The previous effort at justification and damage control over the FBI counterintelligence operation to spy on presidential candidate Donald Trump was likely courtesy of FBI Asst. Director of Counterintelligence E.W. “Bill” Priestap.

The latest effort at justification comes directly from anti-Trump FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok; claiming the ‘insurance policy’ statement was to protect candidate Donald Trump, not to defend the republic against him.  :::insert eyeroll here:::

WASHINGTON DC – An FBI agent’s text message that referred to “an insurance policy” and has been cited as evidence of bias against President Trump reportedly alluded to the investigation into Russia’s election interference and any potential ties between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
The Wall Street Journal, citing individuals familiar Peter Strzok’s message, said the agent did not mean to indicate that there was a plan to damage Trump. Strzok’s message, instead, was intended to mean that Trump could win the election, and therefore the probe “couldn’t afford to take a more measured approach,” the newspaper said.  (read more)

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This would be embarrassingly laughable if the underlying issue was not so serious. Notice the transparency of the timing here; along with the justification angle.

Today NBC comes out with an “exclusive report” provided by “FBI counterintelligence sources” curiously pushing a story (*NOW*?) about a “high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials” for candidate Donald Trump in July 2016 “soon after the nomination”.  Why this narrative now?  Methinks they doth protest too much.
Gee, I wonder why government officials would be pushing NBC’s Ken Dilanian (the narrative engineer for pro Fusion-GPS stories) to report on Senior FBI counterintelligence briefings with Donald Trump in July 2016?

Perhaps because those same Senior FBI counterintelligence people (Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe) are quickly realizing their 2016 spy operation against Trump, their “insurance policy“, is out in the sunlight…. and NOW their collaborative illegal operation is about to put them in a position of being questioned by congressional oversight?  When does McCabe testify? Oh, yeah, tomorrow; funny that.

WASHINGTON — In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.
The warning came in the form of a high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials, the officials said. A similar briefing was given to Hillary Clinton, they added. They said the briefings, which are commonly provided to presidential nominees, were designed to educate the candidates and their top aides about potential threats from foreign spies.

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Fox News host Maria Bartiromo interviews Representative Bud Cummins about the 2016 weaponization of the FBI and DOJ and the same group of people in 2017 working to undermine the Trump administration.

It is my belief, based on mounting evidence, a specific cast of characters -within the Mueller “Russia Election Interference” probe- were placed there to protect people behind the FBI’s initial false claims. Those claims formed the basis for the counterintelligence operation against 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump.

According to reports, in August 2017 the Mueller team went around the Trump administration in their quest for documents, by directly demanding documents from the General Services Agency (GSA); the entity that hosted the communication network for the Trump transition team.
According to reports, the content of 12 email accounts was handed over to the Special Counsels’ office; consisting of thousands of pages of transition team communication.  Innocuous, ordinary transition stuff, but the method of procurement is jaw-droppingly unethical, possibly illegal.
Well, now you don’t have to rely on reports. Here’s the actual letter (Full pdf):
[scribd id=367392335 key=key-NHeTYuWqhdD4duzA7D1d mode=scroll]
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Now, let’s take a stroll and explain to our neighbors exactly what this entire plot is all about and why they should care….
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People have caught on; it was bound to happen. Back in August 2017 Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein created a special joint task-force within the FBI and DOJ to track down intelligence leakers. The investigative unit was requested by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
No-one was really paying much attention to it, until recently people started realizing the false media stories were too structured. The stories were fake, but the leaks were real.
Someone was seeding congress with carefully constructed false information and then watching to see where that false information surfaced. This is exactly how you track down leakers.  We previously referenced it as “Black Hat Hunting“.

A few false stories leading the news might be accidental, but the Donald Trump Jr. email date leak, a CNN story, was so specific and so carefully crafted, it became the fake news leak that evidenced a clear strategy going on behind the scenes. CTH has been discussing the likelihood for several weeks, now there’s a bunch of people who have caught on:
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There is widespread opinion that many of the officials enlisted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller are ethically challenged.  Critics point to Mueller team members like DOJ Attorney Andrew Weissman, Jeannie Rhee and Aaron Zebley as specific examples of players within Mueller’s investigative team who have a history of gross ethics violations and also carry jaw-dropping conflicts-of-interest.
Against that backdrop, a report today about conduct by the Mueller team of investigators gains additional levels of concerns.   According to reports, in August 2017 the Mueller team went around the Trump administration in their quest for documents, by directly demanding documents from the General Services Agency (GSA); the entity that hosted the communication network for the Trump transition team.  According to reports, the content of 12 email accounts was handed over to the Special Counsels’ office; consisting of thousands of pages of transition team communication.  Innocuous, ordinary transition stuff, but the method of procurement is jaw-droppingly unethical, possibly illegal.

However, as with all things disclosed and discovered recently, CTH would caution anyone toward weighting favor or disfavor on the underlying issue.  Additionally, I would again remind everyone to look at the timelines on any new information, overlay it against prior information, and consider how the timing of the event(s) -in relation to the whole- might change the first impression.
In this case, the reported action by the SC team took place in August 2017, four or five months ago.  Inside that exact same timeline, on August 16th 2017, FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Attorney Lisa Page were kicked off the Mueller team.  Coincidence? Dunno. Maybe.
Again, don’t get so stuck looking at the granules moving at your feet that you fail to notice the entire landscape around you is shifting.
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