Mueller And The FISA MoU Revisited

It seems like a long time ago, but it was only May 25, 2019, that I published a fairly detailed summary of what was known about the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the FBI and the CIA that the two agencies entered into in 2012. By the terms of the MoU the FBI gave the CIA permission to FBI resources to access NSA databases, opening up CIA access to information on Americans within the US. In other words, the MoU allowed the CIA--using private contractors--to "spy on" (h/t AG Bill Barr) Americans within the US, and most people would suppose that this was the FBI conducting their legitimate counterintelligence (CI) business. Of course, the terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) forbade the CIA from accessing such data. This occurred while Robert Mueller was Director FBI. At CIA this would have happened either under Acting Director Mike Morrell or Director David Petraeus. The point is that this likely happened in time for the Presidential election of 2012, facilitating--and here's that word again--"spying" on the Romney campaign. Thus, I titled that post Obama Almost Certainly Spied On Willard. I'll be republishing that post, below--for a reason.

As I've mentioned several times, I've been ploughing through the archives of articles on the Russia Hoax by J. E. Dyer. Last night I came across one that contained a reference to a visit Robert Mueller made to the White House in April, 2016, nearly three years after leaving the FBI. While Dyer doesn't relate Mueller's visit directly to the MoU--in fact she frankly states that the visit is a bit of a mystery--I believe that a nexus with the MoU is the easiest way to make sense of that visit. The nature of the MoU and the role that it plays in explaining the full extent of Obama's domestic spying (with Mueller's cooperation) was the subject of the post I just linked. I drew heavily on research published at CTH in that post, but here I intend to add that one crucial explanatory element that Dyer mentions--Mueller's visit to the White House. (Dyer gives credit to "Katica", which is where I first saw this visit mentioned.)

So, below, I'll append the linked post so that all the details will be in one spot, but to lead up to that I'll provide details regarding Mueller's visit to the White House. That visit will be placed within a timeline, but the timeline itself is quite simple, consisting of only three dates--although a few contextualizing dates will be added. So, let's begin.

We've already seen that the MoU between the FBI and the CIA was entered into in 2012. Details on the legal significance of this MoU can be found below. For our purposes, at this point, just bear in mind (as FISC Chief Judge Rosemary Collyer noted) that an MoU that violates the law is simply ... illegal. If FISA forbade CIA access to this type of information, Robert Mueller had no authority to allow the CIA to use FBI resources to circumvent the provisions of FISA. The existence of this MoU came to Judge Collyer's attention on March 9, 2016, as a result of oversight by "DoJ personnel conducting a minimization review"--a review for compliance with minimization rules that are a key part of FISA. Apparently the DoJ oversight personnel found a large number of violations and, when they pressed the FBI for an explanation, discovered that there was more going on than simple bureaucratic mistakes. Here is how Judge Collyer describes the beginning of the inquiry that she became a key part of:

Obama Almost Certainly Spied On Willard

Last night, in comments to What If The Mueller Inquisition Was Only Ever An Obstruction Ploy? "LM" wrote:

There's much discussion of characters in the 2015-2017 time frame: Brennan, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, etc. but if the antecedents go back to 2012, Mueller is still FBI Director and the AG is...Eric Holder, IMHO one of the more sinister and under-scrutinized figures, and HRC heads State.

I responded in part:

It seems pretty clear that the political spying began in time for the 2012 election. I'd have to do some searching, but somewhere I pointed out that it was Mueller who would have done the illegal MOU with CIA that was mentioned in the Chief Judge of FISC's order.

There have been so many revelations in this Russia Hoax that's it's hard to keep track of it all--impossible without modern search technology. What LM is referring to is research that constitutes one of the most important discoveries that sundance at Conservative Tree House (CTH) has made. I reviewed those matters at the beginning of this month, but not for the first time, in The Fear Of Barr Is Almost Palpable. Indeed, as sundance repeats periodically, it's impossible to remind ourselves of this crucial aspect of the Russia Hoax often enough--there are deep roots to the Russia Hoax in illegal domestic spying. First I'll reproduce my discussion from the post just linked--it's not that long--and then I'll reproduce Don Surber's salutary reminder this morning:

Romney And Pelosi

I try to avoid doing blogs unless I have something somewhat original to say. However, there were two bits of commentary today that I found so cogent, given the current state of our polity, that I thought perhaps some originality could be found in simply uniting or juxtaposing key passages from each. I have one minor caveat for each.

First, Victor Davis Hanson comments on Mitt Romney's public auto destruct--and much more:


After listing Trump’s successful policies ... Romney mysteriously concludes that “These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years.”

I think about at least 40 percent of the electorate might beg to differ.

Certainly, the prior appointments of Supreme Court Justices Blackmun, Brennan, Powell, Souter, and Stevens, to name a few, would not suggest much Republican consistency in appointing conservative Supreme Court justices. China’s unfair trade policies were never reined in, but often enhanced by laissez-faire Republican administrations hand-in-glove with corporate globalism. I am not aware that the regulatory state significantly decreased over the last 40 years, despite Republican governance.

Romney is certainly right that presidents “should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” And Trump has been often a catalyst rather than a restraint upon national mudslinging. But we also forget that, for the first time in modern memory, during the 2016 election, one candidate hired a law firm and opposition research team to employ a foreign-national operative, who in turn bought foreign sources to discredit his employer’s opponent and with others also enlisted the existing hierarchies of the DOJ, CIA, FBI, NSC, and FISA courts to break past protocol, and often the law, in order to obstruct the candidacy, transition, and presidency of  Donald Trump.

[Comment: Here's my caveat, or quibble: Too many in our conservative commentariat are Anglophiles, uncritical fanboys of Churchill. What needs saying here is not simply that Hillary recruited the help of a foreign national who bought foreign sources (Russian) to influence a US Presidential election, but that our Intel agencies were suborned to collude with the Intel agencies of foreign powers (Britain, Australia, and apparently others) for the same purpose.]