How Big Could The Alfa Bank Hoax Turn Out To Be?

The last time we referenced the Alfa Bank hoax--Alfa Bank Redux--Starring John Durham!--I pointed out that the importance of the fact that Durham is pursuing the Alfa Bank Hoax angle with grand jury subpoenas lies in where that inquiry leads: Straight to the Clinton and, now, the Biden campaigns and organizations:

The Alfa Bank hoax "dossier" memo was written up by Christopher Steele at the express direction of Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Sussmann then took the story directly to the FBI--to a friend of his, James Baker, who happened to be FBI General Counsel, i.e., Comey's top lawyer. Knowing Sussmann as he did, Baker also knew that this hoax story was coming straight from the Clinton campaign. Add that background to the involvement of Daniel Jones and Jake Sullivan in the Alfa Bank hoax (see above), along with the fact that James Baker has long been believed to be cooperating with Durham and we come to this: Durham's conspiracy net is attempting to catch some of the biggest fish in the Dem hierarchy, central figures in both the Clinton and now the Biden campaigns. 

The theory that draws these non-government actors into Durham's big picture conspiracy case is they provided false information--false statements, so think 1001--to the government, the FBI. The fact that the FBI would have known the information was false in beside the point. It was a form of information laundering--Hey, we received allegations, we investigated them: Wink, wink! 

Barr, Durham, Jones & Sullivan

Sounds like a law firm, and it's true--three out the four are lawyers. In reality, of course, it refers to the latest revelation in the continuing Barr investigation of the Russia Hoax lawfare coup attempt against President Trump. Please note: I said revelation, not development. As I pointed out recently (Why The Daniel Jones Story Is Significant) this part of the investigation has--beyond any doubt--been intensively ongoing for some time. Most likely for months:

Consider this. I simply can't conceive that Durham is calling Jones before the grand jury on a whim, without having conducted a searching background investigation of everything connected to Jones. If Durham sent Jones a grand jury subpoena to testify before the grand jury, IMO it's for sure that he has also issued grand jury subpoenas for everything in Jones life that could conceivably be obtained via grand jury subpoenas. That would, as SWC says, focus on communications and finances. Moreover, before quizzing Jones on all that, Durham would have reviewed that mountain of material and followed out all leads that arose from it. And my belief is that Durham would not be calling Jones before the grand jury if he hadn't already developed bona fide investigative leads that he has followed out. That's too serious a step to take just to show how thorough an investigator he is.

In other words, Barr and Durham have been busy--very busy. And anyone who thinks Donald Trump is clueless about this is, well, clueless themselves. Of course Trump has a right to be frustrated. The crew of his appointees who should have turned this coup plot inside out during the first two years of his administration betrayed him. Barr has not. Anyway, Trump does the politics, Barr does the legal stuff.

This is why I find it irritating to read the kind of stuff that Paul Sperry has been running on his twitter feed for the past week or so. I get it that this stuff generates, views, clicks, retweets, etc. Still ...

Why The Daniel Jones Story Is Significant

Yesterday I ran with the Alfa Bank Redux story. Please follow the link if you need to refresh yourself about that hoax--probably the first part of the Russia Hoax that truly went public during the 2016 election. Dexter Filkins at the New Yorker--one of the original purveyors of the hoax, which was quickly debunked by the FBI--is trying to resurrect the hoax for a very specific reason.

Filkins, in his article, breaks the news that John Durham is taking what looks like a very deep dive into the origins of the Alfa Bank hoax. In doing so Durham has subpoenaed several of the hoaxters before a grand jury. Among those subpoenaed is Daniel Jones. Another participant in the hoax--and possibly one of its originators--was Jake Sullivan, who is currently a top adviser to none other than Joe Biden. Filkins is sounding the alarm about the, um, alarming direction Durham's investigation has taken--signaled by Durham's subpoena to Daniel Jones. Here's how I described Jones' background yesterday:

UPDATED: Alfa Bank Redux--Starring John Durham!

H/T to commenter EZ, who pointed me to a tweet by Fool Nelson that pointed me to a New Yorker article by Dexter Filkins--who wrote the original article touting the short lived Alfa Bank - Trump Tower server conspiracy hoax. The article--The Contested Afterlife of the Trump-Alfa Bank Story--begins with a precis of the original hoax. I say "original" because Filkins is suggesting new conspiracy theories that embrace AG Barr and John Durham acting in concert with "the Russians". 

Here's the first paragraph, to remind you of the original hoax and to get us started:

Two years ago, I wrote about a mysterious series of computer contacts between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of the most powerful financial institutions in Russia. For four months, during the summer before the 2016 Presidential election, two servers registered to the bank repeatedly looked up the address of another server, maintained by a mass-marketing firm for the Trump Organization.

 

Remember, now? There's more to it, of course, but that'll do--my interest is in what the new developments (of which, more below) tell us about what John Durham is up to.

Since late summer the conservatives have been treated to regular explosions of anti-Barr and anti-Durham sentiment. You've seen the kind of stuff I'm talking about: They're Deep State operatives working to bury the evidence and get Trump defeated. People peddling this stuff point to Trump's recent tweet storm, right after returning to the White House after his brief stay chez Walter Reed, in which Trump vented about nobody being arrested, not enough documents being declassified, and et cetera. 

I was then and remain now convinced that that was basically political theater for the base. Nevertheless, people whom I previously mistook for serious commentators have taken this cry up in all seriousness. Just last night Fred Fleitz told Lou Dobbs that Durham should have wound up his investigation "a year ago." I guess that tells you all you need to know about what it takes to be a CIA analyst. Or, hey, an FBI analyst, too. I'm agnostic when it comes to analysts--no favorites.

I'm not just trying to beat my own drum, but ... I've been maintaining ever since Barr and Durham set out down this investigative road that they were two serious guys who intended to reach the end--not just offer up a couple of easy indictments. And I've also been maintaining that Barr and Durham are working strenuously to build a "big picture" conspiracy case--a theory of the case that would take in the entire Russia Hoax, not just a few nickel-dime false statement cases divorced from the big picture story. To do that takes time and resources and, unfortunately, is not certain of success. But it's a story that the American people need to have told to them in detail--so that it can't be written off as right wing conspiracy theory.

This is where Filkins article is leading us--confirmation that that's the road that Barr and Durham are on.

Really? Rosenstein Wanted To Wear A Wire Against Trump?

That's pretty wild--the Deputy Attorney General offering to "wear a wire" against the President of the United States--and yet that's what the NYT is reporting, and they wouldn't publish fake news, would they? And they say he proposed this line of action because he was upset over the firing of James Comey. Clearly he hadn't been paying any attention at all to what Comey and the FBI had been up to for the past year or two--if anyone deserved firing, Comey deserved it richly. Interestingly, Rosenstein doesn't actually deny the story, instead he called it "inaccurate" and "factually incorrect." As opposed to "totally untrue" or "fake news." So we're probably safe in assuming that something like this really did transpire, and leave Rosenstein and the NYT to quibble over the details.

But what's the point in all this? I believe that, following so closely on the letter of the infamous Sub-Gang of Four "requesting" Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray (as well as DNI Coats) to clear any declassifications with them before disclosing any of the material to the President, this story is designed to place even more pressure on Rosenstein--as the person most centrally involved in and in control of the declassification process. As I elaborated in Dems Throw Wray And Rosenstein Under The Bus:

In effect the "request" by the Gang of Eight Democrats amounts to a demand that Wray and Rosenstein openly choose sides. In place of the "slow walk" strategy of documentary release that has so frustrated Congressional Republicans, Wray and Rosenstein are being "requested" to openly side with the minority party by defying a Presidential order. There is a carrot and a stick attached to this request. The stick, of course, is that if the much ballyhooed "Blue Wave" makes landfall in the US and Wray and Rosenstein haven't cooperated with the current minority, then the full fury of the new Democrat majority would be unleashed against them. The carrot is the fact that neither Wray nor Rosenstein are in good graces with President Trump. Presumably that new Democrat majority would protect Wray and Rosenstein from an enraged President Trump--if they've cooperated. By revealing publicly the fact that Wray and Rosenstein may have been colluding with the Democrats in an attempt to thwart what President Trump sees as a "crowning achievement" of his presidency--cleaning up the corruption of the FBI--the Democrats are clearly attempting to muscle Wray and Rosenstein into open opposition to Trump. They have shown their gratitude to them by placing them directly in the path of a bus named Donald J. Trump.

This new story will certainly increase the pressure on Rosenstein. After all, it has to increase the likelihood that Trump will fire Rosenstein after the midterm election. Rosenstein would therefore have a choice: stick with Trump and get fired, or side with the Dems by attempting to thwart the declassification order--and gain the everlasting gratitude of Democrats. Which might last for 15 minutes.