The Department of Justice has disclosed additional evidence of the FBI’s efforts to undermine the Trump presidential campaign and presidency. Attorney Sidney Powell includes it in her memorandum filed yesterday in support of the “agreed dismissal” of the case against General Flynn. Powell characterizes the FBI misconduct involved in these efforts as “Stalinist tactics.” The FBI’s briefing to President Obama on January 5, 2017, figures in the mix. I have embedded Powell’s memo at the bottom of this post.
From inside the FBI a knowledgeable agent cries out regarding his colleagues: “…why do we do this to ourselves. What is wrong with these people[?]” It turns out that the famous “insurance policy” against Trump’s possible election required…insurance. Five days after the Oval Office briefing, “they all went out and purchased professional liability insurance.”
Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway summarize the new evidence in the Federalist column “‘Trump Was Right’: Explosive New FBI Texts Detail Internal Furor Over Handling Of ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Investigation.” Subhead: “Newly disclosed internal FBI notes and text messages detail the extent of the FBI’s desire to take down Trump and his associates at any cost.” Their column opens:
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents tasked by fired former Director James Comey to take down Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election were so concerned about the agency’s potentially illegal behavior that they purchased liability insurance to protect themselves less than two weeks before Trump was inaugurated president, previously hidden FBI text messages show. The explosive new communications and internal FBI notes were disclosed in federal court filings today from Sidney Powell, the attorney who heads Michael Flynn’s legal defense team.
“[W]e all went and purchased professional liability insurance,” one agent texted on Jan. 10, 2017, the same day CNN leaked details that then-President-elect Trump had been briefed by Comey about the bogus Christopher Steele dossier. That briefing of Trump was used as a pretext to legitimize the debunked dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign and compiled by a foreign intelligence officer who was working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
“Holy crap,” an agent responded. “All the analysts too?”
“Yep,” the first agent said. “All the folks at the Agency as well.”
“[C]an I ask who are the most likely litigators?” an agent responded. “[A]s far as potentially suing y’all[?]”
“[H]aha, who knows….I think [t]he concern when we got it was that there was a big leak at DOJ and the NYT among others was going to do a piece,” the first agent said.
Attorney General Barr also disclosed information about Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source in connection with the memos prepared at the behest of the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016. If the memos were what they purported to be, I inferred that Steele performed as a conduit for Russian disinformation. Barr’s letter lends credence to this inference. Catherine Herridge flagged the headline news from Barr’s letter in the tweet below.
#Durham BREAKING: The primary sub-source for the Steele dossier was deemed a possible “national security threat” + the subject of 2009 FBI counter-intel probe. According to new records, those facts were known to Crossfire Hurricane team in December 2016. @LindseyGrahamSC pic.twitter.com/I6Gp4fv98C
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) September 24, 2020
Late last night Herridge reported the story for CBS News in “Senate Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham releases new details about source of Steele dossier.” Brooke Singman reported the story for FOX News in “Source of Steele dossier was investigated by FBI for Russian contacts, Barr says.” Zachary Evans also has the story for NR in “FBI Docs: Primary Sub-Source for Steele Was Suspected Russian Agent and ‘Threat to National Security.’” The NR column opens:
The “primary sub-source” for the Steele dossier was suspected of being a possible Russian agent and a “threat to national security,” according to newly declassified FBI documents.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) announced the revelations on Thursday after the Justice Department declassified a footnote of the DOJ Inspector General Report on FISA abuse by the FBI. That report focused on efforts by FBI agents to obtain FISA warrants to surveil Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page, and concluded that two applications to renew such warrants were not valid because of “material misstatements and omission” of evidence.
FBI agents on the Crossfire Hurricane probe, who investigated alleged contacts between the Trump-campaign and Russian intelligence, were aware that the Primary Sub-Source was a suspected Russian spy by December 2016. However, the FBI did not share this information with the FISA court in their applications for warrants against Page.
According to footnote 334 of the Inspector General Report, the “Primary Sub-Source was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011 that assessed his/her documented contacts with suspected Russian intelligence officers.”
At the request of Attorney General William Barr, the FBI made available a declassified summary of that counterintelligence investigation.
“[T]he FBI commenced this investigation based on information by the FBI indicating that the Primary Sub-Source may be a threat to national security,” the summary states. The Primary Sub-Source was an employee at a “prominent U.S. think tank,” and “in December 2016, the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation identified the employee as Christopher Steele’s Primary Sub-Source.”
The Sean Davis/Mollie Hemingway column above is based on Sidney Powell’s newly filed memo below. The memo was filed in advance of the hearing set before Judge Sullivan early next week.
Explosive FBI Texts Show In… by The Federalist
UPDATE: At the time I wrote this I was unable to locate Attorney General Barr’s letter to Senator Graham conveying the declassified FBI summary. Senator Graham has posted Barr’s letter along with the enclosure here.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.