Seven months after throwing Carter Page as fuel on the collusion fire lit by then-FBI director James Comey’s stunning public disclosure that the Bureau was investigating possible Trump campaign “coordination” in Russia’s election meddling, the Gray Lady now says: Never mind. We’re onto Collusion 2.0, in which it is George Papadopoulos....
Well, it turns out the Page angle and thus the collusion narrative itself is beset by an Obama-administration scandal: Slowly but surely, it has emerged that the Justice Department and FBI very likely targeted Page because of the Steele dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed disguised as intelligence reporting. Increasingly, it appears that the Bureau failed to verify Steele’s allegations before the DOJ used some of them to bolster an application for a spying warrant from the FISA court (i.e., the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court)....
January 2, 2018
"As the Dossier Scandal Looms, the New York Times Struggles to Save Its Collusion Tale."
A must-read by Andrew McCarthy (at National Review).
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107 comments:
Carter Page's a pimp. He never could've out-fought Hillary. But I didn't know until this day that it was George Papadopoulos all along.
Mo Elleithee latched onto this latest NYT narrative like a life ring on Fox News Sunday.
It's not just the NYT -the entire MSM are ignoring the giant pink elephant in the room.
Doens't fit the narrative.
Why are of of these lies, falsehoods and distractions necessary? Because the Truth is too terrible to contemplate. I suspect that the Truth is that certain FBI agents and DOJ lawyers were bribed by the Clinton campaign to point shave and sandbag the Hillary Clinton investigation. Then after Hillary lost, they had to cook up this Russia collusion narrative as a distraction to protect themselves. Indict Point Shaver Strzok and watch him rat out his bosses. Leavenworth is not a pleasant place.
Oh,nos! Collusion by people other than Trump people. Quck! Lift the carpet!
Sorry, but when is this crap going to end?
We've been hearing about Trump-Russia for OVER A YEAR! And yet not one solid piece of evidence tying Trump to anything illegal.
Time to wrap it up, get Mueller's report, and then fire Rosenstein.
The New York Times is carrying collusion insurance.
I congratulate the Dems and their NYT for creative BSing. This will require another 18 months of investigations and leaks written by the top CIA mind control guys...but since it is under investigation all truth will be classified, except for the morsels of rumors leaked like a metronome.
I think the person who recently wrote Mueller’s going to slide for another year then dump during the mid-terms is right.
He has too much to lose.
I see the Trump Apologist in Chief is busy. Things have to be verified for FISA courts. He's speculating that the Steele Dossier was used sans any evidence in a desperate effort to excuse his boy Trump.
Look it's becoming increasingly obvious that the entire "Dossier" and l'affaire Russia "scandal" in general is the biggest hoax since Piltdown Man (or "Globull Warming"/climate change/AGW-take your pick.)
"Slowly but surely, it has emerged that the Justice Department and FBI very likely targeted Page because of the Steele dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed disguised as intelligence reporting."
Let me fix that for ya...
Slowly but surely, it has emerged that the Justice Department and FBI very likely targeted Page using the Steele dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed disguised as intelligence reporting.
Mike said...
I see the Trump Apologist in Chief is busy. Things have to be verified for FISA courts. He's speculating that the Steele Dossier was used sans any evidence in a desperate effort to excuse his boy Trump.
Wouldn't you think the people who leaked the Page and now Papadopoulos baloney would be leaking that instead if it existed?
The NYT: following the evidence wherever leads (as long as leads away from the Dems and towards Team Trump and regardless of whether it is evidence).
These tedious NYT and WaPoo hack journalists have done more to destroy the credibility of the press with half the country than Trump could ever have done on his own. And Mueller is stuck with the work product of the Obama DOJ and the Comey FBI.
As George A Custer said, "Keep comin', boys. We got 'em on the run. There's nothin' over that there ridge!"
I read this last night and went back to reread it this morning. McCarthy has several good points:
"If the Trump campaign had to learn, through Papadopoulos, that Russia supposedly had thousands of emails damaging to Clinton, that would necessarily mean the Trump campaign had nothing to do with Russia’s acquisition of the emails. This, no doubt, is why Mueller permitted Papadopoulos to plead guilty to a mere process crime — lying in an FBI interview. If there were evidence of an actual collusion conspiracy, Papadopoulos would have been pressured to admit guilt to it. He wasn’t."
...
"Anonymous intelligence and law-enforcement officials have been leaking collusion information to the Times and other media outlets since before Trump won the November 2016 election ... If Papadopoulos had really been the impetus for the investigation way back in July 2016, what are the chances that we would never have heard his name mentioned until after his guilty plea was announced 15 months later?"
...
"There’s another interesting word that does not appear in the Times’ extensive Papadopoulos report: surveillance. Despite being “so alarmed” by young Papadopoulos’s barroom braggadocio with the Australian diplomat, and his claimed Russia connections, there is no indication that the Obama Justice Department and FBI ever sought a FISA-court warrant to spy on him."
The most likely explanation for this new story is to deflect attention from the use of the Dem-funded dossier to obtain a FISA warrant. I don't think it's going to work.
"virgil xenophon said...
Look it's becoming increasingly obvious that the entire "Dossier" and l'affaire Russia "scandal" in general is the biggest hoax since Piltdown Man (or "Globull Warming"/climate change/AGW-take your pick.)"
Not a hoax at all. A set up. By the collective left. Using government agencies.
This is all going to circle back and blow up in the Democrat's face. Then the investigation of the real collusion will start-Hillary's collusion with Obama to run her homebrew server and her foundation scams and the FBI and DoJ criminal conduct.
My bet is that both the Congressional investigators and the DOJ-IG are slowly gathering the information that will confirm the "misbehavior" of the FBI/DOJ/DNC/Clinton cabal. There must be a group of people who are beginning to run a bit scared, thus increasing amounts of unsourced BS to see if any of it might stick. Every day it appears that there is more "there" there of Dem collusion. If everything goes really well people like Huma, DWS, Tony Podesta, Strozk, will be doing perp walks just before the mid term elections. If so, it will be delicious.
As they say "Karma is a motherfucker!"
The collusion was between the Obama/Clinton/DNC, the Press, a private corporation, a former British intelligence asset, and the post-coup government in Kiev, the "axis", in a conspiracy to influence the election. Since they failed to disenfranchise Americans, they have been on an adventure to deem the president unworthy, nonviable and abort him, and deny Americans their civil rights. And, in following the tried and true, to paint us with broad, sweeping strokes as either sheep or closet leftists (e.g. diversitist, sexist, congruent).
Mike said...
Things have to be verified for FISA courts.
It's a good thing that the FISA court has its own intelligence service, so that it can independently check if something was actually verified.
*facepalm*
Blogger Mike said..."I see the Trump Apologist in Chief is busy. Things have to be verified for FISA courts. He's speculating that the Steele Dossier was used sans any evidence in a desperate effort to excuse his boy Trump."
"sans any evidence" - Congress has been requesting pertinent documents for months and the FBI will not produce them. You are free to draw your own conclusions.
"Things have to be verified for FISA courts." - Have to and were are not the same thing. You need to read up on the reports of McCabe's testimony to Congress.
Obama/Clinton's Water Closet is what Watergate was purported to have been and so much more. It's ironic, and somehow appropriate, that The Washington Post was a principal in this conspiracy.
Wisconsin with wildings, witch hunts, and Occupations, must have been the proving ground.
McCarthy doesn't get into the likely sources for this latest episode in the NYT's Operation Get Trump, but it's pretty cleat there are some dedicated anti-Trumpers in the CIA or elsewhere in the 'intelligence community' (what a misnomer!) who have no intention of giving up. And the leakers have no trouble finding credulous media outfits happy to broadcast whatever anti-Trump stuff they can come up with.
Even more puzzling is why the Trumpers do not order the major domos at DOJ, FBI, CIA, etc, to cooperate with the House and Senate investigations into the Obama Admin's use of the Steele dossier in 2016 as an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign. The upshot of the NYT story is that the FISA warrant was supposedly predicated on what the Australians said Papadopulous said that he had heard from someone else (Mifsud, the guy who tricked P by introducing him to a fake Putin neice?) about Clinton emails that the Russians had supposedly acquired. It shouldn't be hard to get to the bottom about what was the predicate for the FISA warrant in 2016 -- the Steele dossier and its alelgations against Carter Page, or something to do with Papadopoulos and the Australians. I'm sure the Trumpers have a good reason for letting this story fester -- it certainly plays into the fake news narrative -- but it's hard to see what that reason is.
I said during the campaign, “jocosely,” that I didn’t care if Trump took a wrecking ball to the White House and built condos on Lafayette Square. I didn’t really mean it, and I hadn’t really determined to vote for him, but you know what? If he does nothing else, rooting out this little cabal of Democrat Party operatives at the FBI will be a great accomplishment.
...He's speculating that the Steele Dossier was used sans any evidence in a desperate effort to excuse his boy Trump.
No, he's not. Sen. Lindsey Graham claims to have seen records demonstrating how the Steel dossier was used as the basis for the FISA court warrant. He says that the FBI and the DOJ mislead the judge by omitting their knowledge of the origins of dossier and that the FBI had not verified any of critical claims (other than Page had traveled to Russia). He claims it was the duty of the FBI and DOJ, as officers of the court, to explain to the court the weaknesses of their claim to need a warrant (as the target of the warrant could not assert his rights on his own).
You might assert that Graham is an interested party and that his testimony does not prove that the FISA court was misled and you would be correct. Graham could be overstating the import of what he saw or could be simply making things up. However, his testimony is evidence that the court may have been misled.
How much weight to put on Graham's testimony is another question, but it's not a matter of pure speculation.
Because the Truth is too terrible to contemplate.
Speaking of which I watched the end of "Truth" this weekend trying to understand how the left deludes itself that the Mapes-Rather forged hit piece wasn't a forged hit piece. They rested on the claim that the papers were consistent with Bush's superior. Specifically a forger would have to know he kept files and that he thought of his superiors as motivated primarily by politics rather than as excellent military men.
Revealingly there was no analysis that these facts were true other than that they were implied by the forgery itself. The result would be similar to throwing twenty dice and claiming the result matched the number in Mapes' head. We were supposed to conclude that someone this "meticulous" could not possibly have simply used Microsoft word to produce the forgery.
Remember this movie cost ten million dollars (not including marketing and distribution which generally doubles or triples the result) and the focus from major industry members including Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett, Dennis Quaid, and Elizabeth Moss. So this explanation is considered sufficient to justify a pretty large devotion of resource. These people are crazy.
I see the Trump Apologist in Chief is busy. Things have to be verified for FISA courts. He’s speculating that the Steele Dossier was used sans any evidence in a desperate effort to excuse his boy Trump.
Well, Comey said that the only part of it that they could verify was that a trip to Russia took place. A perfectly normal trip to Russia, not a honeymoon in the Soviet Union, or anything. None of the actual “illegal” or “colusiony” stuff could be verified.
But stay tooned Mike, maybe the big twist and all of the evidence you are sure is there will come out in one big avalanche!
Carter Page's a pimp. He never could've out-fought Hillary. But I didn’t know until this day that it was George Papadopoulos all along.
It’s like a poorly written mystery novel where the denouement flatly contradicts the many clues that the writer planted.
They never verified any of the information in the dossier because they already knew it was unverifiable. If you ever learn the truth, it will turn out to be this- the small circle in the DoJ and the FBI knew about the Dossier during its preparation at FusionGPS. They knew who was writing it- Glenn Simpson and Nellie Ohr- they knew who was being used as the front to bring in the front door of the DoJ- Steele- and they already knew how they planned to use it to monitor the Trump Campaign using Carter Page as the first in a series of linked FISA warrants.
