Wednesday, August 5, 2020

OBAMA AND HIS SENIOR STAFF TARGETED AND TOOK DOWN A PATRIOT

Leaders and members of the Democratic Party in the DNC, the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and the directors of these federal agencies under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, with allies in the media; sought to find something, anything that would stick to him in order to either remove him from office by impeachment, or force him to resign; a fight they started before Donald Trump took office.

In what is the most horrendous scandal in US history, they tried to make him a pawn of Russia, concocting a false story of Russian collusion, that was hatched as “an insurance policy” in case he won the elections, which he did then they went all out.

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s presidency, these people had and continue to slander, libel, and attack the president on virtually a daily basis.  We have been bombarded by the mass media with all sorts of negative reporting and personal attacks against a sitting president; the likes of which the nation has never seen before.

For those who would disagree I would ask when was the last time they ever hear journalists or TV news anchors, reporters, pundits, editors, and commentators refer to a sitting president as, ‘Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini?  This is both appalling and seditious.

When was it that a sitting president was called a dictator by the press?  When have we seen a sitting president so disrespected as this president has been and is by this media mob?  When have did we ever hear these people question the president’s ability to lead?  When have we seen a sitting president state of health and mind repeatedly questioned as this one has?
Well, as to the last question, I remember the media did question President Reagan’s cognitive abilities, and the Democrats of that era used it to the hilt to defy him as today’s Democrats defy this president.  Apart from that, I do not recall any president being subjected to such negative and biased news reporting.

The mass media has been badgering US with every one of these points, repeatedly brought up by the organs of the mass media against this president for three and a half, soon to be four, years.  Since when did we ever see a press corps conduct themselves with the utmost disrespect and contempt against the nation’s chief executive, continuously interrupting him, pelting him with “gotcha” questions designed specifically to irk him and cause him to react and say something they could use later against him as they worked feverishly to present him the worst possible light in their daily reports.  The media’s contempt and personal animus against this president is not even hidden.  It is there in plain sight for the nation to see and hear each and every day.  The  press has been the water carrier of the Democratic Party and to that end they live to see that he is presented to the public in the most unfavorable light.  Is it any wonder why so many people dislike him?  Anyone subjected to the type of “news reporting” he has, would be a pariah when they finished with him.  The press works for this to happen.
But equally, if not more horrendous were the activities of the Obama Administration weaponizing the Justice Department against a sitting president.  When in our history have we ever witnessed a president so abused in such a way as this one?

During the last days of the infamous Obama Administration, under the direction of Barack Obama himself, several of his key official requested that the Justice Department under the leadership of James Comey, have the FBI investigate the incoming president and everyone associated with him to find if the charges made against they created from fiction could stick – presumably hoping among themselves that something would pop up that they could use to incriminate him in some way and have him removed from office.

Problem was, as time and even their own Mueller Investigation discovered; there was absolutely nothing they could find to corroborate any type of Russian collusion either between the president and any of his colleagues.  It is amazing, but every investigator in Mueller’s team were all partisan Democrats with strong ties to the DNC.  Of course, all but Fox News failed to report this very revealing detail of those doing the investigation.

As a matter of fact, as time and other investigations into this matter would follow.  As more details about how high and how deep the corruption had been, it was discovered by the Justice Department that all of the FISA warrants requested by Obama’s senior administration officials and issued, which began the investigations were all based upon a phony dossier containing falsified information.  The premise for investigating the incoming president and everyone connected to him, including his senior officials) was based upon a fictitious story against Trump that was purchased and obtained from Christopher Steele, a British MI6 operative who received it from an organization called Fusion GPS, which obtained it from the Russians.
This phony investigation was leaked to CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast television news channels, who ran with it for the next three years in order to besmirch the president and destroy public confidence in him and his ability to lead the country.

