Durham Is Focusing On The Task Force And The ICA Assessment

Excellent. AG Bill Barr is on the same page we described earlier today: Brennan's Task Force--The Heart Of The Russia Hoax. Barr recognizes the Task Force and the ICA Assessment as twin lynchpins in the Russia Hoax.

The NYT has an article out that reports that AG Bill Barr's prosecutor of choice for the Russia Hoax "review", John Durham, "wants to better understand the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016." That means, the Task Force. And the NYT understands that:

In the summer of 2016, the intelligence community formed a task force housed at the C.I.A. to investigate Russian interference. The group shared intelligence with F.B.I. investigators who opened the bureau’s Russia inquiry ...

Further, Durham is focusing on the analytical process behind the production of the ICA Assessment.

Specifically, the article (Justice Dept. Seeks to Question C.I.A. Officers in Russia Inquiry Review) reports that Durham will soon seek to interview two CIA employees who were key to that CIA/FBI cooperation in 2016--and it should come as no surprise that the same personnel who were involved in the Task Force were also involved in the production of the ICA assessment (Peter Strzok, on the FBI side, was also involved in both):

One of the C.I.A. officers he wants to question works at the agency’s counterintelligence mission center that would have been one conduit for the C.I.A. to pass intelligence to the F.B.I. about Russian attempts to reach out to the Trump campaign, or information that the agency uncovered about Moscow’s interference campaign. C.I.A. officers at the center work closely with the F.B.I. on complex cases like hunting down traitors and helping validate the agency’s informants. 

The senior analyst whom the Justice Department wants to talk to was involved in the C.I.A. assessment of Russian activities in 2016, ...

The article makes two additional points:


1. While Durham's review is not a criminal investigation, per se, he is authorized to pursue any criminality he encounters. Can you say: Distinction with little or no difference?

2. CIA Director Gina Haspel has said she will cooperate in making her employees available. Interestingly, Durham has twice previously investigated the CIA, including Haspel. As a result Durham has a familiarity with the Agency and Haspel appears to trust that Durham will be fair.

Sundance at CTH comments on this development, getting to the heart of the matter:

The claims within the ICA were/are completely silly, and manufactured specifically to present a political narrative intended to undermine President-elect Donald Trump. The ICA was the brain-trust of John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey. NSA Director Mike Rogers would not sign up to the “high confidence” claims, likely because he saw through the political motives of the report. 

Apparently John Durham is looking into just this aspect: Was the ICA document a politically engineered report stemming from within a corrupt intelligence network? 

The importance of that question is rather large.  All of the downstream claims about Russian activity, including the Russian indictments promoted by Rosenstein and the Mueller team, are centered around origination claims of illicit Russian activity outlined in the ICA. 

If the ICA is a false political document…. then guess what?
Yep, the entire narrative from the JAR and ICA is part of a big fraud.

ADDENDUM 1: And count on it--Durham will be asking about Brennan's role and influence in both areas: Task Force and ICA Assessment. Thus Brennan's over the top tweet upon hearing the report (see Joe's comment, below).

ADDENDUM 2: Two Paul Sperry articles from 2018 give excellent background to this--and also illustrate how long Brennan has been allowed to get away with this, thanks largely to Rod Rosenstein:

Yet another way Obama’s spies apparently exploited the Trump ‘dossier’

Two Colleagues Contradict Brennan's Denial of Reliance on Dossier

And of course Andy McCarthy's detailed summaries of what I've been saying all along--the dossier is behind Crossfire Hurricane, which means it's also behind the FISA, which means it's also behind Team Mueller (including the scope memo):

The Steele Dossier and the ‘Verified Application’ That Wasn’t

Was Brennan’s ‘Intelligence Bombshell’ the Steele Dossier?

Steele’s Shoddy Dossier