In order to defend the bogus Nunes’ memo Rep. Matt Gaetz who is a member of Undercover House Trump Protection Force spoke with Jake Tapper to explain their case on how and why members of the FBI supposedly used a “partisan” document to defraud the FISA Court into authorizing surveillance of Carter Page.
Rep. Matt Gaetz claims to Jake Tapper that since the DNC paid law firm Perkins Coie, who paid Fusion GPS, who paid Christopher Steele $163,000 it’s a “partisan” document and those shouldn’t be used in this way, then he denies that the Nunes memo which was written entirely but Republicans isn’t a “partisan document” because — well, reasons — he also claims that Steele was ‘terminated” by the FBI for his communications with the press, but that through his links with Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife also works with Fusion GPS, he was still able to funnel information to the FBI in later weeks.
He claims that the Steele Dossier was only confirmed by a news report by Michael Isakoff on Yahoo News which Steele himself had contributed to and that McCabe said that the Page’s FISA warrant wouldn’t have been authorized without it.
Tapper pushes back that the investigation had already began months previously after reports that George Papadopoulos had received information that the Russians had “Thousands of Hillary’s Emails”, where Gaetz essentially ignores this fact and claims essentially that the FISA warrants “found nothing” and that it all would have petered out long ago if not for the “partisan” Steele dossier.
Yeah, right, ok.
The headline Talking Points for Dems are as follows:
- Republicans also paid Fusion GPS for their research on Trump and Russia.
- The FISA Judge was indeed informed of the political funding provided for the research.
- Steele went to the Press because of the inaction by the FBI, not because of the DNC.
- The FBI had enough confidence in Steele to offer to pay for his research themselves.
- Michael Isakoff’s report in Yahoo News was included in the FISA warrant because it shows that Carter Page may have accepted an illegal bribe from Russia.
- Previous reports had already confirmed parts of the Steele Memo.
- Carter Page had been targeted for recruitment by the Russians previously which had led to several spies being prosecuted.
- Carter Page was no longer a member of the Trump Campaign when under surveillance.
- The investigation into Russia and Trump began as a result of other reports besides the Steele dossier.
Taking each of his points in turn:
1. Republicans also paid Fusion GPS for their research on Trump and Russia.
Gaetz like nearly all Republicans who’ve supported this release completely ignore that the Republican outfit Washington Free Beacon also paid Fusion GPS.
Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.
The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
So it’s not like people like Gaetz don’t know that this is the case, particularly since it was confirmed in testimony to their own committee by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpon in response to questions by Trey Gowdy — who is the only Republican to have viewed all the source documents.
MR. GOWDY: Were you hired by a person or entity in either 2015 or 2016to do research into then-candidate Donald Trump?
MR. SIMPSON: Yes, we were. We were hired around October,September-October of 2015.
MR. GOWDY: By whom?
MR. SIMPSON: The Free Beacon has been publicly stated as the client or identified to the committee as the client, and I can confirm that._
MR. GOWDY: All right. I'm going to be asking you questions even thoughthere's been public reporting. I don't want anybody in the media to take any offense, but sometimes they're right, sometimes they're not right. So --
MR. SIMPSON: I can agree with that.
MR. GOWDY: So in this instance, we can all celebrate the fact that they were correct. You were hired by the Washington Free Beacon?
MR. SIMPSON: That was the client, yes.
2. The FISA Judge was indeed informed of the political funding provided for the research.
Also Dems are arguing that the Judge was informed about Fusion GPS’s funding — so that’s a hard blow to this conspiracy that this information was hidden from the Judge.
“The Majority suggests that the FBI failed to alert the court as to Mr. Steele’s potential political motivations or the political motivations of those who hired him, but this is not accurate.
3. Steele went to the Press because of the inaction by the FBI, not because of the DNC.
Steele did eventually go to the press, but the reason why was because he felt frustrated by the FBI who he thought were dragging their feet and stonewalling because — in short — the New York Office of the FBI was “Trumpland.”
Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.
This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
4. The FBI had enough confidence in Steele to offer to pay for his research themselves.
Gaetz not only doesn’t mention that Fusion GPS had previously been paid by Republicans, he also ignores the fact the the FBI had offered to hire Steele directly, before he had gone to the press.
The former British spy who authored a controversial dossier on behalf of Donald Trump’s political opponents alleging ties between Trump and Russia reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work, according to several people familiar with the arrangement.
The agreement to compensate former MI6 agent Christopher Steele came as U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that the Russians had interfered in the presidential election by orchestrating hacks of Democratic Party email accounts.
What was terminated after this was Steele’s job offer as a consultant, not that they didn’t trust his information. According to the memo they kept accepting that through Ohr. In fact according to Glenn Simpson he lost his trust in them, not the reverse.
MR. SIMPSON: Come the end of October, some extraordinary things started happening. The Russians -- WikiLeaks releases John Podesta's emails, and then, you know, most extraordinary of all, James Corney sends a letter to Congress saying he is reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation. And that was, I believe, around the 25th. And, you know, if you are me, you know, and you have been in politics and campaigns and investigations, and this is your whole world, and you have been doing it basically since you got out of college, you know, one of the things that you -- that is really ingrained in you is the rules of Washington -- and when I say rules, I mean like regulations of the Justice Department about interfering with an election. It is not something that you are just aware of as a technical requirement, it is something the people embrace, which is that law enforcement shouldn't interfere in elections by announcing investigation sof people at the last minute.
And so we were shocked, and I felt - I mean, I guess I was angry. But in any case, you know, the result of that was predictable, which is that, you know, it began to influence the election. And, so, we tried to decide how to respond to that. And when I say "we," I mean like me and my little, you know, company, and Chris and, you know -- I didn't have any dealings with Mrs. Clinton or any of these other people. They were dealing with -- that was their thing. But I was sitting on this piece of knowledge, which was that, in fact, the FBI was investigating the Trump organization for possibly having illegal dealings with the Government of Russia. And you can imagine if you are me or Chris Steele and we have been sitting here working — and they seemed to be very seriously running a counterintelligence/espionage investigation of the Donald Trump organization, and all of a sudden they announce that they are reopening Hillary case, you know, you're kind of, what's going on here?
So at that point, I, of course, was really confused, and I would say Chris was a little scared, because he didn't -- he thought that - he didn't really understand what was going on with the FBI. In any event, at that point I felt likethe rules had just been thrown·out and that Comey had violated the sort of one of the more sacrosanct policies, which is not announcing law enforcement activity inthe closing days of an election.
And so, we began talking to the press·again about -- we decided that if James Corney wasn't going to tell people about this investigation that, you know, he had violated the rules, and we would only be fair if the world knew that both candidates were under FBI investigation.
5. Michael Isakoff’s report in Yahoo News was included in the FISA warrant because it shows that Carter Page may have accepted an illegal bribe from Russia.
Michael Isakoff’s report does reference Steele’s claim that Page met Igor Sechin about Rosneft’s impending stock sale and offered him brokerage fees on the sale in exchange for his help getting Trump to drop Sanctions [Page has since testified that he met a different Rosneft exec who told him about the sale], but it also references Intel officials who state they were quite seriously concerned about Page.
U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president, according to multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue.
The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election, the sources said. After one of those briefings, Senate minority leader Harry Reid wrote FBI Director James Comey, citing reports of meetings between a Trump adviser (a reference to Page) and “high ranking sanctioned individuals” in Moscow over the summer as evidence of “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that needed to be investigated by the bureau.
Rosneft is a sanctioned company and Page admitting that he spoke to any of their people about stocks doesn’t make sense since there’s nothing he could legally do with that information without violating Treasury Dept. regulations on sanctions which can be punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
OFAC considers non-compliance with sanctions to be a serious threat to national security and foreign relations. Consequently, those who breach OFAC sanctions without obtaining the proper license can face severe legal repercussions. Fines range up to $20 million, depending the offence, and prison sentences can be as long as 30 years.
6. Previous reports had already confirmed parts of the Steele Memo.
When it was presented to the FBI the dossier itself was confirmation of previous reports from England, Germany, Estonia, Poland as well as Australia which were strategically left out of the Nunes memo to mislead the public and support the claim that on it’s own — it had no validity.
A source close to the investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and its ties to Russia says that there is now “specific concrete and corroborative evidence” that individuals within Trump’s immediate orbit coordinated with Russian intelligence operatives during the election.
The Guardian said on Thursday that the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been watching the Trump camp since late 2015, having noticed suspicious “interactions” between Trump associates and well-known Russian agents.
…
The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow ahead of the US election. This was in part due to US law that prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of American citizens without warrants. “They are trained not to do this,” the source stressed.
“It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep,” the source added. “They [the European agencies] were saying: ‘There are contacts going on between people close to Mr Trump and people we believe are Russian intelligence agents. You should be wary of this.’
“The message was: ‘Watch out. There’s something not right here.’”
7. Carter Page had been targeted for recruitment by the Russians previously which had led to several spies being prosecuted.
Further on this point, this wasn’t the first time Page had been placed under surveillance, starting in 2014 there was another counter-intelligence investigation involving Page the Russians.
US Attorney Preet Bharara prosecuted Russian intelligence officer Evgeny Buryakov who was posing as an employee of sanctioned Russia bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) of conspiracy to commit espionage in recruiting U.S Businessmen in Manhattan including Carter Page. Page had then cooperated in this investigation as an informant, so it’s not that surprising that this was happening, yet again.
8. Carter Page was no longer a member of the Trump Campaign when under surveillance.
The Kremlin task force had attempted two previous times during 2016 to get a FISA Warrant on Page and those had been rejected, it was only on the third attempt in October — by which point Page was no longer a member of the Trump campaign and now also included Steele’s information which matched up very well with what they had already heard — that the warrant was finally authorized. This is quite different from Gaetz contention that it was ONLY the Steele data that was required to secure the warrant.
Another point is that in addition to his trip to Russia in July before the warrant was approved, Carter Page went back to Moscow again in December of 2016.
MOSCOW — Carter Page, an early foreign policy adviser to Donald J. Trump who was scrutinized by the F.B.I. on suspicion of private communications with senior Russian officials over the summer, was back in Moscow on Thursday.
Mr. Page was closelipped about the purpose of his visit, telling RIA Novosti, a Russian state-run news agency, that he would stay in Moscow until Tuesday and would meet with “business leaders and thought leaders.”
…
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told journalists that government leaders in Moscow had no plans to meet with Mr. Page and that they had never had any contact with him. “We have learned about this from the press,” Mr. Peskov told the news agency Interfax.
Peskov says that government leaders in Moscow “never had any contact with him”? That’s interesting because on his previous trip that he met with Deputy Prime Minister Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich while he was there.
Washington (CNN) Carter Page met with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich while in Moscow in July 2016, the former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump's campaign confirmed to CNN on Friday.
The encounter occurred during a conference in July 2016 at Moscow's New Economic School, Page said, describing it as more of a "hello" in passing than a formal meeting.
Page first confirmed the encounter with a senior Russian government official to
The New York Times on Friday night. He later told CNN's Jim Sciutto the Russian official's name.
Page shared an email with at least one Trump campaign aide "describing insights he had after conversations with government officials, legislators and business executives during his time in Moscow,"
the Times reported, citing one person familiar with the contents of the message. The email was read aloud during Page's closed-door testimony to the House intelligence committee, the newspaper reported.
So nobody met him, nobody knew him — except the Deputy Prime Minister. Yeah, alright — sure.
Except for the time CNN reported that the Russians were trying to recruit him as an asset, again.
CNN is reporting that Russia tried to infiltrate President Donald Trumps campaign using former foreign policy advisor Carter Page as someone assigned to keep an eye on them. However, the officials were not able to say whether or not Page knew Russia was using him.
The information comes from the FBI, which gathered the intelligence on the act in the summer of 2016, around the time Paul Manafort took over the campaign.
The information also revealed that Russia tried to use backdoor channels to communicate with Trump staff and the inner circle of the Trump campaign. Page was just one of many found to have been in contact with Russian officials.
9. The investigation into Russia and Trump began as a result of other reports besides the Steele dossier.
It was on the basis of the reports from Estonia about increased Russian spying, from Dutch Intelligence detecting the Russian hack and counter-hacking them and from Australia that Papadoplous had been told by Russians about having “thousand of Hillary’s emails” that the Russian investigation began in mid 2016. Steele’s memo came along later and effectively confirmed those existing reports and Geatz strategically ignores that since that time much more of the Dossier has been confirmed.
For example the claim that there are illicit sex tapes of Donald Trump recorded in Russia do not come exclusively from Christopher Steele.
And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by "the head of an East European intelligence agency".
Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".
….
The claims of Russian kompromat on Mr Trump were "credible", the CIA believed. That is why - according to the New York Times and Washington Post - these claims ended up on President Barack Obama's desk last week, a briefing document also given to Congressional leaders and to Mr Trump himself
So there’s that — and also the fact that Stormy Daniels passed a polygraph about her affair with Trump back in 2011.
And there’s more:
- Steele June 20, 2016— [6 Days after Wapo’s first report on DNC hack]
- Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by Putin, has been to encourage splits and divisions in the Western alliance. [PARTIALLY CONFIRMED considering Trump’s multiple attempts to open Trump Tower Moscow and his long, long history of Money Laundering in connection to Russian Oligarchs]
- Source A stated that Kremlin has been feeding Trump and his team valuable intel on his opponents including Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for several years. This was confirmed by Source D, a close associate of Trump’s who had organized his recent trips to Moscow noting Russian Intel had been “very helpful”. [PARTIALLY CONFIRMED]
This source is very likely Trump’s Russian born associate Felix Sater who has stated to friends that he and Trump are “going to Jail.”
Sources told The Spectator‘s Paul Wood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deep dive into Trump’s business practices may be yielding results.
...
And according to Wood’s sources, Sater may have already flipped and given prosecutors the evidence they need to make a case against Trump.
For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me.
- Steele July 19, 2016 — [During 2nd Day of RNC convention]
- Trump associate admits Kremlin behind recent appearance of DNC emails on Wikileaks as means of plausible deniability. [CONFIRMED]
- Agreed exchange of information in both directions, Trump teams using moles within DNC and US hackers as well as Russian. Russians receiving intel on oligarchs living in US and their families. [PENDING]
- Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Trump, states Manafort was using Carter Page and others as intermediaries. [CONFIRMED]
Papadopolous in his guilty plea admitted that he was trying to setup a personal meeting between Trump and Putin which was ultimately shutdown by Jeff Sessions, but he continued to talk to Russians while other Trump staffers — Manafort and Gates who are both under indictment — agreed that someone “Low-level” should be sent instead of Trump.
May 2016: The Russian MFA connection emails Papadopoulos and says he has talked to his colleagues at MFA and that they are “open for cooperation”, George then relates this to a “High Ranking” member of the campaign (Manafort) as “Russia Updates.” They continue communicating during the Month via email and Skype. Some of his emails are forwarded by Manafort to Gates “Let[‘]s discuss, We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”
On the very same day that his Russian Government contact Millian agreed with that plan, Corey Lewandowski authorized Carter Page’s trip to Russia — although he had initially lied about his involvement in this.
-
- In return Trump has agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and raises US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltic and Eastern Europe to deflect attention from Ukraine, which is a high priority for Putin. [CONFIRMED]
Trump associate JD Gordon mysteriously blocked the addition of a RNC plank to support arming Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
The Trump campaign's national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention said Friday that he gave campaign colleagues the chance to "intervene" when an amendment to the GOP's draft policy on Ukraine was introduced in Cleveland last July.
The original amendment, which proposed that the GOP commit to sending "lethal weapons" to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian aggression, was ultimately altered to say "provide appropriate assistance" before it was included in the party's official platform.
Trump has also repeatedly attacked and criticized NATO in a way that Putin would be quite happy with.
"Members of the alliance must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations," Trump told the heads of state, who stood silently -- some shifting uncomfortably -- behind him.
"Twenty-three of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States," he said.
All NATO nations have all already made a commitment to increase these payments in 2016 and several have done so already.
NATO reiterated the benchmark of members spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, and 20 percent of defense budgets on major equipment and research and development. Reaching this benchmark and maintaining it is an obligation for NATO members and requires a political, economic, and societal decision to invest in defense. Poland, the host of this year’s summit has made that decision, and as such has set a good example for other NATO member states
They really don't need Trump heckling about meeting a commitment they’ve already made — or grandstanding on the goal line when they do what they’ve already said they would do.
-
- July 26, 2016 — [During 2nd Day of DNC Convention]
- Russia has an extensive program of state-sponsored offensive cyber operations. External targets includes foreign government and big corporations, especially banks. [CONFIRMED]
Several hackers involved in the attack on the U.S. have been arrested. Two who have pleaded guilty have pointed to Russian Intelligence (FSB) as directing them to perform hacks of the DNC and Yahoo Mail accounts.
As it became known to The Bell, Konstantin Kozlovsky, a hacker from Yekaterinburg, one of the main defendants in the Lurk case , stated about his involvement in the crackdown of the committee of the Democratic Party of the United States [...]
Judging by the documents published on Kozlovsky's page, he first announced his work for the FSB in a letter of November 1, 2016. In it, he mentions and attacks on the servers of the Democratic Party committee. Kozlovsky writes that he was engaged in them on behalf of an FSB officer, whom he calls "Ilya." Later the hacker began to assert that under the pseudonym "Ilya" he was overseen by FSB major Dmitry Dokuchaev.
- Steele August 10, 2016 —
- Trump campaign insiders report recent DNC emails leaks aimed at switching Sanders (protest) voters away from Clinton and over to Trump. [CONFIRMED]
This is exactly the plan that was outlined in a report by a Russian Think tank with links to Putin.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.
They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election
…
It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.
- Steele August 22, 2016 -— [3 Days after Manafort left Trump campaign due to kick-back story]
- Ex-Ukraining President Yanakovych confides to Putin that he authorize kick-back payments to Manafort, assures Putin there is no documentary evidence/trail. [PARTIALLY CONFIRMED — These exact Kick-back payments are part of Manafort Money-Laundering indictment, that Yanakovych said this to Putin is still in question.]
- Steele September 14, 2016 —
- Russian Diplomat [Kalugin] withdrawn from US due to closeness to US Presidents operation and veterans pension payments ruse. [PARTIALLY CONFIRMED Kalugin left in August 2016, the pension plan scam is still under investigation.]
- Steele October 12, 2016 — [5 Days after Homeland Security publicly points to Kremlin as being source of DNC hacks]
- Trump supported by Kremlin because he’s seen as disruptive anti-establishment figure who would shake-up the current international status quo in Russia’s favor. [CONFIRMED — See Think Tank Report above.]
- Putin disappointed that Clinton hacked emails had not had a greater impact on election.[PENDING]
- Steele October 18, 2016 —
- Close associate of Sechin elaborated on his meeting with Carter Page, stating Sechin had offered a stake in the sale of 19% of Rosneft stock in exchange for Trump lifting Russia sanctions. Page had expressed interest, and said if Trump were elected he would lift sanctions.[PARTIALLY CONFIRMED — As noted above Trump’s WH did try to end sanctions on Russia almost immediately and Trump and Tillerson have dismantled the State Dept Sanctions Office]
- Steele October 19, 2016 —
- Importance of Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who wife is Russian, had grown after departure of Manafort. [PARTIALLY CONFIRMED — Cohen’s wife is from Ukraine and he has some businesses there.]
- Steele December 13, 2016 —
Not everything within the Dossier has panned out perfectly, Steele himself says that it is about 70% accurate and that he wasn’t even looking to discover what he did — he himself was “shocked” at the time.
The former British intelligence officer behind the controversial Trump dossier believes his reports are "70 percent to 90 percent" accurate, according to a new book about Russia's influence in the 2016 election written by Guardian reporter Luke Harding.
Christopher Steele also reportedly believes the contents of his report will be verified — and his work vindicated — as special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, according to a Guardian story written about the book and published on Wednesday.
“I’ve been dealing with this country for thirty years. Why would I invent this stuff?” Steele is quoted as saying in Harding's new book, "Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald TrumpWin."
According to Harding, Steele felt shocked by his findings and the information his sources gave him about the extent of the collusion, warning friends that reading his report would be a "life-changing experience.”
No, not perfect, but that’s a long way from the claim that the only confirmed claim from the dossier was from Yahoo News.
That’s a lie.
The idea that without the Steele memo this investigation would have just “faded away” now that there are two guilty pleas, from Papadopoulos and Flynn, and two pending indictments against Manafort and Gates, is not just ridiculous it’s completely deluded.