It has been since discovered that when the Justice Department examined the evidence they uncovered that none of the FISA Warrants were legal, because the premise upon which they were requested and issued by the FISA Court, was pure fiction, it had no basis on fact.  There was no probable cause for the FISA to be granted and any investigation conducted.  As a matter of fact, the record states that when tasked to look into the allegations and conduct their investigation to see if there was probable cause to obtain a FISA Warrant, they returned saying that they had found no evidence that would justify the court issuing a FISA Warrant, because there was no evidence of wrong doing by either the new president or any of his colleagues.
This is when Peter Strzok and his paramour, Lisa Page became involved in the investigation.  Strzok had risen to post of Deputy Assistant Director (one of several) of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI, the second-highest position in that division.  He also led the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.  When the two agents conducting the Trump campaign and returned with no reason for an investigation,  he disregarded their findings and led the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

Wikipedia has called the rumors, now confirmed as fact by the Attorney General’s report, “a conspiracy theory.  This how Wikipedia describes it using rather peculiar hard left codespeak to describe what happened;

The revelation of the text messages led Republican congressmen and right wing media to speculate that Strzok participated in a conspiracy to undermine the Trump presidency.”[1]
After it barely gives a minimal and largely superficial explanation of the facts surrounding Strzok investigation of the president, it follows concluding, “A comprehensive review in February 2018 of Strzok's messages by The Wall Street Journal concluded that ‘texts critical of Mr. Trump represent a fraction of the roughly 7,000 messages, which stretch across 384 pages and show no evidence of a conspiracy against Mr. Trump"’[2]
Really?  Either the article’s writer, Wilber, Del Quentin (February 2, 2018) overlooked what Stzrok and Page texted to one another, or he is deceiving purposely his readers with this claim.[3]  We are aware of the Wikipedia’s writer  spin of this story, and as mentioned previously, the Wikipedia writer’s mention Stzrok’s and Page’s activities is barely mentioned and much detail is left out, which helps feed the writer’s narrative that nothing happened.  This Wikipedia writer would like us to look away and leave this story alone, but justice demands that the American electorate know what occurred right under their noses in this nation’s capital.  For this I include in this report journalist Molly Hemingway’s well – detailed excellent article which she wrote for the Federalist website.

 “Information released in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a January 5, 2017, meeting at the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration.
‘“President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote in an unusual email to herself about the meeting that was also attended by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey, and Vice President Joe Biden.

“A clearer picture is emerging of the drastic steps that were taken to accomplish Obama’s goal in the following weeks and months. Shortly thereafter, high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump. At each major point in the operation, explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.

“Not only was information on Russia not fully shared with the incoming Trump team, as Obama directs, the leaks and ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially damaged national security. When Comey was finally fired on May 9, in part for his duplicitousness regarding his handling of the Russia collusion theory, he orchestrated the launch of a Special Counsel probe that continued his efforts for another two years. That probe ended with Mueller finding no evidence of any American colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, much less Trump or anyone connected to him.
“An analysis of the timeline from early 2017 shows a clear pattern of behavior from the federal officials running the collusion operation against the Trump campaign. It also shows how essential media leaks were to their strategy to sideline key law enforcement and intelligence officials and cripple the ability of the incoming Trump administration to run the country.
“Here’s a timeline of the key moments and news articles of the efforts, per Obama’s direction, to prevent the Trump administration from learning about the FBI’s operation against it.

“January 4: Following the closure of a pretextually dubious and politically motivated FBI investigation of Flynn at the beginning of January, the leadership of the FBI scrambled to reopen a case against Flynn, the man who in his role as National Security Advisor would have to review their Russia collusion investigation. FBI officials openly discussed their concern about briefing the veteran intelligence official on what they had done to the Trump campaign and transition team and what they were planning to do to the incoming Trump administration. Flynn had to be dealt with. The FBI’s top counterintelligence official would later memorialize discussions about the FBI’s attempts to “get [Flynn] fired.” No reopening was needed, they determined, when they discovered they had failed to close the previous investigation. They found this mistake “amazing” and “serendipitously good” and said “our utter incompetence actually helps us.” Even more noteworthy were texts from FBI’s #2 counterintelligence official Peter Strzok to FBI lawyer Lisa Page noting that the “7th floor,” a reference to Comey and his deputy director Andrew McCabe, was running the show.

