THREAD: Brennan's Fusion Cell
1/ According to @JohnBrennan's May 23, 2017 @HouseIntel testimony, he set up a "fusion cell" of experts from the CIA, NSA, and FBI "to assess Russian attempts to interfere in the U.S. Presidential election".
2/ Brennan's narrative during this hearing is that he was "aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian Officials and US persons involved in the Trump Campaign", leading him to create the fusion cell and Intel sharing with the FBI.
3/ @DevinNunes's 2018 "Report on Russian Active Measures" confirms the existence of the fusion cell, adding that it stood down in mid-November 2016.
4/ MI6/Steele mouthpiece Paul Wood claims that the taskforce was created after Brennan, in April 2016, was shown intelligence from a Baltic State that involved convos of Kremlin money going into the Trump Campaign. bbc.com/news/amp/world…
5/ April 2016 is significant given this is when Paul Manafort started scheming with Konstantin Kilimnik to use his campaign position "get whole", hoping that Oleg Deripaska and his aide, Victor Boyarkin, would notice. Are these Brennan's Russian Officials? theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
6/ According to SSCI's Vol. 5 on Russia, Kilimnik and Boyarkin are Russian Intelligence Officers, never divulging how the US obtained their communications. I surmise these are Brennan's Russian Officials, and the SSCI labeled them so, unlike Mueller, to justify any pre-CH spying.
7/ Karen Greenaway was investigating Manafort at the time for the FBI, and interest from Steele, Fusion GPS, and Ukrainian Prosecutors made him a likely target for allied intelligence agencies and our own.
8/ SSCI's RIO designation of Kilimnik and Boyarkin, besides giving cover to Brennan, also served the purpose of validating various news articles starting from February 2017. @petestrzok even debunked that these two individuals were IO's contemporaneously. nytimes.com/2017/05/24/us/…
9/ @RealScottRitter believes the focus of the fusion cell was Oleg Smolenkov's report, the Steele Dossier, and a Baltic SIGINT report, which the April timeframe would suggest to be the Manafort/Kilimnik/Boyarkin communications. consortiumnews.com/2019/09/14/the…
10/ Given Brennan briefed Harry Reid on August 25, 2016, and 2 days later Reid sent a letter to @Comey with information from the dossier, it is likely that Brennan perjured himself to HPSCI regarding foreknowledge of the Steele Dossier. nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/…
11/ The members of the fusion cell are not well understood, but I have previously surmised that Chris Bort was the Chief of the cell and that Jon Moffa was almost certainly a member as well.
12/ I could go on about @lukeharding1968's report on GCHQ, but to conclude, I believe that Brennan and IC partners' spying on Manafort pre-CH led to the fusion cell, and SSCI's Kilimnik/Boyarkin RIO categorizations seeked to justify it all, it won't work! theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/a…
13/ Btw, the fusion cell is mentioned once unredacted in the five volumes of SSCI reports. They claim that neither the fusion cell members nor the ICA authors were read into Crossfire Hurricane, this would eliminate Moffa as a member of the cell, but SIA Dennis Thrasher could be.
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