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30 July 2020

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Deap

Brennan did not want the peepee dossier included, because it would expose himself as the dirty cop running the whole transnational Obamagate hit operation on DJTrump. Ya think? I suspect Brennan pushed back with a wink, when he confronted Comey.

Deap

Latest wrinkle - push Susan Rice for VP since you can't conduct investigations on a candidate that may "interfere with an election?

Impeachment didn't work, covid delays didn't work, burning cities down didn't work, attacking federal court houses didn't work, police brutality race riots didn't work, sticking it to Barr during the Judiciary hearing didn't work, Russiagate still plods on.

Time to bring in Obama fixer Susan Rice as Biden's VP 'candidate" just to finally put the screws on the Russiagate investigations. Is Rice their insurance policy?

Fred

Deap,

Rice isn't going to be the first to be getting investigated and running for office, or being in office, isn't going to protect her. You want to cut out her value as a shield for Barack and Biden then Pardon Obama. He'll enjoy testifying before a grand jury about what went on with nothing but a possible perjury charge to worry about.

Vegetius

How does someone like Brennan, a supposed Muslim and admitted supporter of Marxism, get a job mopping the floors at the Department of Labor, much less get hired on by the CIA?

Is the agency that corrupt or simply incompetent?

johnf

More on Igor Danchenko, Steele's main source for the dossier:

"The mysterious “Primary Subsource” that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is a former Brookings Institution analyst -- Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele...

The 42-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a network of sources to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was arrested, jailed and convicted years earlier on multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the Washington area and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, according to criminal records...

A newly declassified FBI summary of the FBI-Danchenko meeting reveals agents learned that key allegations in the dossier, which claimed Trump engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin against Clinton, were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia...

In March 2013 — three years before Danchenko began working on the dossier — federal authorities in Greenbelt, Md., arrested and charged him with several misdemeanors, including “drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his [2-year-old] child in a safety seat,” according to a court filing. The U.S. prosecutor for Maryland at the time was Rosenstein, whose name appears in the docket filings."

Danchenko was at the Brookings InStitute and was a protege of Fiona Hill. Strobe Talbot and his brother-in-law Cody Shearer were also involved in the group.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/07/24/meet_steele_dossiers_primary_subsource_fabulist_russian_at_us_think_tank_whose_boozy_past_the_fbi_ignored_124601.html

Mathias Alexander

" covert actions designed to ensnare George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and others and to promote the meme that Trump was a creature of Moscow."
So there are massive covert actions designed to promote memes then.

English Outsider


Still this odd lacuna in the investigation.

We've become very familiar with Christopher Steele and his doings, often through statements or justifications in the media put out by Sir Richard Dearlove or by journalists with the same aims as Steele. We hear increasingly more about Mr Steele's actions and contacts at the American end as he worked at circulating and promoting his dossier.

But that's it. No further questions. Mr Steele himself seems to be taken for granted. A senior ex-Intelligence Officer, with continuing close contact with British Intelligence up to a senior level, meddling in American politics? Most normal thing in the world. Nothing out of the way there.

Like hell. The American authorities won't get to the bottom of Russiagate until they stop pretending it was nothing to do with HMG.

turcopolier

Mathias Alexander

Yes, in all the major countries.

turcopolier

Vegetius

I vote for incompetent.

Rick Merlotti

EO,
You are correct about HMG. British Intel and their Anglophile cousins in US Intel ran/are running this coup. But Republicans would rather lazily bash Russia than think critically on the subject. There will be no real justice until this changes.

johnf

EO

The Theresa May (and probably the Cameron) governments were obviously involved in the campaign to derail the Trump Campaign and his nascent Presidency. This was probably from promptings by anti-Trump elements within the American intelligence community and Trump's anti-NATO stance.

To keep everything at arms length they employed Steele through his private company Orbis.

You can see the British involvement through PM Theresa May's horrified reaction to Trump's surprise election when, realizing Britain's blunder, with indecent haste she crossed the Atlantic as soon as he was inaugurated and held his hand in the Rose Garden.

Relations between the two countries remained frosty until Boris Johnson turned up. Elements of his nascent foreign policy are (probably) more closely aligned to Trump's.

Steele is now employed by the British Intelligence establishment to smear Johnson as a Russian agent.

English Outsider


johnf - if Mrs May was in the loop so was Mr Johnson. He'll have been briefed at the latest when he became PM and should have been briefed earlier.

Thing is, they must have been briefed to some extent. Never mind speculation about what happened earlier. The dossier scandal exploded in late 2016. There was no ignoring it. Any PM would ask "What's one of our people doing getting involved in all this?" and as a matter of course they'd have distanced HMG from the scandal.

They didn't. According to one of the experts here - Mr Habakkuk - they might have been on the point of disavowing Steele at one time. At the least it must have been one of the options discussed. We don't know why that option wasn't taken.

Turn it round the other way. Say some US Intelligence Officer spread scandal about Mr Johnson at the time he became PM. That's not what one friendly power does to another and no matter whether the scandal was true or not the US government would automatically distance itself from the affair. Or they would if they wanted to remain on friendly terms with HMG.

Turn it back round and you'll see that there are two indisputable facts. The scandal was spread by an ex UK Intelligence Officer. HMG did nothing to distance itself. That though the scandal was and remained politically embarrassing to the new President.

Odd as hell, the whole thing.

Trump's got an election coming up. Johnson, though he's got a spanking majority, is not that secure as PM and has got to get the Brexit deal squared away pretty soon. Maybe the thing'll be swept under the carpet until those two things are done.

Maybe it'll be swept under the carpet permanently.

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