Matt Taibbi: Five Questions That Must Still Be Answered In the Russia Hoax/Coup

Great questions.

Here are a couple:

Who is Joseph Mifsud?

A congressional source last week said, "I don't see any way the investigation can be aboveboard if Mifsud isn't a Russian agent."

Horowitz said all four of the FISA warrant applications for Carter Page relied upon a core probable-cause argument based on the idea that the FBI was conducting a legitimate investigation into Russian election interference.

Horowitz wrote that the "sole predication" for that investigation was a statement former Trump aide George Papadopoulos made to an Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer. Papadopoulos allegedly told Downer that a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Horowitz said that "if true," this first-hand account from a friendly foreign government was "sufficient to satisfy the low threshold" for opening an investigation. This was hardly the ringing endorsement of a "justified" probe many saw.

When Horowitz found no evidence that Mifsud "ever acted as an FBI [confidential human source]," pundits saw this as devastating to the Trumpian "conspiracy theory" that the FBI investigation was a setup. Maybe, but the original conspiracy theory was that Mifsud was a Russian agent, and Horowitz, like Robert Mueller before him, found no evidence of this, either.

In other words, the sole predication for opening the case on Carter Page was that he heard Russians had dirt on Hillary, which of course is something everyone was speculating about at this time, including me, probably including you too.

But they claimed that his information came from Russians-- specifically, Josef Misfud.

Well, we now have the Mueller Report and the IG report and neither says Misfud was a Russian agent. In fact, both are entirely silent on them.

So if there was no Russian agent feeding Carter Page this speculation (which Rush Limbaugh and everyone else was speculating) that the Russians had Hillary's emails, then there was no valid "predication" for this case at all.

The media is jumping on the idea that if Misfud isn't proven to be a Western agent, then they win.

Um, no. To save your lies from being actionable slanders, you need Misfud to be proven to be a Russian agent, not merely unproven to be a Western one.

Further, very few people on the Skeptical Side of reality-- as opposed to the Credulous Lunatics forming the Human Centipede of Fusion GPS disinformation and transmission, each one just eating what the previous link sh*ts into his mouth -- believed or claimed that Misfud was definitely a Western agent.

What people said a lot was, "Not only is there no strong evidence that Misfud is a Russian agent, but there is just as much evidence, if not more, that he's a Western agent."

That is, we weren't claiming he was a Western agent -- just that, given his position at the Western-intelligence-linked Link University, where FBI agents frequently visited, there was more evidence to suggest he was a source for Western intelligence than a Russian spy.

Not that he was a Western agent, but there was just as much (if not more) evidence suggesting that than that he was a Russkie.

Also, none of us put our suspicions INTO A FUCKING FISA APPLICATION AND CERTIFIED THEM AS TRUE IN ORDER TO OPEN A CORRUPTLY-AUTHORIZED SURVEILLANCE OPERATION.

But the media, and their NeverTrump defenders/allies/employees, take their victories where they can find them.

Oh, did you hear, Trump is a bad man because he never backs down from false claims and apologizes for having made them?

Yeah, a lot of that going 'round, huh, NeverTrump? Huh, Conservative, Inc. grifters?

To whom does footnote 461 refer? At the bottom of page 310, Horowitz describes an unusual communication to the FBI by a "former" confidential informant:

[A] former FBI CHS [Confidential Human Source] . . . contacted an FBI agent in an FBI field office in late July 2016 to report information from "a colleague who runs an investigative firm . . . hired by two entities (the Democratic National Committee [DNC] as well as another individual . . . [who was] not name[d]) to explore Donald Trump’' longstanding ties to Russian entities." The former CHS also gave the FBI agent a list of "individuals and entities who have surfaced in [the investigative firm's] examination," which the former CHS described as "mostly public source material."

Horowitz goes on to say McCabe sent word that the FBI agent was not to collect any more information from this source, and should not "accept any information regarding the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."

During testimony last week, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley asked Horowitz if the "investigative firm” in this footnote was Fusion-GPS. Horowitz said he'd have to get back to him.

This footnote raised a few eyebrows on the Hill. Among other things, it seems to imply that the "investigative firm" was connected with the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane probe at that early juncture in July of 2016. (Why else would McCabe need to insist on not accepting information regarding Crossfire Hurricane?)

It would be interesting to know who this "former FBI CHS" is, why this person felt a need to reach out to the FBI about his colleague's firm, and why the FBI shut down this source.

It might also suggest that, despite the FBI's denials, this really did all begin with the Hillary Clinton oppo research lies. The FBI might be trying to hide the fact that the true start to all of this was a partisan "research" document.

How did this "investigative firm," which, let's face it, is Paul Singer's/the DNC's dirt merchant Fusion GPS, know about Crossfire Hurricane so early, if they themselves were not There At The Creation?

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:28 PM

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