Not holding my breath, either.

It will take a lot of hard work and time to ID and then get rid of the swamp critters.

“U.S. Attorney John Durham reportedly interviewed the Australian diplomat whose tip about George Papadopoulos effectively started the counterintelligence investigation into President Trump's campaign in July 2016.

Alexander Downer, who was Australia's high commissioner to the United Kingdom up until last year, met with Durham's team last month in London and is said to have told investigators he was not part of a conspiratorial plot to undermine Trump, according to the Australian…”

www.washingtonexaminer.com/new...russia-investigation

good news from CTH

https://theconservativetreehou...lawyers/#more-175982

We finally have confirmation of a procedural process that allows us to anticipate the timing for public release of the FISA report from Inspector General Horowitz.

According to the Associated Press:

The inspector general in recent days has invited witnesses and their lawyers who were interviewed for the report to review portions of a draft this week and next, a critical final step toward making the document public, according to multiple people familiar with the process who insisted on anonymity to discuss it.


As part of that process, the people will have opportunities to raise concerns or suggest potential edits, making it unclear precisely when in the coming weeks a final version could be ready for release. Inspector General Michael Horowitz told Congress in a letter last month that he did not expect a lengthy review period and that he intended to make as much of the report public as possible, with minimal redactions

Generally speaking, and using the 2018 IG report on FBI conduct as a guide, the ‘Principal Review’ phase under Horowitz usually lasts 10 business days, or two weeks. All principals, and lawyers who review the report, are required to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Presuming this is principal review week one (seems certain), that would put the final report publication after the week of November 25th through November 29th. [NOTE: Thanksgiving day is November 28th]

The inspector general may allow principal comments to be added to the final report; however, the IG usually adds rebuttal information for any principal additions. Once the principal review and final OIG referencer check is complete the report moves to publication and public distribution.

In the example of the 2018 report on FBI conduct in the Clinton investigation, the principal review was 10 days from start to finish. It seems like Horowitz is following the same schedule. With Thanksgiving on Thursday November 28th, it is likely the resport will be released the week after Thanksgiving week; however it is possible for the report to be released during Thanksgiving week if IG Horowitz limits principal additions.

Best guess is the week after Thanksgiving.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


We might be seeing a lot of spin from Comey etc as they learn the report contents. They can have lots of ways to dance around the NDA

Wash Post is also reporting things are heating up

https://www.washingtonpost.com...67891d39d_story.html

The Justice Department inspector general has begun scheduling witnesses to review draft sections of his report on the FBI’s investigation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign — the clearest indication yet that the long-awaited document will soon be released publicly, people familiar with the matter said.

Several witnesses have been scheduled or are in talks to review sections of the report dealing with their testimony in the next two weeks, the people said on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. That could mean public release is imminent, though the witnesses will be allowed to submit feedback — which could spark more investigative work and slow down the process.

I sure hope not. Horowitz is mind numbingly slow but he appears to be very thorough

The particulars for each witness’s review were not immediately clear and in some cases were still being negotiated. The inspector general’s office will probably offer relatively short windows for witnesses to submit feedback and take other steps to prevent leaks, as it often does in sensitive and high-profile cases.

It's gotten so that now whenever I hear "The Inspector General" all I can think of is Inspector Jacques Clouseau.

Yeah, how many decades has he been working on that now?

Horowitz is a Obama left over, part of the swamp as far as I'm concerned. Somehow I think there is going to be a "no reasonable prosecutor" moment in this report. Even if there is a Comey criminal referral like it's being reported that's a long long ways from any real justice being administered.

It's taken this long just to get this far and the report still hasn't been released. Can you imagine how long it would take to actually prosecute someone the likes of Comey?

Can the coup attempt be any more obvious ?

https://www.washingtonexaminer...-advice-to-democrats

One of special counsel Robert Mueller's top prosecutors is offering advice to House Democrats for their impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

Andrew Weissmann , a former Justice Department official who was known as Mueller's "pitbull" during the Russia investigation, made his debut Wednesday as an NBC News legal analyst .

incredible

He explained how the House Democrats faltered in their first day of public hearings and should refocus their proceedings from Ukraine to United States election interference if they want to make an effective case against Trump.

