Deep State Update

It's been clear for well over a year now that the Obama DOJ-FBI-CIA used massive surveillance powers (FISA warrant, and before that, national security letters and illegal contractor access to intelligence data) against the Trump campaign. In addition to SIGINT (signals intelligence, such as email or phone intercepts), we now know that HUMINT (spies, informants) was also used.

Until recently one could still be called a conspiracy theorist by the clueless for stating the facts in the paragraph above. But a few days ago the NYTimes and WaPo finally gave up (in an effort to shape the narrative in advance of DOJ Inspector General report(s) and other document releases that are imminent) and admitted that all of these things actually happened. The justification advanced by the lying press is that this was all motivated by fear of Russian interference -- there was no partisan political motivation for the Obama administration to investigate the opposition party during a presidential election.

If the Times and Post were dead wrong a year ago, what makes you think they are correct now?

Here are the two recent NYTimes propaganda articles:

F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims

Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation

Don't believe in the Deep State? Here is a 1983 Times article about dirty tricks HUMINT spook Stefan Halper (he's the CIA-FBI informant described in the recent articles above). Much more at the left of center Intercept.

Why doesn't Trump just fire Sessions/Rosenstein/Mueller or declassify all the docs?

For example, declassifying the first FISA application would show, as claimed by people like Chuck Grassley and Trey Gowdy, who have read the unredacted original, that it largely depends on the fake Steele Dossier, and that the application failed to conform to the required Woods procedures.

The reason for Trump's restraint is still not widely understood. There is and has always been strong GOP opposition to his candidacy and presidency ("Never Trumpers"). The anti-Trump, pro-immigration wing of his party would likely support impeachment under the right conditions. To their ends, the Mueller probe keeps Trump weak enough that he will do their bidding (lower taxes, help corporations and super-wealthy oligarchs) without straying too far from the bipartisan globalist agenda (pro-immigration, anti-nativism, anti-nationalism). If Trump were to push back too hard on the Deep State conspiracy against him, he would risk attack from his own party.

I believe Trump's strategy is to let the DOJ Inspector General process work its way through this mess -- there are several more reports coming, including one on the Hillary email investigation (draft available for DOJ review now; will be public in a few weeks), and another on FISA abuse and surveillance of the Trump campaign. The OIG is working with a DOJ prosecutor (John Huber, Utah) on criminal referrals emerging from the investigation. Former Comey deputy Andrew McCabe has already been referred for possible criminal charges due to the first OIG report. I predict more criminal referrals of senior DOJ/FBI figures in the coming months. Perhaps they will even get to former CIA Director Brennan (pictured at top), who seems to have lied under oath about his knowledge of the Steele dossier.

Trump may be saving his gunpowder for later, and if he has to expend some, it will be closer to the midterm elections in the fall.


Note added: For those who are not tracking this closely, one of the reasons the Halper story is problematic for the bad guys is explained in The Intercept:

... the New York Times reported in December of last year that the FBI investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia began when George Papadopoulos drunkenly boasted to an Australian diplomat about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was the disclosure of this episode by the Australians that “led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” the NYT claimed.

But it now seems clear that Halper’s attempts to gather information for the FBI began before that. “The professor’s interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium,” the Post reported. While it’s not rare for the FBI to gather information before formally opening an investigation, Halper’s earlier snooping does call into question the accuracy of the NYT’s claim that it was the drunken Papadopoulos ramblings that first prompted the FBI’s interest in these possible connections. And it suggests that CIA operatives, apparently working with at least some factions within the FBI, were trying to gather information about the Trump campaign earlier than had been previously reported.

Hmm.. so what made CIA/FBI assign Halper to probe Trump campaign staffers in the first place? It seems the cover story for the start of the anti-Trump investigation needs some reformulation...