Is Chris Wray Cruising For A Bruising?

Before turning to John Solomon's latest major article, let's briefly consider FBI Director Chris Wray's track record since taking over at the FBI.

- He actively collaborated with Rod Rosenstein in delaying and thwarting GOP House investigators who were attempting to get to the bottom of the Russia Hoax. 

- He continues to delay DoJ investigative efforts by holding up declassification of key documents. 

- He has publicly contradicted AG Barr, saying that he disagrees with Barr's characterization of FBI actions during the 2016 campaign--and continuing, it now appears, virtually up to the present--as "spying." 

- Most recently, Wray responded to Senator Ted Cruz's call for a RICO investigation of Antifa by stating that the FBI views antifa as more of an ideology and noted that the FBI does not investigate ideology. He went on to suggest that the FBI was investigating "anarchist extremists" more or less as individuals.

Who can take a guy like this seriously? The FBI didn't engage in active "spying" on a political campaign and candidate? Really? Antifa activities are not coordinated? Really? Chris Wray is a waste of space.

Is it any wonder that one of Wray's remaining allies--Dan Coats--is being removed as DNI? Who thinks that when President Trump--only days after Wray's absurd statements about Antifa--stated that "[c]onsideration is being given to declaring ANTIFA ... a major Organization of Terror", Trump had not already discussed the matter with Bill Barr? Count on it: Bill Barr is NOT on the same page with Chris Wray. Discount Barr's public "nice talk," just as you should discount his public "my friend Bob" statements. I have no doubt at all that Barr has taken the measure of Wray.

In the wake of Coats' ouster from DNI, Paul Sperry tweeted:

"Christopher Wray Is Becoming A Very Big Problem"

I've been on FBI Director Chris Wray's case for some time now. You can review past posts here. The quote in the title, "Christopher Wray Is Becoming A Very Big Problem," is taken from an interview with Joe DiGenova on Monday, May 13, 2019. DiGenova touched on a number of Chris Wray related problems:

Wray was behind the illegal classification of the Kathleen Kavalec memo; 

The decision requiring Wray to declassify that memo was taken by DoJ; 

Wray's Congressional testimony in which he disagreed with AG Bill Barr's use of the word "spying", or at least distanced himself, was "badly received throughout the Trump administration;

Wray was recommended to Trump by Chris Christie.

I have in the past pointed out Wray's close association with Andrew Weissmann in the notorious Enron case (Weissmann's theory of obstruction was rejected by the SCOTUS 9-0, but only after Arthur Andersen was destroyed and ten thousand people lost their jobs). DiGenova adds to that and sketches out Wray's Deep State connections by relating that Wray is close friends with Robert Mueller and James Comey, terming Wray "an acolyte [altar boy] of Comey," adding that Wray "worshipped" Comey.

Wray can't be gone soon enough for me.

How Much Pressure Do You Think There Is On Peter Strzok?

John Solomon is using the Kathleen Kavalec story to perpetrate the journalistic version of death by a thousand cuts. In his latest article, State Department's red flag on Steele went to a senior FBI man well before FISA warrant, Solomon documents that the information Kavalec received from Brit fabulist and ex-MI6 spook Chris Steele went straight to the FBI and was then routed to ... Peter Strzok. The FBI is required to apprise the FISA court about any reasons for doubting the reliability of a source. Kavalec's typed up account of her interview with Steele includes the "important to note" fact that Steele claimed that the alleged "Russian network" was being paid out of the "Russian Consulate in Miami"--which, as Kavalec points out, doesn't exist. Would the FISA court have been interested to know that the supposedly reliable Steele, on whom the warrant was totally reliant, was inventing stories about non-existent Russian consulates? Would this suggest that he was inventing other "facts," like the "Russian network"?

Multiple sources confirm to me that the recipient of the State Department email was Special Agent Stephen Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Eurasian counterintelligence and now one of the bureau’s top executives as the assistant director for intelligence under Director Christopher Wray. 

The email to Laycock from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec arrived eight days before the FBI swore to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it had no derogatory information on Steele and used his anti-Trump dossier to secure a secret surveillance warrant to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Moscow. 

Officials tell me that Laycock immediately forwarded the information he received about Steele on Oct. 13, 2016, to the FBI team leading the Trump-Russia investigation, headed by then-fellow Special Agent Peter Strzok. 

Laycock was the normal point of contact for Kavalec on Eurasian counterintelligence matters, and he simply acted as a conduit to get the information to his colleagues supervising the Russia probe, the officials added.
The officials declined to say what the FBI did with the information about Steele after it reached Strzok’s team, or what the email specifically revealed. A publicly disclosed version of the email has been heavily redacted in the name of national security.

It was Strzok's responsibility to make sure that derogatory information was included in the Carter Page FISA application. I'd say there's an enormous amount of pressure on Strzok to do a deal with John Durham if Strzok has any incriminating information on other officials higher up the ladder. We can start with Andy McCabe and James Comey and continue with John Brennan and James Clapper. Strzok appears to have been the poodle running back and forth between the principals in the Intelligence Community who would have had overall direction over the Russia Hoax.

ADDENDUM: Oh my! Sundance at CTH is all over this. Get a load of this--the FBI's FISA application specifically cites information coming from the State Department in October, 2016, for the proposition that Carter Page is a Russian agent:

Worse yet, in the application itself the FBI said the information proving Carter Page was an agent of a foreign power came from the State Dept:

IMO: Peter Strzok is in a world of hurt.

UPDATED: Uh-Oh! More On Kathleen Kavalec's Notes Re Chris Steele

This is awkward. Just over a week ago Chris Wray's FBI retroactively classified Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec's email, based on notes regarding her meetings with Chris Steele, the Brit ex-spook of "dossier" fame. Then just two days ago, John Solomon revealed the scam--it turns out Kavalec had classified her email as ... Unclassified (Chris Wray Challenges Bill Barr). And now Solomon has a new article out in which he provides some details about what's behind all those redactions, based on the notes. The email as obtained by Citizens United looks like this:

You could say, just from the title of Solomon's article, that he's skeptical of the FBI's "narrative": FBI's Steele story falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA. Here are some of the details that Solomon reveals, after carefully noting that the FBI had sworn in its FISA application that Steele’s “reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings” and the FBI has determined him to be “reliable” and was “unaware of any derogatory information pertaining” to him.

... Kavalec apparently needed just a single encounter with Steele at State to find one of his key claims about Trump-Russia collusion was blatantly false. 

In her typed summary, Kavalec wrote that Steele told her the Russians had constructed a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” that recruited emigres in the United States to “do hacking and recruiting.” 

She quoted Steele as saying, “Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami,” according to a copy of her summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United. Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.”

Ouch! Standards for judging informant reliability at the FBI seem to have fallen.

Chris Wray Challenges Bill Barr

No, actually I'm not referring to Wray deprecating the use of the word "spying" to describe the spying that the FBI engaged in. I'm referring to a breaking story by John Solomon that is stunning in its implications: Steele's stunning pre-FISA confession: Informant needed to air Trump dirt before election.

Here's the short story--you can get the gist of it from these notes that Kathleen Kavalec, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, sent on Oct. 13, 2016: