NBC News has this little gem tucked into their report about Trump’s SOTU speech.
Sources say that Trump has adopted a two-track strategy to deal with the Mueller investigation.
One is an un-Trumpian passivity and trust. He keeps telling some in his circle that Mueller — any day now — will tell him he is off the hook for any charge of collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice.
But Trump — who trusts no one, or at least no one for long — has now decided that he must have an alternative strategy that does not involve having Justice Department officials fire Mueller.
"I think he's been convinced that firing Mueller would not only create a firestorm, it would play right into Mueller's hands," said another friend, "because it would give Mueller the moral high ground."
Instead, as is now becoming plain, the Trump strategy is to discredit the investigation and the FBI without officially removing the leadership. Trump is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team.
"Here's how it would work: 'We're sorry, Mr. Mueller, you won't be able to run the federal grand jury today because he has to go testify to another federal grand jury,'" said one Trump adviser.
Apparently Trump wants to go full obstruction and try to prosecute the prosecutors. I truly don’t think that’s going to work, not even a little bit. In fact, it’s such a bad idea — I truly hope he tries it.
Obviously Devin Nunes’ Smear the FBI Memo is part of this, and I truly do hope they release it soon because their efforts are so clumsy, obvious and dumb — it can only blow up in their faces like a shaken up can of Coca-cola, or perhaps a beer that’s been left in the freezer.
I mean the core idea behind Nunes memo seems to be that it was improper for the DOJ to use elements from the Steele Dossier in their application to extend the FISA warrant on Carter Page in October of 2016.
I have to wonder if that is even accurate because somehow this is supposed to implicate Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller — but neither of them could have possibly been involved in that application. Rosenstein wasn’t confirmed as Deputy AG until April of 2017 and he didn't appoint Mueller until May of 2017 — so exactly how were they involved in the 2016 FISA extension for Page?
That’s just embarrassingly nonsensical.
Further more as I’ve repeatedly pointed out this was an extension on a warrant that had already been filed originally back in April of 2016, whereas the first of Steele’s memos weren’t written until June 20, 2016.
Reports are that the Nunes Memo claims that the FISA Court was not informed that the DNC had paid for some of the research generated by Fusion GPS on Carter Page and therefore the warrant was somehow invalid. This is besides the fact that it wasn’t just the DNC who had funded this research and that not all of it came from Christopher Steele. This apparently was a warrant to extend surveillance that was already in progress and had begun earlier as a result of other reports including the detection of communications between Trumpsters and Russia which were first reported to U.S. intelligence by Estonia. Later in March and April additional reports from GCHQ, Poland and Germany came in and a Kremlin Task Force was put together to between FBI, DOJ, NSA and Treasury who originally requested the Page warrant that month.
Carter Page was target by Russian intel to recruit as an asset in 2014, which was the first time a FISA warrant was approved for him, at which time Page acted as an informant for the FBI. That case led to the successful prosecution of Russian Intelligence Officer Evgeny Buryokov by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
So Page had FiSA warrants going all the way back to 2014 and Russian spies who were attempting to recruit him had already been prosecuted for it. But somehow it was “improper” to extend this warrant simply because “DNC” was on the check to Fusion GPS?
That is laughable when you look at the mountain of probable cause there was to surveil this guy. I mean seriously, he actually took two trips to Russia during 2016 and during the first one this happened.
[Page traveled to Russia during the midst of the 2016 campaign and met] with Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Andrey Baranov, Rosneft's head of investor relations who told him of an impending sale of a large portion of their stock. Why he would tell him this when Rosneft was sanctioned is a good question, but the Steele memo alleges that Rosneft’s CEO offered Page a percentage of this sale in exchange for influencing Trump to drop sanctions. Naturally Page denies this offer, but he does admit discussing the stock sale with Baranov
Steele had pointed out that Page went to Russia and he was right. He pointed out that Page had met with execs at Rosneft and he was right. The only discrepancy is which executive and what they specifically said about the sale of Rosneft stock — which, as Steele predicted, did take place just one day before the election.
And the GOP position is what? NSA shouldn’t have been listening to what the Russians told this guy?
I for one would really like to know what they said.
They believe somehow Steele made all this up because of the signature on a check that he didn’t even know about? When in fact multiple intel services have confirmed much of what Steele describes?
A source close to the investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and its ties to Russia says that there is now “specific concrete and corroborative evidence” that individuals within Trump’s immediate orbit coordinated with Russian intelligence operatives during the election.
The Guardian said on Thursday that the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been watching the Trump camp since late 2015, having noticed suspicious “interactions” between Trump associates and well-known Russian agents.
There is no way this memo proves what the GOP and Donald Conspiracy-Theorist-in-Chief Trump thinks that it does.
“You just have this wider and wider net: they all perjured themselves, they all opened themselves to criminal liability,” former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa said, referring to the allegations against the FBI. “It makes no sense,”
“It suggests to me that the goal here is not expose a scandal, but the goal is to impugn the credibility of the relevant actors and to satisfy an existing narrative,” said Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in national security issues.
...
For Republicans claims of an abuse to be true, one would have to assume that the dossier was the sole basis of the warrant application, that it was a “fabrication” and that the DOJ knew that it was a fabrication when it applied for the FISA warrant, Vladeck said.
“All three things would have to be true for this to actually be an abuse of FISA,” Vladeck said, adding that he wouldn’t take the claims seriously unless the White House declassifies the underlying warrant.
“The major problem here is that this is only arguably scandalous in any way if [the DOJ] just essentially repacked the dossier as a warrant package without any work of their own,” Sanchez said, adding that it would be “inconceivable to me that would be the only source.”
Yes. Inconceivable.
And yet John Kelly has said that the Memo will be released “Pretty Soon.” Oh Goody.
But that’s not going to make FBI Director Wray very happy since he says the memo is full of inaccuracies.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the White House he opposes release of a classified Republican memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department because it contains inaccurate information and paints a false narrative, according to a person familiar with the matter.
And yet rather than listen to him, he and his team have been shutout of the process.
The FBI isn’t included in the inter-agency review process led by the White House aimed at deciding whether -- and how much of -- the memo can be made public. Wray was allowed to read the memo on Sunday.
As President Donald Trump departed the House floor after delivering his State of the Union address, C-SPAN cameras captured Representative Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, asking the president to “release the memo.”
"Oh yeah, don’t worry, 100 percent," Trump replied, waving dismissively. "Can you imagine that? You’d be too angry."
The FBI has even released this view publicly.
In a statement posted by ABC News’ Mike Levine, the FBI said it only had limited time to review the memo’s contents before the House Intelligence Committee voted to release it.
“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the statement concludes.
All of this is an attempt to string up the FBI in the Kangaroo Court of Pubic Opinion. Along the way they may be directly placing the lives of Fusion GPS staff and other potential intelligence assets at risk, just like when Trump blabbed code-word classified intel from Israel to the Russians.
Obama Ethics Attorney Norm Eisen has stated that since Nunes hasn’t denied that he’s been working with the White House all along on this, he’s probably voided his congressional immunity for being prosecuted for Obstruction of Justice.
Also Trey Gowdy, the only Republican Lawmaker to actually read the underlying documents, has just announced that he’s retiring. Hm, coincidence?
All this is such a boneheaded play I truly hope they do it — I really do.
Wednesday, Jan 31, 2018 · 11:20:38 AM PST · Frank Vyan Walton
Looks like the author of the memo took a secret trip to London to harass Steele.
Kash Patel, a top Nunes staffer and senior counsel for the House Intelligence Committee, traveled to Londonlast summer to question the former British spy who wrote the Trump-Russia dossier.
Patel and another Nunes staffer, Doug Presely, went on the research mission without notifying the U.S. embassy or British government.
They also failed to inform the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) or GOP Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), who took over the panel’s Russia probe after Nunes stepped aside over ethics concern
And that back in 2016 he got benchslapped by a judge for ineptitude.
Patel was issued a rare “order of ineptitude” in 2016 by U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, who faulted the lawyer’s handling of the prosecution of Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, who was accused of trying to support ISIS.
“If the pretentious lawyers from ‘main’ justice knew what they were doing — or had the humility to ask for help from the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas,” Hughes wrote, “it would not have taken three days, seven telephone calls, three voicemail messages and one snippy electronic message for them to indirectly ask the court for assistance in ordering a transcript.”
Wednesday, Jan 31, 2018 · 12:41:59 PM PST · Frank Vyan Walton
Nunes has now released a statement calling the FBI statement that this his memo has “material omissions in fact” and is “extraordinary reckless” — “spurious” and continues to triple-down on the release of his memo, basically challenging the FBI to prove him wrong by releasing even more secret FISA information.
If he’s not an agent for Russia, they couldn’t have imagined a better one.
These guys really think they can fool a majority of nation with this crap? Man, the impending faceplant when the FBI calls his empty bluff with be delicious. Unfortunately, there will be far too many Trumplets that will swallow this stink burger without chewing, and they’ll be effectively poisoned against the FBI which won’t mean a damn thing in court where it truly counts, but just might stir up enough dust to keep Trump in office until the election and Traitorous Frackholes like Nunes get tossed out on their ear.