Now They Tell Us ...

But did they ever tell the FISA Court (FISC)?

Anonymous sources, including one in DoJ, are now telling us that the FBI "had doubts" about the Russian source for Christopher Steele's "dossier." The NYT reports:

By January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele’s main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document and three people familiar with the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. After questioning him about where he’d gotten his information, they suspected he might have added his own interpretations to reports passed on by his sources, one of the people said. For the F.B.I., that made it harder to decide what to trust.

Agents did not believe that either the source or Mr. Steele was deliberately inventing things, according to the former official. How the dossier ended up loaded with dubious or exaggerated details remains uncertain, but the document may be the result of a high-stakes game of telephone, in which rumors and hearsay were passed from source to source. 

Another possibility — one that Mr. Steele has not ruled out — could be Russian disinformation. 

Let's go step by step.

By January, 2017, FBI agents had "tracked down" one of Steele's "main sources." Really? Tracked down ... how? Pardon my skepticism, but I think a proper translation of this narrative would run something like this ...

By January, 2017, the FBI had finally persuaded Steele to allow them to speak to someone whom he claimed was a source of information for his dossier. In other words, by that point in time Steele had worked out a story with a Russian he knew, had rehearsed it, and thought it might work for purposes of an interview. And who was this dynamite source, who could pass on what Westerners were meeting with which Putin insiders? "A Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West." That's not very impressive as sources go, even allowing for protection of the "source's" identity.

But then they drop a real bombshell--this source, this "Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West," turns out to have been passing on tittle tattle from other "sources." And of course neither the FBI nor Steele would, even accepting that this was true, have access to those sources--who may or may not have ever existed. Obviously Steele must be a big John le Carre fan, since this reads exactly like the "source Merlin" setup in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy--with Steele, appropriately enough, playing Bill Haydon, the Russian "mole."

Nellie Ohr's Story--Puzzlements

Reading Nellie Ohr's testimony to the House (October 19, 2018) is a bit of a frustrating experience. In the first place there's a significant amount of recurring legal wrangling over the scope of the spousal privilege that Nellie is claiming with regard to her husband, Bruce Ohr, who testified to the House on August 28, 2018. Beyond that, however, Nellie is, when compared to any of the previous witnesses, tight lipped. She volunteers virtually nothing, constantly asks for questions to be rephrased, and generally professes ignorance on most matters that she's questioned on. Nevertheless, there are possibly significant points in her testimony, so let's take a closer look.

Probably the biggest surprise in her testimony is her confirmation that Ukrainian legislator Serhiy Leshchenko was a "source" for Fusion GPS. One point of interest in this is the entire line of questioning--as of October 19, 2018, I don't think Serhiy Leshchenko was on any researchers' radar screens, but he was definitely on the House GOP's radar screen. Nellie herself states that she was quite familiar with Leshchenko as an "anti-corruption" activist in Ukraine--a George Soros connected angle that we recently explored in The Soros, Ukraine, FBI Connection and Do All Roads In The Russia Hoax Lead To Ukraine? The exchange regarding Leshchenko between Nellie and the Committee is a bit ambiguous toward the end, but there's no doubt that the questioners believe that Leshchenko was providing information about the travels of Trump family members--and area of research that Nellie was engaged in. As I say, it's somewhat unclear whether Nellie actually confirms that, although the probability is that she does--but suggests that there may have been more to Leshchenko's source information than simply Trump family travel. You decide (pp. 113-115):

Nunes Airs His Big Picture Theory Of The Russia Hoax

Shortly after the Lisa Page testimony was made public, on March 12th, Rep. Devin Nunes, former head of the HPSCI, did an interview with Sean Hannity. In the interview Nunes lays out is, in some important respects, his view of the big picture of the Russia Hoax--who's behind it, what were it's origins, what needs to be done. Some of what he says is speculative, and he acknowledges that. Also, while he and his GOP colleagues are preparing criminal referrals to DoJ, Nunes openly states that "the best possible thing that could happen" would be for DoJ to take this investigation in hand, because there's still plenty of work that needs to be done.

I've done a transcript of the interview--the first nine minutes--that's largely word for word, but cleaned up a bit to eliminate cross-talk, stumbling for words, etc. You can listen to the interview here, but I think reading and thinking about what Nunes is saying may prove provocative. There's lots to ponder in what he says. I'm pleased to be able to say that Nunes confirms many of the things that I and commenters here have been saying over the past two years. Among other items of note, Nunes maintains strongly that the FBI was "thick into" the anti-Trump effort from the beginning of 2016 and not, as their "essentially fake narrative" maintains, only beginning in July. He clearly suggests that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS was a major source for the dossier operation, and he openly states that Andrew Weissmann--nominally Mueller's deputy--is "running the operation."  If reading this sparks your curiosity, as it really should, I highly recommend the linked posts below, because Weissmann was centrally involved in the Russia Hoax long before there was ever a Team Mueller--possibly as much as a year before:

The FBI: Working Hand In Glove With Clinton Operatives

Why Andrew Weissmann?


****

So, here's the interview, with some comments added:

SH = Sean Hannity
DN = Devin Nunes

Oh My! Meet The "Meticulous" Chris Steele

You may recall that Christopher Steele was sued for defamation by a Russian, Aleksej Gubarev, for allegations about Gubarev that appeared in Steele's infamous "dossier." The deposition of Christopher Steele's deposition in that case--which was released to the public yesterday--turns out to be a bit disappointing, in that only the parts that related directly to Gubarev were released. You can read what's available here.

Nevertheless, that limited glimpse of Steele's methodology should utterly destroy any residual credibility he may have--if, indeed, any remains at this point. It should also have the same effect on the entire FBI/DoJ Russia Hoax operation.

If you want to see the detailed analysis, check out Undercover Huber's thread. To give you some flavor of what just this limited glimpse reveals about Steele's research methods--and FBI vetting of his reliability--I'm providing some snippets. You can also refer to a post from August, 2018: Just How Reliable Is Christopher Steele?

And remind yourself as you read: This is the type of stuff the whole Russia Hoax is based on. Chris Steele--and his principals at Fusion GPS--used this stuff to keep our politics in a perpetual uproar of anti-Trump hysteria for the past two years. Aided and abetted by a media and political class that knew better.

Lisa Page's Confirmatory Bombshells - Day One

Lisa Page's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee--released yesterday by Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.) is 365 pages in length and was conducted over two days. It includes questioning in alternating rounds by the GOP and Dem Representatives. In what follows I will confine myself to the questioning by the GOP Reps, since the Dem questioning is mostly in the nature of damage control.

While there is overall little new in what Page says, her testimony is strongly confirmatory of the positions I have maintained over the past years regarding the Russia Hoax. I particularly welcome her testimony because it directs the focus to what I believe is the fundamental legal issue, which is: the basis for initiating the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) investigation. In that sense I refer to Page's testimony as containing "confirmatory bombshells." She removes any remaining doubt regarding the corruption that characterized the entire process.

ROUND ONE: TREY GOWDY QUESTIONING

The hearing leads off with Trey Gowdy doing the questioning. My impression at this point--as throughout--was pretty much in line with what the GOP Representatives who did the questioning stated at the time: Page gives every appearance of being a very forthcoming witness. True, Page is at times defensive, but she presents as sincere and credible, answering all questions forthrightly unless instructed not to answer by FBI counsel. Even then she attempts to provide as full a response as possible. Her narrative of an FBI that was alarmed at the possibility that the Trump campaign had been infiltrated by "the Russians" comes across as perfectly sincere. And yet ...

The actual effect of her testimony is quite otherwise when it's subjected to a close analysis. In fact, the actual thrust of her testimony is to strongly confirm that the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation (the FBI codename for the investigation into the Trump campaign) was fundamentally based on ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele's totally unverified "dossier". Further, it soon becomes apparent that the FBI was applying a double standard to Hillary Clinton related investigations as opposed to Steele's outlandish allegations against Trump.

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:

MULTI-UPDATES: Michael Cohen In A Nutshell

Mark Penn begins his latest, and typically excellent, article with the following trenchant observation:

After bilking corporations out of millions of dollars for "insight" into his client, failing to pay his taxes, trying to entrap his client, and pleading guilty to lying to Congress, now-disbarred attorney Michael Cohen took his best shots at President Donald Trump, calling him a liar and a cheat. The testimony brought Congress to a new low after years of dead-end investigations of supposed Russia-Trump conspiracies.

It may be worthwhile to briefly review how we got to this point, and what the Cohen angle is really about.

Like just about everything else in the Russia Hoax, and as nearly as anyone can tell, Michael Cohen's travails began with the infamous Steele "dossier." When she wasn't honing her mid-life ham radio hobbyist skills, Nellie Ohr--former CIA analyst and wife of Bruce Ohr, a high DoJ official and (yes) FBI informant--browsed through NSA databases on behalf of Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS, in search of opposition research information regarding anyone associated with Trump. Courtesy of James Comey and the FBI, who made their access to NSA databases freely available to Nellie and Fusion GPS.

In early summer of 2016, as the campaign season was heating up, Nellie discovered that a Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague. Whether or not Nellie really assumed that the world only contained one Michael Cohen who might travel to Prague we cannot say for sure. However, by fall of 2016 the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Trump and his campaign was in need of a refreshed narrative, due to the fact that none of the original subjects were any longer with the Trump campaign. Either assuming for no apparent reason that only one Michael Cohen existed or, more likely, figuring that the coincidence of names was close enough for government work, the FBI and Chris Steele wove a new narrative about Cohen as the go between Trump and his masters in Moscow. And that was crucial to obtaining the first FISA:

Bill Priestap's Partially Leaked Testimony

Jeff Carlson has the summary of the latest (partially) leaked testimony at the Epoch Times. This time it's the testimony of Bill Priestap, recently retired from the position of Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. There are only a few significant takeaways from his testimony.

First, Priestap flatly contradicts disgraced former FBI Director Comey's frankly non-credible claim that Priestap told him (Comey) not to brief Congress re the Crossfire Hurricane case. Non-credible, because Comey first states that the practice is to brief the Gang of Eight Intelligence group on "sensitive cases," but then claims Crossfire Hurricane was not briefed because it was "a matter of such sensitivity"--its sensitivity is precisely why it should have been briefed. Here's how the questioning of Comey went:

Marc Elias: A Reminder

A search of this blog reveals, remarkably, that there appear to be no references to Marc Elias, so this post will remedy that. And right up front I want to offer (FWIW) a hat tip to Mark Penn, the former "pollster and adviser" to Bill Clinton, whose (typically) excellent article on the Roger Stone indictment and arrest brought Elias specifically to my attention (Mueller’s selective prosecution of Stone, Venezuelan-style).

Who is Marc Elias, and why is he important for understanding the Russia Hoax? Wikipedia explains it lucidly:

Marc Erik Elias (born February 1, 1969)[1] is an American attorney. He is a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie LLP and head of its Political Law practice. He is the general counsel for Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign. He worked in the same role for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. 

... 

He served as lead counsel for Senator Al Franken in the 2008 Minnesota Senate election recount and contest, the longest recount and contest in American history.[6] Elias has testified before committees in both houses of Congress and before the Federal Election Commission on campaign finance.[7] Elias has worked on voting rights and redistricting lawsuits in Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.[8] 

... 

In April 2015 Hillary Clinton engaged Elias as attorney of record for her 2016 presidential campaign.[5] According to The Washington Post, in April 2016, Elias hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to complete the research that resulted in the Donald Trump–Russia dossier.[11] ...

Are you getting the picture? You've heard of Super Lawyers? Well, in the legal field of Democrat politics, or simply politics generally, Marc Elias is an 800 lb. gorilla.

Trisha Anderson: Andy McCabe and Sally Yates Read The FISA Application "Line By Line"

Gregg Jarrett at Fox News has a new article up, just over an hour ago: Testimony in Russia probe shows FBI and Justice Department misconduct in effort to hurt Trump. This appears to be another in a series of leaks of testimony given by FBI and DoJ officials before the House Intelligence Committee, going back to when Republicans were still in control. Jarrett leads with this:

Newly revealed testimony by a former top FBI counterintelligence lawyer shows that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe examined “line-by-line” the faulty warrant applications to spy on Trump presidential campaign adviser Carter Page.

The former to FBI lawyer in question is Trisha Beth Anderson, an Eric Holder protege. She was working at Holder's firm, Covington & Burling, and was recruited for DoJ. The Covington web page provides this summary of Anderson's stint with the Federal government before returning to Covington:

Ms. Anderson rejoined the firm after over a decade of service in the federal government. She held senior positions at the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury. Most recently she served as Principal Deputy General Counsel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where she handled complex and sensitive matters relating to national security and cyber intrusions. 

Previous Experience 

• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Principal Deputy General Counsel
• U.S. Treasury Department, Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement & Intelligence
• U.S. Department of Justice, Associate Deputy Attorney General; Attorney-Adviser at the Office of Legal Counsel  

Obviously these were all sensitive positions. Principal Deputy General Counsel at the FBI means she was the principal deputy to James Baker, currently leaking to the NYT and under criminal investigation for other leaks as well. Since she handled "complex and sensitive matters relating to national security and cyber intrusions" she would very likely have been knowledgeable about such "cyber intrusions" as the potential intrusions into Hillary Clinton's illegal home brewed email server as well as the DNC "hack."

UPDATED: More On Mueller's Theory Of The Case

In the week since I wrote Crossfire Hurricane: The Theory Of The Case the conservative commentariate has continued to deny that Mueller is investigating any Trump crimes. As I stated earlier, I agree in that overall assessment of the Russia Hoax--that any crimes are fictional or ... trumped up--but I disagree in this respect: I believe that Team Mueller does have a theory of the case and is continuing to work to find proof for that theory.

As an example of the type of conservative commentary I'm referring to, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline Blog published two blogs, one last night and one this morning, regarding the Mueller "probe": Report: Mueller Pressing Hard on Trump Tower Meeting and Mueller’s theory: Trump defrauded voters. In fact, Mirengoff touches on some central issues that deserve more attention and which, when properly understood, reveal the scope and aim of the highly secretive Mueller operation.

A lot of clarity can be gained by looking at the whole Mueller operation in light of the Steele Dossier. The central allegation of the Dossier boils down, quite explicitly, to the simple proposition: Trump entered into a corrupt quid pro quo arrangement with "Russians": a bribery scheme. This is the aspect of the Mueller case theory I examined in the blog that's linked above, the bribery statute: 18 US Code 201(b)(2). The Dossier's version of this general proposition is that, in exchange for the release of DNC emails by the Russians through Wikileaks--"a thing of value," in that the release of emails could lead to Trump's election--Trump agreed to grant sanctions relief to Russia.

But "dirt on Hillary" works just as well as "a thing of value" to be exchanged for sanctions relief, for purposes of the bribery statute.

Just How Reliable Is Christopher Steele?

PLEASE NOTE: In what follows I adopt a narrow focus. I focus closely on the FBI's claims for Christopher Steele's reliability, rather than on the reliability of what was contained in the "dossier"--which all FBI officials who have spoken on the matter have characterized as "unverified."

The famous "Dossier" on Donald Trump--supposedly compiled by British ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele acting as a contractor for Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS, themselves contractors for the Hillary Clinton Campaign--"salacious and unverified" though it might have been, was "crucial" to the FBI's efforts to obtain the original FISA on Carter Page as well as the three renewals of that FISA. That the "dossier" was "salacious and unverified" we have on the authority of disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, and that it was "crucial" to the Carter Page FISA is attested by the equally disgraced former Deputy Director and later Acting Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.

In the Carter Page FISA application the FBI presents material from the "dossier" without referencing it as an actual document. Rather, it presents material from the "dossier" as reporting provided by Christopher Steele as "Source #1." The concealing of source identities is usual in FISA applications. To make up for this secrecy in the interests of security, at least in theory, the FBI provides characterizations of their sources as well as specific facts that vouch for the reliability of the sources in question, to provide the FISC judge with a factual basis upon which to assess the case for granting a FISA order.

Since we know the person who is supposed to have been behind the Carter Page FISA application, it seems reasonable to inquire: just how reliable was Christopher Steele? After all, if verification of the dossier was still "in its infancy"--i.e., it basically hadn't been verified at all--at the time the FISA application was submitted to the FISC, according to the FBI's top Counterintelligence official, Bill Priestap, then it would follow that the reliability of the material presented in the application would stand or fall with the reliability of the source. So, what does the FBI say in the application about Steele's reliability as a source?