Sussman trial update: the FBI lying to the FBI
This is from two days ago [emphasis mine]:
It looks like the FBI top brass kept Hillary Clinton’s campaign identity a secret when it pushed her disinformation to Chicago-based FBI agents investigating ties between Trump and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. That’s according to FBI agents who testified during the Michael Sussmann trial, which is in its final days in a Washington, D.C. courtroom. The FBI told agents that the Department of Justice had brought the information used in the probe. That was a lie. Michael Sussmann, a former DOJ prosecutor now working for the Perkins Coie law firm, brought the information.
So it seems as though the top people at the FBI were deceiving the lower-down agents who would actually be doing the work of investigating. The purpose of the deception was almost certainly to get them to not be suspicious that it was a campaign dirty trick by Hillary and company – which in fact it was.
That is quite extraordinary but unsurprising. What is surprising is that anyone is now testifying to that effect.
More:
The Chicago FBI agents figured out quickly that the data was overblown and the possibility of Trump’s organization communicating with the bank server was nearly impossible because of firewalls.
It turns out that the “connection” was a hotel and hospitality marketing firm sending out spam emails. Trump runs hotels, as you may have noticed.
Because the information was so hinky, “didn’t pass analytical merit,” and didn’t show “a covert communications system,” agents prevailed on their boss to ask the 7th Floor at the FBI headquarters if they could be read in on who provided the flash drives, white papers, and other documents purporting the link. The brass who claimed the information came from the DOJ and said as much in the official referral to investigators. The Sept. 24, 2016 referral never mentions Michael Sussmann.
Agent Ryan Gaynor served as the liaison between Chicago agents and the home office in the beltway. He testified that, had he known that the provenance of the information was Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer, it could have “impacted the way I viewed the close hold.”
Ya think?
Who was in charge of the investigation? Why, Peter Strozk under Bill Priestap. Those are rather familiar names.
I wonder whether FBI higher-ups can be prosecuted for lying to the FBI – internal lying, that is, to the people working under them.
FAT CHANCE!
Misappropriation of Federal funds, spending Fed dollars to investigate false phony information has to be a Federal crime, especially when it interferes with a national election. FBI, that’s not your job.
So many institutions in which I no longer have confidence: FBI, DOJ, CDC, FDA. They have to prove definitively that they know what they’re doing, and that what they’re doing is legal and ethical, before they gain my cooperation.
I have been thinking for a while that it’s a sweet sweet irony that Sussman was lying about the provenance of his info, not to protect himself, but in order to build a paper trail to protect the higher-ups at the FBI like Baker, Priestap, Storzk, and Comey from any questions about the investigations. They all knew who he was, who signing his paychecks, and what should be done with the fake info he was pushing, and they didn’t care one damm bit. Nothing was ever gonna happen to them so long as the right person won the election.
Peter Strozk. The ex-PFC Wintergreen of the FBI; except with more pay and a mid-level rank. Was Strozk acting purely on his own initiative (like Wintergreen), or was he getting directives from higher ups at the FBI, or perhaps from political actors outside the FBI? I won’t hold my breath waiting for an answer.
THIS…is no doubt the “insurance” that Strzok spoke about so glowingly to his squeeze-at-the -time…which squeeze was defended in court by—guess who!—none other than the wife of the judge of the curretn Sussmann trial (i.e., if I’ve got all those incestuous DC relationships sorted out correctly….)
Which might make one wonder if the “Yes-Sussmann-surely-lied-but-his-lies-would-not-have-MATERIALLY-affected-anything” “DEFENSE” will kick in here.
IOW, whether the US is a “JUSTICE, JUSTICE THOU SHALT TRASH” nation….
Or not.
BTW, if you’re an “incest-is-best” type of person…I’ll just have to repost this:
https://howiecarrshow.com/unraveling-hillary-clintons-russia-hoax-starting-with-michael-sussmann/
All this shows me is that from Lois Lerner on, our government is so completely corrupted as to make a tin pot dictator in a banana republic blush. I can’t see it ever being fixed.
I can’t help but believe that the “insurance policy” may have been assumed by the lovebirds (and others at their level) to be legitimate, and based on ultra-top-secret info that they had to accept on faith.
As Trump-haters they didn’t ask a lot of tough questions, but I suspect they were being led into treachery by WH politicians and FBI top leadership – recall Paige’s comment that “POTUS wants to know everything we do”.
The Obama White House was basically telling FBI middle management, through Comey, “Trump’s not going to win but we’ve got the goods on him even if he does, so just to be sure, hold your noses and work to make the case.” This was enough to give them the green light to cheat on the FISA safeguards, since in their minds they were going after a bad guy! That’s the tune the lovebirds could well be singing to Durham!
And once the only thing that could go wrong DID go wrong, the White House was in a life or death struggle with the new President-elect! Then the lovebirds had to play along, because in any blame game, they figured they were going to lose to Obama!
Really? Really? The top FBI echelon was helping Hillary along by co-opting the machinery of the organization to promote a fraud? Why would anybody think that, I wonder? Why would anyone look at, say, the political campaign of Andy McCabe’s wife receiving $700,000 in political contributions from the DNC, and think that there was, maybe, just maybe, a quid-pro-quo connection to something being done in exchange for it?
By golly, us rubes sure do have over-active imaginations. I remember concluding this all the way back to the very first instant I heard about it.
When DeSantis is POTUS in 2024/5 his first executive order should be the dissolution of the FBI & reassignment of all active files to the US Marshals Service with the stipulation that no current FBI employees are eligible for US Government employ.
Total fantasy, but a modern-day Hulagu on the side of non-adjectival justice (the equal-before-the-law kind) would leave a spectacular pile of high-ranking skulls in DC after one short visit to the quarters of the high-ranking players in this farce.
Dude…now who’s engaging in “total fantasy”?
😉
My “fantasy” is of course not wholly new, but I am speculating that FBI middle management may be somewhat LESS culpable, and FBI top management and the White House MORE culpable than we imagine, and proposing a scenario for how that might effect the evolution of the case.
And doing so politely, I might add.
They are insurrectionists.
}}} I wonder whether FBI higher-ups can be prosecuted for lying to the FBI – internal lying, that is, to the people working under them.
Funny, I’m more inclined to wonder if they can be lined up against a wall and shot for Treason…
:-/