Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told her caucus earlier today she will bring a resolution to the floor tomorrow for a House vote to appoint impeachment managers and submit the two articles of impeachment to the Senate.  It appears Speaker Pelosi is timing the resolution to take oxygen from the White House signing of the U.S-China ‘phase one’ trade agreement, also expected tomorrow; a major win for the U.S. trade reset.

The Speaker made the announcement during a private caucus meeting.  However, Pelosi did not name the impeachment managers, that announcement is expected to be made at the same time as the house vote.

WASHINGTON DC – […] The resolution the House will vote on Wednesday will do three things: transmit the articles of impeachment against Trump; name the team of impeachment managers; and provide funding for the trial. Democrats and Republicans will have five minutes per side to debate the resolution on the floor, according to rules established during the House impeachment debate in December. (more)

As you review this story keep in the back of your mind that U.S. DC Attorney Jessie Liu has been recently moved to head the Financial Crimes Division of the Treasury Department.

CTH noted last year when John Fry, an intelligence analyst with the IRS’s law enforcement arm, was arrested that something more was happening in the background of his case and the DOJ case against Natalie Sours-Edwards.   Today Ms. Sours-Edwards pleads guilty to downloading & distributing the financial records of people connected to the Trump orbit.

You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department [See Here].  You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official [See Here].  As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation.

(VIA DOJ) Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards Illegally Repeatedly Transmitted SARs and Other Sensitive Government Information To A Reporter Resulting In Approximately 12 News Articles Over 1-Year Period.

Ms. Sours-Edwards, a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), pled guilty today to conspiring to unlawfully disclose Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”).

Beginning in approximately October 2017, and lasting until her arrest in October 2018, EDWARDS agreed to and did unlawfully disclose numerous SARs to a reporter (“Reporter-1”), the substance of which were published over the course of approximately 12 articles by a news organization for which Reporter-1 worked (“News Organization-1”).

The illegally disclosed SARs pertained to, among other things, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Maria Butina, and Prevezon Alexander.

EDWARDS had access to each of the pertinent SARs and saved them – along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information – to a flash drive provided to her by FinCEN. She transmitted the SARs to Reporter-1 by means that included taking photographs or images of them and texting the photographs or images to Reporter-1 over an encrypted application.

In addition to disseminating SARs to Reporter-1, EDWARDS sent or described to Reporter-1 internal FinCEN emails or correspondence appearing to relate to SARs or other information protected by the BSA, and FinCEN nonpublic memoranda, including Investigative Memos and Intelligence Assessments published by the FinCEN Intelligence Division, which contained confidential personal information, business information, and/or security threat assessments.

At the time of EDWARDS’s arrest, she was in possession of a flash drive on which she saved the unlawfully disclosed SARs, and a cellphone containing numerous communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted SARs and other sensitive government information to Reporter-1.  (read more)

There is so much sketchy about all of this – it is difficult to know where to begin.

[Sidebar Question: In 2017 how would Mrs. Sours-Edwards know to search and download the financial records of Maria Butina?  …I digress]

First, within the current DOJ press release there is no identification of Mrs. Edwards co-conspirator.  Mrs. Edwards was a “senior official”; however, within the original indictmentthere was clearly a supervisor who was working with her: [Pg 13]

What happened to the co-conspirator?

Second, based on the information from 2018 CTH was able to identify that at least one part of Ms. Sours-Edwards leaking was a series of financial records identical to those sent to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

[May 2018] Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told reporters Thursday that his committee also had gotten the Treasury Department data.  (read more)

Which begs the question:  Was Ms. Edwards alone in leaking the financial records, or did both the SSCI and Ms. Edwards leak that material to the media?

Why is this question important?…. Because it will determine what happens with her plea.  There is a decent likelihood, perhaps even a strong likelihood, Ms. Edwards will benefit from the same issue that protected SSCI Security Director James Wolfe.

Watch the plea process closely.  If my hunch is correct, the DOJ will touch Ms Edwards very lightly in their sentencing recommendation as they did with James Wolfe.

