The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Was Formally Opened on False Pretenses

Chicanery was the force behind the formal opening of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. There was a false premise, namely: The Trump campaign must have known that Russia possessed emails related to Hillary Clinton. From there, through either intentional deception or incompetence, the foreign ministries of Australia and the United States erected a fraudulent story tying the Trump campaign’s purported knowledge to the publication of hacked Democratic National Committee emails.

We learn from the Mueller report (Volume I, p. 193) that Mifsud was interviewed by the FBI on February 10, 2017, a couple of weeks after the bureau started interviewing Papadopoulos. Mifsud denied that, when he met Papadopoulos in London on April 26, 2016, he either knew about or said anything about Russia’s possession of Clinton-related emails.

The Trump-Russia investigation continued for over two years after the FBI’s interview of Mifsud. Mueller took over the probe in May 2017. During his 22 months running the investigation, Mueller charged many people (including Papadopoulos) with lying to the FBI. But he never charged Mifsud. The government has never alleged that Mifsud’s denial was false.

...Mueller carefully describes not what Papadopoulos said to Downer, but what Downer understood Papadopoulos had “suggested,” namely that:

"the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton."

The “Trump Campaign” here is Papadopoulos; the “Russian government” is Mifsud. But Papadopoulos was as low-ranking as it got in the Trump campaign, and Mifsud — the source of the “indications” — was not part of the Russian government at all.

there is no evidence that Mifsud ever told Papadopoulos that the Russian government was planning to assist the Trump campaign by anonymously releasing information damaging to Clinton.

Crossfire Hurricane and the Steele Dossier was the “insurance policy”. Read the Strock and Paige messages again.
The real criminal behavior/intelligence gathering had been taking place for YEARS, at least since 2012 and 2013, monitoring the political enemies of Obongo via the NSA. The Admiral caught on to their antics and reported it to the FISA Court, shutting their games down at a most inopportune moment in April 2016.

They needed another means of intelligence gathering and the FISA Court warrant against Carter Page was a last minute, thrown together affair to get them back quasi-legitimately monitoring the Trump Campaign via the two step rule.

Brennan and Clapper were thick as thieves through the whole thing but it was a tangled bureaucratic patch job with the usual lies and distrust between the players and sources through FBI, CIA, DOJ, State WH and NSA. No one trusts the other parties in this criminal cabal and the disorganization shows.

When the dreaded even happened, Trump won, then they carried on with the monitoring via renewals and starting building the case to undo the election using whatever they had at hand.

Bingo. I think most Freepers know about the “unmasking” of American citizens, but who has provided details on the interrogatories (who, what, where, when, why, how & sometimes huh?)?

Ever wonder why McConnell, Ryan, and McCain never demanded a congressional inquiry when Republicans had three branches of government? Republicans had a great opportunity to increase seats in the house and senate, not lose in the midterms. WHY? A significant number of republicans (and of course, Sessions) were blackmailed or coerced into not allowing an investigation to be opened.

Folks, we are definitely not out of danger yet! Our only hope is that Trump has/had enough human assets (besides Rogers) inside the FBI, CIA and NSA who have saved copies of documents authorizing illegal unmasking of Americans. Most likely, the unmasking was improperly classified with a SAP designation to limit its distribution, so there might only be a handful of folks per agency in the know.

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