You can call it a soft-coup, or you can call it politicization of the DOJ and FBI, but the end result is the same – the intentional effort to manipulate, influence, and ultimately subvert an election for the presidency of the United States.
A disgusted former FBI Deputy Director, James Kallstrom, appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the nonsense and James Comey’s insufferable conduct. Mr. Kallstrom also discusses the bigger picture and the corruption within the intelligence apparatus.
As many people are aware, CTH has decided to go back through two years of documents, releases, reports, testimony and media interviews; including interviews with fired FBI Director James Comey; question all prior assumptions; re-examine the entire framework within all the known granular DOJ and FBI activity; and finally contrast it all against the full scope of released messaging between FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ Special Counsel assigned to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page.
Suffice to say, this project was no small task; reading the messages in a chronological order takes a minimum of four to six hours. It is understandable why so much mystery and confusion circles the rather complex storyline. However, before going into the deep weeds – two distinct issues must frame what will soon follow:
♦First, notice a catch-phrase by fired FBI Director James Comey in every interview: “that was not my understanding.” That phrase is Mr. Comey’s ‘go-to’ lead-in at the beginning of every explanation, amid challenging questions presented to him, on his current book tour. That phrase is also a highly legalized linguistics and deployed for a specific reason.
♦Second, if you are going to endeavor to read through all of the released messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok; and/or review an outline of content that utilizes their communication as the background to understand events within the FBI and DOJ-NSD; it helps to have a familiarity from their perspective.
Having said that, this encapsulation of the Page and Strzok outlook by “Newhere” is both fair and accurate:
The nature and tone sound like a couple of earnest, self-important, professional bureaucrats who see themselves as high-achieving stand-outs among their peers, doing the “right thing” or at least the “best” thing among some ugly office politics and broader forces.
Among the two of them, they unquestionably believe themselves “the good guys,” with appropriate motives and judgment.
They are preoccupied with their professional reputations, ambitions and positioning. They spend lots of time dissecting the minutiae of day-to-day interactions and orchestrating mundane office dynamics, and often reassure each other on their respective “excellence” and superiority. All to a degree that pegs their maturity and self-awareness at a level of maybe adolescent. They interpret events and decisions around them in insular terms, like teenagers passing notes in homeroom about high school social cliques.
Takeaways?
— They weren’t driven by specifically by partisan bias. Viewing it as simple bias only minimizes the bigger problem. They were consummate professional bureaucrats, intuiting, anticipating, and expanding upon the goals of leadership, both spoken and implied. Contempt for the implicated political actors was a given; all politicians are intellectually and morally inferior, and (in their minds) the country needs professionals like them having the tools to stand watch and “protect” the country when necessary.
— Trump was viewed as so obviously “dangerous” that extreme measures were necessary. This wasn’t a *partisan* sentiment — it was (again, in their minds) a professional judgment. Which is how they managed the cognitive dissonance of behaving as they did while seeing themselves as moral actors.
These aren’t sociopaths with no consciences. They have the conscience of a common, professional technocrat. Self-delusion and self-importance that warps the moral compass (e.g., they feel aggrieved by things like being left out of a meeting, and they hyper-focus on their own “credit-seeking” vs. “team player” motivations, as if THESE are the pressing moral issues at stake . . ). They are professional technocrats like a lot of professional technocrats, who believe their jobs are singularly important, that they face pressures that are uniquely complicated — who know they hold replaceable jobs, but secretly believe themselves irreplaceable.
Professionalism becomes its own ethic, from which perspective actual ethics are quaint, a luxury for academics or simpletons. This isn’t spoken or acknowledged.
— The scariest part: conduct in the the Clinton/Trump investigations wasn’t anomalous. The fact that these “professionals” behaved this way with only a faint notion of the significance of what they were doing suggests it was more business-as-usual than the biggest scandal of our lifetimes. Meaning it’s even a bigger scandal.
— They did have at least a faint notion that they had ventured well outside of “by the book” territory, but were again deluded by feeling indispensable, hand-picked by the highest echelons of bureau hierarchy, to which they aspired. Page, in particular, felt special because she was chosen by McCabe. Their moral compasses were aimed at pleasing those whose favor they sought.
— They seemed to see the FBI as white hats vis a vis DOJ. I think they truly believed that any corruption/politicization came from DOJ, and FBI jockeying/mischief was trying to set things right against all these other corrupting [political] forces.
–Page’s final “never write to me again” doesn’t seem like a hostile snub. Seems more like a signal/coded message to a friend: “We’re scr*wed. Every (wo)man for himself. I’m looking out for myself. You should too.”
As many people are aware, CTH has decided to go back through two years of documents, releases, reports, testimony, media interviews; including interviews with fired FBI Director James Comey; question all prior assumptions; re-examine the entire framework within all the known granular DOJ and FBI activity; and finally contrast it all against the full scope of released messaging between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Within this project some breakout discoveries need to be highlighted. One of those discoveries pertains to the Fox News interview with James Comey and Bret Baier.
Within the interview Mr. Comey is questioned about the announcement of re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation on October 28th, 2016. In his response to why there was a delay between the FBI being notified by New York on September 28th, and waiting until October 28th, James Comey revealed a very important nugget.
The New York U.S. Attorney (SDNY) called Main Justice in DC to ask about why they were not receiving authority for a search warrant. We knew that call took place on October 21st, 2016. Now we know “why” and who New York called at DOJ HQ.
Listen closely to James Comey at 06:06 to 07:30 of the interview (prompted):
Baier: “Did you know that Andrew McCabe, your deputy, had sat on that revelation about the emails”?
Comey: “Yeah, I don’t know that, I don’t know that to be the case. I do know that New York and FBI headquarters became aware that there may be some connection between Weiner’s laptop and the Clinton investigation, weeks before it was brought to me for decision – and as I write in the book I don’t know whether they could have moved faster and why the delay”
Baier: “Was it the threat that New York Agents were going to leak that it existed really what drove you to the ‘not conceal’ part?
Comey: “I don’t think so. I think what actually drove it was the prosecutors in New York who were working the criminal case against Weiner called down to headquarters and said ‘are we getting a search warrant or not for this’? That caused, I’m sorry, Justice Department Headquarters, to then call across the street to the FBI and poke the organization; and they start to move much more quickly. I don’t know why there was, if there was slow activity, why it was slow for those first couple of weeks.”
There’s some really sketchy stuff going on in that answer. Why would SDNY need to get authorization for a search warrant from DC, if this is about Weiner’s laptop? Yes, you could argue it pertains to a tightly held Clinton investigation run out of DC but the Weiner prosecution issues shouldn’t require approval from DC.
But let’s take Comey at face-value…. So there we discover it was justice officials within SDNY (Southern District of New York) who called Main Justice (DOJ in DC) and asked about a needed search warrant for “this”, presumably Weiner’s laptop by inference. Now, let’s go look at the Page/Strzok description of what was going on.
Here are the messages from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok surrounding the original date that New York officials notified Washington DC FBI. It’s important to note the two different entities: DOJ -vs- FBI.
According to the September 28, 2016, messages from FBI Agent Peter Strzok it was the SDNY in New York telling Andrew McCabe in DC about the issue. Pay close attention to the convo:
Notice: “hundreds of thousands of emails turned over by Weiner’s attorney to SDNY”.
Pay super close attention. This is not an outcome of a New York Police Dept. raid on Anthony Weiner. This is Weiner’s attorney going to the U.S. attorney and voluntarily turning over emails. The emails were not turned over to the FBI in New York, the actual emails were turned over to the State Attorney in the Southern District.
Key point here: Weiner’s attorneys turned over “emails”. Actual “emails”.
♦If the U.S. Attorney in New York has the actual physical emails on September 28th, 2016, why would they need a search warrant on October 21st, 2016? (Comey’s call explanation)
♦Why would Weiner’s attorney be handing over evidence?
Think about this carefully. I’ll get back to the importance of it later; but what I suspect is that Weiner had physical material that was his “insurance policy” against anything done to him by Hillary Clinton. Facing a criminal prosecution Weiner’s lawyer went to the U.S. Attorney and attempted to exploit/leverage the content therein on his client’s behalf.
Fast forward three weeks, and we go back to FBI in DC.
On October 21, 2016, this is the call referenced by James Comey in the Bret Baier interview. Someone from New York called “Main Justice” (the DOJ National Security Division in DC) and notified DOJ-NSD Deputy Asst. Attorney General George Toscas of the Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton emails via the “weiner investigation”.
[I would point out again, he’s not being notified of a laptop, Toscas is notified of “emails”]
George Toscas “wanted to ensure information got to Andy“, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe…. so he called FBI Agent Peter Strzok…. who told George Toscas “we know”.
Peter Strzok then tells Bill Priestap.
Of course, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe already knew about the emails since September 28th, 2016, more than three weeks earlier.
In his Bret Baier interview FBI Director James Comey says this call is about a search warrant. There is no indication the call is actually about a search warrant. [Nor would there be a need for a search warrant if the call was actually about the emails that Wiener’s attorney dropped off on 9/21].
However, that phone call kicks off an internal debate about the previously closed Clinton email investigation; and Andrew McCabe sitting on the notification from New York for over three weeks – kicks off an internal FBI discussion about McCabe needing to recuse himself.
Now it’s October 27th, 2016, James Comey chief-of-staff Jim Rybicki wants McCabe to recuse himself. But Rybicki is alone on an island. Lisa Page is furious at such a suggestion, partly because she is McCabe’s legal counsel and if McCabe is recused so too is she.
At the same time as they are debating how to handle the Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton emails, they are leaking to the media to frame a specific narrative.
Important to note here, that at no time is there any conversation -or hint of a conversation- that anyone is reviewing the content of the emails. The discussions don’t mention a single word about content… every scintilla of conversation is about how to handle the issues of the emails themselves. Actually, there’s not a single person mentioned in thousands of text messages that applies to an actual person who is looking at any content.
Quite simply: there is a glaringly transparent lack of an “investigation”.
Within this “tight group” at FBI, as Comey puts it, there is not a single mention of a person who is sitting somewhere looking through the reported “600,000” Clinton emails that was widely reported by media. There’s absolutely ZERO evidence of anyone looking at emails or scouring through laptop data…. and FBI Agent Peter Strzok has no staff under him who he discusses assigned to such a task…. and Strzok damned sure ain’t doing it. So what gives?
Moving on – Note to readers. Click the graphics and read the notes on them too:
It’s still October 27th, 2016, the day before James Comey announces his FBI decision to re-open the Clinton investigation. Jim Rybicki still saying McCabe should be recused from input; everyone else, including FBI Legal Counsel James Baker, is disagreeing with Rybicki and siding with Lisa Page.
Meanwhile the conversation has shifted slightly to “PC”, probable cause. Read:
While Lisa Page is leaking stories to Devlin Barrett (Wall Street Journal), the internal discussion amid the “small group” is about probable cause.
The team is now saying if there was no probable cause when Comey closed the original email investigation in July 2016 (remember the very tight boundaries of review), then there’s no probable cause in October 2016 to reopen the investigation regardless of what the email content might be.
This appears to be how the “small group” or “tight team” justify doing nothing with the content received from New York. They received the emails September 28th and it’s now October 27th, and they haven’t even looked at it. Heck, they are debating if there’s even a need to look at it.
Then on October 28th, 2016, the FBI and Main Justice officials have a conference call about the entire Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton email issue. Here’s where it gets interesting.
George Toscas and David Laufman from DOJ-NSD articulate a position that something needs to happen likely because Main Justice is concerned about the issue of FBI (McCabe) sitting on the emails for over three weeks without any feedback to SDNY (New York).
Thanks to Deputy Director McCabe, Main Justice in DC, specifically DOJ National Security Division, now looks like they are facilitating a cover-up operation being conducted by the FBI “small group”. [which is actually true, but they can’t let that be so glaringly obvious].
As a result of the Top-Tier officials conference call, Strzok is grumpy agent because his opinion appears to be insignificant. The decision is reached to announce the re-opening of the investigation. This sends Lisa Page bananas…
…In rapid response mode, Lisa Page reaches out to Devlin Barrett again to quickly shape the media coverage. Now that the world is aware of the need for a Clinton email investigation 2.0 the internal conversation returns to McCabe’s recusal.
Please note that at no time in the FBI is anyone directing an actual investigation of the content of the Clinton emails. Every single second of every effort is devoted to shaping the public perception of the need for the investigation. Every media outlet is being watched; every article is being read; and the entire apparatus of the small group is shaping coverage therein by contacting their leak outlets.
So let’s go back to that Comey interview:
♦What exactly would SDNY need a search warrant for?
♦Anthony Weiner’s lawyer has delivered SDNY actual emails. Why would he do that?
Now lets connect those questions to an earlier report.
According to ABC News Comey writes in “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” that he became the public face of the investigation partly because of a mysterious development which he felt could cast “serious doubt” on Lynch’s independence.
“Had it become public, the unverified material would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the attorney general’s independence in connection with the Clinton investigation,” Comey writes, according to ABC. He calls the material a “development still unknown to the American public to this day.” (ABC Link)
On page six of the IG report on Andrew McCabe (point number 4) we find a conference call between Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and the FBI field office in New York where the subject of the Weiner/Abedin/Clinton email findings overlap with: the Clinton Foundation (CF) investigation; the Clinton Email investigation; pressure for Asst. Director McCabe to recuse himself, and Washington DC via Loretta Lynch using DOJ Main Justice leverage from the Eric Garner case against the NY FBI office and New York Police Department.
4. The Attorney General Expresses Strong Concerns to McCabe and other FBI Officials about Leaks, and McCabe Discusses Recusing Himself from CF Investigation (October 26, 2016)
McCabe told the OIG that during the October 2016 time frame, it was his “perception that there was a lot of information coming out of likely the [FBI’s] New York Field Office” that was ending up in the news. McCabe told the OIG that he “had some heated back-and-forths” with the New York Assistant Director in Charge (“NY-ADIC”) over the issue of media leaks.
On October 26th, 2016, McCabe and NY-ADIC participated in what McCabe described as “a hastily convened conference call with the Attorney General who delivered the same message to us” about leaks, with specific focus being on leaks regarding the high-profile investigation by FBI’s New York Field Office into the death of Eric Garner. McCabe told us that he “never heard her use more forceful language.” NY-ADIC confirmed that the participants got “ripped by the AG on leaks.”
According to NY-ADIC’s testimony and an e-mail he sent to himself on October 31, McCabe indicated to NY-ADIC and a then-FBI Executive Assistant Director (“EAD”) in a conversation after Attorney General Lynch disconnected from the call that McCabe was recusing himself from the CF Investigation.
What makes this explosive is the timing, and what we now know about what was going on amid the FBI “small group” in DC.
On September 28th, 2016, Andrew McCabe was made aware of emails given to New York State Attorney (SDNY) directly from Anthony Weiner’s lawyer. Again, the information relayed to DC is not about a Weiner laptop, it’s about actual emails delivered by Weiner’s lawyer. The laptop was evidence in the Weiner “sexting” case involving a minor; however, the laptop did, reportedly, also contained thousands of State Department documents from Hillary Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin, Weiner’s wife.
When Weiner’s lawyer walked into SDNY to deliver his leverage emails, Preet Bharara, a Clinton-Lynch ally, was the United States Attorney.
Again, look at the text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok (Inbox) and FBI Special Counsel to Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page (Outbox):
[The letter to “Congress” at the end of the text exchange relates to notification of the re-opening of the Clinton investigation – Actual date of notification 10/28/16]
According to later reporting, FBI Director James Comey was not notified of the emails until after October 21st, 2016. However, in late October and early November, there were reports from people with contacts in New York police and New York FBI, about Washington DOJ officials interfering with the Weiner investigation.
On the same date (October 26th, 2016) as the Lynch, McCabe and NY FBI phone call, former NY Mayor Rudy Giuilani was telling Fox News that an explosive development was forthcoming. Two days later, October 28th, 2016, Congress was notified of the additional Clinton emails.
However, a few more days later, November 4th, 2016, an even more explosive development as Erik Prince appeared on radio and outlined discoveries within the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner/Hillary Clinton email issues that was being blocked by AG Lynch.
Prince claimed he had insider knowledge of the investigation that could help explain why FBI Director James Comey had to announce he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server last week.
“Because of Weinergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating it. Through a subpoena, through a warrant, they searched his laptop, and sure enough, found those 650,000 emails. They found way more stuff than just more information pertaining to the inappropriate sexting the guy was doing,” Prince claimed.
“They found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times,” he said.
“The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained.
“I believe – I know, and this is from a very well-placed source of mine at 1PP, One Police Plaza in New York – the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice Department, with the Justice Department threatening to charge someone that had been unrelated in the accidental heart attack death of Eric Garner almost two years ago. That’s the level of pushback the Obama Justice Department is doing against actually seeking justice in the email and other related criminal matters,” Prince said. (Link)
An earlier Grand Jury in New York had refused to return an indictment against the NYPD in the Garner case. As an outcome of that grand jury finding, and as an outcome of their own investigation, the local FBI office and Eastern District of New York DOJ office was not trying to pursue criminal charges against the NYPD officers involved. This created a dispute because federal prosecutors (EDNY) and FBI officials in New York opposed bringing charges, while prosecutors with the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department in Washington argued there was clear evidence to do so.
On October 25th, 2016, Loretta Lynch replaced the EDNY New York prosecutors:
New York Times (Oct. 25) – The Justice Department has replaced the New York team of agents and lawyers investigating the death of Eric Garner, officials said, a highly unusual shake-up that could jump-start the long-stalled case and put the government back on track to seek criminal charges.
With that move on Oct. 25th, 2016, AG Lynch was now in position to threaten criminal prosecutions against the NYPD, and repercussions against the NY FBI and EDNY using the Garner case as leverage, just like Erik Prince outlined in the phone interview above.
Additionally, we see confirmation from the IG report, the Garner case was brought up in the next day (Oct 26, 2016) phone call to the NY FBI field office; just as Erik Prince outlined. Obviously Prince’s sources were close to the events as they unfolded.
The NY FBI and Eastern District of New York (EDNY) were threatened by Washington DC Main Justice and FBI, via Loretta Lynch and Andrew McCabe to drop the Clinton/Abedin/Weiner email investigation matters, or else the Garner DOJ Civil Rights Division would be used as leverage against the NYPD. And Loretta Lynch had SDNY U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as the enforcer waiting for her call.
And so it was…
“Had it become public, the unverified material would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the attorney general’s independence in connection with the Clinton investigation,” Comey writes, according to ABC. He calls the material a “development still unknown to the American public to this day.” (ABC Link)
The emails Anthony Weiner’s lawyer brought to Preet Bharara was Weiner’s leverage to escape prosecution. Likely those emails were exactly as Eric Prince sources outlined. However, the SDNY responding to upper level leadership buried those emails.
In DC the FBI (Comey and McCabe) created the appearance of a re-opening of the Clinton investigation to keep control and ensure the investigative outcomes remained out of the hands of the Eastern District (EDNY) and New York FBI field office. They had no choice.
However, once they opened the investigation October 28th, they did exactly the same thing they had done from September 28th to October 28th… they did nothing.
A few days later they declared the second investigation closed, and that was that.
President Trump is not pulling any punches today as he pushes back against the terrible personal attacks against WH Doctor, and former VA nominee, Admiral Ron Jackson:
Chairman Devin Nunes calls in to Fox News for an interview with Neil Cavuto to discuss the HPSCI report on Russian active measures (pdf also below):
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fyi, late last night I decided to reset all assumptions about the ‘small group’ and go back to the beginning of the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok texts and re-read every single message that has been released. *Note* it takes, at a very minimum, six hours to chronologically review every document containing their messages. I’m writing up a summary of that review today.
Earlier today the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) released their final report on Russia Active Measures (full pdf below). House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes issued the following statement today:
“The Intelligence Community has finished its declassification review of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation final report. Given the substantial public interest at stake, the Committee is publishing the redacted version we’ve received. However, we object to the excessive and unjustified number of redactions, many of which do not relate to classified information. The Committee will convey our objections to the appropriate agencies and looks forward to publishing a less redacted version in the near future.” (LINK)
There are some initially revealing aspects to the release including: revelations that DNI James Clapper was a leaker to CNN about the Steele Dossier content and Presidential Briefing [SEE HERE]; and that Former Dianne Feinstein staff raised $50 million after the election to continue funding Fusion-GPS and Christopher Steele [SEE HERE] Likely much of that money was used to pay journalists and continue the Muh Russia narrative.
The revelation about James Clapper leaking to CNN doesn’t come as a surprise because we actually noted the strong likelihood on the day of the report [January 10th, 2017 – see here], and then again after much of the suspicions were confirmed [HERE].
However, the revelations of Senator Dianne Feinstein participating in the overall post-election scheme to deploy the insurance policy [SEE HERE] do answer a nagging question that always seemed to lay quietly below the surface.
During 2016 Senator Feinstein was part of the Gang of Eight by way of her position as vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It always seemed odd that Feinstein gave up that position immediately following the 2016 presidential election.
There was something about Feinstein’s abdication that appeared to be a move to diminish risk. With the discovery that her top staff was actually involved in close coordination with Fusion-GPS, Christopher Steele and the advancement of the Russian conspiracy/collusion narrative, Feinstein’s move to create distance after the election makes sense.
Last night another batch of FBI Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ Lawyer Lisa Page text messages were released by the DOJ. (pdf here)
This series of messages are clearly from captures on the Peter Strzok side of their communications. All prior releases were captures from Lisa Page’s side, and were a direct outcome of her providing the messages to the FBI Inspection Division (INSD) as verification for her side of the story in the contradictions between her statements and those of her once boss Andrew McCabe (per the INSD leak investigation).
Much of the messaging is disjointed because of the one-sided capture. However, some information is decipherable and very interesting.
FBI Head of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok’s boss, features heavily in convos. This makes sense since the perspective in the release is from Strzok’s side of their communications. The name “Jen” also figures prominently and appears to be a person within the FBI Counterintelligence Unit that Strzok views as a competitor of sorts.
Important Note – It definitely appears Page and Strzok were using joint G-Mail account. Notes to “clear GMail” indicates they were using a running draft to talk at length about ongoing activities. [This is also a common tactic of terrorist group communications]
♦[April 6th, 2017] 15:32 FBI definitely Coordinating media leaks. Strzok asks Page if she has “update from Mike Kortan (FBI Communication Director) about timing of New York Times piece.”
♦[April 10th, 2017] 08:16am Strzok anxious because new DOJ is leaning in on media leaks and making inquires. Might pertain to April 6th leak to NYT previously highlighted.
♦[April 22nd, 2017] 10:53am another article constructed for intentional leak again discussed. Sheeesh, this crew was constructing leaks like mad. Transparent behavior of political motives within small group. Kortan needs to be questioned under oath to understand scale.
Connected aspect “GC” = General Counsel. That’s James Baker and he figures heavily in their coordinated activity. He’s the fulcrum amid Comey and McCabe and these activities as carried out by Michael Kortan, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok etc. Another frequent name abbreviated is “JR” James Rybicki, Comey’s former Chief of Staff.
♦[May 8th, 2017] Afternoon (15:00ish – 3pm) Strzok/Page are watching Yates/Clapper testimony to Senate Judicary Committee. Strzok makes mention of “unmasking” etc. First notation of concern. Here’s a reference point for convo: (CTH Article From May 8th)
More from May 8th, 2017. Appears to be a key date (lengthy convos). Discussion of Special Counsel and what they skills and investigative stuff they need.
♦[May 9th, 2017] Strzok “angry” because his boss “Bill” Priestap is starting to question why Strzok needs to have his fingers in everything. “implication is I’m a busy body” etc. Gee, ya think?
♦[May 10th, 2017] 05:29am (five o’clock in morning) Page to Strzok: “We need to lock in {redacted} in a formal chargeable way soon”.
It’s highly likely the redaction is “POTUS” (secondary option could be “FLYNN”) “We need to lock in POTUS (Trump) in a formal, Chargeable way soon”. It is on page 32 of the pdf.
♦[May 11th, 2017] Conversation is about this picture when Andrew McCabe testified to congress, and the coordinated and accompanying media leaks to frame the narrative. DOJ Attorney Lisa Page was assigned a special counsel to McCabe’s office during the entire operation to exonerate Clinton, and later to frame Donald Trump (ie. the “insurance policy”) hence her centrality to all aspects within Main Justice and FBI via McCabe.
Convo on May 11th also includes Senator Mark Warner and Richard Burr questions to McCabe etc. With additional convo about Lester Holt interview w/ Trump. Page/Strzok see Holt as on their team: “he did a great job” etc.
♦[May 17th, 2017] Lisa Page mentions reviewing Benjamin Wittes Lawfare website (James Comey BFF and leak conduit) for “arguments to chronicle” on behalf of Special counsel advocacy.
Important – May 17th, 2017 is the date of the Special Counsel Mueller appointment.
♦[May 17th, 2017] Date of Mueller appointment. Discussions of team being assembled. Strzok notes “emailing with Aaron”. Well that’s Aaron Zelby former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s Chief of Staff who was selected for Special Counsel position. He’s also a partner at WilmerHale, and Strzok mentions to Page that she might find herself working at WilmerHale if she plays her cards right.
The fact that Agent Strzok was emailing with “Aaron” Zelby prior to the official appointment of the special counsel team should likely raise a few eyebrows. Of course within this time-frame of the messaging released, the redactions increase. Go figure.
Toward the end of the release a more thorough picture emerges of who was selecting Robert Mueller’s team and why. Andrew McCabe was key player along with James Baker. Reading how this was done blows the entire Mueller “White Hat Theory” to smithereens. However, the conversation does highlight an aspect we have previously discussed. Robert Mueller did not select the “small group” to work with him; but rather the DOJ/FBI “small group” appears to have selected him.
Specifically Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are discussing who is best ideological ally to help their Mueller Special Counsel team “get Trump” (discussions on pages 46, 47, 48, 49).
… And whaddyaknow… Predictably right when those juicy tidbits about the Mueller agenda are surfacing the text message release abruptly stops on May 23rd, 2017.
Transparently those who are releasing information do not want the motives and intents of the Mueller team origination to surface. So they stop the release right there.
Sign at a protest outside Trump Tower in New York City, February 8, 2018. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what’s next? The Resistance wants Trump’s head — on the chopping block.On the domestic and foreign fronts, the Trump administration has prompted economic growth and restored U.S. deterrence. Polls show increased consumer confidence, and in some, Trump himself has gained ground. Yet good news is bad news to the Resistance and its strange continued efforts to stop an elected president in a way it failed to do in the 2016 election.
Indeed, the aim of the so-called Resistance to Donald J. Trump is ending Trump’s presidency by any means necessary before the 2020 election. Or, barring that, it seeks to so delegitimize him that he becomes presidentially impotent. It has been only 16 months since Trump took office and, in the spirit of revolutionary fervor, almost everything has been tried to derail him. Now we are entering uncharted territory — at a time when otherwise the country is improving and the legal exposure of Trump’s opponents increases daily.
First came the failed lawsuits after the election alleging voting-machine tampering. Then there was the doomed celebrity effort to convince some state electors not to follow their constitutional duty and to deny Trump the presidency — a gambit that, had it worked, would have wrecked the Constitution. Then came the pathetic congressional boycott of the inauguration and the shrill nationwide protests against the president.
Anti- and Never-Trump op-ed writers have long ago run out of superlatives. Trump is the worst, most, biggest — fill in the blank — in the history of the presidency, in the history of the world, worse even than Mao, Mussolini, Stalin, or Hitler.
Next was the sad effort to introduce articles of impeachment. After that came weird attempts to cite Trump for violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. That puerile con was followed by plans to declare him deranged and mentally unfit so that he could be removed under the 25th Amendment. From time to time, Obama holdovers in the DOJ, National Security Council, and FBI sought to leak information, or they refused to carry out presidential orders.
As the Resistance goes from one ploy to the next, it ignores its string of failed prior efforts, forgetting everything and learning nothing. State nullification is no longer neo-Confederate but an any-means-necessary progressive tool. Suing the government weekly is proof of revolutionary fides, not a waste of California’s taxpayer dollars.
Anti- and Never-Trump op-ed writers have long ago run out of superlatives. Trump is the worst, most, biggest — fill in the blank — in the history of the presidency, in the history of the world, worse even than Mao, Mussolini, Stalin, or Hitler. So if Trump is a Hitler who gassed 6 million or a Stalin who starved 20 million, then logically Trump deserves what exactly?
The book industry is doing its part. Mythographer Michael Wolff’s hearsay Fire and Fury suggested that Trump was a dangerous child despised as much by his friends as by his enemies. As FBI director, James Comey leaked confidential memos, lied to Congress, misled a FISA court, admitted that he based his handling of the Clinton-email investigation on the assumption she’d win the presidency, misinformed the president about the status of his investigation. And the now-former director book-tours the country slamming Trump hourly on the assumption that he would certainly not be former, if only his prior obsequious efforts to appease Trump had saved his job. Comey is building perjury cases against himself daily with each new disclosure that belie past sworn testimonies, but that is apparently less scary to him than simply ignoring Trump.
Robert Mueller and his “dream team” were long ago supposed to have discovered proof of Trump’s collusion with Russia. A year later, they have found nothing much to do with this mandate. Then the alternative scent was obstruction of justice. Then the chase took another detour to follow some sort of fraud or racketeering. Now the FBI is reduced to raiding Trump’s lawyer in an effort to root out the real story on Stormy Daniels. One wonders what might have happened had Michael Cohen panicked and destroyed 30,000 emails before Mueller seized his computers. No matter, Mueller’s legal army presses on, even as it leaves its own wounded on the battlefield, as resignations, reassignments, and retirements for improper conduct decimate the Obama-era FBI and DOJ hierarchies.
Trump has left the intelligence community unhinged. John Brennan (“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. . . . America will triumph over you”) and James Clapper (who called Trump a veritable traitor working for Putin) have both admitted to lying under oath to Congress in the past, and with their present invective, they have discredited the very notion of a Washington intelligence elite. At some point, Mueller’s zealotry will remind federal attorneys that equality under the law demands indictments of those with far greater legal exposure, regardless of the exalted status of Comey, Andrew McCabe, and — in the matter of lying under oath, leaking classified materials, and destroying evidence — John Brennan, James Clapper and Hillary Clinton.
In addition, a media, found to be more than 90 percent negative in its coverage of the Trump administration, sought to delegitimize the president. Journalists declare that disinterested reporting is impossible in the age of Trump — and therefore believe that Stormy Daniels or James Comey’s Dudley Do-Right’s memos are a pathway to accomplish what they are beginning to concede Robert Mueller cannot.
Everything from the NFL to late-night comedy shows have become Trump-hating venues. Almost every sort of smear from scatology to homophobia has been voiced by celebrities to turn Trump into a president deserving such abuse — and worse. Late-night television host Steven Colbert was reduced to incoherent and repellant venom: “You talk like a sign-language gorilla that got hit in the head. In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c*** holster.” Actor Robert De Niro has become deranged and dreams of pounding on Trump’s face. But then so does former vice president Joe Biden, who on two occasions boasted that Trump is the sort of guy that a younger he-man Biden used to take outside the gym to give a whippin’ to.
Each cycle of hysteria demands another, as the race to the bottom has descended into which celebrity or politician can discover the most provocative — or crude — Trump expletive. “S***” and “f***” are now the ordinary vocabulary of angry Democratic politicos and officeholders. Are we reaching a point in the so-far-failed Resistance where little is left except abject violence in the manner of the Roman or French Revolution? The problem for Trump’s pop-culture foes is not whether to imagine or advocate killing the president. That’s a given. They just need to agree on the means of doing so: decapitation (Kathy Griffin), incineration (David Crosby), stabbing (the Shakespeare in the Park troupe), shooting (Snoop Dogg), explosives (Madonna), old-fashioned, Lincoln-style assassination (Johnny Depp), death by elevator (Kamala Harris), hanging (a CSU professor), or simple generic assassination (a Missouri state legislator).
The Resistance and rabid anti-Trumpers have lost confidence in the constitutional framework of elections, and they’ve flouted the tradition by which the opposition allows the in-power party to present its case to the court of public opinion.
Now the Democratic party — whose presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, hired Christopher Steele to find dirt on Trump with the aid of Russian sources to warp the 2016 election — is suing President Trump, alleging collusion with the Russians. If Clinton were called as a witness, what would she say under cross-examination — that she did not hire Steele, that he never purchased Russian dirt, or that there was no collusion effort to enlist foreign nationals such as British subject Christopher Steele and Russian propagandists to warp an American election?
Insidiously and incrementally, we are in the process of normalizing violence against the elected president of the United States. If all this fails to delegitimize Trump, fails to destroy his health, or fails to lead to a 2018 midterm Democratic sweep and subsequent impeachment, expect even greater threats of violence. The Resistance and rabid anti-Trumpers have lost confidence in the constitutional framework of elections, and they’ve flouted the tradition by which the opposition allows the in-power party to present its case to the court of public opinion.
Instead, like the French revolutionaries’ Committee on Public Safety, the unhinged anti-Trumpists assume that they have lost public opinion, given their venom and crudity, and are growing desperate as every legal and paralegal means of removing Trump is nearing exhaustion. Robert Mueller is the last chance, a sort of Watergate or Abu Ghraib that could gin up enough furor to drive down Trump’s poll favorability to the twenties and thereby reduce his person to a demonic force deserving of whatever it gets.
After the prior era of hysteria, between 2005 and 2008, when books and docudramas staged the imagined assassination of George W. Bush, and celebrities like Michael Moore and activists such as Cindy Sheehan reduced Bush to the status of a war criminal, the Left in 2009 demanded a return to normal political discourse and comportment, with the election of Barack Obama. A newly contrite and apologetic America was abruptly worth believing in again. In 2009, the CIA and FBI suddenly were reinvented as hallowed agents of change.
Bush careerists, including Clapper and Brennan, were now damning the very counterterrorism practices that they once helped put in place, while offering Obama-like politically correct sermons on the benign nature of Islamism. Surveillance and jailing were appropriate punishments for suspected Obama apostates (ask James Rosen or Nkoula Basseley Nakoula). The IRS was weaponized for use against Obama’s ideological opponents. Suggestions that the president was unfit or worse became near treasonous. Unity was the new patriotism. The assumption was that Obama had ushered in a half-century of progressive norms, not that he so alienated the country that he birthed Donald Trump.
The danger to the country this time around is that the Left has so destroyed the old protocols of the opposition party that it will be hard to resurrect them when progressives return to power.
We are entering revolutionary times. The law is no longer equally applied. The media are the ministry of truth. The Democratic party is a revolutionary force. And it is all getting scary.
The more Mueller searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he ignores the actual lawbreakers.
The country is about to witness an investigatory train wreck.
In one direction, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation train is looking for any conceivable thing that President Donald Trump’s campaign team might have done wrong in 2016.
The oncoming train is slower but also larger. It involves congressional investigations, Department of Justice referrals, and inspector general’s reports — mostly focused on improper or illegal FBI and DOJ behavior during the 2016 election.
Why are the two now about to collide?
By charging former national-security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, Mueller emphasized that even the appearance of false testimony is felonious behavior.
If that is so, then the DOJ will probably have to charge former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe with perjury or related offenses. A report from the Office of the Inspector General indicates that McCabe lied at least four times to federal investigators.
Former FBI director James Comey may also have lied to Congress when he testified that he had not written his report on the Hillary Clinton email scandal before interviewing Clinton. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan lied under oath to Congress on matters related to surveillance.
Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin probably lied when they told FBI investigators they had no idea that their then-boss, Hillary Clinton, was using an illegal private email server. Both had communicated with Clinton about it.
Mueller is said to be investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by requesting that Comey go easy on Flynn.
If so, then the DOJ will have to look at Comey himself and DOJ officials who obstructed a federal court. On at least four occasions, they were not honest about the deeply flawed Christopher Steele dossier being the source of information used in applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Comey also has said that he predicated the nature of the Clinton email investigation on his assumptions about her chances of winning the presidency — another investigatory abuse.
The Mueller team is reportedly still looking into the possibility of election-cycle collusion with Russia by Trump officials.
That track will require Mueller’s DOJ counterparts to look carefully at the Clinton campaign, which paid opposition researcher Steele, a British subject, for dirt on Trump that was produced through collusion with Russian sources.
Mueller is also said to be investigating whether Trump or his advisers broke laws concerning the release of confidential government information.
If so, the DOJ may have to indict Comey. He confessed to passing along confidential FBI memos to a friend for the expressed purpose of leaking their contents to the press.
High-ranking Obama administration officials may also be subject to indictments, given that they may have requested the “unmasking” of American citizens whose communications were intercepted during the surveillance of foreign parties and then leaked the names of those citizens to the press.
Mueller’s team apparently has assumed that Michael Cohen’s status as Trump’s attorney offers no protections under normal attorney-client privilege protocols.
If that is true, the DOJ will have to investigate why the FBI allowed Clinton aide Cheryl Mills to pose as Clinton’s attorney and thereby be shielded from providing testimony on what she knew about the email scandal involving her “client.”
Investigators have swarmed Cohen’s offices and residence, supposedly in fear that he might destroy pertinent records.
The FBI should probably then reopen the investigation into the Clinton email scandal, given that Clinton destroyed more than 30,000 emails as well as computer hard drives that had been requested by federal investigators.
What is going on?
Mueller has searched far and wide for wrongdoing but so far has found little. Meanwhile, there is plenty of other wrongdoing already found, but no one seems to be looking at it.
Flynn, Cohen, and other Trump aides are considered small enough fry to go after. Clinton, Comey, McCabe, and others seem big enough fry to leave alone.
No one thought Hillary Clinton would blow the election. Top Obama officials at the FBI, DOJ, intelligence agencies, and National Security Council believed in 2015 and 2016 that they could ignore laws with impunity because a protective Clinton administration would soon be in power.
Politics have infected these investigations. Trump was seen as a threat to the status quo, and FBI and DOJ lawbreakers were seen as custodians of it.
The more Mueller searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he is inadvertently underscoring that actual lawbreakers must be subject to the same standard of justice. Ironically, Mueller’s investigation has reminded America that it is past time to call Comey, McCabe, and a host of Obama-era DOJ and FBI officials to account.
For over a year, we have had two standards of legality when there can only be one.
Noted in this interview is discussion that a new batch of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and DOJ/FBI lawyer Lisa Page have been sent by the DOJ to the State Department. Understanding the public and congressional release process, this would indicate the DoS needs to sign-off on potential classified information within the texts.
Often, amid our frustration, we forget there’s an actual process for releasing information; it’s not simply a matter of current DOJ or FBI officials trying to block the release. I will bet a donut the next batch of Page/Strzok messages outline some connective tissue to DoS.
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