Thirdly, along the lines of the SSCI and the DOJ sentencing, it does not go unnoticed that former FBI Director James Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, is the SDNY prosecutor in this case.

…”This case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Public Corruption Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kimberly J. Ravener, Daniel C. Richenthal, and Maurene R. Comey are in charge of the prosecution.”… (link)

Lastly, few things shock me upon follow-up review; however, this statement:

…”The illegally disclosed SARs pertained to, among other things, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Mariia Butina, and Prevezon Alexander. EDWARDS had access to each of the pertinent SARs and saved them – along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information“…

I find the “thousands of other files” to be particularly noteworthy.

I would not be surprised to discover those files would include President Trump’s tax records; and/or the records of his business and family interests.

What exactly did Ms. Edwards extract, download and leak?

Perhaps that’s why U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu was moved into the Treasury Dept (?).

As we noted last year, it is highly likely Ms. Edwards was the Treasury Department source for a myriad of resistance articles written by multiple journalists.  Some of the more transparently obvious examples come from Buzzfeed via Jason Leopold, in addition to Ronan Farrow:

October 6th, 2017 –  The Treasury Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been illegally rifling through and filing away the private financial records of US citizens, Treasury employees alleged. “This is such an invasion of privacy,” said one official. (read more)

October 29th, 2017 – BuzzFeed News has learned of a series of wire transfers, made by companies linked to Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, that federal officials deemed suspicious. Many of the wires went from offshore companies controlled by Manafort to American businesses. (read more)

May 16th, 2018 – Ronan Farrow […] there has been much speculation about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury Department’s inspector general has launched a probe to find the source. That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation. (read more)

Keep an eye on the sentencing phase for Ms. Sours-Edwards.  I suspect we have not seen the end of this story….

…unfortunately, as with James Wolfe, I also suspect it won’t be the DOJ to tell it.

DOJ-NSD lawyer David Kris has been a defender of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and Lawfare critic of Devin Nunes’s 2018 memo on alleged FISA abuses.  Sketchy Mr. Kris was recently picked by FISC presiding judge James Boasberg, to serve as the court’s amicus curiae — a position that is supposed to provide impartial advice to the court.

Mr. Kris will oversee the implementation of “FISA reforms” following the IG report on serious abuses found in the DOJ and FBI’s political efforts to conduct surveillance on U.S. person Carter Page.  However, representative Devin Nunes shares his doubts & concerns:

This is a little weedy, but it’s important….

In the second half of Devin Nunes interview with Maria Bartiromo today he was asked his thoughts about the FISA Court selecting David Kris as an FBI surveillance and compliance monitor.  The issue is quite important because the FBI FISA reforms and promises are essentially meaningless without some form of structural review process.

However, the new 2020 FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg selecting David Kris has been noted by several people as a rather weak effort on behalf of the court.

As an outcome of our former FISA-702 reviews CTH has an entirely different reason for questioning the selection of Kris; there’s much more substantive reasons to be alarmed about it; but first here’s the general consensus opposition:

WASHINGTON – The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris — a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and written extensively in support of the FBI’s surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare — to oversee the FBI’s implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice inspector general report last year.

[…]  “Of all the people in the swamp … this is the guy that you come up with?” Nunes asked. “The guy that was accusing me of federal crimes? The guy that was defending the dirty cops at the FBI? … The court must be trying to abolish itself. There is long-term damage.”

President Trump then referenced Nunes’ interview with Bartiromo on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, calling Kris “highly controversial” and slamming the FISC’s decision. (read more)

There’s an aspect to the history of David Kris and Judge Boasberg that explains this selection…. It doesn’t justify it, but explains it.   CTH first learned of Kris when researching who the government was using as Amici Curiae for FISC Reviews (FISC-R appeals).

You see, there’s a process when the FISA court denies the position of the government, for the feds to appeal the FISC decision.  In essence if the FISA court defines activity by the government as a violation of the fourth amendment, the government sends representatives to argue “process issues” on behalf of the surveillance state.  David Kris has been one of those Amici Curiae; and specifically Kris has worked to ameliorate Judge Boasberg before.

Judge Boasberg became the presiding FISC judge on January 1st of this year, replacing FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer.

In April 2017 the DNI released a FISA report written by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collery that showed massive abuse, via unauthorized searches of the NSA database, in the period of November 2015 through May 2016. Judge Collyer’s report specifically identified search query increases tied to the 2016 presidential primary.  Two years of research identified this process as the DOJ/FBI and IC using the NSA database to query information related to political candidates, specifically Donald Trump.

When Judge Boasberg was given the similar assignment, to review the intelligence community use of the NSA database, essentially a FISA-702 compliance audit (2017 through March 2018), he wrote his findings in a report in October 2018.

Within Judge Boasberg’s review of the 2017 activity he outlined an identical set of FISA violations from within the FBI units and “contractors” as initially outlined by Judge Collyer a year earlier.  Judge Boasberg wrote his opinion in October 2018 and that opinion was declassified last October 8th, 2019).

Boasberg’s review was 2017 through March 2018  [Main Link to All Legal Proceedings Here], written October 2018 and made public October 2019.

To counter the FISA-702 legal issues Judge Boasberg was identifying about the unlawful data exploitation and surveillance of U.S. persons (4th amendment violations), the government countered with an attempt to justify.  This is the aforementioned appeal process known as the FISC-R.   Who is the Amici Curiae attempting the justification?

Yup, David Kris.  The level of back-and-forth govt. justification -vs- FISC argument within the database surveillance process was where we first saw Mr. Kris name surface.

In 2018, in response to Boasberg, the Government appealed the FISC’s deficiency finding related to the FBI’s procedures to the FISC-R which, after briefings and oral arguments by the Government and amici, issued a per curiam opinion on July 12, 2019.

Because the FISC-R’s conclusion regarding Section 702 required the Government to amend the FBI’s querying procedures, it declined to reach the issue of whether the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures complied with the requirements of FISA and the Fourth Amendment.

On September 4, 2019, the FISC approved the FBI’s amended querying procedures, explaining that the revisions remedy the deficiencies contained in the earlier procedures. Thus, the FISC held that the FBI’s minimization and querying procedures were consistent with the requirements of Section 702 and the Fourth Amendment. [Ruling]

Although the Government did not seek to resume FISA-702(16) “abouts” collection, the FISC, with assistance from amici, reviewed whether the “abouts” restrictions applied to any other types of Section 702 acquisitions currently being conducted.  Essentially it was the job of David Kris to deal with the violations being outlined, and then find process arguments to convince the FISA court to keep letting the DOJ and FBI use the system.

It’s Kris’s job to manufacture the judicial plausible deniability the FISA Judges need to keep allowing the FISA process to exist.

Stop and read that again.

Even before Mr. Kris was given this new FISC assignment, it was already his job to manufacture process arguments, find obtuse angles to justify the procedures being used, and provide the FISA judges with the plausible deniability they need in order to keep rubber stamping the fourth amendment violations.

It’s a scheme.  A legal game of whac-a-mole.  Every time the DOJ and FBI violate the fourth amendment; and every time they are caught in a compliance audit; Kris comes into the picture as the ‘fixer’, with the job to keep the non-fixable system going.

How do we know these are not earnest procedural processes being refined?   Because the exact same violations are found year after year, after year.   Nothing is ever fixed; the judges point out the violations; the Amici promise new process fixes; and wash-rinse-repeat the next year…. and the next….. and the next.

Boasberg noted in his 2018 opinion the “about” query option that NSA Director Mike Rogers halted, technically didn’t stop.   Instead operators used the “to and from” option almost identically as the “about” queries for downstream data review and extraction.

The FISA Appellate Court appointed amici curiae (David Kris) to review Boasberg’s opinion and reconcile counter claims by the FBI.   Boasberg was never satisfied despite the FISC-R amicus assurances.  Previously CTH said these opinions reflected valid judicial cynicism within a reluctant re-authorization…. However, after looking deeply at the last three annual FISC reports, it now appears the judges are only writing cynically – and are actually willfully participating in a process that abuses the fourth amendment.

One of the weird aspects to all of the FISC reports, and this extends to both Collyer and Boasberg, is that both presiding FISC judges never ask the “why” question: why are all these unauthorized database searches taking place?  Instead, both judges focus on process issues and technical procedural questions, seemingly from a position that all unauthorized searches were done without malicious intent.

Accepting that neither judge, likely purposefully, had no information upon their FISA review, their lack of curiosity is not necessarily a flaw but rather a feature of a very compartmentalized problem.

Boasberg and Collyer are only looking at one set of data-points all centered around FISA(702) search queries.   Additionally, the scale of overall annual database searches outlined by Boasberg extends well over three million queries by the FBI and thousands of anonymous users; and the oversight only covers a sub-set of around ten percent.

As a result of the number of users with database access; and as Boasberg notes in his declassified opinion there is no consistent application of audit-trails or audit-logs; and worse yet, users don’t have to explain “why”, so there’s no FISC digging into “why”; the process is a bureaucratic FUBAR from a compliance standpoint.

Guess what?

Yes, they’ve designed it that way.

We have to get the entire FISA-702 process stopped, and that includes using the FISA Court against U.S. citizens.  Why?  Because, as President Obama’s term highlighted, it’s a massive surveillance database that is being used to gather black-ops and political surveillance against our elected officials.

FISA-702, the entire process, needs to be eliminated.  If the DOJ or FBI want to turn on a surveillance switch against an American person, let them go to a standard Title-3 judge and request a search warrant for it.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss two very important issues.  The first is the origination of the “whistle-blower” complaint and new issues surrounding Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.  The second important subject is the background of newly installed FISA Court monitor, David Kris, to oversee the FBI reform promises.

CTH has some explosive new information which has been shared with Mr. Nunes on both issues; but we start with the interview and ICIG Michael Atkinson.

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Since our original research into Atkinson, there have been some rather interesting additional discoveries.

The key to understanding the corrupt endeavor behind the fraudulent “whistle-blower” complaint, doesn’t actually originate with ICIG Atkinson. The key person is the former head of the DOJ National Security Division, Mary McCord.

Prior to becoming IC Inspector General, Michael Atkinson was the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division, Mary McCord.

It is very safe to say Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson have a working relationship from their time together in 2016 and 2017 at the DOJ-NSD. Atkinson was Mary McCord’s senior legal counsel; essentially her lawyer.

McCord was the senior intelligence officer who accompanied Sally Yates to the White House in 2017 to confront then White House Counsel Don McGahn about the issues with Michael Flynn and the drummed up controversy over the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak phone call.

Additionally, Mary McCord, Sally Yates and Michael Atkinson worked together to promote the narrative around the incoming Trump administration “Logan Act” violations. This silly claim (undermining Obama policy during the transition) was the heavily promoted, albeit manufactured, reason why Yates and McCord were presumably concerned about Flynn’s contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. It was nonsense.

However, McCord didn’t just disappear in 2017 when she retired from the DOJ-NSD. She resurfaced as part of the Lawfare group assembly after the mid-term election in 2018.

THIS IS THE KEY.

Mary McCord joined the House effort to impeach President Trump; as noted in this article from Politico:

“I think people do see that this is a critical time in our history,” said Mary McCord, a former DOJ official who helped oversee the FBI’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and now is listed as a top outside counsel for the House in key legal fights tied to impeachment. “We see the breakdown of the whole rule of law. We see the breakdown in adherence to the Constitution and also constitutional values.”

“That’s why you’re seeing lawyers come out and being very willing to put in extraordinary amounts of time and effort to litigate these cases,” she added. (link)

Former DOJ-NSD Head Mary McCord is currently working for the House Committee (Adam Schiff) who created the impeachment scheme.

Now it becomes critical to overlay that detail with how the “whistle-blower” complain was organized.  Mary McCord’s former NSD attorney, Michael Atkinson, is the intelligence community inspector general who brings forth the complaint.

The “whistle-blower” had prior contact with the staff of the committee.  This is admitted.  So essentially the “whistle-blower” almost certainly had contact with Mary McCord; and then ICIG Michael Atkinson modified the whistle-blower rules to facilitate the outcome.

There is the origination.   That’s where the fraud starts.

The coordination between Mary McCord, the Whistle-blower and Michael Atkinson is why HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff will not release the transcript from Atkinson’s testimony.

It now looks like the Lawfare network constructed the ‘whistle-blower’ complaint aka a Schiff Dossier, and handed it to allied CIA operative Eric Ciaramella to file as a formal IC complaint.  This process is almost identical to the Fusion-GPS/Lawfare network handing the Steele Dossier to the FBI to use as the evidence for the 2016/2017 Russia conspiracy.

Atkinson’s conflict-of-self-interest, and/or possible blackmail upon him by deep state actors who most certainly know his compromise, likely influenced his approach to this whistleblower complaint.   That would explain why the Dept. of Justice Office of Legal Counsel so strongly rebuked Atkinson’s interpretation of his responsibility with the complaint.

In the Justice Department’s OLC opinion, they point out that Atkinson’s internal justification for accepting the whistleblower complaint was poor legal judgement.  [See Here]  I would say Atkinson’s decision is directly related to his own risk exposure:

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Michael Atkinson was moved from DOJ-NSD to become the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) in 2018. What we end up with is a brutally obvious, convoluted, network of corrupt officials; each carrying an independent reason to cover their institutional asses… each individual interest forms a collective fraudulent scheme inside the machinery of government.

Michael Atkinson and Mary McCord worked together in 2016/2017 on the stop-Trump surveillance operation (FISA application via DOJ-NSD).  Then, following the 2018 mid-term election, in 2019 Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson team up again on another stop-Trump operation, each in a different position, and -working with others- coordinate the House impeachment plan via the ‘whistle-blower’ complaint.

While Devin Nunes is focused on the false statements of ICIG Michael Atkinson, the key is the contact between the ‘whistle-blower’ (Eric Ciaramella) and the House Intelligence Committee via Mary McCord.

There’s a very strong likelihood this entire impeachment construct was manufactured out of nothing.

National Security Council resistance member Alexander Vindman starts a rumor about the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call, which he shares with CIA operative Eric Ciaramella (a John Brennan resistance associate).  Ciaramella then makes contact with resistance ally Mary McCord in her role within the House.  McCord then helps Ciaramella create a fraudulent whistle-blower complaint via her former colleague, now ICIG, Michael Atkinson….

…And that’s how this entire Impeachment operation gets started.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appears on Sunday Morning Futures to discuss the current status of Speaker Pelosi’s fraudulent impeachment effort.  Leader McCarthy emphasizes his claim that Pelosi’s intention is to block Bernie Sanders from achieving the democrat party presidential nomination.

However, there’s no rule that requires Senator Sanders to participate.  If Bernie Sanders wants to stay on the campaign trail while a senate impeachment trial is ongoing, he can.

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon joins Sunday Morning Futures to discuss rising support for democracy around the world and connects the movement to the impeachment effort against President Trump.  Big Stuff. Big Ugly type stuff.

A fired-up Bannon looks at the Senate impeachment trial as the “trial of the century”, where the professional political class gets brought into the trial and the framework becomes an expose’ on how President Trump is willing to take down the system.

In an effort to retain a manufactured anti-Trump narrative, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears on ABC to deny the uprisings in Iran are against the Iranian government.  It really is ridiculous how far the democrats will push a false pretense to keep a narrative.

The insufferable House clown attempts to deny Iranians oppose oppression, and spin the impression of current protests being against Trump administration.  WATCH:

Full interview below

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National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien appears on Fox News Sunday to discuss the recent conflicts with Iran, and the government of Iran blaming the U.S. for their shooting down of Ukraine Airline flight 752.

With increased scrutiny toward the actions, and lack thereof, from current FBI Director Christopher Wray, another sketchy aspect deserves some scrutiny.

Hat Tip Techno-Fog for noting some remarkable FBI activity.

