Nu Russiagate alleen nog door de Democraten in het Huis van Afgevaardigden serieus genomen wordt, waarbij de Amerikaanse MSM (met spijt) af beginnen te haken, wordt het vizier gericht op de instanties die het discours mogelijk maakten: CIA, FBI en vooral de leiding er van.

Tot nog toe lag vooral de FBI voor in de frontlijn van onderzoeken naar de rechtmatigheid van het Russiagate-schandaal. Maar alles wijst er op dat de CIA (en haar directeur – in de USA een kabinetspost!! – John Brennan) minstens zo veel aandacht vereisen. Die komt er nu ook. Republikeins Afgevaardigde Mark Meadows verkondigt aan iedereen die het maar horen wil dat de FBI al binnen twee maanden na het opstarten van het onderzoek zeker was dat er van Collusion geen sprake was, en dat heel Russiagate een zandkasteel was..

Meadows did not elaborate on why he believes the FBI knew their investigation was built on a mountain of lies, however according to The Hill’s John Solomon last month, memos which were retroactively classified by the DOJ reveal that a high-ranking government official who met with Christopher Steele in October 2016 determined that information in the Trump-Russia dossier was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media.

Meadows also suggested that the FBI had exculpatory information on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who was fed the rumor that Russia had negative information on Hillary Clinton, and later bilked for said information by a Clinton-linked Australian diplomat.

Het onderzoek van de DOJ [1] breidt zich nog steeds uit. De Democraten in het Huis van Afgevaardigden zijn op de hoogte (zie brief onderaan artikel), maar kunnen het niet stoppen:

The Justice Department revealed on Monday that it is investigating several “non-governmental organizations and individuals” in its “multifaceted” and “broad” probe into alleged misconduct by US intelligence agencies surrounding the 2016 US election, according to a DOJ letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).
The letter was in response to Nadler’s request as to the scope of the investigation, led by Connecticut US Attorney John Durham.
According to Fox News, Durham is looking into whether “foreign intelligence services” played a role. Of note, the highly controversial “Steele Dossier” – created by an ex-British spy for employer Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton campaign an the DNC was referred to as “crown material” in emails unearthed last month.

Pijnlijk is ook dat het DOJ nader onderzoek doet naar wat Special Counsel Mueller onderzocht, en waarom hij bepaalde zaken zo voorstelde als hij deed. Daarmee wordt ook de integriteit van Mueller ter discussie gesteld, en naar het zich laat aanzien niet zonder goede redenen.

Buried in his massive Trump-Russia report, special counsel Robert Mueller admits that he was able to pinpoint Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s precise location in January, 2017 by matching his cell phone signal to a cell site near Trump Tower in New York City, according to Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times.

The special counsel’s report discloses the use of this investigative technique, by which police determine a suspect’s location via a cellphone’s GPS signal.

The Prince narrative is one instance in unredacted sections of the report in which Mr. Mueller’s team explicitly discloses cellphone tracking. It raises the question of whether the FBI applied the process to other investigative subjects — a phone’s GPS signal can disclose its exact location within a few feet. One of the first requests the FBI makes when confronting subjects is to ask for their electronic devices.

The fact Mr. Mueller could pinpoint Mr. Prince’s exact whereabouts suggest he used GPS readouts, which prosecutors can subpoena from cellular service providers. –Washington Times

De top van de FBI dacht niet eens zozer zelf boven de wet te staan, maar kreeg het gevoel de wet te zijn. Van de CIA is bekend dat de Agency zich bij voorkeur zo min mogelij kaantrekt van de regels die haar zijn opgelegd, en haar werkterrein dat exclusief buiten de USA ligt vergemakkelijkt die houding ook. Nu het DOJ ook naar de CIA onderzoek gaat doen wordt het spannend.

The Department of Justice will interview senior CIA personnel as part of a sweeping investigation into the origins of ‘Russiagate,’ according to the New York Times, citing anonymous sources briefed on the matter.

The interview plans are the latest sign the Justice Department will take a critical look at the C.I.A.’s work on Russia’s election interference. Investigators want to talk with at least one senior counterintelligence official and a senior C.I.A. analyst, the people said. Both officials were involved in the agency’s work on understanding the Russian campaign to sabotage the election in 2016. –New York Times

Omdat de bemoeienis van de CIA begon met de buitenlandse spionage op leden van de Trump-campagne.

And why should the CIA be nervous? Fox News commentator Monica Crowley laid it out in an April Op-Ed in the Washington Times: 

The Obama Department of Justice and FBI targeting of two low-level Trump aides, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, was carried out in the spring of 2016 because they wanted to spy on the Trump campaign but needed a way in. They enlisted an American academic and shadowy FBI informant named Stefan Halper to repeatedly sidle up to both Mr. Papadopoulos and Mr. Page. But complementing his work for the FBI, Mr. Halper had a side gig as an intelligence operative with longstanding ties to the CIA and British intelligence MI6.

DOJ-onderzoeksleider Durham weet wie hij spreken wil:

One of the CIA officers Durham wants to question works at the agency’s counterintelligence mission center – one potential conduit between the CIA and the FBI through which the agencies might have passed information during the Trump-Russia investigation. Another senior analyst Durham wants to talk to was involved in the CIA’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The ties between the efforts by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to examine Russia’s election interference are broader. In the summer of 2016, the intelligence community formed a task force housed at the C.I.A. to investigate Russian interference. The group shared intelligence with F.B.I. investigators who opened the bureau’s Russia inquiry in an effort to determine whether any Americans were working with the Russians on their interference during the election. –New York Times

Of note – the CIA focuses on foreign intelligence and is not supposed to investigate Americans. Instead, the agency is required to pass domestic issues which arise during investigations to the FBI.

Ook in Washington is de diepgaandheid van het onderzoek dat nu is gestart ongekend:

The DOJ inquiry, says the Times, “has provoked anxiety in the ranks of the C.I.A., according to former officials. Senior agency officials have questioned why the C.I.A.’s analytical work should be subjected to a federal prosecutor’s scrutiny.” Attorney General William Barr is overseeing the review but has assigned the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, John Durham, to conduct it.

Barr is approaching this challenge with a resoluteness and a calm candor rarely seen in Washington — particularly when it comes to challenging those who run the intelligence agencies.

The big question, once again, is whether President Donald Trump will follow his customary practice of reining in subordinates at the last minute, lest they cross the vindictive and still powerful members of the Deep State.

En we bereiken nu ook het stadium dat een vraag die al jaren bij tijden opnieuw opduikt, maar steeds als aluhoedjes verhaal werd weggezet, weer actueel wordt en serieuze aandacht verdient. De zaak-Seth Rich:

The idea that the DNC email disclosures were produced by a hack – not a leak – makes less and less sense…

After bungling every last aspect of Russia-gate since the day the pseudo-scandal broke, the corporate press is now seizing on the Mueller report to shut down debate on one of the key questions still outstanding from the 2016 presidential election: the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

No one knows who killed Rich in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016.  All we know is that he was found at 4:19 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood “with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back” according to the police report.  Conscious and still breathing, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:57.

Een zaak die omgeven is met mysteries, waaraan niemand zijn handen branden wilde:

But cops said shortly after the killing that they had no immediate indication that robbery was a motive.  Despite his mother’s report of two shots in the back, all the local medical examiner would say is that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the torso.  According to Rich’s brother, Aaron, Seth “was very aware, very talkative,” when police found him lying on the pavement. Yet cops have refused to say if he described his assailant.  A month later, they put out a statement that “there is no indication that Seth Rich’s death is connected to his employment at the DNC,” but refused to elaborate.

Er is meer, maar dan moet u de link hierboven maar volgen. Maar de laatste zin van het opiniestuk waaruit ik citeer kan niet genegeerd worden.

Bottom line: you don’t have to be a loony rightist to suspect that there is more to the murder than Robert Mueller would like us to believe. 

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Brief van het DOJ aan Nadler:

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1. Ministerie van Justitie

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Meer lezen? Op VoL leest u een ander relaas over Russiagate, The Memo, USA2016, Midterms2018, Spygate, de Deep State en Trump, en vanuit andere bronnen dan de bevooroordeelde verhalen van NOS en RTL.

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Voor mensen die nieuw zijn in het scepticisme van het NOS/RTL-verhaal raden we dit stuk aan, dat een en ander in het perspectief van het heden zet.