"The key thing that the Democrats have to think about is, where are you going to be at the end? What is it that you’re going to be asking people to really care about? And you need to find out — and make the case for — why should there be impeachment where people vote to convict as opposed to acquit now, and not sort of let it go to the election?" Weissmann said on MSNBC.

He said Democrats "needed to focus on that this was about election interference in our election" and encouraged more analogies to the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

During an earlier appearance on NBC News, Weissmann also critiqued the Republicans' performance during the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday. Claiming the facts were not on their side, Weissmann said GOP lawmakers "raised a lot of confusion" as a defense counsel might do in a criminal case under similar circumstances.

One of the witnesses who testified on Wednesday, acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, said he was told military aid to Ukraine was contingent on Ukraine publicly announcing these investigations. The congressionally mandated security assistance, meant to counter Russian aggression, was eventually given to Ukraine, but only after lawmakers complained and the whistleblower complaint was submitted to the Intelligence Community inspector general. The president claims he urged Ukraine to open the investigations to root out corruption in Ukraine.

"It's telling that he said it's really important that it be public," Weissmann said. "I don't really care whether you do the investigation. What's important is it be a public announcement of the investigation," he added.

Trump told reporters on Wednesday he does not recall a July 26 phone call with European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland, another impeachment witness, in which he was said to have asked about "the investigations."

Weissmann said this could be a "huge mistake" for Trump because Sondland and an aide to Taylor, David Holmes, who allegedly heard Trump on the call, could claim under oath that he said this, and the president "can't rebut it" unless he suddenly says he recalls the conversation.

quote:

Originally posted by lastmanstanding:
Horowitz is a Obama left over, part of the swamp as far as I'm concerned. Somehow I think there is going to be a "no reasonable prosecutor" moment in this report. Even if there is a Comey criminal referral like it's being reported that's a long long ways from any real justice being administered.

It's taken this long just to get this far and the report still hasn't been released. Can you imagine how long it would take to actually prosecute someone the likes of Comey?

Cut it out. You haven't even seen the report and you're posting this crap. Can you not get it through your head that I do not want to see this kind of defeatist talk in this forum? You don't know what's going to be in the report, so just stow your cynicism.

Whenever you feel the need to brighten everyone's day by posting this dreary manure in this forum, stop and think real hard before you hit the 'post' button. Stop and think real hard. Don't spread this attitude to the members of this forum.

The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate

https://www.realclearinvestiga...ssiagate_121098.html

In the waning days of the Obama administration, the U.S. intelligence community produced a report saying Russian President Vladimir Putin had tried to swing the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

The January 2017 report, called an Intelligence Community Assessment, followed months of leaks to the media that had falsely suggested illicit ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin while also revealing that such contacts were the subject of a federal investigation. Its release cast a pall of suspicion over Trump just days before he took office, setting the tone for the unfounded allegations of conspiracy and treason that have engulfed his first term.
What was Brennan's motive? Among the possibilities is hostility within his camp toward Michael Flynn (foreground), Trump's future reform-minded national security adviser.
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The ICA's blockbuster finding was presented to the public as the consensus view of the nation's intelligence community. As events have unfolded, however, it now seems apparent that the report was largely the work of one agency, the CIA, and overseen by one man, then-Director John Brennan, who closely directed its drafting and publication with a small group of hand-picked analysts.

Nearly three years later, as the public awaits answers from two Justice Department inquiries into the Trump-Russia probe’s origins, and as impeachment hearings catalyzed by a Brennan-hired anti-Trump CIA analyst unfold in Congress, it is clear that Brennan’s role in propagating the collusion narrative went far beyond his work on the ICA. A close review of facts that have slowly come to light reveals that he was a central architect and promoter of the conspiracy theory from its inception. The record shows that:

Contrary to a general impression that the FBI launched the Trump-Russia conspiracy probe, Brennan pushed it to the bureau – breaking with CIA tradition by intruding into domestic politics: the 2016 presidential election. He also supplied suggestive but ultimately false information to counterintelligence investigators and other U.S. officials.
Leveraging his close proximity to President Obama, Brennan sounded the alarm about alleged Russian interference to the White House, and was tasked with managing the U.S. intelligence community's response.
While some FBI officials expressed skepticism about the Trump/Russia narrative as they hunted down investigative leads, Brennan stood out for insisting on its veracity.
To substantiate his claims, Brennan relied on a Kremlin informant who was later found to be a mid-level official with limited access to Putin’s inner circle.
Circumventing normal protocol for congressional briefings, Brennan supplied then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid with incendiary Trump-Russia innuendo that Reid amplified in a pair of public letters late in the election campaign.
After Trump's unexpected victory, Brennan oversaw the hasty production of the tenuous Intelligence Community Assessment.
Departing from his predecessors’ usual practice of staying above the political fray after leaving office, Brennan has worked as a prominent analyst for MSNBC, where he has used his authority as a former guardian of the nation’s top secrets to launch vitriolic attacks on a sitting president, accusing Trump of "treasonous" conduct.

Now Brennan is among the most vocal critics of the more comprehensive of the two Justice probes, the criminal investigation run by U.S. Attorney John Durham and Attorney General William Barr. "I don’t understand the predication of this worldwide effort to try to uncover dirt, real or imagined, that would discredit that investigation in 2016 into Russian interference," he recently said on MSNBC.

The Trump-Russia collusion theory was not propagated by a few rogue figures. Key Obama administration and intelligence officials laundered it through national security reporters who gave their explosive claims anonymous cover. Nevertheless, Brennan stands apart for the outsized role he played in generating and spreading the false narrative.
'Raised Concerns in My Mind'

The government’s official story as detailed in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s April 18 report casts the Trump-Russia probe as an FBI operation. It asserts that the bureau launched its investigation, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane,” on July 31, 2016, after receiving information that junior Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was informed that Russians had politically damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
John Durham: His probe aims "to better understand the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016," as the New York Times put it.
United States Attorney's Office, District of Connecticut/Wikimedia

But a great deal of evidence – including public testimony and news accounts – undermines that story. It indicates that the probe started earlier, with Brennan a driving force. Many of the clues are buried in public testimony and reports published by the New York Times and Washington Post, the primary vehicles for intelligence community leaks throughout the Russiagate saga.

One signal came in June when the Times reported that the Barr-Durham investigation had "provoked anxiety in the ranks of the C.I.A." Among Barr's aims, the paper noted, was "to better understand the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016."

That intelligence "flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I" underscores that the agency played a larger role in the early stages of the Trump-Russia probe than is publicly acknowledged. Late last month, the Times ran a more ominous piece suggesting that the CIA may have been a prime mover of the probe through deception. It reported that Durham has been asking interview subjects "whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation." In anticipation of being asked such questions, the paper added, "[s]ome C.I.A. officials have retained criminal lawyers."

If that reflects an accurate suspicion on Durham's part, then Brennan, by his own account, has already outed himself as a key suspect. Brennan has publicly taken credit for the Russia probe's origination and supplying critical information to the FBI after it began. "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about," he told Congress in May 2017. That information, Brennan added, "raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians," which then "served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion-cooperation occurred."

A BBC report suggests that Brennan may be referring to April 2016 – a month before Papadopoulos allegedly mentioned Russian dirt and three months before the FBI launched its probe – when “an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States" provided Brennan with "a tape recording" that "worried him" – "a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the U.S. presidential campaign."
Stefan Halper: This CIA and FBI informant targeted Carter Page as early as May 2016, Page says.
Oxford Union/YouTube

It is not clear whether the BBC account is accurate, but the April date coincides with other activity suggesting an earlier start date to the collusion probe than the official version. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified before a congressional panel that in the “late spring” of 2016 then-FBI Director James Comey briefed National Security Council principals about concerns surrounding newly appointed Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. According to the Guardian newspaper, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele began briefing the FBI on his discredited dossier in London as early as June; after that, "his information started to reach the bureau in Washington." In mid-July, veteran CIA and FBI informant Stefan Halper made contact with Page at a British academic conference; according to Page, the invitation had come at the end of May or early June.

Halper has also been accused of taking part in a smear operation aimed at spreading false information about National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russian nationals. In May, Halper was sued in the U.S. by Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-born British academic, for defamation. Lokhova alleges that Halper, while working as a U.S. intelligence asset, spread rumors suggesting that she and Flynn had an improper relationship.

