I have reason to hope (hope, not expect) that the State Department's (heavy) role in Spygate, including the ICA, will become better known within the next 4 weeks. I was thinking to prepare a thread of materials to help put this in context. Is there is any interest? 100 likes=yes.
Okay. I’ll prepare a backgrounder thread on State Dept involvement in Spygate. Hopefully tomorrow. What is prompting me to do is State’s saying that after 2 years I’ll be getting a response on 4/4/22 to this foia request. And I think other Spygate foias may get responses too.
As things stand now, State hasn’t released a single Winer memo or email for over a year. I figure they were stalling until a statute of limitations expired, and I told them as much. 😎
1/ So here's a quick backgrounder on the State Department's role in Spygate (in bits and pieces when I have time to add to it). Bit # 1: What Jonathan Winer told us about his, and State's, relationship with Christopher Steele: web.archive.org/web/2018020902…
/2 The fact that Winer constantly received Steele's reports, particularly on the subject of "Ukraine policy," and that he shared them with Nuland (who appreciated them), is now well documented and indisputable. foia.state.gov/Search/Results…
3/ It is also a fact that both Steele AND Winer, had done private work for Russian (or "Eurasian") oligarchs. Steele, for his part, never really stopped.
4/ Zoom ahead to the 2016 election. As Winer explains it, in September of 2016, he met with Steele, was allowed to review his dossiers, and then Winer prepared a brief memo to Nuland regarding their contents. [Foia request pending for that memo].
5/ One thing Winer fails to mention, however, is that he also shared his dossier memo with others at the State Department (Finer and Patterson), who presumably told or showed SOS Kerry. (Or perhaps Steele informed Finer and/or Patterson directly? See the vague sentence below).
6/ For reasons best known to him, Winer (and the Senate report as far as I can tell on a quick skim) leave out Fusion's role in Winer getting access to the dossiers. But it happened. (h/t @walkafyre for image from Simpson book). foia.state.gov/Search/Results…
7/ Another thing Winer didn't mention, but which is now known, is that he arranged for Steele to come into the State Department and meet/brief Kathy Kavalec. See Kavalec's notes of this meeting here: thespygateproject.org/ocred_docs/doc…
8/ Yet another thing Winer didn't mention was that, shortly after the Winer-arranged Kavalec/Steele meeting took place, where the Trump/Alfa Bank narrative was discussed, Winer gave Kavalec an "online" piece on Trump/Afla, which she shared with the FBI. foia.state.gov/Search/Results…
9/ It seems likely that the Alfa article Winer/Kavalec passed onto the FBI was among the materials that Sussmann gave Baker back on 9/19/2016, as described in the Sussmann indictment. Dunno specifically who told Winer about it.
10/ Winer also played a role it the Cody Shearer version of the dossier making its way through Steele to the FBI. Winer apparently did not the State Department to that material. The Shearer material was eventually referenced in the addendum to the ICA, in an obscure way.
11/ In any event, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize that, somewhere under a few redactions, we'd learn that Steele's communications with the State Dept. were cycled through the FBI and into the Carter Page FISA applications.
12/ In addition to whatever the State Department told the FBI in Sept-Dec 2016, traces of Steele's allegations bounced around certain top people and likely impacted on their thinking in the runup to the ICA and Congressional investigations into Russiagate.
13/ Certainly Steele's allegations continued to influence Kathy Kavalec and Bruce Ohr, as they worked together on the "Malign Influence Group" to counter actual or suspected Russian influence on Western politics and elections.
14/ Another Kavalec/Ohr email exchange from 11/21/16, after another Ohr/Kavalec/MIG. Ohr met with the FBI the same day, including Peter, Lisa and Andy. Busy day ...
15/ Ultimately, the Malign Influence Group, which was primarily a State Department project, became a source of Russiagate info for Senate inquiries. Everybody in MIG had been swayed by Steele, etc., in one way or another. foia.state.gov/Search/Results…
16/ Certainly Kavalec and Winer took an interest in the 1/10/2017 DNCNN/IC leak-a-thon. Note the highlighter sentence in the email to Winer from Steny Hoyer’s national security advisor.
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