There is a very important article posted last night on The Daily Caller [SEE HERE] The article surrounds a discovery that Robert Mueller’s lead attorney Andrew Weissmann worked with four AP journalists on both the story of Paul Manafort’s business interests; and, more importantly, and jawdroppingly, the evidence for Mueller to use against Paul Manafort.
Read the article HERE. I’ll try to explain why this appears so important.
The gist of the story is that Andrew Weissmann was meeting with AP reporters in April of 2017, approximately a month prior to the formal construct of the Robert Mueller investigation. The information from the meeting, which was essentially based on research provided by the “reporters” about Paul Manafort, was then later used in the formation of the underlying evidence against Manafort to gain a search warrant.
To understand the implications we must overlay a set of facts that has perplexed CTH for almost a year. Back in April 2017 Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, declassified a FISA court ruling that had/has massive potential implications. The 99-page ruling, written by FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer, outlined structural issues and admissions by the DOJ and FBI about violations of search queries within the NSA and FBI database.
Essentially, the underlying evidence within the Collyer FISA report, outlines how the DOJ National Security Division (John P Carlin), FBI and NSA (Admiral Mike Rogers) informed the court that unauthorized access to the NSA/FBI database had been ongoing for a long period of time. The “unauthorized access” was primarily driven by contractors who had access to the information database and were using it in 2015 and 2016. According to the report over 85% of searches conducted were “unauthorized” abuses of the system. DOJ-NSD head John Carlin resigned in 2016 immediately after informing the court.
Since the discovery of this issue a great deal of disconnected information has followed. Including how FBI Director James Comey allowed his friend Daniel Richman to have “special access” to this information database.
The term “contractors” is opaque in the ruling, and there are hundreds of redactions protecting the names of the individuals and groups who participated in the unauthorized searches. However, within the testimony of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson; and the story of the Steele Dossier and Nellie Ohr; we discover a nexus of information users.
Fusion GPS was/is essentially in the ‘information for hire‘ business, selling to clients for a price and using networks of journalists and former government officials to transmit, share and disseminate information on behalf of their clients. Essentially, Fusion GPS is an opposition research group with a network of journalists, paid and unpaid, that it uses to frame constructed narratives to the benefit of their clients. In the spring, summer and fall of 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign was one such client.
In April 2017, at the time of this meeting with AP reporters, Andrew Weissmann was chief of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section. Weissmann joined the special counsel a month later, May 2017.
We already know the FISA searches were essentially political opposition research being conducted by these opaque ‘contractors’. We know the ideology within the DOJ-NSD and FBI, the generic intent of their motive, from the communication amid the group doing the Clinton and Trump investigations; text messages, memos and emails which have since become public.
A common sense review of all facts outlines a strong likelihood these database searches were ongoing by groups and individuals affiliated with Fusion GPS and other political networks. It’s a simple process of selling information.
We also know that Christopher Steele was a beneficiary of information provided within this process; and we know that Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS) was conducting research into Paul Manafort as part of his personal oppo research and political/business endeavors. We also know that Fusion-GPS paid journalists (would love to see those names now); and from British court documents -and Simpson transcript- we know Fusion-GPS coordinated meetings between journalists and contractors like Christopher Steele:
Within the underlying story of how a FISA Title-1 surveillance application was assembled against U.S. person Carter Page, we clearly see how intelligence was laundered through a process of leaking to the media and then cycling the media article back into official intelligence reports. The Carter Page FISA application used media stories as underlying evidence for the search warrant. The media stories came from officials within the FBI, and Fusion GPS; the FBI was essentially manufacturing the evidence they needed.
So, with all of that in mind, this meeting between Andrew Weissmann and AP reporters, as outlined by The Daily Caller, is essentially another round of same-method manufacturing of evidence; it is a collaborative effort. The result therein is information to be exploited by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to gain search warrants against Paul Manafort.
The purpose of all this was to find some dirt on Trump. They couldn’t; what is most remarkable is that they couldn’t find one shred of anything with which to undercut Trump. So, failing that, it is the APPEARANCES of the inquiries, investigations and accusations that was supposed to do the trick.
All this while Hillary committed perjury on national television.
All the innuendo and unsubstantiated accusations was supposed to make sure Hillary won, but Hillary made sure she lost and now the revelations about gross abuses of power keep cascading down. Each new revelation chips away more and more at the integrity of Mueller’s “investigation” until, long ago, there is none left.
A foreign government trying to come between voters and a candidate is bad.
Our own government doing it is far worse.
@Bill589: Evidence shows the foreign influences were far less invasive than Obama’s.
Manufactured innuendo fed to reporters to print or report, then used as evidence for warrants, cause you know the spying failed. Whats missing is paragraph 1 the reason to begin an investigation to begin with. Get Trump and his little dogs too is not a legal reason to set 16 agencies against the opponent in a Presidential election.
Hillary and her flying monkeys…
There were two phases to this operation by Obama’s praetorian guard. The first was to throw the election to Hillary with the get out of jail free card. The second was the insurance policy (the coup). The insurance policy that was put in place by the FBI and DOJ was simply transferred to Mueller after Yates and Comey were fired. That’s why the likes of such people like Page and Strsok ended up on Mueller’s team. Consistency.