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:

The Barnett 302

I'll do this in a sort of impressionistic way--concentrating on overall impressions taken from the FD-302 of FBI Agent William Barnett. That "302" memorializes the interview of Barnett that was conducted by FBI agents and prosecutors investigating the handling of the Michael Flynn case.

First of all, imagine how Barnett felt going into this interview, and what the circumstances of the interview tell us.

Barnett, a law enforcement official of the federal government, had hired an attorney to be present with him at the interview--even though he was just a witness. He may have been just a witness, but he knew this was a high stakes interview and he couldn't simply trust to his own integrity.

He was interviewed by two FBI agents and two federal prosecutors--one of them Jeffrey Jensen, a USA who had also been an FBI agent. Barnett knew there'd be no BS-ing his way through this interview, and that this interview was supremely important from the government's standpoint.

Right at the start we learn something very important. Barnett had worked on both the Flynn and Manafort investigations. In fact, he was the case agent for both investigations at the FBI's Washington Field Office (WFO), having been specifically recruited to join the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) team by SSA Joe Pientka. He continued working those cases once Team Mueller was set up. That means that he would have interacted regularly with the prosecutors who led those investigations for Team Mueller. We learn later that Barnett is able to recall the attitudes and words of Jeannie Rhee and Andrew Weissmann, so it's a good guess that Durham/Jensen are very much interested in those two Team Mueller alumni.

John Ratcliffe: Durham's Investigation Is About Predication

Maria Bartiromo had Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on her show this morning for a fairly wide ranging interview. All the topics were of interest, but one that especially caught my attention was the segment dealing with the John Durham investigation. We've been hearing rumors about Durham nearing, if not the end of his whole investigation, then the end of a certain phase of it. The Clinesmith guilty plea has whet our appetites for more information, but it's been slow in coming--despite promises that we'll be hearing more before the end of the summer. Before we get into that, however, a few remarks.

As we know, as a Congressman, Ratcliffe was a key part of the investigation into the Russia Hoax--as an experienced former prosecutor he showed himself to be a skilled questioner who knew the value of careful preparation. Trump's decision to replace veteran Deep State operative and former senator Dan Coats with Ratcliffe as the head of the Intelligence Community was a shrewd pick. Coming at a time when the Barr/Durham investigation was picking up momentum, there was an obvious need for a DNI who could break through the bureaucratic logjams that Coats and others had constructed to protect the Deep State. The fact that Ratcliffe was an experienced former prosecutor who would understand what was involved in such a major investigation and, especially the legal issues involved in coordinating with a grand jury investigation was an important plus. When you add to that he years of experience in Congress investigating the Russia Hoax, his knowledge of the all the players both in Congress and the Deep State as they overlapped, it came as little surprise that the Deep State and GOP senators closed ranks against Ratcliffe. In the end, however, Trump (and probably Barr) persisted and won the day.

In the transcript of the relevant portion of the interview, note that Maria has focused on some key issues that we've been discussing in recent days. First, of course, she located the tape of then Congressman Ratcliffe clearly referring to disgraced former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith's "changing evidence." Maria astutely relates the Clinesmith guilty plea to the entire three year investigation--and Ratcliffe picks up on that.

Note that Ratcliffe relates what Clinesmith did--"changing evidence"--not just to the final FISA application but to the origination of the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation. As he puts it, what Clinesmith did had to do with continuing the entire investigation. What's left unsaid, however, is that the continued focus of Durham--and Ratcliffe!--on the predication for Crossfire Hurricane also relates directly to the predication for Team Mueller witchhunt--the two are one and the same. Further, at the heart of his is Joe Pientka, who was the supervisor for the Crossfire Hurricane team and who wrote the EC recommending its closing. Also note that Ratcliffe, without being prompted, brings up the topic of the Intelligence Community Assessment--that can't be a coincidence.

Place Pientka into this context when you read about the ongoing coordination between Ratcliffe and Durham. The willingness of Durham to allow Ratcliffe to declassify some of the Pientka related documents and to allow Pientka to talk to Senate investigators in a tightly controlled setting suggests that Durham is still very much focused on the big picture conspiracy. Things appear to be coming to a head.

