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First of all, remember that Joseph Schmidt was on the Trump campaign’s national security team. Seth Abramson argues that Trump’s Nat-Sec team was his version of Nixon’s CREEP. Let’s remember who else was on Trump’s version of CREEP: Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. 

At the time these choices baffled GOP foreign policy experts:

“Trump’s foreign policy team baffles GOP experts.”

“Republicans can’t figure out the mogul’s quirky mix of advisers.”

Two of the five people Trump cited Monday have private-sector backgrounds.”

Yes these two people were: yep, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, who together would be the center of the Russia collusion investigation.

A third person on Trump’s Nat-Sec team? Joseph Schmitz:

“Another Trump adviser concerned with domestic Islam is Joseph Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general with ties to the Center for Security Policy. The center’s president is Frank Gaffney, whose controversial statements about Muslims — including a charge that President Barack Obama might be a Muslim — came under new scrutiny when Ted Cruz named him as a foreign policy adviser last week. Schmitz, a Naval Reservist and former partner at the Washington law firm of Patton Boggs, co-authored a 2010 report for the center titled “Shariah: The Threat to America.”

Regarding the premise of this chapter’s title that Schmitz was the source of the fake Clinton emails Erik Prince was peddling to Breitbart 96 hours before the 2016 election there are two other facts that are pretty darn germane to this assertion:

First is that Schmitz was also Prince’s long time business partner. 

“Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general in George W. Bush’s administration as well as a co-worker and confidant of Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince, told the Chicago Tribune he had been working for the Trump campaign for about a month prior to the announcement, communicating closely with top Trump adviser Sam Clovis.”

Prince was the CEO of the (in)famous Blackwater and Schmitz was the COO. Small world.

But it’s even better than this as Schmitz also relentlessly pursued Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails from her server from the dark web and brought material he found there to the FBI and other government agencies:

“Joseph Schmitz approached the FBI and other government agencies about material a client of his had discovered that Schmitz believed might have been Clinton’s missing 30,000 emails from her private e-mail server, sources say. The material was never verified, and sources say they ultimately believed it was fake.”

“His push is the latest example of Trump advisers who were mixed up in efforts to find dirt on Clinton during the presidential campaign.”

Indeed, Papadopoulos learned from Mifsud about incriminating emails the Russians had on Clinton, you had Peter Smith’s search on the dark web for the 33,000 emails-could Smith and Schmitz’s search on the dark web for Clinton’s emails be related? More on this below.

Donald Jr had hoped the Clinton dirt Rob Goldstone was talking about regarding the Trump Tower collusion meeting of June, 2016 was actually Clinton’s emails. We know that both the Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica and the Mercers-Trump’s biggest donor were searching for the emails. regarding Alexander Nix, as we saw in (Chapter D) Bannon was actually his boss. Then there was Trump himself Russia, if you’re listening. 

“Schmitz was one of the first people Trump named to his campaign’s national security and foreign policy team. The team, showcased in a March 2016 photo, was thrown together early in Trump’s successful run as he faced mounting pressure to prove his ability to pull in high-level advisers who could help prepare him for the White House.”

“Schmitz’s connection to the multi-faceted effort to expose damaging information about Clinton has not been previously reported. His status as a former Pentagon inspector general afforded him access to the agencies and a sophisticated understanding of the government bureaucracy. He was relentless, sources say, and truly believed his client had found important, sensitive material. He did not hesitate in his pursuit even though the material on the dark web — a part of the Internet not easily accessible or traceable — was questionable and many experts already believed the Russians had stolen Clinton’s emails.”

As noted above, the emails he presented to the FBI and other agencies were fake. But here’s a very interesting question: did the fake Russian document Comey admitted he used as a pretext for doing his very careless press conference (Chapter C) actually come from Joseph Schmitz’s batch? More on this in the next chapter…

In any case, we can see that the theory that Schmitz was Prince’s source is not implausible at all, quite the opposite: they were business partners at Blackwater, so it’s very plausible that Schmitz would approach Prince and Schmitz was on a crusade to find the 33,000 emails so it’s very plausible he’d approach Prince with the fakes he’d found on the dark web.

Another very interesting nugget in this CNN article? Steve Bannon testified before Congress about continually getting approached about Clinton’s emails.

“Fired chief strategist Steve Bannon told the House Intelligence Committee in February that members of the Trump campaign “kept getting approached” by outsiders suggesting ways to get Clinton’s emails, according to a source familiar with his testimony.”

FN: The Mueller Report revealed that on the same day Trump declared Russia if you’re listening he also

Of course, what Bannon doesn’t say here is if the Trump campaign followed up on it. But, then again, remember that Joseph Schmitz was Trump’s foreign policy adviser-as was Carter Page and Papadopoulos as hard as the Trump obstucters attempt to dismiss everyone who worked on the campaign as coffee boys working for free. 

Schmitz’s was with the campaign throughout and Trump considered him for Secretary of the Navy after it ended.

Schmitz counseled Trump “through the November election,” according to a biography on his law firm’s website. After Trump’s election victory, he considered Schmitz as a possible Secretary of the Navy, first reported by the Daily Caller and confirmed by CNN’s sources.”

Ok, then there’s Peter Smith. As noted above they were both searching the dark web for Clinton’s emails-what are the chances their paths crossed?

“Schmitz met with officials at the FBI, the State Department and the Intelligence Community Inspector General — the watchdog tasked with investigating Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified information. He claimed a source he called “PATRIOT,” an unidentified contractor he was representing, had discovered what he believed was likely material stolen from Clinton that could contain classified information. Both the client and Schmitz were afraid that going through the material without permission could jeopardize their security clearances, though there is no indication their actions were illegal.”

Seth Abramson has conjectured that Smith was actually Schmitz’s client.

According to Abramson’s theory of the case, the NatSec team was Trump’s CREEP and the true-rather than nominal-heads of the NatSec team were: Michael Flynn and Erik Prince.

Remember that Peter Smith sought out Flynn on the emails-and it’s clear if nothing else that Smith knew Flynn very well. Indeed, Smith had both Flynn and Steve Bannon in his email chain regarding his efforts to enlist Russian hackers to help him find Clinton’s emails.

FN: The Mueller Report documents that on the same day as Russia if you’re listening-Trump followed up with Flynn and directed him to get Hillary’s emails and Flynn complied with this directive by following up with Peter Smith who did in fact pay Russian hackers-possibly the hackers who got the Podesta emails-Chapter A for more.

I’ve recently come around to EmptyWheel’s belief that the claims in the Dossier about Cohen traveling to Prague to pay off the hackers was likely disinformation from the Russians. What it turns out is that a Trump campaign operative did pay the hackers but it wasn’t Cohen but Peter Smith.

Of course on the same day of Russia if you’re listening-July 27, 2016 Russian hackers also in fact attempted to hack Clinton’s office.

End of FN.

Exactly and again, there’s a tendency to give too much credit to Trump’s dissembling where everyone on his campaign was a coffee boy working as a volunteer he couldn’t pick out of a lineup. He tried that with Felix Sater and now Sater is a major Mueller informant-again.

FN: With the bombshell of Ukraine if you’re listening there’s a MSM tendency to  say  this scandal clearly has a merit unlike Russia if you’re listening which makes no sense-clearly Ukraine Extortion is the sequel to Russian Collusion. But it perhaps shows the benefit of the doubt Trump has gotten despite being a gaslighting pathological liar who lies at a truly Olympian level-73% of the time.

We keep hearing that you have to believe in Ukraine Extortion as we have the phone call and Trump’s own words. True enough but why was there a refusal to believe the truth about Trump without his own words? Quite apart from the fact that we did have his own words in 2016-Russia if you’re listening.

Indeed the truth is that Ukraine completely vindicates Russia and all of us who were advocating his impeachment a long time ago-personally I started the day after his fake win on November, 10 2016.

But Flynn, Schmitz, Papadopoulos, Page-this was the heart of his foreign policy national security team. Smith clearly has ties to Flynn and Bannon-note the email chain. Would a marginal figure even have their email address? Prince had no official role-neither did Roger Stone-but in Trump world official roles often don’t even tell half the story.

A very good question just like the question of how do we know that Comey’s fake Russian document didn’t come from Joseph Schmitz’s batc?. Regarding the question of wether Schmitz was Prince’s source for the fake emails:

One thing is clear: we need to see Schmitz’s fake Clinton emails ASAP:

3/ Remember that one of Prince’s many lies to Congress was about his ties to the Trump campaign—an important lie, as it kept any illegal activities he engaged in during the 2016 election clear of the Trump campaign. But Schmitz was a *part* of the campaign—he has no such defense.”

4/ Did Schmitz transit his fake Clinton emails to his former business partner Prince so that—having been identified as fakes by the FBI, State Department, and others—they could be used as domestic disinformation right before the election? We need to see these Schmitz emails ASAP.”

5/ Keep in mind that a clandestine campaign to leak *false* information about the content of Clinton’s emails is what led Jim Comey to re-open the Clinton investigation. So if we now have proof that the Trump campaign was behind that clandestine campaign, this is *very* serious.”

In other words we have convergence between Russia collusion and Emailgate.

6/ Moreover, the question becomes, who *created* these fake emails—which presumably were intended to be believable enough fakes that they could perhaps fool the FBI and the State Department? Did Schmitz *know* the emails were fake? Who was his source? Who was he in contact with?”

7/ Well, Schmitz was in contact with everyone on Trump’s NatSec team, the Hungarian ambassador (whose boss, the Prime Minister of Hungary, is a key Putin ally), and, one presumes (and with good reason), Erik Prince. But who else? Steve Bannon (Breitbart)? Mueller *must* find out.”

“SUMMARY/ We now know two men—longtime friends/business partners and, moreover, both Trump NatSec advisors—were peddling fake Clinton emails in the period after Donald Trump had publicly announced that he wanted Clinton’s deleted emails found and released. It wasn’t a coincidence.”

Yeah well ‘coincidences’ take a lot of planning.

 

 

 

 

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