Ali Watkins Never Slept With James Wolfe – It Was a Cover Story
With media reporting that U.S. Attorney John Durham has expanded the timeline and scope of his investigation into U.S. government and intelligence community activity during the 2016 election, there’s an interesting quote from NBC:
…”Justice Department officials have said that Durham has found something significant, and that critics should be careful.”…
The expanded investigative timeline is now into May 2017 when Mueller was appointed special counsel, and would mean all of the preceding (and surrounding) activity leading up to Mueller would be reviewed. With that carefully in mind….
During the 2016 effort to weaponize the institutions of government against the outside candidacy of Donald Trump, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) was headed by Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein. After the 2016 election Senator Feinstein abdicated her vice-chair position to Senator Mark Warner in January 2017.
While the SSCI was engaged in their part of the 2016 effort Vice-Chair Feinstein’s lead staffer was a man named Daniel Jones. Dan Jones was the contact point between the SSCI and Fusion-GPS.
After the election, and after Feinstein abdicated, Dan Jones left the committee to continue paying Fusion-GPS (Glenn Simpson) for ongoing efforts toward the impeachment insurance policy angle.
Feinstein appears to have left because she didn’t want to deal with the consequences of a President Trump, IF he discovered the SSCI involvement. Dan Jones left because with a Trump presidency the SSCI, now co-chaired by Senator Mark Warner, needed arms-length plausible deniability amid their 2017 operations to continue the removal effort (soft coup).
The trail for this plausible deniability process and ongoing soft-coup effort first surfaces with Dan Jones appearing in the early 2017 text messagesbetween Senator Warner and the liaison for Christopher Steele, lawyer and lobbyist Adam Waldman:
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In those March 2017 text message you can see Senator Warner attempting to set up covert “no paper trail” communication with dossier author Christopher Steele. Adam Waldman represented Chris Steele and Steele’s employer, Oleg Deripaska.
Less than a month later you can see within the text messages that Christopher Steele is in direct contact with Dan Jones. “[Chris] said Dan Jones is coming to see you” etc.
(Text Messages Between Feinstein’s replacement, Mark Warner, and Chris Steele’s lawyer/lobbyist, Adam Waldman, noting the importance of Dan Jones)
Former Feinstein staffer Dan Jones talking to Christopher Steele in April 2017 is critical to understanding what was going on after Trump won the election.
Jones raised $50 million from those who were behind the 2016 stop Trump effort, and the purpose was now the 2017 impeachment effort [SEE LINK]. Jones having left the SSCI (now outside govt.) then paid Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS to keep up their efforts. As you can see from the texts, Jones was now talking in person (“coming to see you”) to SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner in April 2017.
[Side-Bar: The role of Fusion-GPS in 2017 shifted, and was now weighted toward feeding a specific media narrative that would aid impeachment (through the FBI, Weissmann and Mueller obstruction angle). Fusion-GPS was now the conduit for arms-length media leaks from the usurping small group still inside the DOJ and FBI. Dan Jones was paying Fusion on behalf of those with larger interests. Fusion was feeding the media.]
So you can clearly see the SSCI was heavily involved in the impeachment effort after the election.
Secondary documentation of the connection between the DOJ, FBI, Fusion, and Dan Jones shows up in the FBI investigative 302 notes of Bruce Ohr, released by Judicial Watch. [Pay attention to the May 8th, 2017, interview – pg 18, 19 of pdf]
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The highlighted bottom portion of page 18 (May 8, 2017, interview) shows a heavily redacted text, but holds enough material to overlay with other research.
This is where Bruce Ohr is talking about Dan Jones efforts as they were currently aligned with Fusion GPS: “and had been on the staff of the [Senate Intelligence Committee]”…. “At the time of the interview [Jones] was working with the [Vice Chairman of the Committee Mark Warner]”… etc.
This part is heavily redacted because the corrupt agents within the current DOJ and FBI once again don’t want people to piece together what was happening.
This is not sources and methods being redacted. This is not national security being redacted. This is the trail of the connective tissue in/around the small group plotting that is being hidden.
At the top of page 19, the investigative notes of Ohr’s discussion continues.
Bruce Ohr is telling the FBI investigator, likely Agent Joe Pientka, about Glenn Simpson and Dan Jones visiting Christopher Steele sometime after May 8, 2017, and they were in the process of “lawyering up”.
Now before going deeper in the SSCI weeds, let me pause and explain the important specifics behind why the FBI was interviewing Bruce Ohr about Chris Steele; by overlaying what was going on in/around early 2017.
Chris Steele wasn’t alone in creating the “dossier”. Heck, the purpose of Fusion-GPS contracting Steele; and the purpose of the FBI engaging with Steele; was the laundry value of having a known intelligence officer validate political opposition research which the FBI could use against Donald Trump. The reality is: most of the raw material and research inside the dossier was from Glenn Simpson and Nellie Ohr at Fusion GPS.
The ‘small group’ inside the DOJ and FBI always knew the provenance of the material; the plan and intent was to utilize Fusion-GPS for their political purposes.
Everyone carrying out this operation, all of the corrupt entities within it, knew the material from Chris Steele was essentially political opposition research. Many of those same people later weaponized the research into the FISA application to give it higher import and value.
That set’s up early 2017 – where the FBI was evaluating the extent to which Chris Steele was willing to remain on public record to support a false framework about the dossier itself. This is the same time-frame where Fusion is being paid by Dan Jones to facilitate the calls for a special counsel. Fusion drives that narrative with structured leaks to media.
Steele’s support was a key issue because the corrupt DOJ and FBI officials were about to hand-off the dossier to Special Counsel Robert Mueller (figurehead only) as the basis for the ‘small group’ and him to launch the special counsel aspect of an ongoing operation.
If Chris Steele suddenly walked away from the dossier, and/or admitted publicly the dossier was political opposition research primarily from Glenn Simpson and Nellie Ohr, the FBI would have a shit-storm on its hands…. and they needed to evaluate the position of Steele. Steele could be a risk if he was not supporting the team playbook. That’s the driving purpose behind all of this 2017 “re-engagement” with Steele through Bruce Ohr.
The small group in the DOJ and FBI planned to continue, pass-off and modify the Trump investigation by shifting it to a special counsel. The centerpiece of that investigation would be using the dossier as justification for a need to investigate Trump as a Russian risk. The DOJ/FBI small group needed Glenn Simpson and Chris Steele to stand by the false narrative all of the players had assembled over the prior year.
The wildcard to retain the false story was Chris Steele… Steele was an outside participant, albeit aligned with the ideology and the purpose. Evaluating Steele’s willful participation in keeping the narrative as assembled was the reason for their urgent talks; however, the “small group” couldn’t run the risk of direct talks in the same way that Mark Warner couldn’t risk of a paper trail.
Additionally, in support of the 2017 use of Chris Steele to frame the Russia narrative, the CIA, FBI, ODNI and aggregate intelligence community simultaneously pushed the December 2016 Joint Analysis Report (JAR) and the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), as evidence to support their Russia narrative.
Now, where’s John Durham been spending his time looking, and what part of the period is he looking at? Yes, the JAR and ICA construct.
The prosecutor conducting the review, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, has expressed his intent to interview a number of current and former intelligence officials involved in examining Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, Brennan told NBC News.Durham has also requested to talk to CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia’s activities, prompting some of them to hire lawyers, according to three former CIA officials familiar with the matter. And there is tension between the CIA and the Justice Department over what classified documents Durham can examine, two people familiar with the matter said. (Link)
If the ICA is a false political document, then guess what? Yep, the entire narrative from the JAR and ICA is part of a big fraud (it is). Then the construct of the special counsel probe (remember the “originating” construct), was false (it was).
In early 2017 Adam Waldman and Dan Jones were facilitating a plausibly deniable information pipeline from Chris Steele to the SSCI and Senator Mark Warner. At the same time, and for the same purposes, DOJ official Bruce Ohr was facilitating a plausibly deniable information pipeline from Chris Steele to the FBI/DOJ small group. The purposes were the same, everyone needed assurances Steele wasn’t going to back-out.
That corrupt planning activity is what the some unknown DOJ and FBI officials are hiding behind the Bruce Ohr 302 redactions.
Now remember, U.S. Attorney John Durham has interviewed Christopher Steele; so too has DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
It was AFTER those interviews with Christopher Steele when the IG report was delayed and reports started surfacing that Durham was adding additional resources, expanding his probe and retaining former FBI officials to assist. It was after those interviews when Durham and Barr started taking the background material of Italy (Mifsud), Australia (Downer) and the U.K. (Halper) more seriously.
Now, where does the current DOJ and FBI small group start to place their defensive positions? This is where it all starts coming back together:
[…] The Senate intelligence committee examined the allegations about Downer, Mifsud and Halper, as part of its bipartisan investigation into the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was responsible for attacking the 2016 election, and found nothing to substantiate any wrongdoing, a committee aide said. (read full article)
Again, notice how yesterday the small group is utilizing the SSCI, and it is a committee aide within the SSCI that is leaking to NBC. The small group are to pulling the Senate Intelligence Committee back into the picture. That brings Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner, Richard Burr, Daniel Jones, Adam Waldman and James Wolfe back in.
Why go there?….
Why is the small group pulling the SSCI back into the picture now?…
Because they have to.
In 2018 the DOJ and FBI covered-up the corruption evident during the 2017 pre-Mueller effort. The current position of the small group is to force the 2019 DOJ and FBI to do it again.
Throughout the 2016 and 2017 effort, a part of one branch of the United States government, the U.S. Senate through the SSCI, was assisting the efforts of the DOJ and FBI against a candidate, president-elect and later United States President, Donald Trump.
The 2017 time period covers Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, Jeff Sessions as AG, Rod Rosenstein as Deputy, Chris Wray replacing James Comey as FBI Director, and eventually David Bowditch replacing Andrew McCabe as Deputy. For all of the important decision-making Jeff Sessions was cut-out by design. For example, the person who made the decisions about SSCI Director James Wolfe’s prosecution was Rod Rosenstein.
Bear with me….
As a result of a FOIA release in Mid December 2018, Judicial Watch revealed how the State Department was feeding “classified information” to multiple U.S. Senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee by the Obama administration immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration:
The documents reveal that among those receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN).Judicial Watch obtained the documents through a June 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department after it failed to respond to a February 2018 request seeking records of the Obama State Department’s last-minute efforts to share classified information about Russia election interference issues with Democratic Senator Ben Cardin (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv-01381)).The documents reveal the Obama State Department urgently gathering classified Russia investigation information and disseminating it to members of Congress within hours of Donald Trump taking office. (read more)
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The impeachment program was a plan, an insurance policy of sorts; a coordinated effort between corrupt politicians in the Senate and hold-over allies in the executive; however, because she didn’t want to participate in this – Senator Dianne Feinstein abdicated her vice-chair position to Senator Mark Warner. [Background Here]
This is the pre-cursor to utilizing Robert Mueller. A plan that was developed soon after the 2016 election. The appointment of a special counsel was always the way they were going to hand-off and continue the investigation into Trump; but they needed a reason for it.
The continued exploitation of the Steele Dossier was critical; thus they needed Chris Steele to be solid. And the continued manipulation of the media was also critical; thus they needed Fusion-GPS to continue. [Dan Jones paid both]
While Mark Warner was communicating with Adam Waldman and Dan Jones as a conduit to Chris Steele, the FBI/DOJ team was communicating through Bruce Ohr to Chris Steele (and by extension to Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS).
Part of Warner’s role was to weaponize the Legislative branch to advance the ‘Muh Russia conspiracy’, a fundamental necessity if a special counsel was going to have justification.
The SSCI, and the security protocols within it, were structurally part of the plan; hence the rapid information from Obama’s State Dept. to the SSCI and Senate participants in the last moments prior to departing.
♦ On March 17th, 2017, the Senate Intelligence Committee took custody of the FISA application used against Carter Page. We know the FISA court delivered the read and return Top-Secret Classified application due to the clerk stamp of March 17, 2017.
The FISA application (original and first renewal) was delivered to Senate Security Director James Wolfe. Senator Mark Warner entered the basement SCIF shortly after 4:00pm on March 17, 2017, the day it was delivered (texts between Warner and Waldman):
Now, when SSCI Security Officer James Wolfe was indicted (unsealed June ’18), we could see the importance of the March 17th date again:
We can tell from the description within the indictment the FBI investigators are describing the FISA application. Additionally Wolfe exchanged 82 text messages with reporter Ali Watkins. The FISA application is 83 pages with one blank page.
The logical conclusion was that Wolfe text Ali Watkins 82 pictures of the application.
FBI Investigators applied for, and received a search warrant for the phone records of journalist Ali Watkins. Ms. Watkins was notified in February 2018, three months after Wolfe was questioned by FBI investigators in December 2017.
However, despite the overwhelming (public) circumstantial evidence that Wolfe leaked the FISA application, he was never charged with leaking classified information. Wolfe was only charged with lying three times to federal authorities, and he pled down to one count of lying to the FBI.
CTH made the case in mid 2018 that someone at the DOJ had influenced a decision not to charge Wolfe with the leaking of the FISA application; despite the FBI and DOJ having direct evidence of Wolfe leaking classified information.
The logical reason for the Rosenstein DOJ not to charge Wolfe with the FISA leak was because that charge would ensnare powerful Senators on the powerful committee. Worse still, in hindsight we now see how that committee was working to aide the purposes and intents of the corrupt DOJ and FBI officials as they built their impeachment agenda.
Remember, the SSCI has intelligence oversight of the DOJ, DOJ-NSD, FBI and all associated counterintelligence operations. Additionally, when the FBI was investigating Wolfe for leaking classified documents, according to their court filings they had to inform the committee of the risk Wolfe represented. Who did they have to inform?.. Chairman Richard Burr and Vice-Chair Mark Warner.
Think about it. Both gang-of-eight members (Warner/Burr), who happened -as a consequence of the jaw dropping implications- to be two SSCI members who were warned by the FBI that Wolfe was compromised…. and they, along with Feinstein in 2016, were the co-conspirators who used James Wolfe. The ramifications cannot be overstated.
Any criminal charges for leaking classified intelligence information against James Wolfe would likely result in a major scandal where the SSCI itself was outlined as participants in the weaponization of government for political intents. Thus, the perfect alignment of interests for a dropped charge and DC cover-up. REMEMBER:
(Source)
If it already wasn’t transparently sketchy as hell, in an act of serendipity and self-preservation, the accused Security Director James Wolfe evidenced the schemes when he threatened to subpoena members of the SSCI as part of his defense. [See Here]
[…] Attorneys for James A. Wolfe sent letters to all 15 senators on the committee, notifying them that their testimony may be sought as part of Mr. Wolfe’s defense, according to two people familiar with the matter.[…] Mr. Wolfe’s defense lawyers are considering calling the senators as part of the proceedings for a variety of reasons, including as potential character witnesses and to rebut some of the allegations made by the government in the criminal complaint, these people say. (link)
Immediately after threatening to subpoena the SSCI (July 27, 2018), the DOJ (Rosenstein authorizing) cut a deal with Wolfe and dropped the charges down to a single charge of lying to investigators. However, someone in the FBI who was doing the investigative legwork wasn’t happy with that decision.
The overwhelming circumstantial evidence that Wolfe leaked the FISA application went from a strong suspicion, to damn certain (after the plea deal) when the DOJ included a sentencing motion in mid-December 2018.
On December 15th, 2018 the DOJ filed a response to the Wolfe defense teams’ own sentencing memo (full pdf), and within the DOJ response they included an exhibit (#13) written by the FBI [redacted] special agent in charge, which specifically says: “because of the known disclosure of classified information, the FISA application”… Thereby admitting, albeit post-plea agreement, that Wolfe did indeed leak the damn FISA:
Right there, in that FBI Special Agent description is the bombshell admission that James Wolfe leaked the Carter Page FISA application to journalist Ali Watkins at Buzzfeed.
We know the special agent who wrote exhibit #13 in the December filing was Special Agent Brian Dugan, Asst. Special Agent in Charge, Washington Field Office. The same investigator who originally signed the affidavit in the original indictment against Wolfe.
So with hindsight there was absolutely no doubt that James Wolfe leaked the 83-page Carter Page FISA application on March 17, 2017. Period. It’s all documented with circumstantial and direct evidence; including the admissions from the FBI agent in charge.
So, why was SSCI Security Director James Wolfe allowed to plea to a single count of lying to investigators?
Back to where this started….
During the 2016 and 2017 effort to weaponize the institutions of government against the outside candidacy of Donald Trump, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) was a participating entity. Dianne Feinstein, Richard Burr, Mark Warner, Daniel Jones, and James Wolfe were all participants of varying degrees.
The small group within the DOJ and FBI, now being investigated by Bill Barr, John Durham and Michael Horowitz, are pushing the SSCI back into the spotlight in an effort to utilize all of the legislative branch participants as a shield. It’s the James Wolfe defense.
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