The thing that went really wrong with this conspiracy, however, was that meeting between Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya. That the lawyer met with Simpson both shortly before and after that meeting with Trump Jr. strongly supports the theory that the meeting with Trump Jr. was set up by FusionGPS as an attempt to entice members of Trump's campaign to offer to buy the promised dirt on Clinton; but for reasons we will never know Trump Jr. didn't take the bait. Did Trump Jr. realize he was being set up, or was he simply smart enough to know going in that it was dangerous to offer anything for the information, and since it wasn't immediately offered up, he walked out. If the meeting was a set up, then the plan was obviously to use any quid pro quo to begin FISA surveillance of Trump Jr. and Kushner. Even with Trump Jr. walking out, I do wonder if that meeting wasn't included in the FISA application that was denied by the FISA court- that is the application I really want to see- the one that was turned down.
Original Mike said...
The most likely explanation for this new story is to deflect attention from the use of the Dem-funded dossier to obtain a FISA warrant. I don't think it's going to work.
I think your conclusion is wrong, but it depends on the goal. The left can't make the original accusations stick. But the goal now is to muddy the waters enough that average people give up trying to work out exactly what happened while retaining the general sense someone did something wrong. I think that likely will work.
How ignorant and/or mendacious would someone have to be to actually consider Andrew McCarthy "Trump apologist in chief?"
Could a reasonably-informed person who isn't being paid to espouse an opinion actually make that claim with a straight face?
Weird that some of our life long pals haven't seen fit to comment much on this story as it unfolds, nor on the original claims (claims they treated with respect) as they've unraveled.
Mike said..."Things have to be verified for FISA courts."
Served up on a platter for you, Mike.
The leftist thugs in WI haven't had to pay any price for stomping on their enemies' faces. I am confident that there is fire beneath all the smoke that surrounds the Clintons and their cabal. I just don't expect to see any of them pay the appropriate price either.
Isn't "never mind" the branding statement of the Democratic, er Liberal, er Progressive Party?
You're all racists! We're racist too? Never mind.
You're all sexists! We're sexist too? Never mind.
You're the party of the rich! We're the party of the rich too? Never mind.
I am waiting for the special prosecutor to look into the illegal use of campaign funds to collate the dossier. Funds paid to a foreign spy, and mislabeled in campaign reporting as “legal expenses.” Not holding my breath, but were there a set of proven facts like that implicating Trump, charges would have been filed already.
Blogger Khesanh 0802 said...
“My bet is that both the Congressional investigators and the DOJ-IG are slowly gathering the information that will confirm the "misbehavior" of the FBI/DOJ/DNC/Clinton cabal. There must be a group of people who are beginning to run a bit scared, thus increasing amounts of unsourced BS to see if any of it might stick. Every day it appears that there is more "there" there of Dem collusion. If everything goes really well people like Huma, DWS, Tony Podesta, Strozk, will be doing perp walks just before the mid term elections. If so, it will be delicious.”
I thimk that the blowup is accelerating. Deadline tomorrow for the FISA app info by the House. They have threatened to take it to the entire House to vote out Contempt. Speaker Ryan has indicated that he is onboard. Meanwhile, the IG has indicated that he will announce results this month. There also seem to be strategic leaks from his office that implicate more and more of the DoJ/FBI cabal involved.
One interesting thing in the leaks and revelations is the complete absence of mention of FBI Asst. Director in charge of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap, who was the immediate supervisor of FBI Counterintelligence Deputy Peter Strzok, before he was demoted. He talked Dir Comey out of performing his statutory duty of informing the Congressional Gang of Eight about the FISA warrants for the Trump team. He had to have approved the fraudulent FISA warrants. And had to have approved of the FBI offering money for the Steele Dossier. Etc. yet while most everyone else in the cabal is now known, his name has been conspicuously missing. My prediction last night is that he has either flipped for the IG, or is headed for prison (or both). My guess is the former. The only players we know about so far as central to the schemes are McCabe (who has announced his retirement), Baker (who controlled the staffing, and is why the same people were involved in investigating Crooked Hillary’s email server issues, as well as working for Mueller), and, of course Strzok.
I think that the scandal is getting ready to blow up big time on the Cabal and Dems, and everyone knows it - thus the desperate Hail Mary of this article.
Since Congress has no police and no jail, the only way that they can press charges against the Department of Justice is through the Department of Justice. DoJ and the FBI know that Congress is toothless and that they only need to wait out the election. Same as Obama is going abroad telling other countries (Logan Act, anybody?) that they can ignore Trump, just wait him out. Once the Democrats control Congress, this investigation of the FBI will be shut down so fast your head will spin.
Kevin: Are you aware of how much your last post concedes to the Left?
It's all projection. If they can get us to say "It's true, we are" in the process of showing that projection, mission accomplished. Every "too" you put before "Never mind" is a huge win for them, of course they're happy to drop the subject at that point.
"Once the Democrats control Congress, this investigation of the FBI will be shut down so fast your head will spin."
Perhaps this is a reason to hand this over to a special counsel.
McCarthy rests his case on the lack of any other known evidence that could have been used for FISA warrants. That means his case can be shown false if any such evidence is produced. That's dangerous.
I don't put as much emphasis on the FISA warrants themselves. Just from what's already known about the dossier (how it was created, how it was spread, etc) and how the dossier's dodgy info was "laundered" both through official government channels and through the Media I think there's an airtight case of attempted election tampering/influence...which is precisely what the Media is now accusing Trump of (having given up on claims that Trump coordinated with Russia).
The Dem operatives bought the dodgy dossier. They tried to get Media outlets to cover it, but the Media mostly said no--these were just bald speculation without any official imprimatur of validity. So the firm the Dems hired gets some pols and others (including, almost certainly Senator John McCain) to get the dodgy dossier into the hands of government officials. The Dem operatives then tell the Media that the FBI has that info...and the Media can then push the story that the FBI is investigating all sorts of salacious stories from the dodgy dossier. Bad, unverifiable political smear info in, and clean, politically damaging Media stories ("clean" in the sense that they're reporting an actual fact--that the FBI has received some allegations) out. That shameful sequence of events has been pretty clear for a while now, and whether the government used the existence of the dodgy dossier as a reason for FISA warrants or not it shows that paid Dem operatives successfully weaponized the US Government against the Trump campaign...in a clear effort to affect the election itself.
The NEW info, to me, is how vocally partisan many SENIOR members of the various government agencies involved in these investigations (inspired in part by the dodgy dossier itself) actually were. Pro-Dem partisans, that is. That fact makes it all the more likely that they'd willingly participate in what had to have been pretty obvious shenanigans--if they felt they needed "an insurance policy" to prevent the Trump people from winning or using their official power if Trump did win then latching onto this junk and using Dem-operative created smear jobs as an excuse to run investigations becomes more plausible.
I keep thinking back to all the smart people who assured me that I shouldnt' be worried about the FBI using it's power in a partisan way--that they were all sober down-the-middle professionals who would never let their own ideological or partisan beliefs influence their decisions. How'd that pan out with the portrayal of Comey as a clean cut straight shooter? How's it looking for McCabe, et al.???
This shit stinks. Anyone who says it doesn't, at this point, really ought to be treated with suspicion.
Mike said...
I see the Trump Apologist in Chief is busy. Things have to be verified for FISA courts. He's speculating that the Steele Dossier was used sans any evidence in a desperate effort to excuse his boy Trump.
HAHAHAHA
You're so funny
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fisa+is+a+rubber+stamp&t=opera&ia=web
Here's NPR from 2013 talking about how the FISA Court pretty much rubber-stamps all gov't requests: https://www.npr.org/2013/06/13/191226106/fisa-court-appears-to-be-rubberstamp-for-government-requests
hand this over to a special counsel
To what advantage?
Obama relieved an Inspector General that conflicted with his interests. There is no reason to believe that an unwelcome "special counsel" would not suffer a similar fate under a Democrat administration.
"Obama relieved an Inspector General that conflicted with his interests. There is no reason to believe that an unwelcome "special counsel" would not suffer a similar fate under a Democrat administration."
Trump is president for three more years.
Once the Democrats control Congress, this investigation of the FBI will be shut down so fast
Just like the progression of the so-called "reckoning" once it achieved their political goal to deny a Republican seat.
In general, I am not in favor of special counsels, but Tim brought up the certainty that if Democrats control Congress, Congressional investigation will end. Perhaps a special counsel would be an 'insurance policy'.
Tim at Large:
The House has both a police department and a jail. In the past, people have been jailed for contempt.
Trump is president for three more years
Yes, so far.
Once the Democrats control Congress, this investigation of the FBI will be shut down
And then.
The evidence is building that the Steele Dossier was used to procure the FISA warrant, and that the FBI at least, and very likely the DoJ, knew its providence at that time, that it was created by Fusion GPS, as bogus opposition research, at the behest of, and funded by the Crooked Hillary campaign and the DNC. The key here is that the same people knew of it’s falsity, used it for the FISA warrant, and then ended up working to destroy Trump after his election. Were key in fabricating the Russian Collusion fable, then got to help investigate it. Which means that the Mueller independent investigation was fraudulent from the first. Mueller may not have known, but all those DoJ attys and FBI agents he was assigned knew. As did their bosses, up through McCabe and Yates (ok, she was gone by then). When the top of the DoJ and FBI were involved, these agencies cannot be trusted to investigate and prosecute themselves, which is why I expect to see a loud demand by Congress for another independent prosecutor, to investigate all these miscreants and felons, once the OIG report is released later this month. And would be more than ample justification for terminating the Mueller investigation as being completely compromised. We shall see.
The big mystery to me is why Sessions and Wray are not taking action to get their arms around the obvious collusion in DOJ and FBI to protect malefactors. Maybe they are doing more than is seen. Is something being held over their heads?
This thing is the worst scandal in US political history and yet most Americans don't know it and the media will not tell them. The press knows much more than they will publish. Without public knowledge, there can be no outrage and without outrage, Congress will be slow to act as well as anyone else in authority who could do something.
President Trump says Mueller will do the fair thing. Does he really believe that and if so why?
First, Andrew McCarthy is a National Treasure.
Second, the Dossier is a blend of fact and fiction, couched in spy/spook/jargon, based on anonymous sources in Russia.
Third, the Dems either commissioned the Dossier or helped create it.
Fourth, the Dems gave the Dossier to the FBI, who, it turn, used it as a basis to get a FISA warrant.
Fifth, the FISA warrant enabled Obama's minions to spy and/or unmask phone calls of many Trump campaign allies.
Sixth, Obama's minions leaked the "fruits" of the spying to the breathless NYTimes and WaPost to damage the reputation of Trump and his campaign allies.
Seventh, Leaker James Comey strategically leaked to get a Special Counsel appointed to investigate all these "crimes."
Eighth, Mueller is trying to close the circle by nailing some Trump allies for a few petty crimes, and justify steps 1-7.
That's how the Left operates when it controls the levers of government.
The House has both a police department and a jail. In the past, people have been jailed for contempt.
In the *distant* past. If it is known that you won’t use a weapon, you may as well not have it.
Papadopoulos was told by a Maltese academic who purported to have Kremlin ties that Russia had “thousands of emails” that could damage Hillary Clinton. We also know that in July, hacked Democratic-party emails began being published.
What's not discussed here is that the "thousands of emails" damaging to Clinton that the Russians are supposed to have aren't the emails from the DNC, they're email from her personal email server. The emails from the DNC as well as John Podesta's account have been released & they're not that damaging to HRC. My guess is that the Russians found out about HRC's personal server, hacked it, & those so far unreleased emails are what the Russians are holding. Indeed, why should the Russians tip their hand now? HRC lost, Trump didn't take the bait. Save the emails as an ace in the hole in case the Hildabeest ever rises in power again. For the Russians to admit now that they've got HRC's server emails would simply compromise intelligence sources to no gain.
One interesting thing in the leaks and revelations is the complete absence of mention of FBI Asst. Director in charge of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap,
I noticed that, too. I have read speculation/rumors that he is cooperating and that is why his name has been absent from all the stories.
The Democrats just might be able to take the House if the economy stumbles but not the Senate, Grassley is on top of this as well as Nunes. I am sure there will be a multimillion dollar campaign to defeat Nunes, just like they went after the the guy who was the Clinton "prosecutor" in that impeachment case. It is California, after all.
He represents the Central Valley but I'll be they will still spend millions to defeat him. He's been attacked incessantly since the story began.
Before the Sullivan piece came out I submitted this to the comments section of the referenced NYT article. So far as I know, it still hasn't been published:
'"...Once the information Mr. Papadopoulos had disclosed to the Australian diplomat reached the F.B.I., the bureau opened an investigation that became one of its most closely guarded secrets. Senior agents did not discuss it at the daily morning briefing, a classified setting where officials normally speak freely about highly sensitive officials normally speak freely about highly sensitive operations."
So why has this "most closely guarded secret" about a "highly sensitive [FBI] operation" just now been leaked to the NYT?
This timely leak is consistent with push back on the meme that the FBI importantly relied on the Steele / Fusion GPS dossier (funded jointly by the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee) to open a criminal investigation on members of the Trump campaign.
Who leaked this (probably still highly classified) information? Obviously, someone who wanted to defuse the current focus on Democrats colluding with the Russians.
The bottom line: Just another vaguely interesting nothingburger.'
I still believe that the Clinton Campaign's funding of the Fusion GPS / Steele dossier through the Perkins Coie law firm would not have been initiated without Fusion GPS serving up Paul Manefort's name as the juicy enticement.
Described in great detail by Lee Smith:
'...In any case, the history of the “Steele dossier” doesn’t begin with Christopher Steele or Nellie Ohr in the summer of 2016; it begins with a story that Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby co-wrote for The Wall Street Journal dated April 17, 2007. “How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington” details how prominent Republicans, including the 1996 Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole, opened doors in the American capital for Kremlin-affiliated oligarchs and other friends of Vladimir Putin. Among those friends of Putin was Viktor Yanukovich, who would become president of Ukraine in 2010. According to the article, one of Yanukovich’s wealthy patrons paid a political fixer named Paul Manafort to introduce Yanukovich to powerful Washington, D.C., figures, including former Vice President Dick Cheney. Manafort figures prominently throughout the piece.'
'...So when the Trump campaign named Paul Manafort as its campaign convention manager on March 28, 2016, you can bet that Simpson and Jacoby’s eyes lit up. And as it happened, at the exact same time that Trump hired Manafort, Fusion GPS was in negotiations with Perkins Coie, the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, to see if there was interest in the firm continuing the opposition research on the Trump campaign they had started for the Washington Free Beacon.'
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/251897/obama-steele-dossier-russiagate
This is like watching Watergate unfold. Except now the villain of the piece isn't Trump, but colluding high-level members of the Obama Administration.
Hmmm...
I think Trump knows what is in the FISA warrant. The fact that he is sitting on it means that it is (1) really bad for him or (2) really good for him. It could be (1), but if so, I think it would have leaked by now, the way things have gone so far. So it may be really good for him, in which case he will drop it when it causes maximum confusion and dismay among his opponents, probably during the heat of the 2018 election campaign--I'd say sometime in October.
One of the things I have liked about Trump's counter-moves against the Dems is the slow, steady pace of revelations about Team Mueller and the FBI. This is how Nixon got killed, and if Newt Gingrich were as smart as he thought he was, it would have been how Bill Clinton got killed, too. You have to keep the story going, so you leak one thing a week and you save the juiciest bits for the end.
Trump the President: Season Two: Revenge of the Trumpinator!
"Second, the Dossier is a blend of fact and fiction, couched in spy/spook/jargon, based on anonymous sources in Russia."
-- Not totally anonymous. For example, we know Clinton ultimately paid Steele to pay a KGB operative for information on Trump. Which sounds awfully collusion-y to me.
So, in an alternative world, where Nixon appointed Mark Felt Director of FBI:
Liddy, Haldemann et al decide there's no need to break and enter McGovern headquarters. Instead, they commission some Brit ex-spy to cook up a report says McGovern is a Soviet asset. Use that report to justify tapping all McGovern Campaign communications, surveillance of all McGovern Campaign operations. Top level FBI and DOJ folks convene a meeting to develop an insurance policy against McGovern winning election, involving leaking of spurious report (which "FBI is taking seriously"), perjury traps for McGovern campaign officials, ultimately impeachment.
That's the way you do it.
"Blogger Amadeus 48 said...
Hmmm...
I think Trump knows what is in the FISA warrant. The fact that he is sitting on it means that it is (1) really bad for him or (2) really good for him"
Or 3) If does release it, he could open himself to "obstruction of justice" charges whether such charges have merit or not. So why raise a ****-storm when the FISA warrant is going to be released in good time?
one of Yanukovich’s wealthy patrons paid a political fixer named Paul Manafort to introduce Yanukovich to powerful Washington, D.C., figures
Hiring Manafort was a disastrous mistake by the Trump kids who were utterly clueless about running a campaign, but of course were sure they knew,
Lewandowski's book, while self serving I'm sure, explains how he wormed his way in even though his campaign experience was decades old. I would be very leery of letting Ivanka or the others near the policy shop. Jared did good on the social media aspect,.
The Watergate thing has been the topic of endless speculation. I doubt Nixon knew anything about it.
Some of speculation is that Dean was behind it because his new wife, Maureen, had a sketchy reputation in DC and he may have been looking to see if the DNC had dirt on her. He is the guy who turned on Nixon and made himself look virtuous at the expense of his boss. He was a weasel.
I think Trump knows what is in the FISA warrant.
He might be using it to put pressure on Priestap to turn "states evidence" on his FBI pals.
I agree that this story will be helpful with the November election.
I recall from last year a number of Althouse commenters claiming that they had given up their National Review subscriptions and would no longer read it or support it. That it had become a "Never Trump" platform. With "Against Trump" contributors like Andy McCarthy.
On behalf of NRO, I'd like to say to TrumpWorld, "Welcome back to NRO! Please watch the name-calling, and please pick up your empty Diet Pepsis. Thank you."
Oh, come on guys. You all are just running scared because "Mueller is closing in!..."
the Russians found out about HRC's personal server, hacked it
The most likely scenario is that the server was hacked by the disenfranchised Democrat insider, then aborted. There were more than a few disgruntled Democrats who were opposed to Obama-era tactics to force the vote.
LLR Chuck: "On behalf of NRO,..."
You do not speak for NRO. Nor would they have you.
Such a strange but apparently overpowering and desperate need our LLR exhibits where he is seen as being "a part" of some group that he clearly believes confers some sort of standing to himself.
That it had become a "Never Trump" platform. With "Against Trump" contributors like Andy McCarthy.
Chuck, I don't recall a lot from McCathy about Trump back when they published that insane issue of nothing but Trump bashing.
I'm sure you loved it.
I had been getting impatient with them, since Lowry fired Derbyshire and ended their relationship with Mark Steyn.
Lowry impressed me as a pussy.
The Hate Trump issue was one too many and I cancelled. I do like McCarthy and will read online his columns and those of VD Hanson.
The rest are little more than toilet paper.
Of course, the thread is about the collapsing dem/lefty/LLR narrative on the Trump collusion front.
Naturally, our "accidental leftist" Chuck is not going to touch that topic with a 10 foot pole! Too damaging to his MSM/Dem allies.
PackerBronco, I saw what you did there. Nice. JPG
I guarantee that on the day the FISA warrants, and thus the dems, are fully exposed, LLR Chuck will be all over this blog demanding an investigation into whether or not Trump had a good day or not on the golf course.
Guaranteed.
I tend not to read Chuck's stuff. Is he a Trump/Russian collusionist?
Original Mike: "I tend not to read Chuck's stuff. Is he a Trump/Russian collusionist?"
LLR and "accidental leftist" Chuck is simply, always, and I do mean always, 100% in alignment with the dem talking points of the day.
He is always in alignment with the dems talking points because he is a better republican and conservative than anyone here.
You don't have to ask him, he's already told us a hundred times.
[NR] ended their relationship with Mark Steyn.
Was this over a specific poistion / writing like Derb's or was it from getting them sued?
@Chuck,
I recall from last year a number of Althouse commenters claiming that they had given up their National Review subscriptions and would no longer read it or support it. That it had become a "Never Trump" platform. With "Against Trump" contributors like Andy McCarthy.
Objection -- Overbroad.
In Fall of Jan 2015, I thought NR was politically lost beyond belief, because they editorialized not in favor of any GOP candidate in the primary (such as Cruz), but against Trump.
This was stupid. There were so many GOP candidates, that "against Trump" was splintered among these 15 folks, thus diluting any real opposition to Trump.
2 months later, NR came out in favor of Cruz, but it was too late. Trump consolidated his support.
So, on politics, Yes, NR was hopelessly lost. Rich Lowery has improved somewhat, but I don't recall how hot and heavy McCarthy was on this mistake.
But, on law, McCarthy has always been excellent.
"Accidental Leftist" Chuck: "I recall from last year a number of Althouse commenters claiming that they had given up their National Review subscriptions and would no longer read it or support it."
Your recollection is often faulty.
Links.
Blogger Original Mike said...
I tend not to read Chuck's stuff. Is he a Trump/Russian collusionist?
Oh, I can answer that!
"No."
Now isn't that a better answer than Drago's fuckheaded, fabulist, made-up answer that he tried to insert for me? Why would anybody want to do that? Answer a question intended for someone else?
I shared the view of Rep. Trey Gowdy when some weeks ago he urged everyone to stop speculating about the investigation and just wait for its conclusion.
Actually outfits like intertel headed by Kennedy aide and fmr nsc operative, Walter Sheridan did this sort of work, for the dnc.one needs to have read James hougans spooks to get a full perspective.on the .matter.
"No"
AND, no gratuitous Trump insult. Congratulations, Chuck.
Rick said...
[NR] ended their relationship with Mark Steyn.
Was this over a specific poistion / writing like Derb's or was it from getting them sued?
I dunno but the suit was probably part of it. I think Steyn went his own way in court but that was no reason to stop his columns.
Remember, these magazine all lose money and rely on donors. That was probably the source of the Trump hatred,
Blogger is getting worse again with the conflicting edits,.
I'm so old, I remember when "liberals" thought collusion with the Kremlin was a great thing, and actively encouraged it.
when "liberals" thought collusion with the Kremlin was a great thing
Mao, too. The leftist utopia.
While I don't see a criminal prosecution of the Clinton's, Obama and the senior Obama officials in this web of graft and other crimes the stink is going to be indelible on the Democrats for years and years. As long as various senior people at the FBI, the DoJ and the intelligence agencies do prison time the rest will get religion real fast afterwards. Trump will be employing the fake media and the Democrats are the party of crooks for years to come and be factually correct.
The irony of course is steyn was just concurring with rand sindberg re the fraud of Michael Mann's agw as revealed by the hack in the UK, info Stephen mcintire already knew about for a year.
So while the national security division was on this snipe hunt, what was missed Orlando Columbus the anchorage shooter.
Yes because the Benghazi probe revealed all what you mean they got away Scot free. Maybe as sundance has pointed out gowdy was on the committee that signed off on the Libyan operation that involved bel hadj the emir of tripoli and subcontracted the likes of bin qumu and al baraj (sic) fmr gitmo detainees to train the rebels.
Andrew McCarthy is doing A+ work on this Trump Investigation. Very clear explanations of why things are getting leaked, the reasoning behind the charges, and what the plea deals really mean. If the Pulitzer Prizes were not so politicized, he would get one. He has done excellent analysis on this dossier that is not pro or anti Trump, and has been very even handed.
I agree with Michael K. the best things in NR right now are Andrew McCarthy and VDH, the rest is so so usually, which is unfortunate.
I an=m impressed by Sundance's criticism of Gowdy,
He talks a good game but nohing much happens.
My bet is that both the Congressional investigators and the DOJ-IG are slowly gathering the information that will confirm the "misbehavior" of the FBI/DOJ/DNC/Clinton cabal.
Mine too. Bet on more hard drives suddenly crashing or going missing, backups mysteriously disappearing, email servers getting bleachbit-ed, more weather data getting fudged or just plain made up, and bureaucrats pleading the 5th.
What agencies haven't the Democrats weaponized into a party-serving cabal?
"Accidental Leftist" Chuck: "Why would anybody want to do that? Answer a question intended for someone else?"
It was not a question intended for you.
It was a question about you.
I realize that's confusing for you, so consumed with whatever lefty talking points are in play for the day.
Carry on big fella.
If you want to go back in time you will see that our LLR was quite pleased with all these fake attacks on Trump by the left/dems.
Our "Bowe Bergdahl" Republican thought that it would consume all of Trump's time leaving all the governance to Ryan and McConnell.
Just lob that idea of LLR Chuck's onto the pile of all his other prognostications that have didn't turn out quite the way he and his operational lefty allies had hoped.
Which makes for a great day for the rest of us actually.
And he suggests why at least one if these investigations went pearshaped, outside of guccifer and judicial watch what actually was gained from this investigation, although admittedly mike Rogers seeded the staff with the malcontent.
Thank goodness for Andrew McCarthy. He started the year completely willing to believe in Trump-Russia collusion, but wanted evidence. As the year has progressed, he has become more and more skeptical. I trust his judgement. I doubt he would have been broken up about a Trump impeachment, which is why his POV is so valuable.
Why do we focus on things of little substance like the poor dezinforma exercise that volodya is chortling.
Birches: "I doubt he would have been broken up about a Trump impeachment, which is why his POV is so valuable."
Most importantly, he was also a former federal prosecutor who knows the ins and outs of how the DOJ ought to be operating and what shenanigans are apparently afoot with the partisan dem/LLR hacks at the DOJ and FBI.
The likely scenario is that a Democrat insider "hacked" Clinton's Water Closet. Perhaps a Pakistani resident of dubious security clearance, or DNC resistance affiliated with Obama or Sanders factions. The so-called "hack" failed against Republican servers only because Water Closet was not, in fact, "hacked", but only touched by the Democrat operative, now aborted (a la Social Security "hacker").
That said, Deep Plunger of Water Closet fame only managed to confirm what everyone already knew about the DNC. They are filled with rabid diversitists (e.g. racists, sexists), politically congruent (PC), redistributive changers (e.g. monopolists), social justice adventurers (e.g. elective regime changes, wars, abortion fields), advocates for environmental, labor, and regulatory arbitrage, and selective/recycled-child advocates.
Has NRO's Kevin Williamson retracted his desire for deplorables to just die and go away?
You can always tell who the best republicans and conservatives are. They are the ones advocating for the election of democrats.
Does it bother anyone that a major DOJ investigation could be triggered by a low level, 28 year old bullshitting at a bar to puff up his importance? McCarthy only points out the obvious that nailing this bullshitter with a process crime of lying his ass off is an admission there is nothing there otherwise they would have given him immunity. This is all backfilling to come up with an alibi on how the "dossier" was not used to file the FISA request.
I lost another comment to "conflcting edits". @Althouse, I'm really sick of this. If you can't get blogger to fix this, your blog will become much less interesting to me.
I lost another comment to "conflcting edits"
Your browser should cache the submitted data. Try reloading (ctrl-r) at the "conflicting edits" page to resubmit your comment intact. It's a kludge, but it will save you the effort of copying or retyping.
McCarthy presents himself as a smart guy, but then he says dumb-ass, idiotic things like "opposition-research," which totally undercuts his arguments.
The dossier is NOT opposition research. It is disinformation. They are two different things. The first is a legitimate investigation to discover true information. The second is a fraudulent operation to spread lies.
On Chuck: I've known many lifelong Republicans from the country club wing of the party who had a great deal of disdain for the right-leaning, populist wing. Just as the populist wing is happy to primary country club Republicans, denouncing them as RINOs. I think this plays into a major part of the Trump story: How is it that as members of the Republican party moved to the right and toward populism, the country club wing held sway in Washington?
The novelty of Reagan is he joined the country club Republicans with tax cuts and the populist wing with a distrust of regulation and by favoring socially conservative positions.
The novely of Trump is he squeaked out a win without the country club Republicans in his camp. This exposes the disjunct between the populists who form the membership and the country club Republicans running the show.
It is plausible to see Trump not only as a threat to Democrats, because he ran Republican, but as a still bigger threat to the establishment Republicans because he promised to disrupt the ways the two parties worked together in Washington. Indeed, this is why many people like me supported him and/or Cruz rather than those the establishment favored.
And this ties in to what we are seeing now: the establishment of both parties have watched the power of the executive branch and the bureaucracy grow and have been fine with it because the presidency was supposed to be traded between the establishments of the two parties (ie, not just not Trump, but also not Bernie). They're pretty freaked out that someone like Trump has gotten a hold of an executive branch they know is too powerful but that they trusted in the hands of Bushes and Clintons. Hence the need for an "insurance policy" against the executive truly being controlled by an outsider. This isn't about Democrats freezing out Republicans; this is about statists defending their turf and their powers against someone who hasn't become wedded to the ways of the powers that be.
GK1 said: Does it bother anyone that a major DOJ investigation could be triggered by a low level, 28 year old bullshitting at a bar to puff up his importance?
But I supposed if a 28 year old were BSing about his connection to ISIS there would be follow-up. That said, this looks like the investigation was started and ever since then a plausible justification has been sought ex post facto. It's worth noting, though, that this "insurance policy" wasn't needed against Republicans in general, but against Trump. Which is to say that had Jeb or Rubio - men already brought into the fold by virtue of family connections or the Senate - there wouldn't have been this worry about what the new President thought of what was considered business as usual. It's the outsider threat of Trump that prompted this nonsense. And Trump is wise to let it play out as the powers that be do themselves far more damage trying to justify themselves than he could with a full frontal attack.
@n.n. I tried that. I didn’t work.
“The likely scenario is that a Democrat insider "hacked" Clinton's Water Closet..”
This is a bit tedious, but the confusion is intentional on the part of the Dems and their MSM allies. Think of it this way:
Server#1 was illegally operated by Crooked Hillary mostly at her home in NY while she was Secretary of State from roughly 1/2009 through 1/2013. It was illegal, because she used it for work, and contained classified information. It ultimately contained maybe 60,000 emails of hers. It also had accounts for several other closest minions, including Huma Abedin Weiner (Mrs. “Carlos Danger”). Of those 60,000 emails, roughly half were provided the govt in response to a FOIA request. She claimed that the other half were personal, mostly involving her daughter’s wedding and yoga lessons. These were illegally deleted by her attorneys, using search criteria, instead of manually inspecting each email, who then illegally ordered the hard drives to be wiped and bleach bitted. No one knows for sure whether this server was ever compromised or hacked, but it did have security flaws, due to a failure to apply all security patches. No one outside her inner circle has ever claimed to have seen the deleted 30k emails, nor has there ever been evidence that foreign actors got access to the emails on the server. It is suspected, because she would have been a hacking target as Sec of State, and the law level of security involved. Her use of this personal email system is what the Comey/Strzok email investigation was all about. Trump’s unfortunate joke was that since her people had illegally deleted the missing 30k emails, the only way anyone could find out what they were was from the Russians (who probably, but may not have, hacked her email system back when she was Sec of State, back between 2008 and 2013). The reason that a lot of people want(ed) to see the contents of the illegally deleted emails is the high likelyhood that they would show the Pay-to-Play scam the Clintons were running through their foundation while she was Sec of State. The scam that brought in > 1 $billion$ to their foundation and > $100 million individually.
Server#2 was for the DNC. Not sure when it was set up, but was compromised late spring or early summer, in 2016 (3 1/2 years after Server#1 was shut down and disconnected from the Internet). Cloudstrike, an IT company hired by the DNC, claimed that it had been hacked and the hacker had “Russian” fingerprints. The FBI asked to see the server, and were refused. The emails from Server#2 were dumped by Wikileaks, and Julian Assange, its founder, claimed that it was an inside job (I.e, leaked, but not hacked). Guccifer 2.0 claimed to have been the hacker. Some of the templates from what he released showing Russian involvement appear to have originally been created by a VP Biden staffer. There were no classified documents on this server, and few from Crooked Hillary. The reason that they were so embarrassing was that they showed, unmistakably, that Bernie Sanders had been cheated by the DNC, as they made sure that Clinton got the nomination. The hacking story broke down for a number of reasons, one of which is that the time stamps on copying the emails are consistent with a disk to flash transfer, and much too fast for a transfer 1/3 of the way around the world across the Internet to Russia. And leaking makes more sense than hacking, because of how a lot of idealistic Bernie Bros viewed this collusion between the DNC and Clinton campaign.
(Leon Podesta’s pfished email account is separate from both these servers).
From the time that the DNC emails from Server#2 showed up On Wikileaks, the Clinton team, DNC, MSM, etc have attempted to confuse the two email servers in the public eye, imputing Russian collusion to the Trump team based on Trump’s Russian joke about the missing 30k emails on Server#1 and the Russian “fingerprints” on the alleged hacking of Server#2.
Trump’s Russian joke about the missing 30k emails on Server#1 and the Russian “fingerprints” on the alleged hacking of Server#2
The DNC claim is uncorroborated by independent investigators. The "collusion" investigation is an effort to identify the identity of "Deep Plunger", who as a matter of technical skill is or was (dearly departed) a Democrat insider. The evidence implicating Russians is a fingerprint that cannot be conclusively (i.e. one-to-one) traced to a Russian actor or origin.
So, the proposition is not that Republicans voted for a Republican, but that Democrats voted for a Republican to retaliate against the DNC, or for Sanders and split the vote. Heads, Democrats win. Tails, Republicans lose. Neat trick, if they can pull it off.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
The Republicans’ Fake Investigations
The attack on our firm, Fusion GPS, is a diversionary tactic by Republicans who don’t want to investigate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
By GLENN R. SIMPSON and PETER FRITSCH
NYT Jan. 3, 2018
"..Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/opinion/republicans-investigation-fusion-gps.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
The accompanying artwork actually depicts three Russian tops a-spinning!
The NYT is not allowing readers to comment on this piece.
Gk1 asked:
"Does it bother anyone that a major DOJ investigation could be triggered by a low level, 28 year old bullshitting at a bar to puff up his importance?"
Yes, it should bother a lot of people if true. However, I think a lot people on both sides just assume the story is a lie.
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