The Senate voted today to confirm Christopher Wray to lead the FBI, replacing James ‘leaker’ Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump for poor job performance and pushing political objectives through the FBI.
Post firing Mr. Comey admitted to leaking FBI information, including his own notes, to various media sources in an effort to push his own political objectives.
The confirmation vote was 92-5.  Mr. Wray had previously represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the so-called Bridgegate scandal.  The five senators who voted against Mr. Wray included Democrats Ron Wyden, Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren.

In congressional testimony today William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital, was testifying about the “Foreign Agents Registration Act” (FARA).
During Mr. Browder’s testimony the origin of the Fusion GPS ‘Russian Dossier’ was discussed.  Browder stated the Russian government actually paid Fusion GPS to create the Steele propaganda dossier on candidate Donald Trump.  That same dossier was used by the FBI in June/July 2016 to generate the FISA surveillance warrants against the Trump campaign. WATCH:

Yes, that actually means FBI Director James Comey was using propaganda commissioned by Russia to attack Trump, as the framework to launch his FBI investigation into candidate Donald Trump and Russian collusion.
Expanding the reality.  This means the Russian collusion narrative the U.S. media has been running with for a year to attack Trump, was actually factual collusion between Russia and the the U.S. FBI, via James Comey.
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Consider this report with a measured amount of cynicism.  Based on all historic references this could easily be just another example of well presented flak and countermeasures meant to protect the swamp, protect the Deep State, and feed a **distracting narrative.

WASHINGTON – FBI General Counsel James A. Baker is purportedly under a Department of Justice criminal investigation for allegedly leaking classified national security information to the media, according to multiple government officials close to the probe who spoke with Circa on the condition of anonymity.
[…] Three sources, with knowledge of the apparent investigation, told Circa that Baker is the top suspect in an ongoing leak investigation, but Circa has not been able to confirm the details of what national security information or material was allegedly leaked.

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According to a report from The Hill, structured around the leaking of a letter sent by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes to the FBI, “The letter was provided to The Hill from a source in the intelligence community“, outlines a massive amount of unmasking done by Obama officials in 2016.

(Via The Hill) […] “We have found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information,” Nunes wrote in the letter to Coats.
[…]  In Thursday’s letter, Nunes said the total requests for Americans’ names by Obama political aides numbered in the hundreds during Obama’s last year in office and often lacked a specific intelligence community justification. He called the lack of proper justifications a “serious deficiency.”

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Interesting development.  If you follow the nuance within twitter-speak it would appear that White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is flagging Chief of Staff Reince Priebus as a potential leaker.  At least that’s the juicy narrative angle clutched upon by the always sketchy, and easily distracted to the ‘shiny thing’, WHCA (White House Correspondents Association) membership.

Or it could be far more innocuous in that Mr. Scaramucci was just notifying Mr. Priebus of the issue by adding his twitter address to the tweet.  You decide.

WASHINGTON DC – […]  While it’s unclear why Scaramucci tagged Priebus, Priebus has been named as a potential leaker by some Trump supporters, like Roger Stone.  Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent for the New Yorker, tweeted that he can confirm that Scaramucci wants the FBI to investigate Priebus for leaking.
The “leak” Scaramucci is referring to is likely a reference to a Politico report Wednesday evening, which details Scaramucci’s financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics.

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The backstory to the Awan brothers is a story within congress where three Democrat staffers within various House committees, including the House Intelligence Committee, were suspected of a variety of unlawful actions including accessing highly classified information under suspicious circumstances. – More Here –

Yesterday FBI agents seized computer equipment from the home of the aide to congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz who was one of the parties employing the Awans.  And now last night Imran Awan was arrested by the FBI at Dulles airport.

(Via Daily Caller)  Florida GOP Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s right-hand information technology (IT) aide was arrested attempting to leave the country just a few hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group revealed that he is the target of an FBI investigation.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved the nomination of Christopher Wray to be FBI director following the dismissal of the agency’s former chief, James Comey, by President Donald Trump.
All 20 members of the committee voted to approve Wray, a white-collar crime lawyer and former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, sending his nomination to the full Senate for a vote. (read more)

President Trump gave an in interesting interview to three New York Times reporters,  Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, on Wednesday.   President Trump’s assistant Ms. Hope Hicks also sat in on the interview.
It is interesting President Trump allowed/chose Michael Schmidt as one of the interviewers in that Schmidt is the primary recipient of leaks provided by fired FBI Director James Comey.   Michael Schmidt is the primary contact source for Comey’s allies within the FBI when they decide to leak information intended to damage the office of the President.
The New York Times article is HERE.

The following are excerpts from that conversation, transcribed by The Times. It has been lightly edited for content and clarity, and omits several off-the-record comments and asides. Additional excerpts will be added as they are compiled.

(Transcript – Via New York Times) TRUMP: Look, [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions gets the job. Right after he gets the job, he recuses himself.

BAKER: Was that a mistake?

TRUMP: Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.

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Those of you following along at home might be having a remarkable feeling of Deja-Vu with the similarity between Hillary Clinton’s approach to her emails containing classified information, and James Comey’s approach today to reports of his leaked memos containing “classified” intelligence.
The defensive narrative ‘fact pattern’ appears identical in sequencing:
Step 1 – The emails/memos were not classified. √
Step 2 – The emails/memos were not ‘marked’ classified. √
Step 3 – The emails/memos were ‘retroactively classified‘. √

(Politico Link – Lastest)

Next up in the logical sequence:

Step 4 –  Missing/deleted = Wiped Comey memos: “what, like with a cloth or something?”
Step 5 –  Robert Mueller (filling the role of Comey circa 2016) will hold a 2017 presser to say: James Comey didn’t intentionally violate the law with sharing classified information within his leaked memos in 2017.  Adding: “we could find no intent” by him to do so.
Step 6 – Mueller will conclude his presser by saying: “no reasonable special counsel would recommend charges“.
Bets?
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You just can’t make this stuff up.  Yesterday it was revealed that several of fired FBI Director James Comey memos contained classified information:
(Via The Hill) More than half of the memos former FBI Director James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia investigation have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents.
This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton over in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election. (link)
This latest report is contrary to James Comey’s prior assertion that he specifically wrote the memos about his contact and communication with President Trump to avoid containing classified information.
Today, the recipient of at least one of the leaked memos, Daniel Richman, claims the memo leaked to him by FBI Director Comey, with the specific intention to leak to the New York Times, did not contain markings designating the memo as “classified”:
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