(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)
CTH is going to break down the AG Barr Principal Conclusion notification letter against more than three years of background research. Yes, more than “three years“, is the correct time-frame here. The origin of the DOJ/FBI operation against Donald Trump goes back to 2015; the Mueller probe was a 2017 concluding chapter in the seditious conspiracy effort.
I’m going to cite as much background as possible; however, this review encompasses so much granular history that some parts might be too complex for a person who only recently jumped into the story. Disclaimer: this outline does not fit the narrative from those who claim Mueller and Rosenstein are honorable men. They ain’t.
The first part that matters is a few paragraphs into the letter. Here we find the scale of the investigative group, and a description of some of the investigative paths they traveled:
There are several takeaways that are worthy of notation.
♦ First, the team of 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents is more than the original Crossfire Hurricane investigative team (lawyers added), but includes the exact same group of FBI and DOJ staff level investigative officials that originated the Trump operation long before Robert Mueller was selected to lead them.
The transferring team assembly has been missed by media; and also missed by those who have researched the investigators. It is an important point, yet completely overlooked.
The same career staff unit that originated the unlawful activity to weaponize the DOJ and FBI is the same team that transferred into the Mueller probe. Their supervising officials changed, Comey, McCabe, Baker, Lynch and Yates (et al) were fired; however, the career investigative officials within the process are identical.
The FBI agents transferred from Operation Crossfire Hurricane into the Mueller Special Counsel. This is a key, heck, critical point, that is continually missed and glossed over.
The Mueller Special Counsel in May 2017 did not start from a clean slate of investigators. Yes, new additional lawyers were added, but the investigators who conducted the Mueller probe were the same investigators who were carrying out the 2016 unlawful and illegal surveillance activity.
Initially Lisa Page and Peter Strzok also transferred to the Mueller team; but they had to be removed in July 2017 due to the discovery of their paper trail. If their paper trail had never been discovered they would have remained with their comrades.
And that takes us to an important SIDEBAR that everyone forgets. Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were removed because Inspector General Horowitz accidentally stumbled upon their communication. Originally Horowitz was looking at “media leaks”, and that led him to question Deputy FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe denied the leaks, but when the IG questioned Lisa Page about media contacts she said McCabe told her to give stories to the media. McCabe and Page were contradicting each-other.
The IG asked Page if she could prove her side of the story, Page said she had texts from McCabe and gave her phone to INSD investigators…. the rest is history. Those IG investigators, while validating the instructions from McCabe (showing he lied), uncovered the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page bias and communication that set the ground work for “spygate”. The IG then had to inform Mueller of the compromised position.
♦The second point that needs to be noted from these paragraphs, is the scale of tools used by the Special Counsel (paragraphs reposted for additional review):
Remember, Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein re-authorized and re-submitted the third renewal of the Carter Page Title-1 (not title-3) FISA warrant in mid-July 2017.
That Carter Page Title-1 warrant did not expire until mid-October 2017. So when we look at search warrants, subpoenas, and specifically “50 authorized pen registers“, we should note most of them were generally not needed while the Page FISA warrant was active.
When Mueller’s team began; and remember this is the same operational team – just using a new leader; they had the legal authority to conduct active electronic surveillance on any individual who was within two hops of Carter Page. [So anyone who was in direct contact with Carter Page, and anyone that person was in contact with, and anyone that second person was in contact with.] All of those officials were under surveillance. A typical two-hop Title-1 warrant ends up hitting a network between 900 to 2,500 people.
The “pen registers” are ‘trap and trace warrants’ [SEE HERE], essentially another form of electronic surveillance (phone, email, etc) and extraction. They would not have been needed for anyone within the Carter Page orbit (the Trump campaign), until the Title-1 FISA warrant expired (October 2017). The pen registers fall under Title-3, ordinary domestic, non-FISA related, DOJ suspect searches and inquires, ie. “phone taps”.
Between the Title-1 FISA warrant (entire trump orbit captured) and the 50 pen registers (unknown orbit) and 500 search warrants (also Title-3), there was a massive dragnet of active surveillance and extraction of electronic files from all targets. Active wire-taps, or “listening bugs”, would also fall under the FISA warrant and/or the Title-3 pen registers.
This gives us the scale of reach for those 40 active and assigned FBI agents.
Understanding that President Trump was a defined initial target of the investigation (as also noted in the Barr letter), those wire-taps, electronic surveillance, phone intercepts and listening “bugs” would have applied directly to President Trump and the White House.
[Insert “by the book” notation from President Obama here.]Do you think we’ll ever hear about how Team Mueller took over active bugs within the White House?… I digress.
Again, I’m going to repeat…. The same investigators who initiated the Trump operation in late 2015, through spygate, and into Crossfire Hurricane (July 2016), were the same investigators in May 2017 when Mueller became their boss. That’s three years of active electronic surveillance, intercepts and extraction. Think about it.
♦ Next we move on to Page Two. Here AG Barr tells us the Mueller report has two elements. Russian interference, including Trump’s potential collusion with Russians; and the second element is the Obstruction investigation:
The key point on the Russian collusion/conspiracy aspect is not actually within Barr’s letter, but is really the unwritten 800lb gorilla in the corner of the letter. There was NO actual Russian election interference to speak of. The entire premise was/is absurd.
A Macedonian content farm producing shit memes on social media isn’t exactly a vast Russian election conspiracy. So it is absurd that the predicate for the Special Counsel was to see if Trump was coordinating with irrelevant shit-posting meme providers etc.
The lack of evidence, for a premise that doesn’t exist, leads Robert Mueller to quote in his report: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 3/25/2019)