This morning ends the tenure of Richard “Ric” Grenell as the acting Director of National Intelligence. At 12:15pm DNI John Ratcliffe will be sworn-in [LINK] and the declassification/sunlight baton will be passed to senate confirmed DNI John Ratcliffe.
On the topic of the FBI capture and use of the December 29, 2016, Flynn-Kislyak phone call… First we had a hunch; then it became a suspicion… that evolved into a likelihood… that has now become a strong probability.
The capture of the December 29th phone call, which generated the raw “CR cuts“, was an FBI summary, modified for a specific interpretation. Much like the missing 302 there is now a very strong probability the FBI ‘CR cuts’ do not represent the actual call content.
Within a twitter response by Grenell, part of the riddle behind the transcripts gets a little more clarity: “The IC doesn’t have all the transcripts/summaries…. it wasn’t our product.”
The implication here is the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) did not generate one of the transcripts; that evolved into an FBI equity, and was later used in their case against Lt. General Michael Flynn. The December 29, 2016, intercept was not exclusive to the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and the call summary became proprietary to the FBI; the agency exploiting the underlying content.
This makes sense and explains how the FBI was able to manipulate the framework of the call and keep the remaining U.S. intelligence system away from their internal plan.
There was more than one phone call and conversation between Flynn and Kislyak. Some immediately after the election and in/around mid-December 2016. Reports of those contacts and communications WERE in the U.S. IC network and those reports led to unmasking requests. However, the specific December 29th communication was not an exclusive intercept of the U.S. intelligence community and therefore easier for the FBI to shape.
When Susan Rice, and now all of the downstream politicians, are requesting the release of the Flynn-Kislyak transcripts, those specific demands do not encompass the Dec.29th call; and it appears from the political narrative being assembled, the democrats do not necessarily expect DNI Grenell to be able to release the transcript of that specific call.
DNI Ric Grenell is signaling that he intends to release all the call transcriptsnot just the ones obtained by U.S. intelligence intercepts.
The “CR cuts” are summaries of the intercepted communication and therefore subject to being manipulated or shaped by the FBI official doing the summary. The call summary is subject to interpretation and shaping much like a 302 report would be. However, Grenell doesn’t just want to release the FBI summary, he wants to release the full transcript.
This approach by Grenell seems to confirm what we have been assembling about the transcripts, the “CR cuts”, and how the FBI used them.
There are intercepted communications between Flynn-Kislyak that were part of the ongoing FBI investigation of Flynn and monitoring of Russian interests. Those intercepts became reports, and within those reports Flynn was masked; and later unmasked by political operatives.
However, the specific December 29, 2016, call while Flynn was in the Dominican Republic was a third party intelligence intercept; transferred to the FBI exclusively as part of their counterintelligence operation. That 12/29/16 intercept generated proprietary FBI “CR cuts” or summaries of that intercepted communication specific to the FBI investigation. That call content remained outside the larger intelligence community. Hence Grenell saying: “The IC doesn’t have all the transcripts/summaries…. it wasn’t our product.”
But Grenell is working to bring that specific FBI equity (call transcript) into the IC and release it -in total- along with all other transcripts that were already within the control of the IC; thus Grenell gives an honest presentation of the totality of the contact, not just the parts that have been manipulated and shaped by officials in their targeting of Flynn.
Combine what Grenell is doing along with the announcement by FBI Director Chris Wray to review FBI action in the Flynn investigation, and a more fulsome picture emerges.
As many have long suspected the FBI shaped the December 29, 2016, call content; the FBI biased interpretation of what took place on that call; specifically to target Flynn. They were able to do this, in part, because they exclusively held the evidence they were shaping.
With U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen now reviewing the background evidence, and with DNI Ric Grenell declassifying and releasing the underlying documents, the truth is being pushed to the surface….
