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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Nov 9, 2022 • 52 tweets • 17 min read • Read on X

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for those weary of election, some Russiagate.
Upon receipt of Horowitz report, Barr (video ; script realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/12/…) identified key issue as why FBI persisted with Crossfire, even concealing exculpatory Danchenko interview info. Assigned to Durham.

3 years later, Durham hasn't provided any answer. His prosecution of Sussmann was irrelevant to Barr's question. And his prosecution of Danchenko perversely targeted the person whose information ought to have "collapsed" the FBI operation, rather than using him to answer Barr.

despite pointlessness of Durham indictments, exhibits to Sussmann trial had some interesting information though unfortunately the information was almost entirely limited to 2016 BEFORE the events relevant to Barr's question. Thus far, shamefully, NO Danchenko exhibits available

Notice that Mar 8, 2017 Talking Points repeat, almost verbatim, an important footnote in Oct 2016 Carter Page FISA application. (In process, providing additional confirmation of "Russian-based sub-source" as infill to redaction.)

A couple of important observations on this.
By March 2017, it was KNOWN to FBI that Steele's "Russian-based sub-source" actually lived in northern Virginia and that, rather than FBI having "no control" over him, FBI was in process of making him an FBI "made man" CHS.

investigation of these (and similar) misrepresentations by FBI were what Barr assigned Durham to do, but which Durham has either not done or not reported on.

The version of the Mar 8, 2017 Talking Points memo didn't show the lead author who was responsible for these false misrepresentations. Or who approved it.

The answer is quite delicious. I'll pick up this thread in a few hours, but readers are invited to guess.

Readers were quick to guess the right answer: Lisa Page was lead author of the Mar 8 Talking Points. There is proof of this in multiple emails involving DOJ scattered through a FOIA series. (No corresponding FBI disclosure). I'll probably do sepaate thread on them.

due to the Strzok-Page texts, Lisa Page was obviously a person of extreme interest to Horowitz who discussed her involvement at Crossfire at considerable length, but either was unaware of her authorship of Mar 8 Talking Points or failed to discuss. Here are H's two main findings:

in the opening summary of Horowitz Report (which is all that most reporters read), Horowitz said that Page "attended some of the discussions regarding opening" of Crossfire, but "did not play a role in the decision" to open. One other irrelevant mention in Summary.

while Horowitz' statement in Summary was technically correct, we now know that Page, as lead author of Mar 8 Talking Points misrepresentations, had integral role in escalation of Crossfire Hurricane from a investigation that had lost its predicate into lawfare insurrection.

Horowitz gave a longer set of findings re Lisa Page in text on 67-68. Priestap said Page was "'not in charge of anything' and that he never witnessed her attempt to steer the investigation or dictate investigative actions". Horowitz didn't ask Priestap about Talking Points memo.

James Baker (now with Twitter) said Page "attended high-level meetings and knew facts of the case, but was not in a 'decision making position' and had no 'decision making
authority'". He didn't mention that Page wrote memo to authorize the critical escalation of Crossfire.

McCabe said Page "was the 'facilitation point' between CD and his office during the investigation". McCabe left out the part about Lisa Page being lead author of the Mar 8 Talking Points which escalated Crossfire into lawfare insurrection.

Lisa Page herself said "she did not have a formal role in Crossfire Hurricane investigation but may have participated in team meetings to keep McCabe aware of status of investigation".

Page's statement concealed critical information about the period that later concerned Barr.

as I've mentioned previously, ONE DAY AFTER Sessions' recusal, Comey held meeting with his top consiglieres in which they decided to take Crossfire public, using Congressional briefings as a mechamism. They were tired of "being beaten up" and criticized.

on Saturday Mar 4, 2017 (recusal +2) at 8:34 PM, McCabe sent a text to REDACTED saying that “boss [Comey] wants us to push the congressional side as much as possible”.

a few weeks later, on March 30, after s..t hit the fan from Comey's public reveal of Crossfire at public House Intel Committee hearing on Mar 20, Comey lied to Trump that he hadn't appeared at hearing "as a volunteer", but documents prove that Comey instigated and orchestrated it

back to Sat Mar 4. McCabe held conference call with DOJ about their plan to take Crossfire public via Congress. At 9:01 PM, McCabe emailed Priestap and Lisa Page commissioning them to draft talking points to "frame the brief to the hill".
They were moving quickly after recusal.

Lisa and Priestap were at the office before 8 AM Sunday Mar 5, later joined by Strzok. Many texts from that day (in several versions), all of which make more sense in context now available.

at 4 PM Mar 5, McCabe scheduled a conference call between senior Comey consiglieris and the Talking Points trio of Priestap, Page, Strzok - all of whom had also been present at the conception of Crossfire Hurricane in late July 2016.

at 6:20PM on Sunday Mar 5, Lisa Page distributed the first draft of the Talking Points to senior FBI officials (Comey's consiglieris) plus Moffa and Strzok

the next day (March 6 - 3 days since recusal), FBI officials briefed senior DOJ (ODAG) officials. Notes on this meeting by Scott Schools, Mary McCord and Tash Gauhar were made available on May 8, 2022 during Sussmann disclosure courtlistener.com/docket/6039058…

according to the notes by DOJ officials, the FBI agents made NO mention in the briefing about Danchenko's revelations on the lack of valid sourcing for Steele dossier allegations.

At 11:14AM, Monday Mar 6, 2017, Lisa Page emailed a draft version of the Talking Points to Tashina Gauhar (DOJ Office of DAG) and Mary McCord (DOJ National Security Division.) McCord was and is a very partisan Democrat activist.

through the day of March 6, 2017, the Talking Points - presumably containing the false information about the "Russian-based sub-source" over whom FBI "had no control" - was circulated to DOJ officials George Toscas, Stu Evans, plus Baker, Ghattas, Priestap, McCabe

in the evening, Strzok texted REDACTED saying that "entire process is trying to get DOJ to say yes on brief". And DOJ were "idiots if they really think we're going to wait for a yes. Or that the D[Comey] is like the idiots they work for and actually need TPs in order to brief".

most of these texts were withheld in original release of Strzok-Page texts. Below is the only text from this sequence in original drop. And the texts obviously have much more meaning when placed in context of documents about progressing TPs in order to take Crossfire to public.

the next day (Tues March 7 recusal+5), FBI urgently sought meeting with DOJ to review Talking Points. It seems to have taken place in mid-afternoon, tho (thus far) no minutes or notes from this important briefing have been released.

at 9:46AM Mar 7, REDACTED asked for info on scheduling of briefing.

at 11:3AM, an intriguing text: "we just sent the new version [TPs] to DOJ. Rybicki's view is earliest the briefing could be is mid-afternoon. Jay knows ... "

Who is Jay? FBI or DOJ?
Laufman and CECS were heavily involved in Russiagate. Could it be Laufman's deputy, Jay Bratt?

at 1:55PM, Mary McCord emailed Scott Schools (cc Toscas, Evans, Gauhar) with DOJ NSD comments on Talking Points, saying "FBI is eager to move" and offered to meet FBI that afternoon. Schools reverted with comments and proposed meeting times.

that afternoon, Devin Nunes announced first public hearing on Russia's meddling in US elections", inviting Comey. Strzok passed news on to Page.
Nunes had played into Comey's plan, as this was precisely the opportunity to take Crossfire public that Comey had been engineering.

at 6:36PM, Strzok was "about to explode", "furious" about some "exceptionally bad judgement" to do with the Russiagate case/Talking Points. Needless to say, no one seems to have asked Strzok what the "exceptionally bad judgement" was.

through Mar 7 evening, DOJ officials worked on Talking Points. None of them corrected the flagrant errors and falsehoods featured in the approved version. Schools at 7:59PM; Gauhar at 10:22PM. Gauhar and Rybicki worked at scheduling next day meet betw Comey and A/DAG [Boente]

on March 8, Lisa Page finalized the Talking Points memo that would be used to escalate Crossfire. Rybicki coordinated with DOJ officials to arrange meeting betw Comey and A/DAG Boente.

in the evening of Mar 8, Gauhar confirmed to Lisa Page and others that Comey and A/DAG Boente had met. She edited TPs to reflect "a concern" expressed by Boente. Which unfortunately wasn't about the multiple inaccuracies and omissions in the TPs.

while Comey and FBI were progressing their plan to take Crossfire Hurricane to the public, other plots were also festering. CNN did long article on March 9 reviving the Alfa Bank hoax that FBI cyber had sneered at in October. edition.cnn.com/2017/03/09/pol…

CNN reported that the Alfa Bank "communications" were being investigated by FBI counterintelligence. We now know that McCain's Armed Services Committee (pals with Joffe) was using Democrat operative Dan Jones, who was coordinating with Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS. A total hoax.

about one week after Comey's Mar 8, 2017 meeting with A/DAG Boente (then senior DOJ Russiagate official), Comey met with Senate Judiciary leadership (Grassley, Feinstein), thus progressing plan set in motion immediately after Sessions' recusal.

One presumes that Comey met with other congressional leadership (SSCI and Dem House leadership), but nearly all records of Comey's actions leading up to his March 20 testimony are presently concealed.

because documents from March 2017 (as lawfare insurrection ratcheted up) are so scarce, I'll parse the notes from Comey's briefing.
Their first question was about jurisdiction. First noted discussion was about Flynn. (In which, of course, FBI misrepresentations are large issue.)

next, there is mention of "Mayflower" - maybe someone can explain.
Discussion turned to contemporary Trump allegations of wiretaps. Comey: "no info to support to Potus". Other than Carter Page FISA, NSLs on Flynn and others, Joffe running around with DNS info (and disinfo)

second question was for documents/transcripts. Comey answer not reported.
third question was redacted beyond identification, but alluded once again to Flynn and whether they would get a summary report,

questions then turned to Steele dossier, then the main predicate for continuing Crossfire. Comey did NOT report to Senate Judiciary that Danchenko had revealed the lack of sourcing for dossier. Instead, Comey deceptively said "Smoke, no fire yet". A totally dishonest rendering.

Comey did admit to Senate Judiciary that "no evidence that Trump campaign colluded", but this admission was offset by "Smoke, no fire yet".

the Mar 8 Talking Points approved by DOJ for briefing congress contained the lurid Steele dossier claim that Manafort "managed" relationship between Trump campaign and Russia, using Carter Page as intermediary. Feinstein chimed in that "Manafort is the serious player".

(presumably) Comey raised question of how Papadop know about "the offer" when "news of hacking hadn't happened yet". In fact, email hacking itself hadn't happened yet (it took place on May 23-25). FBI was then and still obfuscates on the chronological impossibility.

Comey said (speaking accurately for a change) that "much in the press is not true".

on March 20, Comey testified to House Intel Committee, announcing for the first time that Trump campaign was under FBI investigation for possible collusion, at very time that original Crossfire predicate had more or less fallen apart. (Tho this was concealed by Comey).

Comey, who had long told Trump that he could not publicly disclose existence or non-of investigation, had just announced investigation into Trump campaign, but refused to comply with Trump request to say publicly what he said privately- that Trump himself was not undervestigation

on Mar 30, Trump made one of the telephone calls that Comey documented. Trump (reasonably) didn't understand why Comey could make the one announcement, but not the other. Comey blew him off with insolent bafflegab, more or less daring Trump to fire him. We know what happened next

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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Aug 12

Here's a listing of Minority HPSCI Staff in early 2017. Most of the redactions in yesterday's release can be identified here.

In two of the 302s, WHISTLEB described the HPSCI Democrat system for exfiltrating secret information from a secure room in a three letter agency: presumably FBI, from which copies and notes were prohibited.

As a work-around, three HPSCI Democrat staffers would attend the Secure Room and, after each visit, "would immediately compose summaries" on a standalone computer set up in a back room by "committee's network administrator" for exclusive use by "Russian team" members. After the three Russian team members had completed their visit summaries, they briefed certain other staffers.

All of the names underneath the redactions can be plausibly identified from contemporary HPSCI Democrat staff rosters as shown below.

Here is a transcription of each of the two descriptions of the Russian team and secondary briefees, showing character counts.

The Russian Team had two 16s (at least one with LN8) and an 11. (number denotes character count of full name.)

The secondary briefees were a 6+5 (12), two 13s (one a 5+7), an 11, and the communications director (a 14). One of the 13s was a new hire.

Read 9 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 31

Durham Classified Appendix is almost entirely about "Clinton Plan". Unsurprisingly, nothing about the post-election events during which Russiagate collusion hoax actually metastasized under FBI and CIA into a national flesh-eating disease.
Emails from Lenny Benardo of Soros' Open Society Foundation feature prominently. Note that Benardo was mentioned in a Washington Post article by Demirjan and Devlin Barrett on May 24, 2017 (a few days after Mueller appointment) - archive archive.is/w43O2 reporting that the email had been dismissed by FBI as "unreliable". DWS, Benardo and Renteria said at the time that they had never been interviewed by FBI.

https://x.com/FOOL_NELSON/status/1658525717183725569

Fool_Nelson proposed Julie Smith as Foreign Policy Advisor-2 in Durham report at the time:

https://x.com/FOOL_NELSON/status/1658525717183725569

Here's a July 27, 2016 email (attributed to Benardo) which contains a detail relevant to the argument against @DNIGabbard's first drop, claiming that Russian interference concern was NEVER about election infrastructure, but always about DNC hack and Buff Bernie memes. Here Benardo talks about how to make Russia "a domestic issue" by raising the spectre of a "critical infrastructure threat for the election". Brennan subsequently did just that: raised concern about "infrastructure threat". ODNI played down that threat in their briefings and ultimately in the proposed post-election PDB of December 8, 2016 which was cancelled by Obama intervention.

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 22

the ICA version in the recent DNI documents is a different version (dated January 5, 2017) than the released version (dated January 6, 2017). There were many changes overnight - some substantive.

Before editorializing, I'll laboriously go through comparisons - final version on left, previous day version on right. (I apologize for not marking this on each of the following slides.)

The Jan 6, 2017 version contained a preface entitled "Background... The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution", not present in the Jan 5 version (as shown). It has two sections.

The first section entitled "The Analytic Process" stated that these assessments "adhere to tradecraft standards".

"On these issues of great importance to US national security, the goal of intelligence analysis is to provide assessments to decisionmakers that are intellectually rigorous, objective, timely, and useful, and that adhere to tradecraft standards."

Now recall the dispute over inclusion of Steele dossier information in the ICA as an appendix and, as we recently learned, as a bullet supporting the assessment that Putin "aspired" to help Trump. Some IC professionals objected to the inclusion of Steele dossier information on the grounds that it did not meet tradecraft standards for inclusion in an ICA. Comey, McCabe and FBI insisted on its inclusion on the grounds that Obama had said to include "everything" - which they interpreted as mandating inclusion of Steele dossier information even though it didn't meet tradecraft standards.

Reasonable people can perhaps disagree on whether this was justified or not. What was not justified was the claim that the inclusion decision complied with "tradecraft standards". It was bad enough to include non-compliant material, but the claim that the included material "adhered to tradecraft standards" was miserably false. The recent Tradecraft Review should have addressed this fault.

The preface also included the following assertion:
"The tradecraft standards for analytic products have been refined over the past ten years. These standards include describing sources (including their reliability and access to the information they provide), clearly expressing uncertainty, distinguishing between underlying information and analysts’ judgments and assumptions, exploring alternatives, demonstrating relevance to the customer, using strong and transparent logic, and explaining change or consistency in judgments over time."

The "past ten years" here refers to the period of time since the savage tradecraft review by the WMD Commission, an excellent repot on a previous intelligence failure of similar scale to the Russia collusion hoax as an //intelligence failure// - which it was (even if non-criminal).

They state that "standards include describing sources (including their reliability and access to the information they provide)". Now apply that to the description of the Steele network in the classified appendix (declassified and released in 2020) shown below and transcribed as follows:
"the source is an executive of a private business intelligence firm and a former employee of a friendly foreign intelligence service who has been compensated for previous reporting over the past three years. The source maintains and collects information from a layered network of identified and unidentified subsources, some of which has been corroborated in the past. The source collected this information on behalf of private clients and was not compensated for it by the FBI".

This description does not remotely comply with the warranty in the Preface. We know that Steele (the "source") had told the FBI that his information was funneled through a "Russian-based sub-source" who Steele refused to identify. Steele did however tell the FBI that Sergei Millian was one of the sub-subsources to the "Russian-based sub-source". By mid-December 2016, the FBI had figured out that Steele's "Russian-based sub-source" was Igor Danchenko, an alumnus of U of Louisville, Georgetown and Brookings Institute, who lived in northern Virginia and had an American-born daughter. A fulsome description of sources IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WARRANTY IN THE PREFACE would have included these details and more.

It would have also stated that the FBI planned to interview the Primary Sub-Source as soon as possible. Given the importance of the document, the obvious question from any sane reviewer of the draft ICA would be: "uh, why don't you interview Steele's Primary Sub-Source right now? Today? " "And, by the way, why are you saying that he is 'Russian-based' when he lives in northern Virginia?"

If the reviewers had known that Steele's Primary Sub-Source had lived in northern Virginia and was available for interview, maybe they would have said: "uh, maybe we should hold off this ICA until we talk to Danchenko. This is a big document, maybe we should do some due diligence". But they weren't given that option, because Danchenko's location in northern Virginia was concealed from them. The warranty in the prefatory Background was false.

Subsequently, a few weeks later, when the FBI interviewed Danchenko and he revealed that there wasn't any "layered network" and that the key allegations were based (at best) on an anonymous phone call and that many of the sourcing claims in the dossier were untrue, the intelligence community had an obligation to fess up. To retract their claims about the Steele dossier, which, by the end of January, had emerged in public consciousness as the driving predicate of the Russia collusion investigation. Once the FBI knew that the sourcing claims were fraudulent, they had an obligation to disclose that to the rest of the IC and to publicly disown the Steele dossier, which had become important to the public precisely because of its endorsement in the ICA.

Read 9 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 14

Trump's latest tariff venture is a 50% tariff on copper, ostensibly for national security reasons. Copper markets are something that I analysed in the 1970s; so I know the structure of the markets and statistics. I was even been involved as a junior analyst in a trade case about US copper tariffs.

Under the US Defense Production Act, Canada is considered "domestic production" for the purposes of national security, but neither Trump nor the Canadian government seem to have had any interest in this legislation.

I remember the difficulties of trying to make long-term forecasts of copper supply and demand. Copper is also a market with voluminous statistics maintained consistently for a very long period. US Geological Survey for US consumption and primary production of refined copper for 1950-2024 are shown below. As someone who, in the 1970s, actually thought about what this chart would look like, it was interesting to re-visit.

In the 1920s and 1930s, US copper company were industrial behemoths: Anaconda, Kennecott, Phelps Dodge and Asarco, all now forgotten, were among the top 20 or top 50 US stocks back in the day. In the 1970s, they were still major companies. US accounted for about 25% of world production and consumption.

But, as you can see, since 2000, both US primary production and US refined consumption have declined precipitously. US refined consumption is now at lower levels than in the 1970s and US primary production is less than the early 1950s.

What will be the impact of a 50% tariff on copper imports? In the next post, I'll show how the changes in US market compare to world production.

although US copper production has declined since the 1970s, world copper production has almost quadrupled. US share of world copper refined production (here primary plus secondary scrap) has decreased from about 25% to 3%.

US copper production and consumption no longer dominate world markets - despite what the Beltway may imagine. An approximate 3% share doesn't get to dictate prices.

That means that the 50% copper tariff will be borne entirely by US copper consumers (i.e. manufacturers using copper). US producers will almost certainly increase their price to match the price of imports. So the tariff will be a bonanza for US domestic producers (e.g. Freeport McMoran) and a burden for US manufacturers.

the copper data also shows a vignette into the remarkable change in world economic geography since 9/11. In 2001, US still produced more copper than China. In 2024, China produced more than 13(!) times as much copper as USA. This isn't just production, but also consumption. Chinese manufacturers consume most of their copper production; their copper consumption is accordingly an order of magnitude greater than US copper consumption.

So when Trump puffs about the importance of USA as a market, this is simply not true of a basic commodity like copper. And I'm skeptical that it is true for other basic commodities.

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 9

on first page: Brennan's lawyer, Robert Litt, was General Counsel at ODNI in 2016 and involved in some key events. Litt published an article in October 2017 lawfaremedia.org/article/irrele… which claimed that "The dossier itself played absolutely no role in the coordinated intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in our election." The recent Tradecraft Review, abysmal as it was, admitted that the dossier was cited in the classified ICA as a bullet support for the claim that Putin "aspired" to help Trump get elected.

@15poundstogo very Clintonian here

Brennan refers here to two press releases issued by William Evanina in July and August 2020. The Evanina statements were prompted in large part by the release of Biden-Poroshenko tapes by Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Derkach (who had previously in October 2016 published receipts showing that Hunter Biden was getting paid $1 million per year by Burisma). Shortly after Evanina's statements, "Trump" administration sanctioned Derkach. As a result of these sanctions, Derkach was de-platformed and the Biden-Poroshenko tapes were deleted from nearly all locations. One of the tapes showed that Poroshenko and Biden gloated in August 2016 about the removal of Manafort as Trump campaign chair as a result of Ukrainian interference (Black Ledger announcement.)

Read 11 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Apr 13

New thread on new information from redactions.

I just noticed that the information in Binder on Trump briefing in Aug 2016 was previously published by Grassley in July 2020, a few days after identification of Steele Primary Sub-source (and thus we, in this corner, were otherwise preoccupied).
grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

The new version sheds light on a previous redaction. Katrina, Norm, Ted, John and Amir were mentioned. Just noting this for future reference.

something else that I'm noticing in the less redacted documents: Kevin Clinesmith was much more prominent in Crossfire Hurricane operation than we previously realized.

In real time, Hans, myself and others had vehemently and savagely criticized Durham's useless plea agreement with Clinesmith that had failed to use their leverage over Clinesmith to obtain a road map of the Russiagate hoax operation. Compare for example Mueller's use of leverage over Rick Gates to interview him about 20 times, If anything, there was more leverage over Clinesmith.

Durham's failure to lever Clinesmith looks worse and worse as we now see Clinesmith's name in multiple Crossfire documents that had previously been redacted.

For example, here is Clinesmith on August 30, 2016 - early days of Russiagate hoax - approving the reporting of FBI surveillance of Trump and Flynn while they were supposedly providing a counterintelligence briefing.

In this briefing, they failed to give Trump and Flynn the same warning about Turkey that they had previously given Clinton's lawyers.

here's an example where the "declassified" Binder contains a redaction not made in the version published by Grassley almost five years ago. the name of Edward (Ted) Gistaro of ODNI

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