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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The activity of the “small group” of coup plotters consists of three generalized subsidiary agencies: (1) DOJ/FBI, (2) CIA/ODNI, and (3) The State Department.
Within each “small group faction” a years-long review of their narrative constructs shows the groups have specific and unique media outlets for their offensive (’16, ’17) and defensive (’18, ’19) propaganda efforts.
•The DOJ/FBI faction of the “small group” leaks to narrative engineers at the New York Times and NBC. •The CIA/ODNI faction utilize the Washington Post and ABC; and •the State Dept. faction use CNN and CBS. Each faction uses the same reporters & pundits for their distribution. This pattern, albeit generalized, has been consistent for several years.

The originating media entity -utilizing the leaks, opinions and agenda of the faction most concerned- starts the process. The secondary media groups come in for support – reporting on the reporting; and then reporting on the reporting of the reporting… and so on. This process provides a concentric distribution effort to bolster the originating premise.
Similar to the Journ-o-list effort of Ezra Klein, all of the ideologically aligned reporters share information for the larger process of defending the prior activity and advancing a unified narrative. [Reference Buzzfeed’s Ali Watkins sharing leaks from SSCI Security Director James Wolfe to her peers at WaPo and New York Times while she had sex with the source to keep the information pipeline open.]
It is important to remember this concerted process whenever we are reviewing media articles concerning the matters of interest to each of the “small group” factions.
In essence, the propagandists within the media are the same; and the sources for the positions reflected in the articles are the same. Wash, rinse and repeat depending on the identified risk.
So today we see NBC and the New York Times going “out front” on behalf of their interests. Referencing the faction each outlet represents we see the *reporting* is to defend the interests of the DOJ and FBI.
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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 is something very damaging about the CIA operative -turned gossiper- that Adam Schiff used to launch his Ukraine dossier (aka “whistleblower? report).  If the gossiper wasn’t sketchy, the Democrats would be heralding his heroism; instead they are trying to sweep away any mention of their CIA ally, and drop the ‘whistleblower’ angle completely.
In this interview Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin discusses the shady tactics of the impeachment committees against the appearance today by President Trump’s former Russia aide Fiona Hill.  Rep. Zeldin also notes the conspicuous bull-schiff.

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There was a mid-day presser (below) with Zeldin and Jim Jordan that also provides good information.
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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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Representative Doug Collins appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the specific strategy behind the Pelosi-Shiff and Lawfare ongoing impeachment effort.
Collins explains why Adam Schiff is holding hearings behind closed doors so they can selectively leak out information that supports the Democrat narrative of impeachment, while also hiding the evidence that refutes their construct.  Additionally, Rep Collins explains his expectations for the upcoming FISA review by Inspector General Horowitz.
[wpvideo vWqlCZkB]
Speaker Pelosi, with forethought and planning by the Lawfare Alliance, is intentionally using non-jurisdictional committees because she is manipulating the process.  It’s the same reason why the House Intelligence, House Foreign Affairs and House Oversight committees cannot legally send out “Impeachment-based Subpoenas“; they have no impeachment jurisdiction.  {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} to understand why.
The “impeachment” subpoenas’ are not technically subpoenas because the basis for the requests, impeachment inquiry, is not within the jurisdiction of the three committees. So the committees are sending out demand letters, calling them subpoenas (media complies with the narrative), and hoping the electorate do not catch on to the scheme.
The House democrats will keep doing this until someone in the media begins to hit them with hard questions that expose the nonsense.
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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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This makes sense on many levels.  As a member of the Obama National Security Council, the CIA “whistle-blower” would have held a working relationship with Vice-President Biden who was given the primary authority to oversee Ukraine effort within the Obama administration.

(Via Washington Examiner)  The 2020 Democratic candidate with whom the CIA whistleblower had a “professional” tie is Joe Biden, according to intelligence officers and former White House officials.
Lawyers for the whistleblower said he had worked only “in the executive branch.” The Washington Examiner has established that he is a career CIA analyst who was detailed to the National Security Council at the White House and has since left. On Sept. 26, the New York Times reported that he was a CIA officer. On Oct. 4, the newspaper added that he “was detailed to the National Security Council at one point.”

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There is a lot to unpack in a decision today by the Director of National Intelligence to declassify (with redactions) a 2018 FISA court ruling about ongoing unauthorized database search queries by FBI agents/”contractors” in the period covering 2017/2018.
BACKGROUND: In April 2017 the DNI released a FISA report written by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collery that showed massive abuse, via unauthorized searches of the NSA database, in the period of November 2015 through May 2016. Judge Collyer’s report specifically identified search query increases tied to the 2016 presidential primary.  Two years of research identified this process as the DOJ/FBI and IC using the NSA database to query information related to political candidates, specifically Donald Trump.
Now we fast-forward to Judge Boasberg in a similar review (full pdf below), looking at the time-period of 2017 through March 2018.
The timing here is an important aspect.
It is within this time-period where ongoing DOJ and FBI activity transfers from the Obama administration (Collyer report) into the Trump administration (Boasberg report).
It cannot be overemphasized as you read the Boasberg opinion, or any reporting on the Boasberg opinion, that officials within DOJ and FBI are/were on a continuum.  Meaning the “small group” activity didn’t stop after the election but rather continued with the Mueller and Weissmann impeachment agenda.
Remember, the 2016 ‘insurance policy’ was to hand Mueller the 2016 FBI investigation so they could turn it into the 2017 special counsel investigation. Mueller, Weissmann and the group then used the ‘Steele Dossier’ as the cornerstone for the special counsel review.  The goal of the Mueller investigation was to construct impeachment via obstruction. The same players transferred from “crossfire hurricane” into the Mueller ‘obstruction‘ plan.
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