Thread by @DawsonSField

Durham's indictment of Sussmann has accomplished something very important.

He has exonerated @Comey's FBI's Chief Legal Counsel James Baker @thejimbaker of illegally leaking classified information to the media and revealed another key battle in #Spygate.

@ButNothingsHappening

So what was Spygate?

Federal contractors illegally accessing NSA data to investigate Trump for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Then using it to trick the FBI into investigating Trump.

The ultimate goal? An excuse to remove honest leaders from FBI & DOJ who investigated Hillary!

They never thought Trump would win in 2016, this was about predicating the firing of FBI Director Comey & others at FBI.
Hillary needed an excuse to hide that she was firing Comey for investigating her, how better than firing Comey for investigating Trump!

Sussman's indictment makes clear that Hillary's alleged approval of the plan on 7/26/17 initiated the "Confidential Project" to spy in Trump & craft documents to trick the FBI.
Sussman's briefing of Baker is just 1 small piece of the case being exposed!
justice.gov/sco/press-rele…

Durham's investigations all stem from investigating what appear to be false allegations against James Baker. The initial investigation was regarding leaks related to NSA spying upon Yahoo users.
Durham exonerated Baker in that leak investigation.

web.archive.org/web/2017122207…

Both the Yahoo NSA info leak & the Trump Alfa NSA information leak. Someone leaked info to reporters, the reporters called Baker, and then Baker was accused of being the leaker.
Baker was accused of leaking Sussmann's documents to reporters in Oct of 2016. nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/…

Questioning of Baker by @Jim_Jordan revealed the investigation was related to leaks to Franklin Foer & David Corn.
While DOJ doesn't officially exonerate people, the Sussmann indictment alleges that Sussmann & his associates provided the information to those reporters, not Baker

Both Reporter-1 & 2 published stories sourced from Sussmann & his agents at Fusion GPS. The leaks Baker was falsely accused of making!

justice.gov/sco/press-rele…

This one is most important, an employee of Fusion GPS alleged that Director Comey had been provided the information, to give them a hook to publish the story. A claim that would lead directly to Baker, did the reporters call Baker just to set him up as the leaker?

None of this was really intended to get Trump, he was never going to win.

It was intended to give Hillary an excuse to fire Comey, Baker & any other honest people at FBI. Fire them for investigating both candidates, to hide it was firing them to end Clinton investigations.

Hillary's entire 2016 plan was to fool everyone into believing that the FBI was investigating Trump. After she lost, it became even more important to create that narrative to damage the FBI.

If you still believe the FBI was investigating Trump, Hillary's team is still winning!

So why would the Clintons & people involved in illegal spying operations want to get rid of Comey & Baker?

Because for 12 years Baker & Comey had been trying to expose & stop illegal spying programs!
The people spying on Trump were already under investigation for illegal spying!

When did this war between the FBI/DOJ & those using illegal spying operations begin?
Soon after 9/11/2001 when the Bush Admin created the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
They told only the Presiding Judges of FISA about it & worked an uneasy compromise to allow it.

The FISA judges accepted that the President had the authority in wartime to order this & they had no jurisdiction. But prohibited the use of any NSA intercepted data as probable cause in a FISA apps.
Expecting any targets of NSA to be flagged in FISA apps so the court would know.

Then James Baker, then with the DOJ's office of Intelligence Policy & Review learned that the system was not working. Information from illegal NSA surveillance was showing up in FISA applications as probable cause.

Baker helped the FISA Presiding Judges learn how the illegal spying program was abusing FISA provisions to get surveillance orders.

The careful compromised was worked out in 2002 to ensure that the judges knew of the cases where an NSA spying target was to be targeted in a FISA.
But the President's team only briefed the 2 presiding judges & concealed the program from the other 10 judges on the court.

The FISA leaders trusted James Baker to hold DOJ accountable for ensuring that NSA information would not be used as probable cause for a FISA warrant.

And that the Presiding Judge would be informed to review every such warrant.

Within months, FISC attempted to rein in FISA applications & surveillance by requiring FBI Criminal Division & intel staff to have personnel from Baker's office at DOJ chaperone the meetings to ensure legal use of FISA acquired material.
FISC was overruled on 5/17/2001 by FISCR

In 2004, Baker found that the NSA was not informing him about targets of NSA surveillance so the agreement could not be trusted to ensure NAS data was not being used in FISA applications.
Presiding Judge Kollar-Kotelly complained to AG Ashcroft setting off a major conflict!

Jim Baker's conclusions lead to Deputy AG Jim Comey, FBI Director Robert Mueller, & AAG Christopher Wray having a hospital bedside confrontation with WH Counsel Alberto Gonzales who wanted to force them to reauthorize the illegal spying program. latimes.com/politics/la-na…

The program was closed for several months but NSA Director Michael Hayden & his allies were able to get a modified version approved by Ashcroft. Eventually Gonzalez was appointed by Bush to replace AG Ashcroft & ensure DOJ supported these programs.

In 2005, Baker identified the use of NSA data in another FISA application that was concealed from the court. DOJ blamed a low level staffer & moved one...
FISC Presiding Judge warned Sec.Def Rumsfeld about the violations.

Gen. Michael Hayden & AG Gonzalez then continued to defend the program. 'Confusing' FISA judges who felt their public statements & reality conflicted.

That's the most polite why I have ever heard someone accuse a senior official of lying!

The judges were also 'puzzled' as they had worked with FBI Director Mueller on 9/12/01 to streamline the FISA procedures to make the quicker & less onerous. Judges felt there was no need for warrantless surveillance but had no jurisdiction to stop it, yet.

In April of 2005, AG Alberto Gonzalez testified to Congress that there had been no abused of the FBI surveillance program since 9/11/01.

But in 2007, Washington Post found evidence that his testimony was not the truth, or at least not the whole truth.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content…

How do we know? Because James Baker & others at DOJ who were fighting against illegal surveillance activities documented their warnings to AG Gonzalez.
So he then played legalistic games of saying he was only talking about intentional abuse of FISA & National Security Letters.

DOJ & FBI officials had documented these problems but AG Gonzalez ignored them & President Bush backed him, because he wanted the illegal programs to continue too!

James Baker identified that he had personally briefed AG Gonzalez on these problems but they continued until the FISC got involved & demanded effective reforms & minimization procedures at the end of the Bush Admin.

From 2007-2019, a continuous string of cases & reviews by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court resulted in requirements for annual reporting of violations & minimization procedures that were approved by the court. They are too voluminous to add here to this thread.

But in 2018, the program that Baker, Comey, Mueller & Wray attempted to stop in 2004, finally ended when NSA closed it & then asked President Trump to rescind authorization & legal authority for the surveillance collection.
wsj.com/articles/nsa-r…

The last effort to keep these spying programs active was the USA Freedom Act in 2015. In January 2016, the NSA's CLPO recommended that these programs needed to be closed.
Triggering a major need to have a pro-surveillance President win in in 2016!
nsa.gov/portals/75/doc…

I have to hit the road but I will continue this thread as time allows!

A few minutes to continue tonight!

By 2013, the FISC rulings made the warrantless spying program untenable. The courts ruled that NSA could not possess giant databases of every phone call, text or DNS activity by Americans. That it was only reasonable with authorized queries.

But phone companies delete records after 1 year to save on storage so NSA would not be able to look back more than 1 year. The solution? Have vendors buy the data from the phone & internet companies, then let NSA query the data from the providers. NSA would only have queried data

The new system would be codified in the USA Freedom Act of 2015. Orwellian of course.
Under this system providers (yellow) would collect & hold all the data "upstream". Users from the IC would query the NSA Enterprise Architecture that was filled with queries approved by a FISA.

In early 2014, it was announced that NSA would be getting rid of it's expansive data & moving it to providers.
If you follow me, you know that Rodney Joffe & Neustar lined up to help NSA solve this problem. Neustar would become NSA's (or one of) providers!
web.archive.org/web/2014121522…

Why Neustar?
Because of a no bid contract since 1997, Neustar was already processing every cellphone call & text in he US & Canada as part of Pres. Clinton's phone mobility program.
Nuestar already handled most of US law enforcements' requests for phone records & surveillance!

And who was leading the way to get Neustar this contract & NSA's data? Rodney Joffe, also known as Tech Executive-1 in the Sussmann indictment who 'exploited' Internet Company-1's (Neustar) senstive relationship with the federal government to spy upon Trump!

You can read my initial thread on the Sussmann indictment here, only big error was not realizing that Agency 1 is Department of Defense

The law enacted to formalize this move to provider controlled data was that USA Freedom Act.
This information isn't entirely true, Neustar was working at the NSA's Utah Data Center since at least November 2011.

I documented Neustar's relationship with the NSA & their Utah Data Center in this thread.
Which is why US Attorney for Utah John Huber's investigation of spying on Trump through NSA data, was started in Utah.
But was handed to Durham to combine the cases!

Joffe claimed to be trustworthy enough for the job!
But Sussman's indictment shows him running a team of researchers who hated Trump, to query Trump & associates in classified non-public databases & utilize it to support Hillary Clinton's opposition research efforts!

Joffe, "Mister Trustworty", provided access to US government data through Office-1 that IC-1 had access to as a subcontractor to another company working for the US government.
On 8/19/16, a Georgia Tech researcher queried that data for Trump related DNS data. Finding little...