The Crossfire Hurricane Opening EC--Predication And The Way Forward

Late yesterday a redacted version of the Crossfire Hurricane Opening EC was released to Judicial Watch. Hopefully a cleaner version will be out in the not too distant future. I understand that AG Barr is playing all of this close to the vest as John Durham prepares his case, but the redaction of information that We The People really should have access to is offensive. After all, we all know what the redactions are about: The identity of foreign governments and their operatives--and some of our own operatives--who colluded in a coup attempt against the established government of the United States. Democracy dies in darkness, as the WaPo has taken to saying, and the identities of all governments and operatives who conspired against our constitutional order need to be made known.

That said, the Opening EC--a Peter Strzok production--is as absurd as expected. Here's the gist of it, actually a very lightly edited paraphrase. It really is as threadbare in terms of predication as this summary indicates:

The [Redacted - but presumed to be Australian] government had been seeking prominent members of the Donald Trump campaign in which to engage to prepare for potential post-election relations should Trump be elected U.S. President. One of the people identified was George Papadopoulos. Mr. Papdopoulos was located in [Redacted - presumed London] so the [Redacted - presumed to be Alexander Downer] met with him on several occasions, with [Redacted] attending at least one of the meetings.

Note what's being said there. Against all odds, this Australian/US operative who claimed to be seeking "prominent members of the Trump campaign" came up with George Papadopoulos. (It tells you something about our Embassy/CIA staff that they were unable to identify the correct spelling of such a common Greek name.) We're supposed to believe that after active consideration of the possible candidates in the Trump campaign one of the top Australian diplomats decide to spend his time cultivating the likes of George Papadopoulos. Not only that, but it's clear from a quick read between the lines that Papadopoulos was not a target of opportunity--he had to be "located". IOW, Downer, or his US handlers, went looking for Papadopoulos, a sort of Quest for the Ideal Fallguy.

Briefly Noted: Trey Gowdy On The Opening EC And Consensual Monitoring

CTH has links to a pair of Fox interviews that Trey Gowdy did during the last few days. While there was a great deal of discussion of reaction to Bill Barr's statement about FBI "spying", there were also a few additonal nuggets to be had from the interviews.

First, and very briefly, without providing details Gowdy confirmed that to his personal knowledge consensual monitoring was used by the FBI in their Russia Hoax investigation. This was a topic in our two most recent James Baker posts over the last two days. I presume that Gowdy is referring, at the least, to George Papadopoulos being recorded, but the potential for much wider use by FBI informants is there.

Second, Gowdy addressed Barr's comments re the failure of the FBI to provide the Trump campaign with a defensive briefing about their suspicions, as is normally done. Gowdy stated that, in response to his queries on that score, the FBI told him that when they attempted to provide the briefing one of the persons they had concerns about (in context, Manafort or Flynn) was in the room with Trump. When Gowdy pressed the issue, asking whether the FBI had ever attempted to follow up, Gowdy was told "we have no good answer."

Finally, Gowdy recounted that he had received two different accounts from the FBI regarding the opening of the Russia investigation. The first version was that the FBI had a general investigation going on the Russian threat and over time a few Americans came into focus. However, Gowdy was able to read the opening EC, written by Peter Strzok, and that EC was very specifically focused on the "four Americans" Comey mentioned in his Congressional testimony: Manafort, Flynn, Page, and Papadopoulos.

As I explained (again) in James Baker: Light On Informants And The "Russia" Investigation, there really is no contradiction here. The first account probably referred to a Threat Assessment or Preliminary Investigation, the second clearly to the Full Investigation that we know as Crossfire Hurricane. What is problematic in all this, as discussed in the linked post, is that there are clear indications (as Gowdy notes) that the focus on the Trump campaign began much earlier than the opening EC would have one believe. Count on it--these are issue that are being closely scrutinized by DoJ and Barr. I've always maintained that the opening EC is a bit of a Holy Grail for an investigation of the investigation. As Barr himself stated, he will want to see whether the investigation was adequately predicated (it wasn't). But the same goes for the earlier investigative activity in which Page and Papadopoulos were targeted virtually from the first day they joined the Trump campaign.

Interesting days.