A Story of Intelligence Fabrication & Media Collusion

Given the clear relevance of journalists to Fusion GPS’s activities, the Requested Records therefore include records related to nine payments to three journalists. – November 21, 2017 Court Filing

With knowledge and hindsight, older articles provide new clarity and unexpected insights. A compelling story emerges when viewed sequentially. One quite different than their authors intended.

Sources revealed. Individuals exposed. Narratives unveiled.

I’ve selected articles surrounding significant events, pulled out specific passages and provided background as needed.

Dates span from May 2016 to December 2017. The majority occur between late October 2016 and April 2017.

When combined and examined it’s quite a story they tell.

A lengthy post but I found the results fascinating. I hope you find it equally enlightening.

May 17, 2016 – A Washington Post article, Former Mafia-Linked Figure Describes Association with Trump, by Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger.

An early attempt to establish loose Russian ties to the Trump Campaign. Sater’s criminal past probably factored more heavily in the reporting:

Felix Sater was trying to revive his career. The Russian-born businessman had already done a stint in prison.

Trump had given Sater’s company, Bayrock, rights to explore projects in Moscow as well as in Florida and New York.

Trump and his lawyers have said that he was not aware of Sater’s criminal past.

Here’s where it gets somewhat more interesting:

 Sater’s involvement in the stock fraud was kept secret for years by federal prosecutors because of his role as an informant.

He was spared prison time in recognition of what an FBI agent later called “extraordinary” cooperation as a witness in unnamed national security cases.

Loretta Lynch told senators that Sater had “provided valuable and sensitive information” for more than 10 years and that his work had been “crucial to national security.”

Sater’s role as an FBI Informant is unexpectedly reminiscent of Carter Page who provided evidence – and possibly served as an informant – in the Evgeny Buryakov case.

We will return to Carter Page later.

June 17, 2016 – A Washington Post article, Inside Trump’s Financial Ties to Russia and His Unusual Flattery of Vladimir Putin by Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman and Michael Birnbaum.

The first direct attempt by the Post to establish Trump-Russia connections. The article was written by the same authors of the article on Felix Sater.

Although exclusivity has now been broken, historically the Post served as an outlet for the Intelligence Community while the Times served as an outlet for the Departments of Justice and State.

This article contains a large amount of historical detail – going back as far as 30 years. Someone with a good data repository did a lot of digging.

It’s this article that established the three Trump Campaign targets of the Left – General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Carter Page:

One of his foreign policy advisers, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, said Trump would be “exceedingly stronger” than Hillary Clinton.

Flynn, the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief who is advising Trump, stunned the diplomatic community by sitting near Putin at a 2015 Moscow dinner.

Campaign chairman Paul Manafort has done multimillion-dollar business deals with pro-Russian oligarchs and was a longtime adviser to the Russia-aligned Ukrainian president.

Carter Page, also a Trump foreign policy adviser, once ran the Moscow office of Merrill Lynch, including advising the Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Page hinted that Trump’s election could be a boost for some of his Russian associates who have been hurt by U.S. sanctions imposed after Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

General Flynn is likely to be exonerated – more on his case further down.

Manafort was indicted for FARA violations and influence peddling in conjunction with the Podesta Group. The activities took place primarily during Clinton’s State Department years. Nothing in the indictments related to President Trump.

Page remains something of an enigma. Despite the FISA Warrant he’s never been charged with anything. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to charge him with. Again, we will re-visit Page later.

The Post article also introduced us to two people who will be repeatedly quoted in later articles – Michael McFaul and David Kramer:

Michael McFaul, who stepped down in 2014 as the U.S. ambassador to Russia, said Trump’s stance toward Russia “makes everyone I talk to around the world nervous — and it makes me nervous.”

David J. Kramer, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state dealing with Russia during the George W. Bush administration, said he was “appalled” by Trump’s approach.

At the direction of John McCain, David Kramer would fly to London in November 2016 to meet with Dossier author Christopher Steele.

August 5, 2016 – A Washington Post article, Trump Adviser’s Public Comments, Ties to Moscow Stir Unease in Both Parties by Steven Mufson and Tom Hamburger.

A third appearance by Washington Post reporter Tom Hamburger. This article focused on Carter Page. Recall that the Post is the primary outlet for the Intelligence Community.

Note the date. By this point it’s likely Page was already the chosen target of a FISA Warrant the FBI would obtain on October 21. 2016:

The adviser, Carter Page, hailed Putin as stronger and more reliable than President Obama, according to three people who were present at the closed-door meeting at Blair House — and then touted the positive effect a Trump presidency would have on U.S.-Russia relations.

There were repeat appearances by “foreign policy experts”:

Other foreign policy experts from both parties say they are distressed with Page for his criticism of sanctions, praise for Putin and his advisers, and his tepid response to what most U.S. policymakers see as Russian aggression.

“It scares me,” said David Kramer, who was responsible for Russia and Ukraine at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. He called Page’s speech in Moscow and recent comments by Trump on the possibility of lifting sanctions against Moscow “deeply unsettling.”

Since being named as a member of the Trump team in March, Page’s background in Russia has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest.

All holdings in Russia by members of the Trump team should be fully disclosed, said Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama who is now teaching at Stanford University.

McFaul, who reviewed Page’s early July speech in Moscow, said he disagreed with the content and added that he knew of no precedent for a presidential campaign adviser publicly criticizing U.S. policy in a foreign capital.

September 23, 2016 – A Yahoo News article, U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin by Michael Isikoff.

The famous Christopher Steel leak to Isikoff. The entire article is focused on Carter Page and will be used by the FBI to obtain the Page FISA Warrant on October 21, 2016. Page would leave the Trump Campaign three days later on September 26, 2016 as a result of this article:

U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president, according to multiple sources.

It is here the “multiple sources” appear. They will remain a constant in every article – from every outlet – going forward.

The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election, the sources said.

The Congressional “Gang of Eight” briefings were given by CIA Director John Brennan.

After one of those briefings, Senate minority leader Harry Reid wrote FBI Director James Comey, citing reports of meetings between a Trump adviser and “high ranking sanctioned individuals” in Moscow…that needed to be investigated by the bureau.

The sources continue:

Some of those briefed were “taken aback” when they learned about Page’s contacts in Moscow, viewing them as a possible back channel to the Russians that could undercut U.S. foreign policy, said a congressional source familiar with the briefings.

The source added that U.S. officials in the briefings indicated that intelligence reports about the adviser’s talks with senior Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin were being “actively monitored and investigated.”

“It’s on our radar screen,” said the official about Page’s contacts with Russian officials. “It’s being looked at.”

What I found particularly interesting was the focus of this article.

Steele had the opportunity to disclose his most compelling evidence against Trump – which he almost certainly did. The entirety of it centered on Carter Page.

Carter Page has never been charged with any crime. My guess is he never will be.

Consider what that implies about the extent and quality of Steele’s evidence.

September 23, 2016 – A Politico Magazine article, Who Is Carter Page? The Mystery of Trump’s Man in Moscow by Julia Ioffe.

This article appeared on the same day as the Isikoff article. I found it far more interesting.

Of particular note is the following paragraph – which I encourage you to read carefully:

As I started looking into Page, I began getting calls from two separate “corporate investigators” digging into what they claim are all kinds of shady connections Page has to all kinds of shady Russians. One is working on behalf of various unnamed Democratic donors; the other won’t say who turned him on to Page’s scent. Both claimed to me that the FBI was investigating Page for allegedly meeting with Igor Sechin and Sergei Ivanov, who was until recently Putin’s chief of staff—both of whom are on the sanctions list—when Page was in Moscow in July for that speech.

One is working for Democratic donors. The other won’t say. Both claim the FBI is investigating Page.

“Corporate investigators” is an obvious reference to Fusion GPS. The two individuals are likely Simpson and Steele. Simpson’s partner Peter Fritsch is another possibility.

Seemingly everyone I talked to had also talked to the Washington Post, and then there were these corporate investigators who drew a dark and complex web of Page’s connections. Was Page, like Manafort, followed by a long train of sordid dealings with dark and powerful players with deep pockets and deep resentments toward the West? This was the person described by the corporate investigators trying to whisper into my ear.

Fusion GPS had previously been given the Washington Post the same names and information. And the Post reporters had been busy.

In the interest of due diligence, I also tried to run down the rumors being handed me by the corporate investigators: that Russia’s Alfa Bank paid for the trip as a favor to the Kremlin; that Page met with Sechin and Ivanov in Moscow; that he is now being investigated by the FBI for those meetings because Sechin and Ivanov were both sanctioned for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The relevance of Alfa Bank will become apparent in the next article.

Reminder: The Page FISA warrant would be obtained one month later on October 21, 2016.

Note: The next four articles all appeared on October 31, 2016.

October 31, 2016 – A Slate article, Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia by Franklin Foer:

In late July, one of these scientists…found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name.

The FBI’s Counterintelligence Investigation into Trump-Russia ties began at the end of July.

His discovery of the data was pure happenstance – a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. “I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,” he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.

He began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server’s DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world.

It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.

Alfa Bank is the same institution referenced by Ioffe in the Politico article directly above and was one of several rumors being promoted by Fusion GPS.

The server and Alfa Bank were investigated by the FBI and the subject of a journalistic investigation by the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers. Nothing was found.

From a follow-up article by Foer:

In a detailed post critiquing my piece, cybersecurity expert Rob Graham wrote, “The evidence available on the Internet is that Trump neither (directly) controls the domain trump-email.com, nor has access to the server.” This echoes the point raised by Vox, the Intercept, and others that the server was not operated by the Trump Organization directly.

Rather, it was run and managed by Cendyn, a vendor that organizes email marketing campaigns for hotels and resorts. This suggests that most of the emails that emanated from this address were mass emails, related to loyalty programs, discount offers, and the like.

October 31, 2016 – A NBC News article, FBI Making Inquiry Into Ex-Trump Campaign Manager’s Foreign Ties by Ken Dilanian, Robert Windrem, William M. Arkin and Tom Winter:

The FBI has been conducting a preliminary inquiry into Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s foreign business connections, law enforcement and intelligence sources told NBC News Monday.

This investigation into Manafort would later be picked up by Special Counsel Mueller, resulting in indictments against Manafort and Gates. It would also result in the sudden dismantling of the Podesta Group.

The Manafort Indictments relate to FARA violations and influence peddling – in conjunction with the Podesta Group – during Clinton’s State Department years. See here for more.

NBC News reported in August that Manafort was a key player in multi-million-dollar business propositions with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs — one of them a close Putin ally with alleged ties to organized crime — which foreign policy experts said raised questions about the pro-Russian bent of the Trump candidacy.

“The relationships that Trump’s advisors have had with pro-Russian forces are deeply disturbing,” said David Kramer, a former senior State Department official. “Trump’s attitude on Russia is not in line with most Republican foreign-policy thinking. Trump has staked out views that are really on the fringe.”

What’s interesting is anyone looking closely at Manafort would have noticed the relationship with the Podesta Group. The timeline aligned with the Clinton State Department. But no mention was made.

October 31, 2016 – A New York Times article, Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia by Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers.

This article is written by the same two reporters who had been investigating the Alfa Bank-Trump Server rumor being pushed by Fusion GPS. As noted earlier, neither they nor the FBI found anything:

For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign.

Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.

And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

This was one of the more factual articles of 2016.

It may reflect resentment from the two reporters who’d spent a good deal of time chasing down the false leads regarding Alfa Bank.

Intelligence officials have said in interviews over the last six weeks that apparent connections between some of Mr. Trump’s aides and Moscow originally compelled them to open a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Republican presidential candidate.

In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump.

CIA Director Brennan personally handled the briefings which would later prove strategic.

The most serious part of the F.B.I.’s investigation has focused on the computer hacks that the Obama administration now formally blames on Russia. That investigation also involves numerous officials from the intelligence agencies.

It is here that two unnamed “senior intelligence officials” make their first of what will be many appearances.

These two individuals are probably CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

A senior intelligence official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing national security investigation, said the Russians had become adept at exploiting computer vulnerabilities created by the relative openness of and reliance on the internet.

Clapper had begun to prepare his second of three Russia-related Reports – GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity by this point.

“It isn’t about the election,” a second senior official said, referring to the aims of Russia’s interference. “It’s about a threat to democracy.”

October 31, 2016 – A Mother Jones article, A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump by David Corn.

This is the second article that resulted from leaks by Dossier author Christopher Steele. The first being Isikoff’s on September 23, 2016.

The FBI, which did not terminate their relationship with Steele for the Isikoff leak, would terminate their relationship with Steele for this interview.

Note the article’s date of October 31, 2016.

The FBI had obtained their FISA Warrant on Page one week earlier – on October 21, 2016.

With benefit of hindsight this entire article is worth a skeptically knowing read.

Some highlights:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sent Comey a fiery letter saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a potentially greater controversy: “It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government…The public has a right to know this information.”

Reid’s missive set off a burst of speculation on Twitter and elsewhere. What was he referring to regarding the Republican presidential nominee?

A former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.

The “former senior intelligence officer” is obviously Steele.

A senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government.

The “senior U.S. government official” is probably State Department official Jonathan Winer who had received Steele reports in the past.

Cody Shearer compiled a “shadow” dossier that was similar in make-up to the Steele Dossier. Shearer gave this “shadow dossier” to Sidney Blumenthal who passed Shearer’s dossier on to Jonathan Winer in September 2016. Winer would then share this information with Steele.

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere.

An apt description of Fusion GPS.

According to his sources, he says, “there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.”

The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not immediately request additional material, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates.

In August the FBI asked him [Steele] for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources.

I suspect this timing will prove important. The FBI opened their Counterintelligence Investigation on July 31, 2016 – and did so with no official intelligence.

The need for a FISA Warrant suddenly became pressing. More later.

The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump’s inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. “It’s quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on,” he says.

November 4, 2016 – A Newsweek article, Why Vladimir Putin’s Russia Is Backing Donald Trump By Kurt Eichenwald.

This article begins to lay out the Foreign Intelligence concerns that would become so prevalent in reporting.

We know that GCHQ Head Robert Hannigan personally flew to DC to meet with CIA Director John Brennan. Hannigan’s U.S. Counterpart was not Brennan. It was NSA Director Mike Rogers. Hannigan would abruptly retire days after President Trump’s Inauguration. More here.

We also know that no official intelligence – foreign or otherwise – was used to initiate the FBI’s July 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation:

In phone calls, meetings and cables, America’s European allies have expressed alarm to one another about Donald Trump’s public statements denying Moscow’s role in cyberattacks designed to interfere with the U.S. election.

They fear the Republican nominee for president has emboldened the Kremlin in its unprecedented cybercampaign to disrupt elections in multiple countries in hopes of weakening Western alliances, according to intelligence, law enforcement and other government officials in the United States and Europe.

Officials from two European countries tell Newsweek that Trump’s comments about Russia’s hacking have alarmed several NATO partners.

One British official says members of that government who are aware of the scope of Russia’s cyberattacks both in Western Europe and America found Trump’s comments “quite disturbing”.

The allies are also uneasy about retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.

Western intelligence has also obtained reports that a Trump associate met with a pro-Putin member of Russian parliament at a building in Eastern Europe maintained by Rossotrudnichestvo, an agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Eichenwald is referring to the fabled Michael Cohen visit – that never happened. This may be the earliest reference to Cohen. CNN would not report on this until January 11, 2017 – see below.

“They didn’t know what to think,” says one former British official who has spoken to numerous members of the government about Trump’s comments in that debate. “A lot of people are now trying to connect the dots of all the data [in the intelligence files] to try and understand Trump.

Officials in Western Europe say they are dismayed that they now feel compelled to gather intelligence on a man who could be the next president of the United States but believe they have no choice.

Officials in Western Europe now feel compelled to gather intelligence on Candidate-Trump…

Just for chuckles, here is an Eichenwald rationalization contained within the same article:

Hillary Clinton left the State Department in 2013, which means that if she had used its unclassified email system rather than her private server—a decision that has dogged her throughout the campaign—any of her emails on the government system could have been obtained by Russian hackers.

Eichenwald has seemed a bit…shaky…over the last year.

January 10-12 of 2017 marked another busy news period – similar to October 31, 2016.

January 10, 2017 – A CNN article, Intel Chiefs Presented Trump With Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him by Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein – this article would later be updated and have a January 12, 2017 date.

This is an important and defining article. Some background from an earlier post:

The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report was released January 6, 2017 – the same day Brennan, Clapper and Comey attached a written summary of the dossier to the classified briefing they gave to Obama.

This briefing occurred one day after Obama held a secret White House meeting on January 5, 2017 to discuss the dossier with Susan Rice and FBI Director Comey.

Rice would later send herself an email documenting the January 5, Oval Office meeting.

Comey met with President Trump on January 6, 2017 to inform him of the Dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the ICA and the Steele Dossier.

Notably, Comey would only inform President Trump of the “salacious” details. “Because that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about.”

Shortly after Comey’s meeting with President Trump both the Trump/Comey meeting and the existence of the Dossier were leaked.

The significance of the meeting was material – as Comey noted in his Memo:

I said media like CNN had them [the Dossier] and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material.

DNI James Clapper was likely the individual who leaked information of Comey’s meeting with President Trump to CNN:

Finding #44: Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, now a CNN national security analyst, provided inconsistent testimony to the Committee about his contacts with the media, including CNN.

The CNN report would establish the second phase of the Trump-Russia Collusion Narrative. It would lead to AG Sessions’ recusal – and the appointment of Mueller as Special Counsel.

The media had widely dismissed the Dossier as unsubstantiated and unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey briefed President-Elect Trump that CNN reported on the Dossier.

From CNN’s January 10, 2017 article:

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

One reason the nation’s intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

The two national security officials are almost certainly Brennan and Clapper.

Recall that Comey only informed President Trump of the “salacious details because that was the part the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about.”

US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago.

One high level administration official told CNN, “I have a sense the outgoing administration and intelligence community is setting down the pieces so this must be investigated seriously and run down. I think [the] concern was to be sure that whatever information was out there is put into the system so it is evaluated as it should be and acted upon as necessary.”

The CNN article is deserving of a full read with the benefit of knowledgeable hindsight. This article set the stage for everything that was to come.

January 11, 2017 – A Guardian article, John McCain Passes Dossier Alleging Secret Trump-Russia Contacts to FBI by Julian Borger:

Senator John McCain passed documents to the FBI director, James Comey, last month alleging secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow and that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on the president-elect himself.

The material, which has been seen by the Guardian, is a series of reports on Trump’s relationship with Moscow. They were drawn up by a former western counter-intelligence official, now working as a private consultant.

An official in the US administration who spoke to the Guardian described the source who wrote the intelligence report as consistently reliable, meticulous and well-informed, with a reputation for having extensive Russian contacts.

CNN reported on Tuesday [article above] that the FBI was still investigating the credibility of the documents but added that the intelligence chiefs had included a summary of the material in a secret briefing on Russian interference in the election delivered last week to Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

The CNN report became the validation the media needed.

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (FISA) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials.

The FISA court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

I find it somewhat odd that the Guardian became aware of the FISA Warrant ahead of CNN. Granted, they did learn of it from a now-deleted Heat Street article by Louise Mensch.

Nevertheless, there have been a lot of British sources…

January 11, 2017 – A CNN article, Russia Denies Having Compromising Material on Donald Trump by Jill Dougherty, Emma Burrows and James Masters.

Note: This article comes out directly after CNN runs the story, Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him. It was clearly coordinated:

The Kremlin denied it has compromising information about US President-elect Donald Trump, describing the allegations as “pulp fiction”.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said reports that Trump was the subject of “Kompromat” — a Russian term for compromising information intended to be used against someone — were an “attempt to harm our bilateral relationship.”

Multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings told CNN that the synopsis included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Trump.

At a senate hearing on Tuesday, Comey refused to comment on whether the agency was investigating any potential connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Comey knew his silence would reverberate quite loudly. Comey could have provided clarification. He chose not to do so.

After the hearing, [Senator Ron] Wyden tweeted: “Director Comey refused to answer my question about whether the FBI has investigated Trump campaign contacts with Russia.”

January 11, 2017 – A Vanity Fair article, What Intelligence Chiefs Think of the Explosive Trump-Russia Report by Abigail Tracy.

This is an interesting article.

It illustrates genuine skepticism from some former intelligence community members. It also highlights weight given the Dossier by inclusion in briefings to President Trump and Obama:

Former intelligence officers and other national-security experts are urging skepticism and caution in the wake of the publication Tuesday night of a secret dossier by a former British spy.

In an interview with Wired, ex-C.I.A. analyst Patrick Skinner said he is “neither dismissing the report nor taking its claims at face value” but approaching the allegations with caution. He also warned of the dangers of releasing unverified intelligence reports—such as this one—to the public, arguing “that people would freak out with the day-to-day drip that might not be anything once it’s placed in context and vetted with multiple sources.”

Matt Tait, a former staffer of Britain’s G.C.H.Q. intelligence agency, cast the report as amateur and the work of “an ex-field officer who’s got some interesting sources, but who has no idea how to compile raw HUMINT into usable intelligence. It’s really hard to tell whether any of the info is actually true, or just a very exciting and expensively produced fan-fiction novel.”

Ex-C.I.A. Analyst Aki Peritz voiced the same concern. “Absent understanding who the sources actually are and their ability to gain correct information, it’s really hard to make heads or tails out of this.”

But the fact that the nation’s top intelligence officials chose to present a summary version of the dossier to both President Obama and President-elect Trump, as CNN reports they did last week, indicates that they may have had a relatively high degree of confidence that at least some of the claims therein were credible, or at least worth investigating further.

“My general take is that the intelligence community and law enforcement seem to be taking these claims seriously. That itself is highly significant. But it is not the same as these allegations being verified,” said Susan Hennessey, a former lawyer for the National Security Administration.

Former N.S.A. analyst John Schindler made a similar argument on Twitter, writing that the intelligence community “would never touch an outside, private Intel report, much less briefed it to ‘the top,’ unless key parts could be corroborated.”

January 12, 2017 – A New York Times article, NSA Gets More Latitude to Share Intercepted Communications by Charlie Savage.

The signing of Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 was a significant event – enough so that I’ve written about it twice (here and here).

This Order was due in early 2016 – it was the delay I initially found puzzling. The upshot is this.

Prior to the formal signing of Section 2.3, greater latitude existed within the White House in regards to collection of information – especially in relation to the Trump Campaign.

The Obama White House specifically delayed signing Section 2.3 until the final days of the Administration – after every possible byte of information had been collected.

Once signed into effect, Section 2.3 granted broad latitude to inter-agency sharing of information.

By the time the new order was signed on January 3, 2017, all information was already in the Obama White House’s possession.

From the article:

In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data.

Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions.

“This is not expanding the substantive ability of law enforcement to get access to signals intelligence,” said Robert S. Litt, the general counsel to Mr. Clapper. “It is simply widening the aperture for a larger number of analysts, who will be bound by the existing rules.”

Among the most important questions left unanswered in February [2016] was when analysts would be permitted to use Americans’ names, email addresses or other identifying information to search a 12333 database and pull up any messages to, from or about them that had been collected without a warrant.

For an overview on FISA see: FISA Surveillance – Title I & III and Section 702.

For an examination of the FISA Abuse committed by the DOJ’s National Security Division and the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division see: The Uncovering – Mike Rogers’ Investigation, Section 702 FISA Abuse & the FBI.

January 12, 2017 – A BBC News article, Trump ‘Compromising’ Claims: How and Why Did We Get Here? by Paul Wood.

This article represents another interview with Dossier author Christopher Steele:

The Washington political research company that commissioned his report showed it to me during the final week of the election campaign.

Fusion GPS showed Wood the report at the beginning of November 2016.

The former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by “the head of an East European intelligence agency”.

It’s possible “retired spy” refers to Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia. Steele had briefed Wood on the Dossier. Wood later briefed McCain who would then dispatch David Kramer to meet with Steele in London during November 2016.

On 15 October [2016], the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community.

I suspect this is Brennan based on the article’s direction.

The following portion of the article loosely describes Brennan’s evolving role in formulating the FBI Counterintelligence Investigation:

Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was – allegedly – a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States.

The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created. The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government.

To my knowledge this is the first known report of the Agency Task Force. Worth asking is why a British reporter should find out first.

Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the FISA Court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.

Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again.

At this juncture, I can’t verify with certainty the existence or non-existence of the June ’16 FISA Application.

I believe it’s likely a June 2016 FISA Application did occur. The inability to obtain a FISA Warrant is probably why the FBI opened its investigation with no official evidence. I suspect that unofficial foreign intelligence presented to the FISA Court was deemed too flimsy.

Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.

It’s possible this new judge could be Judge Rudy Contreras. Contreras presided over Flynn’s guilty plea but was abruptly recused six days later. More on Flynn and Contreras shortly.

Update: We now know Contreras did not sign FISA per Schiff Democrat Memo which specifies that Page FISA Application and renewals were approved by four different Federal (FISA) Judges and appointed by following: One by Reagan. One by G.H.W. Bush (elder). Two by G.W. Bush (younger).

Contreras was appointed by Obama.

Anne Conway signed a Page FISA Application or Renewal.

Either Raymond Drearie or Martin Feldman (FISA Court 5-19-10 to 5-18-17) signed FISA Application or Renewal.

Two of the following signed FISA Application or renewal: Collyer, Egan, Kugler, Mosman, Saylor.

For more on Brennan’s Role – and Britain’s involvement – see:

• The Nunes Interview – “No Official Intelligence Used” & Problems for Brennan
• The Electronic Communication, Redacted Names & John Brennan
• John Brennan’s Role in the FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation

January 18, 2017 – A McClatchy article, FBI, 5 Other Agencies Probe Possible Covert Kremlin Aid to Trump by Peter Stone and Greg Gordon – article updated on January 24, 2017.

This is the second report on the Agency Task Force:

The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election.

The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence.

Investigators are examining how money may have moved from the Kremlin to covertly help Trump win, the two sources said.

Those two sources keep turning up.

The informal, inter-agency working group began to explore possible Russian interference last spring, long before the FBI received information from a former British spy hired to develop politically damaging and unverified research about Trump.

What’s particularly interesting is that the Agency Task Force appears to still be active at this point – January 18, 2017. Later reports seem to indicate it ended in the summer of 2016.

The BBC reported last week that the joint inquiry was launched when the CIA learned last spring, through a Baltic ally, of a recording indicating the Russian government was planning to funnel funds aimed at influencing the U.S. election.

Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency…said such warrants were issued only if investigators could establish “probable cause” that the target was a foreign power or its agent and that the surveillance was likely to produce foreign intelligence. She said the information in Steele’s dossier couldn’t have met that test.

“If, in fact, law enforcement has obtained a FISA warrant, that is an indication that additional evidence exists outside of the dossier,” she said.

We now know that additional evidence does not exist. And former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe has testified that no FISA Warrant would have been sought without the Steele Dossier.

January 19, 2017 – A New York Times article, Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates, by Michael S. Schmidt, Matthew Rosenberg, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo.

Interestingly, this article was originally titled “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.” The New York Times changed the title after President Trump made his claims of wiretapping:

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.

The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.

We know the Obama Administration not only received the intelligence reports – they disseminated them. This will become apparent in a March 1, 2017 article discussed below.

The decision to open the investigations was not based on a dossier of salacious, uncorroborated allegations that were compiled by a former British spy working for a Washington research firm. The F.B.I. is also examining the allegations in that dossier, and a summary of its contents was provided to Mr. Trump earlier this month.

Note the specific delineation. This investigation – which remains ongoing – is separate from the investigation into the Dossier’s allegations.

Of the half-dozen current and former officials who confirmed the existence of the investigations, some said they were providing information because they feared the new administration would obstruct their efforts. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the cases.

For more on how this information was obtained see: The FBI’s Private Contractors – FISA Abuse, the Steele Dossier & a Timeline.

January 23, 2017 – A Washington Post article, FBI Reviewed Flynn’s calls With Russian Ambassador But Found Nothing Illicit by Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller:

The FBI in late December reviewed intercepts of communications between the Russian ambassador to the United States and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn — national security adviser to then-President-elect Trump — but has not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government, U.S. officials said.

The calls were picked up as part of routine electronic surveillance of Russian officials and agents in the United States, which is one of the FBI’s responsibilities, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss counterintelligence operations.

Of particular note was a Dec. 29 telephone conversation, initiated in an exchange of text messages the day before.

The FBI’s counterintelligence agents listen to calls all the time that do not pertain to any open investigation, current and former law enforcement officials said. Often, said one former official, “they’re just monitoring the other [foreign official] side of the call.”

Flynn had long been a target.

Note: Flynn was the prior head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The DIA and the CIA have often been in conflict with each other and the rivalry between the two is real.

Flynn was forced from the DIA by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Clapper later tried to have Admiral Rogers removed as Head of the NSA in October 2016 but failed in this particular effort.

February 9, 2017 – A Washington Post article, National Security Adviser Flynn Discussed Sanctions With Russian Ambassador, Despite Denials, Officials Say by Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima:

National security adviser Michael Flynn privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

[The] account of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak provided by officials who had access to reports from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that routinely monitor the communications of Russian diplomats. Nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The Flynn call was not illegal. The FBI had already found no evidence of wrongdoing.

But the disclosure of Flynn’s call is a major felony leak. Nine senior intelligence officials.

Good Lord…

All of those officials said ­Flynn’s references to the election-related sanctions were explicit. Two of those officials went further, saying that Flynn urged Russia not to overreact to the penalties being imposed by President Barack Obama.

I wonder who could those two officials be…

February 13, 2017 – A Washington Post article, Justice Department Warned White House That Flynn Could Be Vulnerable to Russian Blackmail, Officials Say by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Philip Rucker:

The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials.

Brennan and Clapper – tells you everything you need to know.

Yates and other intelligence officials suspected that Flynn could be in violation of an obscure U.S. statute known as the Logan Act, which bars U.S. citizens from interfering in diplomatic disputes with another country.

No one has ever been charged under the Logan Act. Of course Yates knew this.

Time for a necessary aside on Flynn. It now appears that something is seriously wrong with the Flynn Case.

The FBI found no evidence of wrongdoing in Flynn’s call.

Comey testified that FBI Agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional.

The House Intelligence Committee’s Final Report found FBI agents did not detect any deception during Flynn’s interview.

There have been unverified reports that McCabe ordered the alteration of the Flynn-related 302s. Grassley is asking for these documents.

On December 1, 2017, Judge Contreras presided over Flynn’s guilty plea.

Here’s what happened next:

• December 2 2017 – Washington Post and New York Times reveal existence of incriminating messages from Peter Strzok revealing anti-Trump biases.
• December 2 2017 – The Inspector General issues statement in response to inquiries.
• December 4 2017 – CNN reveals Strzok changed wording of Clinton investigation to avoid criminal charges.
• December 6 2017 – DOJ executive Bruce Ohr demoted after revelations he secretly met with Fusion GPS, which had secretly employed his wife Nellie.
• December 7 2017 – Fox News reveals DOJ’s Bruce Ohr was in contact with Fusion GPS at the same time the FISA application was submitted and granted.
• December 7 2017 – Morning. Rep. Jim Jordan grills FBI director Wray about FBI’s use of Dossier to secure FISA warrant. Demands to see FISA Application material.
• December 7 2017 – Afternoon. Judge Contreras recused. Contreras is a FISA Judge.

All hell broke loose after General Flynn’s guilty plea.

Contreras’ replacement, Judge Sullivan, has ordered the Special Counsel to turn over all evidence to the Flynn Team. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree has been alleged.

It is my firm belief that Michael Flynn will be exonerated when all is said and done.

Update: We now know Contreras did not sign FISA per Schiff Democrat Memo which specifies that Page FISA Application and renewals were approved by four different Federal (FISA) Judges and appointed by following: One by Reagan. One by G.H.W. Bush (elder). Two by G.W. Bush (younger).

Contreras was appointed by Obama.

Anne Conway signed a Page FISA Application or Renewal.

Either Raymond Drearie or Martin Feldman (FISA Court 5-19-10 to 5-18-17) signed FISA Application or Renewal.

Two of the following signed FISA Application or renewal: Collyer, Egan, Kugler, Mosman, Saylor.

For more on the Flynn Case see: Something Rotten in Denmark – The Michael Flynn Case.

February 14, 2017 – A New York Times article, Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence by Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo.

This is an important article. It inadvertently details ongoing FISA Abuse.

Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

This would indicate early to mid-2016. Podesta’s emails were obtained in early March 2016 through a simple phishing attempt. In April 2016, the DNC realized there had been a serious compromise of their security.

The FBI’s Counterintelligence Investigation into Trump-Russia ties began on July 31, 2016.

This is a critical distinction. The FISA Warrant was not granted until October 21, 2016.

The article is actually describing the illegal use of Section 702 data.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

These articles are carefully crafted. Accusations and allegations first. A meaningful clarification further down.

The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump.

The call logs and intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information that the F.B.I. is sifting through.

The intercepted calls are different from the wiretapped conversations last year between Michael T. Flynn…and Sergey I. Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador.

The National Security Agency, which monitors the communications of foreign intelligence services, initially captured the calls between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russians as part of routine foreign surveillance.

Section 702 Surveillance.

After that, the F.B.I. asked the N.S.A. to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted communications that had not been analyzed.

The NSA captures communications directly from the Internet backbone using upstream collection. This raw data is stored in the NSA databases.

The FBI was using private contractors to search the NSA databases using “To”, “From and “About” queries. “About” queries are the most intrusive (more here). The FBI was giving these contractors access to the NSA database through FBI entry points.

For an examination of the FISA Abuse committed by the DOJ’s National Security Division and the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division see: The Uncovering – Mike Rogers’ Investigation, Section 702 FISA Abuse & the FBI.

March 1, 2017 – A New York Times article Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking by Matthew Rosenberg, Adam Goldman and Michael Schmidt.

This article is nothing short of amazing.

It quite literally describes the Obama Administrations efforts at disseminating illegally gained intelligence throughout the Intelligence Community.

If one reads between the lines of this article and the February 14th article directly preceding, a rough outline of what really transpired is obtained.

Recall the January 12, 2017 article, NSA Gets More Latitude to Share Intercepted Communications. That event heralded the shift from gathering information to sharing information. This article illustrates the fulfillment of that shift:

In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.

Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators.

At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government — and, in some cases, among European allies.

The opposite happened with the most sensitive intelligence, including the names of sources and the identities of foreigners who were regularly monitored. Officials tightened the already small number of people who could access that information.

Damaging raw intelligence was being widely disseminated. But sources of that information were being protected and restricted…

More than a half-dozen current and former officials described various aspects of the effort to preserve and distribute the intelligence, and some said they were speaking to draw attention to the material and ensure proper investigation by Congress. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information.

Efforts to preserve the intelligence continued until the administration’s final hours. This was partly because intelligence was still being collected and analyzed.

European allies were starting to pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries.

In the weeks before the assessment was released in January, the intelligence community combed through databases for an array of communications and other information — some of which was months old by then – and began producing reports.

If you’ve not read these reports, I encourage you to do so. They can be found here. They are almost laughable. I’m not the only one with a low opinion of the ICA.

From the House Intelligence Committee’s Final Findings:

Finding #16: The Intelligence Community Assessment judgments on Putin’s strategic intentions did not employ proper analytic tradecraft.

I’ve written about a March 2, 2017 interview with Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas several times. In the interview, Farkas detailed how the Obama Administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump Team:

I was telling the Hill people “Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can” before Obama leaves the administration.

The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence.

That’s why you have the leaking.

Note that Farkas emphasizes “how we knew” not “what we knew”. This is a crucial distinction.

If you have a moment give the interview a watch. It’s short. The hubris is amazing.

March 20, 2017 – A Washington Post article, FBI Director Comey Confirms Probe of Possible Coordination Between Kremlin and Trump Campaign by Ellen Nakashima, Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett.

Before proceeding, I remind you of a direct quote from Devin Nunes regarding the Electronic Communication and the FBI Investigation:

We now know that there was no official intelligence that was used to start this investigation.

Comey finally confirms the July 31, 2016 FBI Counterintelligence Investigation:

FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged Monday that his agency is conducting an investigation into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign in a counterintelligence probe that could reach all the way to the White House and may last for months.

The extraordinary disclosure came near the beginning of a sprawling, 5½ -hour public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee in which Comey also said there is “no information” that supports President Trump’s claims that his predecessor ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the election campaign.

Comey repeatedly refused to answer whether specific individuals close to the president had fallen under suspicion of criminal wrongdoing, “so we don’t wind up smearing people” who may not be charged with a crime.

The FBI traditionally does not disclose the existence of an investigation, “but in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest,” Comey said, “it may be appropriate to do so.”

Comey also said he was authorized by the Justice Department to confirm the existence of the wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the electoral process.

Comey said that the investigation began in late July and that for a counterintelligence probe, “that’s a fairly short period of time.”

March 20, 2017 – A New York Times article, Comey Confirms F.B.I. Inquiry on Russia; Sees No Evidence of Wiretapping by Matthew Rosenberg, Emmarie Huetteman and Michael S. Schmidt:

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, publicly confirmed an investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election and whether associates of the president were in contact with Moscow.

Mr. Comey also said the F.B.I. had “no information” to support President Trump’s allegation that Barack Obama wiretapped him.

The F.B.I. is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government — and whether there was any coordination, Mr. Comey said.

“Our ability to share details with Congress and the American people is limited when those investigations are still open, which I hope makes sense. We need to protect people’s privacy. We need to make sure we don’t give other people clues as to where we are going.”

I can’t even…

Mr. Comey told lawmakers that the investigation began in July, but he conceded that he had only “recently” briefed congressional leaders on the existence of the F.B.I. investigation. Asked why he had waited so long, he said, “Because of the sensitivity of the matter.”

This admission proves crucial.

It also reveals FBI Counterintelligence Head Bill Priestap. I first highlighted the exchange in a May 2017 post. An excerpt:

STEFANIK: If the open investigation began in July and the briefing of congressional leadership only occurred recently, why was there no notification prior to the recent — to the past month?

COMEY: I think our decision was it was a matter of such sensitivity that we wouldn’t include it in the quarterly briefings.

STEFANIK: So when you state our decision is that your decision? Is that usually your decision what gets briefed in those quarterly updates?

COMEY: No, it’s usually the decision of the head of our counter- intelligence division.

Per Comey’s testimony, Bill Priestap was responsible for making the decision not to inform Congressional leadership of the FBI’s July 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation.

Individuals directly below Priestap (Strzok) and above Priestap (McCabe) have been ensnared by the Inspector General’s Investigation.

I originally made the case that it was around this period Priestap began to cooperate with the Inspector General’s Investigation. I have come to suspect that Priestap, like Director Rogers, may have been aligned against Brennan, Clapper and Comey from the beginning.

• Where is Bill Priestap – FBI’s Counterintelligence Head – Dec 28 2017
• FBI Counterintelligence Head Bill Priestap – A Cooperating Witness – Feb 11 2018
• Is Bill Priestap a White Hat – April 18, 2018

One final item of note from the Times article:

Daniel C. Richman, a longtime confidant of Mr. Comey’s and a professor at Columbia University, defended Mr. Comey. “There is no fair comparison between announcing a material status change in an investigation that you publicly declared to be closed — in an announcement the public can be expected to rely on — and speaking about investigative moves, or nonmoves, in a covert national security investigation,” Mr. Richman said.

Richman is the individual to whom Comey would later leak his Memos. Richman then leaked the Memos to the NY Times. Comey later testified he did this to obtain the appointment of Special Counsel.

Note: Brennan, during May 23, 2017 testimony, would specifically state how he notified the Gang of Eight during August and September of 2016:

BRENNAN: Through the so-called Gang-of-Eight process we kept congress apprised of these issues as we identified them. Again, in consultation with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional leadership.

Brennan testified about two months after Comey – and threw the FBI Director under the Congressional bus.

March 30, 2017 – A Vanity Fair article, How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier by Howard Blum.

This article, while full of misrepresentations, chronicles the actions taken by Steele and Fusion GPS and might be worthy of a skeptical read:

[Simpson] made a call to London, to a partner at Orbis he had worked with in the past, an ex-spy who knew where all the bodies were buried in Russia.

As Steele threw himself into his new mission, he could count on an army of sources whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the years.

“Speaking in confidence to a compatriot,” the talkative Source E “admitted there was a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership.”

Steele didn’t speak with Source E. Steele spoke to a third party who said he spoke with Source E.

Steele dutifully filed his first incendiary report with Fusion on June 20 [2016].

While he kept working his sources in the field and continued to shoot new memos to Simpson, he settled on a plan of covert action.

The FBI’s Eurasian Joint Organized Crime Squad was a particularly gung-ho team with whom Steele had done some heady things in the past.

When he began mulling whom to turn to, Steele thought about his tough-minded friends on the [FBI] Eurasian squad. And fortuitously, he discovered, as his scheme took on a solid operational commitment, that one of the agents was now assigned to the bureau office in Rome. By early August, a copy of his first two memos were shared with the F.B.I.’s man in Rome.

Steele had been friendly with this FBI team for some time – and had worked with them.

Note: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland may have received the Dossier prior to FBI Leadership. See: New Details of Victoria Nuland’s Role in the Steele Dossier.

With Simpson now on board, in effect, as co-conspirator and a shrewd facilitator, Steele met with a reporter.

In early October [2016], on a trip to New York, Steele sat down with David Corn, the 58-year-old Washington-bureau chief of Mother Jones.

In early November [2016], Corn shared a bit of what he knew with Julian Borger, of The Guardian. And Simpson, during a sandwich lunch with Paul Wood in the BBC’s Washington radio studio, reached into his briefcase and handed over to the British journalist a redacted version of Steele’s initial report.

A lot of stories seem to originate from that Dossier…

Late November [2016] in Nova Scotia, about 300 deep thinkers—a collection of academics, government officials, corporate executives, and journalists from 70 countries—settled in for a couple of ruminative days at the annual Halifax International Security Forum.

Senator John McCain and David J. Kramer, a former State Department official whose bailiwick was Russia…found themselves huddling with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia.

Sir Andrew knew Steele well.

Had Sir Andrew arrived in Halifax on his own covert mission? Was it just an accident that his conversation with Senator McCain happened to meander its way to the findings in Steele’s memos?

“The issue of Donald Trump and Russia was very much in the news and it was natural to talk about it.” And he added, “We spoke about how Mr. Trump may find himself in a position where there could be an attempt to blackmail him.

Kramer flew out of Washington and landed early the next morning at Heathrow. [Kramer and Steele] talked for hours. And Steele passed him his report.

On December 9 [2016], McCain sat in the office of F.B.I. director James Comey and, with no other aides present, handed him the typed pages.

Slightly reminiscent of Loretta Lynch’s meeting with Bill Clinton…

There were consequences. In the waning days of the Obama administration, both the president and congressional leaders were briefed on the contents of the Steele memos. And in early January, at the end of an intelligence briefing at Trump Tower on Russia’s interference in the presidential election conducted by the nation’s top four intelligence officials, the president-elect was presented with a two-page summary of Steele’s allegations.

And with that mind-boggling moment as a news peg, the dominoes began to fall with resounding thuds.

Steele’s credentials were the real thing and, apparently, impressive enough to scare the hell out of James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, James Comey, John Brennan, the C.I.A. director, and Admiral Mike Rogers, the N.S.A. director. How else can one explain their collective decision to pass on the still-unverified dossier to the president and the president-elect?

Note: NSA Director Rogers was not aligned with Brennan, Clapper and Comey. Rogers refused to go along with the Intelligence Community Assessment – which contains one significant caveat:

CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has only moderate confidence.

Rogers stated in Senate hearing testimony that his confidence did not reach even this threshold:

I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy, I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations and in the end I made that call.…It didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources.

DNI Clapper tried to have Rogers removed from the NSA in October 2016 – and failed.

If you have doubts regarding Admiral Rogers see: The Uncovering – Mike Rogers’ Investigation, Section 702 FISA Abuse & the FBI.

April 4, 2016 – A New York Times article, Russian Spies Tried to Recruit Carter Page Before He Advised President Trump by Adam Goldman.

One week after this article was written, the Times would report the FBI had obtained a FISA Warrant on Page.

Russian intelligence operatives tried in 2013 to recruit an American businessman and eventual foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who is now part of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia’s interference into the American election.

The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.

Page’s role may have been somewhat different than the Times article suggests.

During testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, the following exchange occurred between Trey Gowdy and Page (transcript):

GOWDY: I’m just wondering if you can recall whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have interviewed you in 2016?

PAGE: During that case related to Mr. Podobnyy, where – which was also illegally leaked, that I was indeed Male No. 1, someone leaked that to Politico and ABC News in April – I had a meeting in the U.S. District Court, Southern District in New York – or the U.S. Attorney’s Office there on the criminal side – and I spoke with them about that then.

Page is referring to a March 2016 meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding the Evgeny Buryakov case.

Page was providing testimony against Podobnyy in the Buryakov case.

Page also spoke with someone from the FBI regarding that case. This was the last time Page would speak with the FBI.

The Buryakov case began in 2012.

From the U.S. Attorney’s press release:

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and John P. Carlin, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, announced that EVGENY BURYAKOV, pled guilty today to conspiring to act in the United States as an agent of the Russian Federation.

BURYAKOV worked in New York with at least two other SVR agents, Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy.

The FBI obtained the recordings after Sporyshev attempted to recruit an FBI undercover employee (“UCE-1”), who was posing as an analyst from a New York-based energy company.

Some evidence suggests, but does not prove, that Page was UCE-1. Regardless, Page remained involved in some form through the resolution of the case on May 25, 2016.

An attachment to Page’s Congressional transcript is a September 25, 2016 letter to FBI Director Comey from Page, who is requesting an end to the FBI Inquiry into his 2016 trip to Russia. He closes with this:

Having interacted with members of the U.S. Intelligence Committee including the FBI and CIA for many decades, I appreciate the limitations on your staff’s time and resources. Although I have not been contacted by any member of your team in recent months, I would eagerly await their call to discuss any final questions they might have.

Page was never contacted.

On October 21, 2016, the FBI obtained a FISA Title I Warrant listing Page as an “agent of a foreign power”.

Page has never been charged with anything. It’s unlikely he ever will be charged. Nevertheless, Page remains something of an enigma.

In my opinion, Page presented a opportunistic situation for the FBI to obtain a FISA Warrant.

As there was no official intelligence used in opening the July 2016 Investigation, the FBI desperately needed a FISA Warrant.

Page was the pathway to fulfilling that goal.

Bharara was fired by President Trump. My guess is we will hear more on Bharara in the future.

Carlin, who abruptly resigned just prior to the FISA Application, had a pivotal role in FISA Abuse committed by the DOJ’s National Security Division and the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. Without his actions it’s unlikely a FISA warrant would have been granted. More on this shortly.

Update: We now know Contreras did not sign FISA per Schiff Democrat Memo which specifies that Page FISA Application and renewals were approved by four different Federal (FISA) Judges and appointed by following: One by Reagan. One by G.H.W. Bush (elder). Two by G.W. Bush (younger).

Contreras was appointed by Obama.

Anne Conway signed a Page FISA Application or Renewal.

Either Raymond Drearie or Martin Feldman (FISA Court 5-19-10 to 5-18-17) signed FISA Application or Renewal.

Two of the following signed FISA Application or renewal: Collyer, Egan, Kugler, Mosman, Saylor.

April 6, 2017 – A New York Times Article, CIA Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed by Eric Lichtblau.

This article loosely details the efforts of CIA Director Brennan to instigate the FBI Investigation and establish the Trump-Russia Narrative.

Brennan activities started no later than Spring 2016 – but probably began in late 2015.

Again, there was no official intelligence contained in the Electronic Communication (EC).

The EC was used to start the FBI’s July 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation.

The C.I.A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say.

The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C.I.A. and counterparts at the F.B.I., where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected.

The split between the FBI and CIA is of interest. There’s been repeated references to this.

In late August — 10 weeks before the election — John O. Brennan, then the C.I.A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia’s election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break.

In the briefings, the C.I.A. said there was intelligence indicating not only that the Russians were trying to get Mr. Trump elected but that they had gained computer access to multiple state and local election boards in the United States since 2014.

These briefings were directly related to the FBI’s July 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation. Again, no official intelligence was used to open this investigation.

Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election. The F.B.I. and two congressional committees are now investigating that claim.

In the August briefing for Mr. Reid, the two former officials said, Mr. Brennan indicated that the C.I.A., focused on foreign intelligence, was limited in its legal ability to investigate possible connections to Mr. Trump. The officials said Mr. Brennan told Mr. Reid that the F.B.I., in charge of domestic intelligence, would have to lead the way.

Days later, Mr. Reid wrote to James B. Comey, director of the F.B.I. without mentioning the C.I.A. briefing.

My suspicion is this: Brennan was pushing a reluctant Comey to initiate an FBI Investigation based on reports that were unsubstantiated and possibly manufactured. Reports that came far outside official intelligence channels – and likely originated with a select few British Intelligence officials.

For more on Brennan’s Role see:

• The Nunes Interview – “No Official Intelligence Used” & Problems for Brennan
• The Electronic Communication, Redacted Names & John Brennan
• John Brennan’s Role in the FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation

April 11, 2017 – A Washington Post article, FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page by Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous.

In this article the existence of the Cater Page October 2016 FISA warrant was first disclosed. At the time of reporting, the article stated the FISA Warrant was obtained in the summer of 2016 – when Page was still part of the Trump Campaign. The article would later be updated as noted below:

The FBI obtained a secret court order in October 2016 to monitor the communications of a former adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.

As we shall see shortly, the Schiff Memo indicates there was not probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.

The counterintelligence investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. elections began in July, officials have said. The FBI also began investigating Page in July as part of the probe, officials said.

The officials spoke about the court order on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of a counterintelligence probe.

The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.

I can’t wait to see the actual FISA Applications.

The application also showed that the FBI and the Justice Department’s national security division have been seeking since July to determine how broad a network of accomplices Russia enlisted in attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election, the officials said.

Correction: This story has been updated to note that government investigators obtained a FISA warrant on Carter Page in October 2016, not the summer of 2016 as originally reported, and that in October 2016 Page was no longer an adviser to the Trump campaign.

There is a lengthy story that lies behind all this – and it’s one of the keys to understanding what occurred.

Here is a timeline of occurrences.

• November 2015-April 2016 – The FBI and DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD) use private contractors to access raw FISA information using “To” and “From” FISA-702(16) & “About” FISA-702(17) queries.
• March 2016 – NSA Director Rogers becomes aware of improper access to raw FISA data.
• April 2016 – Rogers orders the NSA compliance officer to run a full audit on 702 NSA compliance.
• April 18 2016 – Rogers shuts down FBI/NSD contractor access to the FISA Search System. The compliance audit continues.
• September 26 2016 – DOJ’s NSD Head John Carlin files the Government’s proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications. The filing does not disclose the FISA Abuses. Carlin is aware of Rogers’ compliance review. The 2016 certifications are scheduled for Court approval on October 26, 2016.
• September 27 2016 – Carlin announces he is resigning. Mary McCord will later assume his position.
• October 15, 2016 – Carlin formally leaves the NSD.
• Mid-October 2016 – DNI Clapper submits a recommendation to the White House that Director Rogers be removed from the NSA.
• October 20 2016 – Rogers is briefed by the NSA compliance officer on the Section 702 NSA compliance audit and “About” query violations.
• October 21 2016 – Rogers shuts down all “About Query” activity. Rogers reports the activity to DOJ and prepares to go before the FISA Court.
• October 21 2016 – DOJ & FBI seek and receive a Title I FISA probable cause order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. At this point, the FISA Court is unaware of the Section 702 violations.
  
• October 24 2016 – Rogers verbally informs the FISA Court of Section 702(17) violations.
• October 26 2016 – Rogers formally informs the FISA Court of 702(17) violations in writing.
• October 26, 2016 – The FISA Court refuses to formalize the 2016 Section 702 certifications. A complete overhaul of Section 702 processes ensues.

The FBI and DOJ’s NSD were quite literally racing against Rogers’ Investigation in order to obtain a FISA Warrant on Carter Page.

Carlin specifically didn’t disclose his knowledge of FISA Abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications so as not to raise suspicions at the FISA Court pre-FISA Warrant.

For the complete story see: The Uncovering – Mike Rogers’ Investigation, Section 702 FISA Abuse & the FBI.

April 12, 2017 – A New York Times article, Court Approved Wiretap on Trump Campaign Aide Over Russia Ties by Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo:

The Justice Department obtained a secret court-approved wiretap last October on Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, based on evidence that he was operating as a Russian agent, a government official said Wednesday.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued the warrant, the official said, after investigators determined that Mr. Page was no longer part of the Trump campaign, which began distancing itself from him in early August. Mr. Page is one of several Trump associates under scrutiny in a federal investigation.

Page left the Trump Campaign on September 26, 2016. He has never been charged with a crime. The FBI did not interview or speak with Page regarding the Warrant. They have not spoken to him since a conversation in March 2016 relating to the Evgeny Buryakov case.

The Schiff Memo unintentionally highlights an interesting point:

Page remained on the radar of Russian intelligence and the FBI. In 2013, prosecutors indicted three other Russian spies, two of whom targeted Page for recruitment. The FBI also interviewed Page multiple times about his Russian intelligence contacts, including in March 2016.

Steele’s information about Page was consistent with the FBI’s assessment of Russian intelligence efforts to recruit him and his connections to Russian persons of interest.

Problem One: Steele’s claims were based on hearsay and uncorroborated by either Steele or the FBI.

Problem Two: An attempt at recruitment does not satisfy the FISA threshold:

Steele’s information about Page was consistent with the FBI’s assessment of Russian intelligence efforts to recruit him.

FISA Title I and Title III surveillance require there be probable cause to believe the proposed target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

Problem Three: Page was cooperating with the FBI in the 2013 case – and provided testimony against the three Russians.

The March 2016 meeting relates to a conversation Page had with the FBI regarding the Evgeny Buryakov case.

Page assisted the FBI and prosecutors, providing testimony against the three Russians that Schiff refers to. Buryakov was sentenced in May 2016.

March 2016 was the last time Page would speak with the FBI – although he offered repeatedly to do so.

Back to the article:

The wiretap shows the F.B.I. had strong evidence that a campaign adviser was operating on behalf of Moscow.

The official was not aware of any instances in which an active member of Mr. Trump’s campaign was directly surveilled by American law-enforcement or spy agencies, though some Trump associates were swept up in surveillance of foreign officials.

As part of the investigation, American intelligence agencies have examined wiretapped communications and phone records.

Like the Post article, the Times article originally noted the FISA Warrant was granted in the Summer of 2016.

Ask yourself why this might be. The sources clearly knew the correct date. What was to be gained.

Recall, the FBI Investigation began in July 2016 – while Page was a member of the Trump Campaign.

That investigation was started with no official intelligence.

Update: We now know Contreras did not sign FISA per Schiff Democrat Memo which specifies that Page FISA Application and renewals were approved by four different Federal (FISA) Judges and appointed by following: One by Reagan. One by G.H.W. Bush (elder). Two by G.W. Bush (younger).

Contreras was appointed by Obama.

Anne Conway signed a Page FISA Application or Renewal.

Either Raymond Drearie or Martin Feldman (FISA Court 5-19-10 to 5-18-17) signed FISA Application or Renewal.

Two of the following signed FISA Application or renewal: Collyer, Egan, Kugler, Mosman, Saylor.

April 13, 2017 – A Guardian article, British Spies Were First to Spot Trump Team’s Links With Russia by Luke Harding, Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Nick Hopkins.

This article is deserving of attention – I encourage you to read it in its entirety. Harding details the extensive role that foreign intelligence – likely mostly unofficial – played in the formation of the Agency Task Force and the FBI Investigation. Brennan was at the center of events:

Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material.

Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors.

It is understood that GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information.

Both US and UK intelligence sources acknowledge that GCHQ played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016.

One source called the British eavesdropping agency the “principal whistleblower”.

GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan, passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan. The matter was deemed so sensitive it was handled at “director level”. After an initially slow start, Brennan used GCHQ information and intelligence from other partners to launch a major inter-agency investigation.

Hannigan’s U.S. counterpart was actually NSA Director Rogers – not Brennan. Hannigan would abruptly resign immediately following President Trump’s Inauguration:

One person familiar with the matter said Brennan did not reveal sources but made reference to the fact that America’s intelligence allies had provided information. Trump subsequently learned of GCHQ’s role, the person said.

It’s my suspicion that this article comes closest to describing what actually occurred. Brennan used unofficial intelligence – from unofficial channels – to establish a Multi-Agency Task Force and push the FBI into starting their July 2016 Investigation.

It is entirely possible the Steele Dossier was compiled using this information.

I suspect that we will uncover some meaningful ties between the British, the DNC and the Hillary Campaign.

The article’s author, Luke Harding, had a good relationship with Christopher Steele.

For a more detailed examination of Brennan’s role see: The Electronic Communication, Redacted Names & John Brennan.

June 28, 2017 – A letter from Senator Grassley on June 28, 2017.

This letter is potentially important because it provides one of the few remaining hints as to the existence of a June 2016 FISA Application. At this juncture, I can’t verify with certainty the existence or non-existence of the June ’16 FISA Application.

I believe it’s likely a June 2016 FISA Application occurred. The inability to obtain a FISA Warrant is probably why the FBI opened its investigation with no official evidence. I suspect that unofficial foreign intelligence presented to the FISA Court was deemed too flimsy.

Recall the January 12, 2017 BBC article:

Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the FISA court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.

Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again.

Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.

It’s also plausible that at this juncture – pre-Carter Page allegations – the FBI did not want to subject their intelligence to FISA Court scrutiny.

From Grassley’s letter:

We are writing to request the following related materials: all proposed FISA applications that the FBI and Justice Department submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC); the FISC’s responses to such proposed FISA applications; all final, signed FISA applications that the FBI and the Justice Department submitted to the FISC; and the FISC’s responses to the final, signed applications.

Media reports and the FISC’s 2016 annual report provide reason to believe that, in the course of these investigations, the FBI and Justice Department may have submitted proposed FISA applications that the FISC preliminarily evaluated and stated it would reject, which the FBI and Justice Department then modified and resubmitted.

The FISA Court’s 2016 annual report provide[s] reason to believe…

Media reports also provide reason to believe that the FBI and Justice Department may have submitted some final, signed FISA applications in these matters that the FISC rejected outright. The Committee needs all of these documents to evaluate fully the FBI’s and Justice Department’s actions in this situation.

The 2016 FISC Report, which provides annual statistics about the Court’s actions in general, states that in 2016 the FISC denied nine applications or certifications, and denied in part or modified 365 orders.

The FISA Court very rarely denies FISA Applications. Nine denials appears to be an anomaly.

November 17, 2017 – An article in the Guardian, How Trump Walked Into Putin’s Web by Luke Harding.

This article is a more lengthy recap of the article Harding wrote in April 2017. Remember, Harding is one of the few journalist who has an actual relationship with Steele:

Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than 100 reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the US state department, and sent up to secretary of state John Kerry and assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland.

Jonathan Winer’s fingerprints seem to appear again.

Note: Victoria Nuland may have received the Steel Dossier prior to FBI Leadership. See: New Details of Victoria Nuland’s Role in the Steele Dossier.

In June 2016, Steele typed up his first memo. He sent it to Fusion.

The memo was sensational. There would be others, 16 in all, sent to Fusion between June and early November 2016.

For around six months – during the first half of the year – Steele was able to make inquiries in Russia with relative ease. It got harder from late July, as Trump’s ties to Russia came under scrutiny.

It appears that Steele may have started his work much earlier than widely reported. Perhaps as early as late 2015.

This would directly align with involvement from British Intelligence Agencies: “GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information.”

When I met Steele in December 2016, he gave no hint he had been involved in what was the single most important investigation in decades.

According to Steele’s sources, associates of Trump had held a series of clandestine meetings in central Europe, Moscow and elsewhere with Russian spies.

Steele’s sources offered one final devastating piece of information. They alleged that Trump’s team had co-ordinated with Russia on the hacking operation against Clinton. And that the Americans had secretly co-paid for it.

Steele was adamant that his reporting was credible. The dossier, Steele told friends, was a thoroughly professional job, based on sources who had proven themselves in other areas.

How many people did Steele tell…

According to friends, he assessed that his work on the Trump dossier was 70-90% accurate.

In late 2015 the British eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, was carrying out standard “collection” against Moscow targets.

Nothing unusual here – except that the Russians were talking to people associated with Trump. The precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public, but according to sources in the US and the UK, they formed a suspicious pattern. They continued through the first half of 2016. The intelligence was handed to the US as part of a routine sharing of information.

That summer, GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan.

In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had co-operated over Fifa. His information started to reach the bureau in Washington.

In September, Steele went back to Rome. There he met with an FBI team.

Later that month, Steele had a series of off-the-record meetings with a small number of US journalists.

Comey then announced he was reopening an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. At this point, Steele’s relationship with the FBI broke down.

The FBI had their FISA Warrant. Steele was no longer needed.

December 14, 2017 – A Washington Post article, Doubting the Intelligence, Trump Pursues Putin and Leaves a Russian Threat Unchecked by Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe and Philip Rucker:

In the final days before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, members of his inner circle pleaded with him to acknowledge publicly what U.S. intelligence agencies had already concluded — that Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was real.

This account of the Trump administration’s reaction to Russia’s interference and policies toward Moscow is based on interviews with more than 50 current and former U.S. officials, many of whom had senior roles in the Trump campaign and transition team or have been in high-level positions at the White House or at national security agencies. Most agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject.

A careful trick of words – most quotes referring to current white house officials are positive.

Russia-related intelligence that might draw Trump’s ire is in some cases included only in the written assessment and not raised orally, said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the matter.

“If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference — that takes the PDB off the rails,” said a second former senior U.S. intelligence official.

Always one, then a second, former senior intelligence official…

On Jan. 6, two weeks before Trump was sworn in as president, the nation’s top intelligence officials boarded an aircraft at Joint Base Andrews on the outskirts of Washington to travel to New York for one of the most delicate briefings they would deliver in their decades-long careers.

The mood was heavy. The four men had convened a virtual meeting the previous evening, speaking by secure video conference to plan their presentation to the incoming president of a classified report on Russia’s election interference and its pro-Trump objective.

Note what’s left out – Rogers did not agree with the ICA.

“We were prepared to be thrown out,” Clapper said in an interview.

Following a rehearsed plan, Clapper functioned as moderator, yielding to Brennan and others on key points in the briefing.

Clapper and Comey had initially planned to remain together with Trump while discussing an infamous dossier that included salacious allegations about the incoming president.

We now know this to be false – Clapper had instructed Comey to brief Trump and cover only the “salacious” allegations…

But in the end, Comey felt he should handle the matter with Trump alone, saying that the dossier was being scrutinized exclusively by the FBI. After the room emptied, Comey explained that the dossier had not been corroborated and that its contents had not influenced the intelligence community’s findings.

After leaving the Jan. 6 meeting at Trump Tower, Comey had climbed into his car and began composing a memo.

“I knew there might come a day when I would need a record of what happened, not just to defend myself but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution,” he testified to Congress in June.

From the Tapper/Comey Interview transcript:

TAPPER: Did you brief him about any — any of the other things in the Steele dossier, claims that his associates, Michael Cohen or Paul Manafort, were potentially working with the Russians? Or was it only about the prostitutes?

COMEY: It was only about the salacious part of it.

TAPPER: Why? Why only about that?

COMEY: Because that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about.

The primary intent behind this effort was to look at the carefully created media narrative with the benefit of hindsight. Many of these articles are transparently obvious from our current vantage point, but together they tell a fascinating story.

They also provide a compressed overview of events. A platform from which it becomes easier to see a more complete picture.

In very broad terms, here is what I think probably transpired:

Brennan used unofficial intelligence – from unofficial channels – to establish a Multi-Agency Task Force and push the FBI into starting their July 2016 Investigation.

Some of this unofficial intelligence originated from foreign sources – particularly Britain’s GCHQ.

Some of this unofficial intelligence came through illegal Section 702 searches conducted by the FBI and NSD.

This unofficial intelligence – both foreign and Section 702 – was insufficient to obtain a FISA Warrant.

Early FISA attempts either failed or were simply not attempted due to dubious intelligence sources.

The FBI may have been rightly concerned over inclusion of illegally obtained Section 702 data in early attempts – or potential attempts – to gain a FISA Warrant.

The Steele Dossier would serve as a laundering device for both types of information previously gathered – illegal Section 702 searches and unofficial foreign intelligence.

Information that had been contrived and internal now became independent and external, was neatly packaged and presented back to the FBI as evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

The Dossier allowed the FBI’s hands to appear clean and independent. It allowed Brennan to appear totally removed.

Carter Page’s July 2016 Moscow trip coupled with Page’s involvement in the Buryakov case presented the FBI with a fortuitous and unique opportunity.

The Steele Dossier was re-compiled. Data previously gathered – Section 702 and unofficial foreign intelligence – was combined with allegations relating to Page’s July 2016 Moscow trip and information the FBI held regarding Page’s involvement in the Buryakov case.

The reformulated Dossier was then used to obtain the October 2016 FISA Warrant. Former Deputy Director McCabe testified that without the Steele Dossier no FISA Application would have been attempted.

The FISA Warrant provided retroactive cover for opening the July 2016 FBI Investigation and the illegal Section 702 searches.

Brennan and Clapper then used the Intelligence Community Assessments to push the Russian Narrative so prevalent in 2017.

Concurrently, information from the illegal Section 702 “About” queries was disseminated into intelligence channels and leaked to the media.

I suspect that we will uncover some meaningful ties between the British, the DNC and the Hillary Campaign.

Obama Administration officials and State Department officials were involved as well.

Again, this is the broadest of descriptions. Actual details appear endless. Many more connections will be uncovered.

If you’ve actually managed to make it to the conclusion, I congratulate you. Hopefully, with benefit of hindsight the carefully constructed media narrative is both apparent – and transparent.

A few well placed intelligence officials, a small group of willing FBI officials, Clinton & Obama loyalists, some worried allies – unnerved over the prospect of losing the status quo, a shaky Dossier, and a compliant and complicit group of reporters.

They never imagined Hillary Clinton could lose.

When she did, the hubris remained. They felt certain President Trump would either be impeached or fundamentally wounded. An Administration hobbled by scandal and uncertainty until 2020.

Thankfully, they were wrong.

Inspector General Horowitz is readying his reports – alongside Outside Prosecutor John Huber.

BREAKING: DOJ will make the 6 months of missing texts that were eventually located by IG between Strzok and Page available to Congress sometime tonight or tomorrow, according to sources…developing

— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) April 24, 2018

The Inspector General’s Investigative Phase is mostly completed.

Now comes the dissemination:

• Phase I – The Clinton Email Investigation.
• Phase II – Carter Page FISA Application.
• Phase III – Russia-Trump Investigation.

The first phase of the Inspector General’s Report is scheduled for May.

There will be overlap, but each Phase moves higher up the political echelon. Phase III includes the broader Intelligence Community and may require Congressional Investigation.

Or Special Counsel Intervention.

For more on the Inspector General see:

• The Inspector General’s Quiet Investigation
• An Introduction to Inspector General Michael Horowitz
• Understanding the Inspector General’s Investigation
• Why AG Sessions Chose Outside prosecutors Over a Special Counsel

Ultimately, I believe there are two fundamental stories that will unveil the entirety of what’s transpired in Washington:

1. John Brennan’s dual role – using unofficial intelligence to establish the FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation and using the ICA to push the Trump-Russia Narrative.
2. FISA Abuse committed by the DOJ’s National Security Division and the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.

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