Dear Attorney General Barr,
Former HPSCI Chairman, and current HPSCI ranking member, Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss several matters of importance. One of the critical topics touched is the ongoing investigations of Obama era intelligence and political surveillance via the DOJ-NSD FBI, CIA, DNI and State Dept.
Representative Nunes hits the key point when he highlights current redactions and current decisions to classify ongoing investigative documents. It is critically important to accept this reality. There are current intelligence officers and career officials in place hiding material by labeling evidence as classified. A recent example was the December 9, 2019, inspector general report about the manipulation of FISA. [@2:30 to @3:00 of video]
Who is doing these redactions?
There is an ongoing cover-up operation with its origin going back to June, July and August in 2018 led by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, AAG John C Demers, FBI Director Chris Wray and FBI chief legal counsel Dana Boente. That cover-up continues through today.
Start by reminding yourself of a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 17, 2020. [SEE HERE] Within the release there is a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court dated July 2018. [Link to Letter]
After the FISA Court reviewed the December 9, 2019, inspector general report, the FISC ordered the DOJ-NSD to declassify and release documents related to the Carter Page FISA application. In January the FISA court ordered the DOJ and FBI to release certain materials making them public for the first time.
That FISA court order is what led to the DOJ submitting documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee. That court order is what led to the judiciary committee current document release. The current FISA court is forcing sunlight on the DOJ and FBI.
In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ cites the January 7, 2020, FISA court order:
Keep in mind that prior to this release only the FISA court had seen this letter from the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD).
As we walk through the alarming content of this letter I think you’ll identify the motive behind the FISC order to release it.
First, the letter in question was sent by the DOJ-NSD to the FISA Court on July 12, 2018. It is critical to keep the date of the letter in mind as we review the content.
Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The DOJ is telling the court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application. The DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.
However, it is within the justification of the application that alarm bells are found. On page six the letter identifies the primary participants behind the FISA redactions:
As you can see: Christopher Steele is noted as “Source #1”. Glenn Simpson of Fusion-GPS is noted as “identified U.S. person” or “business associate”; and Perkins Coie is the “U.S-based law firm.”
Now things get very interesting.
On page #8 when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the DOJ notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.
This is an incredibly misleading statement to the FISA court because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier the sub-source, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.
Let’s look at how the IG report frames the primary sub-source, and specifically notice the FBI contact and questioning took place in January 2017 (we now know that date to be January 12, 2017):
Those interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source took place in January, March and May of 2017; and clearly the sub-source debunked the content of the dossier itself.
Those interviews were 18-months, 16-months and 14-months ahead of the July 2018 DOJ letter to the FISC. The DOJ-NSD says the sub-source was “truthful and cooperative” but the DOJ doesn’t tell the court the content of the truthfulness and cooperation. Why?
Keep in mind this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018. Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was/is FBI Director, David Bowditch was/is Deputy, and Dana Boente was/is FBI chief-legal-counsel.
Why would the DOJ-NSD not be forthcoming with the FISA court about the primary sub-source? This level of disingenuous withholding of information speaks to an institutional motive.
By July 2018 the DOJ clearly knew the dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the court and said the predicate was still valid. Why?
It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.
In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex. Bob Mueller is a “dear friend” of current AG Bill Barr.
This letter justifying the FISA application and claiming the current information would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant…. My research suspicion is that the DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller had already extracted from the fraudulent FISA authority. That’s the motive.
In July 2018 if the DOJ-NSD had admitted the FISA application and all renewals were fatally flawed Robert Mueller would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation. The DOJ in 2018 was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.
If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending. The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.
This is not simply a hunch, because that motive also speaks to why the FISC would order the current DOJ to release the letter.
Remember, in December 2019 the FISC received the IG Horowitz report; and they would have immediately noted the disparity between what IG Horowitz outlined about the FBI investigating Steele’s sub-source, as contrast against what the DOJ told them in July 2018.
The DOJ letter (July 2018) is a transparent misrepresentation when compared to the information in the Horowitz report (Dec 2019).
Hence, the court orders the DOJ to release the July 2018 letter so that everyone, including congressional oversight and the public can see the misrepresentation.
The court was misled; now everyone can see it.
We can see it.
The content of that DOJ-NSD letter, and the subsequent disparity, points to an institutional cover-up; and as a consequence the FISC also ordered the DOJ to begin an immediate sequestration effort to find all the evidence from the fraudulent FISA application. The proverbial fruit from the poisonous tree…. And yes, that is ongoing.
Moving on… Two more big misstatements within the July letter appear on page #9. The first is the DOJ claiming that only after the application was filed did they become aware of Christopher Steele working for Fusion-GPS and knowing his intent was to create opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign. See the top of the page.
According to the DOJ-NSD claim the number four ranking official in the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, never told them he was acting as a conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI. While that claim is hard to believe, in essence what the DOJ-NSD is saying in that paragraph is that the FBI hoodwinked the DOJ-NSD by not telling them where the information for the FISA application was coming from. The DOJ, via John Demers, is blaming the FBI.
The second statement, equally as incredulous, is at the bottom of page nine where the DOJ claims they had no idea Bruce Ohr was talking to the FBI throughout the entire time any of the FISA applications were being submitted. October 2016 through June 2017.
In essence the claim there is that Bruce Ohr was working with the FBI and never told anyone in the DOJ throughout 2016 and all the way past June 29th of 2017. That denial seems rather unlikely; however, once again the DOJ-NSD is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they knew nothing about the information pipeline.
Bruce Ohr, whose wife was working for Fusion-GPS and assisting Christopher Steele with information, was interviewed by the FBI over a dozen times as he communicated with Steele and fed his information to the FBI. Yet the DOJ claims they knew nothing about it.
Again, just keep in mind this claim by the DOJ-NSD is being made in July 2018, six months after Bruce Ohr was demoted twice (December 2017 and January 2018). If what the DOJ is saying is true, well, the FBI was completely off-the-rails and rogue.
Neither option speaks well about the integrity of either institution; and quite frankly I don’t buy the DOJ-NSD spin. Why? The reason is simple, the DOJ is claiming in the letter the predication was still valid… if the DOJ-NSD genuinely didn’t know about the FBI manipulation, they would be informing the court in 2018 the DOJ no longer supported the FISA application due to new information. They did not do that. Instead, in July 2018, they specifically told the court the predicate was valid, yet the DOJ-NSD knew it was not.
The last point about the July 2018 letter is perhaps the most jarring. Again, keep in mind when it was written Chris Wray is FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy and Dana Boente is FBI chief legal counsel.
Their own FBI reports, by three different INSD and IG investigations; had turned up seriously alarming evidence going back to the early 2017 time-frame; the results of which ultimately led to the DC FBI office losing all of their top officials; and knowing the letter itself was full of misleading and false information about FBI knowledge in/around Christopher Steele; this particular sentence is alarming:
“The FBI has reviewed this letter and confirmed its factual accuracy?”
Really?
As we have just shared, the July 2018 letter itself is filled with factual inaccuracies, misstatements and intentional omissions. So who exactly did the 2018 “reviewing”?
This declassification release raises more questions than any other in recent memory.
Perhaps AG Bill Barr will now start asking some rather hard questions to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Perhaps AG Bill Barr will now start asking some rather hard questions to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Here’s the Full Letter. I strongly suggest everyone read the 14-pages slowly. If you know the background, this letter is infuriating…
It is not accidental the fraudulent letter to the FISA court was written on July 12, 2018.
This is the exact same timeframe when the DOJ and FBI were involved in two other operations, two cover-up operations, to protect their prior activity.
The position of Bill Barr today is a direct result of decisions made by the DOJ in the summer of 2018. The events surrounding the leaking of the FISA warrant used against U.S. person Carter Page, and the 2018 DOJ decision not to prosecute SSCI Security Director James Wolfe for those leaks, was the fork in the road moment for the DOJ.
This was the point of no return…
This is when every downstream action had to be taken to cover-up these decisions…
Everything since has been designed to protect three specific cover-up operations…
In the summer of 2018 Attorney General Jeff Session was recused, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was in charge and the Mueller investigation was ongoing. That was when the DOJ made a decision not to prosecute SSCI Security Director James Wolfe for leaking classified information (The Page FISA Warrant).
As a result of people at the highest level of power and authority making a decision to protect themselves and the gross abuses of power by current and former DC officials and politicians…. DC-based U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu signed-off on a plea deal where Wolfe plead guilty to only a single count of lying to the FBI.
If the DOJ had pursued the case against Wolfe for leaking the FISA application, everything would have been different. The American electorate would have seen evidence of what was taking place in the background effort to remove President Trump. We would be in an entirely different place today if that prosecution or trial had taken place.
Three events revealed the Wolfe issue and highlight the cover-up:
So on July 12, 2018, the DOJ and FBI were lying to the FISA court; and telling the court there was reasonable justification for the Carter Page FISA warrant, when they knew that was false. At the same time the DOJ and FBI were debating what to do about SSCI Security Director James Wolfe leaking the FISA application.
But wait it gets worse….
Simultaneous to the decision to mislead the court; and simultaneous to the decision-making regarding Wolfe; there was yet another (a third) DOJ cover-up effort that was also necessary to retain the origin of the Russia-collusion fraud.
To further understand the decision-making of Rosenstein/Liu, as to why they hid the James Wolfe leak it is important to note the DOJ in the Eastern District of Virginia was creating the cover-story to block sunlight on the origin of how Wikileaks gained the leaked DNC emails.
On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:
On Tuesday April 15th 2019 more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….
The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time.The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.
How does this all connect?
What does it mean?
James Wolfe was confronted about his leaking by the FBI in December of 2017. At the same time the FBI were investigating Wolfe and the SSCI, the FBI was also investigating Wikileaks and Julian Assange. This matters because it shows what the mindset was within the DOJ in late 2017 and early 2018.
In both examples, Wolfe and Assange, the actions by the DOJ reflect a predisposition to hide the much larger background story:
• A prosecution of Wolfe would have exposed a complicit conspiracy between corrupt U.S. intelligence actors and the United States senate. Two branches of government essentially working on one objective; the removal of a sitting president. The DOJ decision protected multiple U.S. agencies and congress.
• A non-prosecution of Assange would have exposed a complicit conspiracy between corrupt U.S. intelligence actors and a host of political interests who created a fraudulent Russia-collusion conspiracy with the central component of Russia “hacking” the DNC. If Assange were allowed to show he received the DNC emails from a leaker, and not from a hack, the central component of the Russia interference narrative would collapse. The DOJ decision protected multiple U.S. agencies and Robert Mueller.
As soon as Robert Mueller was going to release his Russia report, the EDVA shut down Assange with the DOJ indictment; in a similar way the DOJ shut down Wolfe with a weak plea agreement.
Again, the key takeaway here is the timing. Both DOJ operations were taking place at the same time (Fall 2017 through spring/summer 2018). Both hold a similar purpose.
What we can see from both DOJ operations is an intentional effort by Main Justice not to expose the epicenter of a multi-branch effort against the White House.
Some people within the FBI were obviously participating along with people within the DOJ. However, not all Washington DC FBI agents/officials were involved. We know there were genuine investigators, at least in the Wolfe case, because their investigative evidence shows Wolfe was leaking classified information. If they did not present the investigative evidence that proves Wolfe leaked, quite simply we wouldn’t have it to show you.
Unfortunately, in hindsight we can see something internally within the DOJ happened because the FBI evidence against Wolfe was buried. Some high-level group inside the DOJ in Washington DC, in the Summer of 2018, was making decisions on what NOT to do.
These two events highlight corruption within the DOJ that existed despite the presence of AG Jeff Sessions, and apparently with the participation of DAG Rod Rosenstein.
The decisions in the Wolfe case are critical. That’s the fork in the road. If the Wolfe prosecution had continued it would have undoubtedly surfaced that key government officials and politicians were working together (executive and legislative).
The ramifications of the Wolfe case are stunning. Had the prosecution continued it’s very likely a seditious conspiracy would have surfaced.
Here’s the answer: They couldn’t….
…..At least they couldn’t cover it and still retain all of the claims they had been making since March 2017 when journalist Ali Watkins gained a fully non-redacted copy of the Carter Page FISA application and first renewal.
Politico, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and The Washington Post are all implicated in the James Wolfe leak to Ali Watkins. They had the FISA information since March 2017, yet those media outlets were disingenuously falsifying their reporting on the actual content of the FISA application despite their actual knowledge.
Remember all of the media denials about what Devin Nunes wrote in the “Nunes memo”?
Remember the media proclaiming the Steele Dossier was not part of the FISA application?
How was the media fifteen months later (July 2018) going to report on the Wolfe leak to Watkins without admitting they had been manufacturing stories about its content for the past year-and-a-half?
It was in the media’s interest NOT to cover, or dig into, the Wolfe story.
Additionally, from both the DOJ and Media perspective, coverage of the Wolfe leak would prove the senate intel committee (SSCI) was, at a minimum, a participating entity in the coup effort. That same SSCI is responsible for oversight over the CIA, FBI, DOJ-NSD, ODNI, DNI, and all intelligence agencies.
Worse yet, all officers within those agencies require confirmation from the SSCI (including Chair and Vice-Chair); and any discussion of the Wolfe leak would highlight the motive for ongoing corruption within the SSCI in blocking those nominations (see John Ratcliffe).
Stunning ramifications.
There was a clear fork in the road and the DOJ took the path toward a cover-up; which, considering what the DOJ was simultaneously doing with Mueller and the EDVA regarding Assange, is not entirely surprising.
Was that decision wrong? Oh hell yes, it was corrupt as heck. .
Were the decisions done with forethought to coverup gross abuses of government? Yes.
Where the DOJ is today is directly connected to the decisions the DOJ made in 2017 and 2018 to protect themselves and internally corrupt actors from discovery.
It is often said: “the coverup is always worse than the crime.” This is never more true than with these examples, because where we are today… now miles down the path of consequence from those corrupt decisions… is seemingly disconnected from the ability of any institutional recovery. That’s now the issue for Bill Barr.
If Bill Barr wanted to deal with the issue he would not be telling President Trump to stop talking about the corruption; instead he would be holding a large press conference to explain to the American people about that fork in the road.
That type of honest sunlight delivery means taking people back into the background of the larger story and explaining what decisions were made; with brutal honesty and without trepidation for the consequences, regardless of their severity and regardless of the friends of Bill Barr compromised by the truth.
Here’s a big reason why Bill Barr should take that approach: We Know.
We know; the DOJ trying to hide it doesn’t change our level of information.
Regardless of whether Bill Barr actually admits what surrounds him, there are people who know…
We know….
You know….
AG Bill Barr shouting at President Trump ‘don’t tweet‘ like the Wizard of Oz doesn’t change the fact the curtain has been removed.
Turn around Bill, it’s time to come clean.
…”Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”..
~ H. L. Mencken