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Thursday, October 24, 2019

NYT: Barr/Durham Open Criminal Investigation On ... DOJ!


WASHINGTON — For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.
Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to impanel a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

I'm not sure how much of this is really true or not. I've been saying all along that the whole big deal in the Russia Hoax is--PREDICATION. What predication really was there to open Crossfire Hurricane at the end of July, 2016. But as I've also been saying endlessly, given that the Mueller Witchhunt was explicitly a continuation of Crossfire Hurricane--we have Rod Rosenstein's word in writing for that--then you can't investigate the one without impacting the other. If Crossfire Hurricane's predication was bogus, then so was the predication for the Mueller Witchhunt bogus.

The only two questions are: Who knew that, and when did they know that? Conveniently, we have two of the founding members of Team Mueller texting each other--Strzok and Page, the dynamic duo--and Strzok says they both know there's "no there there." If Strzok, the lead agent for Crossfire Hurricane, knows that it's all a hoax immediately before the startup of the Mueller Witchhunt, then how could it possibly be that McCabe, Rosenstein, and Mueller wouldn't also know that? Either Strzok was playing them and is the evil genius behind it all, or they were all in on it. And, anyway, each of them had an independent duty to determine whether the predication was good or not, so I'm betting that they were all in on it.

Bill Barr gets this, and always has. The NYT article quotes him to that effect:


Mr. Barr expressed skepticism of the Russia investigation even before joining the Trump administration. Weeks after being was sworn in this year, he said he intended to scrutinize how it started and used the term “spying” to describe investigators’ surveillance of Trump campaign advisers. But he has been careful to say he wants to determine whether investigators acted lawfully. 
“The question is whether it was adequately predicated,” he told lawmakers in April. “And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”

So, there's never been any mystery about where Barr/Durham have been headed. Despite the NYT's professed mystification at it all.

Is this truly a new development, or has this been going on for some time and the fact is only now being leaked in the midst of the Impeachment Theater? My hope is that it's been ongoing for at least a few months.

ADDENDUM: In case anyone is bummed out by this news, thinking, Man, this is taking way too long--don't be. Durham hasn't needed a Grand Jury in order to obtain and review mountains of evidence that's already in government custody: FISA applications, case files, correspondence of all sorts. Much of that would already have been obtained and sorted through by OIG (and maybe John Huber--remember him?). The big deal about the Grand Jury would have to do with two things that I can think of offhand: 1) Getting people under oath for questioning, and 2) obtaining documentation from non-government entities like Fusion GPS. We've heard several times about Durham getting more resources and personnel, so we know he's been busy, and a lot of that business has probably been preparation for questioning witnesses before the Grand Jury.

22 comments:

  1. If Durham targets Brennan in a criminal conspiracy case, one has to wonder how far Brennan will go...facing jail time...to protect the guy he reported to.

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    1. Jail time is a sobering thought. And Durham will be looking to hammer him, given what this has done to the administration and the nation.

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  2. Ask yourself, why did Mifsud record a deposition with the local police constabulary shortly after his name was outed in the press and then go into hiding? Could it be because he feared for his life due to the enormity of the information he possessed? And if that sounds far-fetched, ask Seth Rich if he thinks it's wise to underestimate the lethality of the Deep State.

    Could it be that Brennan was tasked with running an off-the-books rouge political entrapment OP via foreign cutouts, of which Mifsud was one of many? And that perhaps Mifsud was wise enough to preserve evidence of same in order to cover his butt if things went sideways? And what if the Italians initially balked at participation until Obama made a personal plea directly to Conte and sweetened the pot? And what if the Italians made a recording of that conversation? And what if the Brits and Ausies caved after learning that the Italians had flipped, and then the floodgates opened and they dumped their CYA dirt to Durham?

    I suppose if that happened it could be called "significant" new evidence.

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    1. I don’t recall who said it, but Mifsud apparently said he wanted to get his story on record in a deposition in case anything happened to him. With what he probably knows about this mess, he could have been due for assisted suicide.

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    2. I believe--not totally certain--that Mifsud's lawyer, Stefan Roh, put that statement out. To let the world know that that there was a tape recorded statement by Mifsud. Suicide insurance, a not entirely novel concept when dealing with criminal organizations like ... MI6 and CIA?

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  3. Barr won't touch Obama, lest that risk spurring blacks to torch the whole country.

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    1. If so, I hope Trump pardons him, and tells the world how the Barry Admin was the biggest Criminal Enterprise in U.S. history.

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  4. I think it all comes back to Mifsud and the Australians. If Mifsud was sent to Papadopoulos by the FBI or the CIA, the game is over. The opening of Crossfire Hurricane was started with the story about Papadopoulos as related by Alexander Downer. If it can be demonstrated that this was all a CIA/MI6 operation, beginning to end, then you have a criminal conspiracy to frame Papadopoulos. If that can be proven, then you work down the ladder- who knew Mifsud was a western agent, and when did they know that. I am guessing that the FBI division Strzok was a part of probably knew this by August of 2016- it might well be the reason they went after Page rather than Papadopoulos with that October 2016 FISA, but if they knew, then even the Page ploy becomes criminal, even if it wasn't dirtied up by a OCONUS lure (and, as I have stated before, I think Page may well have been invited to that conference in Russia as part of a CIA lure, too).

    I think you are correct, though- this isn't new news- I think a grand jury has been impaneled for a while now, and would disappointed if it is only happening now. If it really is only now, then the Italy/Australia meetings of Barr and Durham must have been very productive.

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    1. I agree--it beggars imagination to think that only know have they come up with sufficient evidence to open a criminal investigation.

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  5. This news about the criminal investigation and the other news about the status of Horowitz's report are Barr's method of assuring Senator Grassley that this scandal is not being deep-sixed by the Deep State.

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    1. Probably so, IMO also. It seems to be a pattern of sorts that when people are feeling frustrated DoJ leaks some tiny bit of info to calm them down.

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    2. This announcement does several other things, IMO. It creates greater apprehension in the dark little hearts of the perps. Panic. And it grabs the news cycle from the endless Schiffless star chamber fiasco.

      About going after Obama, why not? He made a whirlwind trip earlier this year to visit Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and former Italian PM Matteo Renzi … just out of the blue? At least one excellent journalist, Monica Showalter at American Thinker, didn’t believe he was just catching up with old pals. She credits Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit with the lead, and also cites PapaD’s writings. She wrote:

      Former President Obama's weird careening around Europe is starting to have the look of a spygate rationale.

      Following his earlier meetings, publicly known, with President Emmanuel Macron of France, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, he's now meeting secretly with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, in what might just be a bid for the two of them to get their stories straight. Italy, recall, is the nation that elected a Trump-like new government, following the deep state collaborations of the earlier government, and the new government has fired four Italian intelligence officials, apparently over a spygate bid to pin Russian collusion charges, falsely, on President Trump via planted emails, in a Machiavellian bid to get him thrown out of office.


      https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/dictator_in_exile_medici_edition_is_obama_secretly_meeting_with_italys_renzi_to_get_their_stories_straight.html

      Ex PM Renzi had come out with a gratuitous remark in 2017 that he would rather have worked with Obama than Trump. Obie and Matteo (called the Trudeau of Italy) were mutually declared BFFs, so...



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    3. Renzi, BTW, openly supported Clinton for president. Both he and Obama feared that the nationalism that was taking hold in Europe would be further fostered by a Trump presidency. Renzi, a young progressive, was pampered and promoted by Obama while he was president. As a community organizer, I can see his seeing Renzi as his strong acolyte in Europe. The Italian voters did not go along with that and Renzi didn’t last long. We may find out how much Renzi repaid Obama’s friendship and patronage.

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    4. No doubt about it--this was the US/EU establishment colluding to keep the "populist/nationalist" element out of power everywhere. These are the same people trying to impeach Trump now.

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    5. In October 2016:

      For his part, Renzi -- who openly backs Clinton in the upcoming election -- acknowledged that attention in the US and abroad wasn't on his own political troubles.
      "I have a feeling, and I think that rightly so, our American friends are a little bit more interested in November 8 than in the Italian vote on constitutional reform," he said. "And so are we, might I add.”


      https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/obama-renzi-italy-state-visit/index.html

      It’s not hard to imagine his having been happy to aid his friend Obama in the plan to keep Trump out of office or bring him down if he was elected.

      Four of Renzi’s top intelligence people ended up being fired.

      Barr knew all of this when he and Durham went to Italy and met with the present administration.

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  6. Hi Mark.
    I really appreciate your insights and find the blog informative and a great read.
    Do you know the internal process for OIG's release of a report? It seems to me that there are 2 steps in the release. One is passing any criminal referrals to DOJ and a second draft comment period where the subject comments on the accuracy (the time for comment between the draft and final report is standard in audits, might not apply to investigations).
    Could the FISA report publication be awaiting DOJ decisions on charging and not only redactions for / from the IC?

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    1. I unfortunately don't know much about procedures within DoJ's OIG--and have been unable to locate much online. Horowitz in his most recent letter refers to following "our usual process" for producing a final report upon completion of the classification review. What all is involved I don't know, however I would expect that any DoJ decisions on prosecution would come only after the final report is finished. The DoJ is only constrained in that decision by the applicable statutes of limitation and may for good reasons wish to delay that decision. OIG doesn't dictate the timing.

      If anyone has found more exact information on the reporting process ...

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  7. https://www.trevorloudon.com/2019/10/admiral-mike-rogers-the-dog-that-didnt-bark/

    This is not precisely on topic but is worth refreshing our memories of. You may have touched on much the same theme in a post awhile back, but I can't recall for sure. An interesting point none the less. So far not a peep concerning Adm Rogers as a potential interviewee/witness.
    "The truth is out there."
    Tom S.

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  8. The NYT story strikes me as column-filler distraction. Why else would Barr have appointed the USA for Connecticut to investigate the investigators regarding spying on a presidential candidate and predication? It wasn't to correct their etiquette. The IG has the non-criminal matters covered, inasmuch as he can recommend prosecution of egregious malefactors.

    I think the NYT is essentially bucking-up The Resistance into pearl-clutching and shrieking on fainting couch behavior while impeachment theatre struggles to put on the next act. Need to keep the embers glowing even if the fire is not roaring hot...

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    1. Right. It's mostly a repeat. Impeachment Theater will be struggling with the Flynn show coming up.

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    2. The Flynn show is really something as Sidney Powell hits the court with proof of Brady violations. They are bullet-pointed, illustrated with appropriate pdfs and analyzed in CTH’s usual painstaking detail.

      https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/25/stunning-potentially-game-changing-court-filing-by-flynn-defense-lawyer-sidney-powell/

      There is also news that a judge has overturned the conviction of Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, who had been convicted of illegally lobbying the US government on behalf of Turkey.

      https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/25/reports-federal-judge-overturns-conviction-against-michael-flynns-former-business-partner/

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