Fox News Catherine Herridge files a report covering the relationships between Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr and the DOJ and FBI.
Today Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham sends a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting a briefing on the FBI conduct during the raid and arrest of 66-year-old Roger Stone.
However, sorry, I can’t let this go unnoticed. This letter is pure Decepticon politics.
Just yesterday FBI Director Chris Wray gave testimony before the senate for over four hours. If Republicans in the senate were actually concerned about the issue, why didn’t a single senator spend 30 seconds to ask about Wray about it? I digress…
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So far the joint house committee transcripts have been leaked to: John Solomon (The Hill), The Epoch Times, The New York Times, and now The Daily Caller. Someone is trying to get additional traction to these structured transcripts.
The content is also interesting. The only thing we knew previously about the testimony of Nellie Ohr was that she evoked ‘spousal privilege’ during her deposition. However, now the Daily Caller is reporting that Nellie Ohr gave testimony about her research with Fusion GPS, to include doing research on Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr’s travels:
Daily Caller – The wife of a Justice Department official who worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign told Congress in 2018 that one of her tasks at the opposition research firm was to research President Donald Trump’s children, including their business activities and travel.
Nellie Ohr, a former contractor for Fusion GPS, also told lawmakers during an Oct. 19 deposition that she recalls that Christopher Steele gave her husband, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, materials from the infamous anti-Trump dossier funded by Democrats.
This is really interesting. Unfortunately, we don’t get the names.
(pdf link)
Key phrases: “two current senior FBI officials”, “one former”, relating to an “FBI Contractor”. Could this be an FBI contractor like Fusion-GPS or Crowdstrike?
I wish we could know more.
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The background here is that any unilateral declassification by President Trump will end up putting him in opposition to a variety of corrupt interests. As a direct result he will be facing legal action from the legislative branch. With that accepted, here is the most strategic approach.
President Trump informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, that he wishes to have a full intelligence briefing on the following documents:
The President selects a date for this briefing and informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, to inform and coordinate with all executive branch lead intelligence officials, who were/are stakeholders in the compartmented intelligence products as described above, of their request be present for the briefing.
Further, all of the compartmented intelligence is to be collectively assembled by the ODNI into one volume of a singular Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). There are to be eighteen printed copies of the PDB assembled and secured for the briefing.
Additionally, the office of the president informs the ODNI of the executives’ intent to invite for the briefing each member of the Intelligence Community legislative oversight known as the Gang-of-Eight.
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There has been a great deal of debate and consternation surrounding how the Administrative State has boxed in President Trump through the use of the Mueller/Weissman counterintelligence probe, authorized by Rod Rosenstein, where President Trump is a target of the investigation.
A widely held supporter perspective is that President Trump can expose the fraudulent origination of the counterintelligence investigation; of which he is now a target; if he were to declassify a series of documents as requested by congress and allies of his administration. This approach would hopefully remove the sword of Damocles.
Because the issues are very complex, we begin a two-part CTH post to outline the issues and hopefully clarify the situation; as well as outline a possible solution that would minimize the risk. This is part I.
The core issue within the debate surrounds two contradictory reference points: (1) President Trump has ultimate declassification authority. (2) Yes; however, in this example President Trump is also the target of the investigation; so declassification could be viewed by elements within the investigation as ‘obstruction’. Both of these points are true.
Also true is the reality that both laws and politics come into play.
In November 2018 President Trump gave an interview where he discussed the situation as it is visible to him. Democrats and opposition, writ large, are working earnestly to remove him from office. Obviously President Trump is aware:
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Devin Nunes dropped a bombshell yesterday in an interview with Maria Bartiromo [Video Here]. Many people are overlooking the implications of his speculation; and, more importantly how Nunes statement answers just about every contradictory question people have carried. Including:
In short, Devin Nunes speculated that Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein put the substantive allegations from the Fusion-GPS/Ohr/Steele Dossier into his investigative instructions (full pdf below) that he gave Robert Mueller.
If it is accurate that Rosenstein charged Robert Mueller with investigating the dossier claims; and if Nunes is accurate that the DOJ investigative target, a derivative of the dossier, is Donald Trump; well, everything starts to make a hell of a lot more sense.
If the mandate given to Robert Mueller was to specifically investigate the sitting president of the United States as an active participant, and subsequent target, for a counterintelligence operation, then DAG Rod Rosenstein -and Mueller- would have to hide that mandate from everyone and anyone.
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The widely held view of the process is/was that Rod Rosenstein selected Robert Mueller as special counsel, and following that selection Mueller created his team. The perspective from CTH research is slightly different.
CTH believes that following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the FBI Chief Legal Counsel, Jim Baker and FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe; together with the corrupt small group that was involved in the prior year’s counterintelligence investigation; reacted to Comey’s firing by pressuring Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint their preferred person, Robert Mueller.
Within this internal debate (May 2017); at the time this construct was being argued; is when the famous comment from Rosenstein originates: “what do you want me to do, wear a wire?” The corrupt FBI investigative crew; having initiated and continued “Crossfire Hurricane”; including people from the DOJ-NSD side (Ohr, Weissmann, etc) were pressuring Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel….. but not just any special counsel.. Baker and McCabe had the person pre-selected. That person was Robert Mueller.
Obviously we can see the reason for this FBI/DOJ crew to need a special counsel. As career corruptocrats they were operating from a mindset of mitigating risk to themselves and continuing to advance on the objective to attack the executive office through their investigative schemes. The key point here is subtle but very significant. Robert Mueller didn’t select his team, the corrupt team selected him.
Former HPSCI Chairman and current minority ranking member, Devin Nunes, appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the recent indictment of Roger Stone, Robert Mueller, and other matters that surround congressional investigations.
Representative Nunes notes that if the current DOJ are willing to go after people that have lied to congress, then this same DOJ should be looking at lies told by Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Comey and Andrew McCabe. Additionally, and frustratingly, Mr. Nunes outlines how it is demonstrably true the Clinton campaign was in direct collusion with Russians in 2016 and yet the current DOJ keeps ignoring those facts.
Nunes also speculates that Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein put the allegations from the Ohr/Steele Dossier into his instructions (full pdf below) that he gave Robert Mueller. This is what DAG Rod Rosenstein is trying to hide from everyone, including President Trump. If true, that should comprehensively destroy the integrity of the DOJ, the Mueller investigation (writ large), and the pro-Rosenstein narrative.
Last year, when CTH predicted the sequence of events Democrats would utilize for their impeachment strategy (full reference information below), we outlined the specific likelihood, as a telling tripwire, that HPSCI Chairman would target Donald Trump Jr. as the second person within their plan. [Michael Cohen would be first]
Affirming that prediction, today Adam Schiff has an interview with George Stephanopoulos and outlines EXACTLY that roadmap:
STEPHANOPOULOS – “Your colleague on the committee, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, told CNN that she believes that Donald Trump Jr. lied to your committee on at least two occasions. Do you agree?”
SCHIFF – “Well, I’d like the special counsel to have access to Don Jr.’s testimony and determine whether it is evidence of — of false statements,” Schiff replied, adding “I think — and I greatly appreciate the seriousness with which the special counsel takes lying to Congress — so I’ll let Bob Mueller be the judge of that. But one of the first acts, if not the first act, of our committee will be to send all of these transcripts of all the witnesses to Bob Mueller so that he can consider whether additional perjury charges are warranted.”