quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Did you ever read something over and over and never really comprehend it ?


That just happened to me. I’ve seen a diagram at Conservative Treehouse dozens of times. It shows that in 2010, Nellie Ohr worked for the CIA.

But the problem was it showed an attendance list at a 2010 conference where Nellie Ohr is identified as “Researcher, Open Source Works”

......
Glenn Simpson: “So, generally speaking, we just do an open-ended look at everything we can find”

It is not clear how long Nellie Ohr worked for Open Source Works. But she sure had a good resume to work for Fusion GPS.

It’s exciting when the penny drops, isn’t it?

I noticed rereading the Simpson transcripts that he was awfully vague and sensitive to questions about employees, names, duties, who worked on what, and the investigators didn’t seem to press him on these details. No wonder!

Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen, and the Steele dossier.

Weekly Standard
Eric Felten


Longtime Clinton crony Lanny Davis, now Michael Cohen’s lawyer, last week walked back a tantalizing story he had been whispering to reporters. Davis admitted he was an anonymous source for reports claiming that Cohen, Donald Trump’s disgraced personal lawyer, was prepared to say candidate Trump knew in advance of the infamous Trump Tower meeting (the one in which his son and other top campaign advisers hoped to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Russian source).

If the story were true, it would have done untold damage to President Trump while also creating further legal jeopardy for Cohen, who has already pleaded guilty to eight felonies. As Axios pointed out, “Cohen told lawmakers last year, in sworn testimony, that he didn’t know whether then-candidate Donald Trump had foreknowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians.”

It isn’t as if Cohen’s old testimony was sitting forgotten in a file. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, well aware that Cohen had denied to them any knowledge that Trump knew about the meeting, asked Cohen’s lawyers “whether Mr. Cohen stood by his testimony.” Chairman Richard Burr and vice chairman Mark Warner, in a joint August 21 statement, said that Cohen’s legal team “responded that he did stand by his testimony.”

Pressed by the New York Post—for which he had been an anonymous source—Lanny Davis apologized for spreading the Trump Tower story.

Cohen’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee—the truthfulness of which his lawyers have now reaffirmed—was not primarily about the Trump Tower meeting. It dealt largely with denying one of the most explosive charges of Christopher Steele’s dossier, the accusation that a few months before the 2016 election, Cohen traveled to Prague on Trump’s orders to pay off “Romanian hackers” who had been bedeviling Democrats. Cohen has done damage to Trump by implicating him in hush-money payoffs that violated campaign-finance laws. But this pales in comparison to the damage he might do if he were to suggest Trump used him to pay hackers. This would buttress the accusations of Trump campaign “collusion” and be ruinous for the president.

There was rampant speculation after Cohen’s guilty plea in the hush-money matter that he might seek a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller to revisit his testimony on Prague and related matters. The day after Cohen pleaded guilty, the Washington Post surmised that the Prague shoe was about to drop: A trip to the Czech Republic by the Trump lawyer has been alleged but “hasn’t been otherwise confirmed,” wrote the Post. “Obviously, Cohen might be able to do so.”

If Cohen were going to change his testimony, his plea deal would have been an optimal time to do so. Prosecutors in New York were able to discover, in the mountain of materials they seized from his office, home, and hotel room, that Cohen had failed to pay taxes on money he earned from the sale of a pricey French handbag. It would surely not have been beyond their forensic abilities to prove Cohen had traveled to Europe in the late summer of 2016. And yet Cohen and his legal team have stated to the Senate intel committee that Cohen was telling the truth in his testimony, which included such unambiguous statements as “I have never in my life been to Prague or to anywhere in the Czech Republic.” And “I never saw anything—not a hint of anything—that demonstrated [Trump’s] involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.”


The Steele dossier’s allegations about Cohen going to Prague are elaborate. Where did its baroque tales of illicit meetings to pay Romanian hackers come from? Special counsel Robert Mueller’s case against Russian military intelligence (GRU) hackers may provide the answer. If the information he conveyed in this July’s grand jury indictment of GRU hackers holds up, the special counsel will have shown definitively that the Kremlin was behind the theft and release of Democratic party communications. Mueller will also have shown that, in falling for the idea of some involvement by Romanian hackers, the authors of the dossier were duped.

The July 13 indictment cuts to the heart of Russia’s bad actions: GRU units, says the indictment, “conducted large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” The indictment includes extensive explanations of how the Russian hacks were executed—with spoofed email addresses, falsely condensed URLs, and malicious links. More to the point: The hackers invented a fictitious Romanian hacker to try to cover their tracks.

