Your Must Read Post For Today

That would be Larry Johnson’s

AN UPDATE — PRESIDENT TRUMP WAS A VICTIM OF ESPIONAGE, BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

Before you yawn and ask, What else is new? Two points:

1. Larry is republishing a much older piece in which he explains the British angle. You’ll recall that yesterday, in discussing Bongino’s monologue, I stressed that part of the Russia Hoax. Larry’s post has more to say about that.

2. It’s important to understand the mechanics of how these things work if you want to get things straight, know where to look, suss out who the likely players are, etc.

As I was also saying yesterday, Larry explains how the Brit NSA—GCHQ—passed “unfiltered and unmasked” communications collection to the US. The point here is that GCHQ doesn’t labor under the legal restrictions that the USIC does—FISA and the 702 provisions. Don’t laugh. Those provisions of US law may be honored in the breach, but they are a real irritant for the USIC because, first, they slow down the process of accessing and using the data, and second, if the provisions aren’t followed the data can’t be legally used. However, if the exact same data is provided by GCHQ—and I am reliably told that GCHQ has all the reach, and maybe even more, that NSA—then it can be used without any of the US legal irritants and restrictions.

Now, as I said yesterday, it’s illegal to directly request a foreign power to do for the USIC what it would be illegal for the USIC to do directly. However, there’s all the difference in the world—legally—between a direct request and a wink and a nod. In other words, the USIC and GCHQ are well practiced in reading winks and nods and acting accordingly.

However, when it comes to direct political action against a US presidential candidate or, a few months later, an actual sitting president, all that needs to be masked. It would not do for the American public to learn that the Brits were instrumental in taking out that person, aka Donald Trump. Or that their assistance had been requested via winks and nods by our own Deep State. That—the need to hide the Brit role in collusion with the Deep State—is why an elaborate Russia Hoax had to be concocted that would allow the FBI to open a Full Investigation, which was a prerequisite for obtaining FISA coverage that could plausibly provide a cover for the earlier plotting. This went well beyond campaign smears by a candidate, Hillary, that looked like she could lose to Trump.

Even with all that effort, the cover turned out to utterly threadbare—even John Durham, tasked with providing a narrative that justify No Action against the Deep State—had to admit that there was no “predication”, no legal basis, for the FBI’s Full Investigation. Which also meant that there was no basis or predication for the Mueller Witchhunt that flowed directly from Crossfire Hurricane. But Durham didn’t go there. Does that tell you why the Durham Coverup had to be dragged out so long? As Larry makes pretty clear, anybody with any experience in intel could see the Brit and Deep State fingerprints all over this one, and yet the “investigations” dragged on and on … until Trump could be removed. Impeachment didn’t work so, a fake election. And still Trump hasn’t gone away. And now Taibbi and company are stirring things up again.

Bongino was right to tie all this in with Syria and Ukraine. Here’s LJ’s conclusion—but read it all:

To recap, we have the GCHQ routinely collecting on U.S. citizens and sharing that with the United States via NSA.  Let me suggest one additional twist–the Brits decided, with encouragement from people in U.S. intelligence (John Brennan, perhaps? Mike Rogers?) to step up their collection on Donald Trump and associates and then passed that information, unfiltered and unmasked, to their U.S. counterparts.

Why in the world would the Brits do something so risky? I think the answer to that is pretty simple, straight forward and self-evident. Trump’s policy positions on Syria and NATO represented direct threats to British interests. In Syria, Trump expressed a willingness to side with Russia in defeating ISIS and to withdraw the U.S. from the business of nation building. Trump also turned over the apple cart of status quo foreign policy by stating quite plainly that NATO was an anachronism and needed to be given a good, hard look. Anyone want to argue that our British cousins were comfortable with these policy shifts?

Therefore, it is not a train to crazy town to suggest that GCHQ and MI6 were more than willing to lend a hand in helping take out Trump. Could that be one of the key revelations coming down the pike in coming weeks.

Wouldn’t that be a shocker–learning that the Government of Great Britain was working hand in glove with U.S. counterparts to sandbag Donald Trump and his Presidency?

Well, as I said, and as LJ makes clear, everyone with a brain knew that from the get go.

One final point. The dog that did not bark. By that I mean that notwithstanding all of these machinations, no significant intelligence was generated that provided a smoking gun that could have spelled the end of Donald Trump. If such information had been scooped up you can be assured that it would have found its way immediately to the front pages of the NY Times and the Washington Post. That has not happened. I think one more story still to be told is what did the Brits know and when did they know it? I suspect any further investigations into this matter will put a bit of a damper on US/UK relations.