With media reporting that U.S. Attorney John Durham has expanded the timeline and scope of his investigation into U.S. government and intelligence community activity during the 2016 election, there’s an interesting quote from NBC:

…”Justice Department officials have said that Durham has found something significant, and that critics should be careful.”…

The expanded investigative timeline is now into May 2017 when Mueller was appointed special counsel, and would mean all of the preceding (and surrounding) activity leading up to Mueller would be reviewed.   With that carefully in mind….
During the 2016 effort to weaponize the institutions of government against the outside candidacy of Donald Trump, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) was headed by Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein.  After the 2016 election Senator Feinstein abdicated her vice-chair position to Senator Mark Warner in January 2017.
While the SSCI was engaged in their part of the 2016 effort Vice-Chair Feinstein’s lead staffer was a man named Daniel Jones. Dan Jones was the contact point between the SSCI and Fusion-GPS.
After the election, and after Feinstein abdicated, Dan Jones left the committee to continue paying Fusion-GPS (Glenn Simpson) for ongoing efforts toward the impeachment insurance policy angle.
Feinstein appears to have left because she didn’t want to deal with the consequences of a President Trump, IF he discovered the SSCI involvement. Dan Jones left because with a Trump presidency the SSCI, now co-chaired by Senator Mark Warner, needed arms-length plausible deniability amid their 2017 operations to continue the removal effort (soft coup).
The trail for this plausible deniability process and ongoing soft-coup effort first surfaces with Dan Jones appearing in the early 2017 text messages between Senator Warner and the liaison for Christopher Steele, lawyer and lobbyist Adam Waldman:
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The background context has already been outlined –SEE HERE– so we won’t repeat.  Instead, we look at today’s defensive narrative engineering from the New York Times with a similar perspective, but a different set of reminders.
Content and distribution tells us this information is from the DOJ and FBI faction of the “Small Group“.  Not accidentally, and VERY importantly, this is the same faction under the microscope of Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his pending IG report.  Additionally, and again very importantly, the principles within the IG report have already had an opportunity to review the part of the upcoming report that highlights their conduct.

So this New York Times reporting, from conversations with the DOJ and FBI small group participants, is coming out in advance of the IG report and with their review in mind.
Here’s the article, emphasis mine:

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors reviewing the origins of the Russia investigation have asked witnesses pointed questions about any anti-Trump bias among former F.B.I. officials who are frequent targets of President Trump and about the earliest steps they took in the Russia inquiry, according to former officials and other people familiar with the review.

[Note “prosecutors” is plural; more than one.  “prosecutors” also implies a shift from investigative review, to a likelihood of criminal conduct.  The media presentation of John Durham has gone from a single U.S. Attorney with a mandate from his boss, to a group of people, ‘prosecutors’, working with the U.S. Attorney.]
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Within today’s reporting from the New York Times and NBC, a key aspect is how CIA analysts are worried about explaining and/or justifying the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).  As such it is well worth remembering information about John Durham’s originating focus from June, 2019:
Against the backdrop of the DOJ admitting FBI investigators never had access to the DNC servers to verify a Russian hack; and with new information about the FBI receiving partial and redacted analysis from Crowdstrike; the review by U.S. Attorney John Durham toward the downstream assessment/claims of the CIA takes on new meaning.
CTH has previously outlined how the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity was a quickly compiled bunch of nonsense about Russian hacking.
The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.
The ICA was the brain-trust of John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey. While the majority of content was from the CIA, some of the content within the ICA was written by FBI Agent Peter Strzok who held a unique “insurance policy” interest in how the report could be utilized in 2017.  NSA Director Mike Rogers would not sign up to the “high confidence” claims, likely because he saw through the political motives of the report.
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Well produced video highlighting the connective sentiment behind Brexit and President Trump.

Inside an otherwise innocuous court filing (full pdf below), General Mike Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, files a motion to compel (MTC) in an effort to gain discovery of the content from two cell phones belonging to Joseph Mifsud.   [Hat Tip Techno Fog]
Apparently, according to the information within the filing, the DOJ has somehow gained custody of two cell phones belonging to Mr. Mifsud:

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The filing notes that “western intelligence” likely tasked Mr. Mifsud against General Flynn as early as 2014 in order to set up “connections with certain Russians” for later use against him.  Essentially, an intelligence entrapment scheme.
Unfortunately the filing only identifies the cell phones along with the request for production of the content therein.  However, the fact the DOJ has two cell phones belonging to Joseph Mifsud opens up a whole bunch of questions:
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Maria Bartiromo had initially reported the IG report on the Carter Page FISA situation was going to be released around the end of this week.  Ms. Bartiromo is now reporting a delay:

It’s the “classifications being made” part that raises concern.  President Trump granted Attorney General Bill Barr with declassification authority on May 23rd, 2019, so that any classification issues could be minimized and maximum transparency afforded.
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There are times during research when searching for details leaves the obviously immediate questions unanswered.  This is one of those examples.  Judicial Watch is hot on the trail of a State Department effort to monitor domestic political opposition.
Specifically former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, initiated a request for State Dept. officials to conduct surveillance on: Jack Posobiec, Donald Trump Jr., Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael McFaul (Obama’s ambassador to Russia), Dan Bongino, Ryan Saavedra, Rudy Giuliani, Sebastian Gorka, John Solomon, Lou Dobbs, Pamella Geller and Sara Carter.
More details:

(Via JW) Judicial Watch has obtained information indicating Yovanovitch may have violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons using State Department resources.
Yovanovitch reportedly ordered monitoring keyed to the following search terms: Biden, Giuliani, Soros and Yovanovitch. Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department and will continue gathering facts from government sources.

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North Carolina republican Mark Meadows has been one of the key republican leaders who have remained in Washington DC during the recess break so that he can quickly attend the secret back-room hearings being held by Chairman Adam Schiff.  In this interview Mr. Meadows discusses the current status of the impeachment effort.
Additionally, Meadows discusses what he knows of the documents provided to Inspector General Horowitz for his pending release of the FISA investigation.   Meadows predicts the IG report will be a “scathing rebuke” of the FBI; however, Meadows also predicts the accountability aspect will only end with recommendations for FISA process changes.
[wpvideo DikGDx5w]
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There is a serious problem here…

FISA Court judges Rosemary Collyer (declassified 2017) and James Boasberg (declassified 2019) both identified issues with the NSA database being exploited for unauthorized reasons.  We have a large amount of supplemental research to see through most of Collyer’s report and we are now starting the same process for Boasberg.  However, an alarming possibility makes it important to outline a rough draft of what appears present.
Initially when Collyer’s report was declassified in April 2017 we were able to start assembling additional circumstantial and direct evidence.  Two years of releases allowed us to see a more detailed picture.
Additional documents, direct testimony from NSA Director Mike Rogers, and later connected material from court filings, classified releases and ODNI statements made the understanding much clearer.  What became visible was a process of using the NSA database for political surveillance. [SEE HERE]
With the Boasberg report we do not yet have enough supportive material to identify specific purposes.  However, directly from the report itself there is a lot of information that shows a continuum of database activity that did not stop after Collyer’s warnings, and the NSA promises.   It seems, the political exploitation continues; and with that in mind some recent events are much more troubling.
Boasberg notes the “about” query option that NSA Director Mike Rogers halted, technically didn’t stop.   Instead operators used the “to and from” option almost identically as the “about” queries for downstream data review and extraction.  The FISA Appellate Court appointed amici curiae to review Boasberg’s opinion and reconcile counter claims by the FBI.   Boasberg was never satisfied despite the FISC-R amicus assurances. His opinion reflects valid judicial cynicism within his reluctant re-authorization.
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Against new information that U.S. Attorney John Durham has lengthened the time-frame for this investigative inquiry into the DOJ and FBI activity around the 2016 election, earlier today Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo revealed (and President Trump tweeted) the FISA report by Michael Horowitz will be released on Friday October 18th.
If that time-frame for the IG report is accurate, that means the classification review has been completed; any remaining classified information not specifically authorized in the inspector general report, a decision granted to AG Bill Barr, would be placed in a classified appendix that is not available to the public.

A publication date in/around October 18th would also mean the time allotted for principal review has expired.  Generally the people whose conduct is under review are granted a preview of the report that covers their activity.  The IG may or may not include any response from the principals outlined.  If the IG permits inclusion of a principal response, the IG usually outlines additional information to rebut or support the principal position.
A final draft is assembled only after the OIG administrative referencer makes a final review of all statements of fact and provides citations therein.  Then things get a little troublesome…
If Bartiromo is accurate as to the size of the IG report; this is where the ‘summary of IG findings‘ becomes critical.  Generally speaking the IG writes the full body of the report, but may not author the ‘executive summary’.  The executive summary can be written by administrative state career officials and their priority is institutional preservation.  If they are motivated to shape public opinion of the report content, the executive summary may be written to dilute institutional damage outlined within the main body of the report.
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