There’s so much in print and online about
the House and Senate intelligence committees and Russian “collusion” with Trump
that I can’t blame people with real lives to lead who just throw their hands up
and garden or go hiking. Some will assume there’s got to be a pony in
there somewhere, as Ronald Reagan used to joke about the kid digging through
manure. I think there is, but it isn’t that Russia corrupted the 2016 election,
it’s that Obama and his closest aides, including some at the highest level in
the intelligence community, illegally intercepted one or more Republican
candidates’ communications before the election, circulated them widely to their
cohorts and then tried to use this information to defeat and later to hamstring
Trump when Hillary -- to their surprise -- lost the election.
I also suspect that the attacks on Flynn have nothing to do with
his Russian contacts which he disclosed, but, rather, to misdeeds respecting
the Middle East, particularly Iran, the country he observed as Obama’s
head of the DIA.
The Surveillance and “Unmasking” of Trump
and his Associates
We learned
this week that surveillance
of Trump began long before he was the Republican nominee, and that the names in
the intercepted communications were “unmasked” -- that is, identified by name
or context -- by someone high up in the intelligence community.
In addition, citizens affiliated with Trump’s team who were
unmasked were not associated with any intelligence about Russia or other
foreign intelligence, sources confirmed. The initial unmasking led to other
surveillance, which led to other private citizens being wrongly unmasked,
sources said.
"Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political
purposes... specifically of Trump transition team members... is highly suspect
and questionable,” an intelligence source told Fox News. “Opposition by some in
the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton
teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin
his presidency by picking them off one by one."
Nunes and Surveillance Reports
The best summation of this week’s distraction -- respecting
chairman of the House intelligence committee, Devin Nunes -- is Victor
Davis Hanson’s which I urge
those of you interested to read in its entirety.
First, the central question remains who leaked what
classified information for what reasons; second, since when is it improper or
even unwise for an apprehensive intelligence official to bring information of
some importance to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for
external review -- in a climate of endemic distrust of all intelligence
agencies?[snip] Nunes also said that the surveillance shown to him “was essentially
a lot of information on the President-elect and his transition team and what
they were doing.” Further, he suggested that the surveillance may have involved
high-level Obama officials. When a reporter at Nunes’ second March
22 press conference asked, “Can you rule out the possibility that senior
Obama-administration officials were involved in this?” Nunes replied,
“No, we cannot.” Ipso facto these are startling disclosures of historical
proportions -- if true, of an anti-constitutional magnitude comparable to
Watergate. Given the stakes, we should expect hysteria to follow, and it has
followed. [snip]
Some notion of such intrigue, or rather the former nexus
between Congress, the Obama administration, the intelligence agencies, and the
monitoring of incoming Trump officials, was inadvertently disclosed recently by
former Obama-administration Department of Defense deputy assistant secretary
and current MSNBC commentator Evelyn Farkas. In an interview that originally
aired on March 2 and that was reported on this week by Fox, Farkas seemed to
brag on air about her own efforts scrambling to release information on the
incoming Trump team’s purported talks with the Russians. Farkas’s revelation
might put into context the eleventh-hour Obama effort to more widely
disseminate intelligence findings among officials, one that followed even
earlier attempts to broaden access to Obama-administration surveillance.
In any event, the White House invited the highest ranking
members of the House and Senate intelligence committees to come view the
documents themselves. Adam Schiff did, and reported he’d seen what Nunes
had, after which he did not deny the intercepted communications
contained nothing about Russia or Trump. They clearly were of no national
intelligence significance, but rather, as Hanson noted, were evidence that the
prior administration was snooping on political adversaries using the apparatus
of the state to do so.
We also
learned this week that Hillary (despite her uncontested
mishandling of classified information when she was Secretary of State), and her aides, including Farkas, were
given access to classified information long after she left the Department of
State which, with Farkas’ admission on MSNBC, underscores the
apparent misuse of intelligence from her end.
FBI Director James Comey and former DNI
James Clapper
As for Comey, Hanson notes:
There is no need to rehash the strange political career of
FBI director James Comey during the 2016 election. As Andrew McCarthy has noted
in his recent NRO analyses, news accounts alleged that Comey’s FBI
investigations of supposed contacts between General Michael Flynn and the
Russian ambassador were shared with Obama-administration officials -- but why
and how we are not sure. Comey himself was quick to note that his agency is
investigating supposed collusion between Team Trump and Russia, but he refused
to comment on whether or not the FBI is investigating possibly inappropriate or
illegal intercepts of Trump officials and the surely illegal dissemination of
intercepted info through leaks to favorable media.
