CTH is going to break down the AG Barr Principal Conclusion notification letter against more than three years of background research. Yes, more than “three years“, is the correct time-frame here. The origin of the DOJ/FBI operation against Donald Trump goes back to 2015; the Mueller probe was a 2017 concluding chapter in the seditious conspiracy effort.
I’m going to cite as much background as possible; however, this review encompasses so much granular history that some parts might be too complex for a person who only recently jumped into the story. Disclaimer: this outline does not fit the narrative from those who claim Mueller and Rosenstein are honorable men. They ain’t.
The first part that matters is a few paragraphs into the letter. Here we find the scale of the investigative group, and a description of some of the investigative paths they traveled:
There are several takeaways that are worthy of notation.
♦ First, the team of 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents is more than the original Crossfire Hurricane investigative team (lawyers added), but includes the exact same group of FBI and DOJ staff level investigative officials that originated the Trump operation long before Robert Mueller was selected to lead them.
The transferring team assembly has been missed by media; and also missed by those who have researched the investigators. It is an important point, yet completely overlooked.
The same career staff unit that originated the unlawful activity to weaponize the DOJ and FBI is the same team that transferred into the Mueller probe. Their supervising officials changed, Comey, McCabe, Baker, Lynch and Yates (et al) were fired; however, the career investigative officials within the process are identical.
The FBI agents transferred from Operation Crossfire Hurricane into the Mueller Special Counsel. This is a key, heck, critical point, that is continually missed and glossed over.
The Mueller Special Counsel in May 2017 did not start from a clean slate of investigators. Yes, new additional lawyers were added, but the investigators who conducted the Mueller probe were the same investigators who were carrying out the 2016 unlawful and illegal surveillance activity.
Initially Lisa Page and Peter Strzok also transferred to the Mueller team; but they had to be removed in July 2017 due to the discovery of their paper trail. If their paper trail had never been discovered they would have remained with their comrades.
And that takes us to an important SIDEBAR that everyone forgets. Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were removed because Inspector General Horowitz accidentally stumbled upon their communication. Originally Horowitz was looking at “media leaks”, and that led him to question Deputy FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe denied the leaks, but when the IG questioned Lisa Page about media contacts she said McCabe told her to give stories to the media. McCabe and Page were contradicting each-other.
The IG asked Page if she could prove her side of the story, Page said she had texts from McCabe and gave her phone to INSD investigators…. the rest is history. Those IG investigators, while validating the instructions from McCabe (showing he lied), uncovered the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page bias and communication that set the ground work for “spygate”. The IG then had to inform Mueller of the compromised position.
♦The second point that needs to be noted from these paragraphs, is the scale of tools used by the Special Counsel (paragraphs reposted for additional review):
Remember, Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein re-authorized and re-submitted the third renewal of the Carter Page Title-1 (not title-3) FISA warrant in mid-July 2017.
That Carter Page Title-1 warrant did not expire until mid-October 2017. So when we look at search warrants, subpoenas, and specifically “50 authorized pen registers“, we should note most of them were generally not needed while the Page FISA warrant was active.
When Mueller’s team began; and remember this is the same operational team – just using a new leader; they had the legal authority to conduct active electronic surveillance on any individual who was within two hops of Carter Page. [So anyone who was in direct contact with Carter Page, and anyone that person was in contact with, and anyone that second person was in contact with.] All of those officials were under surveillance. A typical two-hop Title-1 warrant ends up hitting a network between 900 to 2,500 people.
The “pen registers” are ‘trap and trace warrants’ [SEE HERE], essentially another form of electronic surveillance (phone, email, etc) and extraction. They would not have been needed for anyone within the Carter Page orbit (the Trump campaign), until the Title-1 FISA warrant expired (October 2017). The pen registers fall under Title-3, ordinary domestic, non-FISA related, DOJ suspect searches and inquires, ie. “phone taps”.
Between the Title-1 FISA warrant (entire trump orbit captured) and the 50 pen registers (unknown orbit) and 500 search warrants (also Title-3), there was a massive dragnet of active surveillance and extraction of electronic files from all targets. Active wire-taps, or “listening bugs”, would also fall under the FISA warrant and/or the Title-3 pen registers.
This gives us the scale of reach for those 40 active and assigned FBI agents.
Understanding that President Trump was a defined initial target of the investigation (as also noted in the Barr letter), those wire-taps, electronic surveillance, phone intercepts and listening “bugs” would have applied directly to President Trump and the White House.
[Insert “by the book” notation from President Obama here.]
Do you think we’ll ever hear about how Team Mueller took over active bugs within the White House?… I digress.
Again, I’m going to repeat…. The same investigators who initiated the Trump operation in late 2015, through spygate, and into Crossfire Hurricane (July 2016), were the same investigators in May 2017 when Mueller became their boss. That’s three years of active electronic surveillance, intercepts and extraction. Think about it.
♦ Next we move on to Page Two. Here AG Barr tells us the Mueller report has two elements. Russian interference, including Trump’s potential collusion with Russians; and the second element is the Obstruction investigation:
The key point on the Russian collusion/conspiracy aspect is not actually within Barr’s letter, but is really the unwritten 800lb gorilla in the corner of the letter. There was NO actual Russian election interference to speak of. The entire premise was/is absurd.
A Macedonian content farm producing shit memes on social media isn’t exactly a vast Russian election conspiracy. So it is absurd that the predicate for the Special Counsel was to see if Trump was coordinating with irrelevant shit-posting meme providers etc.
The lack of evidence, for a premise that doesn’t exist, leads Robert Mueller to quote in his report: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”.
