Briefly Noted: McCabe
This needs to be brief because I need to take a car in for work this morning.
I mentioned this development late yesterday—Merrick Garland is intent on reminding us that he’s no more than a puppet of the Zhou regime and unfit for any public office. What better way than restoring all employment benefits to McCabe?
At the same time, I wasn’t unduly worked up. I assume that this is a move by the regime to obstruct, if possible, Durham’s investigation. And yet, Durham appears to have forged ahead in the past months when the regime had a better standing with the public, so he seems unlikely to back down from where he’s headed. Almost certainly not quietly.
The other consideration in the back of my mind last night was that, once empaneled, a Grand Jury can be difficult to thwart. If they’ve been presented evidence of wrong doing in high places they can insist on action. That may not happen often, but it can happen. It’s also true that, having done their job, the GJ loses control over the case, but if the Special Counsel is in agreement with the Grand Jury it would likely be extremely difficult for DoJ to do much about anything that the GJ and SC decide upon. In other words, I think this move by DoJ will not affect Durham’s decision to indict McCabe.
I have no expertise in these matters. My experience with grand juries was that they were largely compliant, although prosecutors had a healthy respect and even some fear of grand juries that got really involved in a case and took the bit between their teeth. At any rate, it’s not clear to me that DoJ is dealing from a position of strength at this point. Obviously there aren’t many lawyers out there who have dealt with identical situations, but we can hope that lawyers with more experience in dealing with similar situations will be commenting today. If so we may get a clearer picture.
This morning Shipwreckedcrew added to his own brief comment last night. He obviously believes that nothing DoJ has done so far will stop Durham with regard to McCabe. Nor will Durham be impressed by MSM spin about McCabe being “cleared”.
Question for MW: the raid by FBI on Oleg Derapaska's home in DC today, executing a "court-ordered search -- is it likely Durham, or some unrelated case?
>> https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1450487348618223619 <<
Stephen's McIntyre tweetstorm re: how preposterous the Steele Dossier is, and what a farce it is for Stephanopoulos to interview him now that we know there are no sources for the allegations:
>> Stephen McIntyre
the secret of how Stephanopoulos and other US media gaslight the Steele dossier fraud is by exclusively focusing on issues that cannot be resolved, rather than ones that can
>> ABC News
@ABC
The world’s most infamous spy is finally ready to talk—what will he say in his first TV interview ever?
The stunning new documentary event with @GStephanopoulos
—‘Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier’—premieres tomorrow only on @hulu
. https://abcn.ws/3j8IMQB <<
2/ this is also how US intel agencies failed in their obligation to validate WMD fabrications by Curveball. Steele and Danchenko are Curveball 2.0.
3/ Lindsay "Gonna" Graham played important role in diverting attention away from most important issues arising from Horowitz Report by making an issue of "bar talk", as opposed to elephant issue that Danchenko never met the supposed source for the most critical reports.
4/ in Steele dossier, Person 1 was supposedly source for pee tape story in Report 80 in June (Source D), for collusion story in Report 95 (~July 28) and for two followup reports, one attributed to information provided on Aug 9, 2016.
5/ yet we KNOW for sure that PSS=Danchenko never met Millian/Person 1 and, to 99.9% certainty, never even talked to Millian. We also know that Danchenko first tried to contact Millian by email on July 19 while Millian was in Asia and tried again by email in third week of August.
6/ Danchenko told the FBI that he received an anonymous call (date not specified but necessarily prior to July 26 since Danchenko went to NYC on July 26 supposedly subsequent to anonymous call.) Millian firmly in Asia at the time.
7/ so we KNOW to 99.9% certainty that Millian didnt make the anonymous call - if indeed there is such a call. FBI did exhaustive searches of all communications involving Roger Stone. so did they check for supposed anonymous call and conceal it? Or never bother checking?
8/ Steele has said that Danchenko told Steele that Danchenko and Person 1/Millian had met three times for dinner, at which the supposed information was passed.
9/ QUESTION 1: Mr Steele, in Report 80, you attributed pee tape story to Source D, who you identified as Millian. However, as of date of Report 80, Danchenko had never met or talked to Millian. Did you fabricate the attribution of pee tape story to Millian? Or did Danchenko?
10/ QUESTION 2. In Danchenko's FBI interview, he attributed pee tape story as a merely unconfirmed rumor told to him by Ivan Vorontsov and also that he had been unable to confirm rumor. Yet in dossier, this unconfirmed rumor is said to have been confirmed. Was it you or was it
11/ or was it Danchenko who embellished the unconfirmed rumor supposedly from Vorontsov into a confirmation from Source D, who you identified as Danchenko?
12/ QUESTION 3: Ivan Vorontsov recently stated in a sworn deposition that he was interviewed by FBI at US Embassy in Moscow in June 2016 about Danchenko. Did Vorontsov ever inform you or Danchenko about this interview?
13/ QUESTION 4: as of July 18, 2016, Danchenko was trying to initiate a meeting with Millian. Why would he be introducing himself to Millian on July 18, if he had previously provided pee tape information in June as you claimed in dossier?
14/ QUESTION 5/ Danchenko told FBI that he had only a single conversation with anonymous telephone call which he attributed to Millian and never met Millian. So how can Millian be a source for 4 reports ranging from before June 24 to August 9?
15/ There are SO many important questions that Steele could have been asked that the uninformed pandering of @GStephanopoulos is yet another embarrassing moment for US media.
16/ there is an important lesson and precedent from the WMD Commission inquiry into the intel agency validation failures regarding Curveball fabrications on a reconstituted WMD program in Iraq.
17/ It turned out that Curveball wasn't even in Iraq at the times he was when he was supposedly witnessing the reconstitution of Iraqi WMD program in non-existent mobile trailers. However, this was only determined AFTER US had invaded Iraq and failed to discover WMD.
18/ Curveball's absence from Iraq in this period (he was in Germany as I recall) was determined by routine due diligence on travel records - at least some of which would have been in Europe.
19/ However, intel agencies informed WMD Commission that their mission was to investigate Curveball's stories ("raw intelligence" as it were), rather than validate Curveball himself. WMD Commission sharply criticized such strategy, strongly stating that validation was essential
20/ however, Comey's FBI repeated and exacerbated ALL the defects and deficiencies of WMD intel failure in their handling of Curveball 2.0 (Danchenko) in Russiagate hoax. They neglected to validate Danchenko, instead chasing every unprovable fantasy, just like Curveball 1 and WMD
21/ to continue the comparison, @GStephanopoulos' continued effort to posit some reality to the fabrications of Curveball 2.0 (Danchenko/Steele) is equivalent of a major reporter giving softballs to Cheney in 2008 about possibility of finding WMD after all.
22/ maybe @GStephanopoulos can follow up his obsequious interview of Christopher Steele with a fawning interview with OJ Simpson about OJ's continuing search for the real killer. It's that level of ludicrous.