What's Behind Fusion GPS' New Fiction That the Russian Spy Had to be Extracted Because of Worries About Trump?

From the Federalist, here's Mollie Hemingway's thoughts.

Note there is video of this at the Federalist link. Click on that if you'd prefer the video.

"There are two likely scenarios. One is inside the government: You had Obama's intel chiefs running this Russia operation. You also had people outside the government, such as Fusion GPS, which was claiming that it had sources highly placed in the Russian government," Hemingway said. "We know that these people were talking to the media to set forth this Russian collusion narrative.... Perhaps they're both trying to point fingers, and they might be trying to distract people by mentioning Trump."

Hemingway noted the leaks and stories may be part of a cover-up tied to ongoing investigations such as the DOJ inspector general's report or U.S. Attorney John Durham's criminal investigation.

"[They] are starting to expose some shenanigans or misbehavior by intelligence chiefs or those people outside the government who put forth this false and dangerous Russian collusion narrative," she said.

What narrative could the leakers/Fusion operatives be trying to squelch by pumping out this new fiction that the spy was extracted because of Trump?

Answer: They're trying to displace the truth. And the truth is that CIA operatives, almost certainly part of the Clapper/Brennan coup faction, began blabbing to reporters about this spy.

On that, at the Federalist, Lew Jan Olowski notes that it was CIA officials, trying to pin the DNC Email hack on Russia and claim Russia was doing favors for Trump, who gossiped to the media about their supposed "highly-placed source" and got the media digging to see if they could identify the man.

And Obama also helped out this spy.

UPDATE: If you're having trouble following this, I suggest you click on the link and read that article in full, rather than just my excerpt. I thought the article was pretty clear -- maybe my excerpt has cut out too much critical background.

In fact, however, officials "mishandled intelligence" and tried to extricate this source in 2016, before Trump even won the presidential election. The New York Times reports intelligence officials compromised this source by gossiping about him to news reporters.

"When intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia's election interference with unusual detail ...the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.'s Kremlin sources." Then, "C.I.A. officials … made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia. ...[T]he C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries."

President Obama compromised this source even further, right before Trump's inauguration. Obama authorized the public release and declassification of a report by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) alluding to this source's placement in the Russian government. The New York Times cites the public release of the DNI report as another reason for extracting the source.

...

In publishing [claims about a high-ranking spy saying that Putin did the hack to help his best friend Trump], intelligence officials publicly revealed they were privy to Putin's private motivations and policy process. This implied they either had a mole in Putin's inner circle or else were eavesdropping on Putin’s most sensitive discussions. Such a revelation would have been clever if it were false because this could cause Putin to distrust, investigate, or even purge members of his inner circle.

But now it appears the leak was true. Intelligence officials spoiled a bona fide top-level intelligence source operating inside an adversary foreign government just to damage their own American president and government.

See the article, because the writer then discusses officials' suspicions that this highly-ranked spy is actually a double-agent who's been seeding the US with disinformation on Putin's orders all along.

That's unproven. But it remains a possibility.

So let's recap:

In order to advance their Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory, itself concocted to safely ensconce a very weak Democrat candidate on the White House throne and thereby safeguard their own power and freedom from prison, the Clapper/Brennan coup clique burned what they claim is a very high-level source close to Vladimir Putin himself. They gossiped and blabbed to reporters about him to the media, which began trying to figure out who the spy was from the breadcrumbs the Clapper/Brennan claque left behind.

This caused the CIA to shriek to the spy, in 2016, before Trump was president, that his life was now in danger and that they must therefore extract him from Russia.

The spy refused. Later, after Trump was elected, the CIA told him he was in even greater peril, and he agreed to leave Russia. (Or was it about the peril, or the payout? See speculations below.)

CIA/NSA officials outed details which could be used to identify an extremely highly-placed Russian spy, all to weaponize the intelligence services of the United States to swing a presidential election.

This is more than firable; this is jailable.

And now, fearing that this will be revealed in the upcoming Horowitz IG report and the Durham investigation -- both of which will be examining leaking in the IC and DOJ and FBI, this claque runs to reliable Fusion GPS stenographer Jim Sciutto and claims the spy was imperiled by Trump, the man they were so desperate to defeat they burned a Russian spy to do it, rather than by their own partisan animus, arrogance, incompetence, and God complexes.

Oh, and Obama was part of it all, too.

By the way, totally unrelated, but James Clapper works beside Jim Sciutto as an "analyst" at CNN.

Also totally unrelated, both are former Obama officials with a stake in protecting Obama as well as themselves.

Further Speculations: Hearing chatter along these lines. Mostly just questions:

Did the CIA deliberately burn this guy? Their leaks put a target on him, assuming he really was a spy against Russia and not a double-agent still working for Russia.

Did the CIA extract him by promising him that $1 million home in Virginia? Did they promise him, say, a $350,000 per year "stipend" if he came?

And why was the CIA so determined to get him out of Russia at that time, after he had already said he didn't feel endangered and seemed vindicated in that, by not being dead?

Was it Mueller? Did Mueller take over the counterintelligence probe (because that's what this whole Trump-Russia probe was claimed to be, for legal purposes) and say "Get me this spy you claim backs up your allegations"?

Why did the media and CIA get together to burn him again? Is it just a matter of shaping narratives -- "It wasn't us that burned him, it was Trump!" -- or is there something else going on?

By the way, on the theory that he might have been a double agent all along:

You know who would refuse an urgent demand for extraction, knowing that his life was in no actual danger? A double-agent who knows he's serving Putin, not a spy afraid that Putin has detected him.

Just saying.

By the way, this high-ranking spy, as the media calls him, has been living in the US for two years, not far from Bob Mueller's DC offices.

So Mueller has interviewed this guy and taken all of his "hot intelligence" about Trump.

And still none of this stuff can be verified, and still there is no evidence for any Trump-Russia conspiracy.

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:22 PM

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