MULTIPLE UPDATES: Extracts From AG Barr's Opening Statement, May 1, 2019

Below are what I regard as the most significant part of AG Barr's prepared statement for his Senate testimony this morning. It's refreshing in this age of disregard for principle generally to see a straightforward presentation of the hallowed ethical principles underlying the prosecutorial function, as well as an enunciation of the relationship of the Special Counsel to DoJ. All emphasis is mine. In my view Barr has done himself proud in this statement, and has provided a signal service to the country. It remains for his yapping critics to feel shame.

Bottom-Line Conclusions

After the Special Counsel submitted the confidential report on March 22, I determined that it was in the public interest for the Department to announce the investigation’s bottom-line conclusions—that is, the determination whether a provable crime has been committed or not. I did so in my March 24 letter. I did not believe that it was in the public interest to release additional  portions of the report in piecemeal fashion, leading to public debate over incomplete information. My main focus was the prompt release of a public version of the report so that Congress and the American people could read it for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

The Department’s principal responsibility in conducting this investigation was to determine whether the conduct reviewed constituted a crime that the Department could prove beyond a reasonable doubt. As Attorney General, I serve as the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States, and it is my responsibility to ensure that the Department carries out its law-enforcement functions appropriately. The Special Counsel’s investigation was no exception. The Special Counsel was, after all, a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice charged with making prosecution or declination decisions. 

UPDATED: About Mueller's Letter To Barr--And The Phone Call

It's important to understand the timing here.

Apparently Mueller took exception to Barr's 4 page letter that provided the Mueller Dossier's principal conclusions. Barr initially issued that letter shortly after receiving the Dossier--he wanted Barr to also release the executive summaries from the Dossier. Barr's position was simple: he issued his four page letter to fulfill the reporting requirements in the regulations. He did not agree with Mueller's idea of a partial release of the Dossier, preferring to release the entire document as a whole, with necessary redactions. That was exactly what Barr did.

Here is a key passage from the WaPo article:

A day after Mueller sent his letter to Barr, the two men spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials. 

In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials. Mueller did not express similar concerns about the public discussion of the investigation of Russia’s election interference, the officials said. Barr has testified previously he did not know whether Mueller supported his conclusion on obstruction. 

When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said. 

In their call, Barr also took issue with Mueller calling his memo a “summary,” saying he had never intended to summarize the voluminous report, but instead provide an account of its top conclusions, officials said.

UPDATED: Briefly Noted: Where Are We At This Point?

For the last few days there hasn't been too much in the way of actual news on the Russia Hoax front, although there have been some excellent summaries of where we stand and what we may be able to reasonably expect (or hope for). Where to begin?

I think the overall big picture has to do with Obama. I've insisted throughout--mostly in private emails--that the first law of bureaucratic behavior is CYA: Do not go out on a limb by yourself. Be sure that someone else has your back, has authorized whatever you do. There's only one place in the US Government that the buck stops, and that's the Oval Office. None of these important people like Lynch, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, and all their subordinates would have taken the risks they took, broken the laws they broke, unless they thought they were covered. Therefore the question is inevitable: What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?

What we may be seeing now is jockeying for position. On the Dem side, the House committees are trying to establish an alternate narrative to distract the public from where Barr's investigations are almost certain to lead: Obama. Thus, we hear that Barr is somehow hiding the truth of the Mueller Dossier; the American people want to know the truth about Trump's finances; it's all about GOP "obstruction". My own opinion is that the public is tired of Dem conspiracy theories and promises of future proof. None of it--none--has panned out. Further, two events--and which comes first remains to be seen--will, in my view, see the floor falling out from beneath the Dems in the House. One of those events will be when indictments of the real Russia Hoax conspirators start coming down--with the focus on spying on Trump and innocent Americans. As it becomes ever more clear, as well, that innocent people such as General Flynn were framed, public revulsion will increase. Promises of future proof will not be able to make the tangible proof of those indictments go away.

I Stand Somewhat Corrected Re Steganography

Commenter Joe raised the issue of steganography (also cf. Wikipedia) in comments at Chris Wray: Deep State Tool. Those comments were seconded by commenter Anonymous. The whole issue was raised on twitter by Ramses Goat, who claims that James Comey's weird tweets--accompanied by images--are actually clandestine communications that utilize steganography. If you read my responses, you'll see that I was skeptical about this. I still am, but I located a complaint in an FBI case from 2010 in which the claim is made that the Russian intelligence services do in fact make use of steganography on publicly accessible web sites. The relevant material begins on page 9 and there are a total of 13 references to steganography on pp. 9-11:

III . MEANS AND METHODS OF THE CONSPIRACY 

A. SECRET COMMUNICATIONS 

20. To further the aims of the conspiracy, Moscow Center has arranged for the defendants clandestinely to communicate with the Russian Federation. In particular, the conspirators have used, among others, the secret communications methods described below — steganography and radiograms. 

1. STEGANOGRAPHY 

21. Steganography is the process of secreting data in an image. Moscow Center uses steganographic software that is not commercially available. The software package permits the SVR clandestinely to insert encrypted data in images that are located on publicly-available websites without the data being visible. The encrypted data can be removed from the image, and then decrypted, using SVR-provided software. Similarly, SVR-provided software can be used to encrypt data, and then clandestinely to embed the data in images on publicly-available websites.

22. As is set forth below, certain of the Illegals have communicated with Moscow Center by means of steganography. In each of the three judicially-authorized residential searches referenced above (the 2006 Boston Search, the 2006 Seattle
Search, and the 2005 New Jersey Search), law-enforcement agents observed and forensically copied a set of computer disks ("Password-Protected Disks"). Based on subsequent investigation as described below, I believe that the Password-Protected Disks contain a steganography program employed by the SVR and the
Illegals.

I remain skeptical that such a technique would be used in this manner--utilizing a Twitter account--when the person in question is an extremely high profile public figure who must presume that he is under investigation and subject to electronic surveillance. It seems too risky to use Twitter for these purposes in such circumstances, since surveillers using sophisticated software could conceivably access the hidden files.

This is a good example, if that were needed, of why I value the comments.

Chris Wray: Deep State Tool

Any notion that the Deep State would drop the Russia Hoax, leaving the fomenting of anti-Russian paranoia and hysteria to such disreputable stalkers of the President as Adam Schiff, were laid to rest by Chris Wray. As reported by the NYT, Wray spoke Friday to a predictably Deep State friendly audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in DC, seeking to stoke hysteria in anticipation of the 2020 election:

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director warned anew on Friday about Russia’s continued meddling in American elections, calling it a “significant counterintelligence threat.” The bureau has shifted additional agents and analysts to shore up defenses against foreign interference, according to a senior F.B.I. official. 

The Trump administration has come to see that Russia’s influence operations have morphed into a persistent threat. The F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have made permanent the task forces they created to confront 2018 midterm election interference, senior American national security officials said. 

“We recognize that our adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping their game,” Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, said Friday in a speech in Washington, citing the presence of Russian intelligence officers in the United States and the Kremlin’s record of malign influence operations.
“So we are very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020,” he said. 

... 

But outside of meetings with Mr. Trump, intelligence officials have continued to raise alarms. Officials including both Mr. Wray and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, have said Russia has aimed its influence campaigns at undermining faith in American democracy. 

“What has pretty much continued unabated is the use of social media, fake news, propaganda, false personas, etc. to spin us up, pit us against each other, to sow divisiveness and discord, to undermine America’s faith in democracy,” Mr. Wray said on Friday. “That is not just an election-cycle threat. It is pretty much a 365-day-a-year threat.”

Wray is either a fool--if he believes this nonsense about the social media threat posed by Russian based "troll farms"--or a knave--presuming that he actually knows better. More likely he's both. A fool for presuming to possess actual credibility, a knave for undertaking to fool the American people.

Briefly Noted: When did Mueller know there was no collusion?

The title references an article by Byron York: When did Mueller know there was no collusion?

What York does is simply provide the dates on which Team Mueller interrogated most of the best known supposed "colluders" or Russian agents. It turns out that most of them were interrogated quite early on. After quickly disposing of "collusion," presumably they had plenty of time for obstruction.

The Carter Page example is telling:

For example, a key figure in the conspiracy allegation, Carter Page, was not on the White House radar screen. But in a new podcast interview, Page, too, said the special counsel's office was finished with him by the end of 2017.

Page did five interviews with the FBI in March 2017, before Mueller was appointed. Page said he had just one appearance with Mueller's prosecutors, and that was in the grand jury on Nov. 17, 2017. Asked if that was the last he heard from the special counsel's office, Page said, "Yeah, essentially."

Five FBI interviews--before Mueller was even appointed! And only one later, before the GJ. I'm guessing the GJ appearance--six months later!--was an attempt to pin a perjury rap on Page. Pathetic, but the point is, with Page--the supposed courier between the Trump campaign and Putin--basically eliminated before Mueller got his Hillary lawyer team assembled, who thinks he really believed collusion was a thing? And, come to mention it, who thinks Rod Rosenstein believed that?

Briefly Noted: Soros, Ukraine, And The Russia Hoax; Peggy Noonan's Paean To The Establishment

Here are links to two excellent reads. The first appears at Gateway Pundit and serves as an excellent summary to the Ukrainian Connection to the Russia Hoax--which, not surprisingly is very much a Soros connection as well: Ukrainian Lawmaker Admits in Recording That Government Agency Linked to Soros Was Helping Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election. The information is dense--it's the big picture information that's only now coming out--but here's a teaser excerpt:

The Ukraine Crisis Media Center was founded in March 2014 by the Ukraine government and George Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation to give reporting on the Ukraine conflict the ‘correct’ spin. Soros has founded media lobby groups all over the world modeled on Media Matters for American, which he founded with John Podesta after the Lewinsky scandal nearly brought down Bill Clinton. 

Leshenko [sic] provided this info [so-called 'Black Ledger' pages linked to Manafort] to Clinton campaign staffer Alexandra Chalupa, as Epoch Times reports, who then passed this info on to Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff. Isikoff broke the story on Yahoo on Aug. 18, 2016, one of the first public mentions of purported “collusion with Russia” by the Trump team. Manafort had to step down as Trump’s campaign manager the next day. 

Chalupa also passed the Black Ledger info on to Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS, who passed them on to staffer Nellie Ohr. Ohr passed the info on to her husband Bruce Ohr, Epoch Times reports.  On May 30, 2016, Nellie Ohr sent an email to Bruce Ohr and Justice Department staffers under the subject line “Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ ‘Black Cashbox.’” 

... 

Bruce Ohr then used this Soros-derived info to begin the Justice Department surveillance of the Trump campaign code-named “Crossfire Hurricane”. 

George Soros had invested billions in Ukraine before the conflict broke out 2014, and was one of the primary players in the conflict with his nemesis Vladimir Putin. “With his Open Society Foundations, Soros was not only instrumental in helping bring down the government in Kiev, he also stands to make a sizeable profit out of Ukraine, especially thanks to his close ties to the new Poroshenko government. In January of this year, he met privately several times with the Ukrainian leadership,” neopresse wrote in 2015.

Is Rosenstein Throwing Comey Under The Bus?

I've speculated recently that Rod Rosenstein may still be at the DoJ because he's assisting the department in its inquiries about "what's been going on" with the FBI and DoJ. Among the remarks that Rosenstein offered at the Armenian Bar Association’s Public Servants Dinner in New York City last night were these:

At my confirmation hearing in March 2017, a Republican Senator asked me to make a commitment. He said: “You’re going to be in charge of this [Russia] investigation. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you’ll do it right, that you’ll take it to its conclusion and you’ll report [your results] to the American people.” 

I did pledge to do it right and take it to the appropriate conclusion. I did not promise to report all results to the public, because grand jury investigations are ex parte proceedings. It is not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges. 

Some critical decisions about the Russia investigation were made before I got there. The previous Administration chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls, and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America. The FBI disclosed classified evidence about the investigation to ranking legislators and their staffers. Someone selectively leaked details to the news media. The FBI Director announced at a congressional hearing that there was a counterintelligence investigation that might result in criminal charges. Then the former FBI Director alleged that the President pressured him to close the investigation, and the President denied that the conversation occurred. 

So that happened.

It sounds to me like Rosenstein is offering a justification for the Team Mueller mess of the last two years, suggesting that he had no alternative than to act as he did, take the course of action that he did. That he really meant to do the right thing all along, but, well, stuff happens.

While I don't buy those excuses for a moment, it's about what you'd expect at this point from a guy who finds himself more or less in the same boat with the FBI and Team Mueller after a 2-3 year deep dive into all things Trump has come up absolutely empty--and a new sheriff is in town and promising a real investigation. Hey, it wasn't me! It was that guy Comey that I trusted! How was I to know that Mueller would run totally amok with Hillary partisans as his sidekicks? How was I to rein it in once it got started? Sure I pledged to do it right, but, but, ... I didn't count on this amount of SHTF!

I just hope his cooperation will be worth any deal that he gets.

January 2016: Obama WH Sought Russia Hoax Help From Ukraine

John Solomon has a new revelation regarding the Ukrainian Connection to the Russia Hoax. We know that the Ukrainian anti-corruption bureau (NABU) was set up by the FBI, with continued close ties. Operatives from NABU released two pages from Paul Manafort's "black book" to smear him while he was campaign manager for Trump. Now, in How the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost, Solomon provides some of the backstory.

Claiming confirmation from "multiple participants and contemporaneous memos," Solomon describes a WH meeting in January, 2016, that

brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), the FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).

The ostensible purpose for the meeting  was "training and coordination." However, the Ukrainian participants soon realized that the meeting was about a number of sensitive political topics. One had to do with Hunter Biden's involvement in a corrupt Ukrainian venture, but the second had to do with the possibility of reviving a two year old investigation into Paul Manafort involvement with the party of ousted Ukrainian President Yanukovych. The original investigation had been dropped without any charges being brought against Manafort.

Kulyk said Ukrainian authorities had evidence that other Western figures, such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, also received money from Yanukovych’s party. But the Americans weren’t interested: “They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else.”

Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016, and then was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19, 2016. 

Here's what interests me. There is talk of targeting Manafort's lobbying firm: "a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump." But this meeting was in January, 2016--two to three months before Manafort was associated with the Trump campaign. By all accounts Trump didn't reach out for Manafort--Manafort was pushed on Trump. A White House meeting seems rather over the top for what sounds like simple opposition research. Could there be more to this? Is it possible that Dem operatives were somehow behind maneuvering an unwitting Manafort into joining the Trump campaign? After all, an actual member of the Trump campaign ensnared in supposedly pro-Russian lobbying activities would have a lot more punch than "a lobbying firm linked closely to Trump."

One way or another, Solomon appears to be on to something big. The Russia Hoax narrative was a developed thing already in January, 2016, but to make it really take off there had to be a attention grabbing hook. That hook was Manafort. Coincidence?

Later, of course, Carter Page and Michael Flynn fit right into the Russia Hoax narrative. George Papadopoulos, on the other hand, had to be worked into the setup. But it all seems to lead back to the Obama White House.

Interesting times.

UPDATED: Tres Amigos Agree: Barr's The Guy To Do It

Mike Huckabee had three smart lawyers on his show last night to talk about how the "collusion tables" were going to be turned on the Dems: Rudy Giuliani, Robert Ray (former Whitewater Special Prosecutor) and Joe DiGenova.

DiGenova, among other claims to fame, was "there at the founding" of the FISA court (FISC). All three agree that Bill Barr, with his deep experience in the legal world of the CIA and his time at DoJ during a turbulent period of politics, is the perfect guy to take on the job of draining the Swamp and that he has the will to do it. Despite the focus, below, on the FBI and James Comey, they also agree that John Brennan at the CIA was at the center of the whole coup attempt.

Perhaps as importantly, DiGenova outlines some of the investigative behind-the-scenes events that tell us that Barr has the tools in place to do this. All this takes place during a seven minute segment of a longer video, from roughly 14:00 to 21:00.

To highlight, here are some of the important things that DiGenova notes. Much of this has already been discussed at various times, but DiGenova lays it out fairly succinctly so it's a good refresher:

• For four YEARS the Obama Administration conducted an illegal spying operation, via access to NSA databases;
• The mechanism for the spying was through the FBI, which provided four private contractors illegal access to NSA databases;
• Adm. Mike Rogers, former head of NSA, personally went to the Chief Judge of the FISC and worked with her for months during 2016 to explain to her how this happened;
• The FISC has already ruled that this operation violated the law, that Sally Yates and John Carlin at DoJ knew about it and lied to the court;
• The FISC has already been told by DoJ who lied to the court, and that report has already been given to Bill Barr--he knows;
• IG Horowitz will produce his FISA report in late May or early June;
• IG Horowitz will produce another, separate, report focused on  James Comey alone; that report will be a "bombshell" that will produce criminal referrals.

UPDATE:

Paul Sperry‏

@paulsperry_

BREAKING: The next hoax to fall -- that the Russians interfered in election "to help Trump win." Stay tuned ...

12:41 PM - 2 Apr 2019


Paul Sperry‏‏

@paulsperry_

BREAKING: FBI agents Joe Pientka and Mike Gaeta, along with DOJ official Stu Evans, are figuring prominently as witnesses in IG Horowitz's investigation of department FISA abuses. The findings in the forthcoming IG report are said to be "devastating."

11:36 AM - 25 Apr 2019


George Papadopoulos
‏
@GeorgePapa19

Replying to @paulsperry_
I have been told that Michael Gaeta was Joseph Mifsud’s handler in Rome.

12:24 PM - 25 Apr 2019


Paul Sperry‏

@paulsperry_

DEVELOPING: It is now looking as though there is more evidence that Obama had a heavier hand in interfering in the 2016 election than Putin

1:12 PM - 25 Apr 2019

Guardians Of The Deep State

Well known NeverTrumper Holman Jenkins has a nice article today at the WSJ in which he concludes: Our politics will be healed only when voters know what our secret agents know (subscription wall). Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, he doesn't suggest when or even whether we should start holding our breath.

Jenkins begins with an example that has received surprisingly little attention. Jenkins' example has to do with Carter Page's commencement address at the New Economic School (NES) in Moscow in July, 2016. Mueller (cf. pp. 98-101 of the Mueller Dossier) tries to play up this incident as an example of how

Page's affiliation with the Trump Campaign took on a higher profile and drew the attention of Russian officials after the candidate named him a foreign policy advisor,

further noting that

The NES commencement ceremony generally featured high-profile speakers; for example, President Barack Obama delivered a commencement address at the school in 2009.

Obviously, Carter Page is hardly in the same "high-profile" category as POTUS, so the suggestion that Page's appointment as foreign policy adviser to the campaign had made him a celebrity of some sort is little short of laughable. And that leads one wonder: just what was going on with this invitation? Could this invitation have been part of an attempt to puff up the centrality of Russia to the Trump campaign? Was the idea of inviting Page suggested to the NES by Western intelligence operatives? That's speculative of course, but then nobody--least of all Mueller--has shown much interest in that angle. Why not?

ISIS And The Russia Hoax

While we await IG reports, Congressional testimony, the empaneling of Grand Juries, indictments to handed down, and all that stuff ...

The other day I wrote in a comment:

My view is that what led the Deep State to regard Michael Flynn as "an existential threat," was the report he did at DIA which called out Obama for basically creating ISIS. The reason that posed an existential threat to the Deep State was because ISIS was part of a broader strategy. To have examined that more closely would have dragged in much, much more. So, despite his more or less conventional views in other areas, Flynn had to be neutered. 

The same applies to Trump. Trump was too open to "revisionist" or "non-orthodox" foreign policy views that conflicted with the established Deep State policy. This is why he was perceived as such a threat. In fact, Trump's revisionism probably was viewed as running far deeper than Flynn's. 

As things stand, I would rate Trump's success in furthering his views against the Deep State as only moderate to this point, largely because he's had his hands full fighting off Team Mueller and GOP Deep Staters.

Today Zerohedge has an interview - article that I highly recommend: How CIA & Allies Helped Jihadists In Syria: French Covert Ops Expert Exposes New Details. Here's the short intro that will give you the overview, but the article is rich in detail (some of which I'll include):

Maxime Chaix has written a shocker of a book in which he reveals insightful information on the support which several Western intelligence services provided to jihadist militias in Syria, starting with the CIA. His investigation reveals a multi-faceted state scandal and points out the murky game played by the Western powers and their Middle Eastern allies in the Levant.

So, in other words, at the heart of this book (La guerre de l’ombre en Syrie - The Shadow War in Syria) is the Clinton/Obama policy in the wake of the Iraq War and the "Arab Spring". That would be the policy that Flynn criticized when he was at DIA and whose criticism Trump adopted. Does that give you some idea of why the Deep State regarded both Flynn and Trump as "existential threats," and why the combination of the two in the White House increased that threat exponentially? Here's how the interview begins (but do yourself a favor and read the whole thing):