John Solomon is on a roll.

The "State Dept flag" is Kathleen Kavalec's email to the FBI about her mtg w Christopher Steele




https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...-fbi-man-well-before

By John Solomon

State Department's red flag on Steele went to a senior FBI man well before FISA warrant

In all Washington investigations, the essential questions become who knew it and when did they know it.

In the case of FBI informant Christopher Steele and the credibility of his now-disproven Russia collusion allegations against Donald Trump, we have some important clarity: Government officials confirm that an October 2016 email revealing that Steele met with State Department officials — a breach of protocol for an informant if it was unauthorized — was sent to an FBI counterintelligence supervisor.

Multiple sources confirm to me that the recipient of the State Department email was Special Agent Stephen Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Eurasian counterintelligence and now one of the bureau’s top executives as the assistant director for intelligence under Director Christopher Wray.

The email to Laycock from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec arrived eight days before the FBI swore to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it had no derogatory information on Steele and used his anti-Trump dossier to secure a secret surveillance warrant to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Moscow.

Officials tell me that Laycock immediately forwarded the information he received about Steele on Oct. 13, 2016, to the FBI team leading the Trump-Russia investigation, headed by then-fellow Special Agent Peter Strzok .

Laycock was the normal point of contact for Kavalec on Eurasian counterintelligence matters, and he simply acted as a conduit to get the information to his colleagues supervising the Russia probe, the officials added.

The officials declined to say what the FBI did with the information about Steele after it reached Strzok’s team, or what the email specifically revealed. A publicly disclosed version of the email has been heavily redacted in the name of national security.

While much remains to be answered, the email exchange means FBI supervisors knew Steele had contact with State and had reason to inquire what he was saying before they sought the warrant. If they had inquired, agents would have learned Steele had admitted to Kavalec he had been leaking to the news media, had a political deadline of Election Day to get his information public and had provided demonstrably false intelligence in one case, as I reported last week.

Current and former FBI officials told me it would be a red flag for an FBI informant on a sensitive counterintelligence case such as Russia to go talking about his evidence with another federal agency without authorization.

Kevin Brock, the former FBI assistant director for intelligence, said the State Department’s email in October 2016 ordinarily should have triggered the FBI to re-evaluate Steele as a source. “This is quite important,” Brock said. “Under normal circumstances, when you get information about the conduct of your source that gives rise to questions about their reliability or truthfulness, you usually go back and re-evaluate their dependability and credibility.

“It doesn’t always mean immediate discontinuation of the source. But there are policy requirements that you exercise some form of prudence, and conduct further vetting to determine whether this source can be utilized going forward. This is particularly true if the source’s information is being used in an affidavit or some other legal process.”

FBI confidential sources such as Steele sign a confidentiality agreement and undergo a training session on the dos and don’ts of informing, an event known in intelligence parlance as an “admonishment.” FBI records show Steele underwent “admonishment” training and signed an acknowledgement on Feb. 2, 2016 .

that was covered in this thread quite a while ago

That post is on page 35 of this thread and dated 3 Aug 2018. I remember seeing that FBI record and was just stunned that Steele was an active FBI human source while he wrote the phony dossier

The FBI fired Steele as an informant on Nov. 1, 2016, claiming he was caught leaking to the news media. But by that time Steele’s intelligence already had been used as the main evidence to secure a FISA warrant against the Trump campaign on Oct. 21, 2016.

The public version of Kavalec's email blacked out Laycock’s name as the recipient and listed an attachment file when it was delivered last month to the conservative group Citizens United under an open records request. The blacked-out version contained only a single visible sentence, in which Kavalec wrote the FBI supervisor: “You may already have this information but wanted to pass it on just in case.”

Officials familiar with Kavalec’s email would only describe the contents as having to do with something Steele told the State Department during an Oct. 11, 2016, visit. They said the attachment was not a copy of Steele’s now-infamous dossier or a complete set of Kavalec’s typed notes from her conversation with the informant. Rather, they say, it was information Steele shared with Kavalec that she felt needed to be transmitted to the bureau.

The officials also declined to address another mystery that has caught congressional investigators’ attention: Kavalec had two exchanges with FBI officials about Steele approximately two weeks before her meeting. The email contacts on Sept. 29-30, 2016, have been redacted, except for a single phrase “Thank you Kathy.” Congressional investigators want to know if the earlier exchange resulted in Kavalec learning in advance of Steele’s work for the FBI, or was a further tipoff to the FBI of Steele’s intention to visit State, a department where he had offered pro bono information in the past.

An FBI spokeswoman declined comment. Laycock did not respond to phone and email requests for comment. State officials declined to discuss the documents.

Republican House and Senate investigators who spent two years reviewing the Russia case say they were not provided the details of Kavalec’s contact with Steele or told about the existence of her handwritten and typed notes.

Lawmakers believe the new memos provide additional evidence Steele was unsuitable to be an informant before his dossier was used to justify a Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant.

Their concern is heightened by the fact that Steele was working simultaneously as an FBI informant and as a paid researcher for Fusion GPS , the firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to find Russia dirt on Trump in hopes of defeating him in the election.

