Stefan Halper Wasn’t Downstream from the Steele Dossier
As you’ve no doubt heard, Devin Nunes and Paul Ryan continue to extort DOJ, ostensibly to find evidence of FISA abuse, but by all appearances, to review intelligence on behest of Trump, delegitimize the Mueller investigation, and create some excuse to start impeaching the people overseeing it.
A Chuck Ross article on the latest effort ends with a reference to Stefan Halper, a dual US-UK citizen who was a Cambridge professor in 2016.
House Republicans are again battling with the Justice Department over information related to the Russia investigation, this time over documents the intelligence community said involves a top-secret source who has provided information to the CIA and FBI.
The mysterious source has also gathered information that was given to Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to The Washington Post.
WaPo reported Justice Department and intelligence community officials issued a stark warning to the White House on May 2 against a request from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. Nunes had submitted a subpoena to the Justice Department on April 24 for records related to the Russia probe.
Justice Department and intelligence community officials argued to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that complying with the subpoena would reveal the identity of a top-secret source and would undermine protocol regarding intelligence sources, according to WaPo.
WaPo provided one small clue about the source: he or she is American.
[snip]
TheDCNF reported that in Sept. 2016, he was approached out of the blue by Stefan Halper, a University of Cambridge professor and former U.S. government official.
Other right wing sites appear sure that Halper is the source in question.
In 2016, Halper resigned from the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar along with Richard Dearlove (Christopher Steele’s old boss) out of concerns Russia had started funding it, which is to say he has close ties with a lot of the spooks that the Republicans are obsessed by. Halper would fit as an American. And as someone at the overlap between MI6, the FBI, and CIA, any information he discovered would ultimately get shared with Mueller.
When Ross first broke the story of weird meetings between Halper and Trump aides in March (a month before Nunes made the mysterious request), he provided very specific descriptions of when Halper spoke with each of three campaign officials (though he kept the identity of the third secret).
Halper first met Carter Page at conference on July 11 and 12 in London (the meeting would have been on the way back from his trip to Moscow), then remained in contact thereafter.
Halper met campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page at a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming election, Page told TheDCNF. The pair remained in contact for several months.
Halper met with the third, unnamed campaign advisor on August 31 or September 1, though did not mention Papadopoulos at the meeting.
Halper also requested and attended a one-on-one meeting with another senior campaign official, TheDCNF learned. That meeting was held a day or two before Halper reached out to Papadopoulos. Halper offered to help the campaign but did not bring up Papadopoulos, even though he would reach out to the campaign aide a day or two later.
Halper first reached out to George Papadopoulos on September 2, then met with him over several days in London in mid-September.
Halper first contacted Papadopoulos by email. In a Sept. 2, 2016, message sent to Papadopoulos’s personal email account, he offered the Trump aide $3,000 to write a policy paper on issues related to Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and the Leviathan natural gas field. Halper also offered to pay for Papadopoulos’s flight and a three-night stay in London.
[snip]
Papadopoulos and Halper met several times during the London trip, including at the Connaught Hotel and the Travellers Club — a classic 19th century club foreign diplomats and politicians frequent. Halper’s research assistant — a Turkish woman named Azra Turk — also met with Papadopoulos. The Connaught Hotel meeting was scheduled for Sept. 13, 2016, and the Travellers Club conclave was two days later.
While discussing the policy paper Papadopoulos was to write, Halper made an out-of-left-field reference to Russians and hacked emails, according to a source with direct knowledge of Papadopoulos’s version of events.
From these meetings and ties to Dearlove, Republicans have gotten themselves worked up to believing that Halper was working off the Steele dossier, perhaps because Ross ties Halper to people in terms of the dossier [see below for explanation that he did not intend to suggest this tie]:
Halper is a close associate of Sir Richard Dearlove — the former MI6 chief.
In December 2016, Halper, Dearlove and espionage historian Peter Morland made international news when they announced they were leaving an organization called the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar due to concerns Russian operatives had infiltrated the group.
Months earlier, in early fall 2016, Dearlove reportedly met with dossier author Steele. Steele sought out Dearlove’s advice on how to proceed with information he gathered on Trump’s ties to Russia, The Washington Post reported. Former MI6 Moscow station chief Steele had been told Trump campaign members were colluding with Kremlin operatives to release emails stolen from the DNC.
Steele’s dossier does not mention Papadopoulos, though the former spy was made aware of the Trump campaign aide while he was working on his anti-Trump document. FBI agents asked Steele during an October 2016 meeting in Rome if he was aware of Papadopoulos. Steele did not have information on Papadopoulos, the former spy said.
But Papadopoulos does have at least one possible connection to the dossier. During the campaign, Sergei Millian approached him. Millian is a Belarus-born businessman who was allegedly an unwitting source for some of the most salacious claims in the dossier.
While it’s possible Halper got wind of the counterintelligence concerns via intelligence sources in London, it doesn’t make sense that his information came via the dossier.
The first dated report on Page is in a report submitted July 19, after Page had already made his trip to Russia (and stopped by London where he met Halper). Both of the sources on the report are Russian, not American or British, so not Halper himself. And the report was reported contemporaneously, meaning Halper wouldn’t have been the only outside source that could have told Steele about the trip, nor would Halper have needed Steele’s sources to learn about it.
