Obama State Department Implicated in ‘RussiaGate’

On Tuesday, I brought news of some emails from the Obama State Department obtained by Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch that showed a connection between British spy Christopher Steele and Clinton allies working there. By Tuesday night, there was a lot more to this story.

Fitton appeared on Sean Hannity’s FOX News show to break brand-new details. He had just obtained even more State Department documents. These showed that the very anti-Trump Steele and Glenn Simpson of oppo-research firm Fusion GPS had SPECIAL ACCESS to an official at the State Department named Jonathan Winer, who worked under then-Secretary of State John Kerry.

In case you haven’t yet seen the Mark Tapscott article in The Epoch Times I linked to on Tuesday — or if it’s just hard to keep track of all the players — I’ll try to simplify what we know at this point. Winer was “the Libya guy” at the State Department. These newly obtained documents show that after the 2016 election, Winer worked with Victoria Nuland at State and also a top aide for Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) to target President-elect Trump.

So, judging from these documents, it certainly wasn’t just the FBI going after Trump. The Obama State Department was, as Fitton put it, “all hands on deck,” with Steele joining forces with longtime Clinton cronies Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer to create the “Russia” material. There was more than one “dossier” (see link. Remember the speculation that Cody Shearer had actually authored one?), and some of this material was apparently created by Winer within the State Department itself.

Documents show that Winer was in contact with Simpson in September of 2016 and then immediately contacted Nuland at the State Department. Later, after the election, they worked closely with Steny Hoyer’s aide on the “Russia” stuff, which Steele, of course, was helping on. According to Fitton, Steele was “extremely close” to Jonathan Winer, who had been his contact at the State Department for years.

Steele was able to launder the phony “Russia” information into the State Department through his pal Winer. (In that sense, Winer’s role sounds a lot like the one played by Bruce Ohr in getting the “dossier” to the DOJ and FBI.) In these emails, Winer admits he moved some of that information from the State Department over to the DOJ.

A Last Desperate Effort

Fitton pointed out that Victoria Nuland was at the State Department primarily to coordinate work on Libya. What was she doing working with Christopher Steele on “Russia”?

We know that someone at the State Department was feeding classified “Russia” information to certain members of Congress in the days right before Trump’s inauguration. In fact, Fitton characterized the State Department officials as “desperate” to get it to them.

It sounds to me like sort of a “last hurrah” before they would have to turn the keys over to their political enemies, a last-ditch effort to undermine the new President. In fact, reporter Sara Carter has been speaking to numerous sources, including a State Department official who was there during the Obama administration. She was told Tuesday that “the genesis of this investigation will begin and end with members of the State Department.”

(Incidentally, Carter also thinks that some of our allies might have been used to spy on Americans without being aware of all the implications of what they were doing. They might very well be horrified that the role they unwittingly played is being exposed now and perhaps are eager to come clean with our Justice Department to set things right.)

Fitton now wants to know specifically which members of Congress knew about the “dossier,” what they knew about it and when they became aware. See, this goes way beyond Comey, Strzok, Page and the others at the FBI. This is the executive branch and the legislative branch as well. And why would that surprise anyone, now that we know that congressional Democrats on the separate House committees have signed “memoranda of understanding” that they will coordinate their efforts to go after Trump.

Proof of the Wide-Spread Conspiracy is Right There

I know this seems like an ever-expanding conspiracy theory — and that’s what Democrats will call it — but the evidence is RIGHT THERE. It’s in these communications, which the bureaucracy “slow-walked” to Judicial Watch and others and would have deep-sixed if they could have. Thanks to the persistence of Judicial Watch, plus certain reporters and undeterred Republican committee members, these are finally seeing the light of day. (Need I remind you that if Hillary had been elected, we would never have known about these relationships and the “meddling” her people were up to?)

So now that Attorney General Bill Barr is conducting an investigation into how the “Trump/Russia” investigation got started, it seems he should enlist the aid of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who’s also a former head of the CIA) to find out what was going on inside his department as well. When the letter sent from the deputy AG to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler announced that Barr’s review would be “broad in scope,” he wasn’t kidding. Obviously, that is of necessity, as the participants are spread out all over, even in some cases around the world.

Now it makes sense when we hear that the Inspector General’s report on the FISA warrant application may take longer than we’d been led to think. For a while, we were expecting it to drop “any day now,” but it just hasn’t come, and some have said it might not even be this month or even the next — more like October.

It’s frustrating, I know. But sensing how huge this ol’ iceberg must be, we want Michael Horowitz and his team to take the time they need to map the whole thing. Of course, his investigation is unlike Barr’s in that it deals only with government employees, and he can’t indict. Barr, in contrast, can go anywhere he wants with his investigation, and, of course, he can press criminal charges. I get the feeling he wouldn’t hesitate one second to do that. It’s a nice feeling.

On Tuesday, the House voted along party lines to take Barr and former White House counsel John McGahn to court to try to force them to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Then, if Barr and McGahn defy subpoenas, they’ll vote again to hold them in contempt of Congress. They just refuse to let the “Trump/Russia” investigation go, even after the Mueller report was released with no case against Trump or any other American.

Trump wants to signal that this is over by simply ending cooperation, as he and his entire administration were transparent to the special counsel. He put up no obstacles to Mueller and even let McGahn testify behind closed doors for about 30 hours.

Barr was transparent as well — much more so than the special counsel law required him to be, as he was not obligated to share the Mueller report at all. The special counsel does not exist to investigate for Congress. (Sorry, Congress.) And now Democrats want Barr to break the law by releasing grand jury material. The vote on this was so partisan, the only thing it really showed was that there are more Democrats in Congress right now than there are Republicans. Let’s hope that situation is rectified next year.

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...reporter Sara Carter has been speaking to numerous sources, including a State Department official who was there during the Obama administration. She was told Tuesday that “the genesis of this investigation will begin and end with members of the State Department.”

Start with Samantha Power and her husband Cass Sunstein.

As I posted previously:

I was thinking that Power would be a soft target to flip, but then I refreshed my knowledge of her background.
She's married to Cass Sunstein, who was also in the Obama administration. He's a Harvard and Columbia lawyer, so he'd be a strong protector of his wife.
She was born in London to Irish parents, and naturalized in 1993.
She supports Palestine over Israel, and was the first American UN Ambassador to refuse to block a resolution against Israel.
She was the strongest advocate for the Obama Administration to intervene in Libya, resulting in the death of Khaddaffi.
Her husband Sunstein wrote a 2008 paper on conspiracy theories. From Wikipedia:

Sunstein co-authored a 2008 paper with Adrian Vermeule, titled "Conspiracy Theories," dealing with the risks and possible government responses to conspiracy theories resulting from "cascades" of faulty information within groups that may ultimately lead to violence. In this article they wrote, "The existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government's antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be." They go on to propose that, "the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups",^[37] where they suggest, among other tactics, "Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."^[37] They refer, several times, to groups that promote the view that the US Government was responsible or complicit in the September 11 attacks as "extremist groups."
The authors declare that there are five hypothetical responses a government can take toward conspiracy theories: "We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help." However, the authors advocate that each "instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5)."
Sunstein and Vermeule also analyze the practice of recruiting "nongovernmental officials"; they suggest that "government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes," further warning that "too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed."^[37] Sunstein and Vermeule argue that the practice of enlisting non-government officials, "might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts." This position has been criticized by some commentators^[38]^[39] who argue that it would violate prohibitions on government propaganda aimed at domestic citizens.^[40] Sunstein and Vermeule's proposed infiltrations have also been met by sharply critical scholarly critiques.^[41]^[42]^[43]^[44]

When reading my bolded portions of the Sunstein paper, doesn't it seem to be the blueprint for the entire Obama conspiracy against Trump?
We have:

The claim that Russian bots infiltrated Facebook and planted disinformation during the election.
The targeting of foreigners who would be talking to Obama's domestic opponents, unmasking the Americans involved, and leaking the conversations to the media.
The hiring of Steele to prepare the Trump disinformation dossier.
Hiding the Clinton and DNC involvement behind Perkins Coie, who fronted to Steele.
Using the American media to offer the "independent rebuttal" against the Trump administration's claims of a witch hunt.

Now I think that both Power and Sunstein were deep into the planning of the whole thing, based on Sunstein's own paper on the subject.

We need to find out who falsified government documents by requesting unmaskings in Powers' name.

-PJ

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Obama State Department Implicated in ‘RussiaGate’

Judicial Watch uncovers emails indicating much further involvement by State Department officials than previously known.

A Last Desperate Effort

Proof of the Wide-Spread Conspiracy is Right There