Another note from Peter Strzok

[HedonistForever]

Here we are almost 4 years since Trump and his campaign were accused of conspiracy with Russian Intelligence to interfere in the 2016 election and we just got another note form Peter Strzok. Material that Christopher Wrey has been sitting on for years. He was asked to turn over all this information and we are just now getting perhaps the most important piece of information so far.


How's this for a "coincidence"? On Feb. 14th 2017, the headline of the New York Times was "Trump campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence". On that same day, Peter Strzok wrote a note saying "We are unaware of any Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian Intelligence". Wouldn't that have been nice if Peter Strzok had told the world that instead of just telling James Comey.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/u...er-strzok.html


F.B.I. Agent in Russia Inquiry Saw Basis in Early 2017 to Doubt Dossier

A top F.B.I. agent recognized by February 2017 that a now notorious dossier of claims about purported Trump-Russia ties had credibility problems, but the Justice Department continued to rely on it as part of its basis to renew permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser, documents released on Friday showed.
The documents included an F.B.I. memo recounting a three-day interview in January 2017 with a person who served as a primary source for Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier for a research firm paid by Democrats. They also included an F.B.I. agent’s notes disputing aspects of a New York Times article the next month.


The agent, Peter Strzok, had not participated in the interview of Mr. Steele’s source, in which the source had suggested that the dossier misstated or exaggerated certain information that the source had gathered from a network of contacts in Russia and relayed to Mr. Steele. But Mr. Strzok appeared to be aware of aspects of it.
In his annotations about two weeks later, Mr. Strzok questioned the reliability of the dossier.


Reacting to a line in the newspaper article that senior F.B.I. officials believed that Mr. Steele had a credible track record, Mr. Strzok wrote in the margins: “Recent interviews and investigation, however, reveal Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network.”

Nevertheless, in the ensuing months, the Justice Department twice sought and obtained a court’s permission to renew a wiretap of the former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, recycling language from earlier applications that relied in part on information from the Steele dossier.
An inspector general report last year sharply criticized the F.B.I. for not telling judges that the interview had raised doubts about the credibility of the Steele information. The bureau has since conceded to the court that oversees national security surveillance that the available evidence about Mr. Page was legally insufficient to justify the last two wiretaps.


The documents were released on Friday by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. A close ally to President Trump, Mr. Graham has been using his position to try to discredit the Russia inquiry in an election year.
In a statement announcing the release of the documents, Mr. Graham called the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Trump campaign “corrupt.” An accompanying news release from his office said that “the document demonstrates that Peter Strzok and others in F.B.I. leadership positions must have been aware of the issues with the Steele dossier that the F.B.I.’s interview with Steele’s ‘primary subsource’ revealed.”


While Mr. Strzok was still working on other aspects of the larger Russia investigation, he was not part of the team working on the wiretap renewals, his lawyer said. Another senior F.B.I. counterintelligence official, Jennifer Boone, was supervising a team in charge of determining the sources of information for the dossier and of handling the wiretap targeting Mr. Page, according to people familiar with the investigation.


Mr. Strzok was later removed from the Russia investigation after the Justice Department inspector general discovered numerous texts on his work phone expressing animus toward the election of Mr. Trump. The inspector general, however, did not find evidence that he took or withheld any official action because of his personal opinions.


Mr. Strzok’s skeptical annotations of the Times article, headlined “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence,” were similar to congressional testimony months later by the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey disputing it. Mr. Comey did not say exactly what he thought was incorrect about the article, which cited four current and former American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information.


Mr. Strzok’s annotations disputed the article’s premise and other aspects. He wrote, “We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.”


BOOM! No need for a warrant for Carter Page except that council for the FBI lied about Carter Page in an official document and no need for Mueller to investigate whether Trump campaign aides had conversations with Russian Intelligence.

And yet the Times and WaPo, CNN and MSNBC continued to perpetuate the lie.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/20/fbi-knew-collusion-was-a-nothing-burger-but-kept-fake-scandal-alive-anyway/


FBI knew ‘collusion’ was a nothing-burger, but kept fake scandal alive anyway



‘We have not seen evidence of any individuals affiliated with the Trump team in contact with [Russian intelligence officers].”
How much wasted time on pointless investigations could have been prevented had Peter Strzok, then one of the FBI’s top counterintelligence officials who was spearheading the bureau’s Trump-Russia investigation, said this publicly one month into President Trump’s term?


