Papadopoulos And The Enterprise

One aspect of the Russia Hoax that may appear puzzling at first glance is the amount of effort the FBI put into framing George Papadopoulos--overseas travel, cooperation with foreign intel services, possibly borrowing assets for use in the entrapment schemes that were designed to ensnare Papadopoulos in the Russia Hoax narrative. By comparison, Carter Page seems to have fallen right into their laps--which is exactly the case.

I think this will make more sense if viewed from the perspective of what the FBI was attempting to accomplish within their administrative framework--into which everything had to fit.

It appears that a decision was made early on that trying to label a single person--or even two more or less unconnected persons--associated with the Trump campaign as a Russian spy would not be sufficient. If that had been tried, the failure to warn and brief Trump would have been utterly implausible. What was needed was to present a plausible case that the supposed Russian connection to the Trump campaign was systemic. For that what was needed was a network of individuals that was active in a key part of the campaign--the foreign policy shop. If such a de facto network of Russian agents working within the Trump campaign could be plausibly claimed, then the FBI could do what it actually did do with Crossfire Hurricane--open an "enterprise counterintelligence investigation," with the de facto network being the targeted "enterprise."

As I explained in Mueller's Enterprise Witchhunt, an "enterprise investigation" is defined in the FBI's guidelines (DIOG) as follows:

Enterprise defined: An enterprise is a group of persons associated together for a common purpose of engaging in a course of conduct. The term “enterprise” includes any partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact, although not a legal entity.

Associated in fact defined : The term "associated in fact" means the persons have an ongoing organization, formal or informal, and that the persons function together as a continuing unit. (DIOG 8.2)

The problem for the FBI, then, was to establish such an "enterprise", an informal group of persons functioning as a unit in fact, although not a legal entity. Who would be the members?

Mueller's "Enterprise" Witchhunt

In past articles on the Russia Hoax I've stressed that the guidelines that govern FBI investigations are the key to understanding the Deep State's assault on the Trump administration. In that regard I have several times referred to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane case as a sort of "umbrella" investigation, one that subsumes the investigations on given individuals, such as Carter Page. The whole issue of the precise nature of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation has arisen once again, in the context of disgraced former FBI Director James Comey's testimony last week before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). I think it will prove helpful to revisit this topic because, as I hope to show, there are important consequences that flow from this.

What Kind Of Investigation Is Crossfire Hurricane?

Back on March 20, 2017, then FBI Director Comey testified before HPSCI regarding Russian "active measures" during the 2016 election. Chairman Nunes characterized the committee's work as concerned with Russian "active measures" during the 2016 presidential election, but the Democrats stated that it was all about "collusion" between the Trump campaign and "the Russians." In his testimony Comey confirmed for the committee that the FBI's investigation, which we now know as Crossfire Hurricane and which began in late July, 2016, was concerned with "any coordination between people associated with the Trump campaign and the Russians."

This is important, because in Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Rod Rosenstein's letter of May 17, 2017, in which he appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel (SC), Rosenstein's authorization closely tracks Comey's testimony:

The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James B. Comey in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, including any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump; ...

There are several important bits of information that we need to take special note of in this.

• First, Mueller is not starting up a new investigation--he's taking over an already existing investigation, the same one that was confirmed by Comey two months earlier. 
• Second, and very importantly, Mueller's investigation is not authorized as a general investigation into Russian "active measures" (i.e., interference, meddling) in the 2016 campaign but instead is rather narrowly focused on "coordination between people associated with the Trump campaign and the Russians."

In other words, Rosenstein did not authorize Mueller to investigate coordination between people associated with the Clinton campaign and the Russians--only the Trump campaign.