“January 5: Yates, Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed Obama on Russia-related matters in the Oval Office. Biden and Rice also attended. After the Obama briefing, the intelligence chiefs who would be leaving at the end of the term were dismissed and Yates and Comey, who would continue in the Trump administration, were asked to stay. Not only did Obama give his guidance about how to perpetuate the Russia collusion theory investigations, he also talked about Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to both Comey and Yates. Interestingly, Clapper, Comey, and Yates all said that they did not brief Obama about these phone calls. Clapper testified he did not brief Obama on the calls, Yates learned about the calls from Obama himself during that meeting, and Comey also testified he didn’t brief Obama about the calls, even though the intelligence was an FBI product. Rice, who publicly lied but later admitted under oath to her widespread use of unmasked intelligence at the end of the Obama administration, likely briefed Obama on the calls and would have had access to the intelligence. Comey mentions the Logan Act at this meeting.

It was this meeting that Rice memorialized in a bizarre inauguration-day email to herself that claimed Obama told the gathered to do everything “by the book.” But Rice also noted in her email that the key point of discussion in that meeting was whether and how to withhold national security information, likely including details of the investigation into Trump himself, from the incoming Trump national security team.

“January 6: An ostensibly similar briefing about Russian interference efforts during the 2016 campaign was given to President-elect Trump. After that briefing, Comey privately briefed Trump on the most salacious and absurd “pee tape” allegation in the Christopher Steele dossier, a document the FBI had already used to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page. Comey told Trump he was telling him because CNN was looking for any reason it could find to publish a story about Russia having compromising information on him, and he wanted to warn Trump about it. He did not mention the dossier was completely unverified or that it was the product of a secretly funded operation by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

“January 10: In an amazing coincidence, CNN found the excuse to publish the Russia claims after a high-level Obama intelligence operative leaked that Comey had briefed Trump about the dossier. This selective leak, which was credulously accepted by CNN reporters Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, may have been the most important step in the operation to harm the incoming Trump administration. The leak of the briefing of Trump was used to legitimize a ridiculous dossier full of allegations the FBI knew to be false that multiple news organizations had previously refused to report on for lack of substantiation, and created a cloud of suspicion over Trump’s campaign and administration by insinuating he was being blackmailed by Russia.

“January 12: The next part of the strategy was the explosive leak to David Ignatius of the Washington Post to legitimize the use against Flynn of the Logan Act, a likely unconstitutional 1799 law prohibiting private individuals, not public incoming national security advisors, from discussing foreign policy with foreign governments. Ignatius accepted the leak from the Obama official. He wrote that Flynn had called Kislyak. “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about ‘disputes’ with the United States. Was its spirit violated?” Flynn’s routine and appropriate phone call became fodder for a developing grand conspiracy theory of Russia collusion. In discussions with investigators, both DOJ’s Mary McCord and Comey conspicuously cite this Ignatius column as somehow meaningful in the approach they would take with Flynn. “Nothing, to my mind, happens until the 13th of January, when David Ignatius publishes a column that contains a reference to communication Michael Flynn had with the Russians. That was on the 13th of January,” Comey said of the column that ran online on January 12. In fact, quite a bit had happened at the FBI prior to that leak, with much conversation about how to utilize the Logan Act against Flynn. And the leak-fueled Ignatius column would later be used by FBI officials to justify an illegal ambush interview of Flynn in the White House.

