The table has turned on the ‘Trump-Russia’ hoax and now the conspirators are running for the hills

The National Sentinel ^ | 26 May 2019 | Eric Felton

[E. Pluribus Unum]

By Eric Felton

Now that the Russia collusion allegations have evaporated, the long knives are out and President Trump’s antagonists are watching their backs. They have moved from accusing him of treason to pushing revisionist narratives that try to shift the blame for the debunked probe onto others.

This effort is expected to accelerate following Trump’s decision Thursday to empower Attorney General William Barr to declassify CIA, Pentagon, and Director of National Intelligence documents as necessary to access “information or intelligence that relates to the attorney general’s review” of the Russia probe.

In other words, he’s gaining the authority needed to investigate the investigators.

CIA sources immediately objected in the New York Times that assets’ lives would be at risk, stunting Langley’s ability to recruit. Perhaps. But the argument is a bit shopworn, raising the question whether intelligence managers are looking to protect their agents and sources, or aiming to protect themselves.

There are a growing number of indicators that the leading players in the 2016 election drama are turning on one another, making a mad dash for the lifeboats to escape being dragged under with the political Titanic that is Christopher Steele and his dossier. These are many of the same people who had been eager to exploit the dossier, that collection of memos paid for by the Clinton campaign and supposedly sourced from Russia. Once treated like the Rosetta stone of collusion, the Steele documents now seem even to Trump antagonists more like the Howard Hughes diaries.

A “former CIA official” has told Fox News that two of Trump’s most high profile accusers – former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Director of the CIA John Brennan – didn’t want anything to do with Steele’s opus. It was former FBI Director James Comey, the source said, who was pushing to use the dossier in the official Intelligence Community Assessment, issued in the final days of the Obama administration. Having failed at that, thanks to Clapper and Brennan’s diligence (or so the story goes), Comey went rogue and confronted President-elect Trump with the salacious highlights produced by Steele.

Even the peripheral players are doing their best to shift blame. Former FBI General Counsel James Baker – who is under criminal investigation for leaks – recently went on the Skullduggery podcast to assert that he and other bureau officials were “quite worried” that Comey’s meeting with Trump would look like a page out of J. Edgar Hoover’s playbook – invoking the legendary FBI director who stockpiled damaging information to blackmail politicians. Would Comey be wrong to interpret Baker’s comments as an offer to testify against his former boss in exchange for a deal on the leaks investigation?

Comey has no shortage of adversaries, partly because old rivals he thought he had dispatched — such as former Attorney General Loretta Lynch — are back in the mix, and he is possibly sensing his vulnerability. It was in June 2017 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that Comey tossed Lynch under the proverbial bus. Now she’s showing she can climb out from under the motor coach and dust herself off.

In September of 2015, Lynch and Comey were preparing to testify on Capitol Hill and expected to be asked about the Hillary Clinton email probe — code-named the Midyear Exam — which at that point had not been officially acknowledged. “I wanted to know if she [Lynch] would authorize us to confirm we had an investigation,” Comey told lawmakers. “And she said yes, but don’t call it that; call it a ‘matter.’ And I said why would I do that? And [Lynch] said just call it a ‘matter.’” Comey says he reluctantly went along with Lynch’s demand, even though it gave him “a queasy feeling.” He worried “that the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way a political campaign was describing the same activity, which was inaccurate.”

Lynch pushed back against the notion she had twisted Comey’s arm. In April 2018 she told NBC’s Lester Holt that she didn’t remember the meeting the way Comey described it, and that the FBI director had raised no objections.

But now that the questions about officials’ behavior regarding the 2016 candidates has become a fraught topic, those officials are taking stronger stands to defend themselves. Comey continues to leave little wiggle room in his portrayal of the conversation with Lynch. In a December 2018 closed-door congressional interview, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) asked him to confirm “the fact that the attorney general had asked you to refer to this investigation as a matter, correct?”

“That is correct.” Comey said.

Not so, says Lynch. On Dec. 19, 2018, she appeared before a closed-door session of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. She was being questioned by Republican staff attorney Zach Somers. He asked “whether you ever instructed Director Comey to call the Midyear Exam investigation a matter?” She said his testimony was the first she had any indication “that he had that impression of our conversation.”

That answer was a little ambiguous, so Somers asked Lynch directly: “So you do not believe you ever instructed him to call it a matter?”

“I did not,” said Lynch. “I have never instructed a witness as to what to say specifically. Never have, never will.” Under penalty of lying to Congress, the former AG declared, “I didn’t direct anyone to use specific phraseology.”

Before leaping to the conclusion that Lynch is calling Comey a liar, we need to keep reading the transcript of Lynch’s testimony, which ends up being far less definitive than it first appears. As is so often the case with lawyers’ lawlerly responses, the assertion turns on specific words. Lynch said she didn’t “instruct” or “direct” anyone to use any “specific” language. Instead, she testified, she had told Comey that she personally referred to the Hillary affair as a “matter” or “issue” and “that was the suggestion that I made to him.”

Could it be this is the shape of investigations — sorry, matters — to come? The spectacle of former power players parsing verbs at one another? It may seem a sound defensive strategy now, but it will grow harder to craft phraseology subtle enough to slip out of trouble. Legalistic sparring becomes increasingly difficult as the number of those being put under oath proliferates, and as the number of investigations mount. The game theory concept known as the “Prisoner’s dilemma” is confounding enough when there are two players having to figure out whether to trust one another or sell each other out. Make it multi-person, game theorists point out, and the difficulty for the players grows exponentially.

Making the game even more difficult is how much of the play is being done under cover. When so much of the frenzied blame-shifting is right out in the open, who knows how much whet workwith the long knives is going on in the shadows? “If Brennan and Comey and Clapper are doing this publicly,” one Senate staffer says, private-sector dossier-peddlers “[Sidney] Blumenthal, [Cody] Shearer and [Glenn] Simpson are doing it privately.”

There’s no overstating institutional animosities and how likely they are to affect efforts to find out the full story of what happened in the 2016 election. The Department of Justice, the FBI, the State Department and various intelligence agencies are supposed to cooperate, working together to amplify their efforts through coordination. Instead, they often end up at odds, competing for the praise and resources that come with successes and laying off on others the blame that attends mistakes and failures.

“The FBI and DoJ are ruthless to each other, petty to one another,” one congressional staffer marvels.

FBI investigator Peter Strzok provides a vivid example of the attitudes at play. In texts to his lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, he makes declarations such as “I hate DoJ.” Half an hour later he sends another text that includes “And I hate DoJ.” Elsewhere in the texts, the people of “main justice” are called “political dicks.” In the same spirit Strzok declares “DoJ are putzes, man.” Later he tells Page, “Don’t trust DoJ” and declares, “God I hate them.” Page describes DoJ as the “no brigade.” She writes, “I just feel like throttling DOJ.”

Connoisseurs of the knife fights between Justice and the bureau keep an eye out not only for what gets reported in the press, but where it gets reported. “The Department of Justice has good relations with, and tends to leak to, the Washington Post,” says a longtime Capitol Hill staffer. “The FBI leaks to the New York Times.”

He points to the competing narratives about then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s supposed offer to wear a wire and record conversations with the president. The story broke in the New York Times last September and portrayed then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe as the level-headed professional pushing back against Rosenstein’s fevered fantasies, which included not only the suggestion of secretly recording Trump, but the idea of invoking the 25th Amendment to have him removed from office. “The extreme suggestions show Mr. Rosenstein’s state of mind in the disorienting days that followed Mr. Comey’s dismissal,” the Times wrote. “Mr. Rosenstein appeared conflicted, regretful and emotional, according to people who spoke with him at the time.” In other words, if there were dubious decisions being made by federal law enforcement officials, it wasn’t just Rosenstein’s fault, according to the Times; it was because the deputy AG was losing his marbles.

[Navy Patriot]

The table has turned on the ‘Trump-Russia’ hoax and now the conspirators are running for the hills

Arrest them before they get to the "hills".

[SaveFerris]

[laplata]

Those involved in the attempted coup must face serious justice because if they get away with it, they will do it again and next time they will go full Stalin/Hitler on our asses.

[hal ogen]

It would make my day if these criminal traitors and seditionists were held to account, convicted and either imprisoned or hanged. More importantly, it would be very good for this Country and for Freedom. Their assets should be seized and their families shunned for centuries. Crush these rats.

[tennmountainman]

Release the Kraken on the coup plotters.

[Neidermeyer]

CIA sources immediately objected in the New York Times that assets’ lives would be at risk, stunting Langley’s ability to recruit.
************
Langley didn’t care when HRC sold info to the Chicoms that got a dozen or so of their CIA’s best spies murdered in 2011...

[precisionshootist]

Total BS. No one has laid a glove on these criminals and they are not running for the hills. They are on book tours, collecting 100 percent taxpayer funded pensions, living large off of ill gotten wealth and continuing to destroy America and undermine the President 24/7. Conservatives are starting to believe their own fantasies as bad a liberals. No one has been arrested, indicted or held accountable in any way shape or form. People that worked to elect President Trump are in PRISON! Wake up!

[proust]

It’s about time for Hannity to lecture us about the great rank and file that stood by during all of this.

[katana]

I was thinking more of a nest of scurrying rats being grabbed and necks broken by a Scotch Terrier. They're impressively efficient.

[smvoice]

Loretta Lynch BKMK

[AustinBill]

The Constitution forbids “corruption of the blood”. But hanging is the traditional punishment for treason and that would be immensely salutary.

[gathersnomoss]

Bingo.

[dragnet2]

Where are all those who chant, “Nothing thing will happen”?

[dragnet2]

No one has been arrested, indicted or held accountable in any way shape or form.

There it is! Btw, since it hasn't happened yet, are you suggesting it never will? Or are you just angry it hasn't not occurred based on your own schedule of what should happen and when?

[dfwgator]

Run to the hills.........Run for your life.....

[Mark]

Part of email that I received recently from producers of the Gosnell movie:

Dear Supporters,

Well that didn't take long. We wrote to you yesterday letting you know about our plans to film FBI Lovebirds: UnderCovers (starring Dean Cain and Kristy Swanson) and reveal how the “Russia Investigation” was started and maintained by FBI agents who privately boasted that they would stop Trump from becoming elected.

[Tucker39]

“...former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Director of the CIA John Brennan – didn’t want anything to do with Steele’s opus...”

This is a lie. Brennan shopped the dossier all around, and leaked it to the media after Comey told POTUS the salacious parts, which launched the totally false mess into the whole world.

[Bommer]

I wish someone like Nick Searchy would do the 2016 election from Trump announcing to HillAry, Seth Rich murder and all the rest of the crap that went on. Make it a mini series before idiots like Ron Howard and Rob Reiner get their liberal mits into it and spin it like The Post and Shock and Awe. Release it in time for the 2020 election and decimate the democraps.

[JohnnyP]

“Under penalty of lying to Congress, the former AG declared...”

What penalty?