Whither Durham's Russia Hoax Investigation?

Yesterday we heard that John Durham's Russia Hoax investigation is:

making "excellent progress"

adding prosecutors to his team.

moving "full speed ahead"

"remains full steam ahead,”

“is definitely still happening,”

Does that explain why Stefan Halper and FBI Agent Stephen Somma are as hard to find as, well, Joseph Mifsud?

That would appear to be the subtext of an excellent article at Fox:

Who's hiding 'Russiagate' informant Stephen Halper, and why?

Questions raised over what became of the subpoena -- and no-show -- of FBI informant Stefan Halper and his handler, Stephen Somma

Halper, of course, is the highly paid, corpulent, CIA/FBI crack(head) operative who was at Ground Zero for all things related to Michael Flynn and Donald Trump--including the setup of Carter Page. Stephen Somma is the New York agent who was both the case agent for the CI investigation of Page as well as the handler for Halper. 

Lindsey Graham Seeking To Declass 40 Page FBI Memo

Yesterday Sen. Graham did a 44 minute interview with Trey Gowdy. Among other topics of interest, Graham mentioned that he has finally been able to review a classified FBI memo--40 pages long--that was referenced by IG Horowitz in his FISA report. Graham states that he is working to get that memo declassified.

The memo in question documents the three day debriefing of Christopher Steele's supposed "subsource." The relevant portion of the interview can be found between the 9:50 and 11:15 minute marks. Here is my transcription of that portion:

... I believe that the FBI was on notice that it [the Steele dossier] was unreliable, continued to use it anyway. I believe that they misled the FISA court, and here's the key question. 

On January 21st through the 24th the Russian subsource, the guy who provided ALL the material for the dossier, is interviewed by the FBI for three days. He's interviewed again in March. There's a memo about that interview. Horowitz found it. It was 40 pages. My staff has finally got to look at it--it's classified. I'm gonna try to get it UNclassified. The Horowitz Report suggests that the result of the Russian subsource interview put great doubt into the reliability of the dossier in terms of being able to get a warrant.  

Here's the question. Is it possible that an interview of that magnitude--that basically shredded the key document to get a warrant--that the people at the top, McCabe and Comey, were never told, 'Oh, by the way, our entire case has collapsed.' I'm looking at that.

I believe I can answer that question: No. That's not possible.

Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller comments:

The Justice Department’s office of the inspector general revealed in a report released Dec. 9 that the source, who has not been identified, disputed many of Steele’s allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The source told the FBI that Steele misrepresented or embellished the claims by passing off rumor as fact in the 35 page dossier. The inspector general’s report revealed that the FBI failed to disclose the information in two applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. 

The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s information in applications for the FISAs. The Justice Department deemed two of the four FISA orders against Page to be invalid because of omissions about Steele’s source.

If Graham is stating openly that he's seeking to declassify this memo, I assume he's coordinating those efforts with the Trump administration's ultimate Declassification authority: AG Bill Barr. The existence of this memo is not news to Barr, Durham, or Graham, so the suspicion must be that Barr has decided that the time for declassification is near.

Avenues Of Inquiry Into Team Mueller?

Today at CTH sundance does an overall nice job of evaluating an important document: a letter from Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers to Rosemary Collyer, Chief Judge of the FISC (the "FISA Court"). Demers, you might like to know, succeeded John P. Carlin as head of the National Security Division, as of February 22, 2018. Here's his Wikipedia bio:

Prior to his post in the United States Department of Justice, Demers served as the vice president and assistant general counsel at Boeing. Demers clerked for Diarmuid O'Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. He worked in private practice before serving in the Office of Legal Counsel. Demers was on the leadership team of the United States Department of Justice National Security Division, first as senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General and then as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Law & Policy. Demers is an adjunct professor of national security law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Demers' letter was dated July 12, 2018--in other words, at the height of the Mueller Witchhunt, with high hopes in the air that the Dems would retake the House in November and use the Mueller Dossier to impeach President Trump. What this letter is all about is the fact that, as a result of the efforts--largely--of Devin Nunes, serious and persistent questions had been raised publicly about the fraudulent nature of the Carter Page FISA order (and its three renewals). By the time Demers wrote his letter to the FISC it was well known that the application for the FISA had been largely based on materials developed by opposition research contractors working for the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that those materials were as suspect as that characterization makes them sound. Another major source behind the FISA application, it was well known by then, had been undercover FBI assets and foreign operatives who were used to target persons in the Trump campaign--"with no basis", as AG Bill Barr recently put it.

John Solomon's Guide To The OIG FISA Report

John Solomon has written what I'm calling a "guide" to the long awaited FISA report that IG Michael Horowitz will present to the public on December 9, 2019. Solomon himself has titled his blog The 10 most important revelations to expect from the Russia probe FISA report, but if you're looking for actual revelations you'll be disappointed. It's much more an educated what-to-expect "guide" for navigating the 500 page report, because Solomon doesn't claim in all cases that the report will in fact deal with each issue. In other words, Solomon's guide in part gives a measuring rod against which it judge the seriousness of the report. It's an easy enough read and I urge everyone to read it. What I'll do here is present my version of Solomon's ten headings with brief explanations which include my comments:

1. The first thing to look for is the actual scope of the FBI's misconduct--whether by omission or commission. Solomon expects Horowitz to document

"between six and 12 failures, mistakes and acts of misconduct. These will range from the serious offense of altering a government document to failures to provide the courts evidence and information required under the FISA process."

Obviously, the larger the number of serious problems of this sort that are identified, the louder the calls for tougher oversight and reform of FBI procedures will be.

2. A major focus falling under #1 is whether the FBI withheld from the FISC exculpatory evidence that it is required to reveal. Solomon expects the report to focus on the exculpatory statements that George Papadopoulos made to one of the FBI informants who was targeted against Papadopoulos in London--one of the now famous "OCONUS lures." However, Solomon also will be looking for similar issues to be raised regarding Carter Page. In the case of Page, in my opinion, a concerted effort was made in the FISA application to conceal the true nature and extent of Page's past cooperation with the FBI, which would have cast serious doubt on the claim that Page was a Russian agent.

MULTIPLE UPDATES: Breaking: Barr Disagrees With Horowitz

Specifically, what Barr is reported as maintaining is that the FBI lacked a justification for opening its Crossfire Hurricane investigation. In legalese, he's saying that the predication for the investigation was inadequate as measured by the requirements of the AG Guidelines for National Security Investigations. That's what the WaPo is reporting tonight: Barr disputes key inspector general finding about FBI’s Russia investigation.


Recall that disgraced former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress that Crossfire Hurricane was "a full enterprise counterintelligence (CI) investigation." What that boils down to--plugging the specifics of the Crossfire Hurricane into the conceptual framework of the AG Guidelines--is this:

The FBI possessed specific and articulable facts that gave reason to believe that 1) "four Americans" - Carter Page, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Paul Manafort - constituted an "enterprise" or "group in fact" within the Trump campaign, and 2) that "enterprise" was engaged in activities that were a threat to the national security of the United States on behalf of Russia.

Nothing I have seen over the past three years supports that claim. Everything I have seen indicates that the FBI's sole reliance on source information that could not be verified--and in many cases was speculation of the rankest sort--fell well short of a reason for the FBI to believe that it possessed the required factual basis.

Assuming the accuracy of the WaPo's reporting, I'll surprise no one by saying that I agree with Barr. As it stands, I'd say that Horowitz's report will soon be shown to be essentially a whitewash because it will have failed to forthrightly address the clear lack of predication for the FBI's actions. As I've stated endlessly over the last three years, that is the fundamental issue--little else truly matters. By stating that the FBI's investigation had sufficient predication the door will be left wide open for a repeat of this fiasco. In a practical sense, it will mean that the FBI's decisions will not be second guessed. That will mean that no substantive reform of the FBI will occur unless John Durham's investigation lives up to its promise and the Deep State will be able to breathe more easily.

Here are excerpts from the article: