It was not unexpected to see NBC shift their earlier reporting on the surveillance of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and attempt to walk-back the most troubling of issues. In a correction to earlier reporting NBC changes the story from federal authorities (ie. Robert Mueller and the corrupt FBI group) “wiretapping” the phones and communication devices of Cohen, to federal authorities “monitoring” the phones and devices of Cohen.
NBC – CORRECTION: Earlier today, NBC News reported that there was a wiretap on the phones of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, citing two separate sources with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen.
But three senior U.S. officials now dispute that, saying that the monitoring of Cohen’s phones was limited to a log of calls, known as a pen register, not a wiretap where investigators can actually listen to calls. NBC News has changed the headline and revised parts of the original article. (link)
The reason for the imprecise shift is obvious. If everyone understood how Robert Mueller’s investigation was merely an extension, an “insurance policy” per se, of the prior originating FBI Counterintelligence operation against Trump, then people would begin to ask uncomfortable questions.
Whether the FBI was actively listening in-on Michael Cohen’s calls; or whether the FBI was merely monitoring who, what, where and how, those calls were taking place, doesn’t diminish the reality that Robert Mueller was –and is– conducting wide-scale surveillance on President Trump and any entity associated with his administration.
That reality, accidentally released by the initial NBC reporting, is considered an uncomfortable risk to the Mueller investigation. The last thing Team Mueller team want people to understand is how they are simply continuing a political investigation that began two years ago under false and unlawful pretense.
The information resources originally deployed by a politically corrupt FBI Counterintelligence unit to conduct surveillance on candidate Trump (2016), and President-elect Trump (2016/2017), are the same information resources currently underpinning the politically corrupt Mueller investigation; May 2017 through today – with the exact same motives and intents. This is the “insurance policy” described by FBI Agent Peter Strzok.
The original Mueller instructions were hidden from the public by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Those originating instructions were carefully kept under wraps -via redactions- by Robert Mueller’s political operatives in a response pleading to a dismissal request by attorneys for Paul Manafort. (pdf below)
Mueller needed to reveal the hidden origination instructions in order to prove the validity of his case against Paul Manafort. Unfortunately for Rosenstein this filing by Robert Mueller also meant the public found out about the secret instructions.
Remember, Rosenstein presented one set of guidelines to the American public, and another set of more detailed instructions to Robert Mueller. If there was nothing sketchy about the instructions, then why would Rosenstein have to hide them?
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And when you accept that Mueller’s investigation was simply a continuance of the politically corrupt endeavors of the FBI, via Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Bruce and Nellie Ohr et al, you begin to understand the likely reason why Rod Rosenstein reauthorized the final FISA Title-1 surveillance warrant for U.S. person Carter Page and the Trump campaign officials.
Robert Mueller’s team needed to assemble the same framework previously built by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. However, Mueller’s team needed some form of arms-length distance from the clouded and corrupt motives of Strzok, Page and crew. Ergo access to the underlying architecture of surveillance originally used against candidate Trump, was needed to build the same process for President Trump. Same/Same but giving the appearance of something entirely different.
Once the value within the campaign surveillance authority was extracted for the new deployment of Insurance Policy 2.0, the Page FISA warrant was no longer needed. It was allowed to expire. Mid-2017 the Mueller crew was moving the net to the larger Trump administration.
NBC accidentally exposed this aspect with their initial report of Michael Cohen being “wiretapped” under the federal authority granted to Robert Mueller by Rod Rosenstein. Hence, a walk-back was needed not only to clarify details but to also cloud the larger issues. That larger issue is that Robert Mueller’s team is simply carrying out the political objectives that originated within the FBI small group in 2016.
…If only someone familiar with such surveillance and monitoring *matters* would have advised Michael Cohen to, well, uh… oh, say: get a ham radio, then this surveillance of Team Trump might be more difficult for Robert Mueller, Aaron Zelby, Andrew Weismann, et al.
Alas…
Centinel2012 