There’s a somewhat sketchy background here that’s a little bit more granular and important than is being outlined. The redacted Comey memos were originally released to congress and the media. However, the unredacted memos -and more importantly the reason for the redactions– has never been held up to scrutiny.
As noted by Fox News: “Washington District Court Judge James E. Boasberg — an Obama appointee who was also tapped by Chief Justice John Roberts for a seat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court — issued an order Wednesday demanding the FBI hand over “clean and unredacted copies of the documents in dispute here,” apparently including the Comey memos and documents relating to the declarations.” (more)
However, as “Undercover Huber” has noted, Judge Boasberg has previously seen the Comey memos back in 2017 when the original arguments were made by Mueller’s team to keep them redacted from public review.
[…] the main issue now isn’t “handing over the Comey memos” (the Judge already saw them long ago), but whether to publicly release the FBI/DOJ justifications for NOT releasing the Comey memos to the public AND release the Comey memos completely unredacted.
The FBI/DOJ filed those justifications against releasing the Comey memos “in camera” & “ex parte” with the court on Oct 13 2017 & Jan 19 2018 They were written by the then FBI lead on Mueller’s team, David W. Archey (who replaced Peter Strzok, he led all FBI agents from Sep-17).
Those secret Archey declarations apparently still didn’t convince the judge that the Comey memos should be kept secret; so Mueller sent his top trial lawyer and supreme court rockstar Michael Dreeben to deliver a secret in-person “on the record proffer” about the investigation.
Whatever Dreeben said to the judge, it worked. Boasberg denied access to even a single word from the memos or even how many there were or how many pages they contained. The lawsuit against the FBI also seeks access to this secret “proffer”.
I think Dreeben confirmed to Judge Boasberg the focus of the investigation had moved to obstruction. That means this happened no later than Oct 2017. Mueller wanted to use the Comey memos as evidence against the President and his aides.
I completely agree.
The issue here, the reason the DOJ and FBI lawyers are holding vested interests in keeping the background issues from public sunlight, is specifically because the information being argued will show that Mueller’s team was exclusively focused on an “obstruction case” as far back as October 2017.
Our research indicates the Mueller probe actually stopped investigating Trump-Russia collusion back in early August 2017. The revised scope memo dated August 2nd, 2017, from Rod Rosenstein was specifically because there was no “there” there; and the Mueller team shifted to exclusively focus on “obstruction”.
When Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were debating the issues of joining the Mueller investigation after Comey was fired. Remember what Strzok said:
…”you and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”
(Text Message Link – See Page #459, March 19th, 2017)
Keep in mind the origin of the May 2017 Mueller probe was a continuance of the FBI counterintelligence operation which started on July 31st, 2016 under the name Crossfire Hurricane. Again, the same corrupt investigative unit transferred from Crossfire Hurricane into the Mueller probe. It became obvious early on there was nothing there.
Because Crossfire Hurricane was started under fraudulent auspices (Brennan using his operations against Papadopoulos to frame the “EC”); and because the FBI investigation used another false intelligence targeting operation (the Steele Dossier) to gain the FISA warrant against Carter Page (October 2016); the construct of the entire investigative conspiracy became a risk that Mueller needed to protect from visibility. This is why Mueller asked Rosenstein for the August 2nd, 2017, revised scope memo.
The scope memo outlining targets, outlines the same people as targets that originally existed within Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller probe: Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen.
[scribd id=375478974 key=key-4DaehSp6U38EiB8eNVXS mode=scroll]
Mueller targeted these individuals on other issues because he needed to shut them down, hide the fraudulent origin of the operation…. and thereby protect his obstruction investigation… For Mueller’s purposes:
- The Obstruction investigation, building toward the impeachment narrative, was always the original goal of Mueller. Therefore…
- The Obstruction investigation needed the precursor of the Trump-Russia investigation to remain standing; However,….
- The structure of the Trump-Russia investigation, the underlying evidence to support the effort, is predicated on the “Steele Dossier”. Therefore…
- Mueller needed to protect the Steele Dossier from scrutiny and deconstruction.
Remember, because there was no Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy, it was always the “obstruction” investigation that could lead to the desired result by Mueller’s team of taking down President Trump through impeachment. The “obstruction case” was the entirety of the case they were trying to make from August 2017 through to March 2019.
It was always about obstruction. The Trump-Russia angle was, and is, nonsense and they knew early on too much investigative effort into that aspect would only lead to more evidence of nothing. Mueller’s team retained the cloud of Russian collusion/conspiracy only to keep maximum political damage upon Trump while the obstruction case was the real case they thought they could build.
This is why Mueller’s team punted on the obstruction decision to AG William Barr. It was their last desperate effort, amid a failure to construct a solid legal case, to politicize the possibility and innuendo, and force Barr to say “no obstruction.”
The problem for Mueller’s team now, with the unredacted Comey memos and more specifically with a possible release of the proffer (the conversation with the judge), is that sunlight will expose the actual timeline and effort as described above.
Mueller requested the second Scope Memo (August 2nd, 2017) so he could target Trump’s team for non Russia related matters and protect his goal which was to continue investigating obstruction. Mueller’s team needed to target the same people mentioned within the Steele Dossier to protect the dossier from scrutiny.
If Trump’s people (Flynn, Cohen, Manafort, Page and Papadopoulos) were allowed to prove the issues about them in the dossier were false, this would have undermined Mueller and the origin of his appointment. Undermining the dossier would have led to a collapse of the Trump-Russia narrative. Therefore Mueller needed to shut down Flynn, Manafort, Cohen and Papadopoulos… so he charged them, silenced them, through unrelated crimes.
If the full unredacted Comey memos are now released; and if the background proffer arguing why the Comey memos should be hidden is now released; it will show that Mueller was focused exclusively on an obstruction case since August of 2017. People will ask why Mueller never said “no Russia collusion – no Russia conspiracy” eighteen months ago.
This is why the DOJ and FBI have been fighting on this issue in court.
When you realize the nature of Mueller’s entire focus since August 2017, you realize just how brutally corrupt DAG Rod Rosenstein is for not putting a stop to it.
In my humble opinion, if Attorney General William Barr held a high opinion of Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller prior to his confirmation, I can guarantee you two things:
One, either he no longer holds that opinion; or, two, William Barr is corrupt as hell.
Time will tell.
