Senator Richard Burr has suspended his role as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) while he participates in a federal investigation into insider trading with his stock portfolio.
Last night a search warrant was delivered to Senator Burr’s lawyers and federal investigators scheduled a convenient time to pick up Mr. Burr’s cellular telephone from his Washington DC residence. It appears the cell phone is part of the ongoing review of Senator Burr’s stock trades.
With the investigation progressing, Mr. Burr said Thursday that he wanted to limit distraction to the Senate and informed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he would temporarily step aside as chairman of the SSCI while the review was ongoing. Senator Burr will remain a member of the committee and an interim chair will be selected.
A few points on the unmasking before Rand Paul response. First, the release today is only what the Obama team did regarding unmasking General Flynn. As Devin Nunes previously outlined, there are many more Trump transition team members who were unmasked as the Obama team conducted surveillance on the incoming administration.
Second, the NSA “reports” are related to actual transcripts, emails and text messages of communication; not just various intelligence interpretations of those communications.
As Senator Rand Paul shares, the effort of the Obama and Biden administration to unmask their political opposition during the transition; and then use widespread distribution and leaks to the media to push a specific one-sided view; is the weaponization of the intelligence apparatus to target political opposition. That’s the major issue:
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Again, a reminder, these reports surround only NSA intercepts. Simultaneous to this there was an ongoing FBI counterintelligence operation using FISA surveillance (Carter Page) and non-fisa targeted FBI surveillance of Michael Flynn.
For the sake of understanding this specific release, “unmasking” occurs when the NSA, eavesdropping on foreign communications, sweeps up communications with U.S. citizen. That is known as “incidental collection.”
When the intelligence about that communication is shared across the government, the names of U.S. citizens in the communication are typically concealed or masked to protect their identities. However, the names can be unmasked if U.S. officials make the request.
In this release [pdf here], the Obama-era NSA was monitoring various foreign government officials and within their communication they picked up contacts with incoming President-elect Trump’s National Security Advisor Lt. General Michael Flynn. This release only includes NSA intercepts; not other intelligence agency reports; only the NSA.
The NSA generated [redacted number] of reports based on those foreign contacts. The reports are actual transcripts of the conversations. The Obama-era officials then asked the NSA to unmask the name of General Flynn so they could see the content and context of the calls. Current DNI Ric Grenell has assembled a list of who asked the NSA to unmask incoming NSA Michael Flynn from November 8, 2016 through January 31, 2017.
It is important to remember, these intercepts are part of the normal function of monitoring foreign communications. There is nothing nefarious about the monitoring and there is nothing nefarious about a foreign person contacting the incoming administration, via General Flynn, to begin preparing for the change in administrations.
However, what is completely alarming and disturbing, is the extent to which the Obama administration went to share the contacts and transcripts of the calls with a myriad of government officials. That’s where the list comes in.
It appears we are about to find out if one of my long-standing theories about surveillance of Michael Flynn is correct. Flynn was not “unmasked”, because he was the direct target.
For three years the official media account of how the intelligence community gained the transcript of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn talking to Ambassador Sergey Kisliyak on December 29th, 2016, surrounded “incidental collection” as a result of contact with an agent of a foreign power.
Meaning the Flynn call was picked up as the U.S. intelligence apparatus was conducting surveillance on Russian Ambassador Kisliyak.
If this version of events were accurate (it’s not), it would fall under FISA-702 collection: the monitoring of a foreign agent (Kislyak) who has contact with a U.S. person (Flynn).
In order to review the identity of the U.S. person, a process called ‘unmasking’, a 702 submission must be made. As NSA Director Rogers said: that submission, the unmasking, leaves a paper/electronic trail. However, I do not think that is what happened, here’s why:
Back in 2017 Senator Lindsey Graham questioned former DAG Sally Yates and former DNI James Clapper. Within the questioning, Sally Yates tipped her hand. There was never an unmasking of Flynn because Flynn was a target; it was not incidental collection. WATCH:
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Sally Yates doesn’t directly say Flynn was a target, but by now we all know he was a target of the FBI investigation. As a result of Flynn being the actual target he would be directly identified within the intelligence documents because the investigation would be about him, and not incidental. But there’s more…
HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the events of the past week. Within the interview Nunes discusses the 53 released House transcripts from their Trump-Russia investigation and outlines how the Trump-Russia fraud transfers into the Flynn case.
It’s now May of 2020. The presidential election is six months from now. Devin Nunes has confidence the DOJ will take action based on an investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham. It’s now May of 2020. CTH remembers James Wolfe.
Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now? Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her cya letter? Why have republicans in congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance? What is the reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?
With the release of recent transcripts and the declassification of material from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and Flynn documents showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about why the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place. Why was Donald Trump considered a threat?
In this outline we hope to provide some fully cited deep source material that will explain the origin; and specifically why those inside the Intelligence Community began targeting Trump and using Confidential Human Sources against campaign officials.
During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches.
On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware.
Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
The good news is former President Obama is panicked by recent sunlight; the slight possibility of a U.S. DOJ that may soon have him in the cross-hairs; and the more obvious possibility the American people will discover the scale of his corrupt weaponization of intelligence to target his political opposition.
The better news is former President Obama is so heavily concerned about the looming possibilities; rather than relying on intermediary instructions through Media Matters; he is giving political operatives and national media his instructions directly. LISTEN:
Earlier this morning President Trump called-in to Fox and Friends morning broadcast for a lengthy interview. You can tell there are aspects to the interview adverse to the political interests of Fox News by the fact they did not present the interview for distribution.
However, that said, here’s a copy of the broadcast where President Trump discusses the efforts of the previous administration to target him and eliminate his presidency. If you want to understand President Trump’s perspective on FBI Director Chris Wray skip to @13:00 point of video; and comments on Jeff Sessions @15:20.
In the summer of 2019 CTH noted: “The problem for Attorney General Bill Barr is not investigating what we don’t know, but rather navigating through what ‘We The People’ are already aware of.”
Six months later, specifically citing the problem for Bill Barr that Michael Flynn’s prosecution represented, we again cautioned against projecting an altruistic motive toward the AG, because there was more evidence the DOJ priority was institutional preservation than any arbitrary quest for justice. The problem is BIG:
[…] At the heart of the matter, in the real activity that took place, there was a multi-branch seditious effort to remove President Donald J Trump. From the perspective of those charged with the actual administration of justice – there is no way to put this in front of the American public and have the institutions survive. What we are witnessing is a dance between increasingly narrowing rails and the DOJ trying to find an exit. (more)
With Michael Flynn trapped on the burning roof of a corrupt institution the problem for Barr was how to rescue Flynn without admitting Main Justice and the FBI is on fire. Fortuitously in January 2020 the FISA Court provided cover, an escape route, for Bill Barr to deal with the problem:
….[LINK] The only way I can see out of this mess; the one crack in the current lock box; is the FISA court order for the DOJ to present the identified downstream consequences from fraud upon the court. The FISC might actually be the ladder truck here. With the DOJ and FBI currently assembling the investigative consequences, ie. the sequestration material, Flynn’s current legal status might be identified as an outcropping of fraud…
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have both released a set of 53 declassified transcripts from the 2018 House investigation. Grenell forced Schiff’s compliance.
Due to the sensitivity of content; and due to Chairman Adam Schiff’s previous statement that his staff was re-reviewing to add redactions; I would strongly urge everyone who is reviewing the transcripts to use the ODNI version.
Additionally, CTH is providing links to the ODNI pdf versions below.
Senator Richard Burr has suspended his role as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) while he participates in a federal investigation into insider trading with his stock portfolio.
