As previously discussed, FBI Director of Counterintelligence E.W. “Bill” Priestap, FBI Head of National Security Division, Michael Steinbach, and the former head of the FBI National Security Division, John Giacalone, are all scheduled to testify to congress this month.

The three FBI officials will be testifying to a joint congressional committee of the Judiciary and House Oversight members.  The joint committee was formed by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy.  The first testimony is tomorrow; and FBI Director of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap will go first.   This will be Priestap’s first congressional testimony.  Unfortunately, the testimony will be behind closed doors.

FBI Asst. Director of Counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, is central to all of the activity that was happening in both the Clinton investigation and the Trump investigation. Bill Priestap was FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s immediate boss. However, as noted in the text messages Strzok often worked around Priestap at the behest of the person giving him political instructions – FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The timing of the testimony also speaks to the timing of the upcoming Inspector General report regarding the politicization of the DOJ and FBI surrounding the Clinton investigative outcomes.  Some of the most significant releases have come while President Trump is outside of Washington DC; and with the G7 on June 8th – 9th in Canada; it would seem likely the IG report is to be made public anytime over the next 72 hours.

Again, a note of caution.  Eight months ago -in advance of the sunlight now upon the FBI and DOJ- Trey Gowdy created the joint committee between Oversight and Judiciary.  There is increased reason to believe Trey Gowdy is compromised and working on a self-driven-agenda to defend the institutions currently under review.

Remember, Gowdy opened a ridiculous investigation on the White House doctor, but refused to participate in an investigation of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller.   Priorities.  Recently Gowdy has been very public with his defense of Mueller, the corrupt FBI apparatus and the DOJ where he was a former U.S. prosecutor.   Ergo, given his structured positioning – these closed door hearings might not generate the type of inquisitive and hard-lined questioning that many are hoping for.  Again, just a precaution on expectations.

Earlier today Lou Dobbs and John Solomon discussed tomorrow’s hearing.  [Prompted, just hit play]

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Prior CTH article on Joint Committee Hearing.

Prior The Hill article on Joint Committee Hearing.

On January 27th, 2017, after over a year of covert surveillance on Trump campaign officials [via FISA searches, FISA(702) Title-1 surveilance, SIGNIT and HUMIT), the FBI first sat down to interview low level campaign aide George Papadopoulos. (likely FBI Special Agent Jennifer Zelski Edwards, and/or FBI Agent Peter Strzok, participated)

Six months later, July 27th, 2017 the FBI arrested George Papadopoulos at the airport and charged him with giving false information to FBI investigators during that interview. The very next day, July 28th, 2017, the DOJ filed a motion to seal with the DC federal court to hide the arrest. (FBI Agent Jennifer Zelski Edwards)

From evidence that surfaced AFTER the motion to seal was removed (October 5, 2017) we discover the charges, motions, pleadings, and case information (ASSEMBLED DOCKET HERE). This is now the reference point for a historic review, including the TRANSCRIPT of the October 30th guilty plea hearing. All needed references are within the DOCKET.

From the motion to seal, we discover Robert Mueller leveraged the July 27th, 2017, charges against George Papadopoulos to make him a cooperating witness for the special counsel. The July 28th, 2017, motion to seal was transparently intended to disguise the arrest of Papapdopoulos and his subsequent role as a “proactive cooperator”:

(Motion to Seal – Page 2, Point #3)

What is a “Proactive Cooperator”?  Let’s turn to another legal case where the terminology is clearly defined:

(DOJ-Eastern district of PA: U.S. -v- Jose Garcia)

What this means is that after his arrest July 27th, 2017, and before the arrest was unsealed in October 2017, George Papadopoulos was working on behalf of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team to gain information against the targets of the DOJ investigation, Donald Trump officials.

For approximately two-plus months, August/September 2017, George Papadopoulos would have been targeting contact with former and current Trump campaign officials.  The purpose of that targeting would have included an effort by the Mueller Special Counsel to build a “conspiracy” charge against anyone associated with President Trump.  The agent running Papadopoulos appears to have been FBI Special Agent Jennifer Zelski Edward.

Remember, despite the media use of the term “collusion” is not a crime; “conspiracy” is. It seems obvious Mueller’s targeting of President Trump is centered around building a political impeachment case. [Not a criminal indictment case – which is unlikely]  The path to the impeachment would come from creating the appearance of a conspiracy.

It seems almost certain the objective of Mueller’s final investigative report will be to present a political case for impeachment to congress.  Democrats are looking for a reason, and many Republicans are looking for an excuse.  The aggregate UniParty goal is removal of the existential threat represented by President Trump.  Mueller’s anticipated report can predictably be forecast as a means to that end.

It does not look like Papadopoulos was able to generate any valuable information while he was working as an informant for the Special Counsel.  Apparently there was no forward value on using Papadopoulos any longer, and on May 23rd, 2018, Robert Mueller informed the court he was done with Papadopoulos, prepare to sentence him according to the earlier plea-deal and guidelines of his cooperation. [Read plea transcript here]

And now, about two-weeks after Mueller informed the court Papadopoulos exhausted his usefulness; and with the back-story of Papadopoulos’ activity in 2016 now gaining much more attention; the wife-not-wife/spy-not-spy of Papadopoulos, Ms. Simona Mangiante, begins a media tour to rehabilitate the image of her husband-not-husband/spy-not-spy.

I doubt anyone actually truly knows if they are married or not; or whether there’s some form of mutual benefit in the appearance therein etc.  And similarly I doubt anyone can ever be sure if they are spies or not.   Remember the single-most-consistent professional trait about professional liars – they lie; often, quite well.

Spies for corrupt U.S. DOJ, CIA and FBI intelligence officials in 2015 and 2016?  Spies for U.S. CIA and FBI agents (like Stefan Halper) on foreign assignment in 2016?  Spies for special counsel in 2017 and 2018?…. Who knows?…..

Sketchy. All of it.

The only thing certain is that Papadopoulos was: interviewed by the FBI January 27th, 2017; arrested July 27th 2017; hidden July 28th 2017; a cooperating informant thereafter; and recently in May 2018 scheduled for sentencing.

You can decide the rest.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes appeared earlier today on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the ongoing aspects of Spygate etc.  WATCH:

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As CTH shared over a week ago, the investigative focus has shifted toward a larger backstory within the CIA and professional counterintelligence actors, ie. spies. Within this line of inquiry it is dangerous to take current presentations and overlay them against their historic footprint. Inevitably the discussion leads to contradictions and forces the conversation into the world of mirrored halls filled with purposeful disinformation.

Intelligence professionals use words like “tradecraft” to explain the process of lying, manipulation and falsehood construction as a professional skill-set. It is almost impossible to identify the truth in current claims by those who are skilled in dark arts; especially when you accept they are likely holding motives and intentions that might be 180 degrees in the opposite direction from initial appearances.

There’s a blue-zillion ‘spy infiltration theories‘ floating around the internet in various granular forms. A few are solid and possible, but most appear based on abject nonsense and twisted logic.

The Inspector General report on the FBI and DOJ action in the Clinton investigation is due out this week. In my humble opinion it is best to wait and see what discoveries are within the fact-centric report, and the confirmed underlying evidence, before wandering out into the speculative land of mirrored rabbit holes.

Interesting delegation to accompany Secretary Ross: treasury, agriculture and energy. Small delegation, short trip, sounds like contract discussions.

From Camp David –  Today, President Donald J. Trump announced the members of an official delegation from the United States to China to discuss rebalancing the bilateral economic relationship between the United States and China.

These meetings will take place from June 2 through June 3, and are a continuation of the talks held in Beijing one month ago and in Washington two weeks ago.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will lead the discussions, accompanied by United States Ambassador to China Terry Branstad, Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs David Malpass, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Ted McKinney, and United States Trade Representative Chief Agricultural Negotiator Ambassador Gregg Doud.

Additional officials and technical experts from the Department of Commerce, Department of Treasury, United States Trade Representative, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Energy will also participate in the talks.  (link)

Appearing on Jesse Watters television broadcast, former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova and former Hillary Clinton official Phillipe Reines square off in a debate over Spygate:

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Unfortunately Reines conflates the origination of the CIA/DOJ/FBI surveillance issue and the FISA searches. It is not coincidental all of the foreign operative intervention (see McCarthy Article on Papadopoulos) begins immediately after NSA Director Mike Rogers begins looking into NSA/FBI database search violations in March 2016.

Many people have noted the bizarre number of former Obama Administration DOJ, FBI and Intelligence Community officials who have gone to work within the U.S. media apparatus in order to protect their interests.

Former CIA Director John Brennan now working for NBC; former DNI James Clapper now working for CNN; former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker now working for Lawfare blog; former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Josh Campbell now working for CNN; former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes now working for MSNBC…. the list goes on. All motives transparently political.

Notably absent, the hiring of any actual journalists.

All of these pre-positioned forces are defensive in nature. All of their collective narrative constructs stem from a self-preservation instinct. The U.S. media has imploded onto itself and devolved into an Kafkaesque assembly political narrative engineers churning out fake news 24/7.

What we are now witnessing is something far beyond Prava and Baghdad Bob. What we now see is an even more severe distortion of media; an alternate reality created as if the Stasi and Tokyo Rose joined forces to take control of U.S. broadcasts.

If the head of the KGB was an analyst for Russia Today, people would laugh. The New York Times would continue pointing at the example as a reason never to believe the stories. Yet, identically, former CIA Director John Brennan is on TV daily and almost no-one gives it a second thought.

A surreal distortion of reality, hence Kafkaesque.

Cue today’s audio visual demonstration.

Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Josh Campbell, now a CNN analyst, steps to the forefront along with Deep State media guards at the New York Times and Washington Post, to pre-position the FBI defense in advance of the Inspector General Report:

(Campell Tweet Link – Zapotosky Tweet Link – Underlying WaPo Story Link)

Emphasis mine:

(Via Washington Post) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz recently summoned an FBI agent important to the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election for an interview. His investigators wanted to know how the bureau came to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser, and in particular, the chronology of events that led them to seek a secret court order to do so.

As the Justice Department’s internal affairs cop, this is the sort of work Horowitz does: investigating the investigators. In that role, he has suddenly found himself in the political spotlight, a potentially decisive voice in the partisan controversies over the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, and its subsequent probe of the Trump campaign and Russia.

In the coming weeks, Horowitz is expected to release a nearly 500-page report criticizing the Justice Department and FBI for their handling of the Clinton email investigation, people familiar with the matter said. They, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about matters they are not authorized to discuss publicly. Meanwhile, he has intensified his review of the Russia investigation, interviewing the FBI agent who once led the case and inviting him back for a second conversation, one of these people said.

Those who know Horowitz say his findings will be as nonpartisan as they are thorough. But his work is almost certain to be weaponized by President Trump against federal law enforcement, and some question whether it will quell the tension gripping Washington.

“He’s going to be unflappable, he’s going to be apolitical, he’s going to call it like he sees it,” said Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York who supervised Horowitz when he worked there.

She added: “I think the public should have a very high degree of confidence in whatever he finds. Now, that’s a different question than, ‘How will it be received?’ ” (read more)

Well, those outlined interviews describe IG Horowitz looking into the FISA abuse scandal at the heart of SpyGate; and we all know who the re-re-re-re-interviewed FBI Agent is, don’t we:

President Trump uses the weekly address to point out the scale of obstructionism within the Democrat party:

The North Dakota senate seat currently held by Democrat Senator Heidi Heitkamp is one of the targeted seats Republicans are looking to take in the 2018 mid-terms.  To flip the seat the White House helped convince Republican Kevin Cramer to challenge Heitkamp.

With the North Dakota election considered a ‘toss up‘, between Heitkamp and challenger Cramer; and with election outcome looking positive toward republicans; the UniParty quickly jumps into action.

Notorious UniParty control agents David and Charles Koch, aka ‘The Koch Brothers’, now begin spending money to help Heitkamp retain her seat.

Washington (CNN) – Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers-backed political advocacy group, is running a digital ad thanking a vulnerable Democratic senator for her support of bank deregulation legislation ahead of the midterm elections.

The ad, which launched Friday, thanks North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who is fighting to hold onto her seat in a state that Trump carried by 36 points in 2016, for cosponsoring a rollback of some Dodd-Frank Act regulations. “Thank you, Sen. Heitkamp for giving main street relief,” the ad reads. The ad campaign was previously reported by CNBC.  (more)

The Koch Brothers are notorious for pushing almost identical points of advocacy as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce including support for amnesty/dreamer/DACA legislation, and opposition for any renegotiated trade deals that benefit U.S. workers.

The Koch Brothers also funded support for Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama, and Michael Bennet of Colorado, all Democrats opposed to the Trump administration.

It’s a big club, and the control agents of the UniParty work earnestly to keep control of it….

Fox News Contributor Dan Bongino discusses the latest developments in the ongoing Spygate scandal.  The focus of attention is now upon Joseph Misfud:

In the shifting narratives of the Trump-Russia probe, a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud has remained a linchpin regarding claims of collusion. He is the professor who allegedly told Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians had emails related to the Clinton campaign.  (more)