A By the Book Coup: Known Liar Susan Rice's Two-Weeks-After-the-Fact CYA "Memorandum"

Susan Rice, known for her willingness to lie publicly to protect Obama administration/Hillary State Department narratives (see her fine work on Benghazi),
wrote an email to herself, minutes before Trump was to become president,
pretending to detail a meeting that had occurred 15 days before. She wrote the email on January 20th; she pretends to memorialize a meeting that occurred January 5th.

Seems like a long time to wait before committing your Best Recollection of an important meeting to paper.

Here are some key quotes, if you can't read the quotes in Sean Davis' tweet:

The Senate Judiciary Committee is giving former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice until February 22 to answer questions relating to an email she sent to herself prior to exiting from the Obama administration. It occurred during President Trump's inauguration. The email contains classified information, so it's a partial disclosure from the Judiciary Committee, but it seems to show that on January 5, 2017, then-President Obama, Vice President Biden, then-FBI Director James Comey, and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates had a meeting in the Oval Office about the fallout from the Russian interference in the 2016 election.

...

Rice wrote that after being briefed by the intelligence community on Russia’s activities during the election, Obama stressed "the very aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities 'by the book'. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book."

Here, Rice says they talked about withholding information from the duly elected president:

Rice continued, saying, "President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia."

The other portions are classified, but it seems as if Comey agreed to keep Obama in the loop on the possible shielding of information on Russia from incoming Trump officials.

"The President asked Corney to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Corney said he would."

Grassley and Graham find this all "odd:"

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) added, "It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation." As a result, they have a few questions that they would like an answer by February 22. Here are the twelve questions:

1.Did you send the email attached to this letter to yourself? Do you have any reason to dispute the timestamp of the email?

2. When did you first become aware of the FBI's investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump's associates and Russia?

3. When did you become aware of any surveillance activities, including FISA applications, undertaken by the FBI in conducting that investigation? At the time you wrote this email to yourself, were you aware of either the October 2016 PISA application for surveillance of Carter Page or the January 2017 renewal?

4. Did anyone instruct, request, suggest, or imply that you should send yourself the aforementioned Inauguration Day email memorializing President Obama' s meeting with Mr. Corney about the Trump/Russia investigation? If so, who and why?

5. Is the account of the January 5, 2017 meeting presented in your email accurate? Did you omit any other portions of the conversation?

6. Other than that email, did you document the January 5, 2017 meeting in any way, such as contemporaneous notes or a formal memo? To the best of your knowledge, did anyone else at that meeting take notes or otherwise memorialize the meeting?

7. During the meeting, did Mr. Corney or Ms. Yates mention potential press coverage of the Steele dossier? If so, what did they say?

8. During the meeting, did Mr. Corney describe the status of the FBI's relationship with Mr. Steele, or the basis for that status?

9. When and how did you first become-aware of the allegations made by Christopher Steele?

10. When and how did you first become aware that the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded Mr. Steele's efforts?

11. You wrote that President Obama stressed that he was "not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective." Did President Obama ask about, initiate, or instruct anything from any other perspective relating to the FBI's investigation?

Remember, this was actually a counter-intelligence operation: claiming Obama wasn't asking about things from a law-enforcement perspective seems a bit of lawyerly deceit.

12. Did President Obama have any other meetings with Mr. Corney, Ms. Yates, or other government officials about the FBI's investigation of allegations of collusion between Trump associates and Russia? If so, when did these occur, who participated, and what was discussed?

You might ask, "What was going on around January 5 that would incite such a big meeting?"

Well -- a whole heck of a lot, actually.

January 3, 2017: According to FNC, "outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order directing the National Security Agency -- America's 60,000-person-strong domestic spying apparatus -- to make available raw spying data to all other federal intelligence agencies, which then can pass it on to their counterparts in foreign countries and in the 50 states upon request."

January 5, 2017: Meeting with Obama, Biden, Rice, Yates, Comey according to Rice's email to herself.

January 10, 2017: Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein broke the story in the WaPo that allowed the dossier to go public.

That story said the briefing happened "last week," so that would put it between the 2nd and 6th, and a source tells me it was actually January 6th.

Is there anything else that you should know?

Well, how about this: If Rice's email is truthful about Comey's presence at this little meeting, then Comey misled Congress by not informing them about it.

According to Law & Crime:

Dated June 8, 2017, Comey’s "Statement for the Record" provided to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, notes, "I have tried to include information that may be relevant to the committee."

Comey clearly did not find the January 5, 2017 meeting to be particularly relevant.

In other words, on January 5, 2017, an Oval Office meeting occurred between then-FBI director Comey, the soon-to-be-former president of the United States (Obama), his soon-to-be-former Vice-President (Biden), then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice and soon-to-be Acting Attorney General Sally Yates–and Comey apparently viewed this meeting as irrelevant to congressional investigators.

Comey's failure to disclose this meeting to the Senate committee is likely to be viewed as an intentional and material omission of a highly relevant fact related to the Russiagate investigation.

Coming soon: James Comey tweets a Bible quote of Jesus saying something about the righteous man's obligation to lie to Congress.

posted by Ace at 12:16 PM

| Access Comments