We are left with only questions about John Durham’s actions as he closes his Russiagate investigation, which included the failed prosecution of Igor Danchenko.
This event was barely covered by the mainstream media, which started with an attempt to remove the president of the United States. It is best to begin with what we have learned. James Comey, FBI Director, knew almost immediately that the Steele dossier was political nonsense. To begin a legal process against American citizens, the FBI knew that it was using false information. This included Donald Trump as a candidate as well as as President. The FBI wanted to destroy Trump’s candidacy and, if that fails, to make him President Trump by tagging him with a Russian agent.
As an organization, the FBI knew in 2017 that Trump wasn’t a Russian spy. The bureau let the Mueller report and the rest of the proceedings continue. Mueller created a “dossier verification” unit that could not verify any of Christopher Steele’s reporting. Mueller also stopped FBI agents from investigating a Clinton crony who had high-level connections with Putin and failed to conduct an espionage investigation into Steele’s Russian primary source.
Imagine Trump’s term if we knew what the FBI did. There was no Maddow, no wall closing in, and no insinuations that Trump’s president was playing cards with the Russians from the Oval Office. We won’t ever know what was done to the country’s business.
The 2019 Horowitz Report, which is a review of the FBI’s conduct by Justice Department Inspector General, was now supported by Durham’s work. It revealed that the FBI knew the dossier contained lies and deliberately lied to FISA court to maintain its lies alive. Steele was a paid informant on the FBI’s payroll. The FBI knew Steele and happily ignored it in support of their goal to spy on Trump’s campaign. This was an unsuccessful coup attempt by FBI.
It was so bad! It was so bad! Did all polygraphs get broken? Did they have a “?” key for their word processors, or was it not?
That is the focus we should be focusing on, and Durham didn’t ask.
Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer, pleaded guilty in Durham’s case that Clinesmith lied to Carter Page on the FISA Application to Surveil him electronically. Page was also electronically spied upon via the two-hop rule. This rule gives those who have a direct tap on Carter Page (e.g., Clinesmith) legal access to listen in two steps downstream. If Page called Michael Cohen one hop and Cohen called Trump two hops later, that would be legal surveillance.
Page was a patsy. The FBI knew this but had to have a patsy to make it happen. The FBI knew Page was a source for the CIA, and an agent for them, but this was kept from the courts. The whole Russiagate investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, started with Carter Page’s tap. Clinesmith was he the only one who fabricated his lies? Did he lie under orders? Did he lie as part of a larger pattern of lies in later FISA applications. Who was responsible for creating the FISA application? When was it incorporated by Clinesmith? What number of people were above Clinesmith (McCabe and Comey, etc.)? How many people knew of the lie and acted in accordance with it? How high up did the FBI chain go before they realized it was all built, that Page was a stooge alright but clearly documented as working for America? Durham didn’t seem to ask and we may never find out.
Although Durham lawyer Michael Sussman was not found guilty of perjury by Clinton, the trial revealed many questions that Durham did not allow to go away. The testimony showed that Hillary Clinton signed off on the plan for pushing out information about Trump’s connection to Alfa Bank, despite concerns that this was a questionable link. This was the first evidence that Clinton was involved in the instant decision to relay the false Trump-Alfa story the FBI and the mainstream media. This was in response to WikiLeaks publishing information from DNC servers which showed among other, Clinton campaign’s attempts to discredit Bernie Sanders. The party was at risk of being split by the leaks that occurred during the Democratic Convention. It was a crisis for Democrats.
Clinton signed off to launch the Russiagate dirty tricks campaign, just as WikiLeaks was revealed. This is the “why” of the Russiagate story’s timing. Durham excluded Clinton from his questioning with the assistance of the court, which blocked such “non-relevant” lines of inquiry at Sussman’s trial.
The extent of Trump’s spying was also revealed by the Sussman trial. The Sussman indictment in Durham was notable for allegations that Rodney Joffe, a tech company executive, accessed “dedicated servers” for the Executive Office President of the United States (EOP). Joffe then “exploited” this arrangement by mining DNS traffic from the EOP for derogatory information about Donald Trump.
Joffe also “enlisted assistance from researchers at a U.S. university” (likely Georgia Tech), who had access “large quantities of Internet data.” Georgia Tech already had the data, and Joffe was able to access it through a Pentagon-paid contract. He said that Joffe had given the researchers permission to use Internet data to create an inference and a narrative linking Trump to Russia. “[Joffe] stated that he was trying to please certain VIPs’, referring to individuals from Law Firm-1 or the Clinton campaign.”
Joffe was never pursued by Durham. Who paid him? When did he begin to monitor the Oval Office’s activities? What did he discover? When did he stop? Did the FBI share any monitoring that was likely unconstitutional? Did the FBI know about the surveillance? If so, what did they do to profit from it or limit it? Were Georgia Tech researchers culpable?
Igor Danchenko was Durham’s third and last prosecution. He was found not guilty of all charges. The Brookings Institution’s Danchenko was the main Russian source for Steele’s Dossier. He was also a cover for Charles Dolan (a Clinton operative) who made up things (such as the pee tap). Danchenko was used to wash his lies through Danchenko in order to give them more validity and conceal his connection with Clinton.
Steele’s information was fed to the FBI, who ate it like pigs at a trough and never seriously considered where the information they were using. Crossfire Hurricane, the name given to the Trump investigation, was allowed to continue in 2017, even though the FBI discovered that Danchenko was the primary source.
Answered: When did the FBI discover that Steele’s source of near-only information was fake? What was the date Dolan became the source of the pee tapes? Why didn’t they conclude the investigation at this point? What rank did the FBI’s chain of command know about Steele’s lackadaisical source? Director Comey? Why not? Trump fired Comey because of this? Comey wasn’t aware that the FBI was actively investigating Donald Trump as a Russian spy.
Steele was never charged with any source. Steele was, during most of Crossfire Hurricane on Clinton’s payroll to create false information and the FBI’s for peddling the same falsehoods, all guaranteed only by his secret squirrel reputation as an intelligence officer in Britain.
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Why didn’t Durham take his indictments higher up the ladder? Or, why didn’t he go sideways and leave Hillary to make way for a deeper position in the FBI? What about Fiona Hill, Brookings? Does she have any connection between the failed Russiagate coup and the failed Ukrainegate impeachment which both of them she played a key behind-the scenes role in? Why didn’t Durham take advantage of the congressional hearings to bypass Joe Biden and give the decision-making back to the people?
It’s over. Biden is now president. It is simple enough to say, “So what?” Many people who didn’t support Hillary Clinton long ago concluded she was a liar. Anti-climax is a result of the knowledge that her supporters know she won’t run again for public office.
It doesn’t matter how Hillary lied, but rather, who was to lie about it? She claimed her opponent was working with Russia. It is clear that many Clinton’s manipulations have been weighed against Trumps transgressions, such as whataboutism. Trump’s win in 2016 did not exonerate Hillary from her sins. People who are worried about election theft via vote miscounts think too small. Think like Hillary Clinton if you really want to worry.
