Johson makes a simple but important point toward the end of the intro:
There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign.
The distinction here is that we have now learned from John Solomon's reporting that the Ukraine has confirmed that a Clinton campaign operative--Alexandra Chalupa--did in fact proactively reach out to the Ukrainian government seeking dirt on Paul Manafort: Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016.
Monica Showalter at American Thinker comments: "Paul Manafort's case for a tossout of all the charges against him gets quite a bit stronger."
Flynn, Papadopoulos, Manafort ...
Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump
Guest post by Larry C. Johnson

The preponderance of evidence makes this very simple–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia.
The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign.
... The biggest curiosity is that US intelligence or law enforcement officials fully briefed British intelligence on what they were up to. Quite understandable given what we now know about British spying on the Trump Campaign.
The Mueller investigation of Trump “collusion” with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential election focused on eight cases:
Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow—
George Papadopolous—
Carter Page—
Dimitri Simes—
Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)
Events at Republican Convention
Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak
Paul Manafort
One simple fact emerges–of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the proposals to interact with the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not one.
Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.
Let’s look in detail at each of the cases.
...
Yes, that was a great article. Reading it reminds me once again to question Carter Page, though. Page was also a FBI and like CIA informant during the Obama Administration, just like Sater. I don't think it out of the question that Page himself was an entrapment tool. The only exculpatory evidence that this theory is wrong is that Halper went to Page, too. So, as of now, I think Page was an unwitting patsy, but I still wonder.
ReplyDelete"I think Page was an unwitting patsy"
ReplyDeleteMy view as well. The question then becomes: was his joining the Trump campaign a coincidence or was he also an unwitting plant? Was he steered to the campaign by intel operatives?
I am going on my gut with my following opinion.
ReplyDeleteWhen I listened to Carter Page on the Byron York show, he came across as an innocent, outraged man. If he not, he is a good actor.
Another Johnson article, titled Felix Sater and the Steele DossierFelix Sater and the Steele Dossier, provides a lot of information about the relationship between Felix Sater and Michael Cohen -- friends since childhood.
ReplyDeleteSater became acquainted with Donald Trump in 2003, and Cohen became acquainted with Trump in 2006. It's likely that Sater introduced Cohen to Trump.
Christopher Steele's first Dossier report might describe Sater-Cohen efforts to offer to Trump (in Steele's words) "various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament."
In other words, Steele seemed (my own interpretation) to be preparing the groundwork for his future reports that Russian Intelligence was offering real-estate deals to Trump through Sater and Cohen. Evidently, however, Steele ultimately did not bring Sater and Cohen into the yarn that he was beginning to write with that first Dossier report.
A subplot of Steele's intended future reports might be indicated by his first report's words (written on about June 20, 2016) especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament.
The idea here seems to be that Russian Intelligence was using Sater and Cohen in June 2016 to arrange for Trump to build a Trump hotel in Moscow before the world soccer tournament that was scheduled to take place in Moscow in 2018.
The entire paragraph in Steele's Dossier report (new emphasis added):
The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. How ever, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.
Why did Steele write in this first report that Trump was not accepting the offers to build the hotel? How does this paragraph hurt Trump? The paragraph seems to exonerate Trump!
I speculate that Steele intended on June 20 that his future reports would develop his yarn that Russian Intelligence increasingly persuaded Trump to accept the offers to build the Moscow hotel.
Steele considered himself to be an expert on Russian corruption related to world soccer. In 2015, he had tried to convince the FBI to charge Russia's Deputy Premier Igor Sechin in the FIFA scandal. The FBI took no action against Sechin, but Steele perhaps still hoped to sic the FBI on Sechin.
Somebody (I think) was paying Steele to slander Sechin. Therefore, Steele intended to write a future report that would tell how Sechin would -- in order to further Russian corruption in international soccer -- take the key actions that would convince Trump to build the Moscow hotel for the 2018 soccer tournament.
I speculate further that Steele, in June 2016, was counting on Sater and Cohen to convince Tump soon to approve a Moscow hotel deal. As it turned out, however, Sater and Cohen failed to convince Trump to do so, and so Steele never did write his intended future subplot about Sechin convincing Trump to build the hotel as part of the Trump-Russia collusion.
The whole notion of implicitly trusting a hired gun--which is what Steele is--is utterly daft on its face. The question then becomes, did the FBI really trust Steele's good faith or was it simply that they needed a source to get what they wanted--a FISA--and the end justified the means? And they weren't at all particular about the means. I think right now the supposition has to be that they were all in to get Trump and were willing to use dishonesty to do it.
DeleteIn my previous comment, I speculated that Christopher Steele's first Dossier report -- written on about June 20, 2016 -- intended to lay the groundwork for future reports that would tell how Russian Intelligence would persuade Donald Trump to build a hotel in Moscow for the 2018 world soccer tournament.
ReplyDeleteAmong other plot twists, Steele's yarn would set up Michael Cohen as a patsy. Steele apparently had been informed by June 20, 2016, that Felix Sater and Michael Cohen were trying to convince Donald Trump to build a hotel in Moscow. Steele's first report said that the Kremlin was offering this hotel deal to cultivate Trump and to support him in his election race against Hillary Clinton.
Although Steele's first Dossier report did not name Sater or Cohen, Steele knew that those two were trying to convince Trump to join such a deal. As real life and Steele's fiction would develop, Steele might reveal that Russia was communicating with Trump about the Moscow hotel deal through Cohen.
Steele hoped that only Cohen would be exposed as an agent of the Kremlin. Cohen was the only intended patsy in this particular subplot.
However, there was a possibility that Sater too might be implicated. If that happened, then that subplot of Steele's yarn would become somewhat more complicated. After all, Sater could be linked to the FBI and perhaps also to the CIA. However, Sater too was expendable.
Therefore, Sater too might become a patsy, if necessary. In the meantime, Sater was informing his FBI handler what Cohen was telling Sater about Trump's reactions to the offers to build a hotel in Moscow. From the FBI, that information was communicated through a series of cut-outs to Steele.
Based on that information, Steele intended to develop his yarn in future reports of his Dossier. If Trump took steps to agree to the Moscow hotel project, then those future steps would be reflected in Steele's future reports.
In particular, Steele would report that the hotel project was progressing because of key support from Igor Sechin, the leading corrupter of Russian soccer and of international soccer. A major lesson of Steele's epic drama would be that the FBI should have acted on Steele's previous warnings about Sechin when the FBI was investigating the FIFA scandal. The FBI should have valued Steele more than it did.
What you're suggesting here about Steele being a self promoter--and aren't people in his line usually that type?--fits in with what Victora Nuland said about him, constantly pushing his latest reports on DoS.
DeleteAll this communication in 2015/early 2016 with Cohen talking with Russians is most likely the source for the early (2016) UK reports (esp. The Guardian newspaper) about "troubling communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians" and the need for multiple European IC agencies to "warn" the Americans. Just the meta-data was important (ie. from who to whom), the actual data was "not helpful" (ie. what was being communicated). Perhaps Chrissy Steele originally heard the rumblings (or is that ramblings) from former colleagues while "sipping a fine port in the high-backed armchairs in the wood paneled drawing room at his "gentleman's club" in Knightsbridge, SW London.
ReplyDeleteHugh W
:-)
DeleteRight. Create the "troubling communications" then use your creation to predicate a Full Investigation and leverage that into a FISA.
Here's the theory behind it:
Nancy Pelosi Details 'Wrap-Up Smear' Technique. It Sounds Exactly Like The Kavanaugh Smear.
I wonder if a small part of this was not a CIA/FBI/DOJ creation. What I mean by that are the reports that several European IC agencies namely the Dutch, French, German, Polish and Estonian ICA's were "raising their concerns". I find it a little hard to believe they are all dancing to Brennan's tune. So I reckon that those ICA's (well excluding the Brits) were looking at meta data and seeing a Trump Tower to Moscow connection and going "Veeeery intereeesting!) while not actually recording the actual communcation. Pretty harmless - obviously monitoring Moscow communications systems is something ICA's attempt to do all the time.
DeleteBut when Brennan heard about it the wheels turned and he thought a useful Plan B or C just in case and thus it got into the "bloodstream".
Hugh W
I'd have to do some searching, but I believe I read somewhere that that's how the Estonian part worked.
Delete