UPDATED: Durham Not Looking To Prosecute High Level FBI Officials

That's the breaking story at Fox:

Durham probe focused on FBI, but prosecution of high-level officials like Comey 'unlikely': sources

My understanding of Bureaucratese yields this translation: "Unlikely" = Take it to the bank. And if you asked Bluto Barr he'd tell you the same.

Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation is largely focused on the activities of the FBI as he reviews the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, Fox News has learned, but sources familiar with the investigation said the prosecution of high-level FBI officials, like former Director James Comey, is "unlikely."

...

One source also told Fox News that Durham had been pursuing "new and credible leads" through the end of the Trump administration, though it is unclear, at this point, what those lines of inquiry entail.

Pursuing "new and credible leads"? Who's kidding whom? If Clinesmith had to be let go with a little tickle, lest he rat out "high Bureau officials," who seriously thinks Comey or McCabe will be squeezed, when what they have to say could lead to the highest levels of the Deep State? As Don Surber wrote not long ago:

We elected Donald Trump president and Washington went into open rebellion. Federal employees sabotaged his administration. The elitist insurrection shut down the economy, printed money to keep Wall Street's fortunes rising, and still had to rig the election to get him out.

Now the goal is to gaslight We The People into believing Trump was never a legit president (strip him of post-presidential perks, put him in front of a ridiculous post-constitutional kangaroo court) and banish him from public life.

But that won't happen. The Army of the Potomac in the Imperial City will serve as a constant reminder of what really went down. Just like Surber said.

UPDATE: I almost forgot--this is a logical place to add this reminder that the republic is no more:

TOP SECRET: FBI Director Christopher Wray is covering up, er, classifying at top levels, all documents referring to the "Crossfire Hurricane Fusion Center." He won't let Congress know what it was, where it was based or who was assigned to it

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) February 2, 2021

Manafort, Flynn--And A Dog That Hasn't Barked Yet

John Solomon continues to plow through the FBI spreadsheet that purports to fact check the Carter Page FISA application. He's come across an interesting detail:

Memo suggests FBI opened Manafort probe before Trump hired lobbyist but gave no warning

Some question why bureau didn't give Trump a defensive briefing in spring 2016.

A footnote (#332) appears to indicate (it's redacted) that the FBI opened an investigation on Manafort on January 13, 2016, but never provided the Trump campaign with a defensive briefing about Manafort. 

Solomon consulted Kevin Brock, a former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI. Brock laid out the general principles behind providing defensive briefings:

MULTIPLE UPDATES: Ratcliffe Releases Docs Showing The Russia Hoax Was Approved By Hillary--And Was A Known Hoax

We recently saw the letter from DNI John Ratcliffe to Lindsey Graham in which Ratcliffe described handwritten notes of John Brennan. Those notes memorialized Brennan meeting personally with Obama, Susan Rice, James Clapper, and Denis McDonough and informing them that it appeared that "the Russians" were aware that Hillary Clinton was ginning up a Russia Hoax operation against Donald Trump to distract attention from her email scandal. Today the original notes were released, along with a CIA memo to disgraced former FBI Director James Comey--with attention to Peter Strzok. The CIA memo documents the CIA's referral of the matter described in Brennan's notes to the FBI--something that Comey denied all knowledge of in his recent testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here are Brennan's notes, which are partially redacted. Note that one of the redactions appears to provide the identities of persons--presumably Russians?--involved in a discussion of Hillary's plans to smear Trump:

Here's a transcript of the notes, provided by Sean Davis at The Federalist (DNI Declassifies Handwritten Notes From John Brennan, 2016 CIA Referral On Clinton Campaign’s Collusion Operation):

“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activites from [REDACTED]. Cite alleged approval by Hillary Clinton–on 26 July–of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to villify [sic] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

 

Two things:

UPDATED: Comey And The Obama White House--Bombshells To Come?

The last we heard from disgraced former FBI Director Jim Comey, he was wracking his memory for the Senate Judiciary Committee and coming up empty. The famous note taker couldn't remember anything that would have interested anyone, even regarding matters that are now pretty much public knowledge. For example, the referral the CIA sent to the FBI in which the FBI was informed that "the Russians" might be aware of Hillary's Russia Hoax caper--even before it went into full swing.

Fortunately, Comey's 'Huh?' responses are unlikely to be the last word on some of those matters.

For example.

Jay Sekulow's American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has been doing some digging with the help of FOIA and just got back some very interesting results. What they show, among other things, is James Comey in direct communication with Neil Eggleston, Obama's White House Counsel (and long time Clintonista). Those direct communications began in September, 2016, and continued up until the afternoon of January 19, 2017. Yes, January 19 was the day before Donald J. Trump was inaugurated. That's a pretty admirable example of the good old American work ethic, and one assumes that the only reason Eggleston didn't send more emails to Comey on the very day of Trump's inauguration was because ... he was busy coaching (or writing?) Susan Rice's email-to-self that morning--Susan Rice: The WH Counsel Told Me To Write It.

Sekulow wants you to know something else about the results of his FOIA work--which isn't complete yet. These results came as a result of a FOIA request for documents regarding FBI spies in the Trump White House. Uh, that makes those results even more suggestive than they already are.

What did Comey do with Eggleston's January 19, 2017, email (which included Andy McCabe and two redacted names on the address list)? Comey thought this email--and the attached, totally redacted, TOP SECRET letter from Eggleston--was the kind of thing that his (Comey's) General Counsel, James Baker, should also see--so Comey forwarded it to Baker. I point this out in particular because Shipwreckedcrew has claimed that the FBI's Office of General Counsel is mostly concerned with very boring stuff like Bureau car accidents. On the contrary, James Baker--long reported to be cooperating with John Durham--was very much Comey's right hand guy.

Who else knows about all this, has seen the redacted letter and any other relevant documents? I'm betting AG Bill Barr has. Uh oh!

UPDATED: The Comey Senate Testimony

I've always disagreed with the idea that Senate hearings are the way forward with regard to the Russia Hoax. The only way is giving Barr and his prosecutors and investigators the time to do the job right. Coupled with public declassifications--which have been coming at an increasing rate as the investigations make headway.

Paul Sperry, in a brief series of tweets, illustrates what would foreseeable go wrong with having disgraced former FBI Director Jim Comey testify--it's a waste of time. He's too slippery to provide the soundbites that would light up the news--if the MSM even reported it:

Paul Sperry

@paulsperry_

Comey keeps referring to the Horowitz report -- "I only know what I've read in the Horowitz report" -- even though he ran the investigation the report details. When he's not limiting his testimony to the Horowitz report, he's suffering suspicious bouts of amnesia.

There is corrupt, and then there is pompously corrupt, and Comey is pompously corrupt.

This scandal is too serious to have politicians questioning such a key witness as Comey under oath. He's too slippery. A staff attorney with prosecutorial experience ought to be questioning Comey, pinning him down with documents, following up on his obfuscations and evasions.

BREAKING: Comey swears he doesn't remember hearing anything about Steele's primary subsource, Igor Danchenko, being the subject of an FBI C.I. investigation, as a suspected Russian agent, and doesn't recall his own CrossFire Hurricane team interviewing Danchenko in Jan 2017.

SENATE: When did you learn Steele dossier's primary subsource was a suspected Russian agent?

COMEY: I don't remember ever being informed.

BREAKING: Comey swears he does not remember, despite documentation, receiving intelligence in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was trying to tie Trump to Russia as part of a political strategy: "doesn't ring any bells".

Why do Senate Judiciary Republicans keep referring only to the Horowitz report when they have a guilty plea from FBI lawyer Clinesmith to now refer to?

Republicans are incapable of asking the pointed questions and follow-ups of Comey to draw any blood, to elicit new admissions and details to advance the investigation. They need a hard-nosed staff attorney to take Comey as a hostile witness.

The real answer isn't to have a Senate staff attorney do the questioning. The real answer is to finish the investigation, indict this deeply creepy guy, and see whether he's willing to be cross-examined in front of a jury by experienced prosecutors--and subject to impeachment by other witnesses.

UPDATE: More illustration of the relatively pointless exercise this testimony is--unless you're only just now learning what a snake Comey has always been. Jonathan Turley:

James Comey seems to be offering the Senate today a series of shrugs over troubling evidence of false evidence and possible Russian disinformation in the Russian investigation. Despite his signing off on secret surveillance, Comey is dismissing questions on the basis that he never knew of any of the memos indicating that the information in the investigation was false or even Russian misinformation. He was under a duty to confirm such facts. As someone who has billed himself as a strong leader, he is now portraying himself as a passive player in these decisions. However, while he would not answer questions on the new evidence of possible Russian misinformation used by the FBI, he had no problem discussing new evidence on Trump's debt that might suggest Russian control over him.

After saying that he could not comment on the new evidence on possible Russian misinformation used by the FBI, Comey just had no problem is saying that he has read material on the Flynn case and give his conclusions on their meaning.

Comey did say that, knowing what he knows today, that he would not have signed off on the Page surveillance. That makes it unanimous with Yates and Rosenstein. Nobody now supports the surveillance request but no one takes real responsibility. 

 

All this was entirely predictable. No surprises at all.

UPDATED: John Ratcliffe Goes NUCLEAR!

Sullivan and Gleeson aren't news and they're not even comedy any more.

OTOH, this is NEWS, via Sean Davis. Handwritten notes of John Brennan--Brennan briefed Obama on Russia's knowledge that Hillary was cooking up a Russia Hoax against Trump! Obama and "other senior intelligence officials." Let's see. Jim Comey, Strzok, Clapper, Susie Rice, and ... who else?

Hey, looks like the Russians knew a thing or two--in any event, they turned out to be right, and the Russia Hoax turned out to be ... a hoax!

Durham v. Mueller

I've repeated several times my view that John Durham almost certainly believes that he has unfinished business with the Mueller FBI. The Comey FBI was really little more than a continuation of the Mueller FBI, and the Team Mueller SCO was, to a significant degree, a resurrection of the Mueller FBI to defend the Deep State against the existential threat of a fully functional Trump administration.

Techno Fog today has a pair of tweets that provide a sort of snapshot of that Durham v. Mueller dynamic. It very simply illustrates the very different understanding the two men have of the injunction to "do justice." These two tweets will also, hopefully, buoy confidence in Durham as we await results--buoy confidence that Durham is doing all in his power to "do justice." He is not the man to easily allow these crimes to go unpunished or to pull up short when he's on the trail. Please excuse my clumsy embedding job:

I don't know what John Durham will do. But I can add perspective.

Keep in mind -

In 2000, he uncovered evidence the FBI framed 4 innocent men for murder.

Durham has already exposed one of the biggest scandals in FBI history. Don't think he's shy. pic.twitter.com/lRenNUtm7E

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 23, 2020

Durham's efforts - he went right to the courts and to their attorneys - freed the two surviving men from prison.

Meanwhile, Mueller's FBI was arguing the exculpatory evidence didn't mean the men were innocent. 🤔

"Do justice." pic.twitter.com/XLHEvx8ek4

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 23, 2020

How Long Has Durham Been On The Job?

We've known, or at least we thought we knew, that John Durham was investigating Russia Hoax related matters as early as the late summer of 2018. However, a new book by NYT reporter Mike Schmidt (Donald Trump v. the United States) sheds additional light on this matter, without clearing it up entirely. Here's how this is explained at The Lawfare Blog:

Schmidt reports in his book that around March 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tapped Durham—then an assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut—to open a leak investigation into FBI Director James Comey following reporting by the New York Times that Comey had asked the Justice Department to refute Trump’s baseless allegations that former President Barack Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower. The investigation reported directly to Sessions. Schmidt adds that Durham’s investigation “unnerved career officials in the deputy attorney general’s office,” [i.e., officials working for Rod Rosenstein] which is generally responsible for the department’s day-to-day operations and normally would have overseen an investigation like Durham’s.

The existence of the investigation shows that Durham has been involved with the investigation of Russia-related matters from the very start of the Trump administration, a point the New York Times’s Charlie Savage made on Twitter. It is unclear to what extent Durham’s 2017 inquiry is related to a January 2020 report that federal prosecutors were investigating whether Comey improperly disclosed information to reporters in the spring of 2017.

Contrary to Schmidt, I don't think this does show that Durham was involved in "Russia-related matters" at that point. In fact, I'd be pretty certain that he wasn't.

Joe Pientka To The Senate

As a witness, apparently. TGP is full of speculation about former Peter Strzok sidekick Joe Pientka and his wife, Melissa Pientka. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but I believe there are simpler explanations. The original twitter thread by Catherine Herridge is sober enough, however.

My assumption from Herridge's account is that Pientka is cooperating with the Senate investigators voluntarily--unlike former head of FBI counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, who will only appear if subpoenaed. My takeaway from this is that it almost certainly means that Pientka has already cooperated fully with both IG Horowitz's FISA related investigation as well as with John Durham's more wide ranging investigation. Signs have, IMO, always pointed in that direction--it has long been apparent that Pientka disagreed with the framing of Flynn and, in the wake of that "awakening," may have realized the full scope of the Russia Hoax.

Thus, I assume that Pientka's period of cooperation with the Durham investigation is now complete and Pientka has been made available to the two Senate committees. More to the point, this almost certainly also means that Durham believes he has no further need to keep Pientka's cooperation confidential--Pientka's cooperation has already been put to whatever use it could have for investigative purposes. And that's another sign that an important phase of Durham's investigation--the pre-inauguration phase--is drawing to a close. A fact that disgraced former FBI Director James Comey is, no doubt, painfully aware of.

Herridge (edited only to form a continuous narrative):

DiGenova: Brennan A Witness Against Comey?

Joe diGenova gave a very interesting interview this past Monday on WMAL. In the interview--for which I've transcribed most of his remarks--he touches on a number of important points, some of which we haven't heard much about and some of which also contradict the conventional wisdom:

1. Joe argues strongly that Brennan is probably in the clear--unless he lied to Durham. But, he also argues, that almost certainly means Brennan will now, willy nilly, be a witness against Comey.

2. Joe also believes that Bill Priestap--who I previously thought may have cooperated with the investigation--is now in the crosshairs, because it was Priestap who lied to the Senate about the Danchenko interview. The fact that Priestap has refused to testify voluntarily seems to confirm this.

3. Joe further believes that John Carlin, who presented false certifications to the FISC, is also a target. I have to wonder whether that is just the tip of the DoJ iceberg in this Durham investigation.

4. Finally, Joe offers his view on the Chris Wray situation, arguing that Trump can't afford to fire Wray--much as he undoubtedly wants to. I think his position on this is pretty sound. It's one thing for the Dems to invent one hoax issue after another, all of which are pretty transparently bogus  to the bulk of the public. It's another thing for Trump to initiate a brouhaha when he's trying to focus on his positive achievements. That's been my position in the past--that Wray is safe through the election--and it still seems the best bet. After the election, all bets are off.

Clinesmith Is Lying About Lying

That's the contention of Andy McCarthy's latest:

Clinesmith’s Guilty Plea: The Perfect Snapshot of Crossfire Hurricane Duplicity

McCarthy contends that, while Clinesmith's guilty plea allocution may have been legally sufficient, it was just barely so. McCarthy's expressed hope is that DoJ will have much more to say about that when it comes time for sentencing. In McCarthy's view it was only a "sort of" guilty plea.

In “admitting” guilt, Clinesmith ended up taking the position that I hoped the judge, and especially the Justice Department, would not abide ... 

... in my view, Clinesmith is lying about lying. His strategy is worth close study because it encapsulates the mendaciousness and malevolence of both “Crossfire Hurricane” (the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation) and the “collusion” never-enders who continue to defend it. A defendant’s lying about lying does not necessarily make a false-statement guilty plea infirm as a matter of law. The bar is not high. Still, his story is ridiculous, in a way that is easy to grasp once it’s placed in context.

And so McCarthy proceeds to provide the context in masterful fashion. I highly recommend the article.

For our purposes, I want to point out just a few things.

First, McCarthy makes this very important point:

Clinesmith’s Motives Mirror His Superiors’ Motives

The FISA Double Standard

I refer, of course, to Chuck Ross' fine article, FBI Agents Pushed For A FISA To Investigate Foreign Government Targeting Hillary Clinton. Ross is working off Lindsey Graham's recent revelation of internal FBI debates that concerned a FISA in an investigation that would have targeted an agent of a foreign government that was seeking to influence the 2016 election. That foreign government was reported--as early as early 2015--to be targeting the Hillary campaign even before its formal announcement.

It's impossible to be certain of the identities of the agent or the foreign government. However, Senator Graham maintains that this incident illustrates that the FBI had a double standard for seeking FISAs in the context of the 2016 electin: one standard when the FISA might impact Hillary, and a very different standard when the FISA was pretty much guaranteed to impact Trump--since the so-called 'probable cause' in the case of the Carter Page FISA was known by the FBI to have originated from the Hillary campaign. In such circumstances, the Page FISA and its rationale as regards the Trump campaign was bound to be leaked--as indeed it was.