Which brings us to the dossier, a work of opposition research written by former British spy Christopher Steele. He was hired by the oppo firm Fusion GPS, which had been paid by a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The dossier was delivered in installments, the last of which, in December 2016, claimed that Cohen and “Kremlin representatives” agreed during an August/September 2016 meeting “in Prague to stand down various ‘Romanian hackers’ (presumably based in their homeland or neighbouring eastern Europe) and that other operatives should head for a bolt-hole in Plovdiv, Bulgaria where they should ‘lay low.’ ”

But we know now from the exhaustive investigative work done for the Mueller team that the putative Romanian hackers were a fiction invented by Russian military intelligence to hide their tracks. Steele seems to have fallen for it.

“On or about June 14, 2016,” according to this summer’s indictment, the DNC “publicly announced that it had been hacked by Russian government actors.” In response to the DNC announcement, the Russian “Conspirators created the online persona Guccifer 2.0 and falsely claimed to be a lone Romanian hacker to undermine the allegations of Russian responsibility for the intrusion.”

It was in the middle of June 2016 that Guccifer 2.0 made his first appearance on a newly created WordPress blog. The title of the post was “DNC’s servers hacked by a lone hacker.” The blogger taunted a “Worldwide known cyber security company” that had done computer forensics for the DNC.

Just in case there remains any doubt that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian concoction, Mueller offers extensive details that demonstrate just how thoroughly Russian computer systems have been penetrated by the investigation. Earlier on the day of the first Guccifer 2.0 post, the Russian military intelligence cyber team at Unit 74455 had “searched for certain words and phrases.” These included terms that turned up in the Guccifer 2.0 post, such as “worldwide known.”

The indictment states, “Between in or around June 2016 and October 2016, the Conspirators used Guccifer 2.0 to release documents through WordPress that they had stolen from the DCCC and DNC.” Russian military intelligence devoted time and effort to maintaining the deception that Democratic documents were hacked and distributed by a Romanian: In January 2017—a month after Steele wrote his Prague tale—they were still putting out statements on the Guccifer 2.0 blog that the fictitious Romanian did all the hacking and had “totally no relation to the Russian government.”

When newspapers in 2016 originally reported the hacks as coming from Russia, the early installments of the dossier show Steele relaying that story. But after months of Russian efforts to prop up an imaginary Romanian hacker, the dossier trafficked in the conceit that “Romanian hackers” were involved in the theft and leaking of Democratic emails and documents. It spun an intrigue-filled tale that a representative of Trump was dispatched to see that the hackers received “deniable cash payments” and help arrange “bolt-holes” where they could hide out.

Mueller’s indictment from this July shows conclusively that the Romanian hacker was invented by Russian military intelligence to fool the West. Perhaps no one was taken in quite so fully as Christopher Steele. However Steele’s story was obtained, the special counsel has provided compelling evidence that his informants either manipulated Steele or didn’t know what they were talking about.

Michael Cohen has maintained and even now maintains—after having pleaded guilty to a grab-bag of criminal offenses—that he has never been in Prague. As risky as it may be to credit anything Cohen says, he has held to the claim through changing fortunes and changing legal teams. And the evidence mounts that he’s right in declaring the dossier allegations about him to be false.

Link

Papadopoulos Court Docs Provide More Evidence Russiagate Was A Setup To Get Trump

Why didn’t the FBI wire George Papadopoulos and arrange for him to meet with Joseph Mifsud during the State Department conference?

Federalist
Margot Cleveland

Late Friday, attorneys for former Donald Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos filed their client’s sentencing memorandum in preparation for his September 7, 2018 sentencing hearing before federal judge Randolph Moss.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making a false statement to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Special Counsel Robert Mueller previously argued that a sentence of up to 6 months imprisonment would be appropriate, but in Friday’s filing Papadopoulos’s attorneys argued for a sentence of probation.

In reporting the latest developments in the case, the mainstream media quickly latched onto two sentences in Papadopoulos’ memo to push the dying Russia narrative. The language the press proffered as supposed evidence of collusion came in a passage in which Papadopoulos’ attorneys sought to portray the Trump advisor as out of his depth.

As his legal team explained to the court, at a March 31, 2016 “National Security Meeting” with Trump and Jeff Sessions, “eager to show his value to the campaign, George announced at the meeting that he had connections that could facilitate a foreign policy meeting between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. While some in the room rebuffed George’s offer, Mr. Trump nodded with approval and deferred to Mr. Sessions who appeared to like the idea and stated that the campaign should look into it.”

The press predictably played up this exchange as a gotcha moment, while it was nothing of the sort. There is nothing nefarious about this discussion, and it has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the presidential election.

In addition to playing up the irrelevant, the press passed on the noteworthy: Papadopoulos’ sentencing memo reveals new evidence that further indicates the FBI’s goal in Crossfire Hurricane was to investigate Trump—not Russia’s interference with the presidential election.

In the memo, Papadopoulos’s lawyers detailed the FBI’s January 27, 2017, questioning of their client, explaining that for two hours, Papadopoulos answered questions about professor Joseph Mifsud, Carter Page, Sergei Millian, the “Trump Dossier,” and others on the campaign. According to Papadopoulos, “[t]he agents asked George if he would be willing to actively cooperate and contact various people they had discussed.” Papadopoulos said he would be willing to try.

Yet when Mifsud—the Maltese professor who in late April 2016 told Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt on Hillary” in the form of “thousands of emails”—visited the United States just two weeks later to speak at a State Department-sponsored conference, the FBI didn’t even bother to have Papadopoulos reach out to his former colleague.

Instead, the FBI questioned Mifsud, then in the special counsel’s sentencing memorandum blamed Papadopoulos for the government’s inability “to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States.” According to Mueller’s office, Papadopoulos’ “lies also hindered the government’s ability to discover who else may have known or been told about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on Clinton,” and prevented the FBI from determining “how and where the Professor obtained the information [and] why the Professor provided information to the defendant.”

I previously explained why the special counsel’s claim that Papadopoulos’s lies impeded the FBI’s investigation doesn’t fly. Papadopoulos’s attorneys similarly argued in their memo that their client’s lies did not actually harm the FBI’s probe, adding significantly that “George was still a cooperating source in their investigation” at the time investigators questioned Mifsud.

That final point and the revelation in Papadopoulos’ sentencing memo that the FBI had asked the former Trump advisor if he would be willing to contact Mifsud—and Papadopoulos’ agreement to do so—exposes the FBI’s purported investigation into Russia as a sham.

Why didn’t the FBI wire Papadopoulos and arrange for him to meet with Mifsud during the State Department conference? What would be more natural than Papadopoulos, who had spent months in London communicating with Mifsud and working at Mifsud’s London Centre of International Law, attending the professor’s speech at the February 2017, Washington D.C. Global Ties conference and inviting him for dinner or drinks? Then Papadopoulos could steer the conversation to the Russia hacking and Mifsud’s earlier comment about Russia having “thousands of emails.”

This isn’t Monday-morning quarterbacking, either. This is exactly what the FBI did with its now-named source Stefan Halper when it wanted to know what Papadopoulos and the Trump campaign knew about the emails. As The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross reported earlier this year, in September 2016, Halper met with Papadopoulos in London and asked the former Trump campaign advisor: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”

Papadopoulos denied knowing anything about the hacked emails when Halper raised the question (which, by the way, is entirely consistent with Papadopoulos’s claim that the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s emails). While the press conflates the two, the hacked emails were the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, while the emails Papadopoulos believed Mifsud meant were the ones missing from Hillary’s homebrew server.

So, let’s lay it out: In September 2016, the FBI used an informant in an attempt to ensnare Papadopoulos and establish collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia’s hacking of the DNC emails. Then in January 2017, after Papadopoulos confirmed Mifsud was the source of his claim that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary, and had agreed to cooperate and contact Mifsud, and after the FBI “located” Mifsud in D.C., the FBI didn’t use Papadopoulos to ensnare the supposed Russian-agent whose purported foreknowledge of the hack justified the launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

With each passing day, it is becoming more and more obvious that the target of the FBI’s investigation was Trump, not Russia.

Link

I've never understood how anyone can say, without laughing, that a major counterintelligence operation was initiated because a low level, inexperienced, unaccomplished, young man said the Russians have something on Hillary Clinton.

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Now Sergei Millian is asking for $1 Million on gofundme.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/0...gei-millian-dossier/

An alleged source for the Steele dossier is seeking $1 million in an online fundraiser to combat “the Deep State” and “fake news consortium.”

Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman, set up the fundraiser on GoFundMe.

“Most of the pertinent details stay hidden from public view by a well-organized campaign of disinformation, twisting facts, and/or purely inaccurate reporting,” Millian wrote in a vaguely worded pitch that does not mention the dossier.

Millian has been identified as a source for some of the most salacious allegations made in the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee (DNC). As “Source D” and “Source E” in the dossier, Millian is behind the claim that the Kremlin has blackmail material on President Donald Trump. According to the recent book “Russian Roulette,” Millian unwittingly spoke to a source who was working for Steele as part of his investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.

Millian, who is chairman of an obscure trade group called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, has claimed in the past to have worked for the Trump Organization, the Trump family’s real estate company. He has said in previous interviews that he helped broker real estate deals on behalf of Trump’s company involving Russians.

But some in the Trump orbit have accused Millian of lying about his links to Trump. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen has called Millian a “phony” who overstated his ties to Trumpworld.

Even Glenn Simpson, the founder of the firm who hired Steele, believed Millian was “a big talker,” according to the recent book, “Russian Roulette.”

In July 2016, Millian reached out to Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos through LinkedIn to request a meeting. The pair met several times during the campaign

Millian, whose real name is Siarhei Kukuts, has stayed out of the public spotlight since being identified as a dossier source. Congressional investigators have tried in vain to interview him.

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Since almost no experienced and respected people came forth to be on the Trump team, a flood of want-to-get rich opportunists filled the vacuum

The FBI has a web site called "FBI Records: The Vault"

https://vault.fbi.gov/

The FBI has published some very highly redacted records of "Records Between FBI and Christopher Steele"

An earlier post discussed the records include an "Admonishment" on 2 Feb 2016.

I am assuming the Confidential Human Source (CHS) involved is Christopher Steele, since these are the FBI records regarding Steele.

These records are in response to Judicial Watch FOIA request No. 1370340.

While Judicial Watch did a great job in making the FOIA request, they misinterpreted the result. JD said the "admonishment" was for something wrong that Steele did.

There has been an additional record to the FBI/Steele records at the FBI vault.

The new document is extremely hard to read. Why would the FBI put up a document that is barely / partly intelligible?

The new records show the details of the admonishment. Here is my interpretation of a very hard to read pdf:

"Admonishments:

1. The CHS’s assistance and the information provided to the FBI are entirely voluntary.

2. The CHS must provide truthful information to the FBI.

3. The CHS must abide by the instruction of the FBI and must not take or seek to take any independent actions on behalf of the US Government.

4. The US Government will strive to protect the CHS’s identity but cannot guarantee it will not be divulged. "

Those were the admonishments to Christopher Steele on 2 Feb 2016.

The Steel CHS status was ended on 1 Nov 2016.

Christopher Steele was an FBI CHS when he wrote most of the dossier.

Wapo

Prosecutors use grand jury as investigation of Andrew McCabe intensifies

By Matt Zapotosky
September 6 at 2:06 PM
Federal prosecutors have for months been using a grand jury to investigate former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe — an indication the probe into whether he misled officials exploring his role in a controversial media disclosure has intensified, two people familiar with the matter said.

The grand jury has summoned more than one witness, the people said, and the case is ongoing. The people declined to identify those who had been called to testify.

The presence of the grand jury shows prosecutors are treating the matter seriously, locking in the accounts of witnesses who might later have to testify at a trial. But such panels are sometimes used only as investigative tools, and it remains unclear if McCabe will ultimately be charged.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., which has been handling the probe, declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for McCabe.

[Inspector general report faults Andrew McCabe for unauthorized disclosure of information, misleading investigators]

The investigation into McCabe is as politically charged as they come, and a decision to prosecute him — or not — will draw significant criticism either way.

McCabe — who briefly took command of the FBI after James B. Comey was fired last year — has been a frequent target of criticism from President Trump. His comments, sometimes urging McCabe be investigated, have offered significant support for McCabe’s argument that he is being treated unfairly and the examination of him is tainted by partisanship.

The special counsel’s office, though, has charged several former Trump campaign officials for allegedly misleading investigators examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. If the Justice Department were to decline to take up the case against the FBI’s former No. 2 official, that could fuel outrage from conservatives who feel federal law enforcement has been unfairly aggressive toward their party. Using a grand jury could give federal prosecutors some political cover to argue they pursued the case using the most forceful tools available to them and still came up empty-handed.

The allegations against McCabe come largely from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, whose office concluded in a detailed report McCabe lied at least four times, three of them under oath, and he approved a media disclosure to advance his personal interests over those of the Justice Department.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe from the FBI in March — a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire. McCabe derided the move, which cost him a significant portion of his retirement benefits, as one meant to slander him and undermine special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. McCabe launched an online campaign to raise money for his legal defense, collecting more than a half-million dollars in less than a week.

[Andrew McCabe, Trump’s foil at the FBI, is fired hours before he could retire]

At that time, the public knew only the broad outlines of what Horowitz had discovered. In mid-April, the inspector general made public his damaging report. Horowitz referred his findings to the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., which at some point launched its own investigation into the former deputy director’s conduct.

McCabe’s lawyer said previously the standard for a referral was “very low,” and he was “confident that, unless there is inappropriate pressure from high levels of the Administration, the U.S. attorney’s office will conclude that it should decline to prosecute.”

The inspector general’s investigation of McCabe focused largely on interactions that he authorized other FBI officials to have with a Wall Street Journal reporter in October 2016 and what McCabe would later tell investigators about those interactions.

The reporter — Devlin Barrett, who now works at The Washington Post — was preparing a story on internal tension inside the FBI and the Justice Department over two investigations related to Hillary Clinton. McCabe, apparently concerned the story would cast him as trying to shut down one of the probes, authorized the FBI’s top spokesman and an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, to talk with the reporter for the story.

Page has since become more well known for the anti-Trump texts she exchanged with another FBI agent. In some of those texts, which the inspector general reviewed, she mentioned her conversation with Barrett.

Such interactions with the media, known as background conversations, are commonplace in Washington, and McCabe, as the FBI’s No. 2 official, had the authority to okay them. But the inspector general concluded his doing so in October was meant to advance his own interests, rather than that of the bureau, and that was inappropriate.

Perhaps more problematically, the inspector general also concluded McCabe lied about having told Comey about his actions and to FBI and inspector general investigators who would later explore the matter. Lying to federal investigators is a crime that can carry a possible five-year prison sentence.

McCabe’s legal team has said previously he did not intentionally deceive anyone — a point prosecutors would have to prove were they to bring a case — and his statements to investigators “are more properly understood as the result of misunderstanding, miscommunication and honest failures of recollection based on the swirl of events around him, statements which he subsequently corrected.”

They have also disputed Comey’s account of his interactions with McCabe, asserting Comey knew McCabe was authorizing engagement with reporters. Prosecutors interviewed Comey in the case earlier this year.

Link

A new report by John Solomon

This one sounds pretty important

Solomon is saying that his sources told him that after the 30 July 2016 meeting between Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, and Christopher Steele in DC, - that Bruce Ohr then contacted Andrew McCabe the same day.

http://thehill.com/opinion/whi...e-started-earlier-in

July and August 2016 one day may be remembered as the infamous summer of Steele and Ohr.

based on Ohr’s own account in a closed-door congressional interview and other contemporaneous documents, congressional investigators have learned that Ohr made his first contact with the FBI about Trump-Russia collusion evidence in late July and early August 2016. And his approach was prompted by information he got from his friend, the former British intelligence agent Steele.

The discovery is one of several key pieces of evidence emerging in recent weeks that explain how the FBI probe pivoted suddenly from looking at the conduct of Trump adviser George Papadopoulos to consuming a document now infamously known as the Steele dossier.

The FBI formally opened the Trump campaign probe — code-named Crossfire Hurricane — on July 31, 2016, based on an Australian diplomat’s claim that Papadopoulos, a young Trump campaign foreign policy aide, appeared to have prior knowledge that Russia had derogatory information it planned to release on Hillary Clinton.

Agents feared Papadopoulos might be looking to create contacts in Moscow to gain access to that Clinton dirt.

But multiple sources tell me the FBI soon received information — now considered highly classified — that undercut the theory of the Papadopoulos case. One source described the evidence as “indisputably exculpatory,” while another said the information “put the predicate used to start the case in reversal.”

Whatever the nature of that classified evidence, the FBI’s own account in court records shows agents suddenly seemed to lose a sense of urgency about the Papadopoulos allegation. They inexplicably waited about six months to interview both the Trump campaign aide and the European professor who allegedly alerted Papadopoulos to the Russia dirt and introduced him to Moscow contacts.

Steele first approached the FBI about the raw intelligence of possible Trump-Russia ties on July 5, 2016, when he stopped by the bureau’s office in Rome. Whatever transpired there, that first contact was not enough to cause the FBI to start an immediate probe.

Then Ohr, the No. 4 DOJ official, intervened, according to the newly discovered information.

Ohr’s account to Congress and his contemporaneous notes show he had multiple contacts with Steele in July 2016. One occurred just before Steele visited the FBI in Rome, another right after Steele made the contact.

A third contact occurred July 30, 2016, exactly one day before the FBI and its counterintelligence official, Peter Strzok, opened the Trump probe officially.

Steele met with Ohr and Ohr’s wife, Nellie, in a Washington hotel restaurant for breakfast. At the time, Nellie Ohr and Steele worked for the same employer, Simpson’s Fusion GPS opposition research firm, and on the same project to uncover Russia dirt on Trump, according to prior testimony to Congress.

Ohr acknowledged to Congress that the July 30, 2016, meeting involved a discussion about the allegations Steele had been gathering against Trump and Russia.

More significantly, Ohr told Congress the information related by Steele that day so concerned him that it prompted him to reach out to the FBI and pass it along, even though he knew he had a conflict of interest, given his wife’s work for Fusion on the same project.

According to my sources, Ohr called then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe the same day as his Steele breakfast and met with McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page on Aug. 3 to discuss the concerns about Russia-Trump collusion that Steele had relayed.

Ohr disclosed to lawmakers that he made another contact with the FBI on Aug. 15, 2016, talking directly to Strzok. Within a month of Ohr passing along Steele’s dirt, the FBI scheduled a follow-up meeting with the British intelligence operative — and the path was laid for the Steele dossier to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Just as important, Ohr told Congress he understood Steele’s information to be raw and uncorroborated hearsay, the sort of information that isn’t admissible in court. And he told FBI agents that Steele appeared to be motivated by a “desperate” desire to keep Trump from becoming president.

There is now growing confidence that the FBI’s sudden pivot from Papadopoulos to Steele was driven by several individuals, all with serious political baggage: Page and Strzok exchanged text messages about their desire to stop Trump from becoming president; Steele admitted he was desperate to keep Trump from the presidency; Ohr’s wife worked for the firm hired by Clinton to find dirt on Trump; and McCabe’s wife was a Democratic candidate in Virginia whose campaign got hundreds of thousands of dollars of electioneering help from Clinton ally and former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe.

