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:
