A Closer Look At The FBI's Carter Page Investigation (Part 2)

Let's continue with our "Closer Look" at the FBI's investigation of Carter Page, as explained in the Horowitz FISA report.  Part I of our "Closer Look" dealt with the origins of the investigation in the FBI's New York Field Office's (NYFO) dealings with Carter Page--which stretch back to 2009--and stopped at the point that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened (July 31, 2016) and a separate sub-investigation was opened on Page. Here we will look at Horowitz's account of FBI investigative activity with regard to Page prior to the FBI's supposed first knowledge of the Steele "dossier" on September 19, 2016.

Once again I've pasted in several pages from the OIG report--the full section, with footnotes. The page numbering is included as before: (paper doc page number/pdf file page number). My comments are in "quote" format.


(77/110)

IV. Investigative Steps in Crossfire Hurricane Prior to Receipt of Christopher Steele Reporting on September 19

UC Huber: Mueller Knew At Once That Trump Tower Meeting Was Nothing

Undercover Huber is reporting that--within 4 days of the event being leaked to the media--Team Mueller interviewed the former State Department translator who accompanied Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to the famous Trump Tower meeting with Don Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort. That leak occurred on July 8, 2017, less than a month after Team Mueller's Witchhunt started operations--an indication that Team Mueller had hit the ground running and was smearing their target before they had any evidence. The translator who was interviewed, Anatoli Samochornov, confirmed that the Trump version of the meeting was absolutely correct and that the media uproar was all wrong:

Undercover Huber
@JohnWHuber

Within 4 days of the Trump Tower meeting being leaked to the media, Mueller’s FBI investigators interviewed a *key* witness who 100% backed up the account of @DonaldJTrumpJr & other participants.

No collusion or info exchanged, lasted a few mins, mostly about adoptions [i.e., Magnitsky Act sanctions].

THREAD
5:56 PM · Mar 5, 2020

Another leak from Team Mueller anytime during the next two years could have corrected the false impression that had been created, but of course that didn't happen. The media was allowed to continue with wild, and false, speculation until the Mueller Dossier was issued.

FBI Dinged On Counterterrorism

I have to say, it seems a bit mean spirited on the part of OIG to criticize the FBI's performance in Counterterrorism cases. I mean, the OIG audit covers the period from October, 2012, to September, 2018. Think of how many important national elections that time period covered! A Bureau has to prioritize, and the FBI's Dem masters obviously prioritized election "meddling" over Counterterrorism. Whose fault was that?

Audit of the Federal Bureau of

Investigation’s Efforts to Identify

Homegrown Violent Extremists

through Counterterrorism Assessments

(U) Objectives

(U) The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted
an audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI)
efforts to identify homegrown violent extremists (HVE)
through counterterrorism assessments. Our objectives
were to review the FBI's HVE-related casework and
resource management and evaluate its policies and
processes to assess HVE threats from October 2012
through September 2018.

(U) Results in Brief

(U) HVEs are the highest priority for the FBI's
Counterterrorism Division (CTD) because the FBI
believes HVEs currently present the greatest terrorist
threat to the United States. Since September 11, 2001,
HVEs have carried out over 20 attacks in the
United States, some of which occurred after the FBI
closed a counterterrorism investigation or assessment
on the individual. Following these attacks, the FBI
conducted reviews and determined there were
weaknesses in its HVE assessment processes.

However, we found that the FBI has not taken sufficient
action to address these weaknesses. Additionally, in
2017, the FBI conducted an enterprise-wide review and
identified potential terrorist threats that may not have
been adequately assessed during calendar years (CY)
2014 through 2016, which amounted to 6 percent of
the total assessments reviewed. We found that the FBI
did not take adequate action on nearly 40 percent of
these assessments for 18 months. After we inquired
about the lack of action, the FBI reexamined these
assessments and, in some instances, the reexamination
resulted in the opening of an investigation. We further
found that the FBI has experienced a substantial influx
of reports of suspicious incidents, but has not developed
comprehensive strategies for addressing the challenges
associated with the potential cross-over between
terrorist threats and other categories of threats, for
example, those posed by individuals with mental health
issues and criminal threats to life. 

UPDATED: Recommended Political Reads

For right now it's starting to look like the Dem nomination--contrary to all expectations until Bernie came out of the closet re Castro--will be Biden's to lose. Or perhaps will be the DNC's choice to assign amid a chaotic brokered convention. With that in mind, three good reads--links and brief excerpts:

Yeah, Go Figure!

Mark Meadows
@RepMarkMeadows

Michael Bloomberg could barely win a delegate in a primary with $500+ million—but if you ask Washington Democrats, a few Russian trolls spending 100K on Facebook ads swung the entire 2016 election. Got it. #CollusionHoax

10:17 AM · Mar 4, 2020

A Closer Look At The FBI's Carter Page Investigation (Part 1)

Carter Page remains at the heart of the Russia Hoax--which is natural, given that the FBI's investigation of Page served as the vehicle for obtaining a FISA order that encompassed much of the Trump campaign. The OIG FISA report, or Horowitz Dossier, devotes several pages to tracing the origins of the investigation of Page that was initiated by the FBI's New York Field Office (NYFO). A closer look at this section of the report is worthwhile because I believe it will expose the weakness of the Russia Hoax generally, including the probability that the rationalizations offered by the FBI exhibit bad faith. At the same time we will also see that those rationalizations do pose difficulties for the Durham investigation.

In what follows, I have inserted the full text of the reports treatment of the origination of the Carter Page investigation. Redactions are indicated by asterisks: "***" and the footnotes from the report are included, but are placed at the end of the text excerpt. I have inserted my own comments in a "quote" format. There are also further relevant selections from the report appended which I have labeled as an Appendix. As for identifying the page numbering, I have adopted a format that presents first the page number as it appears in the text, followed by a slash and a number that represents the page number in a PDF viewer--which may be easier to use for anyone looking at the original.

Page 61/94 and following.

C. The Pre-Existing FBI New York Field Office Counterintelligence Investigation of Carter Page

Jeff Sessions Places Second, Forces Runoff

President Trump had something to say about the Republican primary for US Senator:

This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins! 

https://t.co/2jGnRgOS6h— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020

My supposition has always been that Sessions did a corrupt deal with Chuck Schumer according to which, in exchange for a narrow confirmation as AG, Sessions would recuse from all things Russia Hoax. Rod Rosenstein was enthusiastically confirmed as DAG, 94–6. Just for the record, here are the Nay voters, those who voted against Rosenstein:

Blumenthal (D-CT)
Booker (D-NJ)
Cortez Masto (D-NV)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Harris (D-CA)
Warren (D-MA)

Overall, the Dems had faith In RR.

I've heard "conservatives" express sympathy for Sessions, because of Trump's harsh public criticisms. For the record, I have no such sympathy and regard Session's actions--failing to inform Trump of his clearly premeditated recusal--as a selfish betrayal of Trump and of the national interest of the American people.

The Horowitz Dossier And Predication

John Durham and his team are pretty much leaking nothing. Which makes for a slow news cycle. So, to kill the time while we await the big developments come May/June, as per AG Bill Barr's assurances in his most recent interview, I've started reading the Horowitz Dossier, aka, "The FISA Report." Finally! Of course I've read lots about it, and excerpts from it, but now I'm doing the whole thing in a systematic way. I've started at the beginning and plan to work my way through to the end, and I'm almost a quarter of the way through already.

My initial impression is that I can see why the Durham investigation is taking so long. What happened from 2015 (at least) through to 2019 (at least) was immensely complex and involved an awful lot of people, all offering excuses and justifications for their commissions and omissions. And to complicate matters, some of the main actors are scattered around the globe, are subjects of foreign powers, even operatives of foreign "allied" or "friendly" intel services. At least one key player is all of the above and, as far as you or I can tell, has disappeared. Putting this beast of an investigation into prosecutive form is bound to be a gargantuan job.

Another initial impression is that it's been a long time since I've read so much officially sanctioned BS. In particular, the justifications for starting Crossfire Hurricane, for starting the various sub-investigations off that main file, for not attempting a defensive briefing of the Trump campaign, for accepting the word of Fusion GPS, Chris Steele, the DNC, Crowdstrike, and all the other unsavory anti-Trump actors--it's all well beyond laughable. If you ever had any doubt that John Brennan's January, 2017, Intel Community Assessment was anything other than an after the fact justification--i.e., a coverup--all doubts will be dispelled by reading Horowitz's report. But this is the subterfuge that Durham has to expose--in prosecutable detail. It's a big job, and he's up against experienced bureaucratic operators.

You may recall that when Horowitz first came out with his report, both Barr and Durham took vocal and public exception to Horowitz's claim that Crossfire Hurricane was properly predicated. Rather than go into that issue again, I want to briefly point out something I noticed and which took me very much by surprise. That something is Horowitz's view of the authority of DoJ and the FBI to conduct investigations and, specifically, his ideas on the whole concept of predication. This topic is raised on page 19/51 (the first number is the numbered page, the second is the overall page number in the pdf file). Here's what Horowitz says (all extra formatting is mine):

More Re The Origin Of The Coronavirus

What you'll find below is basically a twitter thread that appears at Zerohedge under this title:

"What Are The Odds?" - A Timeline Of Facts Linking Covid-19, HIV, & Wuhan's Secret Bio-Lab

What I've done is to strip out the embeds to make it read smoothly and edit it out some of the more technical details. Then I pasted in the abstract and conclusion from a paper by Indian scientists who suggest that the virus behind Covid-19 was engineered based on the model of HIV1 (the technical details are beyond me). I have also added a limited number of comments of my own, in the hope of pointing to the significance of certain points.

The author of the original twitter thread and the link to that thread:

Scott Burke,  CEO of crypto-related firm Groundhog, ...

Again, the question is: If this virus was engineered and then escaped "into the wild," what was the purpose of the engineering? Legitimate scientific inquiry? Use as a bioweapon when perfected? Both? Do the seemingly extreme reactions of governments around the world--compared to flu outbreaks--indicate that they may know things that aren't being shared?

Here is Scott Burke:

Has There Already Been A Coup?

If not, maybe it's time for President Trump to prove that he's still the president and makes policy--not Mike Pompeo.

I've made no secret of my view that Pompeo never should have been made part of the Trump administration in any capacity, any more than Bolton or McMaster or others of that ilk. What's Pompeo's latest offense? Flirting with World War Three in Syria--a follow on to his past attempts to force Trump into a major war.

Pompeo, through his mouthpiece, James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative for Syria engagement, has been pressing to send Patriot missiles to help the Turks in Syria. To its credit, the Pentagon is pushing back. Politico explains:

Turkey, a fellow member of NATO, has asked the U.S. to deploy two Patriot batteries on its southern border. Jeffrey, who is also a former ambassador to Turkey, is urging the Pentagon to follow through with the request and potentially to establish a no-fly zone, one of the people familiar with the matter said. 

But senior leaders at the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense are resisting Jeffrey’s proposal, according to State Department and DoD officials and two additional people familiar with the discussion. Defense officials believe the move would set a bad precedent and would not change Russian or Syrian calculations in the conflict, the State Department official said. 

DoD officials are “resisting doing foolish things with real global ramifications,” the State Department official said.

Note that--below Pompeo, people at DoS agree with DoD that this would be a very stupid thing to do, like so many of Pompeo's harebrained and war mongering ideas. Geopolitical realities aside, Trump needs a war like he needs a hole in his head.

Twitter Is In Paul Singer's Sights

Monica Showalter has just posted a terrific article at AmThinker: A 'vulture' circles over Twitter. I won't give it all away, but I'll quote the portions that Showalter quotes from MSM sources:

Here's the Wall Street Journal take on what's happening now:

Elliott Management Corp. has nominated four directors to the board at Twitter Inc., according to a person familiar with the matter, setting the stage for a potential showdown between one of the most prolific and pugnacious activist hedge funds and the influential social-media company.

Elliott has taken a roughly $1 billion stake and been in talks with Twitter management about its desire for the company to find a full-time chief executive officer, the person said. That most likely would involve replacing co-founder Jack Dorsey, who began a second stint as the company’s CEO in 2015. In addition to his role at Twitter, Mr. Dorsey leads Square Inc., a financial-technology firm he also co-founded.

Here's the much more entertaining Daily Caller take:

A Republican donor reportedly purchased a major stake in Twitter with the intention of pushing out CEO Jack Dorsey, who the billionaire says is too distracted with other ventures.

Activist investor Elliott Management wants to make changes at the social media company, the Bloomberg News report noted Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Paul Singer, the billionaire behind Elliott, once opposed President Donald Trump’s campaign but has since grown more supportive.

But Showalter has lots more to tell you, so follow the link. As she says, this couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch of woke Leftists.

Steele Denies His Dossier Was Bogus

Toward the end of January we ran a short post relating the verdict of well-known Brit "spy expert", Nigel West, regarding the Steele "dossier": NEWSFLASH: Steele Made It All Up! That was West's conclusion--the dossier was "totally fabricated." This past week Orbis Business International, aka Chris Steele, denied that the "dossier" was a total fabrication and claimed, to the contrary, that three individuals---John Sipher, Chuck Rosenburg and Anthony Ferrante--had "confirmed" the dossier. The Gateway Pundit has a nice roundup on the story.

It turns out the three individuals are more or less the usual suspects--well known Deep State actors who have long since either outed themselves or have been exposed by investigative reporters. Of the first two,

John Sipher, was a member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service.  He wrote an article in September 2017 where he claimed the dossier was reliable.

We know that Chuck Rosenburg was disgraced former Jim Comey’s Chief of Staff.

The third person, former FBI agent Anthony Ferrante, was exposed in an excellent investigative article by Paul Sperry, which we covered in Sperry's OIG Bombshell: Comey Targeted Trump. At that time, July of 2019, Sperry reported that Ferrante--who had been detailed to the NSC essentially as Comey's spy within the White House--left the FBI in April, 2017, and

"contracted with BuzzFeed to lead the news site's efforts to verify the Steele dossier, in connection with a defamation lawsuit."

In other words, BuzzFeed paid Ferrante to say that the Steele "dossier" was legit because BuzzFeed was being sued for having published it. BuzzFeed paid to rent Ferrante's supposed credibility as a former FBI agent.

What's new is that Chuck Ross quickly responded to Orbis' self serving tweets with this:

Chris Steele's firm published a letter to the editor suggesting that ex-FBI official Anthony Ferrante had validated the dossier. 

The firm did not disclose that a.) Ferrante did not validate the dossier, and b.) BuzzFeed paid Ferrante $4 million to try to do so. pic.twitter.com/YeBnHXNZVG 

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) February 25, 2020

I assume that Durham is checking all of this out, too.