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. 

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:

Has Sullivan Found A Way To Keep Flynn Case Going Past Election?

 H/T to commenter Bruce from Oz, who points out:

Sullivan has granted 'Leave for filling' on the Goelman letter (also contains the letters in question). This is going to drag on.

Aitan D. Goelman is Peter Strzok's lawyer, and this is his letter. In the letter Goelman complains that Strzok's handwritten notes have been "altered." What he means is that dates have been added to show the date of the notes (these additions by document reviewers are set off in boxes), and he complains that one date is inaccurate. He also complains that Sidney Powell has violated an order not to supplement pleadings until the government's "Brady" production is complete.

You can view the two pages of notes that Goelman is complaining about by following the link above.

Roscoe Davis argues that this signals that Sullivan will seek to hold additional--evidentiary--hearings to drag the case past the election. Davis also points out that none of this has anything to do with Flynn himself, or with the DoJ decision to dismiss the prosecution. 

I hasten to add that Sullivan allowing this letter to be filed doesn't mean that there actually will be hearings on the matters discussed in the letter--nor does Goelman request any particular action. It's all up to Sullivan. However, it seems to me that if Sullivan seizes on issues of this sort to prevent expeditious dismissal of the Flynn case, then AG Barr needs to find a way to play some hardball with the Judicial Branch, which is increasingly out of control. Joining an appeal to the SCOTUS would seem appropriate.

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.

Peter Strzok Talks To Anne Applebaum. Hilarity Ensues.

A Peter Strzok interview seems like a pretty sad consolation prize in lieu of indictments (at least, not so far today). Here's the link to the interview, but I'm not actually recommending that you read it. It's one of those, I read it so you won't have to things. You might actually make yourself less smart by reading it:

‘Who’s Putting These Ideas in His Head?’

The former FBI agent Peter Strzok worries that Americans will never learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia.

 It's actually not even an interview in any traditional sense. It's more of a Trump-Hate venting session. Normally if a journalist interviews a controversial figure, the journalist will push and challenge the interview subject. Strzok is someone who was fired by the FBI after he helped launch unpredicated investigations into a presidential campaign using opposition research from the other campaign, then obtained FISA warrants that everyone who knows anything--Michael Horowitz at OIG, Bill Barr at DoJ, the FISA court judges--understands were fraudulent. He's now awaiting indictment and prosecution. In any normal world that would qualify Strzok as controversial, but not in the alternate reality inhabited by Applebaum and The Atlantic.

Well, there is the possibility that The Atlantic simply doesn't care about its reputation and is willing to sacrifice its credibility in an effort to stop what's beginning to look like a Trump re-election juggernaut.

So, instead of posing challenging, probing questions, Applebaum tosses out one debunked conspiracy theory after another. Strzok fields them, agrees, then tosses out one of his own, and so it goes--back and forth. Improbable as it would be in a normal interview, the two agree on everything, and it all comes down to: Orange Man Bad. Also Mean, because Strzok is gonna get prosecuted.

You can actually get the drift of it right from the title: ‘Who’s Putting These Ideas in His Head?’ Trump is afflicted with Wrongthink--bad ideas, ideas that no right thinking person could possibly hold. That's a dead giveaway, according to Strzok, that Trump has been "compromised" by the Russians. They're blackmailing him. Here's how that works:

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):

Stephen Somma Again

Commenter Bebe drew my attention to Margot Cleveland's excellent article today (I was at the dentist):

FBI Lawyer’s Guilty Plea Suggests Spygate Corruption Goes Way Higher 

FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith’s guilty plea suggests another area ripe for inquiry: FBI Agent Stephen Somma’s misrepresentation of Trump campaign details to a secret federal court.

Cleveland's article largely focuses on the Horowitz FISA report and, specifically, the role of Case Agent 1--Stephen Somma--in persuading DoJ Office of Intelligence attorney Stu Evans that Carter Page's past cooperation with the CIA wasn't relevant to the FISA application targeting Page. Stu Evans, not entirely coincidentally, was a thorn in the side of Peter Strzok and the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) Team in their quest for a FISA on Page, but Evans is now reported to be cooperating extensively with John Durham.

I won't repeat the details that Cleveland provides, but I do want to suggest a line of inquiry that Durham may be looking into--or, more likely, looked into long ago.

Important: FISA Search Of Carter Page Premises

A FISA warrant is usually associated with the collection of electronic communications. However, they often cover much more, such as surreptitious physical entries to premises used by the subject and searches of those premises and everything in them. Carter Page has complained of such searches, including the seizure of sensitive or possibly embarrassing items, that he says were unrelated to any legitimate investigative purpose.

Undercover Huber reminds us:

Has everyone fully internalized that *after Mueller became Special Counsel*, the FBI physically broke into locations used by Carter Page, under FISA warrants that even the DOJ now says lacked probable cause, and the searchers broke FBI procedures too?

3:12 PM · Aug 12, 2020

"After Mueller became Special Counsel" also means months after the Danchenko interview completely debunked any probable cause value that the Steele "dossier" was claime to have. Peter Strzok knew about the Danchenko interview and he became the lead investigator on Team Mueller. Who else should be presumed to know? If I'm John Durham, I really want to know. For example, did Andrew Weissmann know? Who else?

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.

David Laufman To The Fore

With the revelation that Igor Danchenko was the Washington, DC, based Primary Subsource for the fraudulent Steele Dossier, attention has once again turned to David Laufman--another disgraced former DoJ official. Until being forced out of DoJ, Laufman ran DoJ's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section. It was Laufman who negotiated a "use immunity" deal for Danchenko, with a rabidly anti-Trump DC attorney who represented Danchenko during his three day FBI interview.

The reason Laufman's name is getting so much buzz now is because his involvement with the Danchenko interview can now be seen to be only the tip of the iceberg of his involvement in the Russia Hoax. As it happens, Laufman's DoJ section also handled the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which was used to spearhead the FBI's offensive against Trump.

We've gone over FARA previously. It was enacted originally in 1938 to deal with US persons propagandizing on behalf of Nazi Germany. The idea was to require such persons to publicly declare themselves, so that Americans could judge how to evaluate the propaganda they were spreading. While there were 23 prosecutions of the Act during WW2, since then DoJ enforcement policy has normally been to send a letter to the subject advising them to register. I know this because I had experience with FARA. The fact is that FARA, over the years, was often honored in the breach, in the sense that nobody really saw a need to register as long the person made no attempt to conceal his agency relationship--concealment of such a relationship had been the whole point of enacting FARA.

That changed when Donald Trump ran for president, and Laufman was the reason for that change. Paul Sperry does a fine job explaining this in:

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 ...

When Strzok Knew There Was No 'There' There

When the Team Mueller witchhunt was formally ramped up by Rod Rosenstein, in mid-May, 2017, disgraced former FBI official Peter Strzok famously anguished over whether to join the witchhunt, texting to another disgraced former FBI official, Lisa Page: We both know there's probably no 'there' there. Meaning, of course: No collusion.

We now know for sure, thanks to the stage managed revelation (by DoJ through Senator Graham) of Strzok's notes critiquing the NYT coverage, that Strzok--and presumably everyone else in his FBI orbit--had come to that conclusion no later than mid-February, 2017. Well before Team Mueller was set up.

Who else thinks Rod Rosenstein has a LOT to answer for? The reason he has a lot to answer for is in plain sight for anyone who reads Strzok's notes. Rosenstein claimed that the witchhunt was simply a continuation of Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation of "four Americans" associated with the Trump campaign that the FBI ginned up in summer of 2016. But Strzok makes it clear that not only was Trump himself clear of such claims, but so, too, were all Trump associates. Even Politico gets that--or has been forced to admit that--finally. With the Carter Page FISA still running--and yet to be renewed two more times!--Strzok wrote re claims being pushed by the NYT:

“We have not seen evidence of any officials associated with the Trump team in contact with IOs [intelligence officers]. We are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.”

In other words, the stuff being peddled as investigative gold by the NYT was, in fact, the purest propagandistic horsesh*t.

Here's how Politico soft peddles Strzok's quite categorical statements:

The documents suggest that even as press reports began to describe connections between Americans in Trump’s orbit and figures in Russia’s shadowy intelligence services, the FBI had gathered little, if any, evidence that such ties existed.

"Suggest." As if one needs to somehow parse Strzok's words to ascertain just what he might be trying to say. Instead, Politico tries to staunch the mortal wound that Strzok's notes are to the Russia Hoax by blaming ... The Orange Man:

Trump supercharged the investigation, however, in May 2017 when he abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey and invited senior Russian officials to the Oval Office. Comey went on to provide internal notes, through an intermediary, to The New York Times that described his growing concerns about Trump’s posture toward the Russia probe. Days later, the Justice Department appointed Mueller to take over the Russia investigation, which continued for two more years.

Problem: Rosenstein appointed Mueller to "take over [a] Russian investigation" which Strzok himself had admitted months previously in categorical terms had no predication. How does firing the FBI Director--based on a justificatory memo that Rosenstein himself wrote--justify continuing an investigation that had no predication? Does the President of the United States inviting with "senior Russian officials" to the Oval Office justify opening an investigation? Rosenstein nowhere suggests that as a basis for any investigation, but for the sake of argument, exactly how would one articulate that as predication for an investigation? It doesn't pass the laugh test.

This, now, is what the NeverTrumps are reduced to.

The FBI 'Analyst' At The Heart Of The Russia Hoax

Paul Sperry has a very thorough, and lengthy, article out today that details the role of Brian J. Auten, a Supervisory Intelligence Analyst for the FBI, in enabling the Russia Hoax. Auten was a key player in getting the Carter Page FISA warrants approved as well as being a key contributor to the fraudulent Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). He was also targeted repeatedly by IG Horowitz' FISA Report. The Sperry article,

FBI Man at the Heart of Surveillance Abuses Is a Professor of Spying Ethics

is too long to attempt to summarize. I'll confine myself here to citing a few examples.

Auten's wrongdoing appears to have involved both failures to disclose necessary information as well as what appear to be outright misstatements:

By January 2017, the lead analyst had ample evidence the dossier was bogus. Auten could not get sources who provided information to Steele to support the dossier’s allegations during interviews. And collections from the wiretaps of Trump aide Carter Page failed to reveal any confirmation of the claims. Auten even came across exculpatory evidence indicating Page was not the Russian asset the dossier alleged, but was in fact a CIA asset helping the U.S. spy on Moscow. 

Nonetheless, he and the FBI continued to use the Steele material as a basis for renewing their FISA monitoring of Page, who was never charged with a crime.

That is very important. In order to renew a FISA, it's necessary to either demonstrate that the FISA has been "productive"--that is, has provided information that confirms the probable cause claims made in the original FISA application--or explain why the FISA had been unproductive to that point and why an renewal would lead to productive results. In addition, of course, a process of reviewing the reliability of past information that was relied upon in obtaining the FISA is also required. Obviously, none of the above occurred with regard to the Carter Page FISA applications, and Auten was a key player in that entire process:

Strzok, Page, Baker Emails Re Logan Act

Catherine Herridge has a twitter thread in which she provides images of two internal FBI email exchanges early in the work day of January 4, 2017. Those email exchanges involve Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and James A. Baker. First, here is an image of the emails:

Now, bear in mind that James A. Baker was at the time the top legal guy at the FBI--he was General Counsel, which means that he was disgraced former FBI Director James Comey's personal lawyer for official purposes. Lisa Page's exact position in the organizational pecking order is a bit more ambiguous, but as Counsel to the Deputy Director, Andy McCabe--who was in charge of day to day operations--she would ipso facto have a lot of clout.

The first email is from Lisa Page to James Baker, and is captioned: "code section at question." I wonder whether Page means "code section IN question"? The entire text of the email is simply the United States Code citation to the Logan Act: "18 USC 953".

What's going on here?

More On Fallout From The Strzok Notes

Please note that I have corrected this post based on info from commenter Cassander--Sally Yates was NOT Acting AG at the time of the Oval Office meeting re Flynn.


The enormity of the revelation from the Peter Strzok notes is slowly starting to sink in. It's not that the notes reveal things that--realistically--we didn't know already. It's that we can now look to the future and get some idea of what could be in the offing--what has the Progs and Libs and crazy Lefties of all sorts bouncing off the walls.

Let me start my pasting in some dressed up comments from earlier this morning, exchanges with commenters.

My initial impression upon looking at the Strzok notes was that they appeared to have been taken by a participant at the Oval Office meeting involving Obama, Biden, Sally Yates (NB: Did AG Loretta Lynch absent herself deliberately?) and disgraced former FBI Director Jim Comey. But there's no way that a guy at Strzok's level could have been present at such a meeting. We'll probably find out later how it worked. I don't believe Comey could have recorded it, so I'm guessing--just a guess--that Comey took notes on his way back to FBIHQ and then, as part of a briefing for the Russia Hoax inner circle at FBIHQ, read the notes to participants in that briefing--who took notes on Comey's notes. Perhaps if we could get a look at the redacted portions of the notes we'd understand fully. Or, perhaps Strzok wasn't actually present at that Comey briefing but received a second hand briefing, and took notes from someone else who was reading their notes from the Comey briefing.

However it worked, the very fact that there were any such briefings raises interesting prospects for the future, prospects that the Barr/Durham investigation is unquestionably focused on. We have to presume that at the Comey briefing issues that flowed from the Oval Office meeting were discussed. Issues like: Where do we go from here? What concrete steps do we at the FBI take?

Durham will want to know--among other things:

Did Obama Try To Throw Comey Under The Bus

As if we needed confirmation, yesterday's developments in the Flynn case--both the Court of Appeals' decision but especially the bombshell Strzok notes disclosure--demonstrate that the Establishment media has failed with Fake News and has adopted the tactic of News Suppression. It was still stunning to realize that virtually nothing was said in the Establishment media about Obama's statements in the Oval Office meeting with disgraced FBI Director Jim Comey and Acting AG Sally Yates--as well as Joe Biden. Those statements were recorded in notes taken by disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok, probably as briefed by Comey after the meeting. Obama clearly urged the FBI Director to take official actions that the FBI Director had stated were unwarranted, because the matter under discussion "appeared legit."

Imagine if it had become known that Trump--or any Republican president you care to name--had said in similar circumstances:

Make sure you look at things, have the right people on it.

The collective howl from the Establishment media would have been heard around the globe. We would have had a mob descend upon the White House, probably including multiple GOP senators.

It seems clear to me that at this stage in the transition the Obama administration still had hopes of preventing Trump's inauguration. The lengths to which they were willing to go in that effort are revealed by Strzok's notes. It's worth taking another look at Susan Rice's email-to-self in light of these new revelations.

The Rice email has always been suspicious. For starters, the email was patently an exercise in ass covering: the "by the book" admonition attributed to Obama is really the main point of the email. This becomes apparent when we recollect several facts:

Uh Oh! More Exculpatory Evidence In Flynn Case!

And according to Sean Davis this new evidence is "explosive." He's quoting "a source with direct knowledge" of the evidence. What's the evidence? It's handwritten notes, written by by Peter Strzok. The notes are undated but are believed to have been written right around January 3-5, 2017, when the FBI decided to keep the Flynn case open--despite Pientka's recommendation to close it because, well, it was all BS.

I know what you're asking--why wasn't this exculpatory evidence turned over previously? Good question! All I can suggest is that maybe it has something to do with Dana Boente's dismissal. Boente, you'll recall, was acting DAG at DoJ and signed off on one of the Page renewal FISAs. He then went over to be the top lawyer at the FBI, for Director Chris Wray.

The new exculpatory evidence isn't available yet, but I'm guessing it won't be long. In the meantime, below I've pasted in the letter (dated today) informing Flynn's lawyers of the new development.

The letter is somewhat amusing, in that Jocelyn Ballantine--the letter's signatory--also signed the final brief submitted to the Court of Appeals by DoJ, and included in it a huffy footnote dismissing the notion that there had been any prosecutorial misconduct whatsoever in the Flynn case. At that time it was thought that Ballantine was throwing the FBI under the bus. Nevertheless, inquiring minds would naturally want to know just how hard the Flynn prosecutors pushed the FBI regarding the entire issue of exculpatory evidence. After all, if "USA EDMO" [Jensen] was able to "obtain" these notes (and others), why were the original prosecutors unable to do so? And "additional documents may be forthcoming"! There's no possible way that this reflects well on Team Mueller, or on Sullivan who has been intent on jailing Flynn, rather than seeing justice done.

Sidney Powell
2911 Turtle Creek Blvd., Suite 300
Dallas, TX 75219 

Jesse Binnall
Harvey & Binnall, PLLC
717 King Street
Suite 300
Alexandria, VA 22314 

Re: United States v. Michael T. Flynn, 17-cr-00232 (EGS) 

Dear Counsel: 

As we have previously disclosed, beginning in January 2020, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri has been conducting a review of the Michael T. Flynn investigation. The enclosed document was obtained and analyzed by USA EDMO during the course of its review. This page of notes was taken by former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. While the page itself is undated; we believe that the notes were taken in early January 2017, possibly between January 3 and January 5. These materials are covered by the Protective Order entered by the Court on February 21, 2018; additional documents may be forthcoming.

Sincerely,
MICHAEL R. SHERWIN
Acting United States Attorney

By: /s/
Jocelyn Ballantine
Assistant United States Attorney

Annex A

There's been a fair amount of comment regarding the soon to be famous "Annex A" to the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). The ICA, of course, was the brainchild of the Intel Triumvirate of Brennan, Clapper, and Comey. Released in the first week of January, 2017, it sought to delegitimize the incoming Trump administration before Trump was even inaugurated by claiming that the Intel Community had "high confidence" that Russia had tried to help Trump get elected.

The whole thing was nonsense, of course, and now we're told that there is documentary evidence that IC analysts pushed back against the official conclusions of the ICA. The official conclusion was that the Russians wanted Trump elected, but the analysts apparently put in writing that the evidence that claimed to support that conclusion was actually very weak. Instead, the analysts pointed out, the evidence that the Russians wanted Hillary to win was quite strong. That pushback was suppressed by the IC, but has been dug out by the Barr/Durham investigation. We have never missed an opportunity to stress that the ICA is at the very heart of the Big Picture conspiracy case that Durham is building.

Yesterday, as one of his first official acts as DNI, John Ratcliffe forwarded to Senators Grassley and Johnson a newly declassified version of Annex A. It's quite brief--not even a page and a half. All it is is a summary of the fabrications that Chris Steele ginned up for the Clinton campaign as contractor for the Clinton oppo research shop at Fusion GPS. Steele then also purveyed these falsehoods to the FBI, the Fake News Media, and various politicians and their operatives. As the Horowitz Report was at pains to point out, the FBI was fully aware--from the get go, in July, 2016--of the political provenance of the Steele "dossier," as it came to be known. The fact that this material was, in all essentials, fiction was also known by the FBI when Peter Strzok helped put together the summary of the "dossier" that was appended to the ICA--Annex A.

None of this should be news to regular readers. Bill Barr and John Durham are smart guys, and they've been focused on the ICA all along. The reason is simple. If the ICA was a knowingly fraudulent production that put forth conclusions favored by the IC Triumvirate, but disputed by the analysts themselves, then we have a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy to defraud the US Government of the honest services of the Intel Community, because if the ICA had been the product of honest services it would have incorporated the views of the analysts who were fraudulently claimed to have reached the official conclusions. By colluding to falsify the true views of the analysts, the IC Triumvirate of Brennan, Clapper, and Comey conspired to defraud the US Government of their honest services. The aim of their conspiracy, of course, was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's election.

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:

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.