There is widespread opinion that many of the officials enlisted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller are ethically challenged.  Critics point to Mueller team members like DOJ Attorney Andrew Weissman, Jeannie Rhee and Aaron Zebley as specific examples of players within Mueller’s investigative team who have a history of gross ethics violations and also carry jaw-dropping conflicts-of-interest.
Against that backdrop, a report today about conduct by the Mueller team of investigators gains additional levels of concerns.   According to reports, in August 2017 the Mueller team went around the Trump administration in their quest for documents, by directly demanding documents from the General Services Agency (GSA); the entity that hosted the communication network for the Trump transition team.  According to reports, the content of 12 email accounts was handed over to the Special Counsels’ office; consisting of thousands of pages of transition team communication.  Innocuous, ordinary transition stuff, but the method of procurement is jaw-droppingly unethical, possibly illegal.

However, as with all things disclosed and discovered recently, CTH would caution anyone toward weighting favor or disfavor on the underlying issue.  Additionally, I would again remind everyone to look at the timelines on any new information, overlay it against prior information, and consider how the timing of the event(s) -in relation to the whole- might change the first impression.
In this case, the reported action by the SC team took place in August 2017, four or five months ago.  Inside that exact same timeline, on August 16th 2017, FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Attorney Lisa Page were kicked off the Mueller team.  Coincidence? Dunno. Maybe.
Again, don’t get so stuck looking at the granules moving at your feet that you fail to notice the entire landscape around you is shifting.
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“The Predicate”

FBI Director Christopher Wray appears before the House Judiciary Committee today to answer questions about the ongoing mission objectives of the FBI.  However, the opportunity for Wray’s appearance is being used to further investigate and unravel the ongoing issues surrounding the politicization of the FBI under the former leadership of Director James Comey.  Specifically how the FBI was weaponized against the campaign of candidate Donald Trump to the benefit of 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In the questioning segment below Ohio Representative Jim Jordan questions Director Wray about the role of FBI Deputy Head of Counterintelligence, FBI Agent Peter Strzok. Jim Jordan outlines the role of Strzok -as it is currently known- and asks if Agent Strzok then took information from Christopher Steele (author of the ‘Steele Russian Dossier’) and used that dossier as the predicate to organize the FISA application that began the surveillance of people associated with the Trump campaign:

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This line of questioning is critical because when combined with a year of investigation by the Dept of Justice, Office of Inspector General, the sunlight takes a two-pronged approach:
♦The IG is working from the inside to investigate the politicization, a more apt term is ‘weaponization‘, of the FBI and DOJ within those organizations.  The IG is then identifying specific people and specific behavior.
♦The oversight committees (Judiciary, Intelligence) are working from the outside of the organizations to spotlight the consequences from those people and from that behavior.
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Those who have traveled the deep weeds will know the Washington Post is the primary and historic defense media for the Intelligence Community (IC).  That backdrop is CRITICAL to understanding this story.

The Washington Post is quick to the presses ahead of congressional intelligence committees discovering the specific content of communication between the lead FBI agent on Robert Muellers team… that led to an Inspector General investigation… that led to Mueller firing the top FBI agent from the team.
Again, for EMPHASIS, this Washington Post report is specifically trying to get out ahead of the story to defend Mueller and the FBI.

FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok (above left box), was the deputy head of counterintelligence at the FBI.  He was the tip-of-the-spear in the Clinton email investigation assigned by James Comey.  FBI Agent Strzok was part of a very small special team, called the “skinny team”, tasked with investigating Hillary Clinton.  Agent Peter Strzok was one of the few people who actually interviewed Hillary Clinton.
Additionally, this year agent Peter Strzok was personally selected by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to be the TOP FBI AGENT in charge of the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian collusion conspiracy.
However, as a direct outcome of an Inspector General investigation into Peter Strzok, it is just coming to light that text messages and written communication between Strzok and an FBI lawyer named Lisa Page will show a strong bias to clear Clinton and against Trump.
Behind the communication, Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were having an affair.  Strzok and Page communicated with each other about their disdain and hatred for Donald Trump while they were key members of the Muller investigative team.
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What a tangled web is weaved….  Hillary Clinton paid her lawyers at Perkins Coie for opposition research on candidate Donald Trump.  In turn Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS to gather information.  Fusion GPS paid Christopher Steele to write the “Russian Dossier”.
The FBI also paid Christopher Steele.  Additionally, prior evidence surfaced suggesting the FBI used the dossier to get FISA warrants against the Trump campaign. And NOW we discover that Fusion GPS paid journalists and five media companies to participate.
Oh, if this ain’t just sketchy as all hell:

WASHINGTON – Newly filed court documents confirm that Fusion GPS, the company mostly responsible for the controversial “Trump dossier” on presidential candidate Donald Trump, made payments to three journalists between June 2016 until February 2017.
The revelation could be a breakthrough for House Republicans, who are exploring whether Fusion GPS used the dossier, which was later criticized for having inaccurate information on Trump, to feed anti-Trump stories to the press during and after the presidential campaign. The three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known to have reported on “Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation,” the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.

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Last year against the backdrop of President Obama’s sanctions announcement against Russia, we closely reviewed the “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity – Joint Analysis Report”. This December 2016 intelligence report (actual document below) is the report where the media talking points “17 intelligence agencies agreed” and the Russian “hacking of the election” began.
The report was released to coincide with President Obama kicking out Russian diplomats as punishment for the content therein.  Everyone talks about this report, yet almost no-one talking about it has actually read it.  WE HAVE.


President Obama’s administration released the ‘Joint Analysis Report’ which various politicians and media claimed to outline details of Russia’s involvement hacking into targeted data, computer systems, and political networks during the election.
Except it doesn’t.
Not even a little.
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Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appears on CNN last night to deny knowledge of the wiretapping of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
In March Clapper stated he would specifically have known if a FISA warrant was issued against any Trump campaign officials. Last night Clapper stated he held no knowledge of the FISA warrant. Clapper is walking through a legal minefield. WATCH:

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It is important to remember that FBI Director James Comey stated on March 20th 2017 he briefed the DNI (James Clapper) and the National Security Adviser (Susan Rice) on the details of the counter intelligence operation. By all intents and appearances the statement last night by Clapper denying knowledge is essentially refuting James Comey’s earlier testimony and throwing Comey under the bus.
They both cannot be telling the truth.
Either Comey told Clapper which means Clapper is lying.  Or Comey never told Clapper, which provides evidence of the FBI collusion with the White House; and the FBI working as a rogue intelligence agency for political targeting.
In the abstract the Obama authorized wiretapping of a Trump campaign official is alarming. However when these recent revelations are added to FBI James Comey admitting to keeping the investigations hidden from congressional oversight an even more alarming picture emerges.
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Knowing that former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort was wiretapped by the Obama Administration via the FBI, James Comey, let’s take another look at Comey’s testimony.
New York Representative Elise Stefanik begins her March 20th, 2017, questioning by asking director Comey what are the typical protocols, broad standards and procedures for notifying the Director of National Intelligence, the White House and senior congressional leadership (aka the intelligence Gang of Eight), when the FBI has opened a counter-intelligence investigation.
The parseltongue response from Comey is a generalized reply (with uncomfortable body language) that notification of counter-intel investigations are discussed with the White House, and other pertinent officials, on a calendar basis, ie. “quarterly”.
With the statement that such counter-intel notifications happen “generally quarterly”, and against the backdrop that Comey stated in July of 2016 a counter-intel investigation began, Stefanik asks:

…”when did you notify the White House, the DNI and congressional leadership”?

Watch an extremely uncomfortable Director James Comey lie by claiming there was no active DNI -which is entirely false- James Clapper was Obama’s DNI.

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Watch it again.
Watch that first 3:00 minutes again. Ending with:

…”Because of the sensitivity of the matter” ~ James Comey

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There will be much discussion and speculation about a recent “leaked” FBI FISA warrant surrounding former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. However, the interesting aspect always falls upon the timeline, not necessarily the wiretapping itself per se’.
According to the CNN report the wiretapping and surveillance of Manafort started sometime in 2014 and then was discontinued after nothing of criminal value or significance was gained.  [NOTE: FISA warrants must be updated in 90 day increments; continued surveillance involving U.S. persons must be justified; if nothing exists the court orders the surveillance to cease the warrant is no longer valid.]  However, according to the same leaked source reporting from CNN the wiretapping began again in 2016.
The July/August 2016 time frame is interesting because that coincides with the surfacing of the ridiculous opposition research “Steele Dossier” on Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. Further recently revealed information about the “steele dossier”, interestingly surrounds the James Comey FBI paying for the information contained therein.
Bear with me on this… So the James Comey FBI paid a British informant, former MI6 operative Christopher Steele, for content within the Steele Dossier, which was originally financed by the Jeb Bush campaign and Never Trumpers, and later passed on to Hillary Clinton allies via continued investigative funding by Fusion GPS. Christopher Steele is the same guy the DNC contracted to research the “DNC hacking” (which many think was actually DNC leaking).
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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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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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