Andrew C. McCarthy
New Files Highlight Brennan’s Role Promoting Clinton’s Russia Collusion Narrative
The CIA was not seeking an FBI probe of Clinton; rather, it was pushing an investigation of Trump consistent with her baseless allegations.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/new-files-highlight-brennans-role-promoting-clintons-russia-collusion-narrative/
On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified and released parts of the documents underlying his earlier revelation about Hillary Clinton’s role in orchestrating the Trump-Russia collusion farce.
The new revelations are important, particularly in clarifying a suggestion, made last week by Ratcliffe, that U.S. intelligence agencies referred former Secretary of State Clinton to the FBI for investigation. That suggestion was then repeated by Senate Republicans and in media commentary (including my column, here).
>Summary
To summarize what happened here, in late July 2016, at precisely the time our spy services learned that Russian intelligence was saying Hillary Clinton was scheming to blame the DNC hacking on a Trump-Russia conspiracy, the FBI formally opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation — on the theory that the Trump campaign may have conspired in Russia’s hacking of the DNC emails.
And in September 2016, around the time Brennan was nudging Reid to pressure Comey to aggressively investigate a possible Trump-Russia conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election, the CIA was formally providing the FBI with a memo outlining that Clinton (who was expected to be the next president) wanted Trump investigated for conspiring with Russian hackers to interfere in the 2016 election — which, conveniently, could distract the voters’ attention from her own email scandal. This was information the FBI already had but, according to Reid, was not acting on.
Within days of getting the CIA memo, the FBI began preparations to apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a warrant to monitor Carter Page. After describing the July publication of DNC emails which it accused Russia of hacking, the bureau’s FISA warrant application stated: “The FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with [Donald Trump’s] campaign.”
The CIA did not want the FBI to investigate Hillary Clinton. The CIA — with the Obama White House and Reid in the loop — wanted the FBI to act on Hillary Clinton’s unfounded allegation that Donald Trump had conspired with Russia to hack the DNC. And the FBI willingly obliged. Because it had no actual evidence implicating Trump in Russia’s cyberespionage operations, the FBI had to rely on the Clinton campaign-sponsored Steele dossier, which either made up that allegation out of whole cloth or based it on disinformation from a “primary subsource” who, it turns out, the FBI suspected was a Russian asset.
Astonishing.
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