So if Halper sought out Page out of counterintelligence concerns, it likely had as much to do with the concerns FBI had in March 2016 (the ones that never appeared in the dossier) as it does July trip, much less any discussions between Steele and Halper about that trip. And if Halper is as spooked up as Republicans want to suggest, by the time of his subsequent communications with Page, he would have known of both those concerns.
Similarly, the timing on the ties between Sergei Millian and Papadopoulos wouldn’t support a tie between Halper’s interest in him and the dossier. The Steele reports believed to tie to Millian date to June (including, possibly, the pee tape) and July. But July is around when Papadopoulos and Millian first met (I suspect, on July 22). So to the extent Millian really was a source for Steele, it would have largely preceded the time he met, much less became close with, Papadopoulos.
But all that happened around the time the Australians informed the US of Papadopoulos’ drunken May ramblings.
So by the time Halper met with Papadopoulos (and met the other aide, possibly as background to the Papadopoulos meeting), the US would have already had official notice of Papadopoulos via the Australians.
If anything, it’d be far more likely that Halper gave the US soft notice of the Downer meeting before the Australians did so formally than that Halper learned of Papadopoulos via some Steele channel.
Admittedly, some nut jobs are wailing about Halper totally independent of the Steele dossier, because they’re outraged, apparently, that the the US sought to chase down whether the unvetted people with troubling ties to suspected Russian spies working for Trump for free were real concerns or not. I’ll return to that in a follow-up. But as background to laying out precisely how ridiculous the Republicans are getting here, understand that it is unlikely whatever investigation, if any, Halper was conducting was based off the Steele dossier.
Update: Ross has taken issue with my claim that he ties Halper to the dossier. I base that claim not just on Twitter exchanges with his readers who make the allegation but on these details (for example, this one that claims Papadopoulos was a source for Millian before they met and that May and September are the same time). Ross introduces the dossier by claiming Page was a central figure in HPSCI’s investigation because of allegations made against him in the dossier, though the reality is that it’s because the dossier was included in his FISA applications.
Page is also a prominent figure in the investigation due to allegations made against him in the infamous Steele dossier. Page’s trip to Moscow in early July 2016 is a central piece of the dossier. Christopher Steele, the author of the Democrat-funded report, alleges Page met secretly with two Kremlin insiders as part of the Trump campaign’s collusion effort.
Page attended the Cambridge event Halper set up, four days after that trip to Moscow.
Then there’s the insinuation, in the passage cited above, that because Halper took an anti-Russian stance with Dearlove in December and Dearlove had a tie to the Steele dossier in September, there must be some continuity between the two events.
Halper is a close associate of Sir Richard Dearlove — the former MI6 chief.
In December 2016, Halper, Dearlove and espionage historian Peter Morland made international news when they announced they were leaving an organization called the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar due to concerns Russian operatives had infiltrated the group.
Months earlier, in early fall 2016, Dearlove reportedly met with dossier author Steele. Steele sought out Dearlove’s advice on how to proceed with information he gathered on Trump’s ties to Russia, The Washington Post reported. Former MI6 Moscow station chief Steele had been told Trump campaign members were colluding with Kremlin operatives to release emails stolen from the DNC.
Ross could have avoided any mention of the dossier by simply saying that Halper and Dearlove took that anti-Russian stance together, but he didn’t.
Finally, there’s the bizarre effort (noted above) to tie Papadopoulos to the dossier via Millian.
I’m glad Ross has now made clear he did not intend to suggest a tie between Halper and the dossier, because (as I think I show here) they make no sense. I do hope his readers who do suggest there’s a tie understand he has disavowed any such suggestion.
My goal with this post (as I suggest above) is to lay groundwork showing that the GOP basis for delegitimizing the investigation — that it purportedly started from oppo research paid for by Democrats — does not have a tie to the next stage, Halper. It seems whatever Ross wrote months ago, he and I are now in agreement that it does not have such a tie.
Update: Ross is still cranky that I suggested his six references to the dossier in a story that’s not about the dossier hasn’t led anyone to imagine a connection. Yesterday morning, Jack Posobiec, with his 300,000 followers, was already suggesting a tie based on a link to Ross’ more recent report.
It seems that the GOP, with McConnell in the lead – taking time away from ushering through a tsunami of young, hard right, white, pitifully unqualified, white, misgonystic, white, anti-abortion Republicans to the federal bench – are pulling out the stops to stay in power, regardless of what Donald Trump is or does.
Their long term play is stay in power. Their blithe assumption must be that regardless of what happens to anyone else, they will survive whatever harm Trump does to the world. (They have their bomb shelters and South Pacific islands, so nuts to you all.) Whatever he does to his own hair, they seem confident he will not muss theirs. The chaos will simply open up new avenues for profit taking.
Imagine what J. Edgar, Curtis LeMay, Dulles and Dulles would do about their party letting its president play lord of the privy to the Russian president in exchange for a few legislative baubles. They would be leading the usurpation against it, not backing it to the hilt.
That perspective helps in a number of ways. It makes a lie, for instance, of Wittes’s hope that Haspel would be able to stiffen the president’s, um, spine against the Russians or protect her CIA from his political interference. She’s built to roll over, like the rest of this GOP.
yeah, the contemporary republican party’s moral imperative is “stay in power” – which, it must be understood, can easily and rapidly degenerate into velvet glove authoritarianism.
using doggerel, one could say,
on the one hand, it’s “pay to play”,
on the other, its “play to stay (in power)”,
bribery and disguised authoritarianism hand-in-glove.
Filling open spots on federal benches with ideologically-aligned lifetime appointments is not just a textbook republican maneuver, it’s how politics has always been.
And it lends credence to the cliche that “Elections have consequences.”
Oh, i’m sorry, and your point is……what? Do you think there is no difference in the norms of extremism in judicial policy between Trump and prior administrations, including Obama, who was pretty centrist, or are you just blowing Trumpism shit?
Nominating qualified like-minded lawyers for seats on the federal bench is textbook. There’s nothing textbook about the GOP sitting on a S.Ct. nomination for over a year in order to steal it. Nor is it textbook to avoid filling a Circuit Court seat for six years. It is not textbook, even under Bush/Cheney, to nominate the stupendously unqualified people Trump has nominated. Even less is it normal for the Senate to approve those nominations.
Brett Kavanaugh, for example, was unqualified to sit on the DC Circuit by virtue of his inexperience and his politics, not his academic accomplishments. But the Trump/McConnell/Federalist Society nominees are a laughing stock. Poor academics, no judicial experience, never tried a civil or criminal case, ignorant of basic law and procedure.
Their “qualifications” are largely youth, misogyny, and disdain for civil rights. That textbook’s pages should join those from the Sears catalog in the outhouse at the bottom of the garden.
Water dreams:
Tsunamis extremely large waves manifest natural power on the surface of our world. R’s oath of office to protect and defend the US Constitution stands as a groin against oportunistic waves. One person one vote is a jetty protecting against waves. Global warming melting glaciers may overwhelm both groin and jetty’s flooding the US Constitution. “Water is gravity’s dog following it everywhere”. By Albert Rios.
Chuck Ross does decent reporting from his side, then craps all over it by pointing to Dim Strassel.
Anyway, the Papadopoulos statement of facts timeline stops in August 2016, so any/everything he did between then and the end of that year is of interest, not least because by then there’s a multi-pronged CI effort to work out what the fuck he’d been up to.
This gets into the realm of Gospel scholarship. The spooks obviously got a wee bit twitchy the moment the foreign policy advisory board was announced, given Page’s history and Papadopoulos’s recent appointment as Director of Stuff at the Centre for Obvious Front Studies. So we have to assume a CI strand in existence from at least that date, initially curious, then snowballing over the summer. Which is when Steele gets hired. But the obviously-complicit Nunes, along with maroons like Meadows who can’t be trusted with the House wi-fi password, pretend that there’s only one strand.
“…. But the obviously-complicit Nunes, along with maroons like Meadows who can’t be trusted with the House wi-fi password, pretend that there’s only one strand…”
ouch!
Scott Dworkin has started a rumor [1] that Nunes is a Mueller target (something I regard as improbable, however much it should be so). John Schindler has put forward [2] an unwarranted extrapolation from a NYT article [3] about Nunes’ interest in Portuguese issues as evidence he is a Portuguese agent.
Clearly something is driving Nunes to engage in the sort of extreme tactics (like outing intelligence sources) that Marcy’s post refers to. It’s strange when the bizarre behavior of a political figure makes rank conspiracy theories start to sound halfway plausible.
1. https://twitter.com/funder/status/994637881753919488
2. https://twitter.com/20committee/status/989245483292987393
3. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/magazine/how-devin-nunes-turned-the-house-intelligence-committee-inside-out.html
Blackmail. Unless he has a dark bank account, Nunes must be the poorest congressman there is. Net worth down from 158k in 2015 to 51k this year. Can’t get even get rich doing insider trading.
In my opinion, Nunes’ relatively small bank account points to his being a useful idiot rather than a blackmail victim. Standard operating procedure for mobsters when cultivating crooked politicians is to mix payoffs with blackmail to maximize their entanglements and dependencies.
My takes is that I think Nunes is showing the signs of a true believer who gets his affirmation from the scraps of praise he is being fed by the inner circle. Blackmail would be wasted on a guy like him.
Judging by Scheiderman, Trump may be a collector of dark secrets to rival J Edgar Hoover. Could explain not only Nunes but also Lindsay Graham.
And Sessions, with his initial, strident and only Senate support of Trump, at the onset?
Blackmail was a specialty of Roy Cohn and J. Edgar, a reflection of how the two were so alike in many respects. Like financial crimes, it’s probably as natural a thing for the Don to do as comb his hair. In the cozy world of NYC real estate, it would have been one avenue to get various approvals, to get people to sell or to stop suing him, to keep a union leader in line, and to prevent his own dirt from hitting the front page.
What’s incredibly shitty is that you know that Trump wasn’t only one who knew about Schneiderman, some of the progressives had to know as well and yet he was shielded. NY and NJ are in competition for the most corrupt government in the country. Although there are probably southern states that are up there too.
The default state of state government in the US is corrupt and terrible. What’s frustrating about states like NY is that they ought to be better.
I think it’s also because ‘King Idiot was a creature of the NYC tabloids, and a kind of distracting court jester for the pages of the NYT written for the actually-rich. That probably came with access to all kinds of gossip to be weaponized for personal benefit, and we know already that fuckers like Bo Dietl were part of his circle.
It’s more than that, though, and with both parties. The Port Authority is a shared slush fund for patronage jobs. The operators fund and direct policy of the politicians. Charles Kushner is a giant example, they use money, blackmail, anything, you name it. And everyone is on the take.
Oh, for sure. Northern urban states converted political machines into modern corrupt entities. Southern states have never really been comfortable with democracy. The midwest is backsliding thanks to fuckers like KKKobach. The northwest and bits of the upper midwest are still fairly decent, but that’s the consequence of white people never being too worried about non-white political power.
But WHO is the keeper of the dark secrets for Trump? Eric? Cohen? I sure would like to hope that Mueller has cracked the stash.
i read recently, and think i might have posted here, that a fellow republican congressman (mccarthy?) said of devin nunes that nunes was, and had always been, an extremely partisan republican.
i’m not sure this is all that might explain nunes’ behavior re protecting trump and attacking the special counsel with clunky stunt-arguments** (that, nonetheless, are effective propaganda), but that hyperpartisanship is a solid base from which to begin evaluating nunes’ behavior.
**beginning with the midnight whitehouse caper with the help of trump nsc young ghosts-in-residence..
Marcy, excuse my case of the dumbz, but what exactly is their point in needing to uncover Halper? Is he supposed to be part of/a plant of some Democratic conspiracy or something? I do not wish to go down the rabbit hole of Trumpism mindset to find out.
Apparently. As I said, I think Republicans have lost the plot and want to do anything they can to suggest the FBI should not investigate CI targets.
Thanks for your response.
Other right wing sites appear sure that Halper is the source in question.
[It is not Halper]
Draining the swamp, slow but sure !!
You Yanks have no idea what is being uleashed upon you. If you think this administration is desperately clinging to power, you’re in for a rude awakening. Power is being poured upon them at a miraculous pace.
Care to elaborate beyond the scare tactic?
Bet that sounded better in the original
GermanRussian.Is it just me or is MSNBC beginning to look like a mash up of NPR and Tucker Carlson?
It brings on tightly-scripted, fast-talking Trumpbots and pastes them against centrist critics with manners and an argument. Inevitable shouting follows, cheer led by the Trumpbot. Viewers learn nothing, owing to the Trumpbot and that MSNBC lets no one left of center within a country mile of its cameras.
The result is crappy, meritless distraction worthy of Kellyanne. He said, she shouted is not news or commentary. It would be hard not to do better.
It’s not you. And for whatever reason, weekends are much worse than weekdays with the wingnuts. I think Hugh Hewitt is on, and Smer-something-or-other.
Probably time to rethink its blowjob prohibition.
As far as pottymouth leader, yes. But I think they are already allowing that (BJ) for corporations. LMAO. The drug ads on that channel are off the charts.
You took the words…Never mind.
I don’t think I’d go on at this point. I did go on in December 2016 (I think Ari Melber brought me on to give Ellen Nakashima an opportunity to complain about my analogy between the CIA/Dem Congress push on Russia and aluminum tubs) and it was really painful waiting to go on, bc the coverage sucked.
If they asked, you should reconsider. Not that it represents a high standard or great opportunity, but the country needs less normalization of this clusterfuck and much less of the abundant devil’s advocates they have on. See @earl’s link to der Spiegel below. That’s what this country needs, straight out, no bullshit, commentary.
It’s the ESPN model. They took a heavy sports schedule and gradually diluted it with more and more hot take shoutathons. ESPN has finally found that it’s a losing model — they’re cutting a ton of employees and getting awfully scared by the struggles of the NFL. But they also can’t figure out how to move away from that model. They’ve forgotten how to teach people to love sports.
Likewise, MSNBC ought to move toward more longer, serious, but entertaining political stories that honestly explain issues, but they are too deeply committed to hot take shoutathons. Ironically, in Maddow they have a model, even if she’s not perfect, but they seem determined not to use it.
bob c –
“They’ve forgotten how to teach people to love sports…”
indeed. at heart, wonderful sports stories are about individuals, or sometimes teams, doing something wonderously skillful, or overcoming some adversity –
lebron james pulling his team thru a playoff series by the force of his talent and will, chrisian reynaldo scoring a key goal on a bicycle kick, ozzie albers’ first weeks in the big leagues, serana williams’ victory at indian wells, a passel of drew brees or aaron rodgers story, etc, etc.
good sports stories are generally not about money contracts, who got fired, who is a dumbassed offensive coordinator, who cheated where and when, and definitely not about “wor”-type stats (sorry 538). sports talking heads are as tedious as political talking heads.
southpaw @nycsouthpaw tweets: An intriguing aside in the new NYT Nunes story
with this screenshot from the article, Suspicions, Demands and Threats: Devin Nunes vs. the Justice Dept:
He also tweets: I’d totally missed this delightful profile [Kashyap Patel, Main Author of Secret Memo, Is No Stranger to Quarrels; 2/2/18] Stay for the kicker.
Does anyone know what it takes to have “earned a certificate in international law from the University College London Faculty of Laws”. And, of course I’m going to highlight 2014.
for no good reason i can articulate, kashyap patel brings to mind young george papadoupolos – which in turn raises the spectre of the late professor misfud.
Wait….do we know he is dead, or just hiding? (I think both are possible, but not sure there is a clear answer yet, that I am aware of anyway).
i don’t know if prof is living well in the mountains of malta or has his remains down in a well somewhere.
i just couldn’t resist the temption for word play on spectre = spook/spy vs spectre = spook/deadman,
based on humorous rumors after prof’s “disappearance” that he was a spy of theirs the russians had offed. :)
The normal “specter” versus the James Bondian “Spectre” is kind of funny isn’t it?
:)
but never bet on my speling.
At the centre of the behaviour, is a theatre of the absurd.
I wouldn’t rule out him being in US custody. We had advanced warning of Pap’s plea, not Putin.
I wouldn’t rule that out either. But will be interested to hear the explanation for that if so. Can we get a Vaughn Index of people we have secreted away in nowheresville?
Locating them physically, I presume, would require skill at marine navigation.
Agree. How do you think their bio’s are similar?
i’m not well informed about either, its more an intuitive sense that they are of the same poseur personality – self-inflating strivers and climbers who will go wherever they sniff opportunity for themselves.
kasyap patel went from being a public defender in florida to being a doj prosecutor to being on the republican staff of the house intelligence committee. this did not seem to me like an ideologues’ journey.
UCL law faculty offers an LL.M. in scores of legal subjects, public international law and international commercial law among them. The LL.M. is a one-year taught course (as opposed to a research degree) that requires studying sixteen modules from four subjects and passing the year-end examination in each.
The current program allows students to take a less rigorous course load in two ways. A post-graduate “diploma” is awarded for successfully completing a ten module program. Papadopoulos opted for the least rigorous program, a post-graduate “certificate”. It is awarded for successfully completing five modules, less than a third of the full-year curriculum.
Thanks, Earl.
And so Patel is a certificate holder and Papadopoulos claims to have a MsC, which some take as a masters degree bus is the same 3rd grade certificate? Thanks.
Patel is an accident waiting to happen. He is not worthy of public employment, but for some reason, he’s popular with certain GOP’ers on Capitol Hill.
His unusual, no-knock arrival in London, without advising the embassy, in hopes of surprising and “interviewing” Steele was one accident already. The former field officer and head of MI6’s Russia desk was able to tell Patel to fuck off. He did.
Wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Kash Patel is talking to Cernovich and rage furby Johnson and other despicables.
So this is the gist of the dust up? Patel was somehow a source for Strassels WSJ story of an informant in/of the Trump Campaign, and has named Halper as that person? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/12/us/politics/devin-nunes-justice-department-documents-special-counsel.html Apologies if EW’s two posts don’t connect this way.
The full-year course load is daunting and not for the feint of heart, and is comparable to training at Oxbridge and Ivy League universities. The format and examinations have been Americanized, UCL would say “internationalized,” in the last twenty years, making it more accessible to those unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies of English university examinations.
The equivalent of the LL.M. is available to non-lawyers, styled as an M.A. It is a common option, for example, for those trained in politics or jouranlism, who need to know about the law, but do not need a full qualification in it. Benjamin Wittes has such training. Papadopoulos, also not a lawyer, might have studied his short course for the same purpose.
Nice takedown of Fearless Leader from der Spiegel:
That’s just for starters. Elsewhere, the der Spiegel cover, released yesterday, portrays Trump as the Middle Finger to Europe, America, the world. And its latest editorial is full and direct in a way unseen in the American MSM.
Der Spiegel is attempting an intervention, the kind used with alcohol and drug addicted families. It is attempting to release the family from the chains of self-deception that help it survive, but which prevent it from seeing the dysfunction destroying it. It starts with the truth.
Re Patel Certificate from UCL in International Law.
UCL website shows that it offers short courses which amongst other things may be part of contining professional development (CPD) and issues certificates of attendance.
A search on their website for ” certificate international law” returns 1 answer :
” Intellectual Property transactions: law and practice” 29 hours face to face over 5 days £3420
Quite what course Mr Patel took in London between graduating from American places of learning in 2002 and 2005, is not clear, but maybe you have a better idea of the sort of thing that he may be referring to.
Thanks for the info. No, I don’t have a better idea about that. I’m interested in the timing, as much as anything else.
Here’s what we know for sure:
1. The Obama administration weaponized the IRS against its political opponents
2. Senior-level officials in the Obama DOJ and FBI whitewashed the Clinton email investigation, losing key evidence, allowing the destruction of evidence, and offering blanket immunity for all involved
3. Illegal surveillance of American citizens using the FISA process was conducted hundreds or thousands of times by the Obama administration, including — unbelievably — giving access to non-government contractors (until shut down by Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA)
4. Senior-level officials in the Obama DOJ and FBI conspired to influence the 2016 election and, failing that, invented an “insurance policy” in the form of manufactured “evidence” of Russian “collusion” to force the resignation or impeachment of President Trump.
5. The “insurance policy” finally emerged in the form of illegally leaked, classified memos by former FBI director James Comey who has admiitted he sought the naming of a special counsel to investigate the very same “collusion” organized by the Obama DOJ/FBI/CIA.
Americans of every political stripe should stand together to destroy the weaponization of our intelligence assets, hunting every one of these criminals down and prosecuting them.
Dear Mr. “Steele”,
Every item of this comment is idiotic right wing screed. Do not ever return with this asinine stupid and ill informed crap. This is not the place for that.
Must be hitting close to the bone to draw bots like that. Thanks for the moderating.
There is a lot of it coming in. It is getting tiring.
If I had the expertise and time, I’d love to set up a generic anti-Trump website just to collect information on who these commenters are.
I have no doubt there are a lot who are true believers, but it would be interesting to see how many are bogus actors operated by some PR campaign or other.
One of the genuinely stupid things about Facebook is that they have a ton of capability to defend themselves against claims of ideological tampering. When they get beaten up about their treatment of conservatives, they could expose just how tightly bound conservative opinions are to astroturf campaigns. And to be fair, there are doubtless liberals who are wrapped up in a fraction too. But instead, Facebook keeps everything in the shadows.
If they want to stay viable, they need to blow this stuff out of the water, and do it out in the open, in the same way that Amazon needs to burn out the fake reviews that are taking over their customer comments. But instead they engage in idiotic moves like hiring John Kyl and Heritage to beat them up for hurting conservative feelings. They seem determined to everything except use their considerable power to wrestle with the problem.
BMAZ, do you ever daydream about handing this stuff to the articling student?
glenn steele –
you clearly don’t belong in intelligegence, **
but you’d fit right in in real estate – glensteele glen ross.
** concerned about our gov’s surveillance of us. start your concern with the entirely covert and genuinely illegal “stellar wind” program in ~ 2004.
1. The Obama administration weaponized the IRS against its political opponents
[Assumes facts not in evidence]
2. Senior-level officials in the Obama DOJ and FBI whitewashed the Clinton email investigation, losing key evidence, allowing the destruction of evidence, and offering blanket immunity for all involved
[Assumes facts not in evidence]
3. Illegal surveillance of American citizens using the FISA process was conducted hundreds or thousands of times by the Obama administration, including — unbelievably — giving access to non-government contractors (until shut down by Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA)
[Probably true wrt illegal surveillance. Note still ongoing, so not just Obama. As to Rogers, assumes facts not in evidence]
4. Senior-level officials in the Obama DOJ and FBI conspired to influence the 2016 election and, failing that, invented an “insurance policy” in the form of manufactured “evidence” of Russian “collusion” to force the resignation or impeachment of President Trump.
[Assumes facts not in evidence. Calls for conjecture]
5. The “insurance policy” finally emerged in the form of illegally leaked, classified memos by former FBI director James Comey who has admiitted he sought the naming of a special counsel to investigate the very same “collusion” organized by the Obama DOJ/FBI/CIA.
[Assumes facts not in evidence. Calls for conjecture]
Americans of every political stripe should stand together to destroy the weaponization of our intelligence assets, hunting every one of these criminals down and prosecuting them.
[Agree. You just do not see the big picture]
*Correction: Does not want to see the full picture. In fact there’s a lot of motion blur in the list.
Dear me
You do realize that your paltry efforts are utterly counter productive.
Far from undermining the the resolve of the authors and the genuine posters here to sift the truth from the crap, your post is a prime example of why the effort to do so is both valuable and necessary.
Kudos to the guardians of proper debate here that voices such as yours are given some space, because we all need reminding that the politically malevolent seek to insinuate themselves everywhere.
Oh, honey.
what is sorely missed is a Hunter Thompson type journalist to add some sarcasm to this American tragedy called trump.
Matt Taibbi? Michael Moore?
Actually, I think the comedians., not the journalists, are the heroes of the Trump era.
bmaz, so no dissent allowed here, correct? Just yay-sayers? Aren’t you afraid of living in a bubble that way?
bellesouth –
you are confusing merit with entitlement.
just because you’re smart enough to breath and have learned to write an english sentence does not mean your ideas are entitled to equal consideration on merit.
That was some shade like a mighty oak.
Elm much better. If you can find.
From up here in Canada:
When did American conservatives become such whining lames?
OT/ONT
Fox news Trumphumper Steve Hilton has written scathing hit piece on Mikey C, will also discuss on his panel show tonite.
“never send for whom the greyhound rolls; it rolls for thee”
:))
I wondered what strategy this site was going to use to spin this sticky development for the left-wing Russiagate crowd. I see it’s chosen the red herring. It’s not Halper’s relationship to the dossier that matters, it’s his relationship to Downer and Papadopolus that matters. And indeed, Halper and Downer are very related through Hakluyt. As for Papadopolous:
“Papadopoulos questioned Halper’s motivation for contacting him, according to a source familiar with Papadopoulos’ thinking. That’s not just because of the randomness of the initial inquiry but because of questions Halper is said to have asked during their face-to-face meetings in London.
According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”
http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/25/george-papadopoulos-london-emails/
It was Halper who sought out Papadopolous and mentioned the existence of the emails. Enter his pal Downer, who gets himself introduced to Papadopolous through his pal Joseph Mifsud (who also tells him about the emails). Downer and Papadopolous set to drinking that fateful night, and Papadopolus can then “brag” about knowing about them to Downer — who could then report to the Americans how he just happened to remember that boast when the proper time came. Circular intel, anyone? Thus Papadopolous becomes the unwitting stooge needed to justify the already ongoing investigation. And the seditious scheme is complete.
Deny all you want, it won’t matter when the indictments come down and the perp walks begin.
Just checking: Do you know when the Downer meeting happened and when the Halper meeting did? Thus far everyone who has spun this line has not known.
Hint: It’s in JacobLaddder’s linked article he obviously didn’t read.
No, dc, it’s clear you didn’t read it.
As I posted to smart-guy “dc” below, Papadopolous is introduced to Downer by Mifsud in May 2016. Mifsud could tell us a lot about both Downer and Halpern — that is, if he hadn’t gone so mysteriously missing these days.
So to be clear (pay attention, dc) Halper’s question asked in fall 2016, clearly indicates he’s fishing: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?” He’s obviously following up to make sure the info has been planted on the dupe. It’s a dead giveaway of his involvement in the scheme.
Remember also that Strzok has already been to London by that time and met with operatives (August 2016). What we’ll see is how much he and Brennan are involved in this scheme, when the indictments are handed down.
p.s. Thank you for engaging me directly, “emptywheel.” I appreciate a courtesy not always extended by site hosts.
Aw jeez Jake, are your fee fee’s hurt because people don’t necessarily take to your right wing nut garbage? How sad!
Do you often confuse thanking the host for her time with sniffing that one’s feelings have been hurt?
Just wondering.
I make exceptions for the consistently ridiculous. Like you.
p.s. This is the key date: Halper met with Downing on May 10, 2016. Why? And what were they discussing?
You should read your link. Halper met Papadopoulos in September, 3+ months after he bragged about emails to Downer and a month after the investigation began based on those brags. You guys should make timelines to test your wishful thinking troll bullshit. This is the problem with the Trumpalos. You can’t think logically or engage in good faith.
I see you didn’t read the link, or what I posted. As I said, the key is when Papadopolous was informed about the emails by Mifsud, which was back in April (via email). Mifsud then personally introduced Downer to Papadopolous in May which set the stage for that fateful night of drinking. Looks like you’re in denial here, too.
Jacob, reply to is not working for me, but when you posted you fairly clearly attempted to put the Halper meeting before the Downer meeting to suggest Halper was the key to the puzzle:
(1) It was Halper who sought out Papadopolous and mentioned the existence of the emails. (2) Enter his pal Downer, who gets himself introduced to Papadopolous through his pal Joseph Mifsud (who also tells him about the emails). (3) Downer and Papadopolous set to drinking that fateful night, and Papadopolus can then “brag” about knowing about them to Downer.
Now you are backpedaling and suggesting a new theory that Mifsud is a US intelligence asset who planted the emails story. Don’t you think you should have said this wack “Mifsud is the key” theory instead of laying out a false timeline and trivializing Mifsud’s role “(who also tells him about the emails)”. This is what I mean by you are not arguing in good faith. You are all throwing bullshit conspiracy theories at the wall and echoing them back again.
TBS= Trumpalo Brain Syndrome
No, you clearly have had your mind muddled by too much MSNBC watching. I suggested Halpern is part of the scheme by asking Papadopolous if he knew about the emails, as a follow-up. Show me where I used the word “before” this is something you invented to discredit me. He did in fact seek out Papadopolous for that purpose. I made it clear that Mifsud also told Papadopolous about the mails as the preparation for his drinking session with Downer (so there’s your “before”). I also made it clear all three men are connected, and how. Really, I don’t know now much simpler I can make this.
“I made it clear that all three men are connected.” They are connected only in your Trumpalo addled brain. And you are a bad liar. In your post you laid out a sequence either that 1) you did not understand at the time you wrote it, or 2) you mixed the evidence-based timeline in bad faith like the rest of the conspiracists are doing right now. Go back and read what you wrote. Have a great weekend!
Again, I made the timeline clear by stating that Mifsud had told Papadopolous about the emails first. I listed Halper at the beginning of the paragraph because he is the main subject of the discussion. You simply tried to seize upon your cockeyed impression as a “gotcha!” to discredit me.
And if you think my Mifsud theory is so “wack” and he couldn’t have been involved in anything, then tell me why he’s strangely disappeared and his bio has been scrubbed off his university’s site? What’s up with that?
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/367004-professor-at-center-of-trump-russia-probe-has-bio-scrubbed-from
You have a great weekend too.
What would the purpose of asking Papadopoulos about the emails 2 months after they had been released?
And if this is such a conspiracy, why didn’t the Dems or the Deep State release details about Papadopoulos knowing about the emails?
Marcy, your Comey-Chuminess and CIA agent past are really coming through. :)
It was that stint in China that gave her away. Plus studying furrin languages and furriners, like that Czech insurrectionist. Might as well hang out a sign that says, “Spook Lives Here.” :-)
And they say the left wear tin foil hats.
As I said, it’s likely a follow-up to ensure the dupe has been properly seeded. Also, I never said anything about “Dems” being aware of the operation. I’m more concerned, however, with whatever coordination Halpern had with Mifsud and Downer before the fateful drinking night.
And there are many odd questions. If Papadopolous was the very basis for the investigation, why did the FBI wait until January 2017 to even interview him?
dc –
i don’t understand this dispute and so, regrettfully, won’t enter.
i can make a few points about trolls though:
1. when they fail to elaborate their argument or repeat the same points over and over
2. when they tell you repeatedly that it is you who have had a failure of comprehension and thus must needs re-read their argument.
3. when they switch subjects or emphasis, aka, duck behind another tree
4. when they bid you a sudden, quick goodnight and disappear – poof.
The issue at hand is what information was contained in the EC that the FBI composed when it initiated the counterintelligence investigation into Russia-Trump Campaign collusion in late July 2016. Nunes stated there was no formal intel report to accompany the EC. How do you undertake a counterintelligence investigation with no intel from your intel agencies? Hmmm…
So we are told via leaks that the Downer – Papadopoulos conversation was part of the EC. What else? Has to be more. Why is there redacted info in the EC that the DOJ doesn’t want Nunes & Co. to see?
Then we go to the Strzok & Page text messages, many parts of which are redacted. Clearly from the unredacted ones, Strzok visited London the first week of August 2016, within days of the opening of the counterintelligence investigation. He met with Downer, but who else? Halper? Other persons associated with Hakluyt? Why was there concern expressed by Strzok about confidentiality with these meetings so as not to embarrass ‘who’ or ‘what’? Could Strzok have met with GCHQ? The latter is a possibility, although it seems that Hannigan was communicating with Brennan in the CIA & not with the FBI.
If it turns out that Halper is the special individual identified in the EC, and he has a formal working relationship with the FBI as an undercover source, then we wold have a new level of intrigue to consider: the FBI manipulating unsuspecting Trump Campaign people to manufacture evidence of a crime.
Stay tuned. It’s a long way to the bottom of this rabbit hole. There is much to learn.
This is seriously gibberish. But, hey, thanks for dropping by.
Today is sock-puppet Saturday.
I’ve been mostly occupied and away today and…..jeebus.
How is it ‘gibberish’? He’s simply going places you don’t want to tread.
His first paragraph points out an obvious fact overlooked by your crowd: that there was never any U.S. intel used to open the investigation. The “Papadopolous kicked off the investigation” narrative is an admission they — shockingly — are relying on the word of an Aussie diplomat. Not an FBI field agent. And we’re called ridiculous for being skeptical about the official FBI narrative?
I pointed out myself Strzok’s London visit, and the fact that he was there to meet with operatives. This easily could have included GCHQ as well as Halpern. And if that’s the case, we do have the possibility that Halpern was used to “seed” dupes with Russian connections that could later be used to justify the investigation.
I’ve also pointed out Halpern’s Hakluyt connection with Downer (look it up, seems you have much to learn) and Brennan’s involvement. So I don’t see how you can disagree with his statement — there does seem like there’s much to be discovered.
First off, it is “Halper”, not “Halpern”, you cluck. Secondly, it is a perfect 88º Saturday and I am watching enjoyable motorsports out on the patio by the pool and have no time for your crap. Bugger off.
Wow, guess I missed one. Spelled it correctly everywhere else though. Oh and make sure you call this poster a “cluck” for making the same error:
emptywheel says:
May 12, 2018 at 2:52 pm
Just checking: Do you know when the Downer meeting happened and when the Halper meeting did? Thus far everyone who has spun this line has not known.
Carter Page gave his presentation in Moscow on July 7, 2016. You can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CYF29saA9w
Halper had previously contacted Page and invited him to attend a symposium in Cambridge, which Page did 4 days following his Moscow trip. Why did Halper contact him? (We don’t know the latter details or when Halper had invited him.) So this meeting with Halper occurred July 11-12 during the symposium. Interesting that Halper’s friend, Richard Dearlove (MI6), was also in attendance at the symposium. {ref: https://www.themarketswork.com/2018/05/10/ties-that-bind-stefan-halper-joseph-mifsud-alexander-downer-papadopoulos/}
The FBI counterintelligence investigation into Russia-Trump Campaign collusion began in very late July (perhaps July 31), so Halper’s meeting with Page occurred circa 2+ weeks prior to initiation of the counterintel investigation and its associated EC document outlining the purpose/background for the investigation. If Halper is an undercover FBI source and his name is present in the EC or supporting documents, then it would likely have reference to his contact/observations/intel gathering on Page. And if Halper is outed in the EC, then it would be presumptive that Strzok met Halper during his London trip the first week of August 2016.
So if Halper was a FBI source, what was his assignment/mission concerning Page? Spying/surveillance? Did he submit reports? Or was it more nefarious…planting evidence for a crime?
Oh yes, I forgot to mention: Halper publicly endorsed Hillary in the Election.
https://sputniknews.com/politics/201611031047032702-clinton-us-uk-cooperation/
Don’t forget Mifsud claimed to be a Clinton Foundation member and was a donor.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/30/joseph-mifsud-papadopoulos-clinton-foundation/
Downer was in tight with the Clinton Foundation, too.
Of course I’m sure it’s just a coincidence all three guys were connected to the Clintons.
I was following the rebuttals by Chuck Ross and I was amazed at how bad he is at basic logic. His point was that since he was the only one talking about Halper, your conclusions had to be wrong. That simply doesn’t follow. Your conclusions about Halper would be unaffected by anyone talking about him or not talking about him. The converse of this bad logic would be claiming something like, “God must be real or else people wouldn’t believe in him.”