"The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

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old salt
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:49 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:32 am And not a squeak from the forum’s so-called Conservatives at this astounding abuse of the system and the resources and power of the State.
Pretty disappointing.
Frantic preemptive pushback to drown out the evidence that Durham is bringing forward. Barr was accurate.

They are squealing like pigs.
a fan
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:57 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:49 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:32 am And not a squeak from the forum’s so-called Conservatives at this astounding abuse of the system and the resources and power of the State.
Pretty disappointing.
Frantic preemptive pushback to drown out the evidence that Durham is bringing forward. Barr was accurate.
Rant on all you want. You don't care about US intel going after people. All you care about is US intel going after Republicans.

I don't care what Durham cooks up. He's as corrupted as you are when it comes to this stupid stuff.
Seacoaster(1)
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by Seacoaster(1) »

a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:10 pm
old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:57 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:49 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:32 am And not a squeak from the forum’s so-called Conservatives at this astounding abuse of the system and the resources and power of the State.
Pretty disappointing.
Frantic preemptive pushback to drown out the evidence that Durham is bringing forward. Barr was accurate.
Rant on all you want. You don't care about US intel going after people. All you care about is US intel going after Republicans.

I don't care what Durham cooks up. He's as corrupted as you are when it comes to this stupid stuff.
Exactly. Old Salt is, to the extent he matters at all, part of the problem. Thanks for your service.
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old salt
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by old salt »

Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:12 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:10 pm
old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:57 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:49 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:32 am And not a squeak from the forum’s so-called Conservatives at this astounding abuse of the system and the resources and power of the State.
Pretty disappointing.
Frantic preemptive pushback to drown out the evidence that Durham is bringing forward. Barr was accurate.
Rant on all you want. You don't care about US intel going after people. All you care about is US intel going after Republicans.

I don't care what Durham cooks up. He's as corrupted as you are when it comes to this stupid stuff.
Exactly. Old Salt is, to the extent he matters at all, part of the problem. Thanks for your service.
:lol: ...yeah. It's all my fault. Keep laying down that smokescreen.
I bet Barr & Durham made up the FBI lovebirds text msgs.
a fan
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:16 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:12 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:10 pm
old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:57 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:49 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:32 am And not a squeak from the forum’s so-called Conservatives at this astounding abuse of the system and the resources and power of the State.
Pretty disappointing.
Frantic preemptive pushback to drown out the evidence that Durham is bringing forward. Barr was accurate.
Rant on all you want. You don't care about US intel going after people. All you care about is US intel going after Republicans.

I don't care what Durham cooks up. He's as corrupted as you are when it comes to this stupid stuff.
Exactly. Old Salt is, to the extent he matters at all, part of the problem. Thanks for your service.
:lol: ...yeah. It's all my fault. Keep laying down that smokescreen.
I bet Barr & Durham made up the FBI lovebirds text msgs.
No smokescreen...I don't care what they find. At all.
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old salt
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:32 pm
old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:16 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:12 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:10 pm
old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:57 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 12:49 pm
Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:32 am And not a squeak from the forum’s so-called Conservatives at this astounding abuse of the system and the resources and power of the State.
Pretty disappointing.
Frantic preemptive pushback to drown out the evidence that Durham is bringing forward. Barr was accurate.
Rant on all you want. You don't care about US intel going after people. All you care about is US intel going after Republicans.

I don't care what Durham cooks up. He's as corrupted as you are when it comes to this stupid stuff.
Exactly. Old Salt is, to the extent he matters at all, part of the problem. Thanks for your service.
:lol: ...yeah. It's all my fault. Keep laying down that smokescreen.
I bet Barr & Durham made up the FBI lovebirds text msgs.
No smokescreen...I don't care what they find. At all.
Who did Barr or Durham spy on & how ?
a fan
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:34 pm Who did Barr or Durham spy on & how ?
For the 100th time----we don't know.

All that would need to happen is for Pelosi to open an investigation, and for Biden, like Trump did....pressure the DoJ and FBI to open cases on Barr, Durham, Giuliani, the FBI, and the DoJ. And give them six years to investigate.

You're being deliberately obtuse, and are overcompensating because you got fooled by Trump, who ALWAYS goes after those who go after him. It works, because no investigation is perfect.

So do what Trump did.......and turn Barr, Giuliani's and Durham's life upside down. Make every text, email, and work draft they made public. Then go after the subordinates at the FBI and DoJ, and make all their communications public, too. Oh, and give it to spinmasters at MSNBC...taking it out of context, and intentionally make these communications look as bad as humanly possible. Sit back and enjoy.

You fell for Trump's game. Most of America did.
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old salt
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:42 pm
old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:34 pm Who did Barr or Durham spy on & how ?
For the 100th time----we don't know.

All that would need to happen is for Pelosi to open an investigation, and for Biden, like Trump did....pressure the DoJ and FBI to open cases on Barr, Durham, Giuliani, the FBI, and the DoJ. And give them six years to investigate.

You're being deliberately obtuse, and are overcompensating because you got fooled by Trump, who ALWAYS goes after those who go after him. It works, because no investigation is perfect.

So do what Trump did.......and turn Barr, Giuliani's and Durham's life upside down. Make every text, email, and work draft they made public. Then go after the subordinates at the FBI and DoJ, and make all their communications public, too. Oh, and give it to spinmasters at MSNBC...taking it out of context, and intentionally make these communications look as bad as humanly possible. Sit back and enjoy.

You fell for Trump's game. Most of America did.
You don't know ? Then what are you fulminating about ? The DoJ IG found the lovebirds texts. ...context ? They spoke for themselves ?

How did McCabe get the intercepts of Flynn's ph calls ? Who leaked them to the WP ?

How did Mueller's investigation miss the fact that the Steele, whose dossier was used as evidence for FISA warrants, was funded by the Clinton campaign ?

Baker was Sussman's friend. He knew was working for the Clinton campaign at Perkins Coie, but Sussman duped him into thinking he was acting as a private citizen ? :roll:
Seacoaster(1)
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by Seacoaster(1) »

A jury said the prosecution didn’t make its case. Not even close. As many of us suspected it would. This was exactly the “criminalization of politics” you eschew…when it’s aimed at Republicans. You’re part of the problem alright.
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MDlaxfan76
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by MDlaxfan76 »

Seacoaster(1) wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 7:15 pm A jury said the prosecution didn’t make its case. Not even close. As many of us suspected it would. This was exactly the “criminalization of politics” you eschew…when it’s aimed at Republicans. You’re part of the problem alright.
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by Typical Lax Dad »

old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 6:46 pm
a fan wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:42 pm
old salt wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:34 pm Who did Barr or Durham spy on & how ?
For the 100th time----we don't know.

All that would need to happen is for Pelosi to open an investigation, and for Biden, like Trump did....pressure the DoJ and FBI to open cases on Barr, Durham, Giuliani, the FBI, and the DoJ. And give them six years to investigate.

You're being deliberately obtuse, and are overcompensating because you got fooled by Trump, who ALWAYS goes after those who go after him. It works, because no investigation is perfect.

So do what Trump did.......and turn Barr, Giuliani's and Durham's life upside down. Make every text, email, and work draft they made public. Then go after the subordinates at the FBI and DoJ, and make all their communications public, too. Oh, and give it to spinmasters at MSNBC...taking it out of context, and intentionally make these communications look as bad as humanly possible. Sit back and enjoy.

You fell for Trump's game. Most of America did.
You don't know ? Then what are you fulminating about ? The DoJ IG found the lovebirds texts. ...context ? They spoke for themselves ?

How did McCabe get the intercepts of Flynn's ph calls ? Who leaked them to the WP ?

How did Mueller's investigation miss the fact that the Steele, whose dossier was used as evidence for FISA warrants, was funded by the Clinton campaign ?

Baker was Sussman's friend. He knew was working for the Clinton campaign at Perkins Coie, but Sussman duped him into thinking he was acting as a private citizen ? :roll:
:lol: :lol: :lol:
“You lucky I ain’t read wretched yet!”
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old salt
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by old salt »

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine ... nderstood/ {paywall}

A willfully obtuse, un-suspicious FBI, with a wink & a nod between 2 deep state lawyers who were old friends.
The FBI & DoJ won't investigate & prosecute themselves, when the target was a President who fired their Director & was going after the players who were trying to prevent his election then take him down after he won.

Russiagate Misunderstood
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, June 9, 2022

The FBI was Hillary’s collaborator, not her victim
When is a lie not a lie? When it’s a cover story.

That, in a nutshell, explains why Hillary Clinton–campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who quite intentionally gave the FBI false information about his motive in conveying derogatory information about Donald Trump, was nevertheless acquitted by a Washington, D.C., jury in the first trial generated by special counsel John Durham’s “Russiagate” investigation...

The main thrust of Durham’s investigation is the question of why government agencies came to suspect Trump — was it due to evidence, overzealousness, or political bias? ...In the national-security realm, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies must be given a wide berth to investigate suspicions even if they are triggered by minimal evidence (although not if triggered by no evidence, or worse, manufactured evidence). Conduct that is abusive is thus not necessarily criminal...

...Russiagate involves the unsavory intersection of law enforcement and electoral politics... The principal player is the Hillary Clinton campaign, which appears to have woven the Trump–Russia “collusion” smear mostly out of whole cloth. Information disclosed by intelligence agencies indicates that this was done to divert attention from former secretary of state Clinton’s email scandal...

Operating through its lawyers, Marc Elias and his partner, Sussmann, the Clinton campaign retained and consulted with operatives who were tasked and otherwise encouraged to conduct opposition research, with an eye toward portraying Trump as Putin’s puppet. These operatives included a self-styled information firm, Fusion GPS, founded by journalists Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch. Fusion retained former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who authored the unverified, laughably error-ridden, and now-discredited “Steele dossier,” a collection of faux intelligence reports claiming that Trump — when not cavorting with prostitutes — was conspiring with Putin to hack Democrats and steal the election. To assemble his reports, Steele relied on Igor Danchenko, a former Brookings scholar whom the FBI suspected — based on actual evidence — of being a Russian asset.

In a second thread of the scheme, another Sussmann client, Rodney Joffe of the Internet-services firm Neustar, who was apparently expecting to land a top government cybersecurity job in the anticipated Hillary Clinton administration, led a gaggle of researchers in mining data (domain-name system data, which involve communications between servers and email addresses) to create what turned out to be the false impression that Trump and the Kremlin had established a communications back channel through Russia’s Alfa Bank. (In reality, the “Trump” email account that appeared to be pinging Alfa Bank servers was not administered by the Trump Organization, nor would one use one’s real name in setting up a covert channel.)

The Clinton campaign tasked its lawyers and opposition researchers to peddle these Trump–Russia story lines to the media. As startling testimony in Sussmann’s trial confirmed, this direction came from Hillary Clinton herself, in full knowledge that the collusion proof was scant. The campaign further sought to entice government agencies into investigating the Trump–Russia claims. The hope was for something like an “October surprise,” in which voters could be told that the “Putin puppet” evidence was so weighty that the FBI had the Republican nominee under the microscope.

It turns out to be one of history’s great political dirty tricks. Clinton was too flawed a candidate for it to have gotten her across the finish line, but Trump was duly slandered and his administration was hobbled by a special-counsel investigation for two years.

Was it a crime, though? Well, if the government agencies were willfully complicit, the scheme could be a fraud on the FISC, which issued warrants based on the FBI’s indefensible reliance on the Steele dossier. Or, if the proof of FBI culpability was murky, it might be possible to indict the campaign and its operatives for defrauding the government by drawing the bureau in on false pretenses.

Perhaps in his final report we’ll get a coherent explanation of his reasoning. For now, he has dubiously settled on a theory that the FBI — despite abundant evidence of rampant anti-Trump bias and highly irregular investigative tactics (not least, rudimentary failure to corroborate deprecatory information about Trump before using it in sworn warrant applications) — was a dupe of the Clinton campaign, not a co-conspirator. Moreover, Durham has not resolved the question of whether the Clinton campaign (a) fabricated bogus information about Trump or (b) simply engaged in the sharp-elbowed politics of spinning rumors and innuendo in the worst possible light, regarding an opponent the partisans sincerely believed was deeply corrupt.

This combination of miscalculation about the FBI and indecision about the Clinton campaign undermined Durham’s prosecution of Sussmann.

Sussmann’s indictment is one of three that Durham has brought in the course of his investigation, all for lying to the FBI. The others are against Igor Danchenko, who is scheduled to be tried in the fall, and Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer who pled guilty last year to concealing from one of the agents preparing a FISA warrant the fact that Carter Page had been informing the CIA about his business contacts in Russia. Yes, we are apparently to believe that even when its own officials lie in the preparation of court submissions, the FBI is the victim, not the perp.

The Sussmann case centered on the Alfa Bank scheme. Sussmann collaborated with Joffe and Fusion GPS in packaging the data that supposedly proved the Trump–Russia back channel. The lawyer urged it on the New York Times, which remained skeptical. To make the story juicier, Sussmann brought it to the FBI, exploiting his Washington-insider status. Having been a Justice Department cybersecurity lawyer for many years, Sussmann privately texted his old friend James Baker, then the FBI’s general counsel, on Sunday night, September 18, 2016:

Jim — it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau. Thanks. [Emphasis added.]

In reality, Sussmann was representing the Clinton campaign and Joffe when Baker invited him to FBI headquarters the next day, whereupon Sussmann delivered the Alfa Bank data. Indeed, the evidence that Sussmann was a campaign lawyer was so overwhelming that the defense conceded it — though it made the far-fetched claim that his meeting with Baker was outside the representation because it somehow didn’t serve the campaign’s interests.

So why wasn’t it an open-and-shut case of lying? Because to establish guilt, prosecutors must show that a statement is not just false but materially so. The agency must actually have been fooled, to the point of taking steps it would not otherwise have taken. Here, to the contrary, the FBI knew exactly who Sussmann was. In fact, he had represented the Democratic National Committee months earlier in blocking the FBI from access to the servers the DNC claimed were hacked by Russian operatives.

What Sussmann gave the bureau was a cover story, not a false statement. If he had said, “I am Michael Sussmann with the Clinton campaign, and we’d like you, six weeks before Election Day, to open an investigation based on this opposition research we’ve mined, to help us suggest that Hillary’s opponent is a Russian spy,” the image-obsessed FBI — which insists it is above politics, despite considerable evidence to the contrary — would have balked. So instead, Sussmann shrewdly targeted an old friend in the FBI hierarchy, which he perceived to be sympathetic to the notion that Trump was corrupt; he gave the bureau a story about coming not on behalf of the campaign but out of patriotic concern about national security — nod, wink. This gave FBI headquarters the deniability it needed to accept political dirt from a patently partisan source.

And then the FBI acted guilty. Headquarters concealed Sussmann’s identity as the source from the cybercrime investigators assigned to analyze the Alfa Bank data — which they quickly debunked, suspecting the source either was incompetent or had an agenda. The bureau preposterously lied in its investigation-opening documentation, claiming the data had come not from Sussmann but from the Justice Department. And even after an innocent explanation quickly emerged to show there was no crime, a top FBI official ordered that the Alfa Bank data be used to open a counterintelligence investigation on suspicion that Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin. The message out of headquarters to the line agents in Chicago was that FBI director James Comey was “fired up” about the case. The FBI wasn’t fooled; it knew Sussmann was a Democratic operative pushing information that lined up perfectly with the Democratic campaign narrative about Trump–Russia collusion.

Durham had other challenges. The Obama-appointed judge, Christopher Cooper, suppressed chunks of evidence regarding the Clinton campaign “joint venture” that Sussmann’s false statement allegedly furthered, rationalizing that Durham had not charged this venture as a crime. Cooper also declined to remove openly partisan Democrats from the jury. The impact of the smoking-gun Sunday-night text was diminished because Durham did not obtain it until after the statute of limitations had expired — meaning the case rested on Baker’s shaky memory of what was said during the Monday meeting, rather than on Sussmann’s black-and-white assertion that he was not representing a client.

All that said, Durham’s principal problem was, and remains, conceptual. What made Russiagate a scandal was not mere partisan hardball. It was the placement of awesome government investigative power in the service of partisan politics. Yet, by the special counsel’s lights, the FBI was the Clinton campaign’s victim, not its collaborator. That is hard to swallow. Democrats have already dismissed Durham’s probe as a waste of time. If his plan is to report myopically on Clinton-campaign machinations, with no further indictments and no symmetrical spotlight on collusion by Obama-era agencies, Republicans are apt to lose interest too.
Last edited by old salt on Sun Jun 12, 2022 7:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by Typical Lax Dad »

old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine ... nderstood/ {paywall}

A willfully obtuse, un-suspicious FBI, with a wink & a nod between 2 deep state lawyers who were old friends.

Russiagate Misunderstood
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, June 9, 2022

The FBI was Hillary’s collaborator, not her victim
When is a lie not a lie? When it’s a cover story.

That, in a nutshell, explains why Hillary Clinton–campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who quite intentionally gave the FBI false information about his motive in conveying derogatory information about Donald Trump, was nevertheless acquitted by a Washington, D.C., jury in the first trial generated by special counsel John Durham’s “Russiagate” investigation...

The main thrust of Durham’s investigation is the question of why government agencies came to suspect Trump — was it due to evidence, overzealousness, or political bias? ...In the national-security realm, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies must be given a wide berth to investigate suspicions even if they are triggered by minimal evidence (although not if triggered by no evidence, or worse, manufactured evidence). Conduct that is abusive is thus not necessarily criminal...

...Russiagate involves the unsavory intersection of law enforcement and electoral politics... The principal player is the Hillary Clinton campaign, which appears to have woven the Trump–Russia “collusion” smear mostly out of whole cloth. Information disclosed by intelligence agencies indicates that this was done to divert attention from former secretary of state Clinton’s email scandal...

Operating through its lawyers, Marc Elias and his partner, Sussmann, the Clinton campaign retained and consulted with operatives who were tasked and otherwise encouraged to conduct opposition research, with an eye toward portraying Trump as Putin’s puppet. These operatives included a self-styled information firm, Fusion GPS, founded by journalists Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch. Fusion retained former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who authored the unverified, laughably error-ridden, and now-discredited “Steele dossier,” a collection of faux intelligence reports claiming that Trump — when not cavorting with prostitutes — was conspiring with Putin to hack Democrats and steal the election. To assemble his reports, Steele relied on Igor Danchenko, a former Brookings scholar whom the FBI suspected — based on actual evidence — of being a Russian asset.

In a second thread of the scheme, another Sussmann client, Rodney Joffe of the Internet-services firm Neustar, who was apparently expecting to land a top government cybersecurity job in the anticipated Hillary Clinton administration, led a gaggle of researchers in mining data (domain-name system data, which involve communications between servers and email addresses) to create what turned out to be the false impression that Trump and the Kremlin had established a communications back channel through Russia’s Alfa Bank. (In reality, the “Trump” email account that appeared to be pinging Alfa Bank servers was not administered by the Trump Organization, nor would one use one’s real name in setting up a covert channel.)

The Clinton campaign tasked its lawyers and opposition researchers to peddle these Trump–Russia story lines to the media. As startling testimony in Sussmann’s trial confirmed, this direction came from Hillary Clinton herself, in full knowledge that the collusion proof was scant. The campaign further sought to entice government agencies into investigating the Trump–Russia claims. The hope was for something like an “October surprise,” in which voters could be told that the “Putin puppet” evidence was so weighty that the FBI had the Republican nominee under the microscope.

It turns out to be one of history’s great political dirty tricks. Clinton was too flawed a candidate for it to have gotten her across the finish line, but Trump was duly slandered and his administration was hobbled by a special-counsel investigation for two years.

Was it a crime, though? Well, if the government agencies were willfully complicit, the scheme could be a fraud on the FISC, which issued warrants based on the FBI’s indefensible reliance on the Steele dossier. Or, if the proof of FBI culpability was murky, it might be possible to indict the campaign and its operatives for defrauding the government by drawing the bureau in on false pretenses.

Perhaps in his final report we’ll get a coherent explanation of his reasoning. For now, he has dubiously settled on a theory that the FBI — despite abundant evidence of rampant anti-Trump bias and highly irregular investigative tactics (not least, rudimentary failure to corroborate deprecatory information about Trump before using it in sworn warrant applications) — was a dupe of the Clinton campaign, not a co-conspirator. Moreover, Durham has not resolved the question of whether the Clinton campaign (a) fabricated bogus information about Trump or (b) simply engaged in the sharp-elbowed politics of spinning rumors and innuendo in the worst possible light, regarding an opponent the partisans sincerely believed was deeply corrupt.

This combination of miscalculation about the FBI and indecision about the Clinton campaign undermined Durham’s prosecution of Sussmann.

Sussmann’s indictment is one of three that Durham has brought in the course of his investigation, all for lying to the FBI. The others are against Igor Danchenko, who is scheduled to be tried in the fall, and Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer who pled guilty last year to concealing from one of the agents preparing a FISA warrant the fact that Carter Page had been informing the CIA about his business contacts in Russia. Yes, we are apparently to believe that even when its own officials lie in the preparation of court submissions, the FBI is the victim, not the perp.

The Sussmann case centered on the Alfa Bank scheme. Sussmann collaborated with Joffe and Fusion GPS in packaging the data that supposedly proved the Trump–Russia back channel. The lawyer urged it on the New York Times, which remained skeptical. To make the story juicier, Sussmann brought it to the FBI, exploiting his Washington-insider status. Having been a Justice Department cybersecurity lawyer for many years, Sussmann privately texted his old friend James Baker, then the FBI’s general counsel, on Sunday night, September 18, 2016:

Jim — it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau. Thanks. [Emphasis added.]

In reality, Sussmann was representing the Clinton campaign and Joffe when Baker invited him to FBI headquarters the next day, whereupon Sussmann delivered the Alfa Bank data. Indeed, the evidence that Sussmann was a campaign lawyer was so overwhelming that the defense conceded it — though it made the far-fetched claim that his meeting with Baker was outside the representation because it somehow didn’t serve the campaign’s interests.

So why wasn’t it an open-and-shut case of lying? Because to establish guilt, prosecutors must show that a statement is not just false but materially so. The agency must actually have been fooled, to the point of taking steps it would not otherwise have taken. Here, to the contrary, the FBI knew exactly who Sussmann was. In fact, he had represented the Democratic National Committee months earlier in blocking the FBI from access to the servers the DNC claimed were hacked by Russian operatives.

What Sussmann gave the bureau was a cover story, not a false statement. If he had said, “I am Michael Sussmann with the Clinton campaign, and we’d like you, six weeks before Election Day, to open an investigation based on this opposition research we’ve mined, to help us suggest that Hillary’s opponent is a Russian spy,” the image-obsessed FBI — which insists it is above politics, despite considerable evidence to the contrary — would have balked. So instead, Sussmann shrewdly targeted an old friend in the FBI hierarchy, which he perceived to be sympathetic to the notion that Trump was corrupt; he gave the bureau a story about coming not on behalf of the campaign but out of patriotic concern about national security — nod, wink. This gave FBI headquarters the deniability it needed to accept political dirt from a patently partisan source.

And then the FBI acted guilty. Headquarters concealed Sussmann’s identity as the source from the cybercrime investigators assigned to analyze the Alfa Bank data — which they quickly debunked, suspecting the source either was incompetent or had an agenda. The bureau preposterously lied in its investigation-opening documentation, claiming the data had come not from Sussmann but from the Justice Department. And even after an innocent explanation quickly emerged to show there was no crime, a top FBI official ordered that the Alfa Bank data be used to open a counterintelligence investigation on suspicion that Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin. The message out of headquarters to the line agents in Chicago was that FBI director James Comey was “fired up” about the case. The FBI wasn’t fooled; it knew Sussmann was a Democratic operative pushing information that lined up perfectly with the Democratic campaign narrative about Trump–Russia collusion.

Durham had other challenges. The Obama-appointed judge, Christopher Cooper, suppressed chunks of evidence regarding the Clinton campaign “joint venture” that Sussmann’s false statement allegedly furthered, rationalizing that Durham had not charged this venture as a crime. Cooper also declined to remove openly partisan Democrats from the jury. The impact of the smoking-gun Sunday-night text was diminished because Durham did not obtain it until after the statute of limitations had expired — meaning the case rested on Baker’s shaky memory of what was said during the Monday meeting, rather than on Sussmann’s black-and-white assertion that he was not representing a client.

All that said, Durham’s principal problem was, and remains, conceptual. What made Russiagate a scandal was not mere partisan hardball. It was the placement of awesome government investigative power in the service of partisan politics. Yet, by the special counsel’s lights, the FBI was the Clinton campaign’s victim, not its collaborator. That is hard to swallow. Democrats have already dismissed Durham’s probe as a waste of time. If his plan is to report myopically on Clinton-campaign machinations, with no further indictments and no symmetrical spotlight on collusion by Obama-era agencies, Republicans are apt to lose interest too.
:lol:
“You lucky I ain’t read wretched yet!”
a fan
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm The FBI was Hillary’s collaborator, not her victim
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm That, in a nutshell, explains why Hillary Clinton–campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who quite intentionally gave the FBI false information about his motive in conveying derogatory information about Donald Trump....
You and McCarthy can't even make it out of the gate without complete and utter failure.

If Hillary and the FBI were collaborators, why would Sussman give the FBI false information? Why would Sussman give them any information at all? The FBI already knows what Hillary knows, because they're "collaborators", remember?

How do you not understand that this doesn't make any sense?
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old salt
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:04 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm The FBI was Hillary’s collaborator, not her victim
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm That, in a nutshell, explains why Hillary Clinton–campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who quite intentionally gave the FBI false information about his motive in conveying derogatory information about Donald Trump....
You and McCarthy can't even make it out of the gate without complete and utter failure.

If Hillary and the FBI were collaborators, why would Sussman give the FBI false information? Because he had a friend inside the FBI who he knew was anti-Trump. Why would Sussman give them any information at all? The FBI already knows what Hillary knows, because they're "collaborators", remember?
Because the Clinton campaign wanted the media to report that Trump was under investigation for his own secret server which he was using to collude with the Russians, which the msm dutifully did.

How do you not understand that this doesn't make any sense?
What Sussmann gave the bureau was a cover story, not a false statement. If he had said, “I am Michael Sussmann with the Clinton campaign, and we’d like you, six weeks before Election Day, to open an investigation based on this opposition research we’ve mined, to help us suggest that Hillary’s opponent is a Russian spy,” the image-obsessed FBI — which insists it is above politics, despite considerable evidence to the contrary — would have balked. So instead, Sussmann shrewdly targeted an old friend in the FBI hierarchy, which he perceived to be sympathetic to the notion that Trump was corrupt; he gave the bureau a story about coming not on behalf of the campaign but out of patriotic concern about national security — nod, wink. This gave FBI headquarters the deniability it needed to accept political dirt from a patently partisan source.

And then the FBI acted guilty. Headquarters concealed Sussmann’s identity as the source from the cybercrime investigators assigned to analyze the Alfa Bank data — which they quickly debunked, suspecting the source either was incompetent or had an agenda. The bureau preposterously lied in its investigation-opening documentation, claiming the data had come not from Sussmann but from the Justice Department. And even after an innocent explanation quickly emerged to show there was no crime, a top FBI official ordered that the Alfa Bank data be used to open a counterintelligence investigation on suspicion that Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin. The message out of headquarters to the line agents in Chicago was that FBI director James Comey was “fired up” about the case. The FBI wasn’t fooled; it knew Sussmann was a Democratic operative pushing information that lined up perfectly with the Democratic campaign narrative about Trump–Russia collusion.
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by Typical Lax Dad »

old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:28 pm
a fan wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:04 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm The FBI was Hillary’s collaborator, not her victim
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm That, in a nutshell, explains why Hillary Clinton–campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who quite intentionally gave the FBI false information about his motive in conveying derogatory information about Donald Trump....
You and McCarthy can't even make it out of the gate without complete and utter failure.

If Hillary and the FBI were collaborators, why would Sussman give the FBI false information? Because he had a friend inside the FBI who he knew was anti-Trump. Why would Sussman give them any information at all? The FBI already knows what Hillary knows, because they're "collaborators", remember?
Because the Clinton campaign wanted the media to report that Trump was under investigation for his own secret server which he was using to collude with the Russians, which the msm dutifully did.

How do you not understand that this doesn't make any sense?
What Sussmann gave the bureau was a cover story, not a false statement. If he had said, “I am Michael Sussmann with the Clinton campaign, and we’d like you, six weeks before Election Day, to open an investigation based on this opposition research we’ve mined, to help us suggest that Hillary’s opponent is a Russian spy,” the image-obsessed FBI — which insists it is above politics, despite considerable evidence to the contrary — would have balked. So instead, Sussmann shrewdly targeted an old friend in the FBI hierarchy, which he perceived to be sympathetic to the notion that Trump was corrupt; he gave the bureau a story about coming not on behalf of the campaign but out of patriotic concern about national security — nod, wink. This gave FBI headquarters the deniability it needed to accept political dirt from a patently partisan source.

And then the FBI acted guilty. Headquarters concealed Sussmann’s identity as the source from the cybercrime investigators assigned to analyze the Alfa Bank data — which they quickly debunked, suspecting the source either was incompetent or had an agenda. The bureau preposterously lied in its investigation-opening documentation, claiming the data had come not from Sussmann but from the Justice Department. And even after an innocent explanation quickly emerged to show there was no crime, a top FBI official ordered that the Alfa Bank data be used to open a counterintelligence investigation on suspicion that Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin. The message out of headquarters to the line agents in Chicago was that FBI director James Comey was “fired up” about the case. The FBI wasn’t fooled; it knew Sussmann was a Democratic operative pushing information that lined up perfectly with the Democratic campaign narrative about Trump–Russia collusion.
“You lucky I ain’t read wretched yet!”
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by Typical Lax Dad »

https://www.lawfareblog.com/special-cou ... l-sussmann

“But now Durham has spoken on his own. He has indicted a cybersecurity lawyer named Michael Sussmann for allegedly making a single false statement in a conversation in 2016 with then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker. The allegedly false statement concerned not Trump or Russia, but whom Sussmann represented when he brought Baker some information about an alleged electronic connection between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank. (Disclosure: Baker is a personal friend and former colleague at Brookings and Lawfare.)

The indictment is, in other words, far removed from the grave FBI misconduct Durham was supposed to reveal. Very far removed. In fact, it doesn’t describe FBI malfeasance against Trump at all, but portrays the FBI as the victim of agitprop brought to it by outside political operatives. It describes the FBI as diligently running down the leads it had been fed by these operatives and then, well, dropping the matter when it learned they had no merit. The misconduct it portrays is an alleged lie by Sussmann that is, at best, wholly peripheral to the substance of the allegations Durham was supposedly peddling.”

Old Vet is going to take this obsession to his grave.
“You lucky I ain’t read wretched yet!”
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by a fan »

Typical Lax Dad wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:28 pm Because he had a friend inside the FBI who he knew was anti-Trump.
Old Salt. Pay attention.

If the FBI is already collaborating with Hillary....Sussman is irrelevant. You're inserting a middle man where one is not needed. The FBI is ALREADY collaborating with Hillary. No Sussmann is needed. And most certainly, not only is there no need to lie? There's no one there to record the lie.

Get it? This claim makes no sense. If the FBI is in on it, why would Sussmann go there, and lie.

This is toddler logic, Old Salt. If the FBI is collaborating with Hillary, why would they EVER record a lie made by Hillary's camp?

They wouldn't. You would have NEVER caught Sussmann lying. Get it?
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm Because the Clinton campaign wanted the media to report that Trump was under investigation for his own secret server which he was using to collude with the Russians, which the msm dutifully did.
:lol: You just told me the FBI and Hillary are collaborating. There's no need for a middle man. Sussmann is pointless...and sure as sh*t wouldn't be caught lying by his (snicker) co conspirators.

The FBI would start the investigation upon orders from Hillary, and leak the investigation. No need for Sussmann. No need for FISA. No need for any of Trump's Toadies. Flynn, Stone....none of them matter.

They have all the probable cause in the world with Manafort, and Manafort alone. Trump hired someone on Putin's payroll to install a Putin Puppet in Ukraine as his Campaign Manager. That's it. That's the ball game. Comey opens his investigation that ANY unbiased body would sanction.

Everything else would be pointless....you get that, right? There's no need to investigate anyone else.

It all falls apart with even the most modest amount of logic. You're simply wrong. There is no conspiracy.

And to top it all off---the cherry on top? Manafort tried to hide his work with Putin from the Government. The smoking gun that proves the investigation was 1000000% valid. You're done. Game over.
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old salt
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:45 pm
Typical Lax Dad wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:28 pm Because he had a friend inside the FBI who he knew was anti-Trump.
Old Salt. Pay attention.

If the FBI is already collaborating with Hillary....Sussman is irrelevant. You're inserting a middle man where one is not needed. The FBI is ALREADY collaborating with Hillary. Strawman. No Sussmann is needed. And most certainly, not only is there no need to lie? There's no one there to record the lie.

Get it? This claim makes no sense. If the FBI is in on it, why would Sussmann go there, and lie.
Sussmann wanted to trigger a FBI investigation of the Trump campaign communicating via the Alfa Bank server, so he took the story to a friend in the FBI who he had credibility with & knew he was anti-Trump.

This is toddler logic, Old Salt. If the FBI is collaborating with Hillary, why would they EVER record a lie made by Hillary's camp?
Toddler logic is portraying the FBI as a monolith, as opposed to a few abusing the powers of their office.

They wouldn't. You would have NEVER caught Sussmann lying. Get it?
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm Because the Clinton campaign wanted the media to report that Trump was under investigation for his own secret server which he was using to collude with the Russians, which the msm dutifully did.
:lol: You just told me the FBI and Hillary are collaborating. There's no need for a middle man. Sussmann is pointless...and sure as sh*t wouldn't be caught lying by his (snicker) co conspirators. Sussmann delivered the "tip" to initiate the investigation, so it could then be leaked.

The FBI would start the investigation upon orders from Hillary, and leak the investigation. No need for Sussmann. Plausible deniability. No need for FISA. FISA had nothing to do with Sussmann & Alfa Bank. You don't know enough of the facts to discuss the cases. No need for any of Trump's Toadies. Flynn, Stone....none of them matter. They had nothing to do with Sussmann & Alfa Bank, not that that matters to you.

They have all the probable cause in the world with Manafort, and Manafort alone. Trump hired someone on Putin's payroll to install a Putin Puppet in Ukraine as his Campaign Manager. That's it. That's the ball game. Comey opens his investigation that ANY unbiased body would sanction.
Crossfire Hurricane was already underway by the time Sussmann went to the FBI. You just keep kicking up the same old dust cloud.

Everything else would be pointless....you get that, right? There's no need to investigate anyone else.

It all falls apart with even the most modest amount of logic. You're simply wrong. There is no conspiracy.

And to top it all off---the cherry on top? Manafort tried to hide his work with Putin from the Government. The smoking gun that proves the investigation was 1000000% valid. You're done. Game over. Different investigations. Manafort had nothing to do with the Alfa Bank story which Sussmann delivered.
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Re: "The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

Post by Typical Lax Dad »

old salt wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 7:41 am
a fan wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:45 pm
Typical Lax Dad wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:28 pm Because he had a friend inside the FBI who he knew was anti-Trump.
Old Salt. Pay attention.

If the FBI is already collaborating with Hillary....Sussman is irrelevant. You're inserting a middle man where one is not needed. The FBI is ALREADY collaborating with Hillary. Strawman. No Sussmann is needed. And most certainly, not only is there no need to lie? There's no one there to record the lie.

Get it? This claim makes no sense. If the FBI is in on it, why would Sussmann go there, and lie.
Sussmann wanted to trigger a FBI investigation of the Trump campaign communicating via the Alfa Bank server, so he took the story to a friend in the FBI who he had credibility with & knew he was anti-Trump.

This is toddler logic, Old Salt. If the FBI is collaborating with Hillary, why would they EVER record a lie made by Hillary's camp?
Toddler logic is portraying the FBI as a monolith, as opposed to a few abusing the powers of their office.

They wouldn't. You would have NEVER caught Sussmann lying. Get it?
old salt wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:57 pm Because the Clinton campaign wanted the media to report that Trump was under investigation for his own secret server which he was using to collude with the Russians, which the msm dutifully did.
:lol: You just told me the FBI and Hillary are collaborating. There's no need for a middle man. Sussmann is pointless...and sure as sh*t wouldn't be caught lying by his (snicker) co conspirators. Sussmann delivered the "tip" to initiate the investigation, so it could then be leaked.

The FBI would start the investigation upon orders from Hillary, and leak the investigation. No need for Sussmann. Plausible deniability. No need for FISA. FISA had nothing to do with Sussmann & Alfa Bank. You don't know enough of the facts to discuss the cases. No need for any of Trump's Toadies. Flynn, Stone....none of them matter. They had nothing to do with Sussmann & Alfa Bank, not that that matters to you.

They have all the probable cause in the world with Manafort, and Manafort alone. Trump hired someone on Putin's payroll to install a Putin Puppet in Ukraine as his Campaign Manager. That's it. That's the ball game. Comey opens his investigation that ANY unbiased body would sanction.
Crossfire Hurricane was already underway by the time Sussmann went to the FBI. You just keep kicking up the same old dust cloud.

Everything else would be pointless....you get that, right? There's no need to investigate anyone else.

It all falls apart with even the most modest amount of logic. You're simply wrong. There is no conspiracy.

And to top it all off---the cherry on top? Manafort tried to hide his work with Putin from the Government. The smoking gun that proves the investigation was 1000000% valid. You're done. Game over. Different investigations. Manafort had nothing to do with the Alfa Bank story which Sussmann delivered.
HDS!

:lol: :lol:
https://www.businessinsider.com/alfa-ba ... 021-10?amp
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