Slim Pickens in Russiagate

Not the most productive day. This one escaped my notice for a while, Tom Maguire at Just One Minute. Do Tell

Wow, Russian intel operatives may have been spoofing Mr. Steele of the infamous dossier! Who could have seen that coming, other than anyone who asked themselves what Putin was up to in 2016?

Just as important is that electing Joe Biden this fall will be a restoration of the above-the-law crowd that figured abusing the FISA process to spy on the other party would never be uncovered.

I do love the word "botched" in this classic NY Times sentence. As if misleading the FISA court was just a stray accident rather than their specific intent:

Some of the most important ways the F.B.I. botched the wiretap applications targeting Mr. Page related to the Steele dossier, the inspector general report found. For example, in mid-January 2017, after the first of three renewals, the F.B.I. interviewed the primary sub-source, who contested how the dossier portrayed his information. But the F.B.I. failed to tell the court in the last two applications for permission to continue eavesdropping on Mr. Page that it had a new reason to be suspicious of the dossier’s credibility.

Forget it, Jack - it's the Times.

Slightly less sarcastically, from Matt Margolis at PJ Media, Newly Declassified Evidence: Russia Didn't Try to Help Elect Trump in 2016,

It has become conventional "wisdom" on the left that Russia wanted Trump to win in 2016, and therefore they helped his campaign. The latter belief was debunked by the Mueller report—though many on the left still believe it. The theory that Russia wanted Trump to win has also persisted, but newly declassified evidence suggesting that Russia was spreading false information about Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign "is calling into question the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment that Moscow was trying to help the Republican win the 2016 election," according to a report from Just The News's John Solomon.

Evidence recently declassified by DNI Richard Grenell and Attorney General Barr revealed that as early as July 2016 British intelligence operative and FBI informant Christopher Steele was involved in an FBI investigation of Trump. The same evidence showed that the FBI was repeatedly warned that Steele was susceptible to Russia disinformation and that U.S. intelligence had "concluded some of his Hillary Clinton-funded dossier’s claims about Trump were false information planted by Moscow’s intelligence services."

Experts agreed that efforts by Russia to provide false negative information about Trump to Christopher Steele "undercut the notion that Moscow was trying to defeat Clinton and help Trump."

It has become widely accepted that Russia's hacking of DNC emails meant that they were trying to help then-candidate Trump win in 2016, but this newly declassified information supports the other theory—that Russia was simply trying to sow division and election discord in the United States.

Which has been my position all along.Coming late to the party, Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Mag, Declassified Info Reveals Russia Hoax Was Based on Russian Disinformation.

What the Russians really wanted was to weaken whoever won in 2016. Steele was their useful idiot. Once Steele had passed on the disinformation, the Democrats and their media allies went to work weakening the country, accusing Republicans of working for Moscow, when they were the ones tearing apart the country and undermining the President of the United States using Russian disinformation.

Trump Derangement Syndrome allowed the Russians to subvert Democrats and elements of the FBI.

The louder the Democrats and the media spread the false claim that President Trump was being controlled by Moscow, the more they could obscure the reality that Moscow was controlling them.

As in the Manchurian Candidate, the Russian assets were shouting the loudest about Russia.

Steele, and the FBI taking Steele's Russian disinformation have tainted the FBI for a long time. And Chris Wray is not the man to clean house. He's too busy sweeping the crumbs under the rug.

Margot Cleveland at Da Fed has 7 Devastating Revelations About Crossfire Hurricane In New Releases

1. The FBI Always Intended to Spy on the Trump Campaign . . .
2. FBI Failed to Brief Trump About Its Page Suspicions . . .
3. The FBI Spied on the Trump Administration . . .
4. Rep. Adam Schiff Is a Rotten, No-Good, Two-Faced Liar . . .
5. FBI Relied Solely on Fake News to Support Portions of the FISA Applications . . .
6. The Special Counsel Pushed Pathetic Intel Too . . .
7. Oh, the Sweet Irony

The final take-away from the newly declassified portion of the FISA applications reveals just how tone-deaf and oblivious the FBI agents involved in Crossfire Hurricane were. In the final application, the FBI “notes that Pages continues to be active in meeting with media outlets . . . to refute claims of his involvement with Russian Government efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.”

“This approach is important,” the FBI posits, “because, from the Russian Government’s point-of-view, it continues to keep the controversy of the election in front of the American and world media, which has the effect of undermining the integrity of the U.S. electoral process and weakening the effectiveness of the current U.S. Administration” (emphasis added).

As the kids would say, “I can’t even.”

So, defending yourself from illegal surveillance and attacks on your character from a government agency are "undermining the integrity of the U.S. electoral process and weakening the effectiveness of the current U.S. Administration". Got it.

And speaking to number 4 above, from News Thud, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler Attack Bill Barr, Demand Review Of AG’s Conduct. Margot should have included Nadler as well.