While Russiagate's exact starting point is murky, it is clear that Brennan placed himself at the center of the action. After the investigation officially got underway in the summer of 2016, as Brennan later told MSNBC, "[w]e put together a fusion center at CIA that brought NSA and FBI officers together with CIA to make sure that those proverbial dots would be connected." (It is not clear whether this was a Freudian slip suggesting the center included Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm hired by the Clinton campaign that produced the Steele dossier of fictitious Trump-Russia dirt – but regardless, it is likely that at least some of Brennan's "dots" came from the firm.) According to the New Yorker, also that summer Brennan received a personal briefing from Robert Hannigan, then the head of Britain’s intelligence service the GCHQ, about an alleged "stream of illicit communications between Trump's team and Moscow that had been intercepted." A U.S. court would later confirm that Steele shared his reports with at least one "senior British security official."

As Brennan helped generate the collusion investigation, he also worked to insert it into domestic American politics – at the height of a presidential campaign. Starting in August, Brennan began giving personal briefings to the Gang of Eight, high-ranking U.S. senators and members of Congress regularly apprised of state secrets. Breaking with tradition, he met them individually, rather than as a group. His most consequential private meeting was with Harry Reid.
Harry Reid: Brennan gave this top Senate Democrat an irregular individual briefing, putting the collusion narrative in motion.
AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz.,File

Afterward, the Democrats’ Senate leader sent a pair of provocative public letters to FBI Director Comey. Reid's messages – released to the public during the final months of the presidential race – made explosive insinuations of illicit ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, putting the collusion narrative into motion. "The prospect of individuals tied to Trump, WikiLeaks and the Russian government coordinating to influence our election raises concerns of the utmost gravity and merits full examination," Reid wrote on Aug. 27. Russia, he warned, may be trying to "influence the Trump campaign and manipulate it as a vehicle for advancing the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin."

Two days after Comey's "October surprise" announcement that newly discovered emails were forcing him to reopen the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server while serving as secretary of state, Reid followed up with even more incendiary language: "It has become clear," he complained to Comey, "that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors and the Russian government."

Reid’s letters show the extent to which Brennan maneuvered behind the scenes to funnel collusion to a public audience. In their book "Russian Roulette," Michael Isikoff and David Corn report that Reid "concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russia operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign."

Nunes: 'Whatever Brennan Told Reid, He Didn’t Tell Me.'

The separate briefings and the Reid letters gave rise to suspicion that Brennan was driven by what Reid, according to Isikoff and Corn, saw as an "ulterior motive." Although Brennan has claimed publicly that he "provided the same briefing to each gang of eight member," Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) says that is not true. Nunes, who was then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is quoted in journalist Lee Smith’s new book, "The Plot Against the President," saying, "Whatever Brennan told Reid, he didn’t tell me."

Reid’s letters also undermine a common, but false, talking point used to defend Brennan and other U.S. intelligence officials behind the Russia investigation: If they really sought to hurt the Trump campaign, they would have made their Trump-Russia collusion speculation public. As Comey put it: "If we were 'deep state' Clinton loyalists bent on stopping him, why would we keep it secret?" Reid's extraordinary letters – released at the height of the campaign – were one of the ways in which Brennan did exactly the opposite.
FBI's Peter Strzok texted Lisa Page suggesting the CIA was "leaking like mad." And he wrote colleagues of his concern the agency was deceiving both the bureau and the public.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

After Trump's election victory in November, Brennan's CIA was the source of yet more leaks. Reports in early December claimed that the agency had assessed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the explicit aim of helping Trump. The leaks sparked worry inside the FBI.

"Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad," Peter Strzok, the lead FBI agent on the Russia probe, texted his colleague Lisa Page on Dec. 15. "Scorned and worried and political, they're kicking in to overdrive." In an April 2017 email to colleagues, Strzok worried the CIA was deceiving both the bureau and the public. "I'm beginning to think the agency got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us," he wrote. "Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as a source of some of the leaks."
‘We Needed More’

At the same time that he was sharing his "concerns" about alleged Trump-Russia contacts with the FBI and Congress, Brennan was raising alarm bells at the White House about an alleged Russian interference campaign. In the process, he went to significant lengths to safeguard his claims from internal scrutiny.

In early August, Brennan told the White House about supposed intelligence from a Kremlin mole that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered an interference operation to hurt Clinton and install Trump in the White House. Brennan, the New York Times reported, "sent separate intelligence reports, many based on the source’s information, in special sealed envelopes to the Oval Office." Brennan made sure that those envelopes evaded scrutiny.

On Brennan’s orders, Greg Miller of the Washington Post reported, "no information on Russia's interference was ever included in the president's daily brief." Brennan's purported fear was that even a highly restrictive distribution list might prove too leaky for the CIA’s explosive claims about Putin’s supposed secret orders to elect Trump.

Miller also reported that Brennan holed up in his office to pore over the CIA's material, "staying so late that the glow through his office windows remained visible deep into the night." Brennan ordered up, not just vetted, "'finished' assessments – analytic reports that had gone through “layers of review and revision," but also "what agency veterans call the 'raw stuff,' the unprocessed underlying material," Miller adds.
John Kiriakou, ex-CIA analyst: Brennan's actions were "a very big red flag."
AP Photo/Cliff Owen

To former CIA analyst and whistleblower John Kiriakou, all of this raises "a very big red flag" that suggests Brennan circumvented his colleagues and normal intelligence safeguards. "As a matter of practice, you never, ever give the raw data to the policymaker," Kiriakou says. "That was something that was done during the George W. Bush administration where Vice President Cheney demanded the raw intelligence. But more often than not raw intelligence is just simply incorrect – it’s factually incorrect, or it’s the result of the source who’s a liar, or it’s the result of the source who has only part of the story. And so you can’t trust it. You have to vet it and compare it to the rest of your all-source information to see what’s true, what’s not true, and then only the true information you use in your analysis. For the director of the CIA to be using the raw data is highly unusual because that’s what you have a staff of thousands to do for you."

The timing of Brennan's supposed delivery of the information sourced to the mole – later identified as Oleg Smolenkov – also raises questions. Although it is unclear when Smolenkov would have conveyed his intelligence to the CIA, the Washington Post reported Brennan delivered it to the White House in early August 2016 – just days after the FBI officially launched its Russia investigation. But if Smolenkov was able to capture Putin's orders to conduct a sweeping election interference campaign – which allegedly began in March – it would be odd that this information arrived only after the U.S. election interference investigation began, and not – at minimum – months earlier, when Putin's supposed operation would had to have been ordered.

When Brennan's material did reach eyes outside Obama's inner circle, "other agencies were slower to endorse a conclusion that Putin was personally directing the operation and wanted to help Trump," the Washington Post reported. “‘It was definitely compelling, but it was not definitive,' said one senior administration official. 'We needed more.'" Faced with that skepticism, Brennan "moved swiftly" to brief congressional leaders -- including Reid.
The Mole

The internal doubts about Brennan's claims now make more sense in light of the recent outing of the supposed Kremlin mole that he relied on to make them.

Smolenkov has been revealed to be a mid-level Kremlin official who was outside of Putin's inner circle. According to Russian media, Smolenkov disappeared during a visit to Montenegro in June 2017, in what other reports call a CIA extraction over fears that a loose-lipped Trump could put him in peril. After that, Smolenkov turned up in the U.S., remarkably living under his own name – easily discoverable in public records – in the Virginia suburbs.

Even putting aside Putin’s reputation for having operatives abroad hunt down and assassinate those who cross him, Kiriakou said this open visibility is "astounding." CIA informants, Kiriakou says, "were never, ever resettled in their own names and they were almost never resettled in the Washington area. That tells me a couple of things: one, this source wasn’t as sensitive as we may have been led to believe; or, two, even if he was sensitive, the information that he provided either has been overtaken by events, or isn’t really that important in the long run."

Nevertheless, Brennan’s Kremlin mole remains the only known direct source for a central claim that Putin worked to elect Trump.
‘Unusually Constrained’

Brennan has countered questions about the intelligence process he directed by insisting that his conclusions were broadly shared and corroborated. That is misleading.

During private briefings to Congress in December 2016, it was the CIA that aggressively pushed the belief that Putin had ordered a secret campaign to elect Trump, while FBI officials said that the intelligence was not conclusive. An unnamed official told the Washington Post that "a secret, new CIA assessment" made "direct and bald and unqualified" statements that the Russian government sought to elect Trump. But days later, "a senior FBI counterintelligence official" appearing before the committee gave "fuzzy and "ambiguous" remarks on the same issue. "It was shocking to hold these [CIA] statements made about Russian intentions and activities, and to hear this guy basically saying nothing with certainty and allowing that all was possible," an official who attended the briefing told the Post.
James Clapper: He suggested the Steele dossier influenced the Intelligence Community Assessment. Brennan denied it.
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

A March 2018 report from Republican members of House Intelligence Committee fleshed out these concerns. It determined that the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which Brennan managed, was subjected to an "unusually constrained review and coordination process, which deviated from established CIA practice." Contrary to the widespread portrayal of a vetted, consensus-based intelligence product, the ICA was in fact "drafted by CIA analysts" working under Brennan and merely "coordinated with the NSA and the FBI." The report found that the ICA also suffered from "significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the ICA judgments regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategic objectives for disrupting the U.S. election."

Another question is whether the Steele dossier influenced the ICA's production. Brennan has insisted in congressional testimony that the dossier was "not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community's assessment," and that he was unaware of the fact that Hillary Clinton's campaign had funded it. But multiple accounts, including in RealClearInvestigations, report that the dossier was inserted as an appendix to the ICA, and that Brennan personally advocated its inclusion. In an October 2017 interview with CNN, where he works as analyst, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that "some of the substantive content of the dossier we were able to corroborate in our Intelligence Community Assessment" – suggesting that it was indeed relied on.

President Obama's role in U.S. intelligence is yet one more mystery. In both the final months of his presidency and in the period since, Obama has said very little publicly about the Russia investigation. But he attended various meetings with top officials about Trump-Russia theories. It’s not clear what he said, but their efforts ramped up in the months that followed.

Most of Obama’s documented efforts occurred during his final days in office. On Jan. 5, 2017 he convened a meeting where he and top principals decided to withhold details about the ongoing FBI investigation of the incoming Trump administration. A week later his administration issued a new rule allowing the NSA to disseminate throughout the government “raw signals intelligence information.” Republicans viewed this as an effort to make it easy to leak damaging information against Trump and harder to identify the leakers. Also after the election, Obama made the curious decision to nix a proposal from inside his own administration to form a bipartisan commission that would have scrutinized Russian interference and the U.S. response.
‘I Think I Suspected More Than There Actually Was’

Since stepping down from the CIA in January 2017, Brennan's incendiary rhetoric has fanned the flames. From MSNBC to the New York Times to Twitter, Brennan has denounced Trump as "treasonous," "in the pocket of Putin," and dismissed the president's now substantiated "claims of no collusion," as "hogwash." In the final weeks of the Mueller probe, Brennan boldly predicted a wave of indictments against Trump's inner circle for a Russia conspiracy. When Mueller completed his probe with no such indictments, Brennan changed his tone: "I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was," he told MSNBC.
Brennan is now a bitter Trump critic on MSNBC.
MSNBC/"The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell"

The Mueller report accepted Brennan’s claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. But as a previous RCI investigation found, the report's evidence failed to support its claim of a "sweeping and systematic" interference campaign. Nor did it show that such interference impacted the outcome.

It is still not clear why the Obama administration, with major media playing along, not only embraced the false Trump-Russia narrative but also used it as a rationale to spy on a presidential campaign and then on a presidency. Brennan’s reasons also remain opaque.

One early motivation may have been the intelligence community’s broad dislike of Flynn – Trump’s first national security adviser, who was one of the earliest targets of the collusion narrative.

Flynn had served as Obama’s head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, but fell out of favor by 2014, in part because of his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and the CIA's arming of anti-Assad militants in Syria. Obama had specifically warned Trump against hiring Flynn.

A longtime critic of the bureaucracy, Flynn earned particular enmity from Brennan’s CIA with an effort to create a new Pentagon spy organization, Foreign Policy reported in 2015.

One of Trump’s first high-profile supporters, Flynn was also the subject of the first news articles – starting in February of 2016 – portraying members of the Trump campaign as overly sympathetic to Russia. In February 2017, “nine current and former officials” from multiple agencies leaked about him to the Washington Post over his contacts with the Russian ambassador -- an article that helped the Post win a Pulitzer Prize with the New York Times. The episode also brought Flynn much grief, including a widely questioned “process crime” conviction for lying to the FBI, which he is now trying to reverse. Meanwhile, a CIA “whistleblower” hired and placed in the White House by Brennan has provided the impetus for the current Democrat-led impeachment effort against President Trump.

The Barr-Durham probe is set to determine, among other things, whether Brennan’s actions and faulty information amounted to incompetence or something considerably worse.

Well worth the read.

Former head of the cia is a tv news analyst- If you made it up no one would believe you.

on page 90 there is a post about Kash Patel.

He used to be one of Devin Nunes' chief staffers.

Patel is suing Politico

https://www.foxnews.com/media/...-role-in-impeachment

A White House official on Monday sued Politico and one of its reporters over stories and tweets that he says falsely accuse him of “lying, deceit and unethical conduct.”

Kash Patel, the National Security Council’s senior counterterrorism director, is seeking more than $25 million in damages in the suit filed in Virginia. We have reached out to Politico for comment.

The lawsuit also names Natasha Bertrand, a Politico reporter and MSNBC contributor, as well as Politico owner Robert Allbritton. The allegations, which center on what the president was told about the situation in Ukraine, go to the heart of the case for impeachment.

While Politico is the nominal target of the suit, it represents an aggressive attempt by a presidential aide to put Adam Schiff’s handling of the impeachment inquiry itself on trial. Describing the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee as “a demagogue with an ax to grind against the president,” Patel portrays Schiff as running roughshod over rules and interviewing witnesses “to create click-bait headlines and soundbites to feed to his co-conspirators and media sympathizers.”

The suit stems from Bertrand’s Oct. 23 story, headlined “Nunes Protege Fed Ukraine Info to Trump.” Patel previously worked for Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, spearheading the Intel Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, before joining the White House in February.

The Politico piece said Patel “was among those passing negative information about Ukraine to President Donald Trump earlier this year, fueling the president’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.”

Patel was “so involved in the issue,” the story said, that “at one point Trump thought he was in charge of Ukraine policy for the National Security Council.” This was attributed to closed-door House testimony by Fiona Hill,” a former NSC official. What’s more, Politico said, “Patel’s involvement demonstrates that the president had at least some support for the scheme from within the NSC” -- the scheme being to pressure Ukraine into investigations that would help Trump politically.

In fact, Patel’s suit says, “at no time” before Oct. 30 “had Kash ever communicated with the president on any matters involving Ukraine. Kash never supplied any Ukraine ‘materials’ to the president.”

Schiff is a major target. The suit, which includes its share of Trumpian language, says the defendants “acted in concert” with the congressman or his aides to further the impeachment probe. The alleged purpose was to “destroy Kash’s reputation” as a lawyer and presidential aide to further “Schiff’s baseless Ukrainian quid pro quo hoax.”

Patel issued a public denial earlier this month, saying a number of media outlets “have falsely reported that...I have communicated with President Trump regarding Ukraine.”

The backdrop for the lawsuit is the leaks by committee staff of the closed-door testimony of Hill, who had been the NSC’s top Russia expert, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, another NSC official.

A second story by Bertrand, on Oct. 30, quoted sources as saying Vindman told lawmakers that Patel “‘misrepresented’ himself” to Trump “in an effort to involve himself further in Ukraine policy, according to two people familiar with his closed-door deposition.” The piece said the president “believed at the time” that Patel “was actually the NSC’s top Ukraine expert instead of Vindman,” despite Patel’s lack of experience with Ukraine. This, Politico said, highlighted “the unusual steps top NSC officials were taking as early as May to avoid angering or annoying the president on Ukraine issues,” and “feeding Trump’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.”

The lawsuit contends -- and this is certain to be contested -- that if Politico “had bothered to wait for the transcript, they would have learned that Hill completely fabricated the story that Kash had provided ‘materials on Ukraine’ to the president.”

Vindman’s testimony shows he had no firsthand knowledge of Patel’s actions beyond what Hill told him, according to the suit, and said Patel was held “in high regard.”

Patel essentially argues that Hill and Vindman offered no direct evidence to show he briefed the president on Ukraine. Politico could counter that it was fairly reporting on congressional testimony, except that the stories were based on leaked accounts, not the actual transcripts.