There are some key differences in the two situations that we should be clear about. Most importantly, the agent of the foreign government targeting the Hillary campaign was not a US Person. Here's the key sentence from one of the internal FBI docs. I'll break the sentence up into bullet points:

Shipwreckedcrew Goes Toe To Toe With Sundance

This Twitter matchup has been going on for a week or so, off and on, and has been pretty entertaining as SWC scores easy points against a wildly flailing sundance. It continues today, including two exchanges that are good for us, as we try to understand what's going on with John Brennan's interview yesterday with John Durham. First let's look at the Twitter exchanges. First:

@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.

Brennan's Interview

Disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan was interviewed for 8 hours at CIA Headquarters today. The interview was led by USA John Durham. We're told by Brennan's team:

Brennan was informed by Mr. Durham that he is not a subject or a target of a criminal investigation and that he is only a witness to events that are under review.

Of course, if as a witness Brennan attempts to obstruct Durham's investigation ...

Brennan also confirmed, indirectly, that Durham remains focused on the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA):

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.

K. T. McFarland On Who's In 'Big Trouble'

Former national security official K. T. McFarland went on Fox this morning with Sandra Smith, who interviewed McFarland about recent activity on the part of the GOP controlled Senate: Lindsey Graham's release of damning FBI notes that show the FBI misled the Senate Intelligence Committee and Ron Johnson's subpoenas to the FBI and Director Chris Wray. Along with the usual talk, McFarland made some important points that should help to maintain perspective as we hear about all the important players in the Russia Hoax getting a pass.

Smith first asks McFarland about the documents that Senator Ron Johnson has subpoenaed from the FBI (as well as Director Chris Wray). McFarland goes over the items that we've all heard about on the news--the documents that were turned over to the IG, the Crossfire Hurricane documents. Then she turns particular attention to a third category of documents, which I hadn't heard were subpoenaed:

But interestingly, he's also asked for all documents that the GSA--Government Services Agency, General Services Agency [sic, it's actually General Services Administration]--had collected during the transition into the Trump administration and asked for what documents were there. I mean, what documents were turned over to whom? Who was turning them over to the FBI? So when I'm looking at this for those three requests, I think some of this is indicating that they're also looking at the Mueller investigation. Not just at incompetence at the FBI or potential wrongdoing.

I've been maintaining exactly that, that AG Barr and John Durham are definitely focusing on Team Mueller from a number of angles. Recall: You can't investigate Crossfire Hurricane without also investigating Team Mueller, which was a continuation of Crossfire Hurricane. The same goes for the Flynn case.

Now, the GSA documents that McFarland is referring to were the very first group of documents that Team Mueller went after. It was a very controversial and aggressive move on Team Mueller's part, because these were documents of the Trump transition team, not the Trump administration, and GSA simply turned them over to Team Mueller without informing the Trump administration. It was a typical Andrew Weissmann and inside the DC establishment move. One angle that Durham could be looking at might be whether Weissmann, in demanding these documents from the (all too willing to cooperate) GSA, may have misrepresented his official authority to obtain those documents without process or notification to the persons and the entity that created those documents.

In my opinion, the fact that the Senate is looking at this event does, indeed, mean that they're looking at Team Mueller. But I think you can take this to the bank as well: The Senate wouldn't be doing this unless they knew that Barr and Durham had already done so.

McFarland continues:

In any event, I think Christopher Wray is in big trouble. Because, Sandra, he did one of three things. He either knew what was going on in the FBI and he uncovered it--and he kept it covered, y'know, cover it up. He, secondly, didn't want to know, and so he's just sort of, 'Don't tell me about it, I don't wanna know.' Or, he's just completely incompetent. I mean, either way, all three of those are pretty bad indictments against the current FBI director.

Assuming Trump is reelected--Wray is unceromoniously fired. My opinion.

Sandra then pivots to disgraced former FBI Director, James Comey, noting that McFarland also thinks that Comey is in 'big trouble'. McFarland responds:

Yeah, because, not just particularly with this subpoena that you just referred to, but it's the testimony that's happened in the last couple of weeks. So you had Sally Yates saying last week, 'Well, the FBI Director, Jim Comey, he went rogue--I didn't know what he was doing.' And then Rod Rosenstein, who testified a couple of weeks ago, he was the Attorney General, acting Attorney General, he said, 'I didn't know anything about it, I would never have signed those requests coming from the FBI if I knew now what I knew then [sic].' And so Comey has a lot to answer for. Either he was rogue and he was running a rogue operation in the FBI--Comey, McCabe, and his senior officials--or he's being set up to take the fall, if in fact it was not a rogue operation, if it has origins that were higher up.

And the other thing, Sandra, to remember, is that Susan Rice wrote herself a memo for the record on Inauguration Day, saying, 'President Obama wants everything done exactly by the book.' So, in other words, 'Jim Comey, if he does something that's not by the books, it's not on us!'

If you watch the video, you can tell from McFarland's body language that she doesn't necessarily believe Yates and Rosenstein, but whether they're telling the truth isn't the real issue. The point is simply that nobody's going to bat for Jim Comey, nobody's arguing--as Chris Swecker recently did--that, gosh, it's so hard to prove intent. They'd all be happy to have Comey take the fall. And, in fact, if he turns out to be the fall guy he'll certainly have earned the distinction. But I think Durham's looking at others, too.

The interview ends up with some general remarks riffing off Lindsey Graham's call for people at the FBI--or who were formerly at the FBI--to go down. IMO, McFarland's remarks here will resonate with any jury, and that dirty cops will receive no sympathy:

Now what we're finding out, whether they lied to the FISA court, whether they lied to Senator Graham, whether they lied to even President Trump, or that they lied to the American people--there were documents being falsified, there were people who were lying, senior officials of the FBI. And I think Lindsey Graham is saying, 'I wanna get to the bottom of it.' These are actual crimes. This is not just leaks to the media. These are actual crimes where people knowingly lied to other government officials and to people.

Targeting Trump

Andy McCarthy has a nice overview article of the Russia Hoax this morning. In it he emphasizes something that I also pointed out in a comment yesterday. Here's what I wrote yesterday, edited for clarity outside the context of the original post (Fact Or Fiction?), using brackets to indicate those edits:

It's slightly more complicated than that. Officially, [after the election and inauguration of Trump] [the FBI] still had C[rossfire] H[urricane] open--so there was an official investigation. However, note that CH was the umbrella, and each individual [who was under investigation] had a subfile investigation [in their name or codename]. We've never heard that an investigation of Trump himself was opened under the umbrella of CH--not until McCabe did so after Comey was fired. That means to me that Comey was conducting investigative activity that was specifically targeting Trump without an open and predicated investigation [on Trump himself].

Now, [Comey] would defend [against] that [charge] by claiming that note-taking during or immediately after official conversations is established practice. However, I believe evidence is accumulating to show that much of this activity was intended to instigate or incite statements from Trump that could later be used to trip him up--not simply to document official discussions. Tricky to prove, perhaps, but I believe that's where the evidence points.

What I'm saying is something very simple and basic, but something that many people fail to internalize. A lot of people seem to think that the FBI just goes out and ... investigates stuff. But the FBI is like any other government agency. It is ultimately a creation of Congress (through DoJ, itself a creation of Congress) set up to undertake official government business--not personal or political business. It can only take official action if there is an official reason for taking that particular action--an official action that is sanctioned by laws, regulations, and guidelines. Moreover, that official action has to be documented in official records (which is what Congressional oversight is about). In the case of the FBI, all investigative activity has to be documented to a case file--which presumes, in the first place, that a case file has been opened for a validly articulated official purpose.

Comey, by contrast, was using official FBI resources to engage in activity that appeared to be official business, but for which he had no official reason, basis, or predication. He was, in reality, misappropriating official FBI and government resouces for his own personal and political benefit. That's a fraud against the government, because it defrauds the government of the honest services of its officials--a duty which Comey owed to the government. And Comey, as well as possibly other FBI officials, compounded this offense by creating records of their faux-official activities at least some of which they treated as their own personal records and maintained in what appears to have been a private--i.e., personal--file system. This was done to conceal what they were doing, which was unauthorized by law, regulations, or guidelines.

This is all at the heart of what Durham is investigating. Part of why the Durham investigation is taking so long is because Durham and Barr are dealing with past masters at manipulating the federal bureaucracy for their own interests. Comey--the disgraced former FBI Director--and the rest are adept at concealing the true nature of their activities. Thus, while Comey engaged in blatantly illegal activity but concealed it for many months, others in the conspiracy covered their criminal activity by concealing it under the forms of legality. For example, investigations were opened using official forms--ECs--and claiming official purposes behind them. Only closer inspection reveals the lack of official sanction, and that leaves the investigator with the difficult task of determining the intent behind these actions: were these actions the result of sheer stupidity, a misguided failure to understand the limits of official authority, or real criminal intent? Recent revelations--the Danchenko interview, the Priestap and Strzok notes and memoranda--are so important because they bear on that question of intent.

We'll return to this a bit later, comparing it to what McCarthy says on these points. The comparison will enhance both and add clarity. However ...

Fact Or Fiction?

Well, if we're talking about Jeffrey Toobin--legal fabulist for CNN--and his new book, "TRUE CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: The Investigation of Donald Trump," then I think we're talking fiction on several levels.

I really hadda laugh last night when I read an article at The Hill--FBI officials hid copies of Russia probe documents fearing Trump interference: book--that recounted an excerpt from Toobin's novel at CNN. My first thought was, Whoa! Theft and/or Destruction of Government Property in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the government of honest services! Or, in the alternative, in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud certain named persons of their constitutional rights. In plain sight--I couldn't believe McCabe could be publicly admitting to that. Here's what The HIll said:

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and other top officials reportedly took steps to preserve memos authored by former Director James Comey and other key documents related to the Russia investigation over worries that President Trump would interfere in the probe, CNN reported Thursday. 

In the days following Comey's ouster in 2017, McCabe reportedly thought that President Trump's decision to remove the FBI director was problematic and, as the then-acting director of the agency, instructed his team to open a criminal case, according to an adapted excerpt from CNN legal analyst Jeffery Toobin's book, "True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump." 

...  

McCabe, fearing that he would not last at the agency given the tumultuousness of the moment, then acted to preserve Comey's memos detailing his conversations with Trump as well as other related documents on the FBI's internal system, thus ensuring that they could not be destroyed, according to CNN. 

Other officials sent documents including the memos to remote locations throughout the FBI, according to CNN, with the goal of preserving them to be shared at a later date. 

Did you catch what was going on? Here's the key phrase: "McCabe ... acted to preserve Comey's memos ... on the FBI's internal system." And just to be sure we have that right, here's Toobin:

McCabe couldn't be sure how long he'd last as director, so he wanted to lock down as much evidence as possible. Most important, he told the investigating agents to place Comey's memos in SENTINEL, the FBI's case management software. McCabe knew that once documents were inside the system, they were virtually impossible to remove. With Comey's memos in the system, the investigators were certain to have access to them -- even if McCabe himself would eventually be gone.

...

Would Trump dismiss more people? Would he shut down the investigation of his campaign's ties to Russia? Would the President demand that the Bureau cease its investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump's onetime national security adviser?

Wait--does that mean that Comey's memos had previously NOT been in SENTINEL? Yes, it does, but, Excuse me! ALL official records must be preserved on the official file system. No exceptions allowed. Believe me--if there's a reason to restrict access to particular investigations within the FBI file system, there are well established, tried and tested, methods for doing so. That's absolutely basic for any investigative agency. It's no more than the application of the basic need-to-know principle that governs all investigative activity.

All Toobin is actually doing is providing us with McCabe's self serving account of how the Comey memos finally--months after some were written--found their way into the FBI's file system where they belonged in the first place. In other words, this is a backhand admission that Comey, McCabe, and presumably others were maintaining a private file system apart from the FBI's official file system. The facts of what happened, as opposed to Toobin's fictional account, run like this:

After Comey's firing McCabe and other top conspirators--undoubtedly including McCabe but also, in all likelihood, James Baker and possibly a few others--afraid that the nature and extent of their conspiracy would become widely known throughout the FBI and DoJ and thus leakable, as also the fact that they had been maintaining a private file system, i.e., conducting a private investigation--scrambled to get the private file system uploaded into the official file system.

The idea that entering Comey's memos into the FBI file system was a security measure rather than an after the fact CYA measure doesn't come remotely close to passing the laugh test.

What To Take From The Senate's ICA Report

Yesterday during the Dem House's theater of the absurd involving AG Bill Barr, the Senate Intel Committee released a heavily redacted version of their report on the origination of the notorious Obama administration Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian "meddling" in US elections. What this report focuses on is the inclusion of the Steele "dossier" as "Annex A" to the ICA.

I think we can take this report as a starting point for John Durham's investigation--at least as regards the ICA and its relevance to the rest of the Russia Hoax and Mueller witchhunt. We've heard at regular intervals that Durham is very much focused on the ICA, that he has been busily interviewing all the analysts involved, and--most pointedly--that he has been gathering all communications between disgraced former FBI Director James Comey and John Brennan. Naturally, the new revelations surrounding the FBI's three-day interview of Christopher Steele's notional "Primary Subsource", Igor Danchenko, make anything we can glean from this report of special interest.

Here's what struck me in reading even this heavily redacted version. You can assess my impressions while reading the excerpts I provide, below.

1. It's clear that the ICA was special ordered from the highest levels. Obama ordered it, but one assumes that there had to have been high level discussions before the decision was made. Those discussions probably involved both the Obama camp as well as the Clinton camp. After all, the Steele "dossier" was Clinton property--they had contracted for it, paid for it, and had already been putting it to use by the time the ICA was written. Getting it into the ICA, mainstreaming it as somehow an intel product rather than a political campaign product, was a big deal. And that was true no matter what caveats CIA analysts may have added.

2. Despite his testimony to the Senate, it seems clear that Comey was the driving force behind getting the dossier into the ICA. Certainly that comes across as the CIA's  understanding of the dynamics. There are hints that the FBI's Bill Priestap--its top CI official--wasn't totally committed, but Comey and disgraced former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe come across as determined. The question, then, is: Was Comey acting strictly on his own, or was he colluding with political operatives, whether from the Obama or Clinton camps, or both? Durham has surely been exploring that angle.

3. John Brennan comes across as rather clever in pointing the finger at Comey in his Senate testimony. This explains why Durham was so eager to get his hands on communications between Comey and Brennan, rather than having to rely on their testimony. What seems clear to me is that if Brennan had insisted, had really gone to the mat in support of the CIA analysts, the dossier could have been excluded from the ICA. Brennan was positioning himself.

4. While the ICA was presented as the assessment of the Intel Community as a whole, it's more clear than ever from this report that the matter of the dossier was strictly between the FBI and CIA--no other agency was truly involved--and Brennan positioned the FBI to shoulder any responsibility.

5. While the CIA analysts may not have been aware of the political provenance of the dossier material, the people at the FBI pushing for its inclusion in the ICA most certainly were fully aware that this was Clinton campaign material. They were also aware of just how unreliable it probably was and the FBI's failure to vet the material was raised insistently by the CIA analysts. Not only was this political provenance concealed from anyone reading the ICA as well as from the CIA analysts, but the fact that the FBI made no attempt to amend or revise the ICA after the Danchenko interview--just three weeks after the ICA came out--is damning evidence of Comey's conspiratorial intent against the president.

Now, here's the major portion of the redacted version of the report. What I've done is to insert an asterisk "*" to indicate redactions in the selected text. My own insertions are in brackets.

What Kind Of Deal Could Comey Make?

Yesterday, commenting on a fine article by Shipwreckedcrew, I pointed out that in January, 2017, the FBI did two things that tied them firmly to the Steele Dossier:

1) At the beginning of the month they inserted a two page summary of the Dossier as Annex A to the Intel Community Assessment (ICA). This placed an Intel Community seal of approval on the Dossier, and drove all subsequent events in the attempted coup against Trump--especially the institution of the Team Mueller witchhunt. Even though Crossfire Hurricane had supposedly been predicated on the Downer - Papadopoulos bar conversation, the ICA in effect--although not in formal reality--superseded that narrative except for occasional tactical purposes when the Dossier came under fire.

2) Toward the end of the month, following Trump's inauguration, the FBI appears to have made the decision to take over operation of Chris Steele's notional "Primary Subsource" (PSS), Igor Danchenko. The FBI had known Danchenko's identity since before the 2016 election, which means they also knew that he was an employee of the premier Dem thinktank The Brookings Institute--then run by long time Clinton crony Strobe Talbott. Further, the vetting interview with the Washington based Danchenko confirmed definitively what the Bureau would have long suspected--that the Dossier was a hoax concocted by the Clinton campaign's "opposition research" arm (spearheaded by Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS, for which Steele was simply a subcontractor, probably used as a frontman to insulate the US operatives). Danchenko appears to have been unproductive in the role of a FBI source, but this action again tied the FBI closely to the Dossier. They could not disavow the Dossier for purposes of the ongoing FISA operation as long as they were also trying to mine its supposed sources for more "dirt" on Trump.

This all plays into the very recent rumors that Comey has been interviewed by John Durham. I gave it as my view that Comey would never sit for an interview with Durham except as part of a plea agreement. That's simply common sense--there would be no benefit for Comey in submitting to an interview under any other circumstances. If here were called before a GJ he would simply be forced to take the 5th.

Thus, I wrote: