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344 Comey’s October Surprise Wasn’t a Surprise for Devin Nunes
🧠The Leak That Devlin Barrett Says Doesn’t Exist
In late 2020, Devlin Barrett’s book October Surprise attempted to close the book on the rogue FBI narrative. His verdict? The idea of anti-Clinton agents leaking to sabotage her campaign was “absurd.” But this dismissal is contradicted by both the facts and the institutional record.
Michael Horowitz, DOJ Inspector General, opened an investigation into rogue FBI leaks in January 2017.
He never released a full report—only a cursory 10-page summary that concluded there were so many leakers, he couldn’t isolate any.
Yet Andrew McCabe was fired for leaking—26 hours before his pension vested. Apparently, some leaks could be isolated.
Barrett’s position was even more extreme than Horowitz’s: not that the leaks were too diffuse to trace, but that they didn’t exist at all. Except, of course, for the leaks that damaged McCabe and his wife-which were leaked to Barrett himself.Â
🧠Devin Nunes Knew—And He Knew Early
In June 2018, Devin Nunes admitted on Fox News that he knew about Huma Abedin’s emails on Weiner’s laptop in late September 2016—a full month before the Comey Letter.
“We had whistle-blowers that came to us in late September of 2016 who talked to us about this laptop sitting up in New York that had additional emails on it.”
Nunes didn’t say “I knew.” He said “we knew.” That “we” likely includes:
GOP House leadership: Trey Gowdy, Jason Chaffetz Darrell Issa, et al
GOP Senate leadership: Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Lindsay Graham, Little Marco Rubio, et al
The Trump campaign: Bannon, Priebus, Spicer
Right-wing media: Hannity, Giuliani
The RNC, which—as Flynn’s testimony revealed—had prior knowledge of the DNC leak
This wasn’t a leak—it was a pipeline. And this pipeline included pretty much anyone who was anyone in the institutional Republican party at the time.
🧠The Myth of the Accidental Discovery
John Robertson, the FBI agent who allegedly “stumbled” upon the Clinton emails, claimed to have found them by accident on September 26. But if Nunes and his “we” already knew by late September, then Robertson’s timeline collapses.
How did Nunes know within days—if not hours—of Robertson’s discovery?
Why did Comey claim to learn about the emails only in late October?
Why was the Comey Letter sent only to GOP committee chairs?
The official timeline doesn’t just strain credulity—it insults it. By the way this doesn’t necessarily mean Robertson was in on the gag. He might well have been a grunt doing his job as his superiors told him to-but I strongly suspect that they at some level up the food chain knew exactly what he would “discover.”
Robertson allegedly found one Huma–Hillary email among 300,000. The odds of that are astronomical. Either Robertson is the luckiest man alive—or the story is a cover for a coordinated operation. As we saw in Chapter Why the Comey Letter, the timeline is riddled with contradictions, omissions, and implausibilities.
🧠The Party-Wide Operation
This wasn’t just Nunes. It wasn’t just the Trump campaign. It was GOPLand:
Barbara Leeden, Grassley’s Judiciary aide, was in the loop
Flynn’s Mueller testimony confirmed RNC foreknowledge of the DNC leak
The Comey Letter was not a surprise—it was a strategic release
The idea that anyone in GOP leadership would sit on this information is laughable. The obsession with Clinton’s emails was party-wide. The leaks weren’t rogue—they were institutional.
🧠Section 2: The Rogue FBI–Congress Pipeline
The idea that Devin Nunes and his allies had privileged access to FBI leaks isn’t speculative—it’s documented. The pipeline ran through the FBI’s New York field office, and its contents flowed directly into the hands of GOP operatives, media surrogates, and campaign strategists.
🔌 Nunes and the NY Field Office
In June 2018, Nunes admitted that “good FBI agents” had informed him about Clinton-related emails on Weiner’s laptop in late September 2016, weeks before Comey’s public disclosure.
Adam Schiff called it “deeply disturbing” that Nunes received classified information from field agents, raising the question: was this also shared with Giuliani?
The implication is clear: Nunes wasn’t just a passive recipient—he was part of a feedback loop between law enforcement and the GOP.
📣 Giuliani’s Public Hints
Giuliani repeatedly teased a “surprise” in late October 2016, days before Comey’s letter. He later admitted to being questioned by the FBI about possible leaks from the NY field office.
He claimed to have spoken with both retired and active agents, describing a “revolution” inside the FBI over Comey’s decision not to charge Clinton.
Giuliani’s proximity to the NY field office—where he once served as U.S. Attorney—gave him unique access to disgruntled agents.
🧨 Erik Prince’s Explosive Claims
Prince told Breitbart that NYPD and FBI agents had found damning material on Weiner’s laptop and were prepared to go public unless the FBI reopened the Clinton investigation.
He claimed the NYPD faced “coercion” from the DOJ to suppress the findings, and that agents were threatening to leak or resign en masse. This use of the word “coercion” here been classic Trumpian gaslighting cum Orwellian-again as we argue in the Prologue Trump IS O’Brien as DOJ’s authority to restrain the NYPD’s attempt to politically weaponize the Weiner investigation-that was itself the product of gross political weaponization as we discussed in Chapter Weinergate-is legitimate.
Prince’s narrative, though sensationalized, aligns with Giuliani’s and Nunes’s timelines—and suggests a coordinated pressure campaign from within law enforcement.
In GOP parlance, “good FBI agents” are those who leak damaging information about Democrats. Nunes’s use of the term is revealing—not about the agents’ ethics, but about their political utility. Barrett’s refusal to acknowledge these leaks isn’t just denial—it’s narrative triage.
UPDATE: Where though is the quote about threatening to leak to Assange? Still need to find that quote
🧠Section 3: The Timeline That Breaks the Official Story
Devin Nunes’s admission that he knew about Huma Abedin’s emails in late September 2016—weeks before the Comey Letter—doesn’t just challenge the official timeline. It obliterates it.
John Robertson allegedly discovered the emails on September 26–27.
Nunes says “we” knew about them in late September.
Comey, meanwhile, told Congress on September 28 that no new evidence warranted reopening the investigation.
This means Nunes knew before Comey did. Or at least, before Comey claimed to know.
🔍 Lies of Omission and Convenient Amnesia
Again I’m not claiming Robertson personally called Nunes. But the timeline demands scrutiny:
If Robertson’s discovery was innocent and internal, how did GOP leadership learn of it so quickly?
If Comey didn’t know by September 28, how did Louie Gohmert know enough to press him on reopening the case?
If Barrett’s account is accurate, why does it omit this entire congressional leak pipeline?
At minimum, Robertson’s story is riddled with omissions. At worst, it’s a cover for a coordinated leak.
🧠Section 4: The Suspects—Stone, Prince, Giuliani, Kerik
Nunes’s source remains unidentified, but the list of suspects is rich:
Roger Stone, who bragged about backchannels to WikiLeaks
Erik Prince, who claimed NYPD and FBI agents were ready to revolt over Clinton’s emails
Rudy Giuliani, who teased a “surprise” days before the Comey Letter
Bernard Kerik, Giuliani’s longtime ally and NYPD Commissioner
All were plugged into the NY FBI ecosystem. All had motive. All had means.
Devlin Barrett’s October Surprise insists that the reopening of the Clinton investigation was a cascade of bureaucratic errors—not a partisan sabotage. He invokes Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.”
But as Schoenblog points out:
“The surprising thing to me is that no one seems to have noticed the errors, not least of all the participants who played a key role, including both Comey and Barrett.”
Barrett’s framing isn’t just naïve—it’s strategic. It absolves the FBI of motive, and himself of complicity.
For Emailgate it seems to me that Hanlon’s razor has it exactly wrong-never reduce something to stupidity that can be better understood as malice. Not sure this is exactly right-it’s below.
In the context of the 2016 election, it functions less as a heuristic and more as a shield—protecting powerful actors from scrutiny. Coincidences that benefit one side repeatedly aren’t coincidences. They’re patterns. Indeed by definition Hanlon’s Razor precludes in principle that you could ever detect systemic elite wrongdoing and abuse. Similarly the media loves Occam’s Razor-but here we should recall that the premise of Occam himself was that there is no human nature at all-which again precludes ever understanding anything in any depth.
UPDATE: This article links William of Occam to nominalism and the decline of the West-here our scope is more narrowed to how it’s led to some very mediocrie journalism.
Great addition, Mike. That article from Intellectual Takeout——makes a provocative case linking Ockham’s nominalism to the unraveling of Western metaphysical coherence. While your scope is narrower, focusing on how Occam’s Razor has been misapplied in journalism, the philosophical backdrop adds depth.
Here’s how we could modularize your update within the Barrett’s Razor section:
UPDATE: A provocative article from Intellectual Takeout links William of Ockham’s nominalism to the broader decline of Western metaphysical thought. While our scope is more focused, the critique resonates: Occam’s Razor, once a tool for parsimony in theory-building, has become a crutch for lazy journalism.
Barrett’s insistence that “there were no anti-Clinton FBI leakers” isn’t just factually dubious—it’s a textbook misuse of Occam’s Razor. He reduces a complex, politically charged sabotage network to a single, convenient explanation: bureaucratic inertia.
But as this chapter has shown, the evidence points to coordination, not coincidence. And the Razor, when wielded without epistemic rigor, becomes a weapon of obfuscation
 The deeper danger is when Occam’s Razor is fused with Hanlon’s Razor (“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”), it doesn’t just simplify—it neutralizes. It becomes a rhetorical firewall against accountability.
Here’s a refined modular insert that sharpens that critique:
Occam’s Razor, especially when paired with Hanlon’s, has become a philosophical sedative in mainstream journalism. The logic goes: if a simple, benign explanation exists, it must be true—and any suggestion of coordinated malfeasance is paranoid overreach.
But this isn’t just lazy reasoning. It’s ideological triage. By privileging simplicity over complexity, and incompetence over intent, these razors implicitly exonerate power.
Barrett’s framing—“no anti-Clinton FBI leakers”—isn’t just wrong; it’s structurally exculpatory. It rules out systemic wrongdoing not by disproving it, but by preemptively disqualifying it as too complicated, too conspiratorial, too uncomfortable.
In this way, the razors don’t cut through noise—they cut off inquiry.
UPDATE: use this link for Peter Smith-Bill Casey section
This wasn’t just Nunes. It wasn’t just Giuliani. It was the Republican Party:
The RNC had prior knowledge of the DNC leak
Peter Smith’s operation was a Trump campaign front with plausible deniability
GOP Chairmen like Gohmert were pressing Comey with questions that assumed knowledge he allegedly didn’t have
The Comey Letter wasn’t a surprise. It was a scheduled release.
🧠Section 7: The Chain of Custody—Who Knew, and When?
John Robertson’s role in discovering the Clinton emails has been framed as a lone agent stumbling upon a digital needle in a haystack. But even if Robertson himself acted in good faith, the timeline suggests that someone above him did not.
Robertson allegedly found the emails on September 26–27.
By late September, GOP leadership—including Devin Nunes—had already been briefed.
Comey, by contrast, claimed ignorance until late October.
This discrepancy implies that the leak didn’t originate with Robertson, but with his superiors—somewhere up the FBI food chain.
🔍 The Chain of Custody Was Compromised
If Robertson was just a grunt, then the leak came from someone who had access to his discovery and chose to weaponize it.
The NY field office, already known for its anti-Clinton sentiment, is the most likely source.
The leak wasn’t a rogue act—it was a strategic transmission to GOP operatives.
This reinforces the thesis: the Comey Letter was not the result of bureaucratic inertia—it was the culmination of a coordinated sabotage network.
🧠Section 8: The Timeline Nobody Dared to Map
When you think about it the story that Nunes knew already on September 29 was fairly well reported as he said it on a Sunday show. BUT NO ONE has ever really put 2+2 together and realized the astonishing fact that he therefore knew about it before Comey-at least according to Comey.
Nunes knew before Comey.
According to Comey’s own timeline, he didn’t learn about the Weiner laptop until late October. But Nunes, by his own account, had already been briefed a month earlier. This inversion of the official narrative is staggering:
The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee had access to classified FBI information before the FBI Director himself.
Nunes said “we knew,” implying a network of GOP leaders—not just himself—were in the loop.
Comey, meanwhile, was still telling Congress on September 28 that no new evidence warranted reopening the case.
🔍 The Manipulated Pawn
Comey’s post–October 28 conversation with Loretta Lynch suggests he felt cornered. According to reporting, Lynch pressed him on why he sent the letter. Comey reportedly responded that he felt he had “no choice”—a phrase that hints at pressure, not principle.
The FBI was leaking to Congress.
Congress was leaking to the media.
Comey was caught in a feedback loop of partisan sabotage.
He may have believed he was protecting the Bureau’s credibility. In reality, he was being played.
The idea that the Republican Party leadership—including Nunes, Gowdy, Issa, and likely Gohmert—had more actionable intelligence than the FBI Director is not just plausible. It’s documented.
Gohmert’s September 28 question to Comey about reopening the case suggests he already knew about the laptop.
Vanity Fair reported that Comey declined to testify on September 12, but agreed to appear on September 28—just as the leaks were circulating.
Robertson’s discovery was allegedly internal. But the information was already external.
This wasn’t a leak. It was a handoff.
So when you talk about Why Comey Wrote the Comey Letter as we did in the chapter Why Comey Wrote the Comey Letter-aptly enough LOL-another aspect beyond what I discussed there: His moral vanity, his genuine institutionalism along with his lifetime as a Republican party partisan that has been entirely ignored by everyone even liberal critics is that he was clearly manipulated by the entire institutional Republican party-putting aside the fact that the NY FBI is basically an arm of the institutional Republican party.
As explored in Chapter: Why Comey Wrote the Comey Letter, Comey’s decision was shaped by a cocktail of moral vanity, institutional loyalty, and a lifetime of Republican alignment—a fact curiously omitted even by liberal critics.
But another dimension emerges here: he was manipulated.
The NY FBI acted as a partisan node, leaking to GOP leadership.
GOP Chairmen already knew about the laptop before Comey did.
Comey’s testimony on September 28 shows he was still in the dark—while Nunes and Gohmert were already pressing him with knowledge they shouldn’t have had.
Comey wasn’t just reactive—he was cornered. His institutionalism made him vulnerable to institutional sabotage. And the Republican Party, acting as a unified front, exploited that vulnerability.
🧠Section 12: Nance’s Law, Not Hanlon’s Razor
Forget Hanlon’s Razor. To understand 2016, the better maxim is (Malcolm) Nance’s Law: coincidences take a lot of planning. Better yet is the opposite of Hanlon’s Razor:
“Never attribute to incompetence what can be explained by malice.”
And nowhere is this more applicable than the FBI’s behavior between September 27 and October 28—the month between Robertson’s “Immaculate Discovery” and the Comey Letter.
Joyce Vance put it even more bluntly:
“There are no coincidences in law enforcement.”
And FDR, ever the realist, said:
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
🧠Section: Negotiating Against the Truth—Michael Wolff and the Media’s Quiet Complicity
UPDATE: In a recent episode of Inside Trump’s Head, Michael Wolff offered a piercing critique of mainstream journalism. He described it as a space where reporters are forced to negotiate against what they know—a quiet, daily ritual of self-censorship.
This isn’t just a media failure. It’s a structural betrayal of truth.
This video demonstrated another reason I really like Michael Wolff-especially compared with mainstream reporters. The reporter at the Daily Beast-and she’s a good reporter BUT she was like ‘many other reporters cover Donald Trump and they do it very well” and Wollf just said “I don’t agree I hate their reporting it’s very poor” this was such a breath of fresh air! As we saw elsewhere he correctly diagnoses them as needing to negotiate against their own reporting.
His blunt rejection of mainstream political reporting—especially the kind that hedges, self-censors, or “negotiates against its own findings”—is exactly the kind of epistemic clarity this book seeks to advocate.
When Daily Beast host Joanna Coles suggested that many reporters “cover Trump very well,” Wolff didn’t equivocate:
“I don’t agree. I hate their reporting. It’s very poor.”
This wasn’t just a stylistic jab. It was a diagnosis.
Mainstream reporters, Wolff argues, have internalized a form of epistemic self-censorship. They negotiate against their own findings, dilute their conclusions, and hedge their language to preserve access or avoid backlash.
This is not journalism. It’s institutional maintenance.
Wolff’s refusal to play that game is what makes his work—however messy or provocative—a breath of fresh air. He doesn’t pretend that power is neutral, or that truth must be balanced against falsehood for the sake of “objectivity.” Honestly it’s hard NOT TO hate the mainstream media coverage-it’s in large part thanks to their Emailgate freakout that Trump was elected in the first place.
Or is this observation better in the previous chapter which mentions Wolff? The subject matter is relevant here in criticizing tendencies of the mainstream media.
🧠Section 13: The Myth of the Accidental Maelstrom
Schoenberg calls the reopening of the Clinton investigation “a maelstrom” born of two independent complaints. Ok but it’s important not to frame it in yet another way that obscures the political choreography behind the scenes.
“The re-opening… was the result of two independent complaints… that managed, by coincidence, to create a maelstrom.”
Coincidence? Or coordination?
Robertson’s discovery was on September 27.
Nunes knew about it within days.
The Midyear team was informed immediately.
And yet, nothing happened for a month.
Comey later claimed he didn’t remember hearing about it. Just as he alone still insists the Russian document was real. Once again, Comey is the odd man out—at least if you believe him. But in all matters Emailgate he’s tough to believe.
🧠Section 14: The FBI’s Month of Inaction
Horowitz’s 2018 IG report offered four explanations for the delay:
Waiting for more info
Needing a warrant
Believing the emails weren’t significant
Reassignment to the Russia probe
But only two were legally dispositive:
No probable cause = no warrant
No indication of criminality = no investigative steps
Robertson didn’t know that. He grew anxious, fearing congressional backlash. Barrett recounts his rising panic, culminating in an anguished “memo to self.” But how much of this is real—and how much is narrative cover?
🧠Section 15: The Leak Pipeline and the McCabe Hit Job
The same week Robertson was allegedly fretting, Barrett was working on a hit piece about Andrew McCabe—based on leaks from “a number of people inside the FBI.”
The story? That McCabe’s wife received donations from Terry McAuliffe-linked PACs. The subtext? That McCabe was compromised.
Never mind that the FBI’s ethics office cleared him. Never mind that the connection to Clinton was tenuous. Barrett ran with it—triggered, he claims, by a childhood memory of his mother’s failed campaign and a donor she felt she’d let down.
FN: Again, coincidences take a lot of planning.
Barrett’s Proustian reverie may very well be touching, but irrelevant. The real story isn’t McCabe’s wife—it’s the weaponization of leaks to discredit McCabe and justify the Comey Letter.
🧠Section 16: False Narratives and Manufactured Scandal
Barrett’s mentor Sandy Johnson warned him about “false narratives” that are “hard to disprove or counter.” Yet Barrett embraced one—against McCabe.
If guilt-by-association is enough to disqualify an FBI official, then Washington has no one left to investigate anyone. Compare the silence around Kenneth Starr’s appointment in 1994, despite his obvious massive conflict of interest-he had hoped a second Bush Sr Administration would nominate him for the Supreme Court.
The McCabe smear wasn’t journalism—it was sabotage. And Barrett, knowingly or not, became its vessel.
🧠Section 17: Barrett, Nunes, and the Myth of the Leakless FBI
Devlin Barrett insists there were no anti-Clinton FBI leakers. Yet Devin Nunes knew about the Weiner laptop within days of its alleged discovery. And Barrett’s own reporting was built on leaks—anonymous, partisan, and weaponized.
“There were no anti-Clinton FBI leakers,” Barrett claims. But his own sources were clearly leaking to him—and likely to Nunes.
The ProPublica investigation confirms what this chapter has laid bare: The FBI wasn’t leak-proof-quite the opposite. It was a sieve. And the leaks weren’t random—they were strategic, designed to discredit McCabe, sideline opposition, and pave the way for the Comey Letter.
🧠Section 18: The Comey Letter as Performance
The Comey Letter wasn’t a choice between “reveal and conceal.” The GOP already knew. Nunes already knew. The FBI had already leaked.
What Comey provided was performance—a public act of credibility that gave partisan leaks the imprimatur of institutional authority.
FN: That’s why it’s called the October Surprise, not the September Surprise.
McCabe was kicked out of the meeting. Page was sidelined. Comey was briefed, gave the go-ahead, and then turned to Congress. The decision to seek a warrant was barely discussed. The decision to go public was everything.
CODA: The idea that Page/McCabe would have prevented the Comey Letter has been seriously considered by Schoenberg and will be dealt with more in Chapter McCabe.
🧠Section 19: Barrett’s Fable and the Real Story
Barrett’s Proustian anecdote about his mother’s campaign donor is touching—but irrelevant.
FN: In truth it’s not really very touching-it’s more as Schoenberg argues implausible-I’m being charitable.
Political corruption isn’t about gratitude. It’s about power. And Barrett’s Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon logic doesn’t pass the laugh test.
FN: The danger isn’t from donors of a losing campaign—it’s from donors of a winning one.
Barrett’s reporting gave the pretext to recuse McCabe. That recusal cleared the path for Comey. And the Comey Letter became the final act in a month-long orchestration.
🧠Chapter Summary: Barrett Needs to Speak to Devin Nunes
Devlin Barrett insists there were no anti-Clinton FBI leakers. He should speak to Devin Nunes. Or maybe he already has.
More likely, he already knows the rogue agents he pretends not to know—he was their go-to guy in the mainstream media for years.
The 2018 revelation that Nunes knew about the Weiner laptop emails a full month before the Comey Letter revolutionizes our understanding of the October Surprise. It wasn’t a surprise to the GOP. It was a strategy. And Barrett’s reporting—whether unwitting or complicit—was part of the machinery.
This brings us back to the old dilemma: incompetence or malice?
Mainstream media culture, where Barrett thrives, prefers to reduce everything to incompetence. But how much of the damage in Barrett’s own reporting can be explained that way?
The fact that he continues to deny the existence of rogue FBI leakers—while relying on them as sources—suggests something deeper. With Barrett, it’s not just incompetence. It’s institutional loyalty masquerading as journalism.