Michael Gaeta's Bombshell Lands Right On Bruce Ohr

Eric Felten has a very good article today that, while focusing on what might at first seem like one small data point in the Russia Hoax, actually opens up major vistas into the overall conspiracy. The article is at Real Clear Investigations, and concerns Michael Gaeta's recently released testimony, comparing it to Bruce Ohr's previously released testimony: FBI's Man in Europe Undercut Ohr's Claim of Limited Russiagate Role.

You'll recall that Michael Gaeta was, in the summer of 2016, stationed at the FBI's Legat office in Rome. He had in the past been Chris Steele's handling agent and when, at the beginning of July he got a call from Steele telling him that he (Steele) had some very hot but unspecified info for him, Gaeta dropped everything and rushed off to London.

That raises all kinds of questions in my mind for which I have no convincing answer at this point. The FBI has numerous Legat offices around the world, but London is certainly one of the largest and most prestigious. They operate on a regional basis, just as FBI Field Divisions in the US operate territorially. Just as an FBI agent would never travel to another Field Division in the US to conduct investigation without notification (there are exceptions to the general rule), likewise no agent at one Legat would simply fly to the territory of another Legat to conduct investigation. In fact we do know that Gaeta sought and received permission for his jaunt from no less a high DoS official than Victoria Nuland, but why an agent stationed in London could not have visited Steele remains unclear to me--as does who at FBIHQ would have been aware of Gaeta's trip.

That said, the main point of Felten's article concerns Bruce Ohr.

Cleveland: OIG Report Fingers Team Mueller

I've been saying for quite some time that everything the Barr/Durham investigation is doing leads inexorably to Team Mueller--and maybe into the Obama White House. Today at The Federalist Margot Cleveland has an excellent article that details the ways in which Michael Horowitz's FISA report points a finger at Team Mueller:

Inspector General Report Shows Special Counsel Replicated FBI Abuses

The report established that the special counsel’s office was complicit in the FISA abuse, the probe was a witch hunt, and its report was a cover-up for systematic government malfeasance.

Here I'll hit what I regard as the highlights.

First, of course, is the matter of the fourth FISA application--a renewal application. That happened on Mueller's watch. FISA renewal applications don't simply piggyback on the previous applications. The same duty of accuracy and full disclosure applies equally to each renewal, as does the obligation to demonstrate that the previous FISA orders are producing new intelligence of value. We now know, of course, that FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith actually falsified documents that were part of that fourth application. Will Clinesmith take a big hit for Team Mueller? We'll find out.

Beyond that, Horowitz documents that when Team Mueller demonstrably identified new information that invalidated the Steele evidence that was relied upon, this information was concealed from the FISA court for many months. The same applies to concealing the fact that, far from being a Russian agent, Carter Page was a US intelligence asset.

Second, the OIG report discovered something that, if it didn't exactly shock me, definitely caused me to sit up and take notice, to even involuntarily raise my eyebrows:

Horowitz Reports Steele Meetings With Clinton Lawyers

What could be less surprising than Chris Steele meeting with the people who were paying him? Still, I'm sure they tried to keep meets to the minimum that were essential.

Here's the date that really interests me. September 23, 2016.

Horowitz reported that Steele met with Perkins Coie in July 2016, on or about Sep 23, 2016 and Oct 2016.  I don't recall this being known previously. Can anyone recall prior reports of Steele-Perkins Coie meetings on these dates? pic.twitter.com/hgVnlx3F8j

— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) December 15, 2019

As I like to bring up, Steele was part of an extraordinary meeting in mid-September, 2016, that included future Team Mueller hotshots Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, veteran DoJ Clintonista Bruce Swartz, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok. I've maintained that this looked like a meeting to tell Steele what they needed in the "dossier" so they could get the FISA on Carter Page. It's unquestionably a strategy meeting. And a few days later Steele meets with Michael Sussman, the Dems' real evil legal genius when it comes to elections.

Can I swear that the proximity of the two meetings wasn't coincidence. I suppose not, but I wouldn't want to bet that it is coincidence. In fact, if I were an investigator I'd be operating on the assumption that it sure wasn't a coincidence.

(It's About Pressure Points, passim)

IMPORTANT UPDATES: AG Barr Speaks

I don't know how to embed this video interview of Bill Barr from Fox News, so I'll offer a transcript of the video. What's on the video is in addition to the summary of the interview that's in the text of the article--and in my view is by far the most important part. Barr is very much focused on what happened after the election, and when you realize that the FISA renewals continued up into the beginning of the Mueller witchhunt, and that the same people were involved, you can see that Barr and Durham are now expanding their investigation to include Mueller's operation.

Overall, I think you'll be impressed with Barr's grasp of what went down beginning in 2016, his understanding of both the big picture as well as the details, and his sense of outrage.

Here are some of the snippets from the article:

On the FBI investigation generally:

“It’s hard to look at this stuff and not think that it was a gross abuse.”

On the absurd claim that the single setup conversation of Downer with George Papadopoulos provided credible predication for a full investigation:

"Where I disagree with Mike, I just think this was very flimsy," ... "a comment made by a 28-year-old volunteer."

On FBI dishonesty and fraud on the FISC:

Zainab Ahmad Has Also Left Team Mueller

Following closely upon the departure of Mueller's deputy, Andrew Weissmann, from Team Mueller it is now being reported that another key prosecutor, Zainab Ahmad, has left Team Mueller. It has been widely reported that Weissmann was given the boot by new AG Bill Barr. With regard to both departures, Rep. Jim Jordan noted that he and Mark Meadows had sent a letter to Barr accusing both prosecutors of a conflict of interest. Jordan raised the same issues we alluded to in The FBI: Working Hand In Glove With Clinton Operatives:

When Ohr met Steele again in either late September or early October, 2016 he did so in company with quite a group: Peter Strzok and Lisa Page from the FBI, and three DOJ career officials from the criminal division, Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew Weissman--currently Robert Mueller's deputy. Note that while Crossfire Hurricane was a CI case and Strzok was second in charge of Counterintelligence at the FBI, the DoJ officials were all from the Criminal Division. For prosecutors to meet with an asset at this early stage strongly suggests they were planning strategy. But this also probably means that they were planning for the FISA application, given that the application was submitted on October 21, 2016, immediately after Steele's October 20 report--the report in which Michael Cohen's famous trip to Prague for a "clandestine" meet superseded the clandestine Moscow meet of Carter Page, who was no longer with the Trump campaign. Which leads to the supposition that this meeting with Steele was to tell him, inter alia, that more detailed information was needed for the FISA application--which Steele duly provided, in the form of the now famous Cohen-Prague miscue. 

All in all, it's an interesting picture: three officials from DoJ's Criminal Division meeting with the second in command of the FBI's CI division (accompanied by the Deputy Director's counsel) to plan for a FISA on--in effect--a candidate for the presidency. Coaching the asset on what was now needed for the FISA to go through, which would be typical Weissman tactics. And all this without informing the Acting AG, Sally Yates. Or so they say.

In possibly related news, Team Mueller has missed a filing deadline, citing the press of other business.

More Thoughts On Bruce Ohr's Testimony

My overall impression, derived from reading the recently released full transcript of Bruce Ohr's House testimony rather than just excerpts, is this: I didn't find Bruce Ohr to be a terribly credible witness, and the GOP Representatives who questioned him--most of them former prosecutors themselves--clearly did not trust him.

Margot Cleveland has an article today in which she discusses 11 Key Things Inside The House Interview With Spygate Figure Bruce Ohr. Most of these items have been discussed already, but I want to point out at least one issue that is worth keeping in the conscious part of our minds.

In #2 on her list, Cleveland discusses an issue that clearly troubled the GOP Reps. Just as clearly, they remained unsatisfied and unconvinced by Ohr's attempted explanation. This issue was the fact that during Ohr's one and a half years of serving as the cutout between Chris Steele and the FBI--including after Steele had been "fired" by the FBI--he claimed that he never informed his superior (DAG Sally Yates) of the highly irregular role he was playing. But he did inform other DoJ officials who were somewhat beneath him in rank--people like Andrew Weissmann, Zainab Ahmad, and Bruce Swartz. Weissmann and Ahmad, of course, later became key members of Team Mueller or, from another possible point of view, were key players in recruiting Mueller to serve as the figurehead of their team--since their well known connections to Hillary precluded them from fronting for the lawfare coup attempt.

Lots Of Noise Swirling Around Bruce And Nellie Ohr

Sundance at Conservative Tree House (CTH) has been trying to connect dots regarding the activities of Bruce and Nellie Ohr. I have some important reservations regarding his speculations, but the release of the full transcript of Bruce Ohr's House testimony and Judicial Watch's FOIA dump from DoJ opens up avenues of research.

The CTH research, in its most convenient form, can be found be found here, and in its original Twitter form here. I will simply work my way down the thread, which contains 14 tweets.

The core of sundance's speculation is his insistent assertion that Nellie Ohr "had to" be working concurrently for both DoJ NSD (National Security Division) and Fusion-GPS--opposition research for the Clinton campaign. Sundance has made this assertion before, but without hard evidence, and I still don't see the evidence now. In support of the assertion he states:

No-one spends that much time gathering, formatting and distributing that much information for free. She had/has to be a government contracted employee for the DOJ.

To start at the beginning, yes, we know that as of 2010 Nellie was an employee/researcher for Open Source Works--a branch of the CIA. Zerohedge has a nice synopsis of what little can be known about Open Source Works:

Paul Ryan Is No Longer The Speaker

And Rod Rosenstein is no longer running Team Mueller.

The result of this new lay of the land in the House, and at DoJ, paradoxically--or, not?--is that those GOP members who were formerly leading the investigations into the Russia Hoax, and who are now minority members of the same key committees, seem to feel a renewed energy. Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows--they all are demonstrating a sort of fire in the belly that appeared to be lacking under the Speakership of Paul Ryan. And that speaks well of the leadership of Kevin McCarthy.

A good example of what this means was the performance of the GOP representatives in questioning Michael Cohen and referring Cohen to the new AG, Bill Barr, for Cohen's renewed perjury. Many observers noted that the majority Dems appeared unprepared for the new, aggressive tactics of the GOP.

Another example is Devin Nunes' Sunday interview with Maria Bartiromo. CTH renders a signal service in making the entire interview available, in two parts, here. The interview is fairly lengthy and wide ranging. Bartiromo, as usual, seems to be pretty well prepared and asks the right questions. She hones in on the list of witnesses that Nunes wants to interview. Most of these witnesses appear to be FBI and DoJ national security lawyers who would have been involved in the full range of coverups and abuses that characterized the Obama years, and in particular the last years leading up to the 2016 elections--the various Clinton related coverups, as well as the FISA abuse and abusive counterintelligence investigations of the Trump campaign. Among the names on the list are some that may be familiar, names like that of former Assistant AG John Carlin. Other names will probably only be familiar to those who have followed the Russia Hoax closely also appear. A good example would be Tashina ("Tash") Gauhar.

Bartiromo pointed out that Nunes no longer possesses subpoena power and is unlikely to get any subpoenas approved by Adam Schiff--reciprocity is a one way street. Nunes appeared undaunted, responding that, in the event the GOP investigations are stiffed by Schiff, he would seek cooperation from the relevant Senate Committees as well as from AG Barr. He also made a point of stating that the FISA law must be entirely "rewritten" to prevent a recurrence of what happened in the events surrounding the 2016 elections--the Russia Hoax.

UPDATED: The FBI: Working Hand In Glove With Clinton Operatives

Jeff Carlson has followed up his revelations regarding the leaked (to him) testimony of former FBI attorney Lisa Page with a similar service regarding the leaked (to him) testimony of DoJ attorney Bruce Ohr. When I commented on Page's testimony I suggested that, for the most part, there were no major revelations. However, Ohr's testimony is pretty much dynamite. In what follows I'll try to pull out what I regard as the highlights from Ohr's testimony--although Carlson's long and detailed account is well worth careful study. In doing so I will concentrate on what was going on with the FBI, Ohr and the DoJ, and Fusion GPS before the election, rather than afterward.

As a preliminary, I want to address what is a recurring issue. What exactly was Ohr's role in serving as a conduit of information between Fusion GPS/Orbis (Glenn Simpson/Christopher Steele) and the FBI?

Ohr himself clearly viewed himself as an asset (informant) of some sort for the FBI. For example, he refers to himself as having an FBI "handler" and he acknowledges that he knew he was going against DoJ policy in not informing his superiors of the role he was playing. At the same time, he also knew that the FBI had direct contact with Steele at times, and we know that Steele was an established FBI asset. Two assets, one handling or, at least, servicing the other? Why? To complicate matters, Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, clearly knew that he was passing material to the FBI through Steele and even, at times, through his good friend Ohr. Yet Simpson didn't want to meet with the FBI and the FBI seemed to prefer using Ohr as a go between with Steele.

Simpson's motives for maintaining a distance from the FBI are clear enough. Simpson would naturally want to avoid any risk of being identified as an FBI asset, if his role should become public (as it has). Moreover, he would also want to maintain control over what material that he held was passed to the FBI. The FBI would also probably prefer not to be linked to Simpson, who was known to be an extreme Democrat partisan as well as unscrupulous in his business. The FBI, on the other hand, would also want to avoid linkage to Steele in this matter, since Steele was a known former MI6 operative linking the Intel Community with political operatives--on both sides of the Atlantic. Ohr, who had legitimate professional reasons to go to FBIHQ, served well as a cutout to avoid accidental sightings of the FBI with Steele or Simpson and to afford the FBI some measure of deniability regarding the sourcing of the materials they were using.

On the other hand, Ohr's explanation for why he claims he didn't inform his superiors--that he wanted the matter to be handled by "career officials" rather than political appointees--doesn't ring true, as the questioning Representatives made clear by pointing out that Ohr, a DoJ official, several times interjected himself into the chain of custody of collected evidence--a no-no. Presumably, from the FBI's and Simpson's point of view, that would be Ohr's personal problem. Interestingly, however, while Ohr claims to have wanted to keep DoJ political appointees in the dark, Lisa Page made it quite clear in her testimony that the FBI had no such qualms: