A hallmark of the Democrats – and the Clintons in particular – is
that, with the aid of a complaisant press, they hide their wrongdoings with
countless obfuscations and distractions so that the truth of consequential
matters is buried in chaff and hard to see. This week, we can look
forward to an effort to clear away the chaff and reveal the wheat.
Tomorrow, we expect the Department of Justice's inspector general
to release the first part of his report to congressional
investigators. The report is expected to cover the alleged bias and
malfeasance by the FBI, among other things.
·
Allegations
that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed in connection
with, or in actions leading up to or related to, the FBI [d]irector's public
announcement on July 5, 2016, and the [d]irector's letters to Congress on
October 28 and November 6, 2016, and that certain underlying investigative
decisions were based on improper considerations;
·
Allegations
that the FBI [d]eputy [d]irector should have been recused from participating in
certain investigative matters;
·
Allegations
that the Department's [a]ssistant [a]ttorney [g]eneral for [l]egislative
[a]ffairs improperly disclosed non-public information to the Clinton campaign
and/or should have been recused from participating in certain matters;
·
Allegations
that Department and FBI employees improperly disclosed non-public information;
and
·
Allegations
that decisions regarding the timing of the FBI's release of certain Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) documents on October 30 and November 1, 2016, and the
use of a Twitter account to publicize same, were influenced by improper
considerations.
The most significant portions of the report, to my mind, will be
who illegally accessed the NSA (National Security Agency) and FISA (Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act) databases (billions of emails, texts, phone
calls) and who unmasked
and publicized the information there, plus the relationship of the FBI
with Fusion GPS and other outside contractors – and on what basis did the
foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issue a warrant to surveil the Trump
campaign?
The short explanation of this is Sharyl Attkisson's (unedited):
First, intel agencies werent supposed to surveil US citizens. But
they did. Then they werent supposed to "store" it. But they did. Then
they werent supposed to search it. But they did. Then they werent supposed to
"unmask" it. But they did. Then they werent supposed to leak it...
All last week, Conservative Treehouse has been offering up far
longer, more detailed explications of what occurred and suppositions about who
did what. While the explanations seem credible, we may have to wait
to see if they are correct. It remains a most valuable – if hard to
read – source. Here is one
part of a recent report from there which forms a useful base from
which to view what will surely be coming in the following days:
If a search is conducted from an
intelligence agency of the U.S. government whose objective is to ensure
"[n]ational [s]ecurity" there are different FISA rules [from the ones
for] a search from an intelligence agency not engaged in "[n]ational
[s]ecurity[.]" ...
When a FISA-702 search is conducted based
on the need for "national security" no approval from the FISA court
is needed. Search away. If the FISA search is because of
a "vital national security interest" the resulting search data can be
opened without seeking permission from the FISA court.
♦ A "FISA-702(16)" Search
Result – would be a search result of the FBI (counter[-]terrorism)
database or NSA database that returns an American person as a result of
a "To" or "From" (16) type data search.
EXAMPLE: Querying phone data (phone
number) TO: Mohammed BadGuy or FROM: Mohammed BadGuy – might return
a list of phone numbers that also contains an American person[']s phone
number. That American person is protected by the [F]ourth
[A]mendment. To look at the "upstream" connections of the
American [p]erson to other people, likely Americans, the search operator would
need to ask permission of the FISA Court to review the upstream results.
[NOTE: *Exception* – the search
was vital to national security. If so, the upstream phone numbers could be
reviewed without asking FISA permission.]
♦ A "FISA-702(17)" Search
Result – would be a search result of the FBI (counter[-]terrorism)
database or NSA database that returns an American person (702) as a result of an
"ABOUT" (17) type data search.
EXAMPLE: Querying everything in email
ABOUT: Mohammed BadGuy – might return communication of an American who wrote a
letter about Mohammed BadGuy or maybe he told a friend in a text to check out a
media story about Mohammed BadGuy. To look at the email or text of
the American, the search operator would need to ask permission of the FISA
Court to see the email/text content. Someone inside the FBI was
giving FISA-702 search results on U.S. individuals to a private entity that had
nothing to do with government. Those 702 (American [c]itizen)
results were not "minimized" and exposed the private data of the
American citizen(s).
In addition, NSA [d]irector Mike Rogers,
who is also in charge of Cyber Command, discovered people within the
intelligence community were doing "searches" of the NSA and FBI
database that were returning information that had nothing to do with
"Foreign Individuals[.]" ...
Mike Rogers discovered FBI contractors doing FISA-702 "About
Searches" that resulted in returns providing information on
Americans. Those results were passed on to people outside
government.
We do not yet know who these independent contractors were who were
allowed to riffle through the NSA database, or why the FBI shared the results
with them. Nor can we imagine why the FBI even hired outside
contractors for such work. But the supposition is that these
independent contractors were Fusion GPS, a dirt-digging opposition research
firm paid by Hillary Clinton and apparently President Obama (through hired
counsel), and even the FBI or others subcontracted by them were working in
league with them. Should that prove true, we have the worst
political scandal in U.S. history: a weaponization of our law enforcement
agencies to assist one candidate and destroy her
opponent. Summarizing the Conservative Treehouse offerings, my
Facebook friend Harry Lewis notes in relevant part:
[Obama] and his allies tried to
strangle the new Trump [a]dministration in its crib. Those efforts
continue to this date.
According to the website, ... Fusion [GPS]
already was working as a private contractor for the FBI before April 18, 2016,
and was given access, through the FBI, to the NSA database. If true,
that means that the FBI, certainly through the level of [a]ssistant FBI
[d]irector McCabe, and probably up to the level of FBI [d]irector Comey,
already was engaged in spying on the Trump campaign by early
April. The "about queries" are Google-style searches of
the NSA database containing intercepted electronic communications. If
the intercepts are of foreigners, then no FISA warrant is
required. If [U.S.] persons are talking to foreigners, then their
conversations are intercepted "incidentally[,]"[] and the identity of
the [U.S.] person is masked (concealed) by NSA.
That operation certainly was known to
Comey's superiors in the Department of Justice's National Security
Division. It also was known, in turn, by Attorney General
Lynch. It very likely was known to the White House. (Nellie Ohr's
visit to the White House is the smoking gun for this). When ...
Fusion [GPS] hired Nellie Ohr, they also were connecting to her husband, a
senior Justice Department official. Ohr applied for a ham radio
license, because [the] NSA isn't surveilling ham radio frequencies, and they
knew that. ... When Trump hires Manafort in March 2016, ... Fusion [GPS]
already knew that Manafort was dirty (was taking money from a Ukrainian
dictator being propped up by the Russians; Mueller's indictment alleges
money[-]laundering by Manafort) from their previous reporting on
him. That's their pitch to the FBI and the Hillary campaign:
exposing Manafort can bring down Trump.
What Sundance is saying is that ... Fusion [GPS] already was a
private contractor for the FBI, that the operation to spy on Trump and his
associates was an FBI/Justice Department/White House/Hillary Clinton/DNC
operation from the beginning, and that Steele was brought in to create a
"foreign" connection to all of this as cover for the FISA
applications and warrants which would justify this sordid and illegal abuse of
[U.S.] intelligence capabilities retroactively.
If you know about the dossier and its work only through TV and
major press accounts, you know nothing. I'm sorry to
say. For example, there has been a "blizzard
of lies" about Christopher Steele, who was the Fusion GPS source on
Russia.
Christopher Steele was Hillary's hired
gun, paid gobs of money to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. Yet somehow
this "brilliant" spy lacked the surveillance skills to know that
Hillary had hired him. That's one of the many whoppers in the
released Glenn Simpson testimony in which Steele is portrayed as a "Boy
Scout" operating from the highest and purest of motives.
Steele's stenographers in the press
invariably describe him as "highly regarded" and
apolitical. The propagandistic omniscience behind these descriptions
is laughable and amounts to nothing more than liberals presiding over a kangaroo
court in which they can endlessly appeal to their own authority: we say he is
"highly regarded," so he is; we say that his motives were pure, so
they are; we say that parts of his report have been "corroborated,"
so don't question them.
The claim that Steele was operating above politics is a
joke. According to the British press, he was a socialist before
working for British intelligence as a Russian expert – a career path that
should stimulate skepticism, or at least curiosity, in a vigilant press. Steele
was the perfect counterpart to John Brennan, who entered American intelligence
after supporting the American Communist Party.
Incidentally, some of the best reporting on this has been done by
women – women without pink pussy hats. Catherine Herridge, Sara
Carter, Kimberley Strassel, and Sharyl Attkisson come readily to
mind. Kimberley Strassel warns
this week about the chaff being thrown up about the dossier in an
effort to keep you confused and ignorant about what went on.
There's no such thing as a coincidence in
Washington, so why the sudden, furious effort by Democrats and the media to
give cover to the Steele dossier? As in, the sudden, furious effort
that happens to coincide with congressional investigators' finally being given
access to FBI records about the Trump-Russia probe[?]
This scandal's pivotal day was Jan.
3. That's the deadline House Intelligence [c]hairman Devin Nunes
gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over documents it had been
holding for months. Speaker Paul Ryan backed Mr. Nunes's threat to
cite officials for contempt of Congress. Everyone who played a part
in encouraging the FBI's colonoscopy of the Trump campaign – congressional Democrats,
FBI and Justice Department senior career staff, the Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama political mobs, dossier commissioner Fusion GPS, the press corps – knew
about the deadline and clearly had been tipped to the likelihood that the FBI
would have to comply. Thus the dossier rehabilitation campaign.
Weeks before, the same crew had taken a
desperate shot at running away from the dossier, with a New York Times special
that attempted to play down its significance in the FBI probe. You
can see why. In the year since BuzzFeed published the salacious
dossier, we've discovered [that] it was a work product of the Clinton campaign,
commissioned by an oppo[] research firm (Fusion), compiled by a British
ex-spook on the basis of anonymous sources, and rolled out to the media in the
run[-]up to the election. Oh, and it appears to continue to be
almost entirely false. When the best you've got is that a campaign
orbiter made a public trip to Russia, you haven't got much. ...
We don't know exactly what Congress has
seen, but it's a safe bet it's hot. The media and Democrats are
trashing Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham for their criminal referral of
Mr. Steele to the Justice Department. But neither man would make
such a move without good – and documented – cause. If anything, the
referral is suggestive of FBI misbehavior. Evidently whatever
Messrs. Grassley and Graham found came only at this late stage, after the
bureau reluctantly made key documents available to lawmakers. The
implication is that the FBI and Justice Department knew they had a problem and
were concealing it from investigators....
If Mr. Steele was such a professional, why was he out spreading
national[] security "intelligence" through the media? If
Mr. Simpson was so worried for his country, why did he spend months dodging
congressional requests for testimony, and refuse to name his
client? If Mr. Steele was confident enough in his document to spool
it to the FBI, why has he ducked every congressional request that he explain
his work? And that's before Mr. Grassley's claim to have credible
evidence that Mr. Steele lied to the government.
Any decent investigation of what took place should, at a minimum,
involve a number of high officials in multiple counts of illegal leaking of
classified information, along with perjury before Congress. At
a minimum, the penalties for misusing FISA databases and a more stringent means
of addressing privacy concerns should be getting far more attention in Congress
than they have as it races to reauthorize FISA.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/confusing_dossier_chaff_with_wheat.html