Congressional Republicans have said publicly for months that the FBI failed to adequately inform FISA judges that Steele was working for Trump’s rival and had a bias against the GOP nominee, or that his dossier was unverified and contained demonstrably false information.

Defenders of the FBI have countered that there isn’t evidence to prove the bureau knew Steele was leaking to the media or was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC until after the FISA warrant was filed.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


FBI Dir Wray and all the FBI personnel who knew about this for the last 2.5 years, and who kept quiet about it, should be forced to resign.

What these people put our country and our President through when they knew it was based on false information. And that Christopher Steele was doing everything he could to destroy the Trump campaign.

I saw that report on Martha MacCallum’s show, but also that Trey Gowdy thinks Comey has the better of that particular argument. We’ll see. My hunch is that Brennan and Clapper are the anti-Trump fanatics here.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:

Looks like some finger pointing between the culprits has started at least. I wouldn't trust Gowdy on this he has a pretty serious man crush on Comey.

quote:

Originally posted by lastmanstanding:

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:

Looks like some finger pointing between the culprits has started at least. I wouldn't trust Gowdy on this he has a pretty serious man crush on Comey.

Sources familiar with the records told Fox News that a late-2016 email chain indicated then-FBI Director James Comey told bureau subordinates that then-CIA Director John Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, known as the ICA.

Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/politi...to-misconduct-begins

w all the chatter about the Carter Page FISA warrant, and Horowitz report hopefully coming out soon, this post will tie together a few things that have been mentioned previously.

1.

It has not been widely reported, but Adam Schiff told some news reporters that the only Steele dossier material in the original Carter Page FISA warrant were the parts about Carter Page.

That would imply nothing in the first warrant mentioned the pee tapes, Michael Cohen to Prague, Manafort running operations to hack the DNC, etc.

Whether any of the 3 warrant extensions added more dossier material will be valuable to know.

You might argue "why believe Schiff?". Because in this case that would make sense if the FBI was trying to deceive the FISA court. If the FBI had told Judge Rosemary Collyer everything in the Steele reports, it is quite likely she would have demanded more substantial verification of the wild claims.

2.

When Comey briefed president-elect Trump on 6 Jan 2017, he only told DT about the pee tape allegations. Nothing else about the broad Steele dossier claims. As far as we know, the President-elect only saw the full details of the 35 page dossier when Buzzfeed published it on 10 Jan 2017.

Comey has said (some time ago) that Clapper thought it best if Comey briefed DT in private about the sex tapes.

3.

Both Nunes and Gowdy have said the FBI prepared a spreadsheet that provided line by line "verification" of the 35 page dossier.

The problem is they both said the verification was news articles by reporters who had been given the dossier by Steele. Some of the verification came from Sid Blumental (who also was given the Steele dossier). Blumethal was the Clinton hatchet man who was so hated by Obama that Clinton was ordered not to bring Blumenthal in as part of her Dept of State operations 2009 to 2013. Turns out, Clinton did bring Blumenthal in, but kept it hidden from Obama.

4.

There was an original warrant against Page and 3 extensions. Here are the FBI signatures on each of the 4 warrants. By looking at the hand written dates, one might suspect that there were 4 different agents signing these. That remains to be seen, but it is possible that four different agents verified to the court that the information was true. We know in each of the warrants there were lies.

^^^^^

Very nice synopsis and clarification sdy.

Thanks !

Bill Barr did not mince words about his brawl with House Democrats when he ran into Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday on the sidelines of a Capitol Hill event.

According to a source close to the attorney general, Barr approached her in a holding tent after the National Peace Officers Memorial Service and asked whether she had brought her handcuffs.

The quip was a reference to the calls from some rank-and-file Democrats for Barr himself to be arrested, amid the fight over access to Russia probe documents.

https://www.foxnews.com/politi...idelines-of-dc-event

quote:

Originally posted by olfuzzy:


Bill Barr did not mince words about his brawl with House Democrats when he ran into Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday on the sidelines of a Capitol Hill event.

According to a source close to the attorney

general, Barr approached her in a holding tent after the National Peace Officers Memorial Service and asked whether she had brought her handcuffs.

The quip was a reference to the calls from some rank-and-file Democrats for Barr himself to be arrested, amid the fight over access to Russia probe documents.

https://www.foxnews.com/politi...idelines-of-dc-event

=============================================

OK

Bill Barr has a sense of humor! That's a good sign.

Pelosi may need to use those cuffs on some of her own party's deep state swamp creatures soon.

Better polish them up Nancy

quote:

Bill Barr has a sense of humor! That's a good sign.

In another thread I posted that Barr should show up complete with camera crew.

I wouldn't say it in humor, I'd say it in dead seriousness. Which one of you pansies is planning on arresting me? And if any of them are brave enough, let them try.

Shocking...

Both Comey And Brennan Voted Communist While Cold War Was Raging

How the F*CK did these two clowns ever get to rise to the ranks they held in their respective organizations? This just amazes me.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Shocking...

Both Comey And Brennan Voted Communist While Cold War Was Raging

How the F*CK did these two clowns ever get to rise to the ranks they held in their respective organizations? This just amazes me.

Security background checks done by top men at FBI and CIA?

Well, the Comey revelation is news, we knew about Brennan. That Brennan was sworn in on a "draft" copy of the Constitution that didn't have the Bill of Rights is fitting I guess...

Well that simply can't be, they've been telling us for years that Comey was a Republican...

Probably best to put this one on the "watch item" list.

Geo Papadopoulos has made public claims that Joseph Mifsud was tied to Italian Intelligence.

https://theconservativetreehou...ficials/#more-163855

Apparently, Italian media are reporting that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conté has requested the resignations of several top Italian intelligence officials. The move is being interpreted as the Conte’ government responding to the previous governments’ coordinated activity with U.S. intelligence officials during the 2016 U.S. election surrounding “Spygate”.

PM @GiuseppeConteIT has suddenly requested resignations from 6 deputy directors of Italian intelligence agencies: DIS, AISI and AISE.

Partito Democratico replies: "it's a regime", but in Rome, everybody knows its' all about SpyGate and Trump sabotage


Papadopoulos:

The Italian prime minister has suddenly requested resignations from 6 deputy directors of Italian intelligence agencies: DIS, AISI and AISE. This was all after I outed Mifsud in Rome and the president called the Italian prime minister. Italy has flipped and are giving up Brennan.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


This has the potential to be very significant. If Mifsud was working for Italian Intel, that destroys the act that the FBI claims was the cause of the July 2016 counterintelligence operation.

Chuck Ross of Daily Caller writes:

In her notes, State Department official Kathleen Kavalec also referred to the two Russians — former Russian foreign intelligence chief Vyacheslav Trubnikov and Putin aide Vladislav Surkov — as “sources.”

https://dailycaller.com/2019/0...es-state-department/

The references to Trubnikov and Surkov, which have not previously been reported, are not definitive proof that either were sources for Steele’s dossier or that they were involved in an effort to collect blackmail material on Trump.

But the notes are significant because they are the first government documents that show Steele discussing potential sources for the information in his dossier, which the former MI6 officer provided to the FBI.

Trubnikov also has links to Stefan Halper , an FBI informant who collected information from Trump campaign aides George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. Halper arranged for Trubnikov to visit intelligence seminars at the University of Cambridge in 2012 and 2015. He also tapped Trubnikov to contribute to a Pentagon study published in 2015

Halper tapped Trubnikov to contribute to a study he did in 2015 for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) titled “The Russia-China relationship: The Impact on the United States’ Security Interests.” Halper, who served in three Republican presidential administrations, was paid over $1 million from 2012 through 2018 for reports from ONA, which is led by Pentagon officials Andrew May and James Baker.

Halper established contact with Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign aide, under the guise of contributing to a study on energy security issues in the Mediterranean and Middle East.

Halper paid $3,000 to Papadopoulos to write a paper on the topic. During meetings in London, Halper and a covert government investigator, Azra Turk, plied Papadopoulos for information on any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. While no evidence has emerged that Halper paid Papadopoulos out of ONA funds, a source familiar with Halper’s work for ONA told TheDCNF that $3,000 was a sum he often paid contributors.

quote:

Originally posted by TSE:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Shocking...

Both Comey And Brennan Voted Communist While Cold War Was Raging

How the F*CK did these two clowns ever get to rise to the ranks they held in their respective organizations? This just amazes me.

Security background checks done by top men at FBI and CIA?

==============================================

^^^

Who could ever make this stuff up!!!

Thanks Obama - excellent vetting.

Comey or Brennan ? Who started the push of the fake Russian Dossier?

Inquiring minds want to know...., and both men are ducking and running.

A little humor by Rush Limbaugh thrown in for good measure, makes this update is a gem.



Fox News Story>>> https://video.foxnews.com/v/60...60001/#sp=show-clips

Comey or Brennan? Dispute erupts over who pushed Steele dossier
May. 16, 2019 - 5:12 - Finger-pointing between high-level government officials begins over who pushed the unverified dossier weeks before President Trump's inauguration.

Jim Comey we thought you were such a boy scout. (Well, some of us did)

Now we hear that Comey voted Commie!

So, just to be clear - we are now being told that our past FBI Director who was "?Vetted?" by the Obama administration actually voted for a communist.

PLEASE! Put a bottle in front of me or give me a frontal lobotomy! I can't take any more of this-

>>> https://www.zerohedge.com/news...-cold-war-was-raging

quote:

Originally posted by HighZonie:
Jim Comey we thought you were such a boy scout. (Well, some of us did)

Now we hear that Comey voted Commie!

So, just to be clear - we are now being told that our past FBI Director who was "?Vetted?" by the Obama administration actually voted for a communist.

PLEASE! Put a bottle in front of me or give me a frontal lobotomy! I can't take any more of this-

>>> https://www.zerohedge.com/news...-cold-war-was-raging

I mean, I get that people want to take the commies to task, but some of this stuff, especially Zero Hedge, is click-bait and frenzy-inducing stuff like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

The reason I like CTH and SigForum is that they're typically a measured place for discussion and not typically "frothy". If that makes sense.