A Tale Of Three Dossiers
A tale of three dossiers--that's what Devin Nunes says the Russia Hoax investigation largely boils down to, and it's hard to disagree with him. Here are the three dossiers, all of which involve, says Nunes, "lots of lies and omissions":
The Steele Dossier - We're familiar with that one, which involved the Clinton campaign and Fusion GPS (a sub-set of the Clinton campaign). Nunes says it also involves the FBI, so I'll leave readers to decide how the FBI fits in with the other two. To be fair, I'd very much want to include the CIA in this.
The Brennan Dossier - That would be the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), and is the CIA Dossier par excellence. Says Nunes: "that was the document that said, oh yeah, the Russians were trying to help Trump" and, in doing so, "not only misled Congress but misled the American people
The Mueller Dossier - Popularly known as the "Mueller Report". Also a tissue of "lies and omissions.
Nunes insists that all three must be investigated to get to the bottom of the Russia Hoax, but he also adds that he and others in Congress are focusing currently on "three Russians" or, properly speaking, Russian-Americans.
Nunes didn't name those three and I'm not entirely sure who he's talking about. I can offer two guesses.
One of the Russians might be Anatoli Samochornov, the translator for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at the famous Trump Tower meeting--Mueller’s hidden evidence: Translator exonerated Don Jr. in Trump Tower meeting :
In Robert Mueller’s final report on the Russia investigation, a little-known translator named Anatoli Samochornov played a bit role, a witness sparsely quoted about the infamous Trump Tower meeting he attended in summer 2016 between Donald Trump Jr. and a mysterious Russian lawyer.
The most scintillating information Mueller’s team ascribed to Samochornov in the report was a tidbit suggesting a hint of impropriety: The translator admitted he was offered $90,000 by the Russians to pay his legal bills, if he supported the story of Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskya. He declined.
But recently released FBI memos show that Samochornov , a translator trusted by the State Department and other federal agencies, provided agents far more information than was quoted by Mueller, nearly all of it exculpatory to the president’s campaign and his eldest son.
Despite learning the translator's information on July 12, 2017, just a few days after the media reported on the Trump Tower meeting, the FBI would eventually suggest Donald Trump Jr. was lying and that the event could be seminal to Russian election collusion.
Samochornov’s eyewitness account entirely debunks the media’s narrative, the FBI memos show.
“Samochornov was not particularly fond of Donald Trump Jr., but stated Donald Trump Jr.’s account with Veselnitskya as portrayed in recent media report, was accurate,” according to the FBI 302 report on its interview of the translator. “Samachornov concurred with Donald Trump Jr.’s accounts of the meeting. He added ‘they’ were telling the truth.”
I for one would certainly like to know what Veselnitskaya's "story" was going to be, if Samochornov knew. I'd also like to question Samochornov about his conversations with the FBI and with the Team Mueller prosecutors--in great detail.
The other Russian who comes to mind is Hank Greenberg, the Russian American FBI asset who approached Michael Caputo and Roger Stone and offered to sell "dirt" on Hillary Clinton--a deal which Caputo and Stone rejected out of hand. That happened in May of 2016, long before Crossfire Hurricane. FBI guidelines require that some sort of case be open before an asset can be used in that way. I'd like to discuss all that with Greenberg.
Who can name the third Russian?