COMEY: FBI PROBE INITIALLY FOCUSED ON FOUR AMERICANS

James Comey made the surprise revelation in his congressional testimony on Friday that the FBI opened investigations into four Trump associates in late July 2016.

It was previously known that four Trump advisers were the focus of the FBI probe, but it was not known that they were targeted at the outset of the investigation.

It was previously believed that former Trump aide George Papadopoulos was the catalyst for the investigation, which was dubbed Crossfire Hurricane.

The FBI opened counterintelligence investigations into four Trump campaign associates in late July 2016, earlier than previously known, former FBI Director James Comey told Congress Friday.

“I was briefed sometime at the end of July that the FBI had opened counterintelligence investigations of four individuals to see if there was a connection between those — any of those four and the Russian effort,” Comey said during a seven hour interview with the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees.

The revelation comes as something of a surprise because Democrats and many in the media have insisted that the probe, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, was launched solely based on information that the Australian government provided the FBI on Trump aide George Papadopoulos.

From the article, this simply incredible comment by Comey:

“I’m sure there was lots of effort to figure out what the heck was going on with the Russians because we saw their effort blossom in the middle of June. But I’m not aware of any information before that at the end of July about the possibility that Americans were working with the Russians,” he said.

This, while the Democrats, the FBI, and the CIA at a minimum were quite busy "working with the Russians". They were gathering together the information from the Russians that was passed to Steele and on to the Clinton campaign. And the NYT and others.

And what could Comey possibly mean by the Russian efforts blossoming in the middle of June.

From the article, this simply incredible comment by Comey:

This, while the Democrats, the FBI, and the CIA at a minimum were quite busy “working with the Russians”. They were gathering together the information from the Russians that was passed to Steele and on to the Clinton campaign. And the NYT and others.

And what could Comey possibly mean by the Russian efforts blossoming in the middle of June.!.

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imo, there was nothing on russia, russia, russia until trump flipped the light switch on in the debate with hildabeast when he made the facetious remark about “asking putin to provide her emails” when she was stonewalling the release of over 33,000 of her private server emails.

She was quick to use trump’s joke to start her projection of russian collusion from her & the DNC cabal

From the article: Comey declined to name the four Americans, though The New York Times has previously reported that the initial focus of the investigation was Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort.

Papadop: duped / seduced by Italian (now wife), given 10k cash which he wisely left with European lawyers. Page: extorted using prior work for FBI helping them with anti-Russian counterintel. He clearly helped the USA but they probably flipped the script and accused him of being a double agent. Flynn, an anti-Trump maverick who was a known foreign policy freelancer. Probably extorted into infiltrating the Trump campaign. Manafort, a man with a theoretical 10-20 years of jail time but was never prosecuted (most similar tax cases are settled with fines). Possibly extorted into joining the Trump campaign.

Of course any or all of the four could have been Russian-connected but that is extremely doubtful. Any of the four could have been part of an election collusion scheme. However it is known that Halper and Mifsud have ties to western intelligence and that pretty much exonerates Papadop.

Page has a history with one of the very few successful takedowns of a russian agent. The Page collusion story was obviously being shopped. See http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/30/new-details-reinforce-fbi-used-fake-pretexts-start-investigating-trump/

Flynn is more of a mystery to me. Not sure what he was doing in 2016, but he was clearly part of a selective prosecution and hit job by McCabe in 2017. It's possible McCabe had earlier evidence from 2016 to go on, but it's much more likely that he just hated Trump and Flynn and wanted to take them out.

Manafort was the bad boy of the bunch but also hit with very selective prosecution for havng been part of the Trump campaign. "According to The Guardian, Manafort met with the WikiLeaks’ founder at the embassy three times—in 2013, 2015, and in spring 2016." see http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/29/guardians-manafort-story-far-just-another-evidence-less-spygate-smear-strategy/ Those stories seem to be post hoc narratives designed to justify the misuse of the intellgence services against a political opponent.

Even if you keep a very open mind about Russian collusion possibilities (which make no sense except perhaps as a general way to sow chaos), the misuse of the intelligence services is something fit for a banana republic. The deep state might well just be a bunch of over-eager McCabe types, but tossing the principles of justice over a botched political hit puts us way down on the slippery slope. Possibly without any way to recover without herculean political efforts, No republicans seem willing to step up and Dems are in the enemy camp.

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