Re: "Explosive", "Shocking" And "Alarming" FISA Memo Rocks DC "End Mueller Investigat
Investor's Business Daily...1/03/2018
Fusion GPS' 'Fake Investigation'
And Hillary Clinton's Real Russian Collusion
In their piece, journalists-turned-political investigators Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch made some interesting assertions about Trump and his supposed collusion with the Russians. But once again, they give no proof for what they call their "intelligence reports."
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Someone forgot to tell the investigative duo: Intelligence without proof is merely gossip. And that's exactly what they've sold.
But what Simpson and Fritsch did do in their defense of Fusion GPS' actions was to confirm the worst fears about the real collusion that took place among the Democrats, Fusion and the Russians.
In case you don't remember all the twists and turns of the tale, Fusion was hired in the summer of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. It did so by hiring a former top British spy in Russia, Christopher Steele, whose murky Russian government and espionage ties and even-deeper connections to the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies made him the perfect source.
Steele produced 35 pages of salacious allegations against Trump — including that he cavorted with Russian prostitutes in a bed once used by Barack Obama; that he was offered bribes of more than a billion dollars by the Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft to end U.S. trade sanctions on Russia if he won the presidency; and that Trump officials secretly met with Russian officials to collude on "hacking" the Democrats during the 2016 election.
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Except there's no evidence outside of the so-called Steele Dossier to prove any of this. Indeed, after more than 18 months, the Comey-Mueller FBI investigations of alleged Trump collusion with Russia have come up bone dry.
It's important to note that the Fusion founders in their op-ed did confirm things that earlier had been reported: Namely, that the anti-Trump research was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, as first reported by the Washington Post on October 24 and subsequently confirmed by Fox News and CNN.
As the Post said, "Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research ... Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC."
Indeed, the DNC paid for the research all the way until the very end of October, merely days before the election. Fusion GPS delivered Steele's reports and other research to Elias, for use by the Democrats.
This is important because as we're now finding out, part of the dossier was also used by the FBI to convince a FISA court to let the FBI spy on Trump campaign officials. So there's a real conflict here: A dossier paid for by one political party and its candidate being used by the government to spy on that candidate's opponent.
Yet, Simpson and Fritsch are coy on this and so many other things.
They say, for instance, that it was Steele, not they, who gave the information to the FBI. But of course they would say that. How else could they convince future "clients" that they wouldn't leak the information they dug up to the government or anyone else?
What's more, the dossier was promiscuously shared among reporters and Democratic officials, so much so that it seemed to be an all-but-open secret. They can say Steele, a foreigner, did it, but it was inevitable that the dossier would end up in the hands of the FBI, whose anti-Trump, pro-Clinton director was James Comey.
They also go on to write that "Mr. Steele's sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president."
First off, as the Washington Times' Rowan Scarborough has reported, some Russian sources were paid. As far as we know, that has never been disproven. And most of the dossier's "sources" — spies and government officials — worked for or previously worked for the Kremlin. That is, Vladimir Putin.
Steele himself in the dossier describes those he talked with as "a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure," "a senior Russian government official," a one-time "top level Russian intelligence officer active inside the Kremlin," and a "senior Kremlin official."
Aren't these the people Fusion says Trump is colluding with? Why would they say anything?
What's more, as we've noted before, it was the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, not Trump, who made use of the information in the Steele Dossier during the campaign, information provided by Russian government officials. So who's really colluding here?
The dossier is a mess of unverified charges of criminality against Trump officials, including that they helped coordinate the hacking of Democratic Party computers by the Russian government.
Yet, once again in the op-ed, there is no proof given for any of the dossier's most serious assertions of criminal acts. We're supposed to take their word for it. Or rather, Russian government officials' word.
It would take a book to dispel all of the half-truths and distortions of Simpson and Fritsch — not to mention the omissions.
One major example of the latter: They don't mention meeting with high-level Justice Department official Bruce Ohr during the election campaign, or that Ohr also met with Christopher Steele. Or that Fusion GPS hired Bruce Ohr's CIA-connected wife, Nellie, to do some digging for them. The obvious conflicts here are just staggering. But Simpson and Fritsch say nothing about it.
What's increasingly apparent is that the Robert Mueller investigation, which was kickstarted in 2016 by the Trump Dossier, has turned into a continuation of the Democrats' failed 2016 political campaign against Trump, with vague insinuations of misconduct or outright criminality but never any proof.
Maybe proof isn't the idea at all. Rather it's about finding a way to hobble a highly effective conservative president who seems dead set on changing Washington for good and for the better. Talk about a real threat to the progressive Democrats and their allies in the Deep State.
https://www.investors.com/politics/...-and-hillary-clintons-real-russian-collusion/
