[BradyLS]

Mark Steyn unravels this pretzel from time to time on Rush’s show.

I can’t explain it very well, but part of it involves the FBI asking some Australian official to cajole one of Trump’s associates into saying he “knew” that the Russians hacked Hillary’s server as part of an entrapment scheme. An FBI stooge feeds the Trump associate a rumor that the Russians hacked Hillary’s server in an authoritative manner. Associate brags to coached Australian official. FBI grills Trump associate about what he knows and this makes it all look like some big Trump/Russia anti-Hillary hacking operation.

[dila813]

forest through the trees, they wanted him to be the source that conformed what would be reported later but it failed

[Rockingham]

The whole point of the entrapments by Downer and Mifsud of tangential Trump campaign figures was to generate plausible legal justifications for FISA wiretapping and eavesdropping warrants on the Trump campaign. Notably, due to massive abuse of the NSA database of intercepts and a separate rogue electronic surveillance system set up by Brennan for use against Obama's political adversaries, the Obama-Clinton crew knew what they knew but wanted a legal basis for that knowledge and to set a defeated Trump up for post-election investigation and prosecution.

[monkeyshine]

Yes that’s about it. It was a set-up, an intelligence operation from the get go.

A bunch of never Trumpers publish an op-ed criticizing Trump’s lack of foreign policy expertise. Trump then puts together a list of ‘advisers’ - really just a list of names most of whom never did any serious work for the Trump campaign. Some on this list worked on other campaigns or belonged to various international think tank type groups. Among them on the list was George Papadopoulos, who had some experience as an energy consultant and then volunteered for the campaign of Ben Carson. Papadopoulos was living in London working for some or another international relations group. He turns in his resignation and tells them he is going to work for Trump.

Instead of giving him 2 weeks severance and wishing him luck, they send him on a trip to Rome to meet Joseph Misfud. Now who sends someone who just quit on a trip to Rome?

In Rome Misfud tells Papadopoulos that “the Russians” have Hillary’s secret emails. They meet several more times in several other exotic locales.

Out of the blue Papadopoulos gets invited to cocktails with Alexander Downer. Downer was the former head of the Australian Intelligence - their version of the CIA. He was then the Aussie diplomat to the UK. Why would Downer have any interest in this Papadopoulos character? They meet and have drinks.

This next part is in dispute. PapaD claims he said nothing of the sort. But Downer claims that PapaD told him that Trump had Hillary’s emails from the Russians - or something along these lines. Downer then notifies the FBI.

IMO, the entire thing was a set up. They sent one set of operatives to seed PapaD with some crazy idea, then they sent another set of operatives to solicit these crazy ideas from him in order that they could report him and justify their ‘investigation’.

Then they get warrants on Carter Page, who was an FBI informant that helped prosecute Russian spied, but they told the court that Page was a Russian asset. Mueller likewise reported that Misfud was a Russian asset when the evidence, scant as it may be, suggests that he was a western intel asset.

The same M.O. basically applies to this entire impeachment nonsense. They had a mole inside the WH, he was told Trump said something about Biden, he did his own unauthorized investigation, went to Adam Schiff’s staff who advised him to file a report with the IG, the IG retroactively changed the rules to allow for hearsay evidence while Schiff’s staff flies off to Ukraine to interview other witnesses. A total set up.