Were there really ever any Russians at all?

Flopping Aces ^ | 02-11-18 | DrJohn

[Starman417]

We have been fed an endless diet of Trump-Russia collusion by the media. It is based on the dossier compiled by one Christopher Steele. The more we learn about it, the more curious it becomes.

The dossier was the basis for the FBI to secure a warrant to spy on Carter Page. That in itself is very curious. Page has been on the FBI radar since at least 2014. Page is thought to have helped the FBI snare Russian spies in 2013 back then although he denies it. You'd think that the FBi would be able to determine if Page was a spy in all the time. I'll have more to say about Page soon.

The Nunes memo made several key claims:

• The FBI used an unverified, allegedly biased document known as the “Steele dossier”to get a warrant in October 2016 to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The dossier, prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleges the existence of a conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russian government. The Steele dossier was partially financed by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
• Senior FBI and Justice Department officials knew that the Steele dossier was indirectly funded by a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, but didn’t disclose this in their application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court — a court that approves surveillance warrants pertaining to national security and foreign intelligence. They also didn’t disclose it when renewing their applications requesting additional time for surveillance.
• In September 2016, Steele spoke with Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele told Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Ohr’s wife worked for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that hired Steele on behalf of the DNC/Clinton lawyer.
• The head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap apparently said corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the FISA application.

Additionally, the memo also noted:

"McCabe testified before the committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the [FISA court] without the Steele dossier information"

Steele lied to the FBI

The narrative is laid out in the Nunes memo. It notes that at the time the FBI sought the Page warrant on Oct. 21 “the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele” for the same information the bureau submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for the warrant. Mr. Steele wrote his last election dossier memo on Oct. 19, apparently ending his $160,000 in payments from Fusion GPS, the investigative firm that had hired him to produce the dossier.

The Nunes memo later states, “Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016 Mother Jones article by David Corn.”

The FBI called him a "less than reliable source."

Donald Trump dossier: intelligence sources vouch for author's credibility

But that was back in January 2017. Things change.

Steele admitted that his dossier was "unverified." 

Then there's the circular sourcing:

Third, the FISA warrant application cited as corroborating evidence an article in Yahoo News written by Michael Isikoff that was published on Sept. 23, 2016 and focused on a trip to Moscow made by Page in July 2016.

But that Yahoo News article couldn’t really be considered “corroboration” of the dossier compiled by Steele, as it was revealed that Steele himself had provided the information upon which this article was based to Isikoff. This tactic is known as circular sourcing, or making a single source of information appear as though it is coming from multiple independent sources.

So now "multiple sources" are dwindling. Now on to the second dossier, written by Clinton hack Cody Shearer.

Frightened out of his wits by Devin Nunes' promise of the next memo exposing the corruption of the DOJ, Jonathan Winer, a DOJ official under John Kerry, came out as the person passing on propaganda against Donald Trump prior to the election:

For your amusement- read this

[Dogbert41]

There never was, but the damage done may be insurmountable.

[Tax-chick]

Russians are a myth. I saw it on Youtube.

[Lopeover]

Who took out the Russian airline? Russians? Global cabal? Clowns?

[umgud]

DJT is our best last chance to shut down the banana republic we have become.

Of course it doesn’t hurt when the dims overplay their hand.

[TakebackGOP]

Where’s Mitch McConnell on the dossier, uranium deal, spying on Trump campaign etc?

[ClearCase_guy]

Well they blew the horns
And the walls came down
They’d all been warned
And the walls came down

They stood there laughing
They’re not laughing anymore
The walls came down

I don’t think there are any Russians
And there ain’t no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin’ with tanks

— The Call - The Walls Came Down

[SpaceBar]

That little incident last week with Adam Schiff believing he was obtaining nude photos of Donald Trump from Russian agents sure went down the memory hole fast.

[Slyfox]

I do believe that the Russian narrative was made up, cuz you know, all of us rubes have this natural fear of those evil Russians.

And we supposedly believe anything when it is attached to "Russians."

[Billthedrill]

In other calls with advisers and political surrogates in; the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss. "She's not being particularly self-reflective," said one longtime ally who was on calls with her shortly after the election. Instead, Hillary kept pointing her finger at Comey and Russia. "She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way," this person said.

The strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shke Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign - Allen and Parnes

[jjotto]

I do not believe there were any Russian sources for the Steele dossier. All the info was invented by Clinton cronies.

US intelligence did employ Russians to try to entrap Donald Trump.

Russia seems to be kind of a Wild West of hackers and scammers, perfect scapegoats for Clinton crime syndicate activities. Just claim anything traced to Russia is controlled by Putin.

[Paladin2]

Mitch is too busy not confirming judges and fighting The Wall.

[freeandfreezing]

I suspect that the actual reason for all the "Russian" dossiers, etc. was to create a cover for the illegal wiretapping that the FBI and CIA did to help out Hillary Clinton.

Some of them appear to have been created solely so that the FBI guys who lied to the FISA court could claim there was corroboration.

There was collusion with Russian agents - but it was done by the DNC, the FBI, the CIA and related parties.

[MAGAthon]

think of all the MSM energy invested in RussiaRussiaRussia - probably could have fuelled the earth for the rest of the Century.

[CloudyI]

Devin Nunes said it best—

“I just go by the old rule: whatever they accuse you of doing, they’re actually doing.”

[adorno]

I think the time has come for the DOJ heads, and for Trump himself to ask Mueller about what his investigations have been really about, since, the whole thing was based on a phony dossier, fabricated by the Hillary campaign and the DNC and the Obama administration.

Trump should be asking Mueller about what he (Trump) is being investigated about, and if the answer is about Russian collusion, Trump should throw it right back at him and demand to know there could be collusion allegations from a phony dossier. Mueller cannot have a good answer to that at all. If Mueller mentions obstruction into the investigations, Trump can answer with the same reply, where there cannot be obstruction of investigations based on a phony set of allegations from a phony dossier.

Mueller is trapped. He cannot, in any shape, way or fashion, come up with anything against Trump based on a phony dossier. Mueller is also trapped on the opposite side of the investigations, where he had better turn up indisputable cases of attempted sedition on the part of the people who fabricated the phony dossier. He has to turn up with charges, but against those who planted the phony evidence in the first place. Anything less, will just point to collusion on the part of Mueller himself.

[jonrick46]

I believe Bill “Slick Willy” Clinton had a hand in the dossier fabrication. Who could have, besides Slick Willy, come with a story line as bazaar as Trump with a Russian prostitute doing Water Sports on a Moscow hotel bed? This has the earmarks of that stain on Monica’s dress—only worse. If that sort of event happened in a hotel room, the mess it made would have been noticed by the hotel staff and all hell would have broke out against Trump as soon as it was discovered. This incident was falsely reported to occur at the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant. It took until late 2013 for it to be reported. If it happened, it would have been reported much much earlier.

[SunkenCiv]

/bingo

I wholeheartedly agree.

Also, I’m stealin’ that graphic.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3631293/posts?page=9#9

[marron]

No, no Russians were involved in writing the famous dossier. Its fiction. None were required. It was no doubt compiled by someone at Fusion and Steele was paid to sign it.

Why? He is a foreign national. Makes it harder to subpoena him into a US court.

And the whole thing provides perjury protection. Is it true? I don’t know, it was provided by someone reliable, who is outside the US. And if you ask him, is it true? I don’t know, it was provided by unnamed Russians who can’t be identified without endangering them. Bla-bla-bla.

No one has to take responsibility for it.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t any Russians, though. Fusion was on Russia’s payroll. As was Podesta. As were the Clintons, both of them. Fusion being contracted to both DNC and Russia, provides an easy pretext for DNC and Russian operatives to be in the same offices without arousing suspicion, not that anyone at FBI is even interested.

[Paladin2]

Mueller needs to be perp walked for being an integral part of the RICO conspiracy of Sedition of at least the Three musketeer Weasels (Comey, RosenWeasel and Mueller).