In The Beginning--The Russia Hoax

Did it all begin with the CIA tasking the Five Eyes intel combine to set up 26 Trump associates as engaged in “suspicious” contacts? That’s what Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger are telling us. But … first a message from Judge Nap and Jeffrey Sachs about the CIA, to provide perspective:

Next question: Does the CIA destabilize the United States? Was the Durham Coverup intended to protect Americans from the truth that Putin revealed in the Tucker interview—that the elected officials don’t rule America? For Durham to have prosecuted just about anybody in the Intel Community could have blown the whole thing sky high.

CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say

United States Intelligence Community targeted 26 Trump advisors for foreign spy agencies to “reverse target” and “bump”

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER, MATT TAIBBI, AND ALEX GUTENTAG

Last year, John Durham, a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ), concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have opened its investigation of alleged collusion by then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Russia in late July of 2016.

Now, multiple credible sources tell Public and Racket that the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.

The new information fills many gaps in our understanding of the Russia collusion hoax and is supported by testimony already in the public record.

Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide [George Papadopoulos] had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

In truth, the USIC asked the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The significance of that, as I have always understood it, is that, while the Five Eyes can share information, the USIC is not supposed to directly task the Five Eyes to do what the USIC cannot legally do itself.

After Public and Racket had been told that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target, a source confirmed that the IC had “identified [them] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate. They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.”

Unknown details about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and raw intelligence related to the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign are in a 10-inch binder that Trump ordered to be declassified at the very end of his term, sources told Public and Racket.

Long time readers will recall that I have always argued that the tasking would have included GCHQ (the UK’s NSA, but perhaps the true 800 lb. gorilla among comms spy agencies) conducting what Trump called a “wiretap”. This new information helps explain why that was so necessary. Electronic surveillance would provide a lot of the background information to enable convincing “bumps” to take place. The Aussie “diplomat”—actually a longtime spy—’bumping’ Papadopoulos is one obvious example. Electronic surveillance would have provided background info to help make the contact convincing. Another example would be the contacts with Carter Page in England. One also wonders how Page received that invite to address a graduation ceremony of a business college in Moscow. That trip to Moscow was an absolute key to the FBI obtaining its own FISA on Page. Did a Five Eyes operative have a contact in Moscow who could extend the invite?

Here’s my transcript of an interview with Jesse Waters and Michael Schellenberger that expands a bit on the above. Of particular interest is the suggestion that the unprecedented FBI raid on Mar a Lago was staged to recover the binder filled with incriminating intel documents. Did the FBI fail to recover the binder, and is that why Trump is being prosecuted? If the FBI had succeeded in recovering the binder, might that have been the end of the matter? And, if Trump has secreted copies somewhere, when might he use them, reveal them to the public?

JW: Brand new details on how Obama's CIA targeted Trump and started the entire Russia Hoax. For years we were told that 'tips' from an Australian diplomat tipped off the FBI, after a random conversation with Papadopoulos--a no-name twenty-something? But according to new reporting by Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi the whole thing was a CIA setup. Former CIA Director John Brennan identified 26 Trump associates to be targeted by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, and then those interactions were targeted by the FBI as 'suspicious.' And that's how the FBI launched the Russia Collusion Hoax. The details of this entire operation have been stored in a top secret binder in a secret room in Washington. Trump ordered the whole thing declassified, and now the rumor is that the binder might be missing.

Joining me now, one of the reporters who broke the story, Michael Schellenberger. Michael, explain to me how this all started with the CIA picking these 26 Trump people.

MS: Obviously this is an extremely serious story and serious allegation by multiple credible sources that Public and Racket--that's Matt Taibbi's publication--have spoken to. These are people that are close to the House Intelligence investigation of how the Russia Hoax began. The story, as you mentioned, was that, 'Oh, we were just told by foreign intelligence about this.' Our sources tell us a very different story, which is that this was initiated by the US government, it came from within the US government's Intelligence Community, including the CIA, that they asked the so-called Five Eyes nations intelligence agencies--that's the other English speaking nations, including Britain and Australia--to spy on 26 Trump associates, or at least they had a list of the 26 associates that were identified.

This is new information. Some people have theorized about this and speculated about it [previoously]. We feel very confident that our sources were in a position to know and are very credible in this reporting. It’s obviously a very serious allegation, because this is illegal spying and it’s illegal election interference.

JW: OK, so you're reporting that the CIA got these allies to "bump" these 26 Trump associates, create interactions, and then call these interactions "suspicious" and let the FBI know they were suspicious--and that starts the whole thing. What about this binder that encapsulates this whole thing? No one knows where it is right now? Or Trump has it? What's that?

MS: Jesse, we'll have a piece tomorrow that's specifically about the binder, but as a friend of the show and of yours on this, I'll say that there has been widespread speculation that this binder was THE reason or a reason for the FBI raid of Mar a Lago, and we'll be discussing that tomorrow. But obviously, if this binder contains what we have been told that it contains, which may include raw intelligence, information showing that the US government, the CIA, and the Intelligence Community of the US government initiated the Russia collusion hoax, that it did not occur in the way that the official story, including the Durham investigation, had portrayed it, then that’s extremely serious information.

And if the FBI then went to go get it in order to continue the cover-up of this information, that obviously adds an even more dramatic wrinkle to this. Again, we'll have more to say about it tomorrow, but this is a huge, huge story. I've been thinking about it. In the history of the United States of America, have we ever had something like this, where the intelligence community was weaponized against a political candidate, and using our foreign allies to do it? I can't think of a more important or dramatic story.

JW: Yeah, and then going to great lengths, using FBI raids to cover it up. That's just an incredible development.

Obviously the big question is, Who knew what, when? Did Brennan get authorization from Obama? Did Clapper and Comey know? How far did the circle of knowledge extend—obviously doing the research to identify associates of a presidential candidate and sort through them to come up with likely targets requires some sort of operation beyond Brennan. How about this—were any members of the Gang of Eight in on it? McConnell, Ryan, Schumer?