According to sources responding to The Daily Caller, Nellie Ohr and James Baker are refusing to willingly testify to the joint House Oversight and Judiciary committee chaired by Bob Goodlatte.   Nellie’s husband Bruce Ohr, a current DOJ official, previously testified to the committee; however Nellie Ohr is not in government and may have to be subpoenaed if Chairman Goodlatte wants her testimony. She was originally schedule to appear tomorrow.

UPDATE – “The Committee continues to seek the testimony of Nellie Ohr and Jim Baker and will compel their testimony if necessary.”

Nellie Ohr was a FusionGPS employee and a bridge of contact between FusionGPS and Christopher Steele.  There are strong indications Nellie Ohr may have actually authored a considerable portion of the Steele Dossier for use by the FBI.  In prior testimony FusionGPS founder, Glenn Simpson, was less than forthcoming about Nellie Ohr’s engagements; and generally misled -direct and by omission- both the Senate and House intelligence committees about Mrs. Ohr.

Additionally, The Daily Caller is reporting that former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker is also refusing to cooperate.  Mr. Baker was removed from his position in December 2017, and left the FBI May 4th, 2018, after spending five months in employment limbo.

FBI legal counsel James Baker accompanied FBI Asst. Director “Andy” McCabe to a Tuesday December 19th, 2017, congressional hearing with the House Intelligence Community.  Curiously, in addition to other lines of inquiry, during the questioning McCabe was asked about whether James Baker was authorized to speak to the media about the Steele Dossier and the underlying ‘counterintelligence’ operation.  Asst. Director McCabe responded that Baker would not be authorized to take such action.

Following the December 19, HPSCI hearing, republican committee leadership announced their plan to subpoena James Baker for further questioning.  [Keep in mind Baker was there.]  Two days later, at the Thursday Judiciary and Oversight Committee hearings, James Baker did not accompany Andrew McCabe.   Hours later, James Baker is removed from his responsibilities as legal counsel within the FBI.  Cause: ‘unknown‘.  Five months later Mr. Baker resigned from the FBI.  Mr. Baker went to work with Benjamin Witts at Lawfare.

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(Washington DC) Project Veritas has released the next in a series of undercover reports which unmask the Deep State. This report features a Government Accountability Office (GAO) employee and self-proclaimed Communist actively engaged in potentially illegal political activity. Natarajan Subramanian is a government auditor for the GAO and a member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (Metro DC DSA).

Metro DC DSA is a socialist group that works to advance progressive issues in the Metropolitan DC area. Subramanian’s political activism may directly violate federal statutes as well as the “Yellow Book” rules which apply specifically to government auditors.  (read more)

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has seen all of the intelligence documents, and as a Gang-of-Eight intelligence oversight member he has also received the briefing material behind the origin of FBI’s operation “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Devin Nunes was also the person who led the FISA legislative reauthorization and initiated some of the preliminary reforms surrounding the 702 process.  So Chairman Nunes is essentially the key subject matter oversight expert on the nature of the information within the declassification directive:

There is nuance within the directive for declassification by President Trump.  The sets of documents are not identical in the way they are classified within the intelligence apparatus.  There are distinct differences and conflicting reports [Bloomberg Report and Washington Examiner] perhaps based on conflation and miss-identification of those differences. First, Sara Carter:

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Breaking down the presidential directive to the four component parts helps  understanding the issue(s), and the likelihood for redactions within the release(s):

• (1) pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page;
• (2) all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation;
• (3) all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.
• (4) publicly release of all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.

(1) “pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page.”

This request is generally familiar; and the proprietary interest/ownership of the document, the June 29th, 2017 FISA renewal application, is already in the hands of DNI Dan Coats.   While DNI Coats will likely follow the process of requesting feedback from the IC community (mostly FBI and DOJ), the removal of prior redactions -and the subsequent declassification- is pretty straight forward.

(2) “all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation.”

This request is a little less straight forward; but from the sketchy DOJ and FBI perspective, also not that big an issue.  This is simply releasing the dozen FD-302 reports from FBI officials debriefing  and interviewing Bruce Ohr.  There may be some valid sources and methods that need to be redacted (ex. if Ohr mentioned a human source or intelligence asset); however, the redactions should likely be very minimal.

(3) “all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.”

This is where the corrupt FBI and DOJ begin to get twitchy.  This is a high risk declassification for the corrupt intelligence usurpers.  This section appears to be where  former CIA Director John Brennan is demanding DNI Coats and the FBI and DOJ leadership must defy the president.  It is in this request for all “reports and interviews” where the intelligence assets (ie. Stefan Halper, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer) and those intelligence sources who helped frame the Crossfire Hurricane operation are located.

Here, the FBI and DOJ will likely demand HEAVY redactions because revealing names could lead to questions, subpoenas and testimony.  In this section it is likely Dan Coats would concur with redacting “sources and methods”. Redactions would be anticipated in this part of the declassification fulfillment (even if it wasn’t corrupt).

Then comes the political ‘biggie’:

(4) “publicly release of all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr”.

Key words “without redaction“.  Within this part of the directive the thousands of prior redactions are removed.  There’s no valid reason for any of the redactions to have been put into place originally.  Obviously someone inside the DOJ/FBI redacted those messages in an attempt to mitigate risk.  No-one knows who made the decisions; and the FBI and DOJ never answered any prior questions about their reasoning.

Presumably all of these messages were created over mobile devices, transmitted via open internet, likely did not carry authorized encryption, and therefore should not contain classified information upon creation.  However, in this informal messaging and discussion there is likely high-risk to discovering additional details about the motives of the corrupt FBI investigation and their actions; hence the prior redactions.

Additionally, beyond redactions there are segments of the prior Page/Strzok messages where it appears message segments were removed entirely. Example:

• Lisa Page: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
• Peter Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

That reply from Strzok was never included in the release from the FBI. The FBI intentionally hid the Strzok reply.  The OIG only discovered it after their independent forensics noted the omission. Daily Caller [SEE HERE].

(See Page #334)

We already know the unnamed FBI officials doing the redactions were caught intentionally removing critical messages. There is no valid reason to justify any redactions or removals within this segment of the declassification directive.

Making an educated assumption here – it appears the DOJ and FBI segment with Sara Carter is likely describing this #4 section of the release.  This section is highly reliant on the FBI (Wray) and DOJ (Rosenstein), because DNI Dan Coats did not, and does not, possess the underlying text message documents.

As previously stated, the corrupt elements within the FBI and DOJ are going to fight against transparency and sunlight; they will be bolstered by corrupt democrats who are attempting to hide the prior administration malfeasance.  Their unified goal will be to delay and obstruct as long as possible. We have to wait and see what ultimately comes from this presidential directive.

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