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I wonder if Durham’s strategy is to prosecute what he’s allowed to, and use the court room to release information he would not be allowed to otherwise?

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one other oddity of the opening EC - opened by Curtis Heide and Allison Sands (Sands then being very new on the job.) Heide was already on Crossfire Hurricane team as of Sep 19, 2016 with responsibility for Papadopoulos investigation. See discussions of Case Agent 3 in Horowitz Report. In the previous week, the FBI had just carried out the curious Halper operation against Papadopoulos in London with both Halper and the still unidentified FBI asset "Azra Turk" - an attractive young woman FBI asset or agent who seems to have cooed into Papadop's ear. Case Agent 3 (Heide) was presumably responsible for, or involved in, the Halper-Papadopoulos operation. So it's doubly odd that Heide would be opening Alfa Bank EC in his Chicago FO capacity rather than within Crossfire Hurricane in the capacity of his secondment. As an extra taste, someone (who checked out online pictures) speculated a day or two ago that Allison Sands may have been "Azra Turk".

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aanother possibility: is it possible that, as of Sep 2016, Hellman was seconded to a Cyber equivalent of Crossfire Hurricane run out of FBI HQ (like Crossfire Hurricane). I.e. although Hellman was from NYO, there was no reference to NYO. We KNOW that SA Stephen Somma (also from NYO) was then under assignment to Crossfire Hurricane - Horowitz Case Agent 2. Horowitz Crossfire Case Agent 1 appears to have been Ben Gessford on assignment from Cleveland.

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I believe you are correct, I’m not FBI but did spend 35 years doing criminal investigations. I came to your conclusion about a 1/3 of the way into this blog. Your 7th floor was trying to get two bites of the same rotten apple, hoping to keep the story going.

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As I mentioned in other thread, I don't see any evidence for Bruce Ohr being involved, other than an unsourced assertion by Paul Sperry. Which should not be relied on without some actual back-up. The affair is, as you say, a huge dig-here. And smells of strange directions by the most senior officials.

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Also reminder Bruce Ohr confided everything with Andrew “slick” Weismann during this time. Wink wink.

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Joffe is CHS who’s handler was Grasso. White paper to DOJ came from Nellie Ohr earlier.

Chicago FO received the data from Miami FO.

Sands of Chicago FO wrote EC.

Close hold is new nomenclature to me.

“Undead FOIA

@UndeadFoia

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7h

Apparent that Joffe had provided data to Grasso by Sep 21. That is apparently why Sands thought the investigation was being opened, as she wrote in the EC.

And it was false.”

“Undead FOIA

@UndeadFoia

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9h

On Grasso:

Grasso reached out with IP addresses of someone at Alfa.

Defense says Joffe was the one provided info to Grasso.“

“Undead FOIA

@UndeadFoia

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12h

Email from Heide sent to Gaynor and Sands:

Oct 3, 2016

Emails says they got logs from Miami field office. Want to look for source of allegations. Any way to track down source?

Also reference to IP addresses associated with Alfa

Miami references Central Dynamics logs.“

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Could it be that CFO was involved because of the Spectrum Health angle? I believe they are located in Michigan.

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Thanks Mark for explaining the fbi process and the potential issues.

We know that much of the fbi, senate Intel committee, foreign Intel agencies, press, and doj were involved in the conspiracy to Get Trump.

The question is, what’s Durham’s scope / authority?

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Is it possible Hellman in NYFO was asked to look at the Sussmann data/white papers by FBI HQ because perhaps NYFO was where FBI had the best cyber analysts? IOW, instead of a full investigation, they were just making an evaluation of the evidence, to see if more investigation was warranted (they thought it wasn't.)

Meanwhile, "somebody" on the 7th Floor decided to float the same evidence to the Chicago FO, and lo and behold, they magically decided there was predication to investigate, whereas Hellman and others in the NYFO had concluded there was no predication to go further. Contemporaneously, FBI HQ 7th floor (and/or DOJ?) decided to closely hold the source of the Alfa bank hoax material, refusing to allow the agents in Chicago FO to know the source was working for Hillary/DNC political operatives.

And what was the effect of not telling Chicago FO that Sussmann -- a lawyer billing Hillary's campaign for meeting with Baker to pass along this garbage evidence -- was the source? Well, one consequence would be that Chicago FO would likely spend much more time investigating before reaching the same conclusion that NYFO reached. Had they known it was Sussmann feeding this to FBI, they might have concluded very rapidly there was no "there," there.

But if the object of the conspiracy was to keep Trump's campaign and associates under investigation, then the close hold on Sussmann's identity ordered by the FBI 7th floor had the effect of assuring the Chicago FO investigation would continue for the remainder of the election cycle.

All of which goes to the motives of Sussmann to hide who he was acting on behalf of when he gave the material to Baker, not to mention evidence of conspiracy by FBI leadership in partnership with Sussmann, HfA, Simpson/FGPS, Steele, Joffe, etc.

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While I am of course following the Durham investigation closely (as are many others), the contrast between the FBI's attempts to investigate Trump's Alfa Bank connection and the "investigation" of Shrillary's email server could not be more illustrative of the complete politicization of the FBI and DoJ (which continues to the present day). Shrillary was caught red-handed passing - at the very least! - 22 SCI emails through her server, not to mention innumerable others at lesser classification levels. Trump was almost impeached on completely false charges facilitated by HFA, federal employees in DoJ and the FBI, and enablers in the media while Shrillary's proven and indisputable criminal conduct was swept under the rug. I held SCI clearances for decades and signed the same annual security questionnaire that she did in order to gain access to the material. She knew the consequences, which the signed form elucidates, yet clearly violated her sworn oath to protect the information. It wasn't a question of trying to find out whether the allegations of her misconduct were true or not, ala the absurd FBI "investigation" of Trump's alleged Russia-related activities. She was guilty as sin and should have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to maximum penalties under the law. No defense of her conduct could possibly have been mounted. Yet, here we are, inching along on a trial that would never have happened in the first place had she been held accountable for her earlier felonies. And no one ever seems to bring that up!

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