No shit? Really?
I wonder how long it took them to figure that out? Maybe something like this:
Mueller (May 2017): Hey Pete, did Trump’s social media guys talk to those Macedonian dudes, or re-post their stuff?
Strzok: Nope. Not that we could ever find.
Mueller: OK, well, that part of the investigation is over. After lunch how about your guys, move on to obstruction.
Strzok: Gotcha.
Unfortunately, that’s only partially tongue-in-cheek on my part. See the next paragraph:
Remember, Rod Rosenstein made a grand splash about indicting the Internet Research Agency. However, he buried the indictment evidence in the DOJ-NSD (National Security Division)… never to be seen from, or brought up, ever again.
The ridiculous nature of that FEB-2018 insufferable ruse, was the breaking point for CTH in giving Rosenstein any benefit of the doubt.
It was/is transparently obvious that Team Mueller and DAG Rod Rosenstein needed to throw up something, anything, that would validate the fraudulent “Muh Russia” premise behind the corrupt DOJ/FBI political operation that was started back in 2015. The IRA indictments were theatrics; a ruse; a cover. Hell, even the damned Washington Post noted it:
(WaPo) A 37-page indictment issued by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team on Friday brings fresh American attention to one of the strangest elements of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election: The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a state-sponsored “troll factory” in St. Petersburg.
But much of the information Mueller published on Friday about the agency’s efforts to influence the election had already been published last October — in an article by a Russian business magazine, RBC.
In a 4,500-word report titled “How the ‘troll factory’ worked the U.S. elections,” journalists Polina Rusyaeva and Andrey Zakharov offered the fullest picture yet of how the “American department” of the IRA used Facebook, Twitter and other tactics to inflame tensions ahead of the 2016 vote. The article also looked at the staffing structure of the organization and revealed details about its budget and salaries. (read more)
Someone get a banana for the 800lb gorilla. I hear CNN has extras, I digress.
The next part of Barr’s letter, as determined from the investigative material provided by Team Mueller, is even more disingenuous as it pertains to Russia:
How could the Special Counsel find that Russian “actors” hacked into computers without being able to do a forensic audit of the servers from the DNC?
Wait….
No, really, wait…
Notice how this is oddly worded:
…”hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliatedwith the Clinton campaign and Democrat party organizations.”…
That paragraph could be describing anyone. Those who are skilled in reviewing professionally obtuse legalese verbiage from the government will immediately pick up something. They are not saying the “DNC” was hacked, and we know Podesta was NOT hacked (he was a victim of a phishing password change). Oh snap, the gorilla farted.
The next segment is just as priceless when overlayed against what technically is not stated in the first:
…”the special counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign”.
Everyone here is projecting Hillary Clinton emails into this statement, but the Clinton emails were never hacked, stolen or released. [There were 30,000 missing Clinton emails that supposedly never surfaced until the Weiner Laptop was discovered.] But the second segment says “these efforts“, and it’s not exactly clear what “these efforts” mean, because nothing in this paragraph makes any sense. What are “these efforts“?
Read it again and see if you can make sense of it.
The key takeaway from this entire “Russian Interference” part, is that there wasn’t actually any Russian interference, so the predicate for Trump to be investigated for colluding or conspiring to do something that technically wasn’t being done is just silly.
And that’s the frustrating part of this entire three years. The Russian Interference narrative was constructed ex post-facto to cover for a political surveillance operation that was targeting candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. The Carter Page FISA warrant (an insurance policy) was needed as cover for the investigative data trail and time spent by FBI officials enlisted in the surveillance operation.
The investigation into something that didn’t exist was predicated as a cover for something the DOJ and FBI were trying to hide. Considering that Robert Mueller came on board in May 2017, there’s no doubt he realized that within weeks (if he didn’t know that from the outset).
After we accept the Russian narrative was entirely false, when we move to the Obstruction narrative we find out why they spent so much time on it. Without any actual Russian interference to collude or conspire with, the possible obstruction case was the only case that could have ever existed.
♦ And it is within the obstruction nonsense where anger over this fiasco really starts to settle in and there’s absolutely NO ROOM to consider Robert Mueller and/or Rod Rosenstein anything except complicit with the sedition team.
What we find in the Barr letter about the Obstruction investigation is blood boiling. Here Team Mueller intentionally politicize their non-finding in an attempt to open the door for Nancy Pelsoi and Jerry Nadler to exploit an impeachment angle.
Team Mueller intentionally tells AG Barr they cannot make a determination of obstruction, and thereby force Barr to make the decision; and make it look political.
The obstruction angle was always what Team Mueller were working to deliver, in collaboration with their democrat political allies.
In my opinion it’s almost certain AG Barr saw this coming, which is why he forced DAG Rod Weaselstein to stick around, share in the decision and deflect the politics.
In summary it is almost certain that Team Mueller knew from the outset there was no Russian collusion/conspiracy because: 1) it’s the same team from 2016 through 2019; and 2) they knew from the outset there was no “there” there.
So, a reasonable question would be: How long did Mueller investigate conspiracy with Russia before jumping to Obstruction of Justice? I think the answer is that Mueller abandoned the Russia angle around August 2017, when he asked Rosenstein for an updated scope memo.
Everything from August 2017 through to March 2019 was Robert Mueller and his team trying to prove an obstruction case of a predicate Russian investigation that was non-existent, and based on a false premise.
FUBAR.
We have every right to be angry !
https://www.scribd.com/embeds/402973466/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-d6W3OkqRPlz3GXlfTDQk
Centinel2012 