Were there really ever any Russians at all?

Flopping Aces ^ | 02-11-18 | DrJohn

[Starman417]

We have been fed an endless diet of Trump-Russia collusion by the media. It is based on the dossier compiled by one Christopher Steele. The more we learn about it, the more curious it becomes.

The dossier was the basis for the FBI to secure a warrant to spy on Carter Page. That in itself is very curious. Page has been on the FBI radar since at least 2014. Page is thought to have helped the FBI snare Russian spies in 2013 back then although he denies it. You'd think that the FBi would be able to determine if Page was a spy in all the time. I'll have more to say about Page soon.

The Nunes memo made several key claims:

• The FBI used an unverified, allegedly biased document known as the “Steele dossier”to get a warrant in October 2016 to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The dossier, prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleges the existence of a conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russian government. The Steele dossier was partially financed by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
• Senior FBI and Justice Department officials knew that the Steele dossier was indirectly funded by a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, but didn’t disclose this in their application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court — a court that approves surveillance warrants pertaining to national security and foreign intelligence. They also didn’t disclose it when renewing their applications requesting additional time for surveillance.
• In September 2016, Steele spoke with Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele told Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Ohr’s wife worked for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that hired Steele on behalf of the DNC/Clinton lawyer.
• The head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap apparently said corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the FISA application.

Additionally, the memo also noted:

"McCabe testified before the committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the [FISA court] without the Steele dossier information"

Steele lied to the FBI

The narrative is laid out in the Nunes memo. It notes that at the time the FBI sought the Page warrant on Oct. 21 “the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele” for the same information the bureau submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for the warrant. Mr. Steele wrote his last election dossier memo on Oct. 19, apparently ending his $160,000 in payments from Fusion GPS, the investigative firm that had hired him to produce the dossier.

The Nunes memo later states, “Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016 Mother Jones article by David Corn.”

The FBI called him a "less than reliable source."

Donald Trump dossier: intelligence sources vouch for author's credibility

But that was back in January 2017. Things change.

Steele admitted that his dossier was "unverified." 

Then there's the circular sourcing:

Third, the FISA warrant application cited as corroborating evidence an article in Yahoo News written by Michael Isikoff that was published on Sept. 23, 2016 and focused on a trip to Moscow made by Page in July 2016.

But that Yahoo News article couldn’t really be considered “corroboration” of the dossier compiled by Steele, as it was revealed that Steele himself had provided the information upon which this article was based to Isikoff. This tactic is known as circular sourcing, or making a single source of information appear as though it is coming from multiple independent sources.

So now "multiple sources" are dwindling. Now on to the second dossier, written by Clinton hack Cody Shearer.

Frightened out of his wits by Devin Nunes' promise of the next memo exposing the corruption of the DOJ, Jonathan Winer, a DOJ official under John Kerry, came out as the person passing on propaganda against Donald Trump prior to the election:

For your amusement- read this

[Boomer]

This is what I find so funny. The dems accuse Trump of colluding but then, as always, they were doing exactly what they accused others of doing.

This happens so often it’s practically the norm now. Whatever they accuse others of doing; everyone can bet they doing exactly that. Crazy. Tag line applies.

[GOPJ]

Nice graphic...