There Is A Key

The following appeared on my Facebook feed yesterday. I feel that it sums up Robert Mueller’s final statement on his investigation:

However, there is a new wrinkle in the investigation of the roots of the Russian collusion charge that is very interesting. Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at The Hill that contains what he describes as surprising information.

The article reports:

Multiple witnesses have told Congress that, a week before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Britain’s top national security official sent a private communique to the incoming administration, addressing his country’s participation in the counterintelligence probe into the now-debunked Trump-Russia election collusion.

Most significantly, then-British national security adviser Sir Mark Lyall Grant claimed in the memo, hand-delivered to incoming U.S. national security adviser Mike Flynn’s team, that the British government lacked confidence in the credibility of former MI6 spy Christopher Steele’s Russia collusion evidence, according to congressional investigators who interviewed witnesses familiar with the memo.

It gets more interesting:

Congressional investigators have interviewed two U.S. officials who handled the memo, confirmed with the British government that a communique was sent and alerted the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the information. One witness confirmed to Congress that he was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller about the memo.

Now the race is on to locate the document in U.S. intelligence archives to see if the witnesses’ recollections are correct. And Trump is headed to Britain this weekend, where he might just get a chance to ask his own questions.

“A whistleblower recently revealed the existence of a communique from our allies in Great Britain during the early days of the Russia collusion investigation,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told me.

So Robert Mueller knew that there were doubts about the Steele Dossier–the basis for the charge of Russian collusion.

The story continues:

The revelation of a possible warning from the British government about Steele surfaces less than a month after a long-concealed document was made public, showing that a State Department official in October 2016 met with Steele and took notes that raised concerns about the accuracy of some information he provided.

Those notes, as I have written, quoted the British operative as saying he had a political deadline of Election Day to make his information public and that he was leaking to the news media — two claims that would weigh against his credibility as an FBI informant. They also flagged a piece of demonstrably false intelligence he provided.

The British Embassy in Washington did not return a call or email seeking comment. Grant, who left his post in April 2017, did not respond to a request for comment at the university where he works. His former top deputy, Paddy McGuinness, declined comment.

The article concludes:

If the British memo exists, it was never shared with the House Intelligence, House Judiciary, House Oversight and Reform or Senate Judiciary committees, despite their exhaustive investigations into the Steele dossier, congressional investigators told me. These investigators learned about the document in the past few weeks, setting off a mad scramble to locate it and talk to witnesses.

If the witnesses’ recollections are correct, the British communique could become one of the most significant pieces of evidence to emerge in the investigation of the Russia-collusion investigators.

It would mean that Trump was never told of the warning Flynn’s team received, and that the FBI and DOJ continued to rely on Steele’s uncorroborated allegations for many months as they renewed the FISA warrant at least two more times and named Mueller as special prosecutor to investigate Russia collusion.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), whose staff has been fighting unsuccessfully to gain access to the British communique, told me Wednesday its public release would further accentuate “that the FBI and DOJ were dead wrong to rely on the dossier in the Russia investigation and to use it as a basis to spy on Americans.”

The investigation into President Trump was a hoax, pure and simple. However, that won’t stop impeachment proceedings. As the truth dribbles out, those impeachment proceedings are going to look really silly.

This Could Get Very Interesting

The U.K. Telegraph reported on Wednesday that MI6 chiefs are secretly battling Donald Trump to stop him publishing classified information linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. 

The article reports:

The UK is warning that the US president would undermine intelligence gathering if he releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers.

However Trump allies are fighting back, demanding transparency and asking why Britain would oppose the move unless it had something to hide.

It forces the spotlight on whether the UK played a role in the FBI’s investigation launched before the 2016 presidential election into Trump campaign ties to the Kremlin.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article on Wednesday that reminds us of some of the possible reasons for the problem:

In 2016 candidate Trump supported Brexit; the professional political class in the U.K. were vehemently against it. Additionally, candidate Trump was openly challenging the structure of NATO and demanding changes to the alliance. This was antithetical to the interests of the U.K. government and likely sent shockwaves through their collectivist system when candidate Trump won the GOP nomination. The Brits had a strong motive to see Trump destroyed and aligned with weaponized U.S. intelligence toward that end.

As President, Mr. Trump, has held true to his campaign promises and forced the British -and the EU writ large- to be more responsible for their own military security. President Trump has challenged the post-WW2 NATO structures and forced the EU to pay more for their defense. Many member nations are vocally unhappy with this shifted landscape because it means less money for liberal/socialist causes. [Note: Including Canada]

Lastly, the U.K. and E.U. (mostly German anxiety) are facing a much tougher trade objective as outlined by President Trump. The trade conflict is costing them billions in addition to their increased need to spend on their own defense via NATO to keep Trump off their back. He might be just one man, but President Trump has them surrounded.

President Trump is not allowing the same one-way benefits within the U.S. trade relationship with the EU; and as he highlighted with the use of tariffs, he is not hesitant to smash the EU economy (mostly Germany) with crippling auto-tariffs if needed.

Trump is leveraging access to the U.S. markets as pressure on the Europeans to comply with U.S. demands. The Europeans, including the British, are not used to this level of confrontation from the U.S. Their economic frames of reference surround acquiescence from prior American presidents. They are increasingly unnerved and the horrible President Trump simply doesn’t care.

And then there’s the newly emphasized Iran sanctions… the economic MOAB that threatens any/all European interests who might dare to get caught doing business with the Iranian regime. President Trump has shown he is not the least bit hesitant to pull the trigger on Treasury penalties against any nation or multinational interest who would defy the sanctions.

Simply put, the Brits did not like the idea of an American President who put America first. The question remains as to what they actually did about it.

Is This A Surprise To Anyone?

Yesterday Western Journalism posted an article about Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele is the ex-MI6 Agent who created the dossier on then candidate Donald Trump alleging collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia.

The article reports:

The former British intelligence agent who authored the 35-page dossier alleging collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia admitted in a court filing that his memos contain “unverified” information.

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who compiled the memos, is being sued in a UK court by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive who says he was falsely accused by Steele of running a hacking operation against the Democrats.

Steele has not spoken publicly about the salacious allegations against Trump but is being forced to respond in a London court through his attorneys. Steele acknowledged that the memo identifying Gubarev came from “unsolicited” and “raw” intelligence that “needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified.”

…The former MI6 agent says he is the victim of Fusion GPS, the firm funded by Hillary Clinton backers that hired Steele to perform opposition research against Trump.

Steele says he never allowed Fusion GPS to circulate his dossier to media sources, but they did so anyway.

Let that sink in for a minute–Christopher Steele was specifically hired by Fusion GPS to perform opposition research against Donald Trump. He gave them unsubstantiated information which the campaign then distributed to a sympathetic media. Now he blames Fusion GPS because he is getting sued. Amazing.

 

Good News And Bad News

The good news is that a plot to blow up an airplane (or two) using underwear bombs which would not have been detected by normal screening processes was foiled. The bad news is that somewhere in the foiling of the plot, a lot of classified information was leaked that will hamper our future efforts to foil such plots.

The U. K. Guardian reported the story yesterday. According to the article:

Detailed leaks of operational information about the foiled underwear bomb plot are causing growing anger in the US intelligence community, with former agents blaming the Obama administration for undermining national security and compromising the British services, MI6 and MI5.

The Guardian has learned from Saudi sources that the agent was not a Saudi national as was widely reported, but a Yemeni. He was born in Saudi Arabia, in the port city of Jeddah, and then studied and worked in the UK, where he acquired a British passport.

Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA‘s Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. “MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that the prime minister should raise with the president, if he has the balls. This is really tragic,” Scheur said.

I understand that there are many things in our government that are classified that should not be. I also understand that sometimes there is a very obvious reason to keep certain information secret. How many people were put at risk by the leaking of the details of this operation? Whoever leaked the information should be charged with a crime, and the newspapers that published it should also be penalized in some way. There is too much information available about this operation. That fact will limit our ability to prevent such attacks in the future.

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