(…) If there is one corrupt DC player who has escaped scrutiny for her corrupt endeavors, it would be Mary McCord. More than any other Lawfare operative within Main Justice, Mary McCord sits at the center of every table in the manufacturing of cases against Donald Trump. {GO DEEP} Mary McCord’s husband is Sheldon Snook; he was the right hand to the legal counsel of Chief Justice John Roberts.
(Credit: Safe and Effective podcast/Jeff Melody)
When the Carter Page FISA application was originally assembled by the FBI and DOJ, there was initial hesitancy from within the DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) about submitting the application, because it did not have enough citations in evidence (the infamous ‘Woods File’). That’s why the Steele Dossier ultimately became important. It was the Steele Dossier that provided the push, the legal cover needed for the DOJ-NSD to submit the application for a Title-1 surveillance warrant against the campaign of Donald J. Trump.
When the application was finally assembled for submission to the FISA court, the head of the DOJ-NSD was John Carlin. Carlin quit working for the DOJ-NSD in late September 2016 just before the final application was submitted (October 21,2016). John Carlin was replaced by Deputy Asst. Attorney General, Mary McCord.
♦ When the FISA application was finally submitted (approved by Sally Yates and James Comey), it was Mary McCord who did the actual process of filing the application and gaining the Title-1 surveillance warrant.
A few months later, February 2017, with Donald Trump now in office as President, it was Mary McCord who went with Deputy AG Sally Yates to the White House to confront White House legal counsel Don McGahn over the Michael Flynn interview with FBI agents. The surveillance of Flynn’s calls was presumably done under the auspices and legal authority of the FISA application Mary McCord previously was in charge of submitting.
♦ At the time the Carter Page application was filed (October 21, 2016), Mary McCord’s chief legal counsel inside the office was a DOJ-NSD lawyer named Michael Atkinson. In his role as the legal counsel for the DOJ-NSD, it was Atkinson’s job to review and audit all FISA applications submitted from inside the DOJ. Essentially, Atkinson was the DOJ internal compliance officer in charge of making sure all FISA applications were correctly assembled and documented.
♦ When the anonymous CIA whistleblower complaint was filed against President Trump for the issues of the Ukraine call with President Zelensky, the Intelligence Community Inspector General had to change the rules for the complaint to allow an anonymous submission. Prior to this change, all intelligence whistleblowers had to put their name on the complaint. It was this 2019 IGIC who changed the rules. Who was the Intelligence Community Inspector General? Michael Atkinson.
When ICIG Michael Atkinson turned over the newly authorized anonymous whistleblower complaint to the joint House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee (Schiff and Nadler chairs), who did Michael Atkinson give the complaint to? Mary McCord.
Yes, after she left main justice, Mary McCord took the job of working for Chairman Jerry Nadler and Chairman Adam Schiff as the chief legal advisor inside the investigation that led to the construction of articles of impeachment. As a consequence, Mary McCord received the newly permitted anonymous whistleblower complaint from her old office colleague Michael Atkinson.
♦ During his investigation of the Carter Page application, Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered an intentional lie inside the Carter Page FISA application (directly related to the ‘Woods File’), which his team eventually tracked to FBI counterintelligence division lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith. Eventually Clinesmith was criminally charged with fabricating evidence (changed wording on an email) in order to intentionally falsify the underlying evidence in the FISA submission.
When John Durham took the Clinesmith indictment to court, the judge in the case was James Boasberg.
♦ In addition to being a DC criminal judge, James Boasberg is also a FISA court judge who signed-off on one of the renewals for the FISA application that was submitted using fraudulent evidence fabricated by Kevin Clinesmith. In essence, now the presiding judge over the FISA court, Boasberg was the FISC judge who was tricked by Clinesmith, and now the criminal court judge in charge of determining Clinesmith’s legal outcome. Judge Boasberg eventually sentenced Clinesmith to 6 months probation.
As an outcome of continued FISA application fraud and wrongdoing by the FBI, in their exploitation of searches of the NSA database, Presiding FISC Judge James Boasberg appointed an amici curiae advisor to the court who would monitor the DOJ-NSD submissions and ongoing FBI activities.
Who did James Boasberg select as a FISA court amicus? Mary McCord.
(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)
♦ SUMMARY: Mary McCord submitted the original false FISA application to the court using the demonstrably false Dossier. Mary McCord participated in the framing of Michael Flynn. Mary McCord worked with ICIG Michael Atkinson to create a fraudulent whistleblower complaint against President Trump; and Mary McCord used that manipulated complaint to assemble articles of impeachment on behalf of the joint House Intel and Judiciary Committee. Mary McCord then took up a defensive position inside the FISA court to protect the DOJ and FBI from sunlight upon all the aforementioned corrupt activity.
You can clearly see how Mary McCord would be a person of interest if anyone was going to start digging into corruption internally within the FBI, DOJ or DOJ-NSD.
What happened next….
November 3, 2021 – In Washington DC – “Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and the House Jan. 6 Select Committee has tapped Mary McCord, who once ran the Justice Department’s National Security Division, for representation in its fight to obtain former President Donald Trump’s White House records. (read more)
That’s the context; now I want to go back a little.
