition, Concord’s move creates the possibility of a trial that could expose sensitive intelligence information without the prospect of ultimately sending anyone to prison.

…Concord is nominally in the restaurant business and is owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an associate of President Vladimir Putin often referred to as ‘Putin’s chef.’ If the gambit was successful, Prigozhin could effectively obtain a trial without putting himself personally at risk.

The Russians will now get to enjoy all the benefits of our legal system without the actual “employees” involved ever likely appearing in court. So what was once a no-downside case for the Mueller special counsel has now become one with little upside.

At best, the Mueller special counsel may be highly embarrassed in being forced to essentially fold by dismissing the indictment, or at least the charges against Concord Management. Of course, this would delegitimize the special counsel by showing that one of its few non-process-crime cases pertaining to its Russia-centric mandate fell apart.

Adding insult to injury, a New York Sun editorial posits the special counsel could find itself facing litigation from Concord Management under the “Hyde Amendment” concerning frivolous criminal prosecutions. Russia will certainly be laughing.

At worst we may see our national security truly threatened by Concord’s discovery process, a legitimate concern that when now invoked will be harder to take seriously. How many times have we seen “national security” concerns raised during the Russiagate saga by the Department of Justice and FBI, only to reveal that the true concern is the job security of those invoking it?
This Is Increasingly Looking Like a Setup Gone Bad

The Concord litigation illustrates the grave defects of the limitless Mueller special counsel investigation that increasingly has to find ways to justify itself. Even in what should have been a simple “win” for the special counsel, we see damaging unanticipated events that affect not only the legitimacy of our justice system and consequently rule of law, but that create a propaganda coup for our Russian adversaries and perhaps even threaten our national security.
The cover-up effort has come into focus because it is so widespread and the fact pattern has played itself out over and over too many times.

Let us state this clearly: The seminal case dealing specifically with the Russian part of the Mueller special counsel mandate—which itself never showed the Russians favored one candidate or “colluded” with the Trump campaign, nor with any witting Americans—may be falling apart.

The Russiagate investigations inevitably seem to lead back to the investigators. This is not because the president’s defenders are running interference. Rather, so many people seem to have been invested in protecting assumed presidential winner Hillary Clinton, then in destroying her opponent and victor Donald Trump, that too many loose ends were never tied up and the malefactors need to cover their tracks. The Mueller special counsel is run by their friends and colleagues.

The cover-up effort has come into focus because it is so widespread and the fact pattern has played itself out over and over too many times. Every day we see more evidence of it in stonewalling, leaking, disingenuously raising national security concerns, contradictory statements, and claims that protecting the integrity of institutions justify unethical if not illegal actions when it is these actions themselves that have destroyed the integrity of those institutions.

There really are people, many of whom were perfectly fine freeing billions of dollars for the Khomeinist regime in Iran, who think the president is one of those monsters of the twentieth century. But increasingly it is very clear that for the non-useful idiots, all of the most insane narratives about Trump must be kept up or their credibility will be shredded.

Democracy is not dying in darkness. The republic is being bludgeoned in broad daylight.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/...-back-investigators/

quote:

Serious question: why doesn’t trump just declassify the Carter Page FISA application?

I understand you are saying "just do it", but I had forgotten about this



so something kicked off 28 Mar 2018.

one would think the "certain U.S. person" is Carter Page, and

the "FBI confidential source" is Christopher Steele

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adding: just saw JALLEN's post in the Trump thread

here is the same story from another source

this action ties into the OIG 28 Mar 2018 announcement above

https://www.washingtonexaminer...ampaign-infiltration

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked the Justice Department's inspector general Sunday to review whether there was improper politically motivated surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016.

Rosenstein made the request shortly after a tweet from President Trump saying that he would "officially" ask "that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes."

In a statement, Rosenstein said: “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action." The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has recused himself from Russia-related matters.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores added, "The Department has asked the Inspector General to expand the ongoing review of the FISA application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election."

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I hope the additional tasking doesn't slow down the report on the FISC application. It would be good to one report on the FISA warrant, and a second one on the FBI spy. Clock is ticking to the Nov election.