“January 23: Another important criminal leak was given to Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller of the Washington Post, also based on criminal leaks. Their article, headlined “FBI reviewed Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador but found nothing illicit,” wasintended to make Flynn feel safe and put him at ease about the FBI stance on those calls the day before they planned to ambush him in an interview. The article was used to publicize false information when it said, “Although Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were listened to, Flynn himself is not the active target of an investigation, U.S. officials said.” In fact, emails prior to this date confirm Flynn was their prime target. This article was later cited by McCabe as the reason why they were justified in concealing from Flynn the real purpose of their interview. Flynn later asked McCabe if he knew how all the information about his phone calls had been made public and whether it had been leaked. Any potential response from McCabe to Flynn has been redacted from his own notes about the conversation.

“January 24: Comey later admitted he broke every protocol to send agents to interview Flynn and try to catch him in a lie. FBI officials strategized how to keep Flynn from knowing he was a target of the investigation or asking for an attorney to represent him in the interview. The January 23 Washington Post article, which falsely stated that Flynn was not an FBI target, was key to that strategy. Though the interviewing agents said they could detect no “tells” indicating he lied, and he carefully phrased everything in the interview, he later was induced to plead guilty to lying in this interview. Ostensibly because White House officials downplayed the Kislyak phone calls, presumably in light of what Flynn had told them about the calls, Yates would go to the White House the next day and insinuate Flynn should probably be fired.

“February 9: The strategy to get Flynn fired didn’t immediately work so another leak was deployed to Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post. That article, headline “National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say,” was sourced to people who happened to share senior FBI leadership’s views on the Logan Act. This article was also based on criminal leaks of top secret information of phone call intercepts and laid out the FBI’s case for why Flynn’s contacts with a foreign adversary were a problem. The fact that such phone calls are routine, not to mention Flynn’s case that improved relations with Russia in a world where China, North Korea, and Iran were posing increasing threats, never made it into these articles for context.

“February 13: The operation finally succeeded in getting Flynn fired and rendering him unable to review the operations against the Trump campaign, Trump transition team, and Trump administration.

“March 1: Flynn was the first obstacle who had to be overcome. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the next. The Trump loyalist with a strong Department of Justice background would also need to be briefed on the anti-Trump efforts unless he could be sidelined. Comey admitted that early in Sessions’ tenure, he deliberately hid Russia-related information from Sessions because, “it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in Russia-related investigations.” To secure that recusal, yet another leak was deployed to the Washington Post’s Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller. The leak was intended to tar Sessions as a secret Russian agent and was dramatically spun as “Sessions Spoke Twice To Russian Envoy: Revelation contradicts his testimony at confirmation hearing.” One meeting was in passing and the other was in his function as a United States Senator, but the hysteria was such that the Post authors could get away with suggesting  Sessions was too compromised to oversee the Department of Justice’s counterintelligence operations involving Russia. It is perhaps worth noting that the Special Counsel idea was pushed in this article.

“March 2: Sessions recused himself from oversight of the FBI’s anti-Trump operation, providing no meaningful oversight to an operation that would be spun into a Special Counsel by mid-May. With the removal of Trump’s National Security Advisor and his Attorney General, there was no longer any chance of Trump loyalists discovering what Obama holdovers at the FBI were actually doing to get Trump thrown out of office. After Trump fired Comey for managerial incompetence on May 9, deceptively edited and misleading leaks to the New York Times ordered by Comey himself were used to gin up a Special Counsel run exclusively by left-wing anti-Trump partisans who continued the operation without any meaningful oversight for another two years.

“This stunning operation was not just a typical battle between political foes, nor merely an example of media bias against political enemies. Instead, this entire operation was a deliberate and direct attack on the foundation of American governance. In light of the newly declassified documents released in recent days, it is clear that understanding what happened in that January 5 Oval Office meeting is essential to understanding the full scope and breadth of the corrupt operation against the Trump administration. It is long past time for lawmakers in Congress who are actually interested in oversight of the federal government and the media to demand answers about what really happened in that meeting from every single participant, including Obama and Biden.”

MY OPINION
In another article released by Nation Review, this one written by Andrew McCarthy, we are providing with additional detail, and for this reason I include it here in its entirety, because this is the first time in my lifetime that I witnessed organs of our government work towards unseating a sitting president using accusations against him without his knowledge, and bringing bear every arsenal in its power to accomplish this before his reelection.  The acts committed by these people are the most blatant corrupt acts of treason and sedition this nation has ever witnessed in its history.  Anyone outside of the Washington elite who would dare to attempt this would be incarcerated period.  They would face some serious jail time.

But because many of these swamp dwellers in Washington and New York are so connected and powerful, they believe themselves to be above the law, and it appears that they may very well be, for at this late date, after so much evidence against them has been uncovered with more yet to come; no indictment has been handed down by the Department of Justice, and no arrests have been made against those who perpetrated this heinous act against our country.
It is a crying shame that the modern Democratic Party is so corrupt that its members, just like a cult, have closed ranks to protect these people, and have for over three years, projected what these people have done to the president to make the public believe their lies about him in order to destroy public opinion so they can drive him from the White House and prevent his reelection.

For almost four years, the Democratic Party has conducted themselves in the most horrendous manner, conducting an appalling political civil war against President Donald Trump.  They have created one national crisis after another, and have sought and continue to seek this country’s failure so they can regain the presidency.  This is treason.  But here in its entirety is Andrew McCarthy’s excellent article.

 “Assertions that the focus was ‘the Trump campaign’ are now known to be ludicrous
Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.

“I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.

“As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI — but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies — was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump.

“Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos?

“My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks — the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump.

“Now the paper trail is finally catching up with what some of us analysts long ago surmised based on the limited information previously available.

“You don’t like Donald Trump? Fine. The investigation here was indeed about Donald Trump. But the scandal is about how abusive officials can exploit their awesome powers against any political opponent. And the people who authorized this political spying will be right back in business if, come November, Obama’s vice-president is elected president — notwithstanding that he’s yet to be asked serious questions about it.

How to Conceal a Politicized Investigation

“It seems mind-boggling that, for so long, the FBI and Justice Department were able to keep a lid on the documents now being released. President Trump could have directed their disclosure at any time over the last four years. But when you think about it, concealing the paper trail was the easy part. The real challenge was: How to continue the probe even after Trump had taken office and was, at least nominally, in a position to shut it down?

“The Obama officials, including holdovers who transitioned into the Trump administration, pulled that off by intimidation: not-so-subtle suggestions that they could disclose damaging allegations at any time (e.g., the notorious “pee tape”), and that White House efforts to inquire into the scope of the investigation would be portrayed as criminal obstruction.

“Prior to the 2016 election, the FBI intentionally concealed the existence of the Trump-Russia probe from the congressional “Gang of Eight” (the bipartisan leadership of both houses and their intelligence committees). Senior Republicans were thus kept in the dark regarding purported suspicions that the Republican presidential campaign was a Russian front, unable to pose tough questions about the probe’s gossamer predication.

“Crucially, the Trump-Russia fabulists managed to sideline two Trump loyalists who would have been positioned to thwart the effort: national-security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That left in place Obama holdovers and Trump-appointed placeholders. They were indifferent to Trump himself and cowed by the prospect of being framed as complicit in a Trump–Russia conspiracy, or a cover-up.

“The paper record is profoundly embarrassing, so it is only natural that the FBI and Justice Department resisted its disclosure. But documents about the investigation were demanded by congressional investigators starting years ago — particularly by the investigation led in the House by then–Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.).

“Congress’s investigation was stonewalled. The more revelation we get, the more obvious it is that there was no bona fide national-security rationale for concealment. Documents were withheld to hide official and unofficial executive activity that was abusive, embarrassing, and, at least in some instances, illegal (e.g., tampering with a document that was critical to the FBI’s presentation of “facts” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).
“Democrats wanted this information suppressed all along. So of course, once Democrats took control of the House in 2019, there was no possibility of pressing the question of why the Justice Department and FBI failed to comply with House information demands back in 2017–18, when Republicans led the relevant committees.
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One wonders, though, why the GOP-controlled Senate had so little interest in finding out why this paper trail stayed hidden despite repeated inquiries. Ditto the House Republican leadership in the first two years of Trump’s term. It is hard to draw any conclusion other than that the GOP establishment bought the “Russian interference in our democracy” hysteria.
“Moscow always meddles in U.S. elections. The 2016 interference was par for the course and, as always, utterly ineffective. This time, though, Democrats were perceived as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries. For once, they and their media megaphone demanded that the political class treat Russia as a serious threat. On cue, Washington Republicans genuflected, lest they be portrayed as covering up for Trump, or as soft on Putin. Meanwhile Democrats, the party of appeasement (very much including appeasement of Moscow through the Obama years), were transmogrified into Russia hawks. And Russia hawks they’ll remain . . . right up until the moment Joe Biden takes the oath of office.

Exploiting Politics to Surveil the Opposition

“Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBI’s New York City headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign surrogates — the aforementioned General Flynn and then–New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won.

“In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that he’d blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia.

“The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign — using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president’s political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he’d had any role in Russian intelligence’s suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.

You didn’t have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who’d rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take — though an irrelevant one, since it’s up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power.

“So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russia’s behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate.

“Just two weeks before Pientka’s August 17 “briefing” of Trump, the FBI formally opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn.

“There was no case file called “Donald Trump” because Trump was “Crossfire Hurricane.” The theory of Crossfire Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putin’s bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trump’s election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications betweenTrump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russia’s favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture.

Get Them Talking

“Besides obtaining FISA surveillance warrants against Page, the Bureau’s favored tactic — a common one in criminal investigations — was to create or exploit situations in which the suspects would be at ease. Either the settings would not seem investigative or, in Trump’s case, repeated assurances were provided that he was not under investigation. With no notice that the FBI was trying to catch them and even prompt them into making incriminating statements, Trump and his campaign advisers would be invited to talk about Russia. Agents parsed their statements and scrutinized their demeanor, searching for any indication of pro-Russia sentiment or uneasiness about the topic — anything that could be portrayed as incriminating. If the Bureau’s contacts with Trump officials were not covertly recorded (as they were, for example, when informants interacted with Papadopoulos), agents would generate written reports about them, the kind of reports the FBI routinely writes when building a criminal case.

“This is exactly what Pientka did in connection with the August 17 “briefing,” under the supervision of Kevin Clinesmith, the rabidly anti-Trump FBI lawyer later found by the Justice Department’s inspector general to have tampered with a key email, and Peter Strzok, the rabidly anti-Trump counterintelligence agent who was later fired.

“Pientka’s significantly redacted seven-page memo is worth reading. The point of it is not the national-security information provided to the candidate; that is just context for the Bureau’s documenting of statements made by Trump in response. For example, when the topic is differences in methodology between Russian and Chinese espionage, Pientka carefully notes that Trump asked, “Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers [of FBI cases] are they worse than the Chinese?” After all, maybe we’ll find out he was reporting back to the Kremlin. When the topic turned to signals intelligence, Pientka notes that Trump interjected, “Yes I understand it’s a dark time. Nothing is safe on computers anymore,” and elaborated that his then-ten-year-old son had broken the code for access to a computer — you know, just the kind of badinage you’d expect from a co-conspirator in a Russian hacking scheme.

“Pientka then recounts that when other intelligence-agency briefers took over to continue the briefing on other topics, Pientka did not leave; he stayed in the room “actively listen[ing] for topics or questions regarding the Russian Federation.” Here, in a classified report they figure no one will ever see, there is no pretense: FBI agents are monitoring Trump. Pientka notes that when one briefer said the U.S. was the world’s leader in counterterrorism, Trump interjected, “Russia too?” And when the discussion turned to cheating by Russia and China on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, “Trump asked, ‘Who’s worse?’” When the briefer replied, “They are both bad, but Russia is worse,” Pientka took pains to relate, “Trump and Christie turned toward each other and Christie commented, ‘Im shocked’” [sic].

“You’re thinking, “So what?” Yeah, well, that’s the point. They had nothing, but the agents were exploiting the U.S. political process to try to turn nothing into a federal case. And would any public official voluntarily attend a security briefing, ostensibly meant to help him perform his public-safety mission, if he thought the FBI might be spying on him and writing reports with an eye toward portraying him as a hostile power’s mole?

“Just as we’ve seen in the Flynn investigation, Pientka’s official FBI report is marked in bold capital letters: “DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL.” Why deliberate over a draft when the purpose is to document a suspect’s statements? After all, he said whatever he said; there shouldn’t be a need to edit it. Drafts and deliberations are necessary only if a report is being massaged to fit the perceived needs of the investigation. Observe that, although the briefing wasAugust 17, the memo is dated August 30. Nearly two weeks later, and it’s still in the form of a deliberative draft, meaning they’re not done yet.

“This is not materially different from the Obama administration’s plan on January 6, 2017. That is when the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, “briefed” Trump in New York City. This briefing came just a day after Comey met with his Obama-administration superiors — the president, Vice President Biden, national-security adviser Susan Rice, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. They discussed withholding information about the Russia investigation from President-elect Trump and his incoming team.

“Consistent with this White House strategy session, Comey did not actually brief Trump about the Russia investigation; he buzzed Trump with an allegation that the Putin regime might be in possession of blackmail material — the pee tape — that it could hold over Trump’s head in order to get him to do the Kremlin’s bidding.

“The point was not to give information. It was to get information: to provoke Trump into making incriminating or false statements, or statements evincing consciousness of guilt. Outside Trump Tower was an FBI car equipped with a laptop so Comey could immediately write an investigative report. The director and his team treated this as an investigative event, not a briefing. Comey memorialized Trump’s statements, as well as his physical and emotional reaction to the suggestion that Moscow might have video of the soon-to-be president cavorting with prostitutes. If a case had ever been made on Trump, Comey could then have been a witness, with his investigative report available to refresh his recollection about Trump’s comments and comportment.

“That is one of the main reasons such reports are done.

“The FBI did the same thing with Flynn: a sandbag interview, against Justice Department and White House protocols, conducted after extensive planning about how to put him at ease, how to make sure he doesn’t think he’s a suspect, how to refrain from advising him of his rights. Then, knock him back on his heels by portraying a legitimate conversation between the incoming national-security adviser and the Russian ambassador as if it were nefarious. Don’t play him the recording or show him the transcript; just grill him and hope he says something incriminating or redolent of guilty knowledge. And then, instead of following the FBI rules for promptly completing interview reports, generate another “deliberative draft” that can be kneaded for a few weeks . . . with the help of a former prosecutor (Lisa Page) who serves as counsel to the second-highest-ranking FBI official (then–deputy director Andrew McCabe).


“There is still plenty of paper trail to uncover. I haven’t even referred here to the Steele dossier, which investigators knew was bogus but relied on to seek — and obtain — court-authorized eavesdropping. I haven’t mentioned the unmasking of Trump officials indirectly targeted in foreign-intelligence collection. We haven’t considered the collaboration of American and foreign intelligence agencies in the scrutiny of Trump, or the collaboration of Obama officials and congressional Democrats, as well as the media, to promote the narrative that Trump was a Russian operative. There is much still to learn and to weigh.
“But this much we know: In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administration’s investigative agencies to monitor his party’s opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trump’s name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it.[4]



[1] Wikipedia the Online Encyclopedia, Peter Strzok – JB
[2] As quoted by the writer to Wikipedia’s article on Strzok.
[3] Wilber, Del Quentin (February 2, 2018) "Inside the FBI Life of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as Told in Their Text Messages"Wall Street JournalISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved February 2, 2018

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