Clinesmith And The Bigger Context.

When we talk about Kevin Clinesmith and the Carter Page FISA we naturally tend to focus on his involvement with the final renewal of that FISA order, in June of 2017. However, it may prove useful to step back and look at Clinesmith--and Carter Page--in a somewhat wider context.

For most of us, Carter Page was a rather obscure person who only began to matter when the the Deep State become involved in, first, attempting to prevent a Trump presidency and, then, in attempting to stage a lawfare style coup against the Trump presidency. Nevertheless, in the world of National Security, Carter Page had mattered for several years, to the extent that he was almost certainly familiar to officials at the highest levels, perhaps even to Obama.

First, it's important to understand the position of the FBI in national affairs. The FBI is, of course, the country's premier law enforcement and investigative agency. Since 9/11 the FBI has also gained enormous importance for its counterterrorism role. However, from its earliest days the FBI had a second role that, while generally not visible to the public eye, has always been crucial: That role is the FBI's status as the lead counterintelligence (CI) agency for the US.

The FBI's CI role, while often relatively low key at FBI field offices across the country, is what gets the FBI a seat at the table in the highest circles of government. We're used to hearing about FBI criminal investigations that lead to high profile prosecutions. Those prosecutions, while they may draw the attention of the president, rarely involve the president's input. They stop at the AG level.

The case is different with the FBI's CI role. An important CI case can have major ramifications for US foreign relations generally, thus potentially drawing the personal attention of top level cabinet members and other agency heads--State, Defense, the Intel Community, etc. The NSC and the president may also get involved, since any actions taken in a CI case could impact sensitive foreign relations matters.

Carter Page had operated 'under the radar' for years--including years spent living and working in Russia--as a CIA asset. However, in 2013 he became involved in an FBI investigation in New York City involving Russian intelligence gathering (I'll refer to the FBI office in New York as the 'NYO' for the sake of brevity). How truly important that case really was needn't detain us. Carter Page was in contact with the Russian intelligence officers (IOs) who were targeted by the FBI investigation and he became an important cooperating witness (CW). That means that he agreed to testify against the Russians, if necessary, if the investigation resulted in prosecution, which would mean revealing his identity publicly.

David Laufman To The Fore

With the revelation that Igor Danchenko was the Washington, DC, based Primary Subsource for the fraudulent Steele Dossier, attention has once again turned to David Laufman--another disgraced former DoJ official. Until being forced out of DoJ, Laufman ran DoJ's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section. It was Laufman who negotiated a "use immunity" deal for Danchenko, with a rabidly anti-Trump DC attorney who represented Danchenko during his three day FBI interview.

The reason Laufman's name is getting so much buzz now is because his involvement with the Danchenko interview can now be seen to be only the tip of the iceberg of his involvement in the Russia Hoax. As it happens, Laufman's DoJ section also handled the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which was used to spearhead the FBI's offensive against Trump.

We've gone over FARA previously. It was enacted originally in 1938 to deal with US persons propagandizing on behalf of Nazi Germany. The idea was to require such persons to publicly declare themselves, so that Americans could judge how to evaluate the propaganda they were spreading. While there were 23 prosecutions of the Act during WW2, since then DoJ enforcement policy has normally been to send a letter to the subject advising them to register. I know this because I had experience with FARA. The fact is that FARA, over the years, was often honored in the breach, in the sense that nobody really saw a need to register as long the person made no attempt to conceal his agency relationship--concealment of such a relationship had been the whole point of enacting FARA.

That changed when Donald Trump ran for president, and Laufman was the reason for that change. Paul Sperry does a fine job explaining this in:

Oh Sh*t! It's Hitting The Fan!

Shipwreckedcrew (SWC) is a very busy guy. In addition to following the Flynn case and the BLM/Antifa rioting, today--working off Paul Sperry's lengthy article on the FBI's Danchenko interview--he combines that with a deep dive into the Horowitz Report. The results are stunning, and amply demonstrate the reasons for Dem alarm and consternation at the revelation of the Danchenko interview.

SWC begins with the question several have commenters raised here: Why? Why did the FBI interview Steele? I speculated that Comey and the top levels of the FBI needed to be on solid ground as they proceeded with their coup attempt against a recently inaugurated president. As SWC puts it:

Let’s begin with the fact that Danchenko did not just walk into an FBI building, show his driver’s license and say “I’m Igor Danchenko.  I was Christopher Steele’s primary source on his Steele Dossier memos about President Trump.  I’d like to talk with someone about what I said to Mr. Steele.”

However, SWC's conclusion is even more pointed than mine: FBI Interview of Christopher Steele’s Primary Sub-Source Was To Prepare for Him To Work Directly With Crossfire Hurricane Team.

Now, that scenario might be one thing, if the FBI had, like, just a bit of predication for Crossfire Hurricane. Of course, we all know that they didn't. And you may recall that I've always maintained that, in spite of the FBI's nonsensical claim that CH was predicated on the Downer - Papadopoulos chat, the real "predication" for CH was always the Steele dossier. By going with the Papadopoulos story they were simply steering clear of Steele's connections to the Clinton campaign.

SWC takes a closer look at just how Danchenko figured in the Horowitz Report, and what he comes up with feeds directly into that. SWC argues persuasively that--while Horowitz doesn't say so in so many words--the FBI knew that Danchenko was Steele's Primary Subsource, or "PSS", and that they had this information as early as October, 2016. Before the election:

Two Questions Re Danchenko's FBI/DoJ Interview

As we've recently learned, Christopher Steele claims that he got the "information" in his reports (which were compiled into a "dossier" that was behind so much of the Russia Hoax) from a "Primary Subsource", Igor Danchenko. Danchenko was interviewed by a team of FBI and DoJ investigators, analysts, and lawyers in January, 2017. The interview took place in Washington, DC, over at least three days, and in the interview Danchenko basically debunked any notion that there was a solid basis in fact for anything Steele claimed in his "dossier". In fact, Danchenko specifically disclaimed all knowledge of certain "information" that Steele passed on to his employers, the Clinton campaign, and the FBI. In spite of what Danchenko told the interviewers, the FBI and DoJ proceeded to allow the Carter Page FISA (based virtually 100% on the Steele "dossier") to remain up and running then obtained two additional renewals of the same FISA on the basis of the Steele "dossier" that Danchenko had debunked!

Two pseudonymous lawyers and Twitter commenters have raised questions about that interview.

First, noting that Danchenko had a lawyer present, Undercover Huber asks:

Re New Revelations About Ciaramella And Misko

Fool Nelson neatly capsulizes a major takeaway from Paul Sperry's lengthy article--Whistleblower Was Overheard in '17 Discussing With Ally How to Remove Trump. David Laufman looks more and more like a key Dem operative:

@DavidLaufmanLaw appears in every @realDonaldTrump hoax.

1. Exonerated @HillaryClinton of gross negligence

2. Interviewed the Primary Sub-source during the #RussiaHoax

3. Represented Monica McLean during the #KavanaughHoax

4. Advised Ciaramella to initiate the #UkraineHoax pic.twitter.com/EtLbQrtbun

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) January 22, 2020

Was There A Conflict Of Interest Between Flynn And His Lawyers?

Margot Cleveland at The Federalist isn't given to speculation. However, today Cleveland offers just that, regarding what's really going on with Judge Sullivan in the Michael Flynn case. Yesterday in Judge Sullivan Enters Dispute Between Flynn Lawyers, Past and Present I noted the unusual and marked manner in which Judge Sullivan had interjected himself, on his own motion, in the matter of the delay by Flynn's prior legal team from Covington and Burling in providing the full Flynn case file to Flynn's new legal team, led by Sidney Powell--long time and noted critic of the legal tactics pioneered by Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann. Covington and Burling, as has been frequently noted, is the law firm of Eric Holder and Trisha Anderson.

Today Cleveland asks whether there may be more to Judge Sullivan's intervention, touching on matters that may be very much at the heart of what will almost certainly develop into a challenge of the guilty plea that Flynn entered into with Team Mueller: Judge Orders Ethics Training For Michael Flynn’s Former Lawyers--Was there a conflict of interest between Michael Flynn and his Covington and Burling attorneys who used to represent him? New facts unfold.

Cleveland bases her speculation on two factors. The first is the fact that Judge Sullivan set the date for the meeting with the ethics officials and the lawyers a few days before a regularly scheduled status hearing--August 27, only three days before the scheduled hearing on August 30. Why, asks Cleveland, would the judge not wait the three extra days to handle all the business at one hearing? Especially given that Powell expects provision of the case file to be complete by then?

Cleveland finds the clue to the explanation in a phrase from Powell's response to the Government's statement on the effect Flynn's changed posture in the "Bian Kian" trial might have on sentencing of Flynn in Flynn's own criminal case. In Flynn's Legal Team Responds To The Government I pointed out that, while Powell saw no reason why sentencing should be affected by that change in posture, she took the opportunity to signal to Judge Sullivan the direction in which her representation of Flynn was moving:

Briefly Noted: DiGenova, Sperry

Below is a 15 minute interview with Joe DiGenova. The interviewers walk Joe through Bill Barr's interview with Bill Hemmer, and Joe has some pithy comments. His fiercest fire is directed at FBI Director Chris Wray ("an empty suit and a dumbbell"), and he points out that Barr's comments on the "insufficiency" of the explanations he has received about the Russia Hoax point directly, in Barr's trademark understated but very direct way, at Chris Wray, who DiGenova says has withheld "an amazing amount of information from the Hill" and is attempting to do the same with Barr. The only purpose is to cover for James Comey. While Joe doesn't say so in this interview, this can only mean that Rosenstein--and this really goes almost without saying--was a key as well to the coverup that was Team Mueller.

Interestingly, DiGenova also calls out IG Michael Horowitz as having issued an insufficient report on Strzok/Page's bias (when Rosenstein was still his boss). DiGenova calls on Barr to fire Horowitz if he doesn't do better with his FISA report.

Beginning at about the 11 minute mark, DiGenova makes perhaps his most explosive statements. Referring to the latest order issued by Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case, which demands the release of all recordings, DiGenova states:

1. Sullivan's order is referring not only to the Flynn/Kislyak recording but to all relevant recordings, which could include others.

2. Judges in the DC court are beginning to wake up to the fact that Mueller/Weissmann have perpetrated a series of frauds on the court.

3. Judge Contreras--who was recused from the Flynn case and who is on the FISC--is in trouble. He "has a lot of explaining to do" because "he was involved in several other FISA warrants involved in this matter". DiGenova then calls out Chief Justice John Roberts who appoints judges to the FISC--Roberts, he says, needs to explain "what he’s done to fix the mess that has been created with the FISA Court."

Paul Sperry has tweeted about David Laufmann, the former head of DoJ's Counterintelligence Section who was forced to resign, apparently as a result of IG Horowitz's investigations.

Laufman had served since 2014 as the top Justice Department official overseeing espionage investigations, as well as cases involving foreign lobbying and leaks of classified information. That put Laufman in charge of the Hillary Clinton email probe and aspects of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — an inquiry handed off last May to special counsel Robert Mueller.

It sounds like John Durhams investigation will be revisiting Laufman's role in the Russia Hoax.

Paul Sperry‏ @paulsperry_

BREAKING: I'm told this Trump-hating Obama loyalist and leaker, who helped arrange Hillary's softball FBI interview and supervised Strzok during the Trump-Russia witch hunt, will have his turn in the barrel when the DOJ inspector general's report comes out

 

9:42 PM - 27 May 2019