Thread by @JohnWHuber

The FBI’s cover story is they weren’t investigating Trump or his campaign, just looking into 4 people “associated” with the campaign (CP,GP,MF,PM), and only because they got a tip from a friendly foreign government (Australia)

Basic logic blows huge holes in this story

THREAD

Recap: Australia tipped the FBI off to a “suggestion” by @GeorgePapa19 that Russia “suggested” it “may” release unspecified info “damaging” to Clinton to help the Trump campaign

THEN the FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane on July 31 2016

THEN the FBI starting counterintelligence research into identifying who Russia “might” potentially have reached out to within the Trump campaign to coordinate such a release of damaging information with

And only *after* this, did the FBI come up with the names of George Papadopoulos (GP), Paul Manafort (PM), Carter Page (CP) and Michael Flynn (MF) - because of their supposed pre-existing “links” to Russia - and opened cases on all of them by mid Aug 2016

So far, the FBI says, our G men are doing it all by the numbers, by the book. We came up the names of these 4 guys in good faith, only because of their pre-existing Russia “ties” or “links”, they just happened to be working on the Trump campaign too (@Comey swore this under oath)

Here’s the problem with this story

The “Russians” supposedly made this “suggestion” to @GeorgePapa19 in Apr 2016 (via Joseph Mifsud)

DNC hacked emails were released in Jul 2016

That means if coordination/conspiracy happened, it would have *first* happened between
Apr—Jul 2016

So why didn’t the FBI open a case against @MichaelRCaputo? 🤔

—Worked on Trump campaign Nov 15-Jun 16

—Lived in Russia for years working for Gazprom & project for the Kremlin

—Publicly admitted to “election meddling” (IN Russia)

—Moscow Office & staff

—Wife born in USSR

Caputo also had what should have definitely seemed like suspicious contacts with Russian nationals in early 2016, even discussing offers of dirt on Clinton
talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/caput…

Caputo also owned property in Miami, Florida* (supposedly where Russian oligarchs were funneling money into Trump properties)

*Steele’s dossier would later claim Russian consulate officials in Miami were making “deniable” payments to DNC hackers

Caputo also worked with Paul Manafort for years - one of the 4 FBI Crossfire targets - as well as Roger Stone, who would also be investigated by the FBI over Wikileaks (who dumped the DNC emails), eventually prosecuted for lying to Congress/obstruction

Here’s CNN reporting all kinds of innuendo about Caputo and his “strong ties to Russia”, and while this is in 2017, it’s all about things in 2016 and before that
cnn.com/2017/07/14/pol…

All that would suggest that if the FBI was genuinely looking into people “associated” with the Trump campaign who had “ties” to Russia as “potential” people Russia could try to reach out to, that Caputo would be one of the very first names on any list

He wasn’t. Why?

The answer is: by the time the FBI opened Crossfire, @MichaelRCaputo had already left the Trump campaign (he left in June 2016, a month beforehand)

But that wouldn’t have mattered if this was a *genuine* CI investigation looking into the earlier release of the DNC emails

What Flynn, Manafort, Page and Papadopoulos have in common is NOT their “links” to Russia or being potential Russian conduits for damaging information in early 2016 - otherwise Caputo would be on any list with them

What they all have in common, that Caputo doesn’t, is that they were all working on the Trump campaign *at the time*, which was the REAL target of Crossfire Hurricane all along...along with Trump himself

Finally, IG Horowitz seems to have bought this cover story or failed to challenge it

So Durham and Barr, it’s over to you...

/ENDS

N.B. By the way, in recent @MichaelRCaputo news, he’s back working again - this time for the Trump administration in @HHSGov (as of yesterday). Congrats to him cnn.com/2020/04/15/pol…

N.B.2: Just to clarify in case it’s not clear, I think opening a full CI case on Caputo would have been ridiculous based on the thin gruel of the Papadopoulos tip. Same goes for Page/Manafort/Flynn

The issue is, that based on their own logic, the FBI should have done so & didn’t