Today the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit held a full panel hearing to decide the outcome of the unopposed DOJ and defense motion to drop the case against Michael Flynn.
Panel Judges include Judge Srinivasan, Judge Henderson, Judge Rogers, Judge Tatel, Judge Garland, Judge Griffith, Judge Millett, Judge Pillard, Judge Wilkins and Judge Rao.
The arguments spanned approximately four hours. Margot Cleveland has a solid breakdown of the arguments – SEE HERE – Full audio below:
If you ever read the indictment of SSCI Security Director James Wolfe [pdf HERE] you would notice how FBI Washington Field Office Supervisory Special Agent Brian Dugan conducted his leak investigation that ultimately led to James Wolfe.
As SSA Dugan explains his investigative process, he goes to great lengths to describe how he went to the FISA court to pick up a copy of the Carter Page FISA application on March 17, 2017. Agent Dugan then takes it to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence where he gave it to SSCI Security Director James Wolfe.
Simple Questions: Why did SSA Dugan go to the FISC to pick up a copy?
Why didn’t Agent Dugan just go to Main Justice and pick up a copy from the DOJ-NSD file that contained the FISA application? Why go to the FISA Court for a copy?
This is not supposition; this is the process described and outlined in court records. So, why go to the FISC and not the DOJ?
♦ Secondly, SSA Dugan goes to extreme lengths to draw attention to his copy; he calls the top secret FISA application an “FBI equity” in numerous documents. It’s his equity, his document, because he was the original equity holder of the document.
Agent Dugan was responsible for generating it. Dugan repeats that provenance again, and again in court records throughout 2018: “FBI Equity“.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson has issued a subpoena for records from FBI Director Christopher Wray. [pdf here] The subpoena is a demand for documents, not testimony. Specifically, Johnson is asking for “all documents related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Unfortunately, given what CTH knows of this specific committee, this approach seems a little like loading the horse into the starting gate after the race is over. They are all good people, but it’s the system that keeps everything compartmentalized by design.
This is interesting…. During the final question of his press conference President Trump forcefully outlined the names of key former administration officials who participated in the effort to remove him.
It would be an extreme long-shot if these two documented events were not analogous.
Senator Lindsay Graham asked today {Go Deep} who was the FBI official who delivered a set of false talking points to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) on February 14,2018?
Now we look within the SSCI Russian Active Measures Report… [Page #10, Footnote #25]
We have a saying in the south: ‘hang around a one-legged man long enough and eventually you’re gonna start limping‘. This interview is an example of how that cuts through the BS, spin and political chaff and countermeasures. Steven Schrage should be trusted as far as you can spit into a hurricane – which is to say, not at all.
First, in an article to accompany his media effort, Schrage waxes philosophical and woefully about how his years-long good friend and phd supervisor, Stephan Halper, the one-legged character in the metaphor, turned out to be a politically motivated snake and spy. Oh, but all the years previous this wasn’t noticed? Not buying it.
Second, Schrage sat and watched Michael Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova get raked over the coals for three+ years only now, right now, to find his conscience bothered by his participation in assisting the lies pushed by his friend against them? Isn’t that convenient timing?… Yeah, sure. I might have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.
Third, Schrage notes he was interviewed by John Durham. Horsepucky. Durham doesn’t interview anyone; someone else does, someone very specific; and the fact that Schrage has no clue who that person is implies an aspect to the side-show he now presents as total nonsense. In short, this is a distraction story…. Look over there…. shiny things.
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I’ve watched and researched these intelligence characters for so long their M.O. screams like visible strings on marionettes. And yes, once you see the strings it’s impossible to return to a time when you did not see them. This interview is a purposeful ruse.
I also do not fault Matt Taibbi or Maria Bartiromo for falling for it.
Senator Lindsay Graham appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to profess his public outrage about the senate being lied to by the FBI in 2018. {Go Deep}
In essence what Graham is doing is establishing the defense of the Senate for their role in attempting to remove President Donald Trump. ie. Selective Outrage.
The simple way to identify Graham’s motive is this way:… The SSCI was aware of this briefing in 2018 right? So why didn’t any SSCI member step forth after the Horowitz report in 2019 and say they were mislead?… or at any time after the truth of the primary sub-source was evident? It does not take the public release of briefing material, two years later, to initiate senate outrage if senate outrage was genuine.
Graham wasn’t outraged when the senate knew about it, he becomes outraged when the public knows about it. See how the application of common sense works?
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Methinks Graham doth protest too much. The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted the spoons.
Today Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsay Graham released a set of talking points [full pdf below – AND here] from the FBI during a briefing on February 14, 2018 to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The unknown FBI briefer is informing the SSCI about the reliability of Chris Steele’s primary sub-source, and whether he agrees with the Dossier content & conclusions:
At first blush the impression from the release; and indeed the expressed position as outlined by Graham in the release; is that some unknown entity from the FBI was misleading the SSCI in February of 2018 about Christopher Steele and the perspective of his primary sub-source. However, there’s a deeper story.
Within the release it must be noted the date of the briefing material is February 14, 2018. The unknown FBI briefer is saying, in essence, the primary sub-source doesn’t dispute the Dossier material. Obviously this position is demonstrably false given how the PSS said the Dossier was full of “rumor”, “gossip”, “innuendo” and “bar talk”.
The FBI briefer is misleading the Senate and so today we see the angry position expressed by Graham as he reveals this misleading briefing. However, five days prior to this briefing, on February 9, 2018, the text messages between SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner and Chris Steele’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, were released. This frames the accurate context to consider the position of the SSCI and FBI briefer on Feb 14, 2018.
Do not misinterpret anger for defeatism. Truth is the fuel for cold anger, and it’s time everyone begins accepting some painful truths.
What some have called “Spygate” is not a frozen moment in time or a set of dates on a calendar with a beginning and an end. Spygate was the originating process to ensure the DC system did not experience the disruption carried by Donald John Trump; but it was only the originating process….
….The process of opposition against Donald Trump is a continuum.
Those who use DC for influence and affluence control the mechanisms within the self-actuating system. This includes both Democrats and Republicans as they both feed from the same trough. In the effort to remove Donald Trump, both wings of the uniparty bird were aligned with an identical purpose; Democrats carrying out their effort openly, and the republican elements operating covertly as to retain the DC premise.
Specifically, one common misconception is thinking the Mueller special counsel was an outcome of an action by President Trump when he fired former FBI Director James Comey. This is false. The special counsel process was a continuum in the effort to remove the threat that Donald Trump represented back in the early primary days of 2016. The system, writ large, was aligned with this purpose.
There would have been a special counsel investigating the nonsense around ‘Trump-Russia’ regardless of Comey being fired. The special counsel was always part of the plan.
