I’m going to go into the deep weeds on this story, because many people are missing a key facet.  The names behind the Trump targeting operation are included, along with citations for independent checks by House congressional investigators.

Inside the recently released report by John Durham [CITATION], the special counsel outlines how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application.  Durham notes that Comey kept asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.”  However, John Durham never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe.  The former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to John Durham.  So, how did John Durham have details about the demands of Comey?

The answer is found in the footnotes.  Durham reviewed transcripts of interviews given by Andrew McCabe to the Office of the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who previously investigated FBI conduct in the origin of the Carter Page FISA.  Durham pulled quotes from that transcript. [Footnote #1207, page 199 – Durham Report]

♦QUESTION: If Andrew McCabe gave testimony to the OIG about the motives and impetus of FBI Director James Comey in pushing for the Carter Page FISA application, why did the OIG report never outline those transcribed interviews?  Why was the interview transcript never included in the 2019 OIG report?

[ NOTE to Congress.  Now that you know a transcribed interview of Andrew McCabe exists in the OIG office, request the transcription and release it to the public.]

Let me answer those questions without the customary pretending from the DC professional political class.  The short version is that OIG Michael Horowitz was trying to protect the DOJ and FBI. The longer version is a coverup that includes Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr and yes, John Durham.  I will share that story below.

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This is a little long and very boring, but people keep asking.. lol

If there is one corrupt DC player who has escaped scrutiny for her corrupt endeavors, it would be Mary McCord.  More than any other Lawfare operative within Main Justice, Mary McCord sits at the center of every table in the manufacturing of cases against Donald Trump. {GO DEEP}

Mary McCord was acting head of the DOJ-NSD when the Carter Page FISA application was submitted.  After leaving the DOJ-NSD, McCord became head of the Nadler/Schiff impeachment staff.  McCord was the organizer of the Vindman CIA whistleblower during impeachment effort #1, and it was Mary McCord’s former NSD lawyer turned Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, who changed the rules for whistleblowing in the CIA -a request made by McCord- to permit anonymity.

Mary McCord was the person who went to the White House with Deputy AG Sally Yates to carry out the DOJ justice scheme to remove National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.  McCord was also selected by a seriously sketchy FISA Judge Boasberg to be the amicus for the court clouding the issues with the FBI and fraudulent information to the FISC. Mary McCord also worked with the congressional team on the second impeachment effort, and it was Mary McCord who went to work for J6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thomspon to frame the J6 case and narrative.

To say that Mary McCord is deeply and professionally attached to the lawfare effort to target Donald Trump would be an understatement.

Today, as a Lawfare contributor to MSNBC, and while discussing the dropping of the investigation in the Pence classified documents case, McCord said she can see no way the DOJ doesn’t indict Donald Trump for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents.  “I don’t think it’s realistic to think that the DOJ would avoid, from here on out through the 2024 election, taking any kind of legal action against Trump or those in his inner circle,” says McCord.  WATCH: 

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Here we go… It was only a matter of time before the DOJ-NSD architects of the Trump targeting operation came out from the shadows.  This is the moment long-time readers of CTH should have been waiting for.  For the past five years Mary McCord has been one of a small and select lawfare group organizing the targeting of President Trump.

Mary McCord led the support team who created the Carter Page FISA warrant using the Steele Dossier to replace the required ‘Wood’s file’.  McCord was the DOJ-NSD official who traveled with DOJ Deputy AG Sally Yates to talk to former White House counsel Don McGhan which weaponized the Flynn-Kislyak call to remove Trump’s National Security Advisor.

Mary McCord was the person who organized Alexander Vindman and Eric Ciaramella to construct the first impeachment effort.  Additionally, it was Mary McCord along with her former legal counsel, turned Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, who changed the ICIG whistleblower rules allowing an anonymous complaint to underpin the false accusations from Ciaramella against Trump.

It was also Mary McCord who was appointed by FISA court Judge James Boasberg as an amici curia to the court, intercepting issues of false information in filings from the DOJ-NSD to the court as constructed by Kevin Clinesmith.

It was Mary McCord who then took up the lead congressional position within the impeachment construct created by Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, and it was Mary McCord who then joined the January 6 Committee in the committee fight to obtain President Trump’s white house records.

Mary McCord surfaces today with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to outline what her team has currently constructed, including the specific targeting approaches her DOJ-NSD and Lawfare crew have put together.

As noted by McCord, the ‘obstruction of justice’ angle is a repeat of the threat used by the Deep State to keep the criminal conduct of the DOJ-NSD from being exposed.  WATCH:

When the Carter Page FISA application was originally assembled by the FBI and DOJ, there was initial hesitancy from within the DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) about submitting the application, because it did not have enough citations in evidence (the infamous ‘Woods File’).  That’s why the Steele Dossier ultimately became important.  It was the Steele Dossier that provided the push, the legal cover needed for the DOJ-NSD to submit the application for a Title-1 surveillance warrant against the campaign of Donald J. Trump.

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With mostly wins and a few losses in the pre-trial evidentiary hearings for Special Counsel John Durham, the case against Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann is scheduled for trial next week.  Now the witness lists are coming forth.

WASHINGTON – […] Robby Mook, who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias and FBI counterintelligence leader Bill Priestap and former top FBI lawyer James Baker are among those called as government witnesses, said prosecutor Andrew DeFilipiis. (link)

Additionally, Laura Seago, a top tech official at research firm Fusion GPS (she has immunity in exchange for testimony); Deborah Fine, a Clinton campaign lawyer; and a CIA official identified as Kevin B are also on the prosecution list.

[…] Defense attorneys unveiled their own high-powered witness list. It includes Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, former acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau. (read more)

Depending on preset Perkins Coie leverage and risk exposure, other officials from deep inside the DOJ/FBI small group operation may also be forced to stand as defense witnesses by Sussmann’s team.  The lawfare combat teams look interesting. (more…)

Carter Page was the convenient target of a FISA application the Obama-era DOJ and FBI needed to cover for their illegal surveillance. In essence, late summer 2016 the DOJ/FBI needed to get a search warrant to cover for the illegal political surveillance they had been undertaking for the past 10+ months on the Trump campaign.

The DOJ/FBI had an intelligence source named Carter Page, essentially an informant who worked for the CIA and whom the FBI previously used to indict Russians in the Buryakov case. Page was tangentially affiliated with the Trump campaign, so he became the conduit -a target- to get a search warrant that would provide the cover for all prior surveillance.

Carter Page became the useful target, and the Steele dossier, again provided by -essentially- another confidential informant (Chris Steele), provided the evidence to support the warrant. Thus, the dossier was important to support the search warrant application (the FISA app). The FISA application is the Title-1 search warrant application, and the dossier was essentially the underlying ‘woods file’, to justify the warrant.

Everything associated with the search warrant was nonsense, including the informants (Chris Steele, Igor Danchenko, Charles Dolan) who provided the DOJ with evidence (fabricated information) to take to the judge. That’s why it is all falling apart in closer examination. Everyone in the DOJ and FBI knew the evidence justifying the search warrant was nonsense, but they needed the warrant to cover for their prior unlawful conduct.

However, the target of that warrant, the former useful CIA, FBI and DOJ informant who was valuable to the DOJ in prior legal cases, is angry. Carter Page is righteously angry at the FBI and DOJ for lying to a judge (FISA Court) to get a search warrant against him and everyone he talked to and communicated with. So Carter Page has been filing civil lawsuits against the participants hoping to hold them accountable.

Today the civil lawsuit Carter Page -vs- James Comey, former FBI Director at the time when Page was targeted, was assigned to a new judge….. and who do you think the judge “randomly selected” was?

Yup…. James Boasberg, current presiding judge over the FISA Court.

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When the Carter Page FISA application was originally assembled by the FBI and DOJ, there was initial hesitancy from within the DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) about submitting the application, because it did not have enough citations in evidence (the infamous ‘Woods File’).  That’s why the Steele Dossier ultimately became important.  It was the Steele Dossier that provided the push, the legal cover needed for the DOJ-NSD to submit the application for a Title-1 surveillance warrant against the campaign of Donald J. Trump.

When the application was finally assembled for submission to the FISA court, the head of the DOJ-NSD was John Carlin.  Carlin quit working for the DOJ-NSD in late September 2016 just before the final application was submitted (October 21,2016).  John Carlin was replaced by Deputy Asst. Attorney General, Mary McCord.

♦ When the FISA application was finally submitted (approved by Sally Yates and James Comey), it was Mary McCord who did the actual process of filing the application and gaining the Title-1 surveillance warrant.

A few months later, February 2017, with Donald Trump now in office as President, it was Mary McCord who went with Deputy AG Sally Yates to the White House to confront White House legal counsel Don McGahn over the Michael Flynn interview with FBI agents.  The surveillance of Flynn’s calls was presumably done under the auspices and legal authority of the FISA application Mary McCord previously was in charge of submitting.

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With the jaw-dropping revelation of former DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord being enlisted by the FISA Court as an Amici Curiae (advisor to the court) it is worthwhile revisiting this previous video explanation of the FISA Court.

John Spiropoulos does a great job outlining the history of the FISC looking the other way when the fourth amendment protections against searching American citizens electronic communication are violated by the FBI.  “Mistakes were made”… and made, and made, and made, and made….

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Prior to the December 9, 2019, inspector general report on FISA abuse, FISA Court judges Rosemary Collyer (declassified 2017) and James Boasberg (declassified 2019) both identified issues with the NSA bulk database collection program being exploited for unauthorized reasons.  Neither of them took any action against the FBI for warrantless searches of American citizen information.

So it should come as no surprise the 2020 report written again by James Boasberg, shows exactly the same issues still exist and the same unlawful abuses of the NSA database are still taking place.  Taking events at their face value it would appear the court is in alignment with the FBI and thus the abuses have continued.  Under that context Boasberg enlisting Mary McCord appears to be an institutional motive of covering-up the wrongdoing.

In order for corruption to continue advancing without consequence, those with institutional power have to pretend not to know things: “mistakes were made.”

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The FISA Court is Compromised

I hate to write this, but there is just no good way to look at this. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, specifically Presiding Judge James Boasberg, has hired former DOJ National Security Division head, Mary McCord, as amici curiae advisor to the court. [LINK] The placement was first noted by an announcement from Georgetown Law ICAP.

Presiding Judge James Boasberg, is the decision-maker in the appointment of Amici Curiae to the FISA court. There is no way, NO WAY, Judge Boasberg does not know Mary McCord was at the epicenter of the fraudulent FISA application used against Carter Page. Remember, in addition to being the FISC Presiding Judge, Boasberg was also the trial judge in the case against Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who lied about Page working for the CIA on the FISA application. {Go Deep}

Boasberg knows Mary McCord took over from former DOJ-NSD head John Carlin (October 2016); and it was McCord who guided the Carter Page FISA application through the court and across the finish-line (October 2016 and January 2017). That FISA application was built upon fraud and Mary McCord was at the center of it.

Mary McCord was also the DOJ-NSD official who went with Sally Yates to confront the White House Counsel, Don McGhan, about the Michael Flynn interview with the FBI. {Go Deep} It was also Mary McCord who had Michael Atkinson as the chief-legal-counsel for the DOJ-NSD -that’s her office attorney- when the FISA application was submitted in October 2016, and renewed in January 2017.

Michael Atkinson went from DOJ-NSD counsel to become the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). {Go Deep} In that new role Atkinson changed the rules to allow an anonymous CIA whistleblower (Ciaramella on behalf of Vindman) to file the complaint that led to the Ukraine impeachment effort. {Go Deep} Who was the lead lawyer in the Jerry Nadler led House Judiciary Committee? Why Mary McCord of course. Judge Boasberg knows all of this… AND MORE.

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