More on Fusion and FISA and the FBI and DOJ
The plot thickens, and it was already plenty thick:
A senior Department of Justice official says he repeatedly and specifically told top officials at the FBI and DOJ about dossier author Christopher Steele’s bias and his employer Fusion GPS’ conflicts of interest, information they kept hidden from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. These conversations involved high-level officials, including some who are now senior officials in the special counsel probe. And the conversations began taking place in the earliest days of August 2016, much earlier than previously revealed to congressional investigators seeking to learn the facts about the FBI’s decision to spy on the Trump campaign.
Bruce Ohr is that “senior Department of Justice official.”
More:
Ohr is an interesting character in the Russia-Trump collusion investigation because his role was unknown for a long time. The former top career official at the Department of Justice was a 27-year veteran with no role in counterintelligence operations. Initially, the FBI and Department of Justice claimed he had no involvement in the probe, despite his marriage to a Fusion GPS contractor. Then they claimed his role was unique and was unknown by others in the department.
It turns out that Ohr kept top officials at both the FBI and Department of Justice apprised of his conversations with Steele, passed along electronic and written materials from multiple Fusion GPS employees, and shared key information that was excluded from the FISA application to the courts…
Ohr claimed he repeatedly made it clear to the FBI that the information was not verified, risked bias, and had been obtained under political circumstances.
He said he was open about his relationship with Steele and Simpson and about the fact his wife was on Simpson’s payroll, working on the same project Steele was. Asked if they were aware of Steele’s bias against Donald Trump, Ohr said “I provided information to the FBI when I thought Christopher Steele was, as I said, desperate that Trump not be elected. So, yes, of course, I provided that to the FBI.”
Sorting out the details of the lies and the truths on this entire “Russia collusion” story has been practically a full-time job. One thing that has been clear for a long long time now is that the FISA application process based on the Steele dossier stank to high heaven.
But is most of America following this outrage, or caring? My answer is “no.”
More from the Hill:
Ohr’s activities, chronicled in handwritten notes and congressional testimony I gleaned from sources, provide the most damning evidence to date that FBI and DOJ officials may have misled federal judges in October 2016 in their zeal to obtain the warrant targeting Trump adviser Carter Page just weeks before Election Day.
They also contradict a key argument that House Democrats have made in their formal intelligence conclusions about the Russia case.
Since it was disclosed last year that Steele’s dossier formed a central piece of evidence supporting the FISA warrant, Justice and FBI officials have been vague about exactly when they learned that Steele’s work was paid for by the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The lies just pile up:
The FBI claimed it was “unaware of any derogatory information” about Steele, that Steele was “never advised … as to the motivation behind the research” but that the FBI “speculates” that those who hired Steele were “likely looking for information to discredit” Trump’s campaign.
Yet, in testimony last summer to congressional investigators, Ohr revealed the FBI and Justice lawyers had no need to speculate: He explicitly warned them…
And yet America has just installed a House determined to cover all of this up and to destroy Trump, which was the original idea in the first place.
It all just leaves your shaking your head in asperation. I told my wife 2 yrs ago that I would give her $50 of my own money if a single one of the Dems and their hanger-on’s were convicted of any crime. Angry does not even come close to how I feel.
“But is most of America following this outrage, or caring?”
They would if it were covered by the so-called MSM.
As John Cardillo pointed out….
“Notice that BuzzFeed’s anonymously sourced story dropped just as Bruce Ohr’s damning on the record testimony was getting traction.”
As John Cardillo pointed out….
“Notice that BuzzFeed’s anonymously sourced story dropped just as Bruce Ohr’s damning on the record testimony was getting traction.”
This has definitely become a pattern. The instant that something comes along that should smack people in the face and get notice, some swill like this magically materializes to suck up all of the oxygen. The proverbial “they” know that the MSM would much rather trumpet the story that’s damning to Trump than one that’s damning to the anti-Trump side; “they” know that the lefty public would much rather hear and believe another story that Trump is evil and guilty and one step from being impeached, than a story that makes the anti-Trump forces look like the corrupt, lying sh1tbags that they are; and “they” know perfectly well that in a few days, when the latest fictional garbage either gets walked back or “corrected” or disappeared, that the LIVs will remember (and believe) the anti-Trump story as initially presented, and not the story “they” don’t want to get out – and never the retraction of the made-up anti-Trump story.
It gets crazier by the hour. I read just today that the DOJ wants to interview employees of the Peruvian embassy in London because of the fake news story printed some time back in the Guardian re Manafort and a vist to Assange, a visit that never happened.
The story was completely fabricated, made up by two clown reporters. The Guardian backed off. Assange threatened to sue the Guardian.
And now the DOJ acts like it believes the original story?
I can’t tell if it’s a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or if the government is completely incompetent, or if everyone in DC really is a self-aggrandizing imbecile. I’m about ready to throw in the towel.
I wish DJT all the luck in the world. But he faces a near impossible task.
I wish DJT all the luck in the world. But he faces a near impossible task.
I agree. He has everyone’s hand against him with few allies, mostly his family. He must have nerves of steel to put up with all the abuse.
I do think that if the Deep State does manage to expel him from the presidency, there will be a violent revolution. Macron is going down that road. The French police have killed a fireman who was wearing a yellow vest.
If that happens, the Administrative State must assume the military will support them. No doubt that is true of Obama’s generals and admirals but they cannot even drive ships through busy shipping lanes.
Meanwhile there are 300 million guns in 100 million hands.
Good work, Neo, on keeping tabs on this.
The Dems and MSM are gambling that the best parts of the web won’t be able to alert enough Americans to matter in elections.
But the web may able to alert enough Americans (esp. in key agencies, e.g. inside the Beltway) that a Counter-Resistance movement may grow, enough to spur major events, incl. Succession movements.
To fair/ knowledgeable people, the Establishment is crapping on its cred.
I am in the middle of Frederick Forsyth’s book “The Fourth Protocol,” about espionage in the middle of the Cold War.
In 1984, all of this looked like fiction.
Excellent book! And ditto the movie, if you can imagine Pierce Brosnan as the bad guy. ;>) And Michael Caine, natch. Congratulations!
And … yes. 1984 in more ways than one. :>(
FWIW – finished the book, excellent conclusion.
The spooks in fiction seem to be far more subtle and intelligent than our present examples.