Devin Nunes’ Promise of Shock!! Shock!! in the Evolving Steele Claims in the Fourth Carter Page FISA Application

As I laid out a few weeks ago, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.

Devin Nunes and the right wing press corps (Catherine HerridgeByron York, Chuck Ross) have now made it clear where Nunes’ games to discredit the Mueller investigation goes next: to claiming that a portion of the Carter Page FISA application say “shocking” things about Christopher Steele and the FBI. That’s based on a letter the House Intelligence Republicans signed inviting President Trump to “declassify and release publicly, and in unredacted form, pages 10-12 and 17-34, along with all associated footnotes, of the third renewal of the FISA application on Mr. Page. That renewal was filed in June 2017 and signed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.”

They’re playing a bit of a game with this, permitting right wing scribes to compare the first and the fourth application as if nothing (including applications signed by people not named Rod Rosenstein) came between.

So what is on pages 10-12 and 17-34? That is certainly a tantalizing clue dropped by the House Intel members, but it’s not clear what it means. Comparing the relevant sections from the initial FISA application, in October 2016, and the third renewal, in June 2017, much appears the same, but in pages 10-12 of the third renewal there is a slightly different headline — “The Russian Government’s Coordinated Efforts to Influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election” — plus a footnote, seven lines long, that was not in the original application.

As for pages 17-34, there appear to be, in the third renewal, new text and footnotes throughout the section headlined “Page’s Coordination with Russian Government Officials on 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Influence Activities.” (That is the same headline as the original application.) The Republican lawmakers ask that it be unredacted in its entirety, suggesting they don’t believe revealing it would compromise any FBI sources or methods.

Clearly, the GOP lawmakers believe pages 10-12 and 17-34 contain critical information, so it seems likely that the release of those pages would affect the current public debate over the FISA application

I guess, in this, they’re working a bit harder than Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows did in their Rosenstein impeachment effort.

As it happens, I’ve done a ridiculously anal 20 page analysis of the application (for the near future, I’m not going to be releasing any of my surveillance analysis publicly; for those interested, let me know separately), so I’ve tracked what changes in each application. So, for example, whereas York suggests that the title in the first section the Republicans want declassified changed in the fourth application, it actually changed in the second, submitted in early January 2017. Here’s how that title looks in each of the four applications, in order (see PDF 8, 93, 191, and 301 for the start of this section in each application).

It’s pretty clear the changes in this section stem in part from a shift to the past tense and an understanding of the extent of Russian interference.

Similarly, while York points to a footnote in the fourth application he claims doesn’t appear in the first, a footnote of similar length, though not the same shape (suggesting slightly different wording) appears in the third application. Here’s how footnote 4 looks in those two applications.

Otherwise, the discussion in applications three and four in this section appears the same. Which is to say that Republicans are trying to suggest this “shocking!!!” content derives from Rosenstein, when in fact much of it was probably approved by Dana Boente. It turns out Nunes’ efforts to discredit Rosenstein are barely more rigorous than Meadows’.

The second section Republicans want selectively declassified pertains to Steele. And there, there are significant changes to the application over the course of the four applications, second only to section where the most changes get made over the course of the four applications, the entirely redacted Section VI (it grows from 3 pages in the first application to 23 in the fourth). The Steele section grows from 7 pages in the first application to 11 in the last, with changes in each application and substantial changes in the last two. Here are all the sections that are new in the fourth, the one the Republicans want declassified:

As a measure of how inattentive the right wing story line is, Byron claims in follow-up reporting that DOJ never told FISC about Steele’s reaction to Jim Comey’s reopening of the Hillary investigation, in spite of unclassified language in footnote 22 (as numbered in the fourth application, though it was added in the second) revealing that,

In or about late October 2016, however, after the FBI Director sent a letter to the U.S. Congress, which stated that the FBI had learned of new information that might be pertinent to an investigation that the FBI was conducting of Candidate #2, Source #1 told the FBI that he/she was frustrated with this action and believed it would likely influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. In response to Source #1’s concerns, Source #1 independently, and against the prior admonishment from the FBI to speak only with the FBI on this matter, released the reporting discussed herein to an identified news organization. Although the FBI continues to assess Source #1’s reporting is reliable, as noted above, the FBI closed Source #1 as an active source. (PDF 320)

Byron appears not to understand that Steele’s response to Comey’s actions on October 28 could not have added bias to his reporting from prior to that date, which is when all of his reports shared formally with the FBI date to (the one other report, dated December 13, was only shared informally).

Whatever the additional caveats on Steele that Nunes is so sure will shock! shock!! the press when all his past predictions of shock have fallen flat, the Minority apparently disagrees. That’s because the Schiff Memo cites precisely the passage that Nunes is so sure will shock us for the following claims:

How odd that the Majority didn’t fight to have these passages, which derive from the passage they claim is so critical to have declassified, declassified in the Schiff Memo (not that I totally buy the Schiff memo on this point either: he claims that Page’s meeting with other key Russians, not the ones Steele described him meeting with, corroborate Steele’s reporting when it doesn’t). Similarly, the Majority also doesn’t want the passages of the fourth application that support this claim to be declassified.

For what it’s worth, a Republican who has reviewed these things told me last week that there was abundant evidence to support the surveillance on Page. So mostly this is just an attempt to beat up the Democrats for the Steele dossier; honest Republicans agree that Page was a legitimate surveillance target.

This is something the right wing press corps is struggling with (the cognitive dissonance among people like Ross would be palpable if logic were a requirement in his work) as much as the left wing, however. It appears increasingly likely that Steele was fed disinformation as a way to confuse the Democrats and ensure any investigation would look at marginal dolts like Page rather than centrally important dolts like Don Jr. I’ll even present a new factoid about how that may have happened in a follow-up.

That doesn’t mean that when the FBI relied on Steele, using the same measure they use for all consultants (past track record), they had reason to know it was disinformation. Rather, it’s yet another indication that Russia was really really intent on making sure it could get Trump elected, via whatever deceit.

But that doesn’t help the GOP claim that Trump isn’t thereby implicated.

Update: Fixed Dana Boente, not Sally Yates, as approving the third application h/t jr.

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82 replies
  1. Peterr says:

    The ease with which Nunes & Co. get debunked on this is mindboggling. It suggest that (a) Nunes, York, et al. are really dumb, (b) Nunes, York, et al. think that the media are really dumb if they expect the media to mindlessly swallow this swill, (c) Nunes, York, et al. think Trump is really dumb and will fall for what they’re selling, or (d) all of the above.

    • Trip says:

      I’m so sick of Nunes. Every time I see his face or his name, in the voice of Jerry Seinfeld, saying “Newman” (only with “Nunes” instead), is how I respond in my head.

    • Charles says:

      Their intended audience doesn’t care about consistency. All that matters is filling airtime. Allegations and speculation, with promises of dramatic action to follow are much more important than verifiable facts. See Whitewater and Benghazi (not to mention Il Rudy) for prior examples.

       

      This is one of the clearest indications that the right-wing media operate as a propaganda system. One day Michael Cohen is a wonderful man. The next he is a pathological liar. As with Comrade Snowball, no one notices.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Perhaps Mr. Nunes is not operating in good faith, any more than is Rudy 911.  Perhaps Mr. Nunes is making shit up in service to an agenda rather than assessing facts and evidence available to him.

    • Ed Walker says:

      I wonder about the staffers who put this garbage on paper. It would be fun to have names to mock on social media.

    • Bob Conyers says:

      It’s worth remember that they’ve had luck with the strategy of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what would stick.

      Swiftboating is one example — it was absolutely vicious, baseless character asassination, but it got treated by the mainstream media as a serious thing that needed to be examined, and it helped Bush a lot.

      The bogus Planned Parenthood sting scheme paid off. The ACORN setup paid off. A lot of these things don’t get any traction, but all it takes is a couple of major actors in the non-rightwing world to buy in, and that can be enough.

      You could argue that the Iraq War is the ultimate example of a crazy theory being bought by the mainstream, or maybe a collection of crazy stories that added up to one big crazy story that was swallowed whole. Nunes lacks Cheney’s ability to build a wholesale fiasco, but it’s hard to argue he’s particularly dumber than James O’Keefe, and look what O’Keefe has managed to drag down.

      • Allison Holland says:

        okeefe could not have succeeded without mcconnells complicitness.  the man behind the curtain has always been the one in front of it. mcconnell is the puppet master. he is the evil that has infected discussion and patriotism all for the sake of denying women choices and to keep the white man on top. and his ultimate belief that resources should be controlled by corporations led by white men. hello justice system goodbye america.

    • Trip says:

      I’d like to know when we drill down to the Kochs, who are playing out a very public break-up with Trump (the monster they created).

    • orionATL says:

      willis –

      here’s my scenario for how the russians got involved directly in the trump campaign:

      1. roger stone looks for a way to help trump do well in the election, if he can win the republican nomination.
      2. stone talks around with former business partner manafort about getting help, including russian help.
      3. stone approaches trump about hiring manafort (say around jan-feb, 2016) and getting some russian help with his campaign.
      4. trump sees merit (personal gain, as always) in the idea and hires manafort in march, 2016.
      5.manafort, thru his employee in ukraine, konstantin kilimnick, a russian with said to have ties to the russian military’s intelligence service, activates a connection with the gru to work in ways helpful to the trump campaign.
      6. march, 2016 gru accesses democratic campaign documents and begins planning a summer/fall military intelligence campaign against the clinton presidential campaign. this includes not only document theft but social media campaigns involving dcleaks and gucifer 2.0.
      7. wikileaks is involved in the anti-democratic party campaign, possibly thru contactvwith stone or thru brexit loyalists.
      8. june 9, 2016 meeting formally cements contract between trump and putin.
      9. as ew preciently pointed out in one of her june 9 posts, gucifer 2.0 becomes active within a week of june 9 meeting (and trump begins his habit of tweeting challenges to “russia”).

      note: #1 implies to me the russians were involved against some republican opponents of trump which may explain the genesis of the steele report (in the jeb bush campaign).

      • Bob Conyers says:

        I think you have some valid points about the campaign, although I am guessing that WW is wondering how much farther back the relationship goes. Was Trump’s birtherism something he was pushing at the recommendation of the Russians, for example?

        • cat herder says:

          Who persuaded Trumpf to call for the death penalty for the Central Park 5? He’s always been an ignorant racist with the mind of a not particularly bright 12-year-old.

        • orionATL says:

          bob c –

          a good point. we know trump and agalarov and son + rob goldstein go back at least to july 2013. it may go further back with profers of russian gov’t subsidized moscow development.

          i took advantage of willis’ comment to sketch something i’d been thinking about for a while. thanks to w. for that opportunity :)

  2. NorskieFlamethrower says:

    Of course the neo-Nazi strategy is to sow confusion, anger and chaos in order to exhaust the rational audience. They don’t need many dumb media, only a bunch of compromised access media and their corporate business managers.

    • Bruce Olsen says:

      As, ummm unhelpful as the access media is, they aren’t keeping Trump supporters inflamed. Trump supporters don’t pay any attention to Haberman et al.

      • Trip says:

        They do to the extent that Trump calls them (NYT) “Failing” and “Fake News”. However, the effect of normalization of the administration on the rest of the populous is a form of confusion. It stretches beyond fact and reality.

      • Peterr says:

        Right. Team Trump uses Haberman to appeal is to the centrist acolytes of High Broderism, lovers of both-sides-do-it/fair-and-balanced stories, and media types who think Bob Woodward continues to walk on water. Any time Trump can get someone in the media to reinforce the message “Please don’t be so rude as to demand anything from the president” he’s happy.

        OTOH, for ginning up the base, Team Trump has Hannity.

        • Bob Conyers says:

          I think the specific value of the Haberman/Schmidt articles is they help Trump in his outreach to the pinstriped GOP donors. It’s a way to signal the Mnuchin types that he’s not so bad and worth a continued investment. They’re also topic changers that help steal front page space away from things that really hurt Trump.

          I also think that the NY Times is largely OK with Trump bashing them, because it helps the market themselves as far more agressive and honest than they really are. I think that’s a big reason why Baquet is pretty sanguine about it all — Trump is good for business, and Trump’s attacks give him cover for every article he runs normalizing Nazis and defending Alan Dershowitz from Vinyard McCarthys.

           

        • Peterr says:

          Speaking of Woodward . . .

          Veteran journalist Bob Woodward is working on a book that will detail the inner-workings of the Trump White House set for release before November’s midterm elections.

          The book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” is set to be released on Sept. 11, according to the book’s Amazon.com pre-order page.

          The book “reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies,” according to Amazon.

          • Rusharuse says:

            And I just got “Dirty Rubles”. I need a second job to feed my Trump literature addiction. (and bobblehead collection).

          • Trip says:

            Woodward has been skating on his 70’s reputation for decades, turning instead to access journalism, while Bernstein still does muckraking with little fanfare.

            • Bob Conyers says:

              Considering how he was spun for Bush At War in the runup to the Iraq invasion, I’m not hopeful for this. Woodward’s biggest problems come from his insistence on writing a coherent narrative when people are lying and many secrets are being kept. He does a lousy job of probing and sowing doubt in official stories, which is a vastly more valuable exercise.

          • orionATL says:

            yes, yes. bob woodward – an ass-kissing access journalist carries his skills deep into history writing. woodward will do what michael wolffe has already done, but he will do it for those more squemish and demanding about their presidential hiistory.

            bob woodward, the thinking ma ‘s michael wolffe. the foreever scribe of hot-selling psuedohistory about exploitative republican presidents.

  3. Avattoir says:

    On whether Nunes’ LT Trump dated 14 June 2018 is a Mess, a Hot Mess, or a Hot Mess of Mess:

    1. Mess:

    At one point it identifies things being done or sought by the HJC as ‘by’ or ‘on behalf of’ the HJC’s Republican members. Otherwise it conflates the HJC’s Republican members with “the Committee”.

    2. Hot Mess:

    It consistently characterizes things “found” by the majority as ‘findings’ of “the Committee”, then spins them further. It doesn’t even mention the Schiff memo and never once refers to any contrary finding in that.

    2. Hot Mess of Mess:

    At the bottom of page 1, it refers to an “enclose[d]” letter to
    “the Presiding Judge of the FISC asking her to conduct an investigation into DOJ’s conduct in obtaining the FISA warrant and three subsequent renewals”.

    From “her”, I assume the enclosure is a Nunes letter addressed to Judge Rosemary Collyer. Quite apart from whether her ‘presidence’ would bear such a task (IMO it would not.), and also the pretty clear indication from her letter to Nunes early this year that the proper office to address the issues is the DoJ, Judge Collyer was among the 4 judges who granted the authorizations that Nunes et al seek thrown into the barrel.

    I suppose Collyer could, purely as a matter of academic interest, critique and second guess hersel; but she lacks jurisdiction to subject her own rulings to her own judicial review (and therefore formal scrutiny). Moreover, she has no jurisdiction at all to sit in review of, or critique, investigate or scrutinize, the conduct of their duties by her 3 fellow members of the court.

    I note that Herridge’s piece for Fox News was published on Sunday, July 22, over 5 weeks after the date of Nunes’ LT Trump; that York’s piece for the Wash. Examiner is dated Sunday, July 29 at just before 11 a.m.; and Ross’ piece for TDC is also dated July 29 but after 7 p.m.

    So how about this? The Herridge piece was timed to work somehow in conjunction with the Meadows/Jordan bill of excommunication impeachment of Rosenstein, while the 2 pieces that came out yesterday were timed in response to Nunes seeking to salvage something from his letter writing campaign – yet should suffer much the same fate because they’re almost as much of a Hot Mess as the Hot Mess of Mess included in the same letter.

    • bmaz says:

      Eh, no.

      You have been jawing relentlessly about delay as to the EDVA trial. This is merely a discovery deadline as to the DDC trial. There is quite a difference.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        You mean it involves a different federal district court, a different judge, and different facts, circumstances and criminal charges?

      • cat herder says:

        bmaz, it’s obviously a code that only looks wrong to the uninitiated. Real deep technical 1337 h4xx0r stuff. To disrupt the, you know, Metadata.

        • Trip says:

          Meh, SLF is harmless. Not a troll, just a little off in space sometimes. There have been some good comments, mixed in with cryptic things. Am I off about this? I don’t mind SLF.

          • Avattoir says:

            FWIW, that’s my take as well on SLF.

            (Also FWIW: sometime after SLF’s flivver first alighted on Planet E, making us all conscious of … it, I started noticing a LOT of variations on the online handle SLF at the blogorbital intersection of politics & tech.

            Am I right in thinking there’s some scifi/weirdfic author or subgenre that the use of the name & variations is reffing?)

             

          • orionATL says:

            my feeling exactly trip.

            it takes a lot of courage to say what you said when it involves going against a strong undercurrent of social pressure from one’s own group.

            personally, i do not like to see others picking on individuals who i consider doing their own thing in an eccentric but well-intentioned way. the opposite of this eccentricity is group-think which should be a far greater fear here, in my view.

            not to mention troll identification and dismissing which has been a near-scandal forever.

            rather than focusing on eccentricity, in my view the model needs to be “don’t lead the trolls on” rather than “don’t feed the trolls”

            • cat herder says:

              I… don’t disagree with any of the above comments. SLF is much improved from the time when it (no offense, I don’t know non-Earth beings’ genders, or if they even have what we would call… oh, never mind)… from the time when it would show up and dump out 20 random off-topic comments as if this were their personal twitter feed. The “Metadata!” comments are maybe starting to ease up too.

              • orionATL says:

                that too. some english language discipline has been imposed. that’s good because it helps me understand better.

                personally, i confess to having written in a semi-coder style at times in earler days. on review, i was not pleased with my impatientence and defacto inarticulateness. i came to consider it the worst kind of stream-of-conciousness writing.

              • SpaceLifeForm says:

                Re: the OT

                Back then, I would note OT because it was not clearly on topic to the article. I was pointing out ‘stuff’ that now, later in time, can actually be relevant to the now current events.

          • SpaceLifeForm says:

            The nick is old. It is about two things:

            Everyone of you is a Space Life Form.

            And it is about viewing the planet Earth from the perspective of Outer Space.

            Looking at what is happening on planet Earth from an outside perspective.

            Viewing the big picture from different angles.

            Thinking outside the box.

            The box that you can not escape from due to gravity.

            • bmaz says:

              Jesus. You had a litany, and a broad spectrum, of people here come to bat for you.

              And your response is some crap that even Jefferson Airplane wouldn’t have uttered in their heroin addiction days? Stop.

              • orionATL says:

                bmaz –

                be a politician. count your votes and pick another fight :))

                when are we going to get to enjoy again your phenomenal feel and memory for, what shall i call it, “folk music” in the very broadest defnition. can’t you put to together a short commentary and digital dj show on a saturday or sunday evening. i don’t mean a hundred old hits – maybe just 4 or 6. what a treat. what a sellout post that might be, especially with your comments on memories.

                nothing works better with serious politics than really pointed “serious” music.

  4. Bruce Olsen says:

    @trip @peterr I’m not as certain that centrists believe that much of what Maggie and her ilk say. There’s a lot of disapproval floating around, so even through her impact is > 0, I wonder how much. And if Mueller produces anything nearly as damning as the public evidence alone shows, I’d bet on a quantum drop in support from the center. Plus some of the access types will change their tunes, so I’m hoping the lasting damage will be minimal.

  5. Willis Warren says:

    Trip, I’m skeptical of any stories that the Kochs have turned on tRUmp. They may be publicly distancing themselves from him, but their ads are running nonstop right now attacking democrats

    • Trip says:

      Of course. Evil likes to disguise itself.  Besides, they’d be more than happy to have Pence. How about the brass balls they have to float that they’d support Dems who share their “values”?  Don’t be surprised if some Dems take them up on their offer. Cuomo did a couple of years ago. The Kochs are running our government. They are the Dr Frankensteins of the monster. Never let them forget it. Storm the castle.

  6. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Self-destruction is one of Donald Trump’s defining traits.  Had he not come from money, he would have ended up homeless or a low-level wannabe for some other crime family.

    The Don amply demonstrated that yesterday.  He turned on the “total joke” Koch brothers.

    The Don relied on Mickey Cohen, now he relies on Rudy Giuliani.  But he thinks it is the Koch brothers who have a “highly overrated” political network.  We’re about to find out.  (But not until after the Don lowers capital gains rates by executive fiat.) Ashes and dust to follow.

    • Trip says:

      Split between 2 tweets, on the Kochs:

      They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made…..

      — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018

      ….them richer.

      And so Trump gave away the game. Everywhere else wages remain flat and corporations are buying back shares, not investing in employees. But the Kochs are richer, and that’s all that really matters. I vacillate between Trump being so obtuse, he doesn’t realize how much he reveals, or that he is actively and knowingly self-sabotaging his presidency. Of course, there is another option: that the feud is a charade to hoodwink the people into believing that the Kochs don’t love Trump, even though they created him, and that Trump is a renegade against the man.  Probably the latter.

      • Bob Conyers says:

        My take is that they made the same mistake with the GOP’s direction (and their own) that a lot of other people did. They got stuck in the short term and never thought through whether it was sustainable, or what would happen when it ran into a dead end. Most likely they’ll be gone before the biggest breakdown happens, much like with climate change.

        But for now, they’re seeing that after they wiped out the diversity of opinion in the GOP, they have nowhere else to go. They’re probably in a worse place than they were back when they gave up on building an independent libertarian party and first started courting the GOP.

        This is largely a puff piece about their supposed transition plans:

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/07/30/daily-202-the-koch-network-down-a-brother-emphasizes-its-staying-power/5b5e88df1b326b0207955e23/

        What still comes through all of the happy talk is that this is not an organization that is seriously grappling with its future, they have no strong plan for the next generation, and they’ve pretty much given up on even pretending to have new ideas.

         

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Sustainable for whom?  The Kochs’ objectives need be sustainable only for them.

        The Kochs are winning.  Trump, intending to look like a maverick Arizona Senator, disses them, but only after doing their work for them.

        Trump takes credit for helping his principals, then acts like a typical overambitious agent/servant.  He mistakes himself for a principal rather than an agent for their interests.

        Trump can be useful, but he’s known his entire career that he’s not one of them.  Nor is he a Main Street American.  He’s not even capable of understanding them beyond being able to deliver a handful of punchlines that echo their concerns while doing nothing to promote them.  Trump is another rich kid, born on third base, who thinks he’s the batter who hit a triple.

        • Trip says:

          Yep, this comment is everything^.

          Their continued governance (which used to be the “shadow government”, but is now out nakedly exposed) is predicated upon restrictions on voting (if any at all), slight of hand (making the tea party), and the masses being composed of servants and slaves with no protections, no social safety nets, and no say.

          • SpaceLifeForm says:

            The love of money is the root of all evil.

            When one is in total control, one has to fix all of the problems. Kochs, Mercers think they can just buy what they want. Until they finally realize no one is around to do any productive work.

            As Linus Torvalds would say:

            When you break it, you get to pick up all of the pieces.

            • Trip says:

              I’m not a proponent of ageism. Many fine old folks with wisdom, kindness, concern beyond self and big hearts.

              But the Kochs are nasty old rancid farts. They, along with Exxon have spent years and tons of money denying global warming/climate change.

              They are going out in a bang, there will be no pieces to pick up and recover, if they continue to have their way. Every pristine place on earth is seen through the prism of profit only. They don’t GAF because when they die, the world is over. The world revolves around them and their wants; nothing else matters.

              The clock is ticking.

        • Hurltim says:

          “Trump is another rich kid, borne on third base, who thinks he’s hit a triple.”

          —Priceless

  7. Trip says:

    Flynn, Comey, and Mueller: What Trump Knew and When He Knew It

    Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller—including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides—provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice…I have learned that a confidential White House memorandum, which is in the special counsel’s possession, explicitly states that when Trump pressured Comey he had just been told by two of his top aides—his then chief of staff Reince Priebus and his White House counsel Don McGahn—that Flynn was under criminal investigation….the most compelling evidence that the president may have obstructed justice appears to come from his own most senior and loyal aides. The greatest threat to his presidency is not from his enemies, real or perceived, but from his allies within the White House.

    https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/31/what-trump-knew-and-when-he-knew-it/

    • orionATL says:

      what trump knew and when did he know it:

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/world/europe/trump-intelligence-russian-election-meddling-.html

      “… WASHINGTON — Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.

      The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.

      Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.

      The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear than this week… ”

      it seems too obvious to require saying, but it should be clear that with this information in hand, trump realized he must immediately woo comey and the intelligence chiefs. when that failed, trump moved to fire comey and began his attack on the fbi and the department of justice. that attack has continued relentlessly to the present with help from nunes and tolerating support from speaker ryan.

      trump must have worried, even before his inauguration, that his deal with putin had been uncovered by the intelligence agencies. he has lived in fear ever since.

  8. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Trump is consistent about few things, but two of them enabling wealth and pissing on everyone who doesn’t have it. After all, if god had not meant for them to be sheared, she would not have made them sheep.

    Trump is also an outsider buffoon among the wealthy. So, he can mimic the feelings of the electorate, but not enough to improve their circumstances.

  9. harpie says:

    Marcy tweets: “The story of “Adam Carter” and links to: A tweet from Thomas Drake:

    “A British IT manager and former hacker from Darlington [Tim Leonard] ran a disinformation campaign that duped former US intelligence agents and provided Donald Trump with manufactured “evidence” to deny that Russia interfered with the US election” 

    …linking to a Computer Weekly article: Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links, by Duncan Campbell on 7/31/18.

    It’s really interesting, and connected with a Post Marcy wrote on 11/7/17: ABOUT THE TIMING OF THE BINNEY MEETING https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/11/07/about-the-timing-of-the-binney-meeting/ 

    The Intercept is reporting that, on Trump’s orders, Mike Pompeo met with Bill Binney on October 24 to understand his theory arguing that the DNC hack was in fact a leak. […]

     
     

      • Trip says:

        Good link.

        So Craig Murray is full of shit. Why did he lie and put himself front and center? And I’ll be awaiting the retraction in Consortium News by Binney and McGovern, while holding my breath. Pfffft.

      • orionATL says:

        with regard to the computer weekly article, see my comment above at 7/31/18 10:03am, items 4. – 6.

        from computer weekly:

        “… How Russia attacked 

        The GRU used multiple units to conduct “large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election”, according to the US hacking indictment. The operations involved “staged releases of documents stolen through computer intrusions”, including by Guccifer 2.0, WikiLeaks and DCLeaks, another front observed being set up by the GRU.

        Security experts have been stunned by the depth and detail of US intelligence information on the hackers in the indictment. Some of the detail could likely only have come as the results of counter-attacks on the GRU, implanting malware that was copying screens and keystrokes, at the same time they were doing the same to officials in the Democratic Party.

        The main Russian attack began in March 2016, and used large-scale phishing attacks that acquired the email accounts of members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team, including campaign chairman John Podesta. Staged releases began in June 2016…. ”

        two points –

        1.” the main russian attack began in march 2016″, the month that trump brought manafort into his campaign. trump has said privately that manafort is the guy who could bring him down; maybe this is why.

        2. “… Security experts have been stunned by the depth and detail of US intelligence information on the hackers in the indictment. Some of the detail could likely only have come as the results of counter-attacks on the GRU,…”

        i thought the indictment contained remarkable detail and attributed that detail to the handiwork of the pittsburg national security lab. more recently, though, i read that the dutch had been conducting real-time surveillance of the gru units. that info was passed to the u. s. at some point – and then exposed by the u. s. doubtless this infuriated the dutch, not only for breech of understanding and trust, but because an extremely valuable surveillance capability (given russian military movements in georgia and ukraine) was probably lost.

    • greengiant says:

      Campbell has evidently changed Binney’s mind. Even has a selfie. Oh my Goddess look at the Assange-GRU-TrumpOperative nexus explode.

      • Charlie says:

        Not surprising now that all has been laid bare in Compuer Weekly. I’d go up to Darlington to look for Tim Leonard but I expect Steve Bannon/The Movement will be covering his back so he could be in a number of alt-right European countries and will surely have started doing “stuff” under a new cover as this one is now blown.

    • SpaceLifeForm says:

      Remember, attribution is hard.

      On inspecting the full data analysis, Binney agreed: “It’s clear G2 is messing with the data. Everything G2 says is suspect and needs to be proven by other sources/means. I agree there is no evidence to prove where the download/copy was done.”

      He added: “The merger of data from 5 July and 1 September … makes all the G2 crap a fabrication … we should only say what we can prove with evidence.”

      Privately, Binney says his colleague Ray McGovern, who has also pushed the Forensicator theories, accepts that there is no evidence where the files were really copied. “Ray no longer argues that point – except to call it an ‘alleged location’,” said Binney. McGovern has refused to confirm this, or to answer questions about evidence for his claims.

      Despite accepting that there was no evidence, Binney and McGovern have not retracted the claims in the 2017 VIPS report at the time of writing.

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