Reaching for Russiagate

Not too much today as the Kavanagh confirmation fight continues to flood the zone; I actually had to go looking.

Sundance at CTH on the recent revelation the high level DOJ and FBI officials met with DNC officials prior to the election: James Baker Testimony: DNC Lawyers Met With FBI Officials Prior to October 2016 FISA Application…

The DOJ-NSD and FBI are holding a press conference today at 9:30am (Thursday). The topic is unknown, but the timing coincides with a document production subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee for McCabe Memos, the “Woods File” supporting the Carter Page FISA application, and Gang-of-Eight documents on the Russia investigation.
In related news, former FBI chief legal counsel, James Baker, delivered testimony to the Joint House Committee yesterday in the ongoing investigation of corrupt FISA processes and “spy-gate”. Fox News and The Hill both have reports.

There has been some speculation James Baker is a willing/cooperating witness within this ongoing investigation. I would urge skepticism and caution toward that view. Baker is currently a participating member of Lawfare; he is not likely to testify in opposition to his DOJ and FBI ideological allies despite their corrupt activity. Indeed, Mr. Baker attended the closed-door hearing with lawyers to protect all interests, including James Baker.

One of the more interesting leaks from the testimony is found in a report from John Solomon of The Hill where he outlines a Jim Baker admission that lawyers from the DNC (Perkins Coie) met with FBI officials in the run-up to the Carter Page FISA application used against the Trump campaign.

WASHINGTON DC – Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search warrant targeting Trump’s campaign.
Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm. (read more)

Essentially the article is affirming a connection, validated by James Baker, where the Steele Dossier -a product of DNC funding- was deployed with knowledge of origin by the FBI in the FISA application. Those who have followed the story closely may not see this as much of a big discovery; however, the DNC and Clinton Team have adamantly denied their transparent connection – so this could remove their defensive talking point.

The fact that FBI officials were meeting with a lawyer representing the interests of a presidential candidate to frame investigative material against the candidate’s opposition is a serious issue. Then again, with overwhelming evidence highlighting the plot – by now everyone accepts this corrupt activity took place within the FBI under James Comey to the secret benefit of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Of course the use of Perkins Coie lawyers as a go-between provides Clinton plausible deniability. Every corrupt behavior in Clinton world is based on plausible deniability and parseltongue use of obfuscated language.

Additionally Joint Committee republican representative Mark Meadows told The Hill’s new morning television show, Rising, there is evidence the FBI had human sources secretly recording members of the Trump campaign:

“There’s a strong suggestion that confidential human sources actually taped members within the Trump campaign,” Meadows told Hill.TV hosts Krystal Ball and Ned Ryun. (link)

If true, and if it can be proved, this puts an even bigger shadow over the insufferably corrupt institutional behavior already identified within the DOJ and FBI under the Obama administration.

In another article, Sundance fingers the probable identity of the Perkins Coie lawyer who was feeding campaign propaganda to the FBI/DOJ: DNC Lawyer Michael Sussman Was Providing FBI Information For Trump Investigation and FISA Warrant…

According to Catherine Herridge reporting testimony from former FBI legal counsel James Baker revealed that Michael Susmann, representing the Clinton team, was feeding information to the FBI for use against the trump campaign. While this is an explosive confirmation, it is not necessarily surprising.

In March and April 2016, around the same time when NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was shutting down “contractor access” to FBI and NSA databases [an effort to stop the frequent FISA-702(16)(17) search abuses that were taking place], Michael Sussmann met with FBI Counsel James Baker – Global Privacy Summit, April 5th, 2016.

Researcher TWE put a lot of the details of how Sussmann lines-up within the larger story on a twitter thread – SEE HERE – With his former DOJ national security credentials Michael Sussmann integrated himself with the DNC’s cyber security team; and following the DNC ‘hack’ (aka Seth Rich leak) Sussmann introduced the DNC to CrowdStrike. The DNC goal was to identify the intrusion and the extent of the compromise.

Apparently during the testimony delivered by James Baker yesterday, Mr. Baker outlined that Perkins Coie/DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann was giving information to the FBI for use in the collaborative investigative efforts against the Trump campaign.

The only way I know to make Democrats help make such conduct illegal is to use it against them. Then they'll be screaming.

Just an interesting intersection; Perkins Coie was also "my" law firm in the successful publication of a patent at the Smithsonian. They are also the Smithsonian's "private" law firm.