Did Brennan Run An Anti-Trump Task Force?

For lack of news, Paul Sperry's recent tweet has caused a minor stir on the conservative interwebs:

Paul Sperry
@paulsperry_ 

DEVELOPING: Investigators have learned that Obama CIA Director John Brennan ran a secret task force out of Langley with its own separate budget to investigate Trump campaign and alleged ties to Russia. Task force set up before FBI officially launched its own probe on 07/31/16. 

10:17 PM · Sep 7, 2020

I'm skeptical of this tweet--the essential content of which is not new--for several reasons.

The first is that, as stated, the whole idea of a CIA task force targeting a US Person residing within the US for ties to a foreign country is too transparently illegal to be probable. A separate budget for such a task force would merely document the illegality.

Counterintelligence operations inside the US--which is what we're talking about here--are the province of the FBI. Brennan--who is not natively stupid, whatever else you may think of him--would understand the risks and would certainly come up with a workaround. That's not to say that Brennan wasn't involved. It's just that the Langley "task force ... with its own separate budget" is too simple. It's too good to be true, because its discovery would make the coup so easy to prove in the big picture conspiracy sense, but like most things that are too good to be true it most likely isn't.

In response to DJL this morning, I wrote:

Yes. They're probably working off a 2017 article in The Guardian. IMO there are two things--possibly three--at work there: the two, the campaign against Flynn, and Brennan spreading the dossier in DC. The other possibility, the Alfa Bank hoax. I believe that that much is true, but with The Guardian you have to be careful.

So, to repeat, what I think drives this narrative is the notorious article by Luke Harding in The Guardian, dating back to April, 2017 (h/t SWC for the reminder). I do wonder whether this article was not intended as a cover for what was really going on--the centrality of the Steele "dossier" to the entire Russia Hoax. That will be difficult to state with certainty because of redactions in the released documents, but I believe it to be probable:

DiGenova On The Flynn/Kislyak Call

Appearing on the Howie Carr show this week, Joe diGenova weighed in on the non-unmasking of Michael Flynn with regard to the famous Flynn/Kislyak call. DiGenova comes down on the side of those who say that the the monitoring of the call was not done by traditional FISA means as I've described them--picking Flynn up on the FISA for the Russian embassy. You can get a good link here, with the relevant portion near the end. Here's a word for word transcript of what Joe says:

I think it's going to become pretty clear that Michael Flynn was NOT unmasked but was rather the subject of a separate intelligence electronic surveillance by a foreign intelligence service at the request of John Brennan. Most likely the United Kingdom GCHQ, which is their NSA. When you look at the timeline in all the of the unmaskings of Flynn, those were done within a timeline that shows that the Kislyak conversation was not conducted in the United States. The Kislyak conversation was when Flynn was in the Dominican Republic and Kislyak was in Moscow for the Orthodox Christian Christmas, which is January 2nd. And so that means that in order for them to be wiretapped and have their calls intercepted that had to be done by a foreign power. And if you do that at the request of the United States, and you know that a US person is your target, and not Kislyak, that is a crime. That is a violation of federal law. You cannot wiretap an American citizen overseas under circumstances like that.

I want this on the record so that, if I turn out to be wrong, anyone who wants to rub my nose in it will have a good point of reference. Sitting here right now I see many problems with what Joe says.

First, what Joe has right--and I don't mean to sound flippant when I say that. He's right that to have targeted Flynn while he was overseas (in the Dominican Republic) in the absence of a FISA order on Flynn would have been illegal.

The problems start with the statement that "Kislyak was in Moscow for the Orthodox Christian Christmas, which is January 2nd." The Russian Orthodox Christmas is NOT on January 2nd. The Russian Orthodox Christmas is actually on January 7th--about nine days after the phone call, which was on December 29th.

McCabe Had A Texting Buddy At MI5

Not much to say except that, yes, these text do shed light. MSN reports: Secret texts cast light on UK's early role in Trump-Russia inquiry. Light is always welcome, right? Even when it reveals that the upper echelons of the FBI appear to have been populated by kooks and criminals.

Two of the most senior intelligence officials in the US and UK privately shared concerns about “our strange situation” as the FBI launched its 2016 investigation into whether Donald Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia, the Guardian has learned. 

Text messages between Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI at the time, and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, now the head of GCHQ, also reveal their mutual surprise at the result of the EU referendum, which some US officials regarded as a “wake-up call”, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

While Russia had previously been viewed as a country that would seek to interfere in western elections, the Brexit vote was viewed by some within the FBI as a sign that Russian activities had possibly been successful, the person said. 

Their exchanges offer new insights into the start of the FBI’s Russia investigation, and how British intelligence appears to have played a key role in the early stages. 

In one exchange in August 2016, Fleming noted that members of the FBI and MI5 had “met on our strange situation”, a veiled reference to discussions about Russian activities, according to the source. 

UPDATED: The Shape Of The Coup Plot: Obama And The Brits

Yesterday, in Is There A Prosecutive Theory To Fit The Russia Hoax? I outlined a prosecutive theory that might be able to encompass the enormity of the Leftist/Prog plot against our constitutional order (please do yourself a favor and give it a careful reading). Today there are analyses available that advance the snowballing effort to flesh out the full detail of this plot.

First let's turn to Byron York, who describes the increasing Leftist/Prog desperation as they find that the Mueller Dossier "has changed everything"--and not in their favor:

The ground has shifted in the month since the report became public. Before the release, many Democrats adopted a "wait for Mueller" stance, basing their anti-Trump strategy on the hope that Mueller would find the much-anticipated conspiracy. 

Then Mueller did not deliver. ... Democrats searched for a way to convince Americans that the president was still guilty of something serious. 

They devised a plan to turn the Mueller report into a TV show, ... 

At the same time, they would insist that Attorney General William Barr, who has allowed top lawmakers to see the full Mueller report with the exception of a small amount of grand jury material, was hiding something, and that the hidden material might reveal presidential wrongdoing. 

So far, the strategy has not worked. ... 

... 

In the meantime, House Democrats have been reduced to stunts to try to grab the public's attention. At the Capitol recently, they enlisted Hollywood star John Cusack to take part in a public reading of the entire Mueller report — it took 12 hours — as C-Span cameras rolled. The event did not exactly captivate the nation.

Then, last week, Bill Barr gave his bombshell The Answers I'm Getting To My Questions Don't Hang Together interview. The bombshell in the interview was the revelation of what Barr personally finds most riveting:

Bill Priestap's Partially Leaked Testimony

Jeff Carlson has the summary of the latest (partially) leaked testimony at the Epoch Times. This time it's the testimony of Bill Priestap, recently retired from the position of Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. There are only a few significant takeaways from his testimony.

First, Priestap flatly contradicts disgraced former FBI Director Comey's frankly non-credible claim that Priestap told him (Comey) not to brief Congress re the Crossfire Hurricane case. Non-credible, because Comey first states that the practice is to brief the Gang of Eight Intelligence group on "sensitive cases," but then claims Crossfire Hurricane was not briefed because it was "a matter of such sensitivity"--its sensitivity is precisely why it should have been briefed. Here's how the questioning of Comey went:

UPDATED: Lisa Page, Brennan, And The Dossier--Once Again

There's a fair amount of commenting going on about recent leaks of "information", first by Jeff Carlson in his fact based, extensive commentary on Lisa Page's House testimony, and secondly in the NYT's vaguely sourced narrative about the FBI opening an investigation on Trump (this is not actually news). My view is that Lisa Page's testimony, while certainly interesting, produced no bombshells--no breakthrough factual revelations that truly advance our understanding of the Russia Hoax. What her testimony does offer is a view of interaction between the FBI and DoJ with regard to Trump and a better understanding of who the main players were. Page's testimony also--and for me this its most important aspect--strongly confirm the centrality of the dossier for the entire Russia Hoax. This comes out in her testimony regarding former CIA Director John Brennan's apparent knowledge of the dossier material, which Page appears to find genuinely puzzling. This comes up in an exchange regarding Brennan's briefing of former Senator Harry Reid at the end of August, 2016, in which Brennan mentioned the dossier:

Could Papadopoulos Blow The Russia Hoax Wide Open?

On November 2 Dan Bongino conducted a fascinating interview with George Papadopoulos. The most convenient way to digest the interview is at Jeff Carlson's blog, which has a link to the interview on Bongino's radio show as well as a full transcript of the interview. What emerges from the interview is, in my view, convincing evidence that Papadopoulos was, in Chuck Ross's words, the target of an "FBI sting." Actually, that characterization doesn't even go far enough. What seems clear at this point is that the FBI--representing the US Government and as an agency of the Department of Justice--targeted Papadopoulos and attempted to manipulate him into appearing to be a vehicle for Russian influence in the Trump campaign. The FBI had no reason to believe that Papadopoulos had any connections to Russian officials before they targeted him. The fact is, Papadopoulos' academic background and previous experience was in what could be broadly termed "Eastern Mediterranean" politics--Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel. Moreover, in his published writings he actually evinced a degree of hostility to Russian influence in that region. When the FBI's attempt at framing Papadopoulos in this manner predictably fell flat, Papadopoulos was indicted on trumped up "false statements to the FBI" charges stemming from a harmless misstatement--not a lie.

The entire interview is well worth listening to--to capture Papadopoulos' personality--and also worth reading closely for the details that emerge. Chuck Ross's digest is also useful as a summary. Bongino's tone is remarkable. He's well prepared for the interview and, as he goes into the details of how Papadopoulos was groomed to be a fall guy in the FBI's war against Trump, his tone is incredulous to the point of hilarity at times--the FBI's setup is that transparent. Bongino has difficulty throughout in restraining himself from exclaiming at Papadopoulos' only too obvious naivete. For his part, Papadopoulos is naturally reluctant to portray himself as a complete dupe, but even he at a certain point ends up quoting his wife, who exclaimed to him:

"What on earth are you pleading guilty for, when this guy [Mifsud] is obviously setting you up?"

Rather than attempt an exhaustive analysis of the many intriguing threads of information that can be found in the interview, what I'd like to focus on are two particular themes in Papadopoulos' narrative: 1) That he was the subject of a FISA, and 2) that his conversations with FBI intelligence assets such as Halper, Downer, and Mifsud were "recorded".

UPDATES: The Spy In The Trump Campaign

Sundance at Conservative Tree House has a fascinating blog up tonight. He begins from a tweet by George Papadopoulos:

George Papadopoulos‏ @GeorgePapa19

While I cannot disclose the information publicly, it’s a fact that both me and congress know who the SPY within the campaign was. Congress will likely include it in a report later on. Eyes were everywhere during 2016.

3:05 PM - 28 Oct 2018

Sundance posits that the source was the former US Representative from Michigan, Mike Rogers--not to be confused, as we'll see, with former NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. Rogers, the former US Rep., was a Special Agent for the FBI in Chicago from 1989 - 1994 (I didn't know him, but recall hearing the office buzz when Rogers resigned to go into politics). More to the point, after leaving the House in 2014, having served as Chairman of the Permanent Select Committe on Intelligence, Rogers joined the Trump campaign in 2016 as national security adviser. Sundance points out Rogers' dodgy role in the Benghazi whitewash and then asks: "So how did Decepticon Rogers come to be an advisor to the Trump campaign?" Unfortunately, he offers no views on that.

Rogers was abruptly terminated within days after the election--much to the dismay of the Washington DC establishment. For example, in the Washington Post David Ignatius reported the dismissal in telling terms:

Just how far the new administration may depart from long-standing U.S. national-security policies was demonstrated by Rogers’s own departure.

You could imagine the jaws dropping Tuesday across the intelligence community when people heard the news of Rogers’s ouster. ... the intelligence agencies literally don’t know what to expect next.

Sundance himself ties Rogers' dismissal to the well known visit of Admiral Mike Rogers to Trump Tower a few days after the election, which led to the move of the Trump transition team headquarters from Trump Tower to a Trump golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. However, once again, sundance offers no further details.

The question, then, becomes: What would the NSA Director have to do with a human source inside the Trump campaign? Wouldn't that be the purview of the FBI? Would the NSA Director even know of the existence, much less the identity, of such a source? And even supposing that Admiral Rogers disclosed the existence and identity of a human source inside the Trump campaign, why would that necessitate a removal of the Trump transition team from Manhattan to rural New Jersey? Wouldn't removal of the source from the transition team solve the problem, without the need for a disruptive move?

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.

UPDATED: The Central Scandal of the Russia Hoax--and Our Constitutional Crisis

Scott Johnson at Powerline, The Biggest Scandal, offers some comments regarding two recent articles by Andy McCarthy. I certainly am in total agreement with Johnson's assessment that this whole Russia Hoax constitutes "the biggest scandal in American political history." Part of the scandal beyond the actions of the Obama Administration and officials at the DoJ/FBI/CIA/State--and including not only political appointees but also career professionals--is the complicity of the press and its continued silence. That complicity extends beyond biased reporting to complicity in the FISA process itself through the FBI's leak process and then reuse of the leaked material, laundered through the press, as "probable cause" for the FISA against Carter Page.

What I'd like to do here is to expand a bit on a point that McCarthy makes in the first article, "Reading the FISA Redactions." The entire article is well worth a careful study for anyone who wants to understand what's going on with all the talk about the FISA application and, especially, the renewal applications. I have to say, I take my hat off to McCarthy--he goes through the applications step by step, demonstrating that, for all the redacting that was done, the bottom line is readily apparent: The FBI had precious little in the way of "probable cause" to offer the FISA Court (FISC), and yet their warrant was approved--and thrice renewed! This never fails to amaze me every time the subject comes up.

McCarthy gets to the heart of the matter--the first of many important points he makes--right up front:

Page has never been charged with any crime, much less with espionage. That is a salient fact because to get a FISA warrant on an American citizen, the FBI is required to show that the citizen’s activities on behalf of a foreign power violate federal criminal law. The FBI and Justice Department went to the FISA court four times over nine months, from October 2016 through June 2017, claiming to have grounds that Page was involved in heinous clandestine activity. Why isn’t he in handcuffs?

I believe it is because they never had a case. All they appear to have had were the 2013 attempt by Russian spies to recruit Page as an asset, and the Steele dossier.

Now here's what I want to make clear. The original FISA order, when the target is a US Person (USPER) such as Carter Page, lasts for 90 days. A FISA order can be renewed, but the renewal is NOT granted on an "if at first you don't succeed, try try again" basis. To get an extension on a FISA--and let me say here that I completely agree with McCarthy that the initial FISA was pure BS--the FBI has to either:

1) make a reasonable showing that it is making progress in its investigation as a result of its use of FISA, i.e., it is moving forward with additional evidence gained through FISA that tends to confirm the presentation of the case that was made in the initial application, or

2) in the absence of such progress, the FBI must make a reasonable showing that the extension is likely to produce progress.

Of London, Rome, And Christopher Steele

In Christopher Steele As Frontman I briefly alluded to a somewhat obscure aspect of Steele's activities:

No wonder Steele has been so reticent to testify under oath. Especially since, if he retains ties to British Intelligence he could be prosecuted for espionage under British law for simultaneously working as a source for the FBI.

I believe it's a well established fact that British Intelligence (GCHQ) as well as the Intelligence Services of several other European countries (including, really, Estonia!) colluded with US Government agencies (presumably the CIA) in the effort to avert a Trump presidency. Perhaps they feared Trump, or perhaps they naively believed the MSM narrative that President Hillary was inevitable and thought this was a smart way to curry favor with the incoming administration. It backfired and, in the case of the British, in a very public way: GCHQ boss Robert Hannigan quits for 'personal reasons' after just two years. Right--who wanted that job anyway? And what was that date? January 23, 2017, giving only three days notice? Surely this had nothing to do with Trump being inaugurated, when was that? January 20, 2017, the very same day Hannigan gave his notice? Yes, very messy, and we can probably trace PM May's rocky relationship with Trump to this, oh, misunderstanding.

But, Steele. What are the possibilities regarding his intelligence affiiliations? Perhaps he still works for British Intelligence in some role, even after his retirement. After all, the fulsome praise for Steele in yesterday's WaPo profile of the former spy could be taken that way:

UPDATED: Christopher Steele As Frontman

This will be short and sweet. Well, the sweetness will depend on individual taste.

What seems to be slowly emerging from the murky background of the Russia Hoax--or perhaps I should be saying The Great Russia Hoax--is that Christopher Steele was more of a frontman for the "dossier" than an actual author. While his writing skills are not in doubt, honed as they were in his days as a student Leftist at Cambridge, it's becoming clear that his true usefulness to the Clinton Campaign had to do with his credentials. The FBI and DoJ couldn't very well go in front of the FISC with an application and attached affidavit and tell the judge, This is something that Nellie and the boys or, as might be, Sid and the boys, came up with. No, much better to be able to talk about a former Spook from an allied country with experience of Russian matters, who has Russian sources, who knows their tradecraft, methods, and goals. Who is familiar with their desire to sully the purity of our political processes. And perhaps best of all, conservatives and Republicans tend to be an Anglophilic bunch, and thus less inclined to question the representations of a source from "British Intelligence."

On closer examination, that narrative didn't hold up well to closer examination. Assuming the truth of what we've been told about Steele, he hadn't been in Russia for many years, hadn't even been in MI-6 for quite a few years. His "sources," such as they were and given the tumult of Russian politics since the end of the Cold War, could be regarded as stale at this point, without further authentication. And, importantly, since he admits at the very least to have been dealing with these sources through intermediaries, verification of any of their assertions would be problematic--to say the least.