Former FBI Deputy General Counsel: The Carter Page FISA Application Was Approved in a Non-Standard Way; Rather Than Letting Me First Review the Application, Andrew McCabe and Assistant Director of the DOJ Sally Yates Bypassed Me and Signed It Themselves

Update: Intelligence Community already blocking Trump's order to declassify.

Some firings are in order.

On to the FBI FISA story:

Lock them up.

A former top lawyer for the FBI described to lawmakers the "unusual" way the surveillance request targeting former Trump campaign associate Carter Page was handled by top leadership at the Justice Department and FBI, according to a transcript released this week.

In front of a joint session of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees on Aug. 31, 2018, former FBI Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson said she was normally responsible for signing off on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications before they reached the desk of her superiors for approval. Anderson said the "linear path" those applications typically take was upended in October 2016, with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates signing off on the application before she did. Because of that unusual high-level involvement, she didn’t see the need to "second guess" the FISA application.

Meanwhile, the Russian academic who was falsely claimed to be a spy and a "honeypot" by media and Russiagate figures -- in order to make the case that Michael Flynn was kompromatted -- is now suing her false accusers.

Cambridge academic is suing FBI informant Stefan Halper and several major news organizations for defamation.

Svetlana Lokhova is accusing Halper of planting false information about her brief interactions in 2014 with Michael Flynn during an event at Cambridge.

Lokhova was the subject of several stories in 2017 that suggested she had improper contacts with Flynn. She believes that Halper, who has since been outed as an FBI informant who targeted the Trump campaign, planted the rumors about her in order to further the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

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The academic, Svetlana Lokhova, is also suing several news organizations she accuses of publishing false information provided by Halper, a former Cambridge professor.

"Stefan Halper is a ratfucker and a spy, who embroiled an innocent woman in a conspiracy to undo the 2016 Presidential election and topple the President of the United States of America," Lokhova wrote in the lawsuit, which she filed in federal court in Virginia.

Lokhova asserts that Halper worked with the FBI and "political operatives" at Cambridge to seed stories about her interactions with Flynn at a dinner hosted at the storied British university on Feb. 28, 2014, when Flynn served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). (RELATED: Cambridge Academic Reflects On Interactions With ‘Spygate’ Figure)

The stories were planted, she claims, in order to "fuel and further the now debunked and dead narrative that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia."

She claims that Halper, who served in four Republican administrations, spread false allegations and insinuations in the press and at Cambridge that she was a Russian agent who had attempted to recruit Flynn at the dinner. Stories that appeared in the press beginning in 2017 hinted that she used sex to lure the retired lieutenant general.

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In addition to The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post, Lokhova is also suing NBC Universal. She claims that MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance has defamed her by calling her a "Russian intelligence officer" and a "honeypot," the espionage term used to describe a spy who uses sex to lure targets.

Lakhova had previously wondered why Stefan Halper, a man she'd barely met, invited her twice to two dinners, and seated her next to Michael Flynn.

She now believes that Halper was running an op to set up Flynn and say "Look, there he is, talking to a RUSSIAN!"

When, according to Lakhova, Halper himself had invited her and sat her next to Flynn just so he could then report the two had spoken.

posted by Ace of Spades at 04:06 PM

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