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Why has government been instituted at all? ​Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.
   ~ ​Alexander Hamilton









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Minority House Intelligence Memo Reveals That 5 Members of Trump Campaign Were Under FBI Investigation in September 2016

2/24/2018

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A memo written by the Democratic minority of the House Intelligence Committee, released Saturday with the approval of the FBI and Department of Justice, disputes the narrative put forth in the memo released February 2 by the supposedly-recused Republican chairman of the committee, Representative Devin Nunes.

The rebuttal memo primarily deals with the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant and two extensions that the Department of Justice obtained on Carter Page, foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. The Nunes memo asserted that the FBI and Department of Justice improperly obtained the FISA warrant by using information contained in the report of a British citizen working for an American company hired by individuals politically aligned with Hillary Clinton.

Page was already known to investigators before he joined the Trump campaign, due to several instances of Russian operatives attempting to recruit Page to spy for the Russian government.

An important passage in the rebuttal memo explains that by September 2016,

“... the FBI had already opened sub-inquiries into [redacted] individuals linked to the Trump campaign: [redacted] and former campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page. As Committee testimony bears out, the FBI would have continued its investigation, including against [redacted] individuals, even if it had never received information from Steele, never applied for a FISA warrant against Page, or if the FISC had rejected the application.”

Footnote 7 in the memo reveals what is likely the list of Trump campaign officials who were, as of September 2016, under investigation by the FBI. mo makes clear that five members of the Trump campaign were under investigation by the FBI for being probable agents of the Russian government:
  • Foreign Policy advisor Carter Page
  • Campaign advisor Michael Flynn, who was considered as a vice presidential running mate, then became National Security Advisor briefly, before resigning or being fired in February 2017
  • Foreign policy advisory panel member George Papadopoulos
  • Campaign manager Paul Manafort
  • Deputy campaign manager Rick Gates.


To understand how this information fits into the picture of what we now know about the Trump campaign and possible interference by Russia in the election, it is necessary to go back to the confusing months around the 2016 election and look at the timeline.
  • July 5, 2016: FBI Director James Comey held a press conference at which he announced that the investigation into Hillary Clinton was closed and they would not press charges. In Comey’s words: “I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest.”
  • September 2016: Five high-level members of the Trump campaign were under investigation by the FBI for being possible Russian agents.
  • October 28, 2016: FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congressional committee head stating that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server was reopened  less than two weeks before the election. The FBI had found Clinton emails on a laptop computer involved in the criminal investigation into Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton’s aide.
 
  • Also October 28, 2016: Rep. Jason Chaffetz, head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sends a message on Twitter announcing the reopening of the investigation:

“FBI Dir just informed me, ‘The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.’ Case reopened”

The Comey letter was released on Twitter 19 minutes later by Fox News analyst Brit Hume.
  • October 31, 2016: The New York Times published an article by Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers entitled, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” That article describes some of the frustration of Democrats like Senator Harry Reid, who expressed his concern to the FBI in a letter released the day before the article was published:
 
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“It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information.”
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  • Also October 31, 2016: The day that article appeared, an article by David Corn was published in Mother Jones that should have gotten more attention, but was overshadowed by the Times article. This article was titled, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.” (This information was compiled into what has become known as the Steele Dossier.)

Clearly, there was evidence in October 2016 that the Trump campaign needed to be investigated, and was in fact under investigation.
  • November 6, 2016: The reopened investigation into Clinton’s emails is closed two days before the election.
  • November 8, 2016: Donald Trump wins the presidency by securing more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton.

I have some questions:

Why did the FBI tell the American people about the Clinton investigation, but not about the investigation into high-level Trump campaign officials?


Why did the FBI find Clinton emails, which turned out to be copies of emails the FBI had already seen, end up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop?

Why did Jason Chaffetz announce on Twitter that the investigation into Clinton was reopened?

​Where did Brit Hume get the letter to Congressional members?

The minority memo from the House Intelligence Committee can be read here.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4387022/Democrats-memo-rebutting-Republican-claims-of.pdf


The letter sent to Congressional committee heads announcing the reopening of the Clinton investigation can be seen here.
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The New York Times article from October 31, 2016 can be found here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html

The Mother Jones article from the same day can be found here.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/

The announcement of the FBI closing the Clinton investigation July 5, 2016 can be found here.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system​
Note: Thanks to former CIA officer Ned Price for pointing out the information contained in Footnote 7.
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New York Times Bombshell: Chief of Staff’s Handwritten Notes Confirm that Trump Pressured Comey to Drop Investigation Into Russian Active Measures and Connection to Campaign

1/4/2018

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Photo source: CNBC
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From The New York Times article by Michael S. Schmidt:

“The Special Counsel has received handwritten notes from Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that Mr. Trump talked to Mr. Priebus about how he had called Mr. Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation. The president’s determination to fire Mr. Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading Mr. Trump about whether he had the authority to remove him.
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“The New York Times has also learned that four days before Mr. Comey was fired, one of Mr. Sessions’s aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging information about Mr. Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the F.B.I. director. It was not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators knew about this episode.”

The article can be found here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/politics/trump-sessions-russia-mcgahn.html

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