USA 2020 Elections: Thread

[grarpamp]

> https://donaldjtrump.com/
> https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump
> https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-donald-trump
> While the secret documents content would bigly expose something,
> the real story are the political frauds waged against Trump for years...


FBI Unit Leading Mar-a-Lago Probe Earlier Ran Discredited Trump-Russia
Investigation

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/08/18/fbi_unit_leading_mar-a-lago_probe_previously_led_russiagate_hoax_848582.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-tweet-total-declassification-russia-docs-not-order-white-n1244022

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/grassley_to_justice_deptfbipoliticalbiasfollowup.pdf
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/03/30/meet_the_russiagate_prober_who_couldnt_verify_anything_in_the_steele_dossier_yet_said_nothing_for_years_769667.html
https://www.c-span.org/video/?522068-1/fbi-oversight-hearing
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/03/08/the_curious_case_of_stefan_halper_longtime_zelig_of_american_scandals_who_crossfired_trump_818108.html
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/06/23/no_evidence_needed_for_collusion_probe_just_an_obscure_pretext_spearheaded_by_this_man_124020.html

The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President
Trump’s handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is
also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation of the
bureau’s alleged abuses of power and political bias during its
years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.
The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington on July 21, 2022.
(Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

The FBI’s nine-hour, 30-agent raid of the former president’s Florida
estate is part of a counterintelligence case run out of Washington—not
Miami, as has been widely reported—according to FBI case documents and
sources with knowledge of the matter. The bureau’s counterintelligence
division led the 2016–2017 Russia “collusion” investigation of Trump,
codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was
fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several
members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit,
the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by
both Durham and the bureau’s disciplinary arm, the Office of
Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions
about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

In addition, a key member of the Crossfire team—Supervisory
Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten—has continued to be involved in
politically sensitive investigations, including the ongoing federal
probe of potentially incriminating content found on the abandoned
laptop of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, according to recent
correspondence between the Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI Director
Christopher Wray. FBI whistleblowers have alleged that Auten tried to
falsely discredit derogatory evidence against Hunter Biden during the
2020 campaign by labeling it Russian “disinformation,” an assessment
that caused investigative activity to cease.

Auten has been allowed to work on sensitive cases even though he has
been under internal investigation since 2019, when Justice Department
Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred him for disciplinary
review for his role in vetting a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded
dossier used by the FBI to obtain a series of wiretap warrants to spy
on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz singled out
Auten for cutting a number of corners in the verification process and
even allowing information he knew to be incorrect slip into warrant
affidavits and mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
court.

In congressional testimony this month, Wray confirmed that “a number
of” former Crossfire Hurricane team members are still employed at the
bureau while undergoing disciplinary review. In the meantime, Wray has
walled off the former Russiagate investigators only from participating
in FISA wiretap applications, according to the sources.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, has asked Wray for copies of recent case files and reports
generated by Auten and whether he is included among the team the FBI
has assembled to determine which of the seized Trump records fall
within the scope of its counterespionage investigation and which fall
outside of it.

Some former FBI officials worry that Auten, a top bureau expert on
Russia and nuclear warfare, will have a hand in analyzing the boxes of
documents agents seized from Trump’s home on Aug. 8 to help determine
if any of the alleged Top Secret material he kept there might have
been compromised, potentially putting national security at risk.

“It is a disgrace that Auten is still even employed by the bureau,”
said 27-year FBI veteran Michael Biasello. “I would substitute other
analysts and agents.”

An examination of the bureau agents involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid
reveals other connections between them and FBI officials who played
key roles in advancing the Russiagate hoax.

Sources told RealClearInvestigations that Jay Bratt, the top
counterintelligence official in Justice’s national security division,
who happens to be a Democratic National Committee donor, has been
coordinating the Mar-a-Lago investigation with Alan Kohler, who heads
the FBI’s counterintelligence division.

Kohler replaced Bill Priestap in that post after Priestap stepped down
from the bureau amid criticism of his role in the Russiagate probe.
Kohler had worked at FBI headquarters under Priestap, specializing in
countering Russian intelligence threats.

Before that, he worked in London as the FBI’s liaison with British
intelligence and law enforcement. The sources say Kohler was close to
Stefan Halper, an academic and longtime FBI contractor whom the bureau
ran as an informant in a failed effort to suborn Trump campaign
officials. He also worked closely with Stephen Somma, a lead case
agent in the Crossfire Hurricane probe whom Horowitz said was
“primarily responsible” for some of the worst misconduct in the FISA
warrant abuse scandal. Somma is a counterintelligence investigator in
the FBI’s New York field office, where he has been reassigned to the
China desk.

In 2019, Kohler was promoted to special agent in charge of the
counterintelligence division at the FBI’s Washington field Office,
where he worked alongside then-assistant agent-in-charge Timothy
Thibault, who was reassigned by Wray just days prior to the Mar-a-Lago
raid, after whistleblowers raised questions about political bias. They
asserted that Thibault, who has taken aim at Trump and Republicans on
social media, worked with Auten to falsely discredit evidence of
alleged money laundering and other activities against Hunter Biden and
prevent agents from investigating them.

The Washington field office’s counterintelligence division is now run
by Anthony Riedlinger, who previously worked at FBI headquarters as a
section chief under Priestap. Some of the agents involved in the raid
on Trump’s home came from that Washington field office, according to
the sources and FBI case documents.

Bratt, the top counterintelligence official at Justice, traveled to
Mar-a-Lago in early June and personally inspected the storage facility
while interacting with both Trump and one of his lawyers. Trump
allowed the three FBI agents Bratt brought with him to open boxes in
the storage room and look through them. They left with some documents.
After leaving, Bratt made a request to Trump’s lawyer for increased
security at the facility and asked to see surveillance footage from
the security cameras. The lawyer complied with the requests. Months
went by before the Justice Department took the politically explosive
step of sending FBI agents unannounced to Trump’s home, seizing
documents, photos, and other items not just from the storage facility
but from multiple rooms on the property, including the former
president’s office.

Former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker said the search warrant
that agents obtained is quite wide-ranging. He pointed out that it
authorized the seizure of any information in any form related to
“national defense information,” which he said “does not necessarily
include classified material.”

“This is a huge, broad search warrant and a huge, broad investigation
leveled against the former president,” Swecker said.

What’s more, he said the physical search of the former president’s
residence was far more sweeping than first reported and included
unsupervised snooping in several dozen bedrooms, as well as numerous
storage rooms and closets, including those of the former first lady.
FBI agents took numerous boxes and containers of documents and other
material, including several binders of photos and even three passports
held by the former president.

Although Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that the DOJ seeks
to “narrowly scope any search that is undertaken,” details of the
warrant reveal agents had the authority to seize entire boxes of
records—including those potentially covered by attorney-client
privilege and executive privilege—if just a single document inside the
container were marked with a classified marking.

Agents were allowed to also seize any containers or boxes “found
together with” ones containing classified papers, according to
ATTACHMENT B (“Property to be seized”) of the warrant. In addition,
the FBI agents were given the authority to confiscate “any government
and/or presidential records created between Jan. 20, 2017, and Jan.
20, 2021,” which covers Trump’s full term in office. That meant they
were able to take any item related to the Trump administration.

All told, dozens of boxes and containers were removed from Trump’s
residence, very few of which actually contained classified
information, the sources said.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Bratt has given
exclusively to Democrats, including at least $800 to the Democratic
National Committee. The sources said he is close to David Laufman,
whom he replaced as the top counterintelligence official at Justice.
An Obama donor, Laufman helped oversee the Russiagate probe, as well
as the Clinton email case, which also involved classified information.

A Senate investigator told RCI that Laufman was the “mastermind”
behind the strategy to dust off and “weaponize” the rarely enforced
statutory relic—the Foreign Agents Registration Act—against Trump
campaign officials, a novel legal move that the investigator noted is
similar to the department’s current attempts to enforce the
Presidential Records Act against Trump—which is a civil, not a
criminal, statute—by invoking the Espionage Act of 1917.

Laufman signed off on the wiretapping of Trump campaign adviser Carter
Page, which the Department of Justice inspector general determined was
conducted under false pretenses involving doctored email, suppression
of exculpatory evidence, and other malfeasance.

Suddenly resurfacing as a media surrogate for the Justice Department
defending the Mar-a-Lago raid, Laufman has been a key source for
stories by the Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets.

On CNN, for instance, he claimed the documents seized from Trump’s
storage were “particularly stunning and particularly egregious,” and
their discovery ”completely validates the government’s investigation”
into the former president—though he quickly added, ”Whether this
investigation transforms into an outright criminal prosecution remains
to be seen.”

Swecker said that there is strong reason to fear that the FBI’s
counterintelligence division might politicize this case.

“For sure, the FBI has dug themselves into a huge hole because of how
they handled the Clinton (email) case and then Crossfire Hurricane and
Hunter Biden,” Swecker said. “Myself and many of my colleagues think
they are treading on very thin ice here.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “you can’t recuse an entire FBI division.”
Patel: ‘It’s Just Insane’

Former federal prosecutor and Trump administration official Kash Patel
said the FBI may have a personal interest—and a potential conflict—in
seizing the records stored by Trump.

He noted that Trump in October 2020 authorized the declassification of
all the investigative records generated from the FBI’s Crossfire
Hurricane as well as the Clinton email investigation, codenamed
“Midyear Exam,” and he said that the FBI may have confiscated some of
those records in its raid, ensuring they won’t be made public. In
addition, he said, the agency may be digging for other documents to
try to justify, retroactively, their questionable, politically-tinged
2016 opening of the Trump-Russia “collusion” case, which came up
embarrassingly short on evidence.

“Tragically, the same FBI characters that were involved in Russiagate
are the same counterintel guys running this ‘national security
investigation’ against Trump,” said Patel, who deposed Crossfire
Hurricane team members as a former House Intelligence Committee
investigator.

Patel noted that the Horowitz report indicated FBI analyst Auten hid
exculpatory information about Trump’s adviser Page from other
investigators and the FISA court, which should be more than enough to
keep him at arm’s length from other investigations involving Trump.

“And to top it all off, this guy admits [to Horowitz’s investigators]
he’s unrepentant about his role in making up the biggest hoax in
election history, and Wray still lets him be a supervisor at the FBI,”
he said. “It’s just insane.”

The Justice Department’s national security division has ultimate
authority over the grand-jury probe of Trump for possible violations
of the Espionage Act, including alleged mishandling of classified
material—the same statutes invoked in the Clinton email investigation.
(In that case, in contrast, the FBI never searched the former
secretary of state’s Chappaqua, N.Y., mansion, where she set up an
unsecured basement server to send and receive at least 110 classified
emails and where she also received government documents by fax.)

Former FBI counterintelligence official and lawyer Mark Wauck said he
is troubled by signs that the same cast of characters from the
Russiagate scandal appears to be involved in the Mar-a-Lago
investigation.

“If these people, who were part of a major hoax that involved criminal
activity and displays of bias and seriously flawed judgment, are still
involved, then that’s a major scandal,” he said in an interview.