(THREAD--61 tweets). Unless you have been on another planet for the last several weeks, you have undoubtedly noticed the mounting, well-concerted attacks on the Mueller probe by Trump partisans.
1/ These attacks are motivated by partisan politics. As Adam Schiff has put it: it is “an effort to attack the DOJ, an effort to attack the FBI, to attack Bob Mueller,
2/ an effort to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what they’ll find and try to discredit them in advance.”
3/ Nothing particularly surprising here, since the investigations can have no good outcome for Republicans. But what is worth noting is the extent to which the partisan Republican attacks are focussing on the Steele dossier.
4/ Consider, for example, this from the article in yesterday’s Politico, which describes the GOP lawmakers in a cabal on House Intel as openly mocking the dossier as “discredited” and “disproven”; tinyurl.com/ycj4283n
5/ and as being “fixated on the FBI's use of the dossier describing sometimes salacious allegations of Trump's ties to the Kremlin.” (The Steele memos are frequently dismissed as the “dirty dossier.”)
6/ In fact, Trump and those involved in his campaign have a lot to worry about apart from the dossier.
7/ They have convinced themselves that the dossier was the “basis” of FISA warrants against Carter Page, for example, even though individuals as different as Susan Hennessey and Andrew Napolitano have pointed out that
8/ no FISA warrant is ever issued unless the DOJ can convince the FISA court that it has ITSELF found probable cause that justifies the issuance of a court warrant. Hence, whether the dossier was used at all or not,
9/ it would never have been used unless the parts that figured in the application for the warrant by the FBI had been independently confirmed by the FBI and the intelligence community.
10/ It may be that Nunes, the chair of House Intel, and his merry band are focussing on the Steele dossier because they are convinced there can be no pushback.
11/ Steele cannot disclose his sources and methods to the public--he makes his living working in “business intelligence,” and anyone working in this field must protect his sources and methods--otherwise he goes out of business.
12/ And Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy AG in charge of the Mueller probe, has been adamant that the FBI will not disclose the information about the dossier that Republicans want because that would compromise the ongoing investigation by Robert Mueller.
13/ That, by the way, is an additional and very strong reason (in addition to the point about FISA warrants made above) for us to take the Steele dossier seriously, b/c Rosenstein’s testimony tells us that the Steele dossier is still being used by the FBI’s OWN investigators.
14/ So when Trump partisans in and out of Congress assert that the Steele dossier has been “discredited” and “disproven,” the appropriate response is: “discredited” and “disproven” by whom? Certainly not by our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
15/ And while Steele’s opponents have undoubtedly taken note of the fact that Steele, an ex-MI6 officer who is a co-founder and principal of a business intelligence company (Orbis Ltd. of London), will not and cannot disclose his sources and methods to the public,
16/ they appear to be unaware that his sources could be disclosed BY THE FBI, should the FBI ever decide that that was consistent, perhaps even advantageous, for its own purposes.
17/ And that might be advantageous if one or more of Steele’s sources could be flipped and used by Mueller’s prosecutors as a cooperating witness.
18/ And interestingly enough, one of the sources that Steele probably used may have ALREADY flipped, and even more interestingly,
19/ that source is probably the absolutely critical Source E of memos #080 and #095--one of the two sources referred to in those memos as the source of the “pee-tape” allegation!
20/ His name is Felix Sater, and I have posted a couple of long threads about him here tinyurl.com/yd2dsd2w
21/ And here tinyurl.com/y9maawpr
22/ Nunes, Jim Jordan et al. have tried to throw shade on the dossier by arguing that Steele used RUSSIAN sources for his dossier--clearly implying that this is damaging to the credibility of the dossier since Steele’s Russian sources cannot be known.
23/ But it is simply a MISTAKE to think that the confidential informant or informants who relayed the explosive allegations of memos #080 and #095 to Steele were RUSSIAN.
24/ (BTW: It is also part of this Republican narrative that the dossier involved a successful plot by Russia to introduce disinformation designed to be used by the Clinton campaign to impugn TRUMP as a Russian asset!
25/ This narrative is so weird and implausible--and also so inconsistent with everything that US intelligence has learned about Putin’s efforts to influence the 2016 election--
26/ that it is impossible to present it in a coherent way in any detail, and I will not try to do so here; I am prepared to discuss RussiaGate with any reasonable person, but I prefer those discussions to take place on Planet Earth.)
27/ As I have clearly shown in my previous threads, Felix Sater as an American himself would almost certainly have had an AMERICAN informant.
28/ And as I also show in those threads, Sater has a long history of being an informant for the FBI (undoubtedly close to or even within the NYPD and Giuliani-friendly cabal of FBI agents in the NY field office),
29/ And it is certain that Glenn Simpson AND Christopher Steele had FBI contacts--they would have had to, given the line of work they have been in for years, and Luke Harding in his recently published book “Collusion”
30/ *tells* us that Simpson and Steele had and continue to have such contacts.
31/ I argue in my previous threads that it is likely that Source E (who I believe is Felix Sater) told one of his FBI contacts all about the allegations detailed in memos #080 and #095, thinking that this information could be disclosed
32/ in confidence because he knew that the agent was fiercely anti-Clinton, but the agent informed on him, and the information found its way to Simpson and Steele,
33/ because the agent decided to spill the beans when he realized that anti-Clinton feelings had crossed the line into a willingness to treasonously collude with the Kremlin.
34/ I am convinced that this, or something very, very close to it, is what happened. But even if I am wrong about the details, the claim that Source E was a “Russian ethnic close to the Trump campaign”--
35/ and therefore an AMERICAN, and that his informant or informants were themselves AMERICAN, can hardly be gainsaid.
36/ And that means (to return to the argument above) that Trump partisans in and out of Congress are delusional if they think that Mueller will never be able to confirm the most explosive allegations in the dossier--including the “salacious” pee-tape allegation.
37/ All that Mueller has to do is identify who Source E is AND FLIP HIM. But Mueller already KNOWS who Source E is, because we know that Steele told the FBI who he was (and everything else the FBI needed to know) in summer of last year when the FBI debriefed him.
38/ And if I am right that Source E is Sater, then the following developments become relevant.
39/ a) As reported in a previous thread, veteran BBC journalist Paul Wood reported on Aug 19 that Sater has told close friends and family that “he and POTUS are going to prison.” tinyurl.com/y8jyv9u5
40/ b) Sater has recently sold his home (for $2.5 million) in Sands Point, Long Island.
41 c) Sater has recently become a cooperating witness for the federal government in a money-laundering case involving Bayrock Group (mainly SoHo Towers, which was recently sold and renamed “The Dominick Hotel”).
42/ Sater was the managing director of this company for several years (before he was forced to leave after the NYT disclosed that he had a criminal record for a pump and dump penny stock scam run by the Russian Mafia in NYC
43/ in which Sater was involved). The lawsuit concerns money laundering by the Kazakhstani Khrapunov family, in a complicated business arrangement in which Trump (and Ivanka and Don Jr. ) were very much involved, as was Sater.
44/ The more general, and essentially indisputable point I wish to make in conclusion, is that all of this, contrary to what Trump partisans seem to imagine, will come out of the wash in some fashion or other eventually, and possibly sooner rather than later.
45/ There has been a lot of talk, at least, about congressional hearings being scheduled for testimony by Sater.
46/ On Monday, Dec 4, Reuters reported that Sater was scheduled to be interviewed--behind closed doors--by the House Intel Committee that coming Thursday, Dec 7. But that clearly did not happen, otherwise we would have heard about it. tinyurl.com/y8q2jdel
47/ (The same day, Reuters reported that Donald Trump Jr. was scheduled to be interviewed--behind closed doors--by House Intel, and that DID happen; indeed it was front page news when it happened.)
48/ Then, last Thursday (Dec 14), the WSJ reported that Sater would be interviewed by the staff on House Intel “sometime next week” (Dec 18-22).
49/ Also on the same day (Dec 14), CNN reported that according to two sources Sater (and Trump’s long-time personal secretary Rhona Graff) would be “interviewed by Republican and Democratic staff “next week” (Dec 18-22) in New York.
50/ But on Dec 14, WaPo reported that Rhona Graff would be interviewed by House Intel Committee staff in NYC on Dec 22 (tomorrow), and that Felix Sater was scheduled for a similar interview “sometime this month” (Dec 14-31).
51/ Clearly, there is some confusion and uncertainty about the scheduling of these two key witnesses, both of whom could provide testimony that could be highly damaging to Trump.
52/ So it is not surprising that the Republican majorities on the committee are procrastinating about these two witnesses in particular.
53/ In fact, it is more than just possible that the interviews will not happen at all. Adam Schiff, who is the ranking member of the House Intel Committee, believes that congressional committees are under increasing pressure by Republican leaders to wrap up
54/ their investigations into possible Trump-Russia collusion, even when there is a rather long list of witnesses that have not testified before the committees.
55/ Indeed, according to Schiff, the Republican majority on House Intel has not scheduled ANY meetings or interviews after tomorrow (Dec 22). tinyurl.com/y7k3fsxu
56/ So although there has been a lot of talk, It is not clear that Sater’s appearance before any committee of Congress will ever happen.
57/ But if it does, watch carefully, because in that case one of three things will happen:
58/ either I am wrong in the *details* about Source E (maybe it wasn’t Sater, but some other American, and some other kind of informant was involved, but also undoubtedly American);
59/ or Source E WAS Sater, and Sater will lie under oath (by far the least likely of the three possible outcomes); or Sater will spill the beans--
60/ and the whole world will know for certain that Steele was right all along, and that the “pee-tape” certainly does exist.
61/ Stay tuned.