But there’s much more to be said about him and his “investigation”
which seems to be continuing only to cover his own backside.
The FBI was concerned that the ill-secured DNC internet
communications were being hacked and sought to examine them. The DNC refused
and engaged an outfit called Crowd Strike to do the job. Crowd Strike reported
the Russia had likely tapped their server. There’s no explanation of why Crowd
Strike was chosen, why the FBI allowed this, and why it apparently relied on
that outfit’s findings. Recently Crowd Strike has walked back
many of its claims after
a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential
British think tank.
And then there’s the dossier compiled by the former British intelligence
agent Christopher Steele. If you recall, this dossier was commissioned through
a DC firm, Fusion GPS, by Hillary to dig up opposition research on her
opponents, and when she dropped it, unnamed Republicans followed up on the
contract. At some point (accounts vary about how this occurred), dog in the
manger John McCain got it and widely distributed it to the press and political
figures. These Republicans, too, dropped the service, at which time the FBI
picked it up, though they claim not to have paid GPS. Comey apparently has
based his still ongoing “investigation” on it. The dossier is utter bunk.
Ironically, it is Fusion GPS that istied
to Russian intelligence.
“It is highly troubling that Fusion GPS appears to have
been working with someone with ties to Russian intelligence -- let alone
someone alleged to have conducted political disinformation campaigns -- as part
of a pro-Russia lobbying effort while also simultaneously overseeing the
creation of the Trump/Russia dossier,” writes [Senator] Grassley.
Akhmetshin hired Simpson and Fusion GPS last year to work
on a campaign to roll back the Magnitsky Act, a law passed in 2012 which
imposed sanctions against a handful of Russian criminals accused of human
rights violations.
The law was named in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian
lawyer who was killed by jail guards in 2009. Magnitsky was working for Bill
Browder, a London-based investor who once operated in Russia, when he uncovered
a $230 million fraud being carried out by the Russian government.
After Magnitsky’s death, Browder began lobbying U.S.
lawmakers to enact sanctions against Russian criminals engaged in human
rights abuses.
In a FARA complaint submitted in July, Browder laid out the
case that Akhmetshin conducted a covert lobbying campaign to hinder the Global
Magnitsky Act, an expansion of the original law.
The report is not worthy of consideration, but the FBI and Rep.
Adam Schiff didapparently
rely on it, drawing into question the FBI’s “independence from politics”
and Schiff’s credulity or venality:
Citing current and former government officials, the New Yorker reported the
dossier prompted skepticism among intelligence community members, with the
publication quoting one member as saying it was a “nutty” piece of evidence to
submit to a U.S. president.
Steele’s work has been questioned by former acting CIA
director Morell, who currently works at the Hillary Clinton-tied Beacon Global
Strategies LLC. Beacon was founded by Phillippe Reines, who
served as Communications Adviser to Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of
state. From 2009-2013, Reines also served in Clinton’s State Department as the
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications. Reines is the
managing director of Beacon...
Morell, who was in line to become CIA director if Clinton
won, said he had seen no evidence that Trump associates cooperated with
Russians. He also raised questions about the dossier written by a former
British intelligence officer, which alleged a conspiracy between the Trump
campaign and Russia…
Morell pointed out that former Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper said on Meet the Press on March 5 that he had seen
no evidence of a conspiracy when he left office January 20.
“That’s a pretty strong statement by General Clapper,”
Morell said.
Regarding Steele’s dossier, Morell stated, “Unless you know
the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular
piece of information, you can’t judge the information -- you just can’t.”
Morell charged the dossier “doesn’t take you anywhere, I
don’t think.”
“I had two questions when I first read it. One was, How did
Chris talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned that he used
intermediaries.”
Morell continued:
And then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this
information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid
them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the
money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you’re
paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you
truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, “Hey,
let’s have another meeting, I have more information for you,” because they want
to get paid some more.
I think you’ve got to take all that into consideration when
you consider the dossier.’
Maybe Comey is continuing the investigation to blur his own role
in the Obama administration's improper and illegal snooping on his party’s
opponents. He has not closed the investigation despite its apparently flimsy
basis, perhaps to protect himself. He was supposed to report this investigation
in a timely manner to the Congressional and Senate intelligence committees and
did not.
As a correspondent with some knowledge of these matters related to
me:
“When push comes to shove, no investigation gets opened, no
FISA order is applied for, without James Comey's say-so. They can
bluster, but it's damned hard to get rid of an FBI Director without a very,
very public stink. He could have said no, but he didn't. That means
the investigation is bound to focus on him. And count on it -- the
decision to short circuit Congressional oversight was probably pushed on him by
those same people, but once again, it was ultimately his decision. He
could've gone to the Committee, but he didn't. His decision, his
responsibility.”
His view is strengthened by Comey’s
obfuscation at a
Congressional hearing:
The counter-intel investigation, by his own admission,
began in July 2016. Congress was not notified until March 2017. That’s an eight
month period – Obviously obfuscating the quarterly claim moments earlier.
The uncomfortable aspect to this line of inquiry is Comey’s
transparent knowledge of the politicized Office of the DNI James Clapper by
President Obama.
The first and second questions from Stefanik were clear.
Comey’s understanding of the questions was clear. However, Comey directly
evaded truthful response to the second question. When you watch the video, you
can see Comey quickly connecting the dots on where this inquiry was going.
There is only one reasonable explanation for FBI Director
James Comey to be launching a counter-intel investigation in July 2016,
notifying the White House and Clapper, and keeping it under wraps from
congress. Comey was a participant in the intelligence gathering for political
purposes -- wittingly, or unwittingly.
As a direct consequence of this mid-thought-stream Comey obfuscation,
it is now clear -- at least to me -- that Director Comey was using his office
as a facilitating conduit for the political purposes of the Obama White
House.
John Brennan
It’s possible that the tissue-thin, incredible Steele “dossier”
was not the only disinformation source. At
the Spectator there’s a plausible account of how
Obama’s CIA director John Brennan worked with Hillary and certain Baltic figures
to discredit Trump with the charge of collusion with Russia.
Brennan pushed for a multi-agency investigation of the
Trump campaign, using as his pretext alleged intelligence from an unnamed
Baltic state. That “intelligence” was supplied at the very moment Baltic
officials had their own political motivation to smear Trump.
“Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that
worried him. It was -- allegedly -- a tape recording of a conversation about
money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign. It was passed
to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States,” reported the
BBC’s Paul Wood.
Is it just a coincidence that Brennan got this tape
recording from a Baltic State intelligence agency in April when officials
in the Baltic States were up in arms over candidate Trump? Recall that in March
of 2016 -- the month before Brennan allegedly got the recording from Baltic
spies -- Trump made remarks about NATO that the press was hyping as hostile to
the Baltic States. [snip]
Hillary and her allies in the media seized on these
remarks and ripped Trump on the false claim that, if elected, he would “pull
out of NATO,” leaving Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to fend for themselves
against Russia.
Such fearmongering set off an anti-Trump panic in political
circles within the Baltic States. Out of it came a steady stream of stories
with headlines such as: “Baltic States Fearful of Trump’s Nato Views” and
“Estonian Prez Appears to Push Back on Trump’s NATO Comments.”
[Snip]
Both Brennan and officials in the Baltic States had
strong incentives to help Hillary and hurt Trump. That Brennan and some
Baltic spies teamed up to inflate the significance of some half-baked
intelligence from a recording isn’t surprising. Only in such a feverish partisan
milieu would basic questions go unasked, such as: Is it really a good idea to
investigate a political opponent on the basis of a lead provided by a country
that wants to see him lose?
Flynn
Flynn was Obama’s head of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency)
and served only days under Trump. Reports this week initially made it appear
that he was under investigation for ties to Russia, but it is more obvious to
me that he knows about skullduggery by the prior administration in the Middle
East, most likely Iran, and wants protection against the sort of unwarranted
prosecutions Ted Stevens and Lewis Libby suffered at the hands of vindictive
Democrats and their minions. The charges against him are being leveled by former
Obama aide Sally Yates, who has utterly discredited herself earlier by
her demonstrably false claim that the White House blocked her from testifying
to Congress when the documentation clearly shows she was not.
Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to just consider everything the
Democrats say, directly or through the media, which just prints as truth
handouts from the same Democratic sources, as a lie. You’d save a lot of time
and most likely be right.