Why did the FBI fail to fully disclose to the court that Steele was being paid by Democrats to help defeat Trump, or that Steele himself was desperate to stop Trump?

Did agents misrepresent “hearsay” evidence as corroborated intelligence?

And should the FBI have shut down the probe — after the original predicate about Papadopoulos was called into question — rather than pivoting to Steele, especially since two key bureau employees involved in it, Strzok and Page, had their own expressed desire to keep Trump from winning the presidency?

The answers to these questions are essential to the American public and its ability to continue to trust the very important work of the FBI, the DOJ and the larger intelligence community.


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It sure looks like the truth is being leaked out, drip by drip

quote:

The FBI formally opened the Trump campaign probe — code-named Crossfire Hurricane — on July 31, 2016, based on an Australian diplomat’s claim that Papadopoulos,

That didn't happen- Nunes said- There's no intelligence there when discussing the 5 Eyes Program.

quote:

That didn't happen- Nunes said- There's no intelligence there when discussing the 5 Eyes Program.

Granted the picture is still fuzzy about Papadopoulos. But there have been several reports that the Papadopoulos story didn't come from formal intel. It may have come from the State Dept. It may have come from John Brennan w informal inputs from the UK.

TBD.

Let's hope President Trump breaks this wide open w significant doc declassification. This whole investigation may be based on BS lies. The Mueller investigation may have been started for no legitimate reason.

And Comey knew it. And McCabe knew it. How could Mueller himself not know it ?

Papadopoulos gets a sentence of 14 days in prison


https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-...0535875--sector.html

George Papadopoulos, a former aide to then-Republican candidate Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, was sentenced on Friday to 14 days in prison after pleading guilty last year to lying to federal agents investigating whether campaign members coordinated with Russia before the election.

Prosecutors for Special Counsel Robert Mueller said Papadopoulos lied to agents about his contacts with Russians during the campaign "to minimize both his own role as a witness and the extent of the campaign's knowledge of his contacts," according to the government's sentencing memorandum.

Among those contacts were London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who told him the Russians had "dirt" on Trump's Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." Russia has denied U.S. allegations that it interfered in the campaign and President Trump denies campaign collusion

Prosecutors had asked Judge Randolph Moss in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to impose a prison sentence of up to six months, saying that Papadopoulos' lies impeded their investigation and that he did not cooperate.

In addition to the prison time, Papadopoulos was sentenced to one year of supervised release and 200 hours of community service. He was also ordered to pay a fine of $9,500.

Friday was his first public court appearance since he pleaded guilty in October 2017 to lying to the FBI while the case was still sealed.

"I hope to have a second chance to redeem myself," Papadopoulos told the judge at the sentencing hearing. "I made a dreadful mistake but I am a good man," he said.

Also in court, his lawyer Thomas Breen criticized Trump for calling the Russia probe fake news and a witch hunt.

"The president of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could," Breen told the judge.

The lies Papadopoulos told in his voluntary interview with the FBI on Jan. 27, 2017, prosecutors said, "undermined investigators' ability to challenge the professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States."

In addition, they said Papadopoulos did not provide "substantial assistance" and only came clean after he was confronted with his own emails, texts and other evidence.

In December 2017, two months after his guilty plea, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had plans for a follow-up meeting with Papadopoulos. The FBI canceled the meeting when it discovered that Papadopoulos had sat down for a media interview about the case. He and his wife later participated in more media interviews.


Lawyers for Papadopoulos dispute some of the government's characterizations, and they asked the judge to sentence him to probation.

"Mr. Papadopoulos's offense was unquestionably serious as he made materially false statements to FBI agents," they wrote in their sentencing memo. However, they wrote, the claim that his lies harmed the investigation are "speculative and contrary to the evidence

Papadopoulos was pictured in March 2016 sitting at a table with Trump, then-campaign adviser Jeff Sessions who went on to become U.S. attorney general, and other foreign policy campaign advisers.

At that meeting, Papadopoulos proposed brokering a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sessions has previously testified to Congress that he pushed back against the proposal, but the memo filed by Papadopoulos's lawyers contradicts Sessions' account, saying that both Trump and Sessions appeared receptive to the idea.

The court filing confirms reporting by Reuters in March about the difference between Sessions’ testimony and how others recounted his reaction to the proposal at the meeting.

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I have a feeling there is so much more to learn

So the man who supposedly "triggered" the FBI counterintelligence investigation into Trump campaign / Russian collusion to influence the 2016 election, gets 14 days.

He was not charged w anything that was about "colluding" w the Russians.

An FBI spy (Stefan Halper) offered $3000 to Papadopoulos to come to 'London and write a paper. That happened in Sept 2016

Remember the $10,000 that was given to Papadopoulos in Israel just before Papadopoulos flew back to DC (and was arrested) ?

Papadopoulos was also fined $9500.

I suspect the govt got their money back.

14 days?

Sounds serious.

So who here has the cliff notes on this latest development in layman’s terms?

Relative to Trump, Russian collusion, etc.

Rey HRH,

hard to summarize because a lot of details and a number of conflicting reports

good ref article:

https://www.washingtonexaminer...-trump-russia-affair

high level summary:

Papadopoulos was a very young and inexperienced guy who was looking to get a Trump administration position

He got named by Donald Trump as a campaign advisor (pickings were very slim in spring of 2016)

Very shortly after the public announcement that he was part of the campaign (Mar 2016), a foreign professor named Mifsud began talking to him. Mifsud told Papadopoulos the Russians had negative information on H Clinton.

Papadoploulos mentioned that to an Australian diplomat and a Greek official. One way or another, that got back to the FBI. There are multiple versions of how that transpired.

Based on that, the FBI says they opened a counterintel op in July 2016 to investigate Trump campaign collusion w the Russians.

In Jan 2017 the FBI interviewed Papadopoulos. The FBI said he lied about when Mifsud told him about the Russian neg info on Clinton. Papadopoulos lied to avoid ruining his ambitions for an administration position.

Papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to FBI.

While it seems incredibly weak, because it is incredibly weak, the FBI thought this justified a counterintel op. That part I can't explain.

Revisiting the FBI Vault, here is the guidance the FBI gave to Conf Human Source Christopher Steele in Feb 2016

"Admonishments:

1. The CHS’s assistance and the information provided to the FBI are entirely voluntary.

2. The CHS must provide truthful information to the FBI.

3. The CHS must abide by the instruction of the FBI and must not take or seek to take any independent actions on behalf of the US Government.

4. The US Government will strive to protect the CHS’s identity but cannot guarantee it will not be divulged. "

Additional Admonishments

1. The FBI on its own cannot promise or agree to any immunity from prosecution or other consideration by an ???, a state or local prosecutor, or ????

2. The CHS is not authorized to engage in any criminal activity and has no immunity from prosecution for any unauthorized criminal activity

3. The CHS is not an employee of the US government and may not represent himself/herself as such

4. The CHS may not enter into any contract or incur any obligation on behalf of the US government, except as specifically instructed or approved by the FBI

5. No promises or ??? can be made, except by the Department of Homeland Security, regarding the alien status of any person or the right of any person to enter or remain in the US.

6. The FBI cannot guarantee any ???, payments, or other compensation to the CHS

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The FBI documents are extremely poor pdf copies. Parts are not intelligible. I made my best guess at some words.

Christopher Steele wrote the dossier while he was an FBI human source.

Steele had an unidentified FBI handler.

Who was that ?

Why is there so much intrigue about how the dossier got to the FBI ? All Steele had to do was pass it as a report to his FBI handler .

I hope someday soon we learn all the answers.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Rey HRH,

hard to summarize because a lot of details and a number of conflicting reports

good ref article:

https://www.washingtonexaminer...-trump-russia-affair

high level summary:

Thank you. While I'm not mentally lazy, I think the whole thing has been purposely made into a spaghetti bowl so that it's difficult for an individual to casually follow the threads. Then you have to rely is who you think is an objective party or your favorite cheerleader for your team.

The more I read and think about this dossier, the more I edge towards the idea that it should have begun with “Once Upon A Time...”

Anyway, Creeps on A Mission is a website of Sidney Powell, the appellate lawyer who wrote “Licensed to Lie” featuring some now familiar names.

Link

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George Papadopoulos recently did an interview w Jake Tapper (CNN). Very informative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQXIBZ44OUM

One of the biggest surprises: George Papadopoulos (GP) says he has no memory of telling the Australian Downer that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton.

That is supposed to be the reason why the FBI opened the counterintel investigation on 31 July 2016.

Papadopoulos and his wife Simona Mangiante are strange characters.

Best to actually watch the interview, but here are some highlights.

1. Joseph Mifsud befriended Papadopoulos after it was announced Papadopoulos was on the Donald Trump campaign team. Mifsud told Papadopoulos the Russians had thousands of Clinton emails. GP thought he was repeating gossip and rumors.

Mifsud said (after he returned from a visit to Russia) that is what he had heard. GP had already heard rumors that the Clinton server had been hacked.


2. Tapper kept pressing GP “did you tell anyone in the Trump campaign about the Russians having Clinton emails?”. GP kept repeating “as far as I remember I absolutely did not share this info w anyone in the campaign”

Finally after Tapper kept hammering away, GP said “I might have but I have no recollection of doing so”. CNN made a big deal of this “admission”, but it sounded to me just as a frustrated reaction to Tapper’s continued questioning.

3. Tapper said “but that meeting is the reason that operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched. The FBI investigation into possible Russian / Trump campaign conspiracy. And Mifsud making that offer …”

GP corrected Tapper. He said there was no offer

It was just a statement by Mifsud. He wasn’t offering anything. GP didn’t say to Mifsud “we want those emails”

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4. GP thought that the Australian diplomat Downer reaching out to him was odd. Downer has said that in the meeting w GP, GP told him that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton

GP told Tapper, “I have no memory of talking to this person about this”

That is quite a statement. Papadopoulos does not remember telling Downer about the Russians having Clinton emails, and supposedly that is what triggered the FBI counterintel investigation. Something really smells here.

5. The campaign authorized GP to go to Greece and meet with Greek officials. GP’s parents are from Greece, and GP speaks Greek. While talking to a Greek minister, the minister told GP that the next day Putin was visiting and Putin would be sitting in the chair that GP was sitting in. GP said he blurted out that he had heard the Russians had Clinton emails.

6. In July 2016, Sergei Millian reached out to GP. Millian said he was working for Donald Trump real estate deals in Russia. Millian made GP an offer.

Millian would give GP $30k per month to act as some sort of consultant for an energy firm in Russia. There was a catch. GP had to work for Donald Trump at the same time.

Note: Sergei Millian has been widely reported as one of Christopher Steele’s prime “sources” for the dossier.

This all sounds crazy doesn’t it ? This BS is why the FBI started a counter intel op. Right.

7. Then in Sept 2016, GP gets an unsolicited email from Stefan Halper. GP had never heard of him before. Halper wanted GP to write a paper. Halper offered $3k, a free flight to London, a 5 star London hotel – for 3 days work.

Over drinks in a London hotel, Halper pulls out a phone and puts it in front of him. He begins “so George hacking is in the interest of your campaign. Of course the Russians are helping you”

“and of course you are probably involved in it too. Is that correct George ?”

GP: I have no idea what you are talking about. I had nothing to do w hacking or Russian interference

Halper’s demeanor changed. His tone was that GP was lying and he was being a bad person for lying.

Tapper: GP’s suspicions were confirmed when the Wash Post identified that Halper was working for the FBI as a confidential source .

Note: During this time period Christopher Steele was also an FBI confidential source.

Is Mifsud the guy who repeated in Capitals to the FBI- He didn't think Pap was a russian agent etc?

Googling anything on this fiasco shows interesting results. Not what I'm looking for but mostly the other sides perspective.


Odd- At the time being discussed We all thought the russians had all of clintons emails. It was probably even reported in the National Enquirer.

Even if Pap said that he never did anything else to prove the boast- which is still in question.

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8. GP thought he would be part of the Trump administration. He attended some inauguration events and then flew back to Chicago. He planned to apply for administration jobs and return to DC.

He lived at his mother’s house. He had just got out of the shower when his phone rang. GP answers the phone. “This is the FBI we are outside your house”. The FBI interviewed GP for the first time. It was 27 Jan 2017.

The FBI asked GP if any Russian govt official ever asked about hacking or emails. GP said no.

Then GP said there was a Maltese professor (Mifsud) who mentioned about emails.

GP was not arrested at this time.

9. GP met his wife, Simona Mangiante, on “Linkedin” when she worked for Mifsud’s London Centre of International Law Practice.

Their first date was in NY in spring of 2017. They kept in contact for a couple months, then GP invited her on a second date. A trip to Greece.

Tapper: how did you pay for this ? You didn’t have a job

GP: He used savings and “having family contributing helps”

GP had met a man named Charles Tawil at a convention. Tawil is Israeli / American. He had contacts in the middle east. GP didn’t hear more from Tawil until GP was vacationing with Simone in Mykonos, Greece.

Tawil emailed and said he needed to see GP to talk business. Tawil met GP in Mykonos, but said GP had to come to Tel Aviv, Israel for the business deal.

Simone thought it was suspicious. Only George went w Tawil to Tel Aviv for one day. Tawil gave George $10k in $100 bills. George said he never understood what the guy was talking about.

GP thought Tawil might be a spy for someone. GP left the 10k w a Greek lawyer

10. GP flew back to DC. It was 27 July 2017. He was immediately arrested. The FBI said “this is what happens when you don’t tell us about all your Russian contacts, and now we want you to cooperate ”

GP went to court and was told he was looking at 25 years in prison for obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI. He spent one night in jail. He told his lawyers he wanted to cooperate.

11. On the day GP was in DC to plead guilty to lying to the FBI, FBI agents served a warrant on Simone. In her FBI interview, she said the FBI tried to profile her and George as foreign agents. She was not charged.

12. GP was sentenced to 14 days. He wants to support his wife’s new Hollywood career, and then he wants to get into politics by running for office.

I think the truth is TBD.