Russiagate Just Waitin' on a Rain

It's supposed to be a wet day here, but it hasn't started just yet.

According to Chuck Ross at Da Caller, Peter Strzok Reveals What He Told Mueller About Trump-Russia Collusion

Strzok shared details of his interaction with Mueller in his book, “Compromised,” which hits stores on Tuesday.

“Is this a coordinated conspiracy?” Mueller asked Strzok, according to the book, details of which were reported by NBC News.

“I was skeptical that all the different threads amounted to anything more than bumbling incompetence, a confederacy of dunces who were too dumb to collude,” wrote Strzok, who served as deputy chief of FBI counterintelligence during the Trump probe.

“In my view they were most likely a collection of grifters pursuing individual personal interests.”

You mean, like the Clintons?

With the flaming skull, and big red italic type, Ace notes Paul Sperry: John Brennan Had a Secret Task Force Paid For With Taxpayer Dollars to Investigate Trump (and Throw the Election to The Candidate Who'd Give Him a Job, Hillary Clinton), with more details than were available yesterday:

This is obviously illegal -- that the CIA would use our money to rig our own election?

Paul Sperry reports:

QUESTION: Will AG Barr have the political willpower & intestinal fortitude to "violate" Justice Dept.'s so-called "60-day rule" by publicly revealing developments in the #Spygate investigation before the Nov. 3 election and suffer the wrath of the jackals in the Beltway punditry?

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) September 8, 2020

Sundance at CTH, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Interview With Maria Bartiromo – “Additional Documents”…Video at link, but it's mostly about the stimulus.

“Additional documents that I’ve been able to review say that a number of the players, the Peter Strzoks, the Andy McCabes, the James Comeys, and even others in the administration previously are in real trouble because of their willingness to participate in an unlawful act and I use the word unlawful at best, it broke all kinds of protocols and at worst people should go to jail as I mentioned previously.”..

John Solomon at JTN,  on The mysterious destruction of evidence related to Steele's dossier, State Department contacts "Former State official Jonathan Winer says he destroyed Steele memo at former spy's request." I'll bet the Russians (and the Chinese, the Iranian, the Norks and the Israelis) have them, though. Lock him up for destruction of government records and evidence.

The content of the reports and extent of Steele's access to the department are taking on new significance now that declassified evidence shows Steele worked with several Russian oligarchs and was the recipient of Russian Intelligence Services disinformation in his anti-Trump dossier. In addition, State knew that Steele was producing the intelligence reports on behalf of foreign clients, whom he did not identify, which raises concerns among experts of injecting foreign influence into the State Department.

"Taken in its totality, it looks like Steele was a foreign influence operation, whether witting or unwitting," said Kevin Brock, the former assistant director of intelligence at the FBI. "He was injecting information from Russia, Ukraine, or whoever was feeding him or paying him."

Brock said Winer's admitted destruction of some of the Steele documents was disturbing. "In what universe does a source of the U.S. government get to request all of his records be destroyed? It doesn’t make any sense," he said.

Also, FISA court scolds FBI for 'widespread violations' of privacy rules "Bureau's upstream searching of records routinely violates privacy protections, Judge Boasberg rules."

"There still appear to be widespread violations of the querying standard by the FBI," Boasberg concluded, citing examples in which NSA records were searched for unnecessary or unlawful reasons.

I hope that Trump is using it against Democrats; nothing will be changed until it bites Democrats in the ass.

Via the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 09.08.20 (Evening Edition), Mollie Hemingway asserts that Vindman, Not Whistleblower, Was Driving Force Behind Impeachment. Yes, junior officers think they should be running the government.

It turns out that the heated discussion over the whistleblower, who was previously identified by Real Clear Investigations as the CIA’s Eric Ciaramella, was a diversion from allowing the American people to understand who was the actual instigator of the failed effort to oust President Donald Trump from office.

Rather than being a witness who independently supported the claims of the whistleblower, the National Security Council’s Lt. Col Alex Vindman was the driving force behind the entire operation, according to the book’s interviews with key figures in the impeachment probe and other evidence. The whistleblower’s information came directly from Vindman, investigators determined.

“Vindman was the person on the call who went to the whistleblower after the call, to give the whistleblower the information he needed to file his complaint,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.

“For all intents and purposes, Vindman is the whistleblower here, but he was able to get somebody else to do his dirty work for him,” explained one senior congressional aide.

Vindman was the only person at the National Security Council (NSC) listening in on the infamous call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to be concerned by it. Vindman immediately began talking to his identical twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who also worked at the NSC. The twins both complained to NSC Counsel John Eisenberg. Alex Vindman talked about it with his direct supervisor Tim Morrison, who was also on the call. He talked about it with another NSC lawyer, Michael Ellis.
. . .
In his complaint, the whistleblower claimed “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call” described to him the contents of the conversation. It is unclear if he was sourcing his knowledge just to multiple Vindmans or any other White House officials.
. . .
Vindman repeatedly said that he viewed Trump’s phone call with Zelensky as “wrong,” but he was unable to articulate precisely why. He expressed frustration that the elected president was pushing a foreign policy at odds from the “interagency consensus” of the bureaucracy that he felt should control foreign policy.

Not really Russiagate, but certainly indicative of the kind of FBI and DOJ shenanigans that characterize it, from Christine Dolan and John Solomon at JTN, Court memos detail unethical, unpunished leaks in case handled by potential Biden AG Preet Bharara "Preet Bharara knew about FBI leaks two years before his office denied them. No one has been punished." Of course. At this point I'm ready for the dismantling of the FBI. Move all the actual working crime fighting agents to the Marshall's service, and shit can the administration.

Sundance, Tucker Carlson Exposes The Background Agenda of CNN and Jeff Zucker…

This was a very interesting segment on Tucker Carlson tonight as the Fox News host shares audio recordings between CNN President Jeff Zucker and former lawyer to Donald Trump, Michael Cohen. Within the recordings Zucker is giving advice to Cohen on how to be most effective for candidate Donald Trump. Quite a remarkable segment.

The National Pulse, State Dept Gives 3-YEAR Response Time When Asked For Details About Biden-Xi Private Meetings. Of course, if Biden is elected it would happen never. Also

“I’ve spent a lot of time—apparently, I was told by the folks at State—I’ve spent more time in private meetings with Xi Jinping than any world leader. I have 25 hours of private dinners with him, just he and I, and one interpreter.”

In response to the video, the National Pulse submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the U.S. State Department on May 24th, 2020.

The request sought “any and all information – times, dates, locations, attendees, transcripts, readouts, and any and all references to – from former Vice President Joe Biden’s private dinners with Chinese President Xi Jinping,” emphasizing that “American citizens reserve the right to know the nature and content of Biden’s conversations with the leader of the Chinese Communist Party since the subject matter discussed or ostensible agreements reached in the meetings could influence how Biden uses the office of the presidency and the interests he chooses to promote.”

The State Department, however, replied to an inquiry about the return date by stating its estimated completion would be on April 5th, 2023 – more than halfway into a potential Biden presidency. That’s over two years and two months past inauguration day.

Also, Chinese State Media Gloats: Biden’s ‘Worldview Runs Parallel To Beijing’s’. Well, they paid for it, fair and square.

Well, while I was putting this post together, the rain came: