Michael Flynn defense attorney, Sidney Powell, appears on Lou Dobbs tonight to discuss the ongoing case against a background of daily revelations showing Flynn was the target of the Obama-era FBI.

The Washington Post confirms todaywhat we have been saying for almost two years.

Michael Flynn’s name was never masked in the FBI intercept of his call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Here’s the part that matters:

WaPo […] in the FBI report about the communications between the two men, Flynn’s name was never redacted, former U.S. officials said.

[…] It was the FBI, not the NSA, that wiretapped Kislyak’s calls and created the summary and transcript, the former officials said.

“When the FBI circulated [tech cuts], they included Flynn’s name from the beginning” because it was essential to understanding its significance, said a former senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence. “There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”  (read more)

The FBI was conducting (FISA) surveillance on Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.  When Kislyak contacted Flynn the call was intercepted by the FBI.  The calls were then transcribed and “tech cuts” created.

On January 3rd Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were text messaging about the intercept.  It is important to note these text messages have never been released; and were intentionally removed and hidden from the text messages that were released.

We only know about these specific texts from a Senate oversight committee paper that put a timeline together.

This January 3rd communication is critical so I’m going to explain it.  You will see why the FBI and DOJ and Intelligence Community have kept it hidden:

A FISA order, in this case on Sergey Kislyak, is referred to as “technical coverage” or a “tech”.  The FBI interceptors, staff doing the interception, then type up summaries of telephone conversations captured. Those are referred to as “tech cuts” or “cuts”.

The “CR cut” in the text message above is a “Crossfire Razor cut”, or a Flynn cut.

This is a summary of the call intercept.  This is the non-traditional intelligence document that FBI Director James Comey gave to DNI James Clapper to use for the briefing of President Obama on January 4th. There are no redacted or masked names because it is a raw intelligence document.

The Clapper briefing officially informed the White House of the existence of an open FBI investigation into Michael Flynn.  That briefing led to the January 5th “pull aside” meeting outlined in the Susan Rice memo.

The FBI was investigating Flynn and monitoring Russian communications to see a reaction to the sanctions imposed on December 29, 2016.  When Kislyak called Flynn the FBI legally intercepted the call because the FISA authority was surveillance on Kislyak and Flynn was also under investigation.

But there are more implications…

Peter Strzok  texts: “[Bill Priestap], like us, is concerned with over sharing.  Doesn’t want Clapper giving [the Flynn cut, or summary of intercepted call] to White House.”  All political, just shows our hand and potentially makes enemies.

Lisa Page responds: “Yeah but keep in mind we were going to put that in the doc on Friday, with potentially larger distribution than just DNI.”

Strzok Replies: “The question is should we, particularly to the entirely of the lame duck U.S. Intelligence Community with partisan axes to grind.”

The implication of the Lisa Page response about sharing the Flynn intercept, is the intention of the FBI to include the “CR cut”, the FBI summary intercept of the Kislyak call, within the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which was being released on Friday.  The filter of their entire conversation was political.

We don’t know if the Kislyak-Flynn call was used as a part of the classified evidence within the ICA.  It sounds from Lisa Page’s text response that the issue was discussed and then a decision made not to include it:  “we were going to put that in”, implies they did not.

Bill Priestap and Peter Strzok have issues with the raw “tech cut” of the intercept being shared with DNI Clapper and White House.  Lisa Page downplays those concerns by saying: ‘hey relax, in context we were about to put that readout in the ICA which is a far bigger deal than just sharing it with the White House.’

Putting it all together.  The FBI intercepted the call.  A “tech cut” summary of the call was generated exclusive to the FBI.  James Comey gave that call summary including Flynn’s name to James Clapper; and James Clapper briefed President Obama.

Michael Flynn wasn’t unmasked in documents related to the call because Flynn’s name was never masked in the documents, the FBI “CR cut”.

If I put all the transcripts and texts together, it’s easy to see the picture:

For more than a year the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) led by Chairman Jerry Nadler has been seeking: (1) Mueller grand jury material; (2) a deposition by former White House counsel Don McGahn; and  (3) Trump financial/tax records.  Each of these issues have slowly worked their way to the Supreme Court.

Today, in the first step to take up the grand jury issue, the Supreme Court has placed a stay on a divided lower court ruling to grant the HJC access to Mueller’s grand jury material:

While the stay is only temporary, pending the DOJ requesting a writ of certiorari for the Supreme Court to take up the 6(e) grand jury issue, it is very likely the DOJ will make the request; and also likely the Supreme Court will take up the case.

The court, without dissent, agreed with a request from the Department of Justice to put on hold a lower court decision granting the House Judiciary Committee some previously undisclosed material from Mueller’s investigation.

The 6(e) material relates to evidence gathered by the Mueller team for grand jury proceedings in their two-year effort to construct a case against President Trump.

Remember, the Mueller evidence was gathered during a counterintelligence investigation, which means all things Trump -including his family and business interests- were subject to unbridled surveillance for two years; and a host of intelligence gathering going back in time indefinitely. A goldmine of political opposition research. This material would also be fuel for leaks to DC media who could exploit rumor, supposition, and drops of information that Andrew Weissmann and team intentionally left to be discovered.

Obviously if Jerry Nadler could get his hands on this material it would quickly find its way into the media, the DNC, and ultimately to the 2020 democrat candidate for president, Joe Biden (or other).  That has always been the objective of Jerry Nadler.

KT McFarland provides her perspective on the newly unclassified segment of the Susan Rice memo to herself.

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The bottom line about what took place in the 48 hours of January 4th and January 5th 2017 is not that complex.  Remember, the position of President Obama and Susan Rice is that the White House was unaware of any FBI investigation of Flynn (or the Trump campaign); nor did they have any involvement in directing it to take place.

When Clapper briefed Obama (Jan 4th) about the Flynn intercept the White House lost deniability; Obama was now demonstrably aware of an FBI investigation.  The stay behind meeting (Jan 5th) was the result of the White House reassembling deniability.

Here’s the full memo in context (including the redacted paragraph):

A day or two prior to this meeting DNI James Clapper briefed President Obama on the nature of the call between Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Michael Flynn.

James Clapper received raw “intelligence cuts” about the call from FBI Director James Comey and used them to brief President Obama.

It gets very sticky for the Obama white house to claim they didn’t know about, nor direct, an FBI investigation of Michael Flynn given the fact they were briefed on the intercepted phone communications conveyed by the FBI, via Clapper, to President Obama.

If the FBI wasn’t investigating Flynn, then why were they intercepting his calls?

Understandably President Obama and NSA Susan Rice would be worried about being attached to a potentially very unlawful investigation of the incoming administration and NSA Michael Flynn; hence the ‘stay behind’ meeting.

As a result of prior briefing material President Obama knew the FBI was monitoring and intercepting Flynn’s communication. The aspect of Obama questioning Comey about sharing sensitive information from Flynn; and Comey’s response; points to Obama/Rice knowledge of an FBI operation against Flynn. An FBI operation against Flynn (and Trump) that Susan Rice knows she needs to specifically claim she and Obama did not know about.

From a hindsight perspective it gets very sticky for Obama/Rice to deny knowledge with that 1/5/17 meeting content in the fray. That’s the purpose of the Jan 20th CYA memo to file. Think about it:

Question: Ms Rice how can you claim to have no knowledge of an FBI investigation when the FBI was providing the White House FBI with intercepts of Flynn communication?

Are you saying the FBI intercepts were not authorized by President Obama?

Rice’s CYA memo is attempting to say exactly that. She’s pinning FBI Director James Comey as “rogue.”

Without the memo FBI Director James Comey could claim President Obama and Susan Rice were well aware of the FBI’s Flynn operation. With the memo Obama/Rice position themselves as having no idea until Comey started talking…

That’s the purpose for the memo; Obama & Rice protecting themselves from Comey if things go sideways.

To further illustrate this intent, it’s worth remembering the letter from Susan Rice’s lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler to the Senate:

Note the second to last paragraph, it’s all about denying knowledge of FBI operations, writ large, against the Trump campaign or incoming administration.

When James Clapper walked directly into the White House with “intelligence cuts” specifically from the FBI to share with President Obama, it’s likely the legal team around Obama -specifically including Kathryn Reummler- went bananas.

James Clapper was always a doofus, but usefully so. However, in this context doofus Clapper -with his FBI cuts in hand- just infected the White House with direct knowledge of an ongoing FBI investigation of the incoming administration. In that briefing Clapper just walked over their carefully assembled plausible deniability like an ox in the oval. D’oh.

The ‘pull aside’ meeting immediately thereafter, January 5th, was Obama and Susan Rice cleaning up the mess and reassembling their plausible deniability.

The January 20th Susan Rice memo-to-file was supportive material for that intention.

L-R: Kathryn Ruemmler, President Obama, Lisa Monaco, Susan Rice

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It looks like Sidney Powell has angered Emett Sullivan as the DC judge has now granted all of the requests by prosecuting amicus John Gleeson.

In an order today Judge Sullivan granted Gleeson with the requested schedule to include a July 10th briefing deadline and oral arguments scheduled for July 16th.

Just as the news broke Flynn’s defense attorney Sidney Powell appeared on Lou Dobbs to react.

An exclusive Treasury Department whistleblower outline in the Ohio Star is almost an absolute match to our research {Go Deep} on how President Obama constructed the political surveillance network during his second term.

According to the article in mid-December 2015 the Treasury whistleblower started noticing data-search transactions with the Treasury Dept. for specific people that aligned with the 2016 GOP primary.  The searches included Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump and his family as well as certain members of congress.

[(L-R) Denis McDonough, Joe Biden, President Obama, Tom Donolin, Jack Lew]

The complaint outlines an unnamed database [likely NSA] was used as the first search mechanism.  After initial data was extracted the results were then used to transfer more specific searches to the Treasury dept.   The level of detail within the whistleblower complaint is eerily familiar to our own research based on declassified records.

OHIO STAR – […] By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury.

“When I showed it to her, what she said, ‘Oh, sh%t!’ and I knew right then and there that I was right – this was some shady stuff,” the whistleblower said.

“It wasn’t just him,” the whistleblower said. “They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well.”

Only two names are listed in the whistleblower’s official paperwork, so the others must remain sealed, she said. The second name is Paul J. Manafort Jr., the one-time chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The other names include: Members of Congress, the most senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign and members of Trump’s family, she said.

“Another thing they would do is take targeted names from a certain database – I cannot name, but you can guess – and they were going over to an unclassified database and they were running those names in the unclassified database,” she said.

This ruse was to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans, she said. Once the Treasury personnel had enough information about someone they were targeting from the black box, they would go to the white box for faster and more informed search.

It was routine for these searches that had no criminal nor national security predicate, merely a political predicate, she said. (read more)

What is described in that article is exactly what our own research discovered as we overlaid numerous declassified reports from the NSA, FISA Court, and testimony to congress around the previous use of the IRS to target political opposition.

The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.

[…] There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.

Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.

This whistleblower complaint simply makes sense.

We know Jack Lew was moved from President Obama’s White House to the position of Treasury Secretary specifically because the IRS targeting became public.   As Treasury Secretary Mr. Lew was in position to keep damaging information from surfacing.

Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:

The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)

Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.

The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal.

Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.

[…] The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database.

Sometime around the summer of 2012 the Obama administration shifted from direct searches of the Treasury IRS files, to using contractor access to the NSA database as a way to conduct political surveillance and export search results without any minimization.

The process of exploiting the NSA database continued for years until March 2016 when a severe uptick in activity, coinciding with candidate Donald Trump becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, flagged the NSA database auditor.

Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.

The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.

While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016

It just makes sense the exported contractor results from database access would then transfer to non-classified (Treasury) searches on other networks for more details.   That process is exactly what the Treasury whistleblower is outlining.

Here’s the full background story.

House Intel Committee ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News to discuss the remarks earlier in the day where AG Bill Barr does not foresee any criminal investigation of President Obama or Vice-President Joe Biden.

Rep. Nunes again refers to the buckets of intelligence that would help outline everything that has taken place. Bucket-1 DOJ/FBI activity prior to July 31, 2016. Bucket-2 DOJ/FBI activity between July 31, 2016 and the inauguration. Bucket-3 everything that takes place after the Trump inauguration, to include the Mueller investigation.

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The bottom line is we need full transparency and a complete declassification of the underlying documents that were redacted and hidden to protect the prior behavior.

Against the backdrop of all things DC swamp, this move was entirely predictable.  No-one takes over as chair of the SSCI without senate leadership having (blackmail) material on the appointee to have full control over their activity.  Marco Rubio is fully compromised.

Today Mitch McConnell announces that Senator Marco Rubio will replace Richard Burr as chairman of the notoriously corrupt Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI):

MITCH McCONNELL – “I am glad to announce that Senator Marco Rubio has accepted my invitation to serve as Acting Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“The senior senator for Florida is a talented and experienced Senate leader with expertise in foreign affairs and national security matters. Senator Rubio was the natural choice for this temporary assignment on the basis of accumulated committee service. His proven leadership on pertinent issues only made the decision easier.

“Senator Rubio has spent a decade as a leading member on the Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees. His care for our nation’s security, advocacy for our values and interests, and vigilance toward threats have earned a national reputation. On subjects ranging from China and Russia to Iran and North Korea to tyranny and unrest in our own hemisphere, Senator Rubio has been on the case for years.

“By and large, our nation’s intelligence professionals are dedicated, hard-working men and women who counter foreign threats and keep Americans safe. They deserve all the resources and support Congress can provide. But as recent years have made painfully clear with respect to federal law enforcement, we also need proactive leadership from within and thorough oversight from Congress to keep partisan bias and political interference out of these sensitive activities.

“I appreciate the Acting Chairman’s commitment to lead on all these fronts during this temporary assignment — to help ensure the intelligence community stays ahead of our adversaries, out of politics, and out of the press.” (link)

To understand numerous layers within the overall dynamic it is important to remember Rubio was a never-Trumper.  Nikki Haley, Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio formed the trio of GOPe advocates to defend the interests of the deep state during campaign 2016.  The original opposition research into Trump by Fusion-GPS came as an outcome of Rubio supporters initiating and funding the research.  That effort evolved into the Steele Dossier after team Rubio dropped funding in March 2016; and the Clinton campaign took over.

There has long been an open secret within DC that Rubio was a compromised individual and there was/is a considerable amount of blackmail material known about him.

As a result of the FBI investigation into SSCI leaks by security director James Wolfe, covert communications in the spring of 2017 between SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner and Christopher Steele were discovered.

Six months after Warner was conspiring with Christopher Steele… (in October of 2017), the FBI questioned Senator Warner’s staff and requested the messaging information.

Mark Warner’s efforts with Chris Steele were February through May 2017.  Warner waited until he was caught, then told the committee about his “no paper trail” attempts to coordinate with Steele in October 2017.  The contacts and text messages were later made public in February 2018.

As soon as the covert SSCI communications surfaced (Feb ’18); which were part of the overall committee effort to remove President Trump; chairman Richard Burr and Marco Rubio provided cover by claiming Warner was honest with them in October 2017.

The committee was notified in October 2017, yet not a single member of the SSCI (R or D) demanded Vice-Chairman Mark Warner make an immediate, full and public disclosure of the VERY SERIOUS conflict he engaged in.  Instead the committee waited until after the covert communication was public in February 2018 and then Burr and Rubio defended Warner.

The SSCI is the enabler for a weaponized intelligence apparatus.  McConnell appointing Marco Rubio to the position of acting chair of the committee is simply more swamp defensive positioning.

That’s the larger backdrop to frame this recent tweet by President Trump:

When you peel back all of the layers of the ‘remove trump’ effort; and when you overlay those efforts in individual pieces to see the ramifications in 2020; it is clear one of the biggest scandals continues to revolve around the SSCI and the failure of the DOJ to prosecute James Wolfe for the leak.

Once the Dept. of Justice Wolfe decision was made… it set into action a chain of events that continues to go forward to today.  It’s like the old saying about once you tell a lie you have to tell another lie to cover the original lie; and then another lie to cover the lie about the original lie; and the sequence continues….