Did Someone Coordinate Stories Among FBI Sources?

Chuck Ross at the Dailer Caller has a very interesting story today: Dossier Author Told John McCain Aide Of Unfounded Michael Flynn Affair Rumor. The real interest in the article is summarized by Ross himself in a tweet:

Christopher Steele told an aide to John McCain [David Kramer] that he believed Michael Flynn had an affair with a Russian woman in the U.K. 

An FBI informant provided a similar allegation to Crossfire Hurricane investigators. They also appeared in the media.

The Steele angle is one revelation from Kramer's just released transcript of his House testimony:

Christopher Steele told a longtime aide to John McCain in 2016 that he believed Michael Flynn was having an extramarital affair with a Russian woman, showing for the first time that the former British spy peddled an unsubstantiated rumor that later appeared in the media and made its way to the FBI. 

Steele shared the allegation with David Kramer, a longtime associate of McCain’s, according to a transcript of Kramer’s House Intelligence Committee testimony released Thursday. 

Kramer met with Steele in London in November 2016 at McCain’s direction to discuss Steele’s work on the Trump dossier. Kramer later gave the salacious document to a reporter from BuzzFeed News.

The other source came to our attention just recently when we examined the now notorious "closing memo/EC" that the elusive Joe Pientka wrote on the Flynn case on January 4, 2017--the one that the "7th Floor" at FBIHQ told Peter Strzok to have Pientka put a hold on.

Svetlana Speaks

Svetlana Lokhova runs a pretty lively twitter feed. I like this tweet, among many others:

So who knew Horowitz was such great comedy value? Read the section on Source 2 (Halper) and see how long far you can get without laughing out loud.

— Svetlana Lokhova (@RealSLokhova) December 10, 2019

What can you say? Lie after outrageously laughable lie, and the Horowitz dossier says: No evidence of "improper motivation."

Imagine how creeped out she must be at having been in the same room with Halper, much less having had to deal with him at Cambridge. Hey, maybe this is why the FBI "fired" Halper for cause, for bad behavior, back in 2011:

Go on. Tell us more about Halper’s DC madam. https://t.co/GBrOLAgndr

— Svetlana Lokhova (@RealSLokhova) December 9, 2019

Svetlana Lokhova On Stefan Halper's Spying

Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian born Cambridge historian who was smeared by the very creepy Stefan Halper with regard to Michael Flynn, has two Twitter threads up that provide extensive detail that strongly indicates that Halper was feeding "information" to Steele. Lokhova also illustrates that Halper's reporting was essentially laundered through Steele, almost certainly to make it appear that information was being provided by the former MI6 officer rather than by a CIA/FBI asset who was targeting the Trump campaign and Trump associates before the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened. I want to highlight just a few of Lokhova's points from her detail rich threads.

In the first thread, Lokhova begins from a letter that Senator Grassley sent to the DoD IG, Glenn Fine. In the letter Grassley asks for information regarding the "loose accounting" of the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) and, in particular, the dates and amounts of money paid by ONA to Stefan Halper for alleged "reports" Halper was providing to ONA. So, Lokhova writes:

Halper gets first Spygate contract from DoD in Sept 2015, draws expenses in Dec 2015, incl. trip to London. He is claiming he’s going to speak with “former Russian intelligence officers”, likely to manufacture lies about Flynn who previously cooperated with Ru intel under Obama/2

That's very interesting, in that it demonstrates that Halper was being targeted against Trump associates as early as September, 2015. Lokhova is probably correct in assuming that Flynn was the target at this point. By September, 2015, there was almost certainly a CI investigation already open on Flynn, but note: 1) Trump would not have been warned about this--whereas Clinton would have been warned in similar circumstances; 2) the predication for the investigation would have been bogus (nonsense like Flynn attending the RT dinner, etc.); 3) while this was probably part of the Intelligence Community's (and especially John Brennan's) jihad against Flynn, the notion of pursuing someone associated with a presidential campaign in this baseless way should give any reasonable person pause.

But the really interesting question is, who exactly were these "former Russian intelligence officers" that Halper was going to speak with? Cambridge can't be crawling with high level former Russian IOs. One suspects there was only one who would ever be named, and that would be Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Trubnikov co-taught a seminar with Halper and later shows up in Steele's dossier. But Trubnikov is really just a name. Naming him doesn't necessarily even mean that Trubnikov knew how he was being used, nor that Halper ever discussed his real business with Trubnikov.

Lokhova is understandably focused on Halper's Flynn-related smears against her, but she does also raise some fascinating points with regard to Carter Page's role in the Steele dossier. In the past I've pointed out how Page doesn't appear to have generated a huge amount of interest from the Deep State--until he flew to Moscow in mid July, 2016, to deliver a commencement address (was that a setup?). Halper and Page were long time acquaintances. On his return from Moscow Page traveled through the UK, where he met with Halper. Presto! Within days, Steele is suddenly all over Page as the connection between the Trump campaign and "the Russians," and the WSJ contacts Page about his supposed contacts in Moscow with Putin allies. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to suspect that it's Halper feeding both streams of reporting--overt and covert. Moreover, in a WaPo article by Deep State operative/reporter David Ignatius (of Flynn leak fame) the former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, praises both Steele and Halper, seeming to associate them.

Regarding all this Lokhova makes two observations:

Can't Recommend Highly Enough

Read Margot Cleveland at The Federalist this morning:

SCOOP: CIA, FBI Informant Was Washington Post Source For Russiagate Smears

These close connections between the Washington Post’s David Ignatius and people connected to U.S. and U.K. intelligence raise grave concerns about the deep state using media to push propaganda.

The sub-title tells the overall story. More specifically, it's all about the John Brennan's plot to frame Michael Flynn by falsely accusing him of having an affair with a supposed Russian "honeypot," Svetlana Lokhova, in Cambridge. Stefan Halper and Christopher Andrew--so-called "academics" but really professional informants and intel operatives--figure in bigly, as you'll know from Lee Smith's book and previous reporting.

Cleveland provides one of the key paragraph's from Sidney Powell's most recent filing (she's due with another later today) in nicely formatted form:

Stefan Halper is a known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI. He was paid exorbitant sums by the FBI/CIA/DOD through the Department of Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment in 2016. His tasks seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent) Flynn met at an official dinner at Cambridge University when he was head of DIA in 2014. Flynn has requested the records of Col. James Baker because he was Halper’s ‘handler’ in the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, and ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post Reporter David Ignatius. Baker is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn’s calls to Ignatius. The defense has requested the phone records of James Clapper to confirm his contacts with Washington Post reporter Ignatius—especially on January 10, 2017, when Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of ‘take the kill shot on Flynn.’ It cannot escape mention that the press has long had transcripts of the Kislyak calls that the government has denied to the defense.

There's a lot of detail. Cleveland does a great job portraying all the perps as the complete shits that they are.

Gosh, no wonder Barr wants to do a 'hatchet job' on these disgusting excuses for human beings. I suspect if Barr has his way Halper will get what he deserves--good and hard.

So, David Ignatius at WaPo has been completely exposed as a Deep State operative. Next question: Who are the other journos who will be exposed? We need to know all of that.

ADDENDUM: Nothing could be more clear at this point than this: The Russia Hoax never could have happened without massive, near total, complicity on the part of the MSM with the Deep State of federal Intel-related agencies. NYT, WaPo, CNN, DoS, CIA, FBI, DoJ, NSC--that's a beginning of your Russia Hoax alphabet soup. And of course we can now add in SSCI and assorted other Congressional actors as well as the top levels of the military--especially including McMaster.

Hatchet job? Barr needs a chain saw.