Chaff and Countermeasures? – Timed During Impeachment, Another Report of Former FBI Director James Comey Under Investigation

Analysis by @TheLastRefuge2

Another New York Times report of James Comey under investigation for unscrupulous, potentially illegal, leaks surrounding the FBI Clinton investigation. However, a note of caution: is this simply chaff and countermeasures intended to keep the heat off corruption monitors Bill Barr and John Durham?

In 2018 congressman Jim Jordan noted James Comey had a special employee on assignment ‘off-the-books’.  People started asking questions and Fox News Catherine Herridge detailed how Daniel Richman held special access privileges to the FBI, as an outcome of former FBI Director James Comey authorizing his friend as a “Special Government Employee” or SGE.

According to The Times the current issues surround media leaks from James Comey to his “special FBI employee” friend Daniel Richman related to the Clinton investigation:

(VIA NYT) […] The latest investigation involves material that Dutch intelligence operatives siphoned off Russian computers and provided to the United States government. The information included a Russian analysis of what appeared to be an email exchange during the 2016 presidential campaign between Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida who was also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee at the time, and Leonard Benardo, an official with the Open Society Foundations, a democracy-promoting organization whose founder, George Soros, has long been a target of the far right.

In the email, Ms. Wasserman Schultz suggested that then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch would make sure that Mrs. Clinton would not be prosecuted in the email case. Both Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Benardo have denied being in contact, suggesting the document was meant to be Russian disinformation.

That document was one of the key factors that drove Mr. Comey to hold a news conference in July 2016 announcing that investigators would recommend no charges against Mrs. Clinton. Typically, senior Justice Department officials would decide how to proceed in such a high-profile case, but Mr. Comey was concerned that if Ms. Lynch played a central role in deciding whether to charge Mrs. Clinton, Russia could leak the email.

Whether the document was fake remains an open question. But American officials at the time did not believe that Ms. Lynch would hinder the Clinton email investigation, and neither Ms. Wasserman Schultz nor Mr. Benardo had any inside information about it. Still, if the Russians had released the information after the inquiry was closed, it could have tainted the outcome, hurt public confidence in the Justice Department and sowed discord.

Prosecutors are also looking at whether Mr. Richman might have played a role in providing the information to reporters about the Russia document and how it figured into Mr. Comey’s rationale about the news conference, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Mr. Comey hired Mr. Richman at one point to consult for the F.B.I. about encryption and other complex legal issues, and investigators have expressed interest in how he operated. (read more)

People are rightly skeptical of this latest report as all prior reports of Comey misconduct have been summarily dismissed by current DOJ corruption monitors.

What Sharyl Attkisson references is the IG referrals to no-where from the prior IG Report on James Comey.  The IG found serious issues with the way James Comey hid information and obstructed the FBI investigation of his memos.  Again another series of leaks to his friend, and special FBI employee, Daniel Richman.  However, the DOJ failed to take any action on those referrals…. so why would this be any different?

There was absolutely no doubt James Comey used his memos akin to FD-302 investigative reports from an FBI agent. Meaning, from beginning-to-end he considered himself an investigative agent against the President-elect and then President Trump.

Note: His recording of his encounter with the target, President-elect Trump should be “treated like FISA derived information in a counterintelligence investigation.” During this January 6th operation, Comey was the active FBI agent gathering evidence for later use. The collected intelligence would be shared with the team via memo #1.

Every encounter, and every aspect of every action within that encounter, was conducted in what Comey perceived as an official investigative capacity.

President Trump was the target of Comey’s operations and he wrote his memos as investigative notes therein. Example: Comey ran the January 6th, 2017, operation:

So the “small group”: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Baker, Priestap, Rybicki, et al, were running a counterintelligence operation against the incoming administration.

There are parts of the IG report highlighting a stunning amount of self-interest.

Example: Who made the decision(s) about what “was” or what “was not” classified? Or, put another way: who was making the internal decisions about Comey’s exposure to legal risk for sharing his investigative notes (memos) outside the department?

The answer is the same “small group” who were carrying out the operation:

James Baker, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, James Rybicki and Lisa Page were determining what parts of James Comey’s investigative notes needed to be classified.

The corrupt FBI was in position to police itself. This is not a conflict of interest, it is better described as a profound conflict of self-interest.

The information the ‘small group‘ wanted to use to frame the target would be visible, not classified; however, any material that would outline the construct of their corruption in targeting the target would be hidden, classified. You can’t make this stuff up folks.

The “small group” WAS the sources and methods they were protecting.

Everything needed to understand that level of corruption is outlined in the way the IG report discusses the handling of James Comey’s investigative notes (ie. memos). AND the fact that James Comey kept them hidden, yes hidden. Read this stuff!

First, “no hard copies of any of the memos were found in Comey’s FBI office.”:

So, if the memos were not held in Director James Comey’s official FBI office, the next logical question is where were they?

Well, when Special Agents went to James Comey’s house, he still kept them hidden and never informed the agents:

If Mr. Altruism, James Comey, was simply fulfilling the duty of a concerned and dedicated FBI Director, why not tell the FBI agents -picking up FBI records- that he had copies of FBI investigative notes in his “personal safe” while they were there?

What honorable justification exists for keeping them hidden from valid investigators?

Obviously me, you and God are not the only ones able to see the sketchy nature of this construct. In fact, an internal FBI whistleblower came forward soon after that search of Comey’s home to request official “whistleblower status protection” from the IG.

Think logically…. What would prompt someone inside the FBI; who at some point gained access to the Comey memos; to request ‘whistleblower protected status’?

Doesn’t the “whistleblower request” indicate the requesting FBI official saw something nefarious in the way this was all going down?

Who was that ‘whistleblower’?

Well, first, Captain Obvious would tell you it has to be someone who actually gained possession of those memos right?…. this is not a big group. Second, you only need to read a few more pages of the IG report to see who it was:

The “whistleblower” was the Supervisory Special Agent described in page 38 as above.

The memos were “stored” in a “reception area“, and in locked drawers in James Rybicki’s office. [“Drawer safes” are silly FBI legal terms for fancy locked drawers] Also note…

“Reception area“? “May 15th“?

May 10th, no-one knows where the memos are.  May 12th the FBI goes to James Comey’s House; again no mention of the memos he was keeping there.  Then all of a sudden, poof, May 15th and the memos are in the FBI “reception area”?

First, apparently no-one wanted to be the one holding the hot potato of investigative evidence (Comey memos); that ownership would outline them as participatory members in carrying out the targeting of then President Trump.

Oh, yeah, those investigative notes were not in “the office of the FBI Director” on May 10th, when you were here searching the last time,… for some mysterious reason.. they, uh,… well, they were discovered… May 15th in the “reception area“… yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket! Right under the four month old copy of People Magazine, n’ stuff.

….ARE YOU FRIGGIN’ KIDDING ME WITH THIS?

…AND secondly, the very next morning, GUESS what happened?…

Now we see why the FBI Supervisory Special Agent in charge in charge of inventorying Comey records asked the IG for official “whistleblower status.”

The SSA agent was surrounded by sketchy warning flares right there in the FBI executive suites.  May 10th, no memos; May 12th, Comey house, no memos; May 15th the memo’s mysteriously appear; and the next day Comey is taking pictures of the memos and sending them to his BFF Daniel Richman to send to the New York Times.

Of course the FBI SSA gave the Inspector General the seven memos, asked for whistle-blower protection, and likely told the IG the way they were produced stinks to high heaven. Good grief.  And the media can’t see this?

And U.S. Attorney Bill Barr can’t clearly see this?

And we can?

…C’mon Man!

With that in mind, is this latest leak about yet another Comey investigation simply an effort by the DOJ to deflect and isolate themselves from anger and frustration while President Trump is going through an impeachment trial?

Given the history, the possibility cannot easily be dismissed.

(and since when do we believe anything NYT posts?)