Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Collusion Scam Unraveling


WIFE OF FUSION GPS FOUNDER SAYS HUSBAND BEHIND 'RUSSIAGATE' 'If a sitting president used the instruments of state ... to de-legitimize the results of an election' 12/25/17, WND

There’s an FBI special counsel, Robert Mueller, investigating the Trump campaign’s so-called “collusion” with “Russia.”

But there also are developing congressional investigations into how those claims were created, from where they came, and who first made them.

Because, as a report in TabletMag suggests, it would be precedent-setting for what President Trump has described as a swamp in Washington to actually have used government channels and resources to make up allegations about a presidential candidate, and then a president-elect.

“To date the investigation into the Fusion GPS-manufactured collusion scandal has focused largely on the firm itself, its allies in the press, as well as contacts in the Department of Justice and FBI,” TabletMag said. “However, if a sitting president used the instruments of state, including the intelligence community, to disseminate and legitimize a piece of paid opposition research in order to first obtain warrants to spy on the other party’s campaign, and then to de-legitimize the results of an election once the other party’s candidate won, we’re looking at a scandal that dwarfs Watergate – a story not about a bad man in the White House, but about the subversion of key security institutions that are charged with protecting core elements of our democratic process while operating largely in the shadows.”

In support of that idea, TabletMag now has reported that Mary Jacoby, the wife of GPS founder Glenn Simpson, boasted “on Facebook about how ‘Russiagate’ would not exist if it weren’t for her husband.”

Her claim, as reported by TabletMag, was that, “It’s come to my attention that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump. Let’s be clear Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steel. Chris Steele worked for Glenn.”

The outline, according to the president’s supporters, is that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid money to Fusion GPS, a team of political operatives, to find dirt on Donald Trump. GPS then reportedly hired ex-British spy Steele to write the claims, which included salacious allegations that have yet to be documented to have a basis in fact.

Critics of the ongoing FBI special counsel’s probe into that say someone simply took the made-up allegations to a FISA court, obtained permission to spy on then-candidate Donald Trump, and then did so.

“The Russiagate story concocted by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, who coincidentally funded Fusion GPS (the firm behind the ‘Trump dossier’ that the entire Russia election meddling is based upon), is unraveling at record speed,” commented those at the Zerohedge blog.

The report continued, addressing Jacoby’s claim: “It’s hardly a simple assertion of family pride; it goes directly to the nature of what became known as the ‘Steele dossier,’ on which the Russiagate narrative is founded.”

Fox News also reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants a senior Justice Department lawyer to review the possibility of another special counsel – this one to investigate those Fusion influences on the FBI.

It also was the DOJ’s Bruce Ohr whose wife, Nellie, was paid by Fusion GPS during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Fox reported, “Sessions on calls for a special counsel to look into Sr DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, and wife Nellie’s contacts with Fusion GPS during the summer and fall of 2016: I’ve put a senior attorney, with the resources he may need, to review cases in our office and make a recommendation to me, if things aren’t being pursued that need to be pursued, if cases may need more resources to complete in a proper manner, and to recommend to me if the standards for a special counsel are met, and the recommended one should be established.”

TabletMag reported its own investigation into the “evolution” of those claims about Trump came “from a series of stories that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby co-wrote for the Wall Street Journal well before Fusion GPS existed …”

“Understanding the origins of the ‘Steele dossier’ is especially important because of what it tells us about the nature and the workings of what its supporters would hopefully describe as an ongoing campaign to remove the elected president of the United States. Yet the involvement of sitting intelligence officials – and a sitting president – in such a campaign should be a frightening thought even to people who despise Trump and oppose every single one of his policies, especially in an age where the possibilities for such abuses have been multiplied by the power of secret courts, wide-spectrum surveillance, and the centralized creation and control of story-lines that live on social media while being fed from inside protected nodes of the federal bureaucracy.”

The report said TabletMag had seen screenshots of a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, in which Jacoby said her husband should get credit for Russiagate. The report revealed she did not respond to TabletMag’s request for comment.

The complication for the strategy to attack the president with claims from the “dossier” comes just as it was revealed Nellie Ohr, the wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr, had been hired by Fusion to “work on the dossier.”

“In any case, the history of the ‘Steele dossier’ doesn’t begin with Christopher Steele or Nellie Ohr in the summer of 2016; it begins with a story that Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby co-wrote for The Wall Street Journal dated April 17, 2007. ‘How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington’ details how prominent Republicans, including the 1996 Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole, opened doors in the American capital for Kremlin-affiliated oligarchs and other friends of Vladimir Putin. Among those friends of Putin was Viktor Yanukovich, who would become president of Ukraine in 2010. According to the article, one of Yanukovich’s wealthy patrons paid a political fixer named Paul Manafort to introduce Yanukovich to powerful Washington, D.C., figures, including former Vice President Dick Cheney. Manafort figures prominently throughout the piece.”

In the 2016 campaign, when Trump hired Manafort, “you can bet that Simpson and Jacoby’s eyes lit up,” the report said.

Fusion quickly was involved in negotiations with the Clinton campaign and the DNC “to see if there was interest in the firm continuing the opposition research on the Trump campaign…”

The Washington Times reported Fusion “pitched other stories about the Republican presidential candidate to Washington reporters, including an attempt to tie him to a convicted pedophile who was once buddies with former President Bill Clinton.”

And Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, says the connection between the Democrats and an anti-Trump dossier is well established and the big questions now are whether the dossier was the grounds for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign and whether the FBI and Justice Department used it as an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency.

Jordan and other lawmakers grilled Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team, with a special emphasis on recently fired FBI official Peter Strzok and recently demoted Justice Department official Bruce Ohr Strzok was fired by Mueller, allegedly for his barrage of anti-Trump text messages to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page. However, in addition to the political chatter came a Strzok text suggesting he expected Trump to lose the election but was planning to take action if the GOP nominee won.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” texted Strzok. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” he added in a text dated Aug. 15, 2016.
Jordan said he believes there is a major story behind that text and that it likely explains why Mueller kicked Strzok to the curb in the Russia probe.

“Remember, Peter Strzok is Mr. Super Agent Guy at the FBI,” Jordan told WND and Radio America. “He ran the Clinton (email) investigation, interviewed (Cheryl) Mills, (Huma) Abedin, and Secretary Clinton. He’s the guy who did the famous exoneration letter that changed the term ‘gross negligence’ – a crime – to ‘extreme carelessness.’ He’s also the guy who ran the Russia investigation and interviewed Mike Flynn.

“So he gets kicked off the Mueller team, and we’re told it’s because of anti-Trump text messaging and Lisa Page. My belief is it’s got to be more than that, because, as I said in committee a couple of weeks ago, if you kicked everyone off the Mueller team who is anti-Trump, you wouldn’t have anybody left,” Jordan said.

So what might be the real reason for Strzok’s dismissal?
“It has to be something more, and my contention is it goes to the dossier, the dossier that I believe was used for securing the warrants to spy on Americans, the dossier that was put into the application that was taken to the FISA court to get warrants to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign,” Jordan said.

He continued, “I believe Peter Strzok, who was the deputy head of counterintelligence at the FBI and ran both the Clinton and Russia investigations, probably has his fingerprints all over that application.”



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