Bad News For The Deep State

We've all heard of Adm. Mike Rogers, former head of the NSA, who played a key role in alerting the FISC of FBI abuses of the 702 databases. Rogers' action possibly forced the FBI to seek out a FISA based on fraudulent sourcing as an alternative to mining NSA databases for political purposes. In news that is surely an indication of the depth of the Barr/Durham investigation, The Intercept is reporting that Rogers is voluntarily cooperating with USA John Durham. That has to be very bad news for the Deep State generally. Rogers would be far and away the highest placed Deep State cooperator. He also would have information that could lead back into Obama administration weaponizing of the Intel Community as far back as 2012.

Notably, Rogers is one of two IC officials who have contradicted John Brennan's denial that the Clinton/Steele "dossier" factored into the ICA that established the narrative of "Russian meddling". As reported by Paul Sperry:

Recently retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers stated in a classified letter to Congress that the Clinton campaign-funded memos did factor into the ICA. And James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, conceded in a recent CNN interview that the assessment was based on “some of the substantive content of the dossier.” Without elaborating, he maintained that “we were able to corroborate” certain allegations.

These accounts are at odds with Brennan’s May 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that the Steele dossier  was "not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community's assessment" that Russia interfered in the election to help elect Donald Trump. Brennan has repeated this claim numerous times, including in February on “Meet the Press.”

I offer hear the portions of the article that pertain to Rogers--note that he's not a reflexive Trump supporter. The rest can be found here--FORMER NSA DIRECTOR IS COOPERATING WITH PROBE OF TRUMP-RUSSIA INVESTIGATION:

RETIRED ADM. MICHAEL ROGERS, former director of the National Security Agency, has been cooperating with the Justice Department’s probe into the origins of the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump presidential campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, according to four people familiar with Rogers’s participation. 

Rogers has met the prosecutor leading the probe, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, on multiple occasions, according to two people familiar with Rogers’s cooperation. While the substance of those meetings is not clear, Rogers has cooperated voluntarily, several people with knowledge of the matter said.

... 

“He’s been very cooperative,” one former intelligence officer who has knowledge of Rogers’s meetings with the Justice Department said. 

... 

Rogers is no stranger to the controversy surrounding the 2016 election. Shortly after Trump won the presidency, Rogers traveled to Trump Tower in New York, where he provided an unsolicited briefing to the then president-elect. Rogers informed Trump that the NSA knew that the Russians interfered in the election, according to three people familiar with the briefing. Despite delivering what Rogers told a confidant was “bad news,” Trump would keep Rogers on as NSA director while dismissing Brennan and Clapper. 

Many also believe that Rogers informed Trump of Obama administration spying into Trump's campaign and transition, leading Trump to abruptly move his HQ from Trump Tower the day after the briefing.

In January 2017 just before Trump took office, the intelligence community released an unclassified assessment concluding that Russia interfered in the election. The assessment was based on a combination of intelligence collected and reviewed by the NSA, CIA, and FBI. 

Russia’s initial purpose, the assessment found, was to undermine confidence in American democracy, but the effort ultimately focused on damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign in an effort to help elect Trump. While all three intelligence agencies agreed on that aspect of the assessment, the CIA and FBI expressed “high confidence” that the Russian government sought to help Trump win “by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,” while Rogers’s NSA had only “moderate confidence” in that finding. 

... 

A year into the Trump administration, in February 2018, Rogers testified at a Senate hearing that the White House had given the NSA no orders or instructions for countering further Russian election meddling. 

“President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay and that therefore ‘I can continue this activity,’” Rogers said. “Clearly, what we have done is not enough.” 

Four months later in Helsinki, Trump said that he confronted the Russian president about meddling in the election. But Vladimir Putin denied that his government was involved, and Trump said he believed him, directly contradicting Rogers and the other U.S. intelligence directors. 

Rogers was concerned that his testimony before Congress drew the president’s ire, according to a former Trump White House official who spoke with Rogers earlier this year. 

“He asked if the president was mad at him,” the former official said. “I told him, ‘No way, the president has always liked you.’”