Juxtaposition … always rewarding when Emptywheel alignes her views and analysis with my own lone deduction of what is factual and what is bs/propaganda. Putin and Netanyahu hand in glove, united in preference for Trump as US President, a revenge for Clinton’s policy of regime change in MENA states and Obama’s push for the Iran nuclear deal. Throughout its young history of 70 years, the state of Israel knows better than anyone: Israel First!
- [Some links added and highlights in article are mine – Oui]
Democrats Embraced a Flawed Dossier–And Gave Republicans an Opening | Politico – Feb. 1, 2018 | by Marcy Wheeler
Sometime around May 2016, according to The New York Times, the longtime law firm for the Democratic Party, Perkins Coie, engaged the private research firm Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump. While the engagement might have been better handled (say, by insulating the official party apparatus better from Fusion), the act of commissioning the firm should not shock us–opposition research is a pretty standard feature of modern politics. Indeed, months earlier in September or October 2015, the Washington Free Beacon, which is funded in part by billionaire Paul Singer, had engaged Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump.
○ Fusion GPS linked to UAE Sheikh and Rubio Donor by Oui on Jan. 14, 2017
More below the fold …
And while Democrats were working with Fusion, Republicans were working with a Steve Bannon enterprise to dig up financial dirt on Hillary Clinton and expose the alleged influence-peddling of her family’s foundation.
○ Peter Smith Tapped Alt-Right to Access Dark Net by Oui on July 16, 2017
Fusion, of course, then took its research in a new direction by hiring Christopher Steele, a former top British intelligence official with deep ties in Moscow who was held in high regard in Washington. He produced a series of salacious, but unverified reports that are now universally referred to as “the Steele dossier,” and their publication 10 days before Trump’s inauguration supercharged claims on the left that the president or his team may have conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election.
Yet, in part because of the way Democrats have handled the aftermath of the leak of the dossier, that very typical act of hiring an oppo research firm has turned into one of the biggest manufactured scandals of the Trump administration, one Republicans are trying to use to undermine an investigation into the growing evidence of Trump ties to Russia. But Steele’s dossier forms only a small portion of the putative case against Trump–which is why it has been such a mistake for Democrats to rally behind it. Reporters, two congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller have sifted through reams of other material suggesting that something fishy was indeed going on, and very little of it came from Steele.
Yet Democrats continue to invest in the intelligence dossier they funded as a key piece of evidence against Trump. They do so even while other, far more damning evidence–such as the report that George Papadopoulos learned Russians had “dirt,” in the form of Clinton emails even before the Democratic National Committee figured out it had been hacked, or the meeting Donald Trump Jr. set up six weeks later to learn what kind of dirt some other Russians had to offer (“If it’s what you say I love it,” he wrote in an email)–has come to light. Well after both those damning details were public, for example, Rachel Maddow dedicated an entire show to the dossier.
In November, former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta claimed the dossier was “looking better and better with age.” In that same time frame, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, complained, “Those who attack the dossier and Christopher Steele would like you to believe that if they can discredit the dossier, then you should ignore everything else that we’ve learned,” even while insisting, “A lot of it has turned out to be true.” Yet this week, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat told POLITICO, “little of that dossier has either been fully proven or conversely, disproven.”
[Read on …]
BooMan archives:
First mention of billionaire Paul Singer funding elite Republican candidate / political issue here @BooMan (2007):
○ Big Giuliani backer behind the failed CA electoral initiative also posted @dKos
Furthermore, it was Guccifer who hacked the Blumenthal email correspondence as early as 2013 that revealed HRC’s private server … Hacking was easy, prison is hard.
This Is Hillary Clinton’s Secret Email: HDR22@ClintonEmail.com
Clinton’s email address was hdr22@clintonemail.com; the handle seems to refer to her maiden initials (she was born as Hillary Diane Rodham). The notorious hacker Guccifer first revealed the email address in March 2013, after he gained access to the AOL account of former Clinton White House staffer Sidney Blumenthal, and sent screenshots of Blumenthal’s inbox to several news outlets. According to those screenshots, Blumenthal was regularly sending Clinton what appeared to be freelance intelligence reports–including information and advice about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya–all of which clearly fell under the rubric of official State Department business.
○ Former Trump campaign aide [Rick Gates] hires lawyer known for navigating high-profile scandals | ABC News |
○ Trump Campaign Aide Carter Page May Have Been Russian Agent, Justice Department Believed, According to Nunes Memo | Newsweek |
Wheeler often makes serious errors (in addition to having drawn conclusions before there is enough evidence for them and not reconsidering them as more information is released):
Why is she citing the NYTimes when the best and most current information available is that Fusion pitched the oppo research project to Perkins Coie (any others there?) early March 2016 and was hired early April 2016. Lots (very little of which we may currently know and that may be related) happened between early March and early April.
3/1/16 – SuperTuesday. Rubio was basically finished, although he delayed his withdrawal until 3/15 when the results of the 3/5-3/12 primary/caucus results were in.
3/1/1 – Fusion GPS recognized that they needed a new client. Free Beacon wasn’t about to throw more money at something that hadn’t developed much of anything and anything further could only help Cruz or the Democrats, neither of which that had any interest in helping. As the DNC and Clinton campaign had long been engaged in oppo research on Trump (we’ve seen the DNC file dated 12/15), not surprising that Fusion wasn’t hired on the spot.
March 28 or 29, 2016 – Trump hires Manafort. This is what some at the DNC and some Clinton associates jumped on. Simpson having reported a decade earlier on the pro-Russia wing of Ukrainian politics would then have been viewed as an oppo research asset.
Glenn Simpson has testified that he was a source for US journalists, but as Steele wasn’t hired until June (yet to be verified), how could he have begun passing Trump-Russia tips before then? Yet, here we saw from Politico on April 27, 2016 Donald Trump’s Russia connections and April 28, 2016 How Donald Trump became the Kremlin’s candidate
Based on what? Trump not toeing the anti-Russia line? That was over nine months old by then. A foreign policy address sponsored by the Center for the National Interest? Nixon’s “think tank” (Nixon the guy that “went to China.”) (CFNI Board of Directors — Honorary Chairman is Hillary Clinton’s good friend Henry Kissinger.) No flip out from Politico when on March 21, 2016 Trump spoke at an AIPAC gathering and received standing ovations.
Coincidentally, In April 2016, …Obama appointed Steven Chabinsky, “general counsel and Chief Risk officer” for CrowdStrike, to a presidential “Commission for Enhancing Cybersecurity,”…
Also coincidentally, Crowdstrike detected a DNC computer breach on May 6, 2016 (if one believes Alperovitch) and quickly ascertain that it was a “Bear.” (He is such a super-computer sleuth that he had to ludicrously dance around why DNC emails through 5/25/16 were handed off to Wikileaks. And as of 6/15/16 both Crowdstrike and Guccifer 2.0 claimed that the “Bear” had been locked out only a week before which would have been about 6/8/16. IOW, they were guessing off whatever it was the Assange claimed to have as of 6/12/16.)
Stick that second dossier (the existence of which was only publicly revealed this week and put together by a long-term Clinton associate Cody Shearer) into the timeline in March 2016 and events begin to become clearer. But the Shearer dossier had to be laundered and more smoke was needed.
Need to add that in hacking Sid Blumenthal’s email, Guccifer might have been able to reveal the existences of Hillary’s server, but he didn’t. He doesn’t even seem to have recognized that Clinton’s email address indicated that she had a private server and I don’t believe that he included her address in anything he posted on-line. He has, however, claimed that he attempted to hack into Clinton’s email and was unsuccessful.
I did look into the possibility that Guccifer’s hack of Blumenathal’s email prompted Clinton to take down her server, but that project had been initiated before Guccifer’s posts and the actual change-over didn’t begin until several months later. IOW — no ASAP on the part of Clinton’s techies.
CREW and a few others had filed FOIA requests for Clinton emails beginning in 2012, but the State Dept reported that nothing responsive to the request was found. So, none of them discovered Clinton’s server either. It was the Benghazi Committee (formed May 2014) that pushed State to find Clinton emails as it wasn’t credible that SOS Clinton hadn’t emailed anyone. In October 2014 State requested that all former SOS turn in emails that weren’t on the State system. Clinton delivered more than 30,000 emails in December 2014. It wasn’t until March 2015 that the Benghazi Committee disclosed that Clinton had had a personal server.
He’s like a loser on a JV tennis team that thinks he can hit junk shots like Bobby Riggs.
What does he have? That the FBI to some extent (he doesn’t even say exclusively) made use of an unverified report to get a FISA warrant on a private citizen. It should alarm the public that this isn’t outside of FBI SOPs, but it won’t. Gee — isn’t that how the FBI nabs innocent suspects all the time?
Oh, sure in monitoring Page the FBI hoped to get the goods on someone else, but probably isn’t too fussy about who that someone else may be. US intell also seemed to be on Page’s tail for its undisclosed reasons.
All Nunes has highlighted is that FISA warrants are abused and that’s a damn good reason to get rid of the Patriot Act. Rich because that wasn’t his intent at all.
Why no information on the rumors that the FBI sought FISA warrants in July 2016? Was Nunes unable to get his hands on that information or did the system work in that instance — with FISA declining the request(s) as the FBI crossed a line or was it the FBI and/or DOJ that nixed a FISA application?
Nothing illegal about oppo research. Ugly and dirty but not illegal. Even if false info is obtained and used against an opponent. (Classic `I know it’s not true, but let’s make the sonofabitch deny it,” the candidate says. Nixon did that to Voorhees and Helen Gahagan Douglas and LBJ reportedly also did it. Rove 2000 against McCain in SC and against Gore repeatedly.) Team Clinton did it and team Trump tried to do it; so they both should STFU.
Some may suspect that Steele wasn’t acting on his own in contacting the FBI with his allegations, but if so, he and nobody else in going to crack on that point. And again, based on what can currently be known, Steele only used his personal contacts which isn’t illegal. Hell, within forty-eight or so hours, the public could see a larger conspiracy in the Watergate burglary than over a year of investigation into both Trump-Russia and Clinton-DNC-Fusion-Steele. No WoodStein, no Deep Throat, no McCord, no John Dean, and no Butterfield.
Crimes may have been committed in the 2016 election but with idiots like Nunes investigating the matter, we’ll never know.
○ After House GOP Memo, FBI OKs Release of Unclassified Steele Referral
Following Senator Grassley’s request of 02/02/2018, the FBI today removed a number of redactions from the Steele referral referenced below. The less-redacted version released today is available HERE.
On January 4, Grassley and Graham referred Christopher Steele, the author of an unverified “Trump dossier,” to the FBI for further investigation after reviewing Justice Department documents that conflicted with Steele’s sworn statements in British court about the distribution of his research. At the time of the referral, the existence of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications described in the HPSCI memo was still classified.
Yeah, known unknowns for some time now … I stood pretty much alone @BooMan and endured a year of scorn by the “progressive” community:
○ Blinded By Love for a Woman
Gubarev et Al v. Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd and Christopher Steele
Covered in my diary – Timeline of Passing Orbis Memo’s to UK and US Governments .
Since the memo became public in January, Steele had not spoken about his role in compiling it but he and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence Limited, have filed a defence in the high court of justice in London, in a defamation case brought by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian venture capitalist and owner of a global computer technology company, XBT, and a Dallas-based subsidiary Webzilla.
Gubarev, who was named along with his company in the December memo as being involved in hacking operation, has denied any such involvement and is also suing Buzzfeed in the US courts for publishing the December memo alongside Steele’s earlier reports on election hacking.
…
The document said that he passed the memos to Fusion on the understanding that Fusion would not disclose the material to any third parties without the approval of Steele and Orbis. They did agree to Fusion providing a copy to Senator John McCain after the veteran Republican had been told about the existence of Steele’s research by Sir Andrew Wood, a former UK ambassador to Moscow and an Orbis associate, at a conference in Canada on 8 November.