More On Predication And The ICA

The "ICA", of course, is the Intelligence Community Assessment--a John Brennan production that was published on January 7, 2017, just short of two weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States. The ICA proclaimed with "high confidence" in its Key Judgments that Russia and, specifically, Russian President Putin had sought to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election in order to harm Hillary Clinton's chances of being elected. Putin was claimed to have had a clear preference for Trump, so the logical corrolary was that Trump's election was tainted by Russian interference in our election. Trump was, arguably, an illegitimate president, attaining office through the efforts of a hostile foreign power to whom Trump would be beholden:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

Recently I cited the statements of a 25 year national security specialist, Fred Fleitz:

... CIA has been concealing a House Intelligence report that provides evidence that Putin and Russia wanted Hillary to win. This evidence was considered "strong" by CIA analysts but was excluded from the ICA over their objections by John Brennan. "Weak" evidence that maybe Russia wanted Trump to win was included by Brennan over the objections of the same CIA analysts.

Yesterday, The Epoch Times expanded on that report--CIA Watchdog Sitting on Secret House Report Allegedly Critical of Brennan’s Role in Russian Meddling Assessment:

The CIA Inspector General has taken more than a year to clear the release of a House Intelligence Committee report which contradicts the key conclusion of the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to the former chief of staff of the National Security Council.  

The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), prepared at the behest of President Barack Obama, claimed that Russia interfered in the presidential election in order to help candidate Donald Trump. The House Intelligence Committee’s public report (pdf) on Russia had already challenged the analytic tradecraft behind this central claim and suggested that the process of arriving at the assessment was not free of political interference.  

A separate, classified report holed up at the office of the CIA Inspector General (IG) sheds damning light on the role then-CIA Director John Brennan played in the preparation of the report, former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz learned from House Intelligence Committee staff. A source familiar with the report’s fate would not deny that the report went to the office of the CIA IG.  

The report states that Brennan overruled agency analysts who wanted to include strong intelligence in the assessment to show that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to win the election, Fleitz says, citing conversations with House Intelligence Committee staffers.

Brennan had also rejected analysts who wanted to strike weak intelligence from the report which suggested that Russia favored Trump, Fleitz said.  

“So Brennan actually slanted this analysis, choosing anti-Trump intelligence and excluding anti-Clinton intelligence,” Fleitz told The Epoch Times.  

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee issued the report in August 2018 and submitted it to the CIA IG in the fall of 2018 to be cleared for public release, according to Fleitz. The former NSC chief of staff says that only the limited circle of GOP members on the intelligence committee had read the report. 

... 

The CIA IG office is currently led by Acting Inspector General Christopher Sharpley, a holdover from the Obama administration who was reappointed by President Donald Trump.

The importance of the ICA is that it forms the predication for the entire Russia Hoax, and specifically for the Mueller Witchhunt

The point ... is that the ICA was the justification for everything that came afterwards, it was the "proof" of what "everybody" claimed to know: That Trump had to be investigated for colluding with the Russians who had tried to help him win the election. It was behind the DNC hack narrative, the Wikileaks narrative, the Roger Stone persecution. But most of all it was behind the Mueller Witchhunt. 

By revealing Brennan's dishonesty in overriding the CIA analysts Durham can use that as evidence of conspiratorial intent. It's an element of proving intent--not the whole ball of wax--but it's important in that respect. This explains why Durham has apparently spent so much time interviewing analysts who were part of the ICA team, and also why he wants to talk to [CIA Director] Gina Haspel--if he hasn't done so already.

Indeed, the Mueller Dossier essentially piggybacks on the ICA for its central claim of Russian interference in the 2016 election--since the Concord Management case has revealed the Team Mueller's own claims in that respect to be a fraud.

Techno Fog has a nice tweet that illustrates the fundamental importance of the ICA's false narrative, this time in the context of the Flynn case. Techno Fog quotes Team Mueller prosecutor in a filing in the Flynn case. Van Grack claims that on January 24, 2017, when the FBI interviewd Flynn,

the FBI was engaged in a legitimate and significant investigation into whether individuals associated with the campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump were coordinating with the Russian government in its activities to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

Van Grack was only able present the Russia Hoax false narrative as if it were fact because of the ICA's claimed "high confidence" in the Russia Hoax. It was also based on the ICA that Van Grack was able to argue in court that Sidney Powell was purveying "conspiracy theories"--anything contradicting the official "key judgments" of the ICA had to be rejected as "conspiracy theories":

U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday accused attorneys for Michael Flynn of misrepresenting facts and peddling conspiracy theories to delay his December sentencing, urging a federal judge to reject President Trump’s former national security adviser’s attacks against former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe.

In a 22-page court filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon L. Van Grack blasted Flynn’s allegations of prosecutorial misconduct as an unfounded effort to conduct a “fishing expedition” for documents that either do not exist or have no bearing on the conduct to which he pleaded guilty.

“The defendant predicates much of his request on conspiracy theories, demanding that the government engage in a fishing expedition for documents that could offer support for those theories,” namely denying Mueller’s central finding of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, Van Grack wrote.

This is why the Deep State is desperately clinging to the ICA. If the ICA is discredited in its "key judgments," the legitimacy of the entire witchhunt of the past four years, as well as of the fake impeachment, will be revealed.

As I argued in Due Process And The Flynn Case, the illegitimacy of the Flynn case--its lack of any adequate predication--can be demonstrated from the newly revealed closing memo, written by FBI SSA Joe Pientka on January 4, 2017. That's tremendous progress, but the exposure of the Brennan fraud behind the ICA will blow the entire Russia Hoax sky high.

Just in time for the 2020 election.