First, when did Mary McCord become “amicus” to the FISA court? ANSWER: When the court (Boasberg) discovered IG Michael Horowitz was investigating the fraudulent FISA application. In essence, the FISA Court appointed the person who submitted the fraudulent filing, to advise on any ramifications from the fraudulent filing. See how that works?
Now, let’s go deeper….
When Mary McCord went to the White House with Sally Yates to talk to white house counsel Don McGhan about the Flynn call with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, and the subsequent CBS interview with VP Pence, where Pence’s denial of any wrongdoing took place, the background narrative in the attack against Flynn was the Logan Act.
The construct of the Logan Act narrative was pure Lawfare, and DAG Sally Yates with Acting NSD AAG Mary McCord were the architects.
Why was the DOJ National Security Division concerned with a conflict between what Pence said on CBS and what Flynn said about his conversations with Kislyak?
This is where a big mental reset is needed. Flynn did nothing wrong. The incoming National Security Advisor can say anything he wants with the Russian ambassador, short of giving away classified details of any national security issue. In December of 2016, if Michael Flynn wanted to say Obama was an a**hole, and the Trump administration disagreed with everything he ever did, the incoming NSA was free to do so. There was simply nothing wrong with that conversation – regardless of content.
So, why were McCord and Yates so determined to make an issue in media and in confrontation with the White House? Why did the DOJ-NSD even care? This is the part that people overlooked when the media narrative was driving the news cycle. People got too stuck in the weeds and didn’t ask the right questions.
Some entity, we discover later was the FBI counterintelligence division, was monitoring Flynn’s calls. They transcribed a copy of the call between Flynn and Kislyak, and that became known as the “Flynn Cuts” as described within internal documents, and later statements.
After the Flynn/Kislyak conversation was leaked to the media, Obama asked ODNI Clapper how that call got leaked. Clapper went to the FBI on 1/4/17 and asked FBI Director James Comey. Comey gave Clapper a copy of the Flynn Cuts which Clapper then took back to the White House to explain to Obama.
Obama’s White House counsel went bananas, because Clapper had just walked directly into the Oval Office with proof the Obama administration was monitoring the incoming National Security Advisor. Obama’s plausible deniability of the surveillance was lost as soon as Clapper walked in with the written transcript.
That was the motive for the 1/5/17 Susan Rice memo, and the reason for Obama to emphasize “buy the book” three times.
It wasn’t that Obama didn’t know already; it was that a document trail now existed (likely a CYA from Comey) that took away Obama’s plausible deniability of knowledge. The entire January 5th meeting was organized to mitigate this issue.
Knowing the Flynn Cuts were created simultaneously with the phone call, and knowing how it was quickly decided to use the Logan Act as a narrative against Flynn and Trump, we can be very sure both McCord and Yates had read that transcript before they went to the White House. [Again, this is the entire purpose of them going to the White House to confront McGhan with their manufactured concerns.]
So, when it comes to ‘who leaked’ the reality of the Flynn/Kislyak call to the media, the entire predicate for the Logan Act violation – in hindsight – I would bet a donut it was Mary McCord.
But wait, there’s more….
Sheldon Snook (Credit: X)
Now we go back to McCord’s husband, Sheldon Snook.
Sheldon was working for the counsel to John Roberts. The counsel to the Chief Justice has one job, to review the legal implications of issues before the court and advise Justice John Roberts. The counsel to the Chief Justice knows everything happening in the court and is the sounding board for any legal issues impacting the Supreme Court.
In his position as the right hand of the counsel to the chief justice, Sheldon Snook would know everything happening inside the court.
At the time, there was nothing bigger inside the court than the Alito opinion known as the Dobb’s Decision – the returning of abortion law to the states. Without any doubt, the counsel to Chief Justice Roberts would have that decision at the forefront of his advice and counsel. By extension, this puts the actual written Alito opinion in the orbit of Sheldon Snook.
After the Supreme Court launched a heavily publicized internal investigation into the leaking of the Dobbs decision (Alito opinion), something interesting happened. Sheldon Snook left his position. If you look at the timing of the leak, the investigation and the Sheldon Snook exit, the circumstantial evidence looms large.
Of course, given the extremely high stakes, the institutional crisis with the public discovering the office of the legal counsel to the Chief Justice likely leaked the decision, such an outcome would be catastrophic for the institutional credibility. In essence, it would be Robert’s office who leaked the opinion to the media.
If you were Chief Justice John Roberts and desperately needed to protect the integrity of the court, making sure such a thermonuclear discovery was never identified would be paramount. Under the auspices of motive, Sheldon Snook would exit quietly. Which is exactly what happened.
The timeline holds the key.
Last point…. Remember the stories of the J6 investigative staff all going to work for Jack Smith on the investigation of Donald Trump? Well, Mary McCord was a member of that team [citation]; all indications are that her background efforts continue today as a quiet member of the Special Counsel team that is still attacking Donald Trump. (Conservative Treehouse, 12/19/2023) (Archive)