@TheLastRefuge2
The ICA is a false political document used as the basis for underlying Trump-Russia expansion. However, by defining his DOJ rules of politics Barr has set up the ICA to be defined as a "political document" and precluded criminal accountability for its content. twitter.com/TheLastRefuge2…
@shipwreckedcrew
Please explain the mechanism for making someone "criminally accountable" for the "content" of the ICA.
You continue to talk in terms that have no meaning in the real world.
Accountability is found in the Title 18. What crime do you think was involved in producing the ICA?
Yes, sundance has a point: The ICA IS a false political document. But few things in life are that simple. What do we know about it's production? Well, we know from what has been released that the same CIA analysts who foolishly bought into some of the key Russia Hoax narratives to come to their conclusion also pushed back strongly against the FBI's insistence on including the "dossier"--which was eventually incorporated as an "annex" to the ICA. So it looks like those analysts were duped but were more or less honorable dupes--probably politically biased but not in a criminal way. Those who declined to examine the "Russian hacking" evidence and who put out the stories about Russian bots and so forth are more responsible, but we're still left with the question of evidence and intent.
Brennan, on the other hand, cleverly played the peacemaker in the ICA production process, telling his analysts, 'Look, Comey is insisting so we'll keep the peace and let the FBI have an annex.' Clever. Brennan looks to his analysts like he's on their side, but to the FBI he looks like he's giving them what they want. And that way Brennan slips out of any real responsibility--he presents himself as having no dog in the fight, as someone who just wants to keep each side happy. Meanwhile, he gets what he wants--legitimation of the dossier in a political sense, injecting it into the public debate, despite the caveats of his analysts.
This is why Durham spent so much time talking to the CIA analysts and searching emails between Comey and Brennan. Durham was trying to come up with evidence of direct intervention by Brennan--either through Comey or directly with his analysts--rather than the slippery misdirection ploy. It appears Durham has been unsuccessful in that, as of yesterday. But who knows? Maybe Durham got something useful yesterday. If he did, we won't know till later.
But then sundance totally overplays his hand. Having yesterday demonstrated that he hasn't a clue about internal operations at FBI and CIA, he returns to his favorite target, Bill Barr. Without a shred of evidence he claims that Barr has precluded "criminal accountability" for the ICA. That contention will be a hanging curveball for SWC. However, ask yourself this: If Barr "precluded criminal accountability" for the ICA, why has Durham spent so much time on the ICA? The answer that seems so obvious to sundance is that Barr and Durham are engaged in a corrupt conspiracy to delude and "betray" the nation and exonerate Brennan, Comey, and all the rest. Or ... maybe Barr and Durham are being controlled and duped by the lead investigator, William Aldenberg! Aldenberg becomes the evil genius pulling the strings!
The reality is that the ICA is basically a CIA production, with an FBI addendum that was included directly against the wishes of the CIA analysts who were the principle authors. To hold the CIA criminally accountable for the ICA, you have to show a crime and criminal intent. In these circumstances, that's not easy. Barr's statements about not criminalizing politics do not in any way preclude recognizing a criminal conspiracy. Those are boilerplate statements to reassure the nation about the rule of law. It is not kabuki.
But due to sundance's absurd overreach, SWC is able to take that hanging curveball all the way out of the park. Go ahead, he says: Name the crime. Do we charge the analysts for being duped? How do you prove intent, rather than gullibility?
Second exchange--and this one is even easier for SWC:
@TheLastRefuge2
If anyone else on Twitter has actually talked to the Durham investigators personally please identify yourself so we can compare notes...
If not, enough said. twitter.com/pera_richard/s…
@shipwreckedcrew
That you "talked" to an agent working with Durham does not mean you offered them anything they found meaningful, or that you came away from the conversation with any understanding greater than when you went in.
How silly can you get? The fact that William Aldenberg allowed sundance to present his theories means ... everyone who disagrees with sundance now has to shut up? I'm not following that, maybe because there's nothing to follow.
I was an investigator for 28 years. Investigation is a one way street. Investigators collect information--they don't dispense it. Did Aldenberg somehow make an exception for sundance? I very much doubt that, but there's one way to find out. Sundance is big on issuing ultimatums and demands, telling Barr and Durham what they have to reveal and when. How about if sundance tells the rest of us what information Aldenberg shared with him?
If not, enough said. Works for me.
All that said, Brennan is clearly not out of the woods yet. As others have noted, there's only one reason why Durham waited so long before interviewing Brennan--because he was trying to learn as much about Brennan's Russia Hoax related activities as possible before talking to him. And that means Brennan was right up at the top of the list of persons of interest. Maybe just below Jim Comey, who has yet to have a chat with Durham. Anyone who was involved and hasn't yet been invited to talk with Durham should be worried.
Wolfgang Pauli, renowned physicist, had a colorful expression for incoherent, irrational, unsupported claims and arguments: "Not even wrong." His point is that sometimes an argument is so bad there's no place to point out the error in it because the argument makes no sense to begin with.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to apply to many of the logic and fact deprived tweets we are seeing.
The bottom line is that sundance wants AG Barr to act like Holder, Yates, and Rosenstein--prosecute people for political crimes even if their actions don't meet the letter of the criminal statute.
ReplyDeleteBarr said, and has continued to say in his nationally televised interviews setting expectations that he's not going to do that. How many times has he said now that not all abuses of power are violations of the penal law, and that not all abuses could be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt?
SWC as a prosecutor gets this and continues to remind sundance "we all know this," but that doesn't mean Durham has evidence of it that could be admitted into a federal court. I like how sundance has also totally ignored the existence of Bash and Jensen even though Bash's jurisdiction, which encompasses Ft. Bliss, which I'm pretty sure has a massive NSA footprint, would indicate he's the more interesting investigation into Brennan's activities so thoroughly documented by sundance.
Finally, the most paramount here, for all of his talk of the rule of law here in the United States, the most important thing to remember about the attorney general of these United States is that he is an exceptionally devout Roman Catholic, like the founder of this blog, and like my father. At the end of the day he knows true justice will never be done on this world because it can never occur at human hands. He will not resort to Muellerite/Wiesmann tactics to get convictions to rack up the score board on this planet--he will abide by the law, and trust a higher power to force the ones he couldn't get to answer for their sins in the next life.
"Anyone who... hasn't yet been invited to talk with Durham should be worried."
ReplyDeleteIf Durham gets Mueller/ Weissmann (e.g. via Comey), the rest are gravy.
My sentiments too, pretty much.
DeleteI give Sundance a lot of latitude overall, even though is too often over the top with his worries. He has done more work on this hoax investigation than anyone else.
ReplyDeleteIf there are going to be indictments, they will likely come in the form of false statements regarding the various players that are claimed to have been the intigating causes of Crossfire Hurricane- for example, proving that the FBI and CIA knew Joseph Mifsud was no Russian agent, and, hopefully, a paper/phone trail demonstrating that he was specifically tasked with making contact with Papadopoulos. This was always, in my opinion, the only way into this conspiracy- showing that the entire investigation was based on an in-house setup operation creating the evidence used to open the investigation. Because, otherwise, the miscreants are going to get away with, "Oops, my bad, we were too stupid to understand this investigation was a fraud from the start."
I'd agree with that, Yancey. I don't read everything that sundance writes, but I do check CTH every day--just in case. There's a huge amount of info out there. It's hard to keep up, and sometimes you need reminders as well. But you also have to be careful. That's why I said mixing and matching is good.
DeleteRe false statements, yes, that's probably the most likely entry point into the conspiracy. The reason is simple. In a bureaucracy--and the FBI is, after all, the Federal BUREAU of Investigation for a reason--most everything is documented in writing. That means that anything put into writing is potentially a false statement, and having that in writing makes proof almost ... fool proof.
Amen aNanyMouse and mark wauck. Brennan is a nice to have at this point. Even Mueller is in the same boat--while revealing their crimes and punishing them might deter future deep staters, does nothing for them, because they're old and ain't coming back.
ReplyDeleteWeissmann, and his goons on the Enron task force, for those who haven't read Sydney Powell's 2014 book, are still up and coming young lawyers--Weissman almost certainly a future AG in a Democratic administration. And he's teaching legal ETHICS at NYU Law School. If you want to eliminate the systemic problem rather than just get revenge for past wrongs, you need to put him behind bars.
Yes. Here's another reason why the lawyers are at the top of my list. Of course it's bad when your intel agencies are dishonest, but when LE and Justice are dishonest IMO that takes the assault on our constitutional order to a whole 'nuther level.
Delete"punishing them might deter future deep staters, does nothing for them, because they're old and *ain't coming* back."
DeleteLet 'em not come back, that's chump change.
It's crucial to show the whole country, that they ran a criminal conspiracy, just as DJT has charged for years (to huge derision from Dems/ MSM).
Until guys like this Walk like Perps, moderate liberals (who largely hold the US balance of power) can deny that he was dead on.
If DJT is vindicated, it may easily be the gravest blow ever to the MSM's cred.
I keep coming back to the statement in the Mueller Dossier regarding Mifsud- that Papadopoulos had reason to believe Mifsud had Russian government contacts- not that Mifsud actually had such a relationship. It was phrased in a way that caught my eye immediately the day the report was made public. I think Mueller and his team all along knew who Mifsud worked for and that is why they never investigated Mifsud or interviewed him. The only "interview" of Mifsud by the FBI (in February 2017) consisted of them telling Mifsud to leave the US and not come back for a long while.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that on the information filed against Clinesmith, Durham signed it Special Attorney to the Attorney General rather than US Attorney for the District of Connecticut. Does that mean anything?
ReplyDeleteFor instance, does it mean that he's been appointed under a similar DOJ regulation to the one used to appoint SC Mueller, and that he will be required to file a report with AG Barr over and beyond any criminal cases he brings?
If so, could that be what Barr has meant in his tv interviews when he says that not all abuses of power can be addressed through the justice system, some are up to the voters? There could be a late summer/ early fall Durham report that tells us what Joseph Mifsud said in that taped Italian deposition and on those two cell phones Barr and Durham were given, even though that evidence would never be admissable in an American court without Mifsud there himself?
As Yancey wrote, Sundance et al did a great deal of investigative work, over a long period of time, on the collusion hoax. It seems he now wants what he never seemed to care about before: Official recognition. That’s my sense of what he’s been up to, and his current crop of followers are more up for creating chaos than they are for critical thinking. There was a self-identified lawyer who called himself ristvan. He posted his legal take on what was happening, providing a calming balance to any tendency to go off the deep end. It doesn’t take much reading there to find out that his followers are big on emotion and very light on information. A pretty unworldly crowd with a sprinkling of commenters who just like to hear themselves talk.
ReplyDeleteI think SD may be reacting to feeling officially overlooked or unacknowledged.
Bebe, quite so, esp. on ristvan providing a calming balance.
DeleteA few folks who still post there are worth something anyway, incl. oldersoul, Wethal, and Hokkoda.
How do we get to SWC’s thread if we are not subscribed to twitter?
ReplyDeletejust go here:
Deletehttps://twitter.com/shipwreckedcrew
Bebe. I think your analysis is on the nose. My reading of SD's stuff over the past several weeks is that after all this analysis he's done, which in fairness has in all probability informed some of these investigations, he wants to be a player in them. "We could never have done it without you son. Good work. Attaboy. Here's a DOJ challenge coin." I don't think he quite understands the interwebs.
ReplyDeleteThe following is what I found most interesting in former DCIA Edward Haskell's released public remarks:
ReplyDelete"Brennan 'expressed appreciation for the professional manner in which Mr. Durham and his team conducted the interview,' ... told Mr. Durham that the repeated efforts of Donald Trump and William Barr to politicize Mr. Durham's work have been appalling and have tarnished the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice, making it very difficult for Department of Justice professionals to carry out their responsibilities. It is Brennan's fervent hope that the results of the Durham review will be apolitical and not influenced by personal or partisan agendas"
I'm betting it tripped a few of Mark's red flags, too.