But no, it was a private note by Strzok, for consumption within the FBI, to debunk a Feb. 14, 2017, New York Times article. The news story, a compilation by five of the Times’ top reporters, working four unnamed sources (the usual “current and former American officials”), claimed that members of the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials” before the 2016 election.

This was false. Just as important, the FBI knew it was false.


But we, the American people, only know that now, in 2020, because Strzok’s notes were finally made public on Friday.
The Times article centrally identified former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort as a key adviser in communication with Kremlin spies. Strzok, however, countered that the bureau was “unaware of any calls with any Russian government official in which Manafort was a party.”
Significantly, the Times report was part of a tireless campaign of government leaks, mostly from current and former intelligence operatives (undoubtedly from officials who either worked in agencies still teeming with Obama holdovers or left government after serving the Obama administration).


The story was published just after the firing of Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. As part of the Trump transition, Flynn had engaged in perfectly appropriate contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, but had been publicly portrayed as if he were a clandestine agent working for Moscow against the country he’d bled for as a decorated US Army commander.


The narrative of “Trump collusion with Russia” was pure fiction. The public officials who peddled it to a voracious anti-Trump press had to know it was bunk. Yet they fed the beast anyway, regardless of the cloud this created, regardless of how much it harmed the administration’s capacity to govern.
Worse: This was not merely a media scam. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department made similar representations, under oath, to the federal court that oversees secret government surveillance programs.


By the time of the Times report, the bureau and Obama DOJ had obtained warrants to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Cater Page in October 2016 and January 2017.


In each warrant, the court was told: “The FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential campaign were being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with [Trump’s] campaign.” Moreover, the warrant applications painted a picture of a “conspiracy of cooperation” between Donald Trump and the Putin regime, with Manafort at the hub, using such underlings as Page and Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, as intermediaries.
It was complete nonsense, largely based on the so-called dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Strzok’s notes attest that the FBI knew Steele’s reporting was highly suspect.


And that’s not the half of it. The Senate Judiciary Committee, at the same time it disclosed Strzok’s notes, also released a lengthy internal FBI memorandum detailing that Steele had immense credibility problems. In particular, his reporting was based on third-hand (or even less reliable) hearsay and innuendo. It was funneled to him through a sub-source who told the FBI, in a lengthy February 2017 interview, that the dossier claims were exaggerations and innuendo gussied up to seem like real intelligence.


Yet, despite knowing that, far from dropping its bogus investigation, the FBI doubled down, seeking new warrants in April and June, failing to correct its misrepresentations.


It is a shocking black eye for American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The Justice Department’s criminal investigation is said to be reaching its conclusion. Americans need answers.

[matchingmole]

It may have been a nothing burger




But it was a something burrito

[dilbert firestorm]

Originally Posted by matchingmole

It may have been a nothing burger

But it was a something burrito

burritos give out gas.

[oeb11]

HF - You dash into shards One of 9500's favorite narratives.

However - Denial and Deflection - and scatologic name-calling, dead old white guy memes - will carry the day in the DemLibs own minds.



as Grace Slick sang - "logic, and proportion have fallen sloppy Dead" - That is the DemLibs narrative.

[nevergaveitathought]

Originally Posted by HedonistForever

.
FBI knew ‘collusion’ was a nothing-burger, but kept fake scandal alive anyway

.

there were plenty of "main stream media" partisans and leftist anti american dimocrat congress persons of many colors who kept salting and peppering that nothing burger

not to mention the leftist idiots in here

[dilbert firestorm]

NYT is doubling down on the Russian collusion. they are in very sorry state.

[bambino]

Like his previously texts weren’t enough?

[rexdutchman]

Gee lets see , "Muller report" 35 million tax dollars / 500 search warrants 2800 subpoenas and wait for it NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION. But But the liberal/socialists and LSM still pushing

[HedonistForever]

Originally Posted by bambino

Like his previously texts weren’t enough?

Not enough for Inspector Horowitz. After reading all that crap that Strzok wrote, Horowitz has the nerve to say he sees no proof that Strzok let his bias interfere in his professional work.


What load of BS. Let's hope Durham has better eyesight and instincts.