Harris Faulkner begins the interview by asking whether Jordan thinks this new text revelation is a "problem" for Obama. In response Jordan immediately points out that the text has to be understand in the context of a timeline, and proceeds to sketch that timeline out.
July 5: Hillary Email Investigation--closed.
Later in July: Strzok opens Trump/Russia investigation.
Sept 2: "POTUS wants to know EVERYTHING we're doing."
Having laid out the bare bones of the timeline, Jordan doubles back: Understand, he says, that between the opening of the Trump/Russia investigation and the September 2 "POTUS wants to know EVERYTHING" text comes the "insurance policy" text on 8/16/16. Then, just to make sure Faulkner gets the significance of what he has in mind, Jordan repeats the timeline, this time inserting the "insurance policy" text:
July 5: Hillary Email Investigation--closed.
Later in July: Strzok opens Trump/Russia investigation.
Aug 16: "Insurance Policy" text.
Sept 2: "POTUS wants to know EVERYTHING we're doing."
Jordan's point is that the Hillary Email Investigation is well past, as we pointed out earlier. Therefore, "potus wants to know everything we're doing" can't be focused on Hillary's emails. Of course, since POTUS wants to know everything, if something new comes up on that he'll want to know about it, but that's not the focus. The focus is on the future, the remaining weeks before the election. Jordan is quite clear in his mind that the key to all this is the "insurance policy" text, which comes between the opening of Russia/Trump and the Potus wanting to know everything the FBI is doing.
Now, Jordan thinks the reference to an "insurance policy" means that Strzok is saying that the FBI needs something that will "guarantee" that Trump won't get elected. Therefore, he's suggesting that Obama wants to know everything the FBI is doing to guarantee that Trump won't get elected. Here I think Jordan's a bit off track, in the sense that it's not that simple.
Strzok is no dummy. He knows there are no guarantees to be had. As we sketched out in the first post in this series, the whole point of the "insurance policy" text is that the FBI needs to be prepared (have an "insurance policy" in place) just in case Trump is actually elected. Strzok makes his meaning clear by likening Trump's election--the unthinkable event to be insured against--to "the unlikely event you die before you're 40." In other words, just as was stated in earlier, the "it" that was decided upon in the strategy session in Andy McCabe's office is a specific action, a path forward, that will function like an insurance policy. But the path forward isn't, can't be, a guarantee that Trump won't be elected. That's the whole point of the text:
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I'm afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."Now, of course Strzok and his superiors in the upper echelons of the FBI (Priestap, McCabe, Page, Comey, et alios) will be doing all in their power to prevent that unthinkable event from occurring, just as one would take all precautions lest "you die before you're 40." But the specific action, "it", is something that will help the FBI in the dark days that will ensue if Trump is elected. That specific action, one that actually occurred, must in my mind be obtaining the FISA warrant targeting Carter Page. As we're now seeing, this strategy was always going to be fraught with danger, because they all knew that the FISA warrant could only be obtained by fraud. That's precisely why Lisa Page suggested at the meeting that perhaps they needed to simply act on the conviction "that there's no way he gets elected", rather than taking this risky step.
But the decision was made to go for the FISA, feelers were put out to get more "stuff" for the dossier with which to target Carter Page. The purpose of the FISA warrant on Carter Page of course included collecting intelligence on the Trump campaign that might be of use to Hillary, but that was always going to be a long shot--far from the "guarantee" that Jordan speculates about in the interview. Fundamentally, it was intended to collect information that might serve to protect the FBI's interests--as viewed from the executive offices on the 7th Floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building. And now we're living in the midst of the "rest" that will become history.
UPDATE: To show the usefulness of timelines for bringing clarity to the often murky world of politics and espionage, sundance at Conservative Treehouse articulates this morning the same conclusions as above, concluding with--the "insurance policy" text. Note what's implicit in this high risk strategy--retroactive legal authority is also an insurance policy going forward:
"All of the evidence points in one transparently obvious direction; toward a 2016 collaborative effort structured to use a counterintelligence operation to conduct wiretaps and surveillance on the presidential campaign of candidate Donald Trump. The FISA Title-1 surveillance approval of Carter Page was retroactive legal authority to do so.
"The FBI and DOJ certainly went to extra-ordinary lengths to get that FISA Title-1 warrant approved; even to the extent of misleading the FISA court on the validity of the underlying documents. The DOJ/FBI ‘small group’ really seemed quite desperate to gain that FISA Title-1 surveillance authority…
"…. they really, really needed it:
…”I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40″…
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