Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) The column below is being shared by smart folks and is worth reading. But it sidesteps the most vital piece of information about Carter Page—the one at the heart of the Durham probe and GOP attacks on Obama and Biden. I hope you'll read on and RT. emptywheel.net/2020/08/15/the…

1/ For years, I've been obsessed with two queries no one else seemed to consider key. With the now-viral piece of writing I just linked to, their significance is inescapable.

1⃣ When and how did Page join Trump's campaign?
2⃣ When did the IC first get Trump-Russia intel on Page?

2/ These are not esoteric questions. Indeed, the key claim being made now by Durham and Barr is that the supposed deep-state coup plot against Trump (they don't use that language, but certainly they employ that concept) began with an illegal criminal investigation of Carter Page.

3/ An implicit—indeed necessary—premise in Durham and Barr's theory of the case is that the U.S. intelligence community only developed interest in Carter Page once he joined Trump's campaign, as (the theory goes) their entire purpose was to bring down Trump's political operation.

4/ But likewise, an implicit (indeed necessary) premise in the theory of Durham and Barr's *critics*—those who decry a pattern of Trump-Russia collusion—is that the odd populating of Trump's political operation with ill-intended, under-qualified pro-Kremlin hacks was no accident.

5/ Page and George Papadopoulos were, without question, the least qualified non-Trump-family members inside Trump's national security advisory apparatus, the cadre responsible for nearly all of the Trump campaign's 250+ clandestine contacts with Russian nationals. And it matters.

6/ As a former criminal investigator who began researching the Trump-Russia case for a book in mid-2018, I believed it necessary to find out exactly *how* and exactly *when* these two men got jobs with Trump—as I believed it would end up being critical to the Trump-Russia probe.

7/ If you own PROOF OF CONSPIRACY (Macmillan, 2019), now is the time to turn to pg. 116—as it took me so long to track down the *full* answer on Carter Page that the full story of his ascension into Trumpworld didn't come into the Proof series until the series' *second* book.

8/ So how did Page get to Trump? Via work by Ed Cox, who a) spoke to Trump about Trump's political ambitions in December 2013, right after the businessman's return from Moscow, b) was a leader—in December *2015*—of a pro-Kremlin org run by a man who now works for Putin in Moscow.

9/ Dimitri Simes, the Putin "friend" and top Trump adviser on Russia—who fled to Moscow to work as a propagandist for Putin as soon as Maria Butina was arrested—ran the pro-Kremlin Center for the National Interest with help from Cox, who helped the pro-Kremlin Page get to Trump.

10/ Page, who was in contact with Russian intelligence in 2015, went to Ed Cox in December 2015—seeking Cox's connections to Trump via the *New York GOP* rather than the CNI, most likely, as at that point (December 2015) not even Jared Kushner had made in-roads with the CNI yet.

11/ Who—Russian or American—first directed Page to the CNI-affiliated Cox, believing Cox the right man to get an under-qualified pro-Kremlin stooge on Trump's political team? We don't know. But we know Cox didn't have to work hard: by January 2016, Clovis had brought Page aboard.

12/ You may be starting to see why this timeline matters. Per the post linked to atop this thread—and the [DOJ IG] Horowitz Report it quotes—it was on March 2, 2016 that the FBI began the process of opening a counterintelligence case on Page.

That date is *critical* information.

13/ While Page was on Trump's national security advisory committee on March 2, 2016, the committee had only one other member at the time: George Papadopoulos. (Who else?) Sessions was to be its head—but was selected primarily because he had been the first senator to back Trump.

14/ On March 2, 2016, the Trump campaign hadn't yet held even *one* national security advisory committee meeting. It hadn't even announced its team. That wouldn't happen for weeks. So the IC interest wouldn't have stemmed from anyone thinking Page had a major Trump campaign role.

15/ Still, though, Page *was* on the campaign at that point. Couldn't Durham and Barr argue that that's why he was targeted?

Well, no—and here's what the post atop this thread seems to miss. Per the Horowitz Report, the FBI agent who wanted a CI probe on Page said the following:

16/ "The FBI's NYFO CI squad supervisor told us she believed she should have opened a CI case on Carter Page prior to March 2, 2016 based on his continued contacts with Russian intelligence officers; however...they did not focus on Page until he was interviewed again on March 2."

17/ What the NYFO CI supervisor is saying is that, but for the fact that her team was "preparing for a big trial," Page would have been a person of interest in a CI probe sometime *before* March 2016. Does that mean February 2016? January 2016? Or does it mean sometime in *2015*?

18/ Here's where my second longstanding fixation comes in. I have been tweeting out for *years* a Guardian article that confirms that *seven* allied intelligence agencies contacted the US intelligence community—beginning in *2015*—about a particular issue. theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/a…

19/ The seven intelligence agencies from allied nations began reporting "suspicious 'interactions' between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents" in "late 2015," according to The Guardian—and such reports continued to come in through the summer of 2016.

20/ So here's the problem: not many people were connected to Trump in "late 2015." Page wasn't yet aboard; Manafort wasn't yet aboard; Gates wasn't yet aboard; Papadopoulos wasn't yet aboard. So who precisely is being referred to here? Sessions? Flynn? Kushner? Clovis? Don Jr.?

21/ An obvious answer is Flynn, who secretly met the Russian ambassador at his home in December *2015*—while he was advising Trump—and also met Putin that month. But that's just one man; the intelligence the USIC received involved multiple individuals. This is an abiding mystery.

22/ It wasn't until tonight that I realized the Guardian article is easily misread. By the time of the *article*, it was known that certain people were tied to Trump. But isn't it possible that at the time the *intelligence* about those folks came in in "late 2015," they weren't?

23/ According to the Horowitz Report, in the period *preceding* the announcement of Trump's national security advisory committee in March 2016—so, February 2016 at the *very* latest—the USIC got intel that it told Horowitz made it want to open a CI investigation of Carter Page.

24/ Given the timeline of the Russian-intelligence CI case that first brought Page to USIC attention, it's certain that the initial contact that made the USIC interested in Page was in 2015—which by *definition* means it came *before* he was in any way involved with Donald Trump.

25/ So while we're debating whether the surveillance of Carter Page began as a CI or criminal investigation—it was *unambiguously* the former—an argument could be made that... it almost doesn't matter, as Page *wasn't on Trump's campaign at the time any such investigation began*.

26/ The upshot is that the *most* Durham or Barr could claim is that interest in Page *picked up* in the USIC after—despite his lack of qualifications, and continued involvement with Russian intelligence *post*-CIA work—he was named to Trump's NatSec team via CI-concerning means.

27/ Under *no* circumstances can Durham/Barr argue the IC first became interested in Page while he was on Trump's campaign, and even their latest date for dating such interest—March 2, 2016—was *before* Page had been announced as a campaign adviser and before Page's team had met.

28/ By the way, even when Page's team met for the first time in late March—the infamous meeting at which Papadopoulos disclosed to Trump directly that he (Papadopoulos) was acting as a Kremlin agent in trying to set up a Trump-Putin backchannel—Page was absent. He was in Hawaii.

29/ In any case, it's clear allied intelligence agencies had noticed someone besides Flynn—as there were at least *two* people reported on—having contact with Russian intelligence between late 2015 and mid-2016. Page, after Flynn, is Candidate #1, as we know he had such contacts.

30/ If Page indeed had contact with Russian intelligence in 2015, which it seems he now concedes, doesn't that mean that he was in contact with Russian intelligence when he suddenly decided (in December '15) to approach a leader of a pro-Kremlin think tank to try to get to Trump?

CONCLUSION/ The Guardian piece is central—it's a window on what the IC knew of suspicious contacts with Russian nationals, and when. Just so, the timeline of Page's involvement with Trump's campaign is key. The two combined destroy the Durham/Barr theory of the Trump-Russia case.

FURTHER READING/ I mentioned pg. 116 of PROOF OF CONSPIRACY (2019). Pp. 116-118 tell a critical part of the Page-Cox story—though to fully understand the context here one needs to read all the Page, Cox, and CNI content in both that book and its 2018 "Proof series" predecessor.

PS/ The story of how a thoroughly underwhelming and unqualified George Papadopoulos got himself into Trump's orbit is even more bizarre—and damning—but as I covered it in my 2018 and 2019 books and this thread is already quite long, I won't go into that element of the story here.

TYPO/ In Tweet #25, I wrote "investigation" when I meant "interest." The FBI CI folks had sufficient intel to open a CI probe of Page in 2015—before he was on Trump's team. They opened the probe after he was on the team but before he'd been announced or *done anything* for Trump.

PS2/ The same source I linked to above has posted another column worth reading, as it underscores that the IC would've first received—per the Guardian—sufficient intel on Flynn to open a probe in December *2015*, not the 2016-17 transition as Barr claims. emptywheel.net/2020/05/09/the…