Durham investigation (Update: Sussman acquitted) (2 Viewers)

[SaintForLife]

It looks like the first shoe has dropped with the Durham investigation with the Clinesmith plea deal. Clinesmith wasn't a low level FBI employee involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

He worked with Strzok to arrange sending an FBI agent into Trump-Flynn briefing, was on the Mueller team, he took part in the Papadopoulos interviews, and he participated in the FISA process.



From the NYT article:

Ex-F.B.I. Lawyer Expected to Plead Guilty in Review of Russia Inquiry (Published 2020)

Prosecutors did not reveal any evidence of the kind of broad anti-Trump conspiracy among law enforcement officials that the president has long alleged.

www.nytimes.com

I wonder who else knew about the lies?

 

[MT15]

You are sadly wasting your time. He has completely bought into the narrative being pushed for various reasons by people who are interested in the destruction of the mainstream Democratic Party, IMO. They twist things, they put forth half truths and outright lies, they use innuendo and smear tactics.

They have even tried to destroy the reputations of some mainstream Republicans in this effort. It seems to me to be a profoundly Un-American undertaking. It’s extreme in its behavior and manifestation.

 

[SaintForLife]

I get so confused when I hear people make this claim. Can you help me understand how the FISA on Carter Page equates to spying on the Trump campaign?





If the FBI applied for the FISA warrant a month after the campaign said that he was not a part of the campaign, how does that equate to spying on the campaign?

Timeline of Carter Page’s Contacts with Russia [Updated]

At the heart of the recent Nunes memo controversy lies a FISA order application for former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. But Page had piqued the interest of FBI investigators long before the Trump campaign, owing to his contacts with the Russian government and energy sector. For example, his...

www.justsecurity.org

I explained that in the post you responded to:

The FISA warrants gave the FBI the authority to spy on Page and it gave them access to internal Trump communications. The FISA warrants also authorized physical searches.

The FISA warrants gave the FBI access to Pages emails, which includes emails from when he was a member of the Trump campaign, phone records, and also physical searches. It doesn't matter that he wasn't a member of the campaign for the time period that you are referring to. They could go back and look at all his emails or any emails that he qas CC'd on.

The FISA Two hop rule also gave the FBI access to even more people than just Page:

While most FISC warrants remain classified, the few which have emerged through leaks, or been forced into the public domain by First Amendment lawsuits, paint a rather bleak picture. These warrants tell us the FISC has issued “mass” warrants which permit government surveillance based on statistical “selectors.”

These documents also tell us the FISC routinely includes authorization in their warrants for the government to surveil people in contact with their target, and people in contact with the contact; in a scheme referred to as “chaining,” these authorizations will include 2 or 3 “hops.” While the text of the Carter Page warrant application, and court approval, remain a secret, one shudders to think this authority was used to spy upon other members of the Trump campaign team who were in contact with Page.

Opinion | The FBI's secret warrant against Carter Page should scare us

A secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review is an insufficient check to our intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

www.nbcnews.com

According to the IG report: Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, the chief of the Office of Intelligence’s Operations Section, said “that the evidence collected during the first FISA application time period demonstrated that Carter Page had access to individuals in Russia and he was communicating with people in the Trump campaign.”

 

[SaintForLife]

SFL-

Honest question.

Do you accept as fact or reject the notion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win?

And please don’t get into collusion, as isn’t relevant to my question. I am not asking about collusion or even if Trump’s campaign was in on it.

Simply do you believe the intelligence communities that the Russians interfered in our election?

I believe that Russia interfered in our election. I think it was a combination of Putin not wanting Clinton to win and preferring that Trump would win. It was well known that Putin hated Clinton.

 

[TaylorB]

Ok, this is for the lawyers, Chuck and Taylor, or others, help me understand what they are saying:





And finally, this:

The Clinesmith Information Suggests that John Durham Misunderstands His Investigation - emptywheel

In the Kevin Clinesmith Information, John Durham made the same mistake that DOJ IG made, mistaking a counterintelligence investigation for a criminal one. His entire investigation may be based on embarrassing mistake.

www.emptywheel.net

They’re saying Durham is using slightly inaccurate and/or misleading terms to describe the investigation into Carter Page, which provides improper framework for determining whether the FBI's actions were legit.

Paragraph 2 of the bill of information for Clinesmith suggests that the Carter Page investigation was only a FARA investigation, which implies that it was only a criminal investigation, and not a counterintelligence investigation -- meaning that the moment the FBI determined Page wasn't acting as a "witting" agent for Russia (FARA contemplates witting agents conducting political business for foreign governments), they'd have no longer been justified in investigating him. In truth, the investigation into Carter Page -- and more broadly, Crossfire Hurricane -- was a counterintelligence investigation, which also considered whether Page and others were acting as "unwitting" agents under 18 U.S.C. 951. If it were also a counterintelligence investigation, it would lower the threshold for First Amendment concerns in surveilling Page, and it would allow a continued assessment into whether Page was a national security threat even after a determination that he's not a "witting" agent under FARA.

Also, Wheeler is saying that Paragraph 2 also implies that the Page investigation was tied exclusively to Crossfire Hurricane, opened July 31, 2016, and ignores that there had been an ongoing CI investigation into Page since March 6, 2016 for things he did that didn’t necessarily relate to his position on Trump’s NatSec team.

Basically, Wheeler thinks there was a legitimate national security reason to surveil Page that began long before Crossfire Hurricane, and the suggestion that the FBI's surveillance of Page was only part of some anti-Trump conspiracy requires Durham to ignore the CI component of the Page investigation by calling it a FARA investigation only.

Please note that I am simply trying to rephrase Wheeler and others in response to MT. I won’t have time this week to defend their positions. And I have no legal expertise that’s helpful in this discussion, but I had read Wheeler’s post and wanted to try to wrap my head around what she was saying, difficult as that often is for me with her posts.

I promise I’ll check back in so I’m not just bailing on the discussion; first child (baby girl) is due mid-week, so posting about Durham / Trump / Russia / COVID is low on the to-do list!

 

[MT15]

Congrats, Taylor, that is so exciting!!

 

[MT15]

SFL, no matter how things are twisted the fact remains that there was no “spying” on the Trump campaign. All you can cite is some “two hop” rule that speculates that the FBI had access. You cannot prove any “spying” on the Trump campaign. There’s no proof of it, just the speculation you keep citing.

Did you read the issues that have been pointed out with the Durham indictment? Do you have an answer for these issues?

 

[TaylorB]

Congrats, Taylor, that is so exciting!!

Thanks!!! As if 2020 hadn’t brought enough excitement and change...

 

[The moose]

I believe that Russia interfered in our election. I think it was a combination of Putin not wanting Clinton to win and preferring that Trump would win. It was well known that Putin hated Clinton.

So with the extreme amount of contact his campaign had with Russia that has been pretty much proven beyond the shadow of a doubt and you think Russia interfered is your fight about how?

It must be about how and not the what.

You know he asked for help on live TV clear as day.

His staff was elbow deep in questionable Russian contact and money.

So your only problem is the how?

 

[SaintForLife]

SFL, no matter how things are twisted the fact remains that there was no “spying” on the Trump campaign. All you can cite is some “two hop” rule that speculates that the FBI had access. You cannot prove any “spying” on the Trump campaign. There’s no proof of it, just the speculation you keep citing.

Did you read the issues that have been pointed out with the Durham indictment? Do you have an answer for these issues?

That's not all I cited. I cited multiple parts of the IG report including this clear example of the FISA warrant to collect Page's communications with the Trump campaign. How are you saying it's speculation when it's in the IG report? Are you claiming the IG report isn't credible?

According to the IG report: Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, the chief of the Office of Intelligence’s Operations Section, said “that the evidence collected during the first FISA application time period demonstrated that Carter Page had access to individuals in Russia and he was communicating with people in the Trump campaign.”

I did see those supposed issues with the Durham case, but Weissman is someone who probably shouldn't be trusted.


First, Weissmann is completely distorting both the law and the facts to disregard the significance of this guilty plea. The fact that Page was a source for the CIA is not disputed. The Horowitz investigation and various congressional investigations have confirmed that the CIA made clear to Clinesmith that Page was working for United States intelligence, a fact that critically undermined the basis for the original application for secret surveillance. The statement that “no where does the charge say that is false, i.e. that Page was a source for the CIA” is bizarre. The charge is that Clinesmith made this false statement to the court and there is a wealth of evidence to support that charge. It was clearly enough to prompt Clinesmith to take a plea and enter into what appears a cooperative agreement with prosecutors.

Second, the claim that “Clinesmith gave the complete and accurate email to DOJ” would not negate the charge. It was the false information that he gave to the court that mattered. Prosecutorial misconduct often involves telling courts something different from what is known or discussed by prosecutors. Moreover, the implications of such a contrast adds to the need for the investigation that Weissmann has sought to hinder. If other DOJ attorneys and investigators knew that the court was being given false material information, the concerns are magnified not reduced for the Durham investigation. Indeed, it means that this investigation dragged on for many months despite other attorneys knowing that the original claims of Page being a Russian assets were directly contradicted by American intelligence and never disclosed to the Court.

 

[MT15]

So, SFL, you are still only saying that Page had communication with the Trump campaign, which isn’t proof that the Trump campaign was spied upon. there’s another step that needs to be shown, and nobody has so far shown the actual spying. Even Barr said it was speculation that spying occurred. It still is.

It’s a definite distinction that seemingly hasn’t registered with those who are for some reason desperately trying to prove that the whole investigation is invalid despite multiple findings from two different IGs now that there was valid reason to start the investigation and that the investigation was not politically motivated.

Bottom line, there was valid reason to start the investigation and the investigation was not driven by politics. It really couldn’t be clearer.

The fact that Clinesmith did give the full and accurate email doesn’t negate what he did, but it certainly speaks to intent. If he intended to mislead, then why would he have also included the unaltered email? It’s a pretty weird way to conspire in a nefarious way, isn’t it?

This whole controversy is fairly well manufactured for political reasons. The errors found appear to not rise to the level that is being widely advertised by the far right wing and those who seek to cause damage from the far left.

Durham seems to have not found any political motivation. I think (guess) that Barr has informed Trump of that fact. Which would explain Trump’s recent public pressure on Barr. Trump is nothing if not ham handed about his corruption

 

[FullMonte]

Here's what I have learned...

Multiple individuals spent their entire lives going to school to learn law and law enforcement, and then got jobs in various law enforcement agencies and worked their way up to the highest levels of the federal law enforcement system. They then decided to risk going to jail to put together the most incompetent deep-state in the history of deep-stating.

--They plotted to create a false FISA application so that they could spy on the Trump campaign, and then used that application to surveil a person who hadn't been a member of the campaign for over a month.
--Then, they decided, just before the election to announce publicly that Hillary Clinton's investigation was being reopened, while keeping the investigation into Trump's campaign a secret.

It's almost like they didn't want to keep Trump from getting elected or something.

 

[TaylorB]

Yes it is actually new information. Clinesmith pled gulity yesterday with his plea deal. You constantly complain about Herridge, but you have never shown that anything she's reported on was untrue. I understand why you don't like her. She hasn't went along with the Russian media narrative that you are used to.

Are you really trying to compare a high level FBI agent changing a government document to give an opposite impression of the facts to use in a FISA application to illegally spy on an American citizen to Flynn who even the FBI officials who interviewed him didn't think he was lying? Do you think altering an official government document is a process crime?

Why would the document allege anything about anyone else when only Clinesmith was charged? You aren't supposed to make filings with a bunch of innuendo unsupported by evidence like Mueller did. This doesn't appear to be the end of Durham's investigation so we will see what comes next.

The Durham investigation as a whole reeks of a disingenuous Barr-Trump joint venture, but the Clinesmith prosecution in a vacuum doesn't bother me to the extent that there does appear to have been legitimate wrongdoing of the kind we'd like to prevent in the future. I think law enforcement should be held accountable for that sort of behavior, in the same way that criminal defendants should be held accountable for deceiving law enforcement or destroying evidence. It's the only way our justice system can work.

Mueller did not "make filings with a bunch of innuendo unsupported by evidence." Durham's charge against Clinesmith looks similar to the charging documents Mueller used against Papadopoulos, Flynn, and Stone. It contains factual allegations in support of the crime, because the crime cannot be understood without that context.

The charge Clinesmith is pleading to is Making False Statements -- it's the same crime Flynn pled guilty to, and Papadopoulos and others. SFL, it is a "process crime" in the same way you've used that term in the past to minimize the crimes charged by Mueller.

 

[dtc]

Here's what I have learned...

Multiple individuals spent their entire lives going to school to learn law and law enforcement, and then got jobs in various law enforcement agencies and worked their way up to the highest levels of the federal law enforcement system. They then decided to risk going to jail to put together the most incompetent deep-state in the history of deep-stating.

--They plotted to create a false FISA application so that they could spy on the Trump campaign, and then used that application to surveil a person who hadn't been a member of the campaign for over a month.
--Then, they decided, just before the election to announce publicly that Hillary Clinton's investigation was being reopened, while keeping the investigation into Trump's campaign a secret.

It's almost like they didn't want to keep Trump from getting elected or something.

Do you think they all cooked this plan up together while there were in in the Madras with Soros, Gates and Obama back in Indonesia while they were faking old birth certificates?

 

[SaintForLife]

So, SFL, you are still only saying that Page had communication with the Trump campaign, which isn’t proof that the Trump campaign was spied upon. there’s another step that needs to be shown, and nobody has so far shown the actual spying. Even Barr said it was speculation that spying occurred. It still is.

The FBI got a fraudulent FISA application to spy on Page. That's not disputed by the facts correct? The IG report, which I quoted multiple times in my previous post, specifically said that they acquired Trump campaign internal communications. How could you say that wasn't spying on the Trump campaign if they knew what they were discussing internally about the campaign?

What additional step are you saying that needs to be shown? I'm guessing Barr said it was speculation because there is an ongoing investigation looking into that very thing.

It’s a definite distinction that seemingly hasn’t registered with those who are for some reason desperately trying to prove that the whole investigation is invalid despite multiple findings from two different IGs now that there was valid reason to start the investigation and that the investigation was not politically motivated.

Bottom line, there was valid reason to start the investigation and the investigation was not driven by politics. It really couldn’t be clearer.

The IG didn't have power to compel testimony or subpoena evidence and Durham does. Barr and Durham said they disagreed that it wasn't politically motivated and since they have access to things Horowitz couldn't see then they could be correct. The investigation will show what happened.

It was fine to open the investigation, but they knew pretty quickly that there was no collusion and they still extended it for as long as they could. There are now more Americans who plead guilty to something illegal in the investigation than there were for Russia election collusion or conspiracy.

The fact that Clinesmith did give the full and accurate email doesn’t negate what he did, but it certainly speaks to intent. If he intended to mislead, then why would he have also included the unaltered email? It’s a pretty weird way to conspire in a nefarious way, isn’t it?

That's what Clinesmith’s lawyer claimed and if true that's more damning than you realize. If he sent the DOJ the accurate email, and other's knew what he put in the FISA application that could implicate others.

Also it doesn't really matter if he really did send the correct email to the DOJ. He included the fraudulent email in the FISA application.

Do you think the same guy who said, “Viva la Resistance!,” & then after the election: “I am so stressed about what I could have done differently,” he sighed. “Plus, my god damned name is all over the legal documents investigating [Trump’s] staff.”, made an honest mistake? I doubt it.

This whole controversy is fairly well manufactured for political reasons. The errors found appear to not rise to the level that is being widely advertised by the far right wing and those who seek to cause damage from the far left.

I disagree. In this instance you seem to discount an obviously biased FBI lawyer changing an email from the CIA that he included in the FISA warrant. He made it look like the CIA said that Page wasn't an informant for them, but you act like it's just a benign mistake.

Durham seems to have not found any political motivation. I think (guess) that Barr has informed Trump of that fact. Which would explain Trump’s recent public pressure on Barr. Trump is nothing if not ham handed about his corruption

What makes you think that? Do you think that Durham's investigation is complete?

 

[TaylorB]

You constantly complain about Herridge, but you have never shown that anything she's reported on was untrue. I understand why you don't like her. She hasn't went along with the Russian media narrative that you are used to.

It's just odd how much credit, and how little skepticism, you apply to Herridge's tweets compared to your treatment of other reporting from mainstream outlets.

In your post that says "it looks like Clinesmith's lawyer approached Durham about a deal after Ratcliffe declassified some FBI records," you're referring to a Herridge tweet in which she implies via an unnamed source that Clinesmith's lawyers were spooked into cooperation by the declassification of FBI records. The broader implication Herridge uses is the suggestion that Clinesmith was involved in a plot to use the August 17, 2016 defensive briefing of Trump and Flynn on Russia to entrap them in a conspiracy by eliciting information from them (which, if true, didn't work because Trump and Flynn pretended not to know anything about what Russia was doing).

It's surprising how many dots you let her connect via an unnamed source without fact checking her, or instinctively disbelieving her, as you've done with other outlets. Herridge implied via her source that Clinesmith's cooperation related to the DNI's declassification of FBI documents, but really, all she's saying is that his plea came after that release of documents. If you're familiar with her work, you know she's implying that Clinesmith may be cooperating by providing information on a separate conspiracy she's promoting about the FBI's nefarious intentions behind the 8/17/2016 defensive briefing to Trump and Flynn (and her "source" sounds a lot like Lindsey Graham, or someone similarly situated on the judiciary committee). Sure, your post is probably accurate -- Clinesmith's lawyer probably did approach Durham about a deal after Ratcliffe declassified FBI records -- but aren't we supposed to conclude from your post, and from her tweets, that something bigger on the horizon? If there aren't additional charges that stem from Clinesmith cooperation, is that proof that the Durham investigation is a hoax, and that Herridge is a hack for promoting it?

I don't have a problem with Herridge using unnamed sources, and I don't doubt that the text of what she's written in that tweet, and in most of her tweets, is technically factually accurate. Since she has a clever way of implying things without saying them, it would be help if you're citing her tweets to extrapolate a bit on what you think she's saying and how it's relevant to the discussion at hand. And it would be reasonable to apply the same level of scrutiny to Herridge's reporting as you do to the reporting of those with whom you disagree.

 

[TaylorB]

It was fine to open the investigation, but they knew pretty quickly that there was no collusion and they still extended it for as long as they could.

*Except the secret Trump Tower Moscow deal worth billions that Trump lied about and directed his lawyer to lie to Congress about, and all the secret meetings with Russians with virtually everyone on the Trump campaign's foreign policy apparatus while Russia was hacking and publishing Democrats' emails to help Trump win and the promises not to escalate sanctions for attacking us.

 

[MT15]

SFL, we will probably never agree on this. But I would just caution you about reading the sorts of biased sources that you are relying on, and taking all the one sided talk to heart. There are quite a few people who will excuse anything that Trump and the Trump campaign did (which was a lot of really shady stuff), while “throwing the book” at procedural errors from the other side. They all have their reasons, I suppose, but you are so heavily invested in it that you cannot see the forest for the trees.

Trump and the Trump campaign (every single person) told lies at every turn. They lied to Mueller and they lied to Congress. We don’t know the half of what went on. We see Trump’s corruption almost daily, we see the way every press secretary is made to go out and tell just huge lies for Trump that started day one of his presidency. We have seen him make his ambassador try to get Britain to put a lucrative golf tournament in one of his courses, we’ve seen him attempt to steer the G-7 to one of his resorts, we’ve seen him attempt to get Ukraine, China, and one of the South American countries that I cannot even remember to dig up dirt on Biden or help him in his re-election bid, we’ve seen him just recently attempt to use the Post Office as a weapon against democrats to sway the election. Someone like that doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt from me.

On the other hand, the FBI is not exactly a democratic stronghold. Comey damaged Clinton far more than he ever damaged Trump. There was no huge deep state conspiracy to “get” Trump in my opinion. It’s far more likely that these mostly straight arrow, conservative law enforcement types became alarmed at all the shady dealings during the campaign, and after. It was Trump’s own DOJ that appointed Mueller, after all. All this Obama, deep state crap is just that. It’s an attempt to make himself into a victim, when he is the one doing all the unethical, shady stuff all along.

 

[SaintForLife]

It's just odd how much credit, and how little skepticism, you apply to Herridge's tweets compared to your treatment of other reporting from mainstream outlets.

In your post that says "it looks like Clinesmith's lawyer approached Durham about a deal after Ratcliffe declassified some FBI records," you're referring to a Herridge tweet in which she implies via an unnamed source that Clinesmith's lawyers were spooked into cooperation by the declassification of FBI records. The broader implication Herridge uses is the suggestion that Clinesmith was involved in a plot to use the August 17, 2016 defensive briefing of Trump and Flynn on Russia to entrap them in a conspiracy by eliciting information from them (which, if true, didn't work because Trump and Flynn pretended not to know anything about what Russia was doing).

It's surprising how many dots you let her connect via an unnamed source without fact checking her, or instinctively disbelieving her, as you've done with other outlets. Herridge implied via her source that Clinesmith's cooperation related to the DNI's declassification of FBI documents, but really, all she's saying is that his plea came after that release of documents. If you're familiar with her work, you know she's implying that Clinesmith may be cooperating by providing information on a separate conspiracy she's promoting about the FBI's nefarious intentions behind the 8/17/2016 defensive briefing to Trump and Flynn (and her "source" sounds a lot like Lindsey Graham, or someone similarly situated on the judiciary committee). Sure, your post is probably accurate -- Clinesmith's lawyer probably did approach Durham about a deal after Ratcliffe declassified FBI records -- but aren't we supposed to conclude from your post, and from her tweets, that something bigger on the horizon? If there aren't additional charges that stem from Clinesmith cooperation, is that proof that the Durham investigation is a hoax, and that Herridge is a hack for promoting it?

I don't have a problem with Herridge using unnamed sources, and I don't doubt that the text of what she's written in that tweet, and in most of her tweets, is technically factually accurate. Since she has a clever way of implying things without saying them, it would be help if you're citing her tweets to extrapolate a bit on what you think she's saying and how it's relevant to the discussion at hand. And it would be reasonable to apply the same level of scrutiny to Herridge's reporting as you do to the reporting of those with whom you disagree.

There's a big difference between Herridge's reporting and most on the mainstream outlet's reporting.

90% of her reporting on the Russia investigation is literally highlighting relevant portions of government documents. 10% of her reporting is unarmed sources and the one you referenced I made sure to use the qualifier "it looks like". That's far from definitive and I'm skeptical of every unamed source until I see evidence. It's evident that you don't like what she highlights in those documents, but nobody here has shown any evidence to show that they aren't accurate.

The mainstream outlets reporting on Russia used 95% of unamed sources with little to no evidence. Most of those "bombshells" fizzled out after a few weeks and closer examination. The few mainstream outlets that used government documents include the discredited Steele dossier and the false Schiff memo.

I'm confused how you said my post was probably correct, but then you are claiming that she wanted us to conclude something that she didn't specifically say.