The Russia Hoax As Contingency Plan

Remember, back in August, 2016, when Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were obsessively texting one another? One exchange went something like, well, exactly like this:

"[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Page texted Strzok.
"No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it," Strzok responded.

Fast forward a couple of years and here we are in October, 2018, just about two years after Trump's electoral triumph, and for reasons best known to themselves Ben Rhodes and Jen Psaki have decided to reveal to NYMag that the Russia Hoax was a key part of the Obama Administration's--and presumably the Clinton campaign's--contingency plan to, well, steal an election: Obama Had a Secret Plan in Case Trump Rejected 2016 Election Results. We're all adults--right?--so there's no need to quibble over the meaning of words like "results." Here's what Rhodes and Psaki are saying:

The Obama White House plan, according to interviews with Rhodes and Jen Psaki, Obama’s communications director, called for congressional Republicans, former presidents, and former Cabinet-level officials including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to try and forestall a political crisis by validating the election result. In the event that Trump tried to dispute a Clinton victory, they would affirm the result as well as the conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community that Russian interference in the election sought to favor Trump, and not Clinton. Some Republicans were already aware of Russian interference from intelligence briefings given to leaders from both parties during the chaotic months before the election. “We wanted to handle the Russia information in a way that was as bipartisan as possible,” Rhodes said. 

The existence of the postelection plan has not been previously reported. A July 2017 op-ed by Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, refers to Obama directing his staff to “prepare possible responses” to claims of Russian interference in the election.

Psaki said the plan was one of a larger set of “red-teaming” conversations to address how the White House should respond to postelection scenarios that did not have any historical precedent. “There was recognition that we had a Democratic president who was quite popular but also divisive for a portion of the population,” she said. “For them, just having him say the election was legitimate was not going to be enough. We didn’t spend a lot of time theorizing about the worst thing that could happen — this isn’t a science-fiction movie. It was more about the country being incredibly divided and Trump’s supporters being angry. Would there be protesting? I don’t want to say violence, because we didn’t talk about that as I recall.”

A lot of internet blog commenters have been belly aching about Trump putting a hold on his declassification order in the runup to the midterm elections, but this seems just as good--real red meat for the GOP base. Why Rhodes and Psaki thought it was a good idea to feed the GOP base like this is anyone's guess. I realize NYMag doesn't cater to that base, but Fox alertly picked this story up. But back to 2016 ...

Of course, the Obama and Clinton camps never foresaw--or so they claim--Trump winning the election. They feared a squeaker, a cliff hanger. Or, two years on, that's their story. So let's try a thought experiment of sorts. By dispensing with some of the coded language or doublespeak we come up with this more succinct version of what Rhodes and Psaki are saying:

Why Were FBI/DoJ Texts Ever Redacted?

I'll keep this brief, because the in depth version can be read at Jeff Carlson' excellent blog: Why Did the DOJ Redact Text Messages Sent by FBI Employees Strzok and Page.

We've all heard the whining from FBI/DoJ that releasing the unredacted texting of Comey, McCabe, Stzok, Page and the rest of the Russia Hoax gang would pose a risk to national security by exposing sources and methods or other classified information. Carlson convincingly demonstrates that that's all hogwash.

UPDATED: About That Insurance Policy

This morning at Gateway Pundit an alternative theory is floated regarding Carter Page. In a way you could say that it's similar to the theory I advanced yesterday, that Carter Page was the "insurance policy" for the FBI--but at least 50% in a CYA sense. The Gateway theory riffs off the new information that indicates that Carter Page remained on the FBI's books as some type of informant or cooperating witness--UCE-1 in the 2013 Three Russian Comrades case--right up to March, 2016. Keep that date in mind, because by March, 2016 Trump was looking to be unbeatable in the Republican Presidential candidacy race. Only a few months later after the Russia case was finally concluded and Trump was being simultaneously recognized as the overwhelmingly likely Republican nominee--by July, 2016--Carter Page was magically transformed from FBI Undercover Employee 1 to Carter Page Master Spy. To celebrate this transformation, a real landmark in the Russia Hoax, the FBI opened a Full Investigation on Carter Page. That meant, among other things, that among the investigative techniques that could be deployed against Page was--you guessed it--FISA.

Now, recall that my theory yesterday posited that the August 16, 2016, text between Strzok and Lisa Page referred to a strategic meeting of the top FBI CI players plus Deputy Director Andy McCabe--a meeting at which, in my theory, the decision was made to utilize Carter Page as "it", the insurance policy in the form of a FISA target.

"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I'm afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."

My view then was that this was in good measure a defensive move: to protect or insure against the event of a Trump presidency, in the sense of offering a justification for the spying that the FBI had already been engaged in against Trump associates.

The Gateway theory poses the question: