Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing turned up on Lou Dobbs' show tonight and had quite a bit to say about the status of the Barr/Durham investigation. I've transcribed the important parts.
Dobbs starts it off by asking if we'll ever see the OIG FISA report, and there's a bit of kidding about dueling anonymous sources. The WaPo source says "by Thanksgiving," but another source says that's "not likely." Then they get into the substance. Two major takeaways:
1) The delay on the OIG FISA report is "partially" due to John Durham's new Grand Jury activity--which can only mean that Durham is already taking testimony from persons named in IG Horowitz's report, and
2) Durham is actively investigating the leak of the Flynn/Kislyak phone call to David Ignatius of the WaPo, which diGenova describes as "a 20 year felony." Ouch! Maybe that person--or persons--will want to go for a deal? But they'll have to have something truly major to offer. Something that Durham can't get without their cooperation.
So, the transcript in relevant part--which means, virtually all of it:
Victoria Toensing: I can tell you this, and we have darn good sources for this, it [the OIG FISA report] is going to be very bad for the people in the Obama administration. My source said to me, "It's going to be worse than you can imagine."
...
Joe diGenova: I would say explosive and I would say, for people at the highest levels of the FBI and at the highest levels of the Justice Department--more important at the Justice Department--it’s going to be devastating. It’s going to ruin careers, it’s going to make people have bar problems ...
Victoria Toensing: Bill Barr problems! [laughs]
Joe diGenova: No, no, bar association problems. What’s clear, now we know is that the senior levels of the Obama Justice Department were complicit in knowingly submitting materially false applications to the FISA Court for an illegitimate counterintelligence purpose. Not for a legitimate purpose, but to spy on Americans for political purposes. And it really will end up being the beginning of the greatest political scandal in history. And it [the OIG FISA report] is being held up partially because of John Durham’s new Grand Jury, which by the way exists for one reason and one reason only – because people are going to be indicted.
Lou Dobbs: Now, he [Durham] is in charge of both FISA abuse and the origins of Spygate, whatever you want to call it--the worst political scandal in this country's history. Is anything being held up because of simply the vast scope of his investigation?
Victoria Toensing: It's been expanded, Lou. He's now going into whole other areas. He's going back into the origins of the investigation. For those of us who know this business, if you're in counterintelligence and you get word that George Papadopoulos has said he's heard something, that the Russians have something, you know what you do? You go knock on his door within a week and ask him about it, and have him give you the information, where did he get it ... They didn't do that. They didn't do that at all. They disobeyed all the rules of a counterintelligence investigation.
Toensing is absolutely right about that.
Joe diGenova: And it's expanded because, originally, Barr wanted Durham to just look at the beginnings of Crossfire Hurricane. How did it start, how did it happen? But then what they discovered, they found out from the Devin Nunes experience at the White House, in March of 2017, that there had been massive, massive, unmaskings of Americans for political purposes and that the information was given and leaked to the press. And, by the way, the Michael Flynn - Ambassador Kislyak call, the Russian Ambassador, which was leaked to David Ignatius of the WaPo, is in fact the subject of one of the criminal investigations because that leak is a 20 year felony.
And count on it, if Durham is looking at the leak, he's looking at everything to do with the Flynn case. And that means not just Comey and his gang of jokers, but Team Mueller, too.
Victoria Toensing: And I've got another idea for Durham. That is, he oughta bring in Mark Zaid before the Grand Jury and ask him how he knew CNN was gonna be a part of it. Was he talking to James Clapper? Did he know that Clapper was gonna leak the dossier?
>he oughta bring in Mark Zaid before the Grand Jury and ask him how he knew CNN was gonna be a part of it. <
ReplyDeleteI think the term that describes Mr. Zaid's behavior is hubris. Anyway Rig for Red /Qsarc off
Nothing would surprise me less than to learn that Barr/Durham is looking into some of the Impeachment Theater shenanigans with leaks.
DeleteThe term that comes to my mind is 'criminal conspiracy'
DeleteWorks for me!
DeleteA CTH comment shows a tweet, about Solomon saying that "the DOJ asked Horowitz to go back and detail and explain all of the statutes that were broken", and that Horowitz won't be issued before 18 Nov.
ReplyDeleteShould we presume that such a list of statutes would be equivalent to Referrals for Prosecution?
IE., is there any precedent for such a list, which weren't
followed by such Referrals?
OIG, of course, doesn't do the prosecuting, just the investigating. However, as lawyers, they can take note of violations and point them out to DoJ, which does the prosecuting. DoJ doesn't have to prosecute. However, the fact that DoJ requested a list of everything sounds like they want OIG to go beyond what it might already have done. That certainly suggests that DoJ plans on putting that list to use. Possibly on prosecutions. Possibly the list will be used in plea negotiations.
DeleteNovember 18, of course, would be before Thanksgiving.
>November 18, of course, would be before Thanksgiving.<
DeleteI think after January 1st, 2020. Why dilute these items during the holidays?
Wasn't that always the tell- that they never interviewed Papadopoulos and Page when they, the investigators, claimed to have received information about the two having Russian contacts? Seriously, they had a history of getting good information from Carter Page himself, and there was no reason at all to suspect George Papadopoulos wouldn't come clean if you approached him for a friendly chat- after all, Papadopoulos supposedly, according to the FBI's story they told to the NYTimes, willingly disclosed the information to Alexander Downing in a damned wine bar.
ReplyDeleteOccam's Razor is very useful in this instance- you only don't interview them right away given these circumstances because you already know that the all the Russian contacts were setups perpetrated by the CIA, MI6, Australian, and Italian intelligence agencies. Lastly, this also goes right back to the entire lack of curiousity on the part of the Mueller Clown Show in regards to Mifsud, the so-called Russian hacking of the DNC, and non-indictment of Carter Page. It was all fabricated from whole cloth, and the FBI team that started Crossfire Hurricane knew this from the beginning. I strongly suspect that Durham and Barr have proof of this- documentary evidence laying it all out.
Yes. You always seek cooperative witnesses in virtually any investigation. Page had a long history as such and it's clear that Papdopoulos was in the same category. Confronting Flynn and Manafort would probably have flipped them, too. That is--all of that supposes that you actually believe they were up to something. But, as you say, they knew it was all bogus. And, for some, there was a personal animus against Flynn.
DeleteA fascinating game of chicken is currently playing out in DC.
ReplyDeleteThe coup, now led by Pelosi/Schiff, is still ongoing and the genesis of this current "whistleblower" campaign began more than a year ago. Not only was this a conspiracy in continuation of previous coup efforts by Brennan/Comey/Mueller, but it involved criminal acts and perjury by members of Congress. There is no end this ever-growing crime wave.
Conversely, Barr/Durham are escalating the severity of the investigation, which in tern is increasing the stress/legal exposure of the coup conspirators and raising public expectations of accountability.
Half the country now wants to see Trump hung by the neck until dead. And the other half wants the same outcome for half of the Obama Administration's senior staff and Executive Branch leadership.
What this means is that the upcoming Schiff show public hearings will likely be a redux of the Kavannagh inquisition and Hannity will not be able to stop muttering "tick-tock" endlessly.
I think the involvement of Congress is a key. It's an indicator of how deep and wide the corruption of the Deep State runs. It's not simply a question of cleaning up a few agencies--it's a widespread culture of corruption. The resistance to an outsider president is another indicator of the unity of a Washington Deep State that spans all three branches.
Delete"The resistance to an outsider president is another indicator of the unity of a Washington Deep State that spans all three branches".
Delete...and both parties.
When you look at it this way, what Trump has been able to accomplish so far is extraordinary.
However, he...and we...have a long way to go before power is returned to the People.
I am reminded of the portrait of Trump on the cover page of Whatfinger with the caption,
"In reality they're not after me, they're after you. I'm just in the way."
Absolutely. And so many voters think all they want is to abolish reality and give them cradle to grave security.
DeleteOf course, Trump is just the guy in the way of their real target, us.
DeleteAnd, yes, Congress is key. Thus, Mitch is key.
If he is mostly clean (incl. of covering for the D.S.), he likely won't sabotage Barr's probe into the Uniparty.
If he is largely dirty, I fear he could somehow cause Barr big (mostly indirect) problems.
The coming ruling on Flynn should say much, on which way the wind is really blowing.
"The coming ruling on Flynn should say much, on which way the wind is really blowing."
DeleteThis should be a slam dunk for Flynn, especially coming from a judge with a record like Sullivan's. If the ruling goes against Flynn--I firmly believe Flynn will ultimately be exonerated--it will indeed say a lot about official DC.
"it will indeed say a lot about official DC."
DeleteIndeed it would, as would a dropping of charges ("on a technicality"), w/o ANY reprimand of the Feds.
If the D.S. can get the judge to "accept" an Offer that he Can't Refuse, the Republic's last stand will be next year's election.
When I refer to a 2020 Last Stand, I should’ve qualified that with “unless Horowitz/ Barr/ Durham spank the D.S. so hard, that it must concentrate on struggling to survive at all, instead of its continuing to be able to crap all over the American people.”
DeleteSidney Powell asserted to Maria Bartiromo that Obama fired Flynn because he was investigating the Deep State. Within two days after the 2016, Trump and Obama sat down for a conversation during which Obama warned Trump not to hire Mike Flynn.
ReplyDeleteObama had his own antipathy toward Flynn, strong enough that Flynn was one of the most important things he chose to talk about in that conversation. Someone - maybe Ciaramella? - warned Obama about Flynn and caused him to be fired?…my opinion.
Obama was also to be kept informed of everything that Strzok and Page and McCabe and the others were doing. That was in one of Page’s texts.
All roads will eventually end up at Obama, IMO.
Re Obama and Flynn, what had the Deep State up in arms over Flynn were his views on the rise of ISIS. Just search "flynn origin of isis" and you'll come up with all sorts of stuff, e.g., like this--it appealed to Trump but no one in the Deep State, and it's a huge part of what scared the pants of the Deep State about Trump:
DeleteIn an interview with Mehdi Hasan of al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn says that the decision to arm opposition to Syria's Bashar al-Assad went forward despite warnings that those weapons might fall into radical hands. Flynn says it was a "willful decision" by the Obama administration.
HASAN: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?
FLYNN: I think the administration.
HASAN: So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?
FLYNN: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.
HASAN: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?
FLYNN: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.
This narrative sounds much like the accusation that surfaced back in 2012 that Fast & Furious was actually intended as an under the table arming operation by .gov of the Sinaloa Cartel. That the propaganda excuse was actually a dead-end CYA dodge (if the hounds think they caught a rabbit, when it's really a mouse, they quit hunting rabbits). The nub of the story being that the .gov would surreptitiously arm the Sinaloas; they would take out their competition, giving them near monopoly of the drug trade in N. America, and their "friends" would be well rewarded.
DeleteSome would contend that our involvement with various bad actors in the M.E. going back forty (or more) years has more to do with the heroin trade than oil.
Tom S.
Well, but the head of DIA and a Lieutenant General isn't supposed to talk about that stuff in public if he doesn't want the Deep State coming after him. Maybe that was his big mistake--thinking his rank would protect him.
DeleteComey, Clapper, Brennan and ValJar should not accept any invitations to Ft. Marcy Park after dark.
ReplyDeleteI will want front row seats for the executions.
ReplyDeleteNever say never! If the AUMF means the US is in a "time of war" then maybe we could argue that the perps are "adhering to [our] Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
DeleteAs much as I would like this to be true, we have been listening to this line for a few years now. Any day now Session, Huber and now Barr was going to lower the boom of these birds yada yada yada. Yet the whole time shit heels like Comey, McCabe, Clapper & Brennan strut around in the news without a care in the world. Why are they so confident? Why do we have so little results from Horowitz's other reports which listed hundreds of violations by these same people but the DOJ didn't think they worth prosecuting. I want to believe, but why should I?
ReplyDeleteThat isn't really the case. Certainly no one ever thought Sessions would "lower the boom"--he recused himself immediately. Before Barr took over at DoJ on February 14, 2019, only 9 months ago, we knew the Deep State still controlled the major agencies. Nine months to run an investigation of this scope is not a lot of time. The reaction of the Left--panic verging on hysteria--shows that Barr and Durham are progressing rapidly. But this is an extraordinarily complex, mulit-facedted, investigation. When people call it the biggest scandal in US history they're not kidding, and that means it won't be easy to unravel, given that it involves all three branches of government and the military.
DeleteRe Horowitz, it's necessary to bear in mind that OIG's powers at DoJ are very restricted. Nevertheless, Horowitz has gathered a lot of information that Durham will be using, expediting Durham's work.