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):

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 ...

Joe Pientka's Briefing Memo Of Trump, Flynn, Declassified

Today DNI John Ratcliffe declassified the briefing memo written by FBI SSA Joe Pientka--case agent of the Crossfire Razor (Michael Flynn) investigation. This memo details the FBI's participation in the first national security briefing provided to then presidential candidate, Donald Trump. The briefing took place on 8/17/2016. Also present with Trump were Michael Flynn and Chris Christie. You can read the memo, which is only minimally redacted, here.

The briefing that Pientka provided was formulated in collaboration with disgraced former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Kevin Clinesmith--the lawyer who altered documents that were used in the final Carter Page FISA application. The content of the briefing is unexceptional, consisting basically of generalities about how foreign intelligence services target Americans with access to sensitive information--including presidential candidates.

At the time that Pientka provided this briefing he was the case agent for Crossfire Razor, the investigation of Michael Flynn that DoJ has stated--correctly--lacked any plausible predication. Pientka later tried to close the investigation before Trump was inaugurated, citing the utter lack of any indications that Flynn should be under investigation for anything. However, Pientka's selection to provide this briefing was intimately connected with the Flynn investigation. As Pientka told IG Michael Horowitz, he was selected to give the briefing precisely in order to observe Michael Flynn and to assess his personality, with a view to a possible later investigative interview of Flynn.

It is in that context that John Solomon makes what I consider to be a shrewd observation. In the memo Pientka records quite precisely everything that Trump and Flynn said--to all appearances Pientka records their exact words each time they spoke. What Trump and Flynn said was, in fact, no more exceptional than the briefing itself. Trump asked sensible questions, given the nature of the briefing--asking for an assessment of the relative threats posed by Russia and China and acknowledging the difficulties in maintaining secure communications. Flynn focused on FBI workloads, but briefly.

I'm speculating here--obviously I've never given such a briefing and have never read the writeup of such a briefing. However ...

UPDATED: I Was Wrong About 'CR Cuts'

Yesterday a friend pointed out to me that I was mistaken regarding the meaning of a Peter Strzok reference to "CR cuts." For that I apologize. Here's the short version:

Whereas I thought that the words "CR cuts" referred to "tech cuts" associated with the Crossfire Razor, i.e., Michael Flynn case, in fact the reference is to the Steele dossier. 

Now here's the longer explanation.

First, I want to be clear that this changes nothing regarding the Flynn/Kislyak conversations as far as issues of non-minimization or 'unmasking' are concerned. The testimony of disgraced former Director James Comey and of Andrew McCabe is explicit: Those conversations were written up, at least initially, in the form of 'tech cuts' and Flynn's name was not minimized or redacted. The reason for his name was not minimized was that Flynn was already the subject of a Full Investigation and thus fell within the exceptions to the minimization requirements. I've covered all that previously, and it all remains 'operative.' As a reminder, here's what a 'tech cut' is:

In FBI parlance a FISA order is referred to as "technical coverage". Or, simply, a "tech." The typed up summaries of, for example, telephone conversations captured in that way are referred to as "tech cuts" or, commonly, as "cuts."

Thus, I assumed that "CR" meant "Crossfire Razor" and "cuts" meant "tech cuts." However, there's a sort of dual context involved:

1) The context at the time Strzok and Lisa Page were texting, and

2) The context at the time I was writing.

To start with #2, I was writing in the context of new documentary revelations regarding the Flynn case, and debates about whether Flynn's name had ever been masked and, if not, why not. I was able to address those issues successfully, but then wrongly assumed, working from incomplete data, that "CR cuts" fell into the same category. In other words, I assumed that Strzok and Bill Priestap were objecting that DNI James Clapper should not be providing raw tech cuts to the White House. 

Now we turn to #1. Here's the fuller data, the full text thread between Strzok and Page on January 3, 2017, slightly reformatted:

Did Someone Coordinate Stories Among FBI Sources?

Chuck Ross at the Dailer Caller has a very interesting story today: Dossier Author Told John McCain Aide Of Unfounded Michael Flynn Affair Rumor. The real interest in the article is summarized by Ross himself in a tweet:

Christopher Steele told an aide to John McCain [David Kramer] that he believed Michael Flynn had an affair with a Russian woman in the U.K. 

An FBI informant provided a similar allegation to Crossfire Hurricane investigators. They also appeared in the media.

The Steele angle is one revelation from Kramer's just released transcript of his House testimony:

Christopher Steele told a longtime aide to John McCain in 2016 that he believed Michael Flynn was having an extramarital affair with a Russian woman, showing for the first time that the former British spy peddled an unsubstantiated rumor that later appeared in the media and made its way to the FBI. 

Steele shared the allegation with David Kramer, a longtime associate of McCain’s, according to a transcript of Kramer’s House Intelligence Committee testimony released Thursday. 

Kramer met with Steele in London in November 2016 at McCain’s direction to discuss Steele’s work on the Trump dossier. Kramer later gave the salacious document to a reporter from BuzzFeed News.

The other source came to our attention just recently when we examined the now notorious "closing memo/EC" that the elusive Joe Pientka wrote on the Flynn case on January 4, 2017--the one that the "7th Floor" at FBIHQ told Peter Strzok to have Pientka put a hold on.

Save Joe's Voice!

Among the newly released documents relating to the Flynn case are previously unreleased text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Among those messages is an exchange dated February 10, 2017.

The part you want to focus on is the blue part beneath the yellow. In that exchange we see that Lisa Page has been asked by Strzok to review his work on a document. Page gets back to Strzok and accuses him of "lazy work," producing a document that isn't "cogent and readable."

Strzok defends his work by saying,

Lisa, you didn't see my edits that went into what I sent you. I was 1) trying [not]* to completely re-write the thing so as to save [Joe's]** voice and 2) get it out to you for general review and comment in anticipation of needing it soon. I greatly appreciate your time in reviewing and your edits. I incorporated them. Thank you.

* The "not", as you can see, is Strzok's correction in a follow-up text.
** I inserted "Joe's" for the short redacted space because it's logical and it fits. More below.

What's going on here?

Nice Margot Cleveland Article On FBI Targeting Of Papadopoulos

I don't want to quote much from Margot Cleveland's article,

Newly Declassified Papadopoulos Transcript Exposes Crossfire Hurricane Corruption

A newly declassified transcript calls into question the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation: Why was it started, and why did it continue?

because it deserves to be read in full. What I like about it is that it gives an insight into the kind of thinking that was swirling around (think: toilet bowl) in the Crossfire Hurricane team. Either the top levels of the FBI were staffed by complete bozos who could not distinguish what they wanted to be true from their obligation to share relevant information with professionals who might come to a different conclusion, or ... they were totally corrupt.

Here's the short story.

A Closer Look At The FBI's Carter Page Investigation (Part 2)

Let's continue with our "Closer Look" at the FBI's investigation of Carter Page, as explained in the Horowitz FISA report.  Part I of our "Closer Look" dealt with the origins of the investigation in the FBI's New York Field Office's (NYFO) dealings with Carter Page--which stretch back to 2009--and stopped at the point that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened (July 31, 2016) and a separate sub-investigation was opened on Page. Here we will look at Horowitz's account of FBI investigative activity with regard to Page prior to the FBI's supposed first knowledge of the Steele "dossier" on September 19, 2016.

Once again I've pasted in several pages from the OIG report--the full section, with footnotes. The page numbering is included as before: (paper doc page number/pdf file page number). My comments are in "quote" format.


(77/110)

IV. Investigative Steps in Crossfire Hurricane Prior to Receipt of Christopher Steele Reporting on September 19

Flynn's Supplemental Motion And Brief

This is a very long post, but I'll make it just a bit longer by adding a preface of sorts. In the body of this post there is repeated reference to "SSA1"--Joe Pientka. See if your impression is the same as mind. My impression is that Pientka is the source of the information about the altering of the original 302, which means that at some point in the past Pientka came clean--probably first to OIG, but possible to someone in DoJ. That would explain why Pientka is now under a protective order. I wonder, too, and this is pure speculation, whether Pientka's action in admitting the truth to some person in DoJ or OIG may have led Rod Rosenstein to experience the change of heart he appears to have experienced--and to appoint John Durham to begin investigating the Russia Hoax in late summer or early fall of 2018, before Barr was yet nominated to become AG.

Fool Nelson

This Michael Horowitz revelation, that the @JusticeOIG referred Andy McCabe for criminal conduct that isn't public, is now relevant given we learned today that McCabe might've pressured Pientka to alter his 302, leading Pientka to inform the IG.

@GTS_Watch notes that Pientka was interviewed 2 days later, vouching for the 302 to the FBI. My hypothesis is that the IG/DOJ gave Pientka immunity to flip on McCabe and permission to lie to the FBI to shield that investigation from McCabe/co-conspirators.

Also, thanks to commenter EZ for spurring me on to complete this. I'm afraid it'll be a difficult read, but it's a necessary one. For the record, I still believe Flynn will be exonerated. Fully. Powell has done a bang up job here.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Today, as promised, Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell, filed a supplemental motion and brief in support of Flynn's motion to withdraw his guilty plea. You can read all 55 pages of it here. As promised, it's stunning. It portrays, with a wealth of factual detail, Flynn as a man fleeced and then betrayed by his lawyers from Covington Burling.

Because the document itself, while clear as legal documents go, is necessarily complex both factually and in its presentation of the law, I've taken some liberties in reformatting for the sake of clarity and removing citations of authorities. At times I've also omitted ellipses (...). When I cite page numbers, the numbers go to the pagination of the entire pdf. I'll avoid the details of legal ethics, but hope to give an overview of Powell's argument--which I find compelling.

This is a no holds bar document. Powell savages the Covington lawyers. She also, albeit briefly, takes Judge Sullivan to task--making it clear that error on his part will figure into an appeal, if it comes to that.

To begin, Powell makes an opening statement that presents her overall argument (pp. 5-7):

Why Is Joe Pientka Under A Protective Order?

And from whom is Joe Pientka being protected?

The pages we received yesterday do seem to have been inadvertently omitted.  That cannot be said for the most important "original 302" or the original notes of SSA1 #HeWhoMustNotBeNamed because of Protective Order. Still need the #Flynn302#AuditTrail#SSA1 EC from 8/17/16 "PDB" pic.twitter.com/V1CeKS5LAd

— Sidney Powell 🇺🇸⭐⭐⭐ (@SidneyPowell1) January 25, 2020

I really have no idea, but to me the most likely explanation is that he's a key cooperating witness in some sort of an investigation. Peter Strzok's right hand man 'Friday,' Bruce Ohr's handler, Michael Flynn's sly stalker and interrogator. What else?

It's almost like he's getting whistleblower treatment! I wonder what's going on?

Cleveland: OIG Report Fingers Team Mueller

I've been saying for quite some time that everything the Barr/Durham investigation is doing leads inexorably to Team Mueller--and maybe into the Obama White House. Today at The Federalist Margot Cleveland has an excellent article that details the ways in which Michael Horowitz's FISA report points a finger at Team Mueller:

Inspector General Report Shows Special Counsel Replicated FBI Abuses

The report established that the special counsel’s office was complicit in the FISA abuse, the probe was a witch hunt, and its report was a cover-up for systematic government malfeasance.

Here I'll hit what I regard as the highlights.

First, of course, is the matter of the fourth FISA application--a renewal application. That happened on Mueller's watch. FISA renewal applications don't simply piggyback on the previous applications. The same duty of accuracy and full disclosure applies equally to each renewal, as does the obligation to demonstrate that the previous FISA orders are producing new intelligence of value. We now know, of course, that FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith actually falsified documents that were part of that fourth application. Will Clinesmith take a big hit for Team Mueller? We'll find out.

Beyond that, Horowitz documents that when Team Mueller demonstrably identified new information that invalidated the Steele evidence that was relied upon, this information was concealed from the FISA court for many months. The same applies to concealing the fact that, far from being a Russian agent, Carter Page was a US intelligence asset.

Second, the OIG report discovered something that, if it didn't exactly shock me, definitely caused me to sit up and take notice, to even involuntarily raise my eyebrows:

SSA 1 Joe Pientka And Chris Steele

Jeff Carlson has produced a long and thorough summary of FBI official (aka SSA 1) Joe Pientka's involvment in the FBI's attempt to sabotage the Trump campaign and presidency. Pientka, of course, is probably best known for his role in the FBI's framing of Michael Flynn--he, along with Peter Strzok, interviewed Flynn in the White House. However, as we've discussed, Pientka played a central role in the entire Russia Hoax, serving as Strzok's right hand man, a handler for both Chris Steele and Bruce Ohr. He was also involved, as documented by the OIG report, in selecting the informants to target against the Trump campaign. Carlson also points out that the OIG report documents that Pientka was very well aware of derogatory information regarding Steele as well as information that totally undercut the entire basis for the FBI's FISA applications against Carter Page. For example, Pientka knew that, although Steele characterized Page as the go between for Paul Manafort and the Trump campaign and the Russian government, in fact Page had essentially no contact with Manafort whatsoever--that whole narrative was known to be BS.

Carlson's whole summary is worth reading: FBI Agent Who Interviewed Gen. Flynn Played Critical Role in Trump Campaign Investigation. However, this brief passage gives a flavor for Pientka's MO, and also contains something that I found rather amusing.

Drilling Down Into The Flynn 302

The heart of the Flynn case lies in its origins--the claim that there were specific and credible facts to support the belief that Michael Flynn, the former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, was an agent of the Russian intelligence services. As we now know, this claim was never presented to the single person who most needed to be aware of that fact: President Donald J. Trump.

While that is the heart of the Flynn case, at the heart of the prosecutorial misconduct throughout the investigation and prosecution of Flynn is the FBI's FD-302 (302), the report of its interview with Flynn, who had become the National Security Adviser in the new Trump administration. That interview took place on January 24, 2017, under the pretext of a need to discuss Flynn's perfectly reasonable official business--contacts with the Russian ambassador--a transcript of which had been leaked to the Washington Post. The interview was conducted by two FBI officials: Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka. 

This 302 has long been a matter of controversy, due to doubts whether the version that was ultimately provided to Flynn and his lawyers is the original version or may in fact have been edited in a way that misrepresented Flynn's statements in the interview. Those doubts were recently heightened by the admission from the prosecutors that they had misidentified which agents (Strzok and Pientka) wrote which of the two sets of notes that were said to derive from the interview.

I've previously stated my view that the basic trajectory of the Flynn investigation and prosecution ran something like this. 

The FBI, immediately after the interview, initially doubted that they had the false statement case against Flynn that they had hoped to obtain in the course of the interview. We have been told this by disgraced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was in a position to know. In the event, Flynn was forced to resign because of a conflict with Vice President Pence. However, with the advent of Team Mueller, the Flynn case was resurrected in a new form: Team Mueller decided to seek to coerce Flynn into a guilty plea in order to squeeze from him damaging claims about President Trump. The hope was to get Flynn to plead guilty to a false statement charge, under the claim that he had lied to the FBI.

Over the course of months, Flynn refused to state that he had lied--and Team Mueller never indicted him. However, when Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein agreed to allow Team Mueller to target Flynn's son, Team Mueller confronted Flynn and told him they would indict his son the very next day unless Flynn agreed to plead guilty. Flynn caved.

Bruce Ohr 302s--This Should Be Interesting

Not much to say about this. My understanding is that the 302s were supposed to have been written up by the elusive Joe Pientka, formerly Peter Strzok's right hand guy. Pientka also took notes for Strzok during the frame up--er, interview--of Michael Flynn. He's said to be cooperating, which I suppose explains why he's so elusive:

@TomFitton

BREAKING: FBI Will Produce Bruce Ohr 302 reports on his contacts with Clinton-DNC-FBI spy Christopher Steele to @JudicialWatch. @RealDonaldTrumpTom Fitton added,

3:26 PM - 1 Aug 2019

OK, I'll say something more: Maybe Joe diGenova was right when he said we'd be seeing a lot of declass soon.

Sidney Powell Last December: Mueller Destroyed Evidence, Obstructed Justice

While researching other things last night I came up with an article written by Sidney Powell, back in December of 2018. The article, New Facts Indicate Mueller Destroyed Evidence, Obstructed Justice, in my view sheds light on the likely legal end game Powell is looking at now that she's representing Michael Flynn. All of this plays out in the context of the government's obligation to disclose to the defense what's known as "Brady material"--exculpatory information that the government may possess but that the defense may not be aware of. Powell has already told the court that she needs clearance to review classified documentation--documentation that Flynn's prior legal team never had access to.

I believe this is an indication that, once her review of the case file is completed, Powell will seek to withdraw Flynn's guilty plea and have the case dismissed, citing prosecutorial misconduct in various forms--which she describes in her article. In reviewing the case in light of the then known facts (IOW, as of December, 2018), Powell covers some of the same ground that I also covered in Briefly Noted: The Flynn FD-302; Levin And York, which offers a pretty good intro to the significance of FBI FD-302s. The existence of the classified exculpatory DIA information has also been known, but Powell's presentation ties all this together in, as I said, a very lucid package.

That said, here are the most relevant portions of the article. The entire article is quite lucid and not overly lengthy:

Why Is Bruce Ohr Still Working At DoJ

This morning commenter Cassander asked: 

Why is Bruce Ohr still an employee of the Department of Justice? 

Really.

I responded (slightly edited and expanded):

I think that comes down to IG Horowitz's FISA investigation--Ohr is key to that inquiry because he's the person who conveyed the dossier directly to the FBI and was Steele's handler. As long as Ohr remains employed at DoJ he's under Horowitz's thumb, so I think some sort of deal for his cooperation was made at a VERY early date. I'll provide a link to an article that points out that Ohr gets exactly ONE mention in the Mueller report. That one mention is simply a cite to a Trump tweet. In other words, Mueller probably never talked to Ohr, but Horowitz has probably been doing so on an ongoing basis. So here's that article:

Mueller 'Strzok Out' With His Whitewash Report:

"On page 323 of the report, the special counsel acknowledges that he is aware of the origin of the Russia hoax because he quotes the president's Aug. 24, 2018, tweet asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Page, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and Christopher Steele and "his phony and corrupt Dossier." But somehow neither Sessions, nor Mueller, nor anyone else has been able to put 2 + 2 together and come up with the correct answer. 

"Indeed, if you want to gauge the complete inadequacy of the Mueller Report, consider this: President Trump’s tweet is the only mention in the report of Ohr, whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier. It is the only mention of Strzok. It is the only mention of Page. Considering their central role in framing the president, that is the equivalent of the Warren Report somehow relegating Lee Harvey Oswald to a single footnote." 

I think that also means that when Horowitz is done, Ohr will be talking to Durham.

To that let me add something that's quite speculative but, so it seems to me, ultimately has to be relevant.

Briefly Noted: The Flynn FD-302; Levin And York

CTH has an excellent piece today regarding the Deep State jihad against Michael Flynn: Second Scope Memo – Rosenstein Authorizes Mueller to Target Michael Flynn Jr… I won't attempt to summarize all that's in the lengthy piece. Here my goal is relatively modest--to focus on the issues surrounding the FBI FD-302 that summarized the interview with Flynn, and served as the basis for his eventual guilty plea.

I'm sure everyone has heard a lot about FBI "302s", but it may be worthwhile to go over the basics.

Often you'll find it said that a 302 is an agent's "interview notes". That's both true and not true--or, not entirely true. When an agent conducts an interview--i.e, potentially, simply speaks to someone--but depending on circumstances, he may take written notes. Those notes will be retained as evidence in what used to be called a 1A envelope. Those notes serve as backup for and confirmation of the contents of the actual 302, which is formalized summary of the interview/contact/investigation when it is anticipated that it could become the subject of testimony at a trial. So, since it's a summary it's true to say that these are "notes," but they can be much more extensive than the handwritten notes.

If you're saying to yourself, wait a minute, that means a 302 is classic hearsay--you're right. But the 302 is nevertheless a powerful tool for the prosecution. Why that's so is explained at this very informative and readable blog: What is an FBI 302? The Problematic Nature of FBI Agents’ Interview Memos (note that the author correctly refers to the 302 as a "memo" rather than as "notes"). I'll summarize it a bit.