Foolishness and betrayal of our country have served to reveal dangers within our present condition. Misplaced corrective action, regardless of intent, is neither safe nor wise. The intelligence apparatus was weaponized against a candidate by those who controlled the levers of government. This is what AG Bill Barr needs to explain to the nation.
The purpose behind briefing Durham’s lead investigator William Aldenberg was essentially to provide an understanding of what we the people already know. The purpose behind releasing the investigator name is to cut through the chaff and countermeasures and give face to the unit holding the precarious responsibility of sunlight.
The position of Bill Barr, and indeed our nation today, is a direct result of decisions made by Main Justice -as run by the special counsel- in the Fall of 2017 & Summer of 2018.
The events surrounding the leaking of the FISA warrant used against U.S. person Carter Page; the purposeful cover-up by Andrew Weissmann; and the downstream 2018 DOJ decision not to prosecute SSCI Security Director James Wolfe for those leaks, was the fork in the road moment for the Department of Justice – and the institutions of government as a whole.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was recused. As admitted in his June 2nd testimony Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was providing no special counsel oversight, and the Mueller team was essentially controlling all DOJ activity. That was when the DOJ made a decision not to prosecute Wolfe for leaking classified information. DC U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu signed-off on a plea deal where Wolfe plead guilty to only a single count of lying to the FBI.
If the DOJ had pursued the case against Wolfe for leaking the FISA application, everything would have been different. The American electorate would have seen evidence of what was taking place in the background effort to remove President Trump; and we would be in an entirely different place today if that prosecution or trial had taken place.
Three 2018 events revealed the Wolfe issue:
EVENT ONE – On February 9th, 2018, the media reported on text messages from 2017 between Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Mark Warner and Chris Steele’s lawyer, a lobbyist named Adam Waldman. These text messages appear to have come from an investigative file belonging to Washington Field Office, Supervisory Special Agent Brian Dugan.
EVENT TWO – Four months after the Mark Warner texts were made public, on June 8th, 2018, another headline story surfaced. An indictment for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Security Director James Wolfe was unsealed on June 7th, 2018. This was the investigation conducted by SSA Brian Dugan.
EVENT THREE – Slightly less than two months after release of the Wolfe indictment, another headline story. On July 21st, 2018, the special counsel declassified and publicly released the FISA application(s) used against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. What they released was again from SSA Brian Dugan’s investigative file.
These three releases later identified a chain of custody for WFO SSA Dugan’s investigative file that flowed back into the special counsel after Dugan’s investigation and capture of Wolfe as a leaker was complete. The special counsel team then began releasing information from that file *before* it was returned to the DC USAO for a May ’18 grand jury presentation.
♦ Later on December 14th 2018 a fourth albeit buried public release confirmed everything. The FBI Supervisory Agent filed an attachment to the sentencing recommendation proving it was the Carter Page FISA that was leaked by Wolfe:
Keep in mind the official position of the DOJ and FBI was that James Wolfe did not leak the FISA application on March 17, 2017. This official position is a lie and the U.S. prosecutors filed tortured language throughout the sentencing phase after the plea deal was struck.
Despite Dugan’s position that an intelligence damage assessment needed to be carried out as a result of the Wolfe action, no damage assessment was done. It was not done because such an assessment would have resulted in evidence of the SSCI compromise.
Indeed, the entire intelligence apparatus, and the balance/separation of power within the intel apparatus, would have been put at risk and exposed by any further investigation.
The Wolfe plea was part of an overall approach to cover-up the intelligence compromise. Wolfe’s lawyers knew -by the absence of an official damage assessment- that our government was fearful of this leak event. They used that fear in their plea negotiations.
The plea was an outcome of a larger cover-up to hide a serious breach of intelligence that was part of a larger effort across the Senate and Special Counsel to remove a sitting President. In 2018 this was the apex of Weissmann and Mueller’s larger objective.
When SSA Dugan turned over his file, institutional interests; which included the need to protect the Senate Intelligence Committee; and included the need for the special counsel to cover their own wrongdoing; took ownership of Dugan’s file. Everything during and after was constructed as a cover for this cross-body corruption.
This cover-up included the July 21st release of the FISA application by the special counsel team that was now running the DOJ operation. It was Brian Dugan’s March 17, 2017, copy of the FISA application that was purposefully released under the auspices of a FOIA fulfillment. That’s why the March 17th FISC stamp was on the released copy.
Dugan brought the FISA application to the SSCI on March 17, 2017, where James Wolfe took custody and shortly after 4:02pm SSCI Vice Chairman Mark Warner reviewed it. There is no indication any other member of the SSCI reviewed the “review and return” document (other than Wolfe and Warner) before returning it to SSA Dugan.
As a result the identified leak of the FISA application had only a few possible suspects.
This is where the dates of the Ali Watkins search warrant and the captured dates of the Mark Warner/Adam Waldman texts align. The Watkins warrant and the Warner texts (as captured) cover an almost identical period. These documents appear to have been part of Dugan’s investigative file.
Everything about the Wolfe leak then became part of the cover-up. This became evident in the series of documents and court records that came out throughout 2018. The trail was very clear, and the official position of the entire intelligence community -which includes the SSCI, the DOJ and the FBI- is false. Everything is built on a lie.
There is no doubt Wolfe leaked the FISA application on March 17, 2017, through a series of pictures of the 82-page application that Wolfe sent via text to Ms. Watkins.
HINDSIGHT – However, what we did not immediately know at the time, simultaneous to the decision-making regarding Wolfe, was another (a second) special counsel cover-up effort was taking place surrounding the origin of the Russia-collusion fraud.
To further understand the decision-making of the DOJ under the control of the Weissmann group, as to why they hid the James Wolfe leak, it is important to note the DOJ in the Eastern District of Virginia was creating another cover-story to block sunlight on the origin of how Wikileaks gained the leaked DNC emails.
On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:
(Link to pdf)
On Tuesday April 15th 2019 more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….
The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.
How does this all connect?
What does it mean?
James Wolfe was confronted about his leaking by SSA Dugan in December of 2017. At the same time the FBI Washington Field Office was investigating Wolfe and the SSCI, the FBI was also investigating Wikileaks and Julian Assange. This matters because it shows what the mindset was within Main Justice, specifically the special counsel, in late 2017 and early 2018.
In both examples, Wolfe and Assange, the actions by the special counsel reflect a predisposition to hide the much larger background story:
• A prosecution of Wolfe would have exposed a complicit conspiracy between corrupt U.S. intelligence actors and the United States senate. Two branches of government, the executive and the legislative, essentially working on one objective; the removal of a sitting president. The special counsel and DOJ decision protected multiple U.S. agencies and congress.
• A non-prosecution of Assange would have exposed a complicit conspiracy between corrupt U.S. intelligence actors and a host of political interests who created a fraudulent Russia-collusion conspiracy with the central component of Russia “hacking” the DNC. If Assange were allowed to show he received the DNC emails from a leaker, and not from a hack, the central component of the Russia interference narrative would collapse. The special counsel and DOJ decision protected multiple U.S. agencies and Robert Mueller.
As soon as the special counsel was going to release their Russia report (aka the Mueller report), the EDVA shut down Assange with the DOJ indictment. This is in a similar way the DOJ shut down the Wolfe issue with a weak plea agreement.
Again, the key takeaway here is the timing. Both operations were taking place at the same time (Fall 2017 through spring/summer 2018). Both hold a similar purpose.
What we can see from both DOJ/SC operations is an intentional effort by Main Justice not to expose the epicenter of a multi-branch effort against the White House.
Some people within the FBI were obviously participating along with people within the DOJ. However, not all Washington DC FBI agents/officials were involved. We know there were genuine investigators, at least in the Wolfe case, because Dugan’s investigative evidence shows Wolfe was leaking classified information. If he did not present the investigative evidence proving Wolfe leaked, quite simply we wouldn’t have it to show you.
Unfortunately, in hindsight we can see something internally corrupt within the DOJ special counsel group was happening because the FBI evidence against Wolfe was buried. The high-level group inside the DOJ in Washington DC, in the Summer of 2018, was making decisions on what NOT to do.
These two events highlight corruption within the DOJ that existed despite the presence of AG Jeff Sessions, and apparently with the willful blindness of DAG Rod Rosenstein.
The decisions in the Wolfe case are critical. That’s the fork in the road. If the Wolfe prosecution had continued it would have undoubtedly surfaced that key government officials and politicians were working together (executive and legislative).
The ramifications of the Wolfe case are stunning. Had the prosecution continued it’s very likely a seditious conspiracy would have surfaced.
♦ I often field a question: If you know this; if all of this information is in the public sphere; then why didn’t any member of the media cover it?
Here’s the answer: They couldn’t…. At least they couldn’t cover it and still retain all of the claims they had been making since March 2017 when journalist Ali Watkins gained a fully non-redacted copy of the Carter Page FISA application.
Politico, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and The Washington Post are all implicated in the James Wolfe leak to Ali Watkins. They had the FISA information since March 2017, yet those media outlets were disingenuously falsifying their reporting on the actual content of the FISA application despite their knowledge.
Remember all of the media denials about what Devin Nunes wrote in the “Nunes memo”? Remember the media proclaiming the Steele Dossier was not part of the FISA application?
How was the media fifteen months later (June 2018) going to report on the Wolfe leak to Watkins without admitting they had been manufacturing stories about its content for the past year-and-a-half?
It was in the media’s interest NOT to cover, or dig into, the Wolfe story.
Additionally, from both the DOJ and Media perspective, coverage of the Wolfe leak would prove the senate intel committee (SSCI) was, at a minimum, a participating entity in the coup effort. That same SSCI is responsible for oversight over the CIA, FBI, DOJ-NSD, ODNI, DNI, and all intelligence agencies.
Worse yet, all intelligence officers within those agencies require confirmation from the SSCI (including Chair and Vice-Chair); and any discussion of the Wolfe leak would highlight the motive for ongoing corruption within the SSCI in blocking those nominations (see John Ratcliffe).
Stunning ramifications.
There was a clear fork in the road and the DOJ, under the influence of the special counsel, took the path toward a cover-up; which, considering what the DOJ was simultaneously doing with the EDVA regarding Assange, is not entirely surprising.
Was that decision wrong? Oh hell yes, it was corrupt as heck.
Were the decisions done with forethought to coverup gross abuses of government? Yes.
Where the DOJ and Bill Barr’s investigative unit labeled “The Durham Investigation” is today, is directly connected to the decisions the special counsel and DOJ made in 2017 and 2018 to protect themselves and internally corrupt actors from discovery.
It is often said: “the coverup is always worse than the crime.” This is never more true than with these examples, because where we are today… now miles down the path of consequence from those corrupt decisions… is seemingly disconnected from the ability of any institutional recovery. That’s now the issue for Bill Barr, John Durham and William Aldenberg; the latter official has the direct evidence to prove this all took place.
Eventually, if AG Bill Barr wants to deal with the issue he will need to explain to the American people about that fork in the road and what happened.
That type of honest sunlight delivery means taking people back into the background of the larger story and explaining what decisions were made; with brutal honesty and without trepidation for the consequences, regardless of their severity and regardless of the friends of Bill Barr compromised by the truth.
Here’s a big reason why Bill Barr should take that approach: We Know.
We know; the DOJ trying to hide it doesn’t change our level of information.
Regardless of whether Bill Barr actually admits what surrounds him, there are people who know… We know…. You know…. William Aldenberg knows and likely by tonight John Durham knows; so AG Bill Barr shouting at President Trump not to ‘tweet‘ doesn’t change the fact this corrupt curtain has been removed and the truth stands on its own merit.
It’s time to come clean.
We The People deserve a representative government that admits the truth.
Centinel2012 