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In my last post the theme was you can panic now. 

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/07/12/you-can-panic-now-trump-threatens-to-pull-out-of-nato/

Trump has been attacking the NATO alliance and suggesting he might pull out. As I noted in the piece You can panic now is basically a fitting epitaph for 20 different things Trump does every day.

Just recently he claimed to believe Putin’s denials of interfering in our election. You can panic now. Meanwhile the House GOP that shutdown the Russia probe in February and declared ‘no collusion’-though they didn’t even interview George Papadopoulos is back to investigating Hillary Clinton. Sure, after all, she’s the President. If you listen to Trump co-conspirators like Corey Lewandowski you’d be forgiven for thinking she is-but its an understandable mistake-she should be but it was stolen from her.

Peter Strozk has emerged as a favorite GOP whipping boy. They have made much of some negative personal texts about Trump he sent to Lisa Page; again, why not look at the texts of all the rogue Trump agents at the NY FBI-you know, Trumpland?

“The FBI is Trumpland’: anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaking, sources say.”

“Highly unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton intensified after James Comey’s decision not to recommend an indictment over her use of a private email server.”

And even if Strozk didn’t have a high opinion of Trump personally his actions actually benefitted the so-called ‘President.’

But it’s even worse than that as Strozk actually slowed down the Russia probe by keeping the number of agents aware-and working on-the case less than usual. While the Clinton email probe was run with Comey’s ‘extreme transparency’-totally contrary to protocol and precedent for an FBI investigation, the Russian investigation was even more closely held than normal.

But Trump and the GOP have never let facts get away with a faux political narrative. The grilled Strozk for 10 hours last week in hearings behind closed doors. Which begs the question-if they think his testimony proves that the Deep State was out to get the faux ‘President’ why do it behind closed doors?

It’s been Democrats who have called for the testimony to be public. Strozk himself wanted to testify publicly. Now thanks to the pressure we are going to get to hear from Strozk publicly today. Meanwhile what the Dems have released regarding Strozk’s testimony last week is very troubling as the GOP actually demanded who he voted for in the 2016 primary.

This ought to shock and outrage every American that someone’s private political views are being questioned. Again, it’s amazing they’ve gotten away with this. The Fake President continues to talk about ’13 angry Democrats’ when in truth there are very few Democrats at the FBI-I’m not aware of one. All the big players are Republicans-Comey-who donated to both McCain and Romney, and was part of investigations into the Clintons for 22 years-Andy McCabe-his wife ran as a Democrat in 2016-and, yes, Robert Mueller himself.

In this vein, it’s a fine thing that Strozk will testify publicly today-sunshine is the great disinfectant. While much has been made that Trump’s poll numbers-around 40%-while historically the lowest-are still not as low as they could be considering everything that comes out about him every day. But a major reason for that is the GOP-before it ended it prematurely-had all the Russia hearings behind closed doors.

It’s clear the narrative Trump and the GOP wants to sell-that the Russia investigation should be shutdown because of Strozk. 

I think today’s vitally important testimony from Strozk is going to show us pretty quickly why they wanted to keep his testimony private.

UPDATE: Regarding the notion I suggested above that Strozk slowed down the Russia investigation, be sure Strozk’s reason was to protect it from all the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents but the effect was the same. Emptywheel argues Strozk lost a fight for a more aggressive FBI investigation of Trump-Russia. 

But the different tempo of Emailgate vs. Trump-Russia underscores the absurdity of the idea that the FBI engineered an anti Trump Deep State conspiracy.

Of course, even within the context of the Hillary IG report, Strzok offers the evidence against the corruption of the FBI: that unlike the constant leaks about the Hillary investigation (the IG Report’s far biggest fault is that it doesn’t treat the leaking from SDNY as a topic unto itself), the FBI didn’t leak, at all, about the investigation into the suspected Russian assets on Trump’s campaign.”

Or there was corruption but in the opposite direction of what Trump and his GOP co-conspirators have been claiming for almost two years.

In the inevitable IG report on the Russia investigation, this passage will be followed with analysis of what the outcome of this debate was, whether to use overt investigative methods or not. It will show that Strzok lost that debate.”

Marcy Wheeler was certainly correct about that. At the rate we’re going with the Coverup AG Barr DOJ it’s a sucker’s bet we see the IG report on the Russia investigation before we see the report on the rogue FBI agents we’ve only been promised 29 months. Indeed will we see it before the 2020 election?

Jerrold Nadler has previously discussed the importance of getting to the bottom of the rogue FBI agents but not since the Dems have taken over the House-true their is a great many things they need to get to the bottom of. 

What isn’t appreciated at all is the extent to which next to Trump-Russia collusion there was also Trump-NY FBI collusion.

But the FBI Trump-Russia investigation-very much contrary to Emailgate was much less aggressive and totally under wraps.

We know that, in part, because Sally Yates said as much, and said it about the investigation into Paul Manafort. This is her explanation to the IG about overt steps in advance of an election.

And the Bureau never pushed back on that concept. This actually came up with, in the connection with Paul Manafort. And they had an investigation on Manafort and I had a lengthy discussion with [McCabe], at least one, maybe more, about how important it was at that time that our investigation not be overt. And what they were, what the Bureau was doing with respect to Manafort because that could impact Trump even though he was no longer his campaign manager. That unless there was something they really needed to do, because they were getting records and doing that kind of, unless there was something they needed, really needed to do overt they really needed to stay under the radar screen…. Because it’s not fair to impact [an election].

That this comment is about Manafort is significant for two reasons. First, because Manafort’s corruption was — like the Hillary email investigation — public. More importantly, the date of Strzok’s text, August 15, likely means the discussion was specifically in the contexts of the stories that week about Manafort’s corruption.”

So while Yates has emerged as a Trump GOP co-conspirator bugaboo because of her work in pushing the Russia House in the early days of January, 2017 about Flynn’s lies about his call to Kisylak-today is actually the day that Judge Emmet Sullivan will release the transcripts of the Flynn-Kiyslak phone call; maybe we’ll get an idea of the sorts of things that led the Judge to declare back in January that he would not pretend to hide his disgust at Flynn’s actions…-in many ways she-just like another GOP bugaboo Loretta Lynch-actually acted in ways that helped Trump.

Neither Lynch or Yates were  nearly as aggressive in pushing back against Comey’s insubordination-as the IG report put it-as they should have been and Yates scrupulously made sure that Trump-Russia be kept very quite prior to the 2016 election-contrast this to what was going on in the NY FBI at the same time.

Back to EmptyWheel:

We know that, in part, because Sally Yates said as much, and said it about the investigation into Paul Manafort. This is her explanation to the IG about overt steps in advance of an election.

And the Bureau never pushed back on that concept. This actually came up with, in the connection with Paul Manafort. And they had an investigation on Manafort and I had a lengthy discussion with [McCabe], at least one, maybe more, about how important it was at that time that our investigation not be overt. And what they were, what the Bureau was doing with respect to Manafort because that could impact Trump even though he was no longer his campaign manager. That unless there was something they really needed to do, because they were getting records and doing that kind of, unless there was something they needed, really needed to do overt they really needed to stay under the radar screen…. Because it’s not fair to impact [an election].

That this comment is about Manafort is significant for two reasons. First, because Manafort’s corruption was — like the Hillary email investigation — public. More importantly, the date of Strzok’s text, August 15, likely means the discussion was specifically in the contexts of the stories that week about Manafort’s corruption.

Moreover, there’s additional evidence the FBI didn’t take overt steps, particularly with those still tied to Trump’s campaign. It wasn’t until some time after February 16, 2017  — literally six months after that text — that FBI subpoenaed George Papadopoulos’ call records, a move FBI could have taken at any time with a “relevance” standard. That delay meant that Papadopoulos hid the existence of his entire communication history with Ivan Timofeev until after his two interviews (and tried to hide it entirely by deleting his Facebook account).

In this post, I showed that, given that they didn’t know about Ivan Timofeev until after his interviews, they could not even have started pursuing a warrant until after the first interview, at best (and didn’t know about the existence communications over a Section 702 provider with Timofeev until after both). In this post, I suggested that it looked like the FBI first obtained a preservation order for the device GSA had on him on March 9, 21 days after his second interview.

Since then two details have come out. First, this Peter Strzok/Lisa Page SMS text highlighted by Matt Tait suggests that as late as June 6, 2017, the Special Counsel’s office was still debating whether searching Section 702 presented a litigation risk (meaning Trump’s buddies are getting far more protection than the rest of us might be).

Then there’s a point that Eric Swalwell made in Monday’s hearing debating whether or not to reveal the Schiff memo. In response to Michael Turner’s suggestion that there was no evidence of “collusion” between Trump and Russia, Swalwell pointed out that only after the FBI challenged Trump aide claims did the Bureau find evidence to support a conspiracy.

George Papadopoulos I think is the canary in the coal mine. He was interviewed January 27, 2017, by FBI. He lied about his contacts over in London with the professor. He was interviewed again in February, and he lied. Only when the FBI showed the willingness to subpoena his Skype and Facebook logs did he come around 6 months later.

This makes it clear that the FBI had not even obtained call records from Papadopoulos (via an NSL or a subpoena) before the second interview, the standard for which is really low.

Again, this shows that, at least during that phase of the investigation, the FBI was moving very conservatively.

And, as noted, even several weeks after Robert Mueller took over the investigation, the team was still debating whether they could do what FBI otherwise does at an assessment level, which is to search 702 data in the FBI’s custody. As I’ve noted, the use of lifetime Republican Stefan Halper to ask Papadopoulos questions (the FBI can use informants at the assessment level) rather than collecting actual call records not only seems to have been an effort to use least intrusive means possible to chase down leads, but it also badly delayed the discovery of key details about Russia’s attempts to curry favor with Trump aides.

The use of Halper has been framed by the GOP co-conspirators as yet more Deep State treachery but the truth is 180 degrees-it was the most nonaggressive means possible-quite arguably nonaggressive to a fault.

If Peter Strzok argued in August that the FBI should be far more aggressive investigating suspected assets infiltrating the Trump campaign to prevent the possibility that a Manchurian candidate might take over the country, he lost that debate, and continued to lose it for the almost the entirety of the time he was involved in the investigation, which according to the IG Report came on July 28, the day after IG Michael Horowitz informed Rod Rosenstein and Mueller about his texts with Lisa Page.

We then obtained all text messages and instant messages for those FBI personnel for the entire period of the Midyear investigation through July 1, 2017, to capture post-election discussions.

[snip]

Strzok was removed from the Special Counsel’s investigation on approximately July 28, 2017, and returned to the FBI in another position, after the OIG informed the DAG and Special Counsel of the text messages discussed in this report on July 27, 2017.

So Strzok lost his argument to investigate more aggressively, and as soon as evidence of his alarm about the suspected assets infiltrating the Trump campaign and his disgust with Trump generally became known, he was removed from the case.”

But again, Strozk was hardly weaponizing the Russia investigation.

All that said, Strzok remained on the case just long enough to net its first arrest, that of Papadopoulos on July 26. Which is why I’m so interested in his explanation for a May 18, 2017 text, another one that disproves the conspiracy. In the text written 10 months after the start of the investigation, Strzok suggested his gut sense suggested “there’s no big there there.”

“you and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”

Here’s his explanation of the text after the fact, which would incorporate information he learned in the two months he remained on the investigation after May 18.

As I looked at the predicating information, as I looked at the facts as we understood them from…the allegations that Russia had these emails, and offered to members of the Trump campaign to release them. As we looked at the various actors, the question [was,]…was that part of a broad, coordinated effort, or was that simply a bunch of opportunists seeking to advance their own or individual agendas…which of that is it? …My question [was] about whether or not this represented a large, coordinated conspiracy or not. And from that, as I looked at what would give me professional fulfillment, what I thought would be the best use of my skills and talents for the FBI and for the United States, whether to take, which path to take. [my emphasis]

On May 18, he suggested there was no big there there. But in a description of the investigation that reflects knowledge through July 28, during which period FBI finally started analyzing call records (and also learned about the June 9 Trump Tower meeting), he instead weighed it as a matter of determining whether there was a “broad, coordinated effort” or just “a bunch of opportunists seeking to advance their own or individual agendas.” Virtually all the evidence answering that question was collected and analyzed after Peter Strzok was removed from the investigation.

So the most aggressive moves were post Strozk’s tenure.

But again, these are mere facts. What matters in American politics today isn’t facts but the preferred narrative of GOP co-conspirators and MSM both siders.

Meanwhile the basis for the FBI’s firing of Strozk still needs to be explained. 

Ironically it’s now emerged that Andy McCabe fired him. 

Ironic as Strozk went down in the same Trumpian purge of the FBI McCabe himself went down in yet he allowed himself to be a facilitator of this same purge against Strozk.

But then McCabe no less than Comey died by the same sword he himself used against others.

McCabe failed to get that Strozk-and inportant investigator in the Russia investigation was selectively targeted just like he was.

UPDATE:

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