Supervisory Special Agent Joseph Pientka III was first identified by Senator Chuck Grassley in May of 2018 as the second FBI agent involved in the 2017 interview of Lt. General Michael Flynn.

Frustrated by the FBI stonewalling his Senate inquiry, Chairman Grassley dropped the revelation publicly on May 11th, 2018, in a letter to the FBI.

[…] the Committee’s oversight interest in the underlying documents requested more than a year ago now outweighs any legitimate executive branch interest in withholding it. So too does the Committee’s interest in learning the FBI agents’ actual assessments of their interview of Lt. Gen. Flynn, particularly given the apparent contradiction between what then Directory Comey told us in March 2017 and what he now claims.

[…] In addition, please make Special Agent Joe Pientka available for a transcribed interview with Committee staff no later than one week following the production of the requested documents… (link)

The FBI never produced Supervisory Special Agent (SSA-1) Joe Pientka for Chairman Grassley’s committee, and the conflict between the Senate Judiciary Committee and the FBI was never reconciled.  (The DOJ/FBI made it to the safety of the mid-term election.)

Additionally, every single document containing information about the investigative activity of FBI agent Pientka has kept his name redacted.  Not a single DOJ/FBI document has ever included his name.

However, around two months after Grassley outed his identity; we discover from the Inspector General that the DOJ-NSD (National Security Division) admitted to the FISA court that Agent Pientka was significantly less than forthcoming with “factual omissions” in the Title-1 surveillance application he assembled against Carter Page.

While the IG report doesn’t name SSA-1 as Joseph Pientka, all documentary evidence supported that Pientka was indeed SSA-1.  [This was also confirmed by Fox News reporter Gregg Jarrett writing an article about SSA-1 Pientka, and by Jarrett being contacted by the FBI as soon as he outed the agent.]

In addition to the Flynn interview, the Inspector General Report notes the importance of SSA-1 as he pertains to the FISA application.

FBI Supervisory Agent Pientka’s lies and omissions to the FISC were material – and made under penalty of perjury. He knew the dossier was fraudulent. He knew about witness denials. In short, Pientka lied about the FISA application’s accuracy.

After the FISA Court was notified in about the issues (July 2018), and before the IG report outlining the conduct of SSA1 was complete (Dec. 9, 2019)… sometime in mid 2019 Joseph Pientka was promoted by FBI Director Christopher Wray and transferred to the San Francisco FBI Field Office where he showed up on their web page.

[Via Web Waybackmachine – LINK November 1st Capture]

[SIDEBAR – It is worth noting this is the same field office where current FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch came from.]

However, AFTER the IG report was published (Dec 9th, 2019); and after Pientka’s activity was outlined as directly involved in the corrupt activity; and after he was identified as having been transferred to the FBI Field Office in San Francisco (Dec 14th, 2019); the FBI mysteriously scrubbed agent Pientka from their website.

(Current FBI San Francisco Office Web Page – Link)

That doesn’t mean that Asst. Special Agent Joseph Pientka III is no longer in San Francisco; it only means the San Francisco Field Office has removed him from the website… He could still be working there.

As Techno-Fog notes: “Putting this into context – the FBI/Christopher Wray has been keeping Pientka from the public spotlight and Congressional inquiry since 2018.“… and it would appear the FBI is adamant about keeping Joseph Pientka as far away from uncontrollable public questioning as possible.

Why?

I should note there are no easily identifiable non-corrupt motives.

The FBI effort to keep Joseph Pientka III (SSA1) hidden, redacted, invisible and unavailable to congress pre-dates the appointment of Bill Barr to Attorney General and U.S. Attorney John Durham as an investigator of the issues.

The DOJ and FBI have been covering for Joe Pientka for well over two years.

(LINK)

PS.  It isn’t just Pientka:

FBI Director Christopher Wray has named David W. Archey as special agent in charge of the Richmond Field Office. Mr. Archey most recently served as a deputy assistant director in the Counterintelligence Division at FBI Headquarters and was assigned as the FBI senior lead at the Special Counsel’s Office. (link)