Patel burst into the news last year during the committee’s Russia probe. The New York Times cited sources in saying he was the primary author of a controversial memo, released by Nunes over the objections of the FBI and intelligence community, that accused federal officials of bias against Trump.

sooo "controversial" that the FBI & intel community were biased against Trump

The suit describes Patel as a “private individual,” a key point since the bar for a successful libel suit is much higher if, as a White House official, he is deemed a public figure.

CTH reports

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham has announced that Inspector General Michael Horowitz will testify About the 500+ page FISA report on Wednesday December 11th, 2019.

this likely puts the publication date for the report on/around Monday December 2nd

CTH also reports that the last day in Dec that is scheduled for House votes is 12 Dec. Impeachment vote could be a few weeks from now

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Of course, we have all been waiting patiently for the tide to turn and for the real deep-state criminals to be indicted.
Not holding my breath.

Indicted heck! I’m waiting to see those scumbags decorating lamp poles. I may have to settle for indicted, but that’s not what I’m waiting for.

Now we wait and watch to see who disappears from public eye...

I am going to try to get this straight, but it is a bit confusing.

The source for this is Techno Fog Twitter

Peter Strzok filed a complaint about the FBI firing him. As part of the DoJ response, an exhibit has been made public. It is Exhibit 4 at

https://www.scribd.com/documen...k-v-Barr-DOJ-DE-30-5

dated Aug 2018

The case is Strzok v. Barr, No.1:19-CV-2367-ABJ

The doc is 27 pages long and is full of interesting things

This exhibit was written by Candice Will of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility

In this doc, Candice Will recommends that Strzok should only be suspended for 60 days and demoted.

When Will made this decision, it had to get reviewed by senior FBI management. I forget exactly who it was in senior management, but they over-ruled Will and ordered Strzok to be fired.

My opinion - Candice Will made a profoundly bad decision and deserved to be over-ruled

Some of the things in the exhibit

"GA" is FBI General Attorney. The context is clear that GA is Lisa Page

27 July 2016
Lisa Page texts "Have we opened on him yet"

Strzok: "Opened on Trump? ..."

31 July 2016 Strzok opened the counterintel operation Crossfire Hurricane

Comey has stated the operation was not against Trump. The text, and a lot of other things, indicates the target was always Donald Trump

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Strzok's wife accessed his personal phone in April 2017. She suspected Strzok was having an affair w Lisa Page. The wife had determined Page's husband' name (different than Page)

The wife found a hotel reservation that indicated a romantic encounter with Lisa Page

The wife had access to photographs on the phone

She threatened to contact Page's husband and also threatened to hire a private investigator.

Lisa Page told Strzok to determine whether the wife might use recovery software to locate other evidence of the affair.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

675,000 emails were found on Weiner's laptop
Strzok was notified of this on 28 Sep 2016

Strzok did not make examining these emails a priority. He thought it would take till the end of 2016 or into 2017. (past the election)

He said the Russia investigation was higher priority. He said the emails were not "a ticking terrorist bomb"

He thought the Russia investigation was more critical and time sensitive

higher priority to damage Trump than to damage Clinton

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Strzok only moved on the emails in late October when DoJ pinged the FBI and asked why a search warrant had not been pursued to examine the emails on the Weiner laptop

The investigation found no reasonable excuse for the delay in following up on the Weiner laptop emails

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

will add a bit more

https://www.politico.com/news/...eneral-report-072433

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s watchdog, will release the report on Dec. 9 and testify before his committee on Dec. 11.

The IG report could also be useful to Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who pleaded guilty in Robert Mueller’s Russia probe in December 2017 but has since hired a combative new attorney who is trying to get the original case tossed out by a federal judge because of what she’s called “egregious government misconduct.”

“ I am looking forward to the long-awaited IG Report!” Sidney Powell , the new Flynn lawyer, said in an email. Her sentencing recommendations are due to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on Dec. 10, one day after the release of the IG report. Sullivan has scheduled a tentative sentencing date for Dec. 18.

^^^ On that note, could the report also have any effect on Roger Stone's recent conviction?

If all 4 warrants against Carter Page are invalid, that could make all the info gathered tainted.

If I understand the process correctly those warrants allowed the FBI to go back in time and forward on all electronic communications.

Then w 2 hops, they could monitor group 1 - everyone Carter Page communicated with, and then group 2 - everyone that communicated w group 1

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

nothing new here, but for the record: