What Everyone Won’t Say About Trump Dossier: Timeline Suggests It Was Crafted by FBI/DOJ Personnel

The Trump dossier continues to be the single biggest news story of any given day—though many people ignore it—even as the news media writ large focuses on anything and everything besides the information that has been uncovered to date about the scurrilous Democrat opposition research document and how and why it was compiled. Even conservative news outlets like Fox News, or news talk radio shows, who have been covering it, seem to be missing what the obvious circumstantial evidentiary timeline clearly makes plain: the dossier was not solely the original work of Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 agent, he was rather the means whereby an investigation already begun by the weaponized counterintelligence unit of the FBI, in tandem with Fusion GPS, could legitimize, and give “independent” confirmation of, illegal surveillance of members of Trump’s campaign team. This bolstered their case before the FISA courts, when they had their surveillance retroactively made “legal”, and gave a measure of credence to the Russia/Trump collusion narrative they created, and thus the means for a legitimate investigation, which is currently ongoing.

What follows is a timeline of events that draw their source from the public record. I did not do most of the initial research, rather it comes from a conservative blogger who goes by sundance, and whose research on the topic is quite extensive and highly recommended. I have added to it, and am going to lay out the timeline of events, with linked material, so that the reader can decide for themselves the veracity of the account presented. The circumstantial evidence to date suggests the most damning case against the Counter Intelligence Divison within the FBI, along with then-Director James Comey, and elements with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and their National Security Division (NDS), in an effort to spy on Trump that was not so much pro-Clinton, as it was anti-Trump. This group of people did not want Trump. Period! The direct political motivations may or may not have been there for them, though it is apparent they were for then-President Obama—if it can be proven he was actively involved—who would have known all of what went on in 2016, though maybe not details—and there is much to suggest that he knew about all of it. This is a theory, based on what is known. I leave to the reader to judge for themselves.

March 2016: According to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court ruling, that was made public in May, 2017 due to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by conservative watch-group Judicial Watch, it was discovered that there was a high amount of illegal surveillance of United States citizens in 2016 specifically using a tool called “About Queries”—section 702(17) in the FISA statute governing surveillance, which specifically relate to the collection of electronic messaging, emails and upstream phone call surveillance data of U.S. persons. Sometime in early 2016, Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of National Security Agency (NSA), became aware of “ongoing” and “intentional” violations of FISA, and ordered a comprehensive review. Important dates for the timeline here presented, referenced by the FISA ruling include March 9, 2016, and April 18, 2016. That ruling also specifically points out the use of “private contractors” who were given access to the NSA data collected by the FBI using “About Queries.”

An example of how the 702(17) “upstream” or “incidental” surveillance works would be like this, and especially as it relates to its use to spy on Trump associates—a confirmed fact:

• Where is foreign person “Natalia Veselnitskya‘s” cell phone? (input phone number)… [She is the woman who met with Trump Jr. in June]. Oh, she’s in Trump Tower,… OK, great. FISA-702 Query “all ip addresses and cell phone communication within Trump Tower.” Review data, fill out FISA query authorization form explaining the reason for the FISA second query. Easy peasy, legal. That query then becomes a valid “FISA warrant,” but “Warrant” is really a misnomer based on traditional lingo.
• The second search, [part 17] is actually a legally approved FISA-702 “query”, not really a “warrant”; the FISA-702 (U.S. individual or entity) search query (form required) is a result of a valid search query upon a foreign actor (no form required). The 702 authorization form is what people mistakenly refer to as the “warrant”.

Sundance claims that sources have told him, one of those private contractors was indeed Fusion GPS. While that is not known, or confirmable, what is known is that Simpson refused to answer questions about source verification for the Trump dossier in his August 22, 2017 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—this testimony was recently made public when the ranking Democrat on the committee, Diane Feinstein (D-CA) released it to the public. From it, you can see that Simpson never verified anything he “received” from Steele. We also know that Steele, in court documents in his defamation suit in England, has acknowledged that the dossier’s contents are unsubstantiated, and more noteworthy that none of it was due to his first-hand sleuthing, as originally thought, but rather that he had “received” the intel from outside sources, which he has also refused to name.

As reported by Tabletmag, Mary Jacoby, wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, boasted on June 24, 2017, on Facebook that her husband deserves the “lion’s share of credit for Russiagate.” Due to this boast, Lee Smith, the author of the Tabletmag piece, surmises that the entire dossier might actually be based on several articles that Jacoby and her husband had penned on Paul Manafort’s shady Russian connections, since neither Steele nor, Nellie Ohr, who were both employed by Fusion GPS, and worked on the dossier, had any real substantive and recent Russia contacts. Jacoby and Simpson had already spent years doing research into Manafort, who on March 28, 2016 became the campaign chair for Donald Trump’s presidential team.

Simpson also already had an established working relationship with DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr—whose names will become more important in the construction of the Trump Dossier—as they had worked together on a collaborative CIA Open Source group project surrounding International Organized Crime in 2010, the year before he founded Fusion GPS. As the following story relates, it is probable that Jacoby’s and Simpson’s research into Manafort is not what Jacoby is referring to when claiming the credit for the Russia project should largely go to her husband, rather, it is due to far more nefarious behavior.

Important note: By the middle of March, Trump had already won enough primaries to be considered the clear-frontrunner for nominee, and by March 16th, there were only two challengers remaining in the Republican field. Simpson had already engaged in research into candidate Trump commissioned by the Washington Free Beacon, and by his own admission in testimony, had come to the conclusion that Trump was unfit for office, due to several business connections with unsavory people, some with connections to the Russian mob. Republicans did not pay for the Trump dossier. That was an entirely separate project, as Simpson made clear in testimony to Congress.

April 18, 2016: Per the FISA court ruling, we now know that on this date, the “sub-contractors” who had been given access to FISA “About Queries” material, was discontinued. Then-FBI Director James Comey misled Congress in March 2017 when assuring them that no unauthorized viewing of FISA data occurred. It wasn’t until May 2017 that the FISA court ruling was made public which showed this to be untrue, and that specifically surveilled material on American citizens had been shared with third parties illegally under Comey’s FBI. Why did he hide this behavior from Congress? The answer seems patently obvious: he wanted to shield himself as much as possible from people knowing about the illegal activity he was engaged in.

April 19, 2016: According to visitor logs, a Mary B. Jacoby, is listed as visiting the White House. So, the day after the “sub-contractors” are cut-off from access to the 702(17) surveillance information, a woman, with the same name as the wife of Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, is seen to visit the White House. Coincidence? Not if you consider what follows.

At the end of the month we come to find both the DNC and the Hillary Campaign paid Perkins Coi, a law firm, to retain Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump—something Simpson left out of his “helpful” testimony before the Judiciary Committee. That same month we also find Perkins Coi being paid nearly $100,000 by the Obama campaign for “legal services.” Then Nellie Ohr is brought on to work for Fusion GPS—remember, she is the wife of Bruce G. Ohr, who was a senior DOJ official—also, something not mentioned in Simpson’s “transparent” testimony.

May 2016: George Papadopoulos met with Australian, Alexander Downer and relates that it has come to his knowledge that the Russians have “dirt” on Hillary. This story did not come out until December 30, 2017. In it, The New York Times is quoting “intelligence sources”, which is another way of saying leaks, who claimed that the hacking of the DNC and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in late July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired. Update: We now know that the meat of the Trump dossier was known to the FBI long before this meeting was ever known and that it merely served as a pretext to officially open an investigation even though what would form the basis for “legal”surveillance of Trump associates was was already well underway.

May 23, 2016: Knowing the NSA was reviewing FISA “Queries”, and intellectually accepting the resulting information from those queries was likely part of the framework put together by Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby, we discover that GPS employee Nellie Ohr applied for a HAM radio license. Why? Probably to escape communication being picked up by the NSA review that was ongoing, as information over that medium is not stored by NSA servers. 

June 2016: Sometime in June, Christopher Steele is brought on to begin to “research” and “develop” what would become the Trump dossier. We now know, from Simpson’s testimony before the Judiciary committee that Steele had informed him he had met with someone at the FBI about his initial three pages of information, which was given to Simpson on June 20, 2016. So the FBI knew about the dossier very early in its creation. However, what was contained in those pages? Nothing of interest had happened that was publicly known, and the only event involving anyone related to the Trump campaign at that time was Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 10, in which she was promising “dirt” on Clinton, and to which she took information she had received from Simpson, something he says he was unaware of. We now know that Simpson was with Vesletnitskaya both the day before and after that meeting, meetings he claims were entirely innocent, and where, according to him, no conversation between the two took place. That Trump Jr. meeting never made it into the dossier, rather it was first reported by the New York Times in July 2017. So what information could possibly have been gathered, contained in three memos, and delivered to the FBI in June? Something non-public, and something that had been gathered earlier. It was also in this month that we find the first FISA warrant is applied for, and denied citing lack of evidence, and the fact that it is overly broad in its application.

June 14, 2016: The press first reported that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had been breached by supposed Russian hackers, under the guise of the website DCLeaks. This has never been proven, but there exists substantial circumstantial evidence to support the notion that it was the Russians. They engaged in a technique known as “spear phishing” and did not obtain any material of merit. Their efforts yield little, though they were active for nearly a year, from the summer 2015 to April 2016, trying to gain access to people within the DNC. The attacker was knocked out of the DNC network during the weekend of June 11 and 12, 2016.

This information will become vital later because the Russian hacking will become a huge part of the narrative created after the election to show that Russia was trying to help Trump. This story was not that big of a deal at the time because it didn’t really damage Clinton and was fairly routine hacking.

June 20 2016: The first three pages of the dossier are delivered. Contained within those first three pages of the dossier were quotes from a large number of anonymous sources, such as, “a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin”, “a senior Russian foreign ministry figure”, “a senior Russian financial official”, and “a senior Kremlin official”. The report claims to have sources from inside the president-elect’s inner circle as well. Here too we get the scurrilous claims about supposed perverted sex acts involving Trump that the Russian FSB recorded and were using as blackmail material against him. We also have in these three pages the references to the “cultivation” of Trump by the Russians in the context of his real estate dealings, and the allegation that the Russians have “dirt” on Clinton—something that tracks with Simpsons own earlier research into Trump, and with what Vesletnitskaya was offering Trump Jr., something which may have been picked up by surveillance, even if Simpson didn’t stage the meeting between the two.

July 2016: According to James Comey’s own testimony in March 2017, the counter-intelligence investigation into Donald Trump’s, campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russians began in July. By this time, Steele had already met with someone at the FBI, and a FISA warrant authorizing surveillance into Trump’s team was requested and denied. The only thing that existed at that time, and could have been presented to the court, was the three pages of the so-called dossier, and that Trump Jr. meeting. The only other information that could possibly exist was what had been put together from Simpson’s advanced work on the ‘Trump Project’—in March and early April, before their access to 702(17) data was taken away. This non-public “intelligence” gleaned from the surveillance use of 702(17) information in March and April—seen by Fusion GPS?—before being stopped, in all likelihood formed the foundation of what was then passed on, probably by Nellie Ohr’s ham radio, to Steele who added his own ingredients to the mix, turned around, and gave the end product back to the FBI, essentially creating an end product that was laundered, illegally obtained, FBI FISA intelligence, now forming the beginnings of what would come to be called the “The Trump/Russia Dossier.”

It was this (the original three pages)—it couldn’t have been anything else—that was likely presented to the FISA Court as “corroborating” evidence with the previous FBI surveillance, in an effort to give legal cover to that surveillance. Update: The Nunes memo confirms that the contents of the dossier formed the primary basis for the FISA application, and that Papadopoulos’ meeting was not a driving force in gaining approval to conduct legal surveillance of Trump associate Carter Page. With the court having denied the first warrant what possible basis could the FBI have for investigating Trump? Yet, we find that they were indeed investigating him, and this gives greater credence to the idea that the agents involved would have continued on with the surveillance to create more of a basis for a FISA warrant with approval from the FBI powers that be, if not legal authorization to do so. Remember, it can all be made legal if they can get the judge to approve it later! In fact we now know that Comey was eager to lie about the illegal surveillance that was done, and in fact told Congress in March 2017, with specific reference to the illegal sharing of FISA material with third parties, that no illegal activity took place! All surveillance was legal he claimed, and technically he is correct—though not about the sharing with third parties—as the FISA court retroactively would have made all surveillance on Trump’s team legal, though it was not strictly so at the time.

Having been shot-down in June, it seems the counterintelligence team of people involved in this scam changed tactics and began independently to research and disseminate information obtained from other “About Queries” to Fusion GPS (Nellie Ohr) who then passed those along to Steele. It is also seems at this time that news about the Russian cyber-efforts was intentionally given to Steele to place in the dossier so as to connect them to Trump later on. Consider. Update: We now can confirm that Mrs. Ohr’s “research” was sent to the FBI by her husband Bruce. This at least tells us that indeed she was being used as a conduit of sorts, though the extent posited here cannot be confirmed.

July 4 2016: The first Wikileaks hack of Clinton’s emails is released. Julian Assange, who runs Wikileaks, is not connected to the Russians at all. Unlike the DCLeaks publications, these contained actual emails sent or received by then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and released under the Freedom of Information Act, and contained information which Assange claimed could lead to an indictment of Clinton.

The next three pages of the dossier are submitted, though not dated, and interestingly enough take an entire shift in the narrative they tell. They don’t even mention Trump and his Russian contacts, but rather speak about all of the alleged state-sponsored cyber-programmes cyber the Russians are known to have been engaged in. How curious. Even more curious is that they are dated July 26, 2015. This strongly suggests that the data contained therein was related to the cyber security FBI investigation into the earlier hack of DNC emails by alleged Russian hackers that had taken place starting in the summer of 2015, and was still ongoing in July of 2016. Steele merely “received” this information and returned it to Fusion GPS and his FBI contact.

July 5 2016: FBI Director James Comey stated that he would not recommend charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. However, Comey noted that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” handling classified information, essentially providing her legal cover.

July 19 2016: The next four pages of the dossier are delivered. These now include for the first time a reference to someone connected to Trump’s campaign, Carter Page, who in July took a trip, that was publicly known, to Russia. It is asserted in the dossier that he met with several high ranking-Russian government officials. None of this is corroborated though, and in fact has been adamantly denied by Page. It is also here asserted that Wikileaks is a Russian surrogate and working in concert with the Trump team and Russians to hurt Clinton. Funny how that tracks with the language of the Clinton campaign, though not a single shred of evidence can support it.

July 22 2016: Wikileaks released an absolute treasure-trove of approximately 20,000 emails and 8,000 files sent from, or received by, DNC personnel. Some of the emails contained personal information of donors, including home addresses and Social Security numbers. Other emails criticized Bernie Sanders and showed favouritism towards Clinton.

July 30 2016: The next three pages of the dossier are sent to Fusion GPS. They specifically reference Kremlin fears about the political-fallout over the newly leaked DNC emails.

Sometime in late July is when the FBI first found out about the Papadopolous meeting, but the Steele dossier was already well on the FBI radar. The Time’s story says it was the Papadopoulos meeting that led to the opening of the counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump team. Update: We can now confirm the counter-intelligence investigation was opened up officially by none other than virulent anti-trump FBI agent Peter Strzok.

Here a little bit of information as to the separation of information is necessary, because this necessitated the need for the two teams working together from the FBI and DOJ to work clandestinely with one another, and it is why it took so long for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to get to the bottom of what happened—he couldn’t just go get it! Sundance lays it out:

Intelligence information is housed by compartments within the larger intelligence community network. Each intelligence unit holds intelligence unique to that compartment and task. The FBI Counterintelligence unit would hold the intelligence information specific to their task or assignment; the DOJ National Security Division would hold their own compartmented intelligence; again, specific to their task and objectives. So too would the DoD (Pentagon), State Dept., or CIA.

This compartmented structure is what led to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI. The 911 commission recommended the office to serve as a hub able to ensure intelligence sharing; that is – to ensure intelligence was not intentionally withheld from other compartments when needed.

It is this separation of intelligence that makes it so that anyone who wants to request an “About Query,” let’s say in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division for example, they could do so, but then they couldn’t share that information with anyone else, including other departments. So, legally, anyone in the FBI, DOJ, or CIA, could conduct surveillance on anyone—so long as it fell within their sphere—and then get that approved retroactively by a FISA court if there was compelling reason. However, they would need compelling reason, in theory, to conduct the query to begin with. This is where oversight of what is going on is essential. The internal watchdogs are supposed to make sure that these illegal searches are not even being conducted by intelligence personnel needlessly. Obviously, no threat regarding Trump existed at the time to warrant what was taking place. Note: The NSA is the one that houses all the data being collected, and the ODNI oversees all intelligence being compiled within each agency.

Within the FBI, we already know from Comey, an investigation was ongoing into Trump in July 2016, without a warrant—something we also now know because that first FISA warrant was denied—to collect surveillance data. The oversight of the FBI’s counterintelligence work, to stop abuses, is supposed to be being conducted by Congress, and they are to report every three months as to what counterintelligence operations are ongoing at the FBI. Comey admitted before Congress in March 2017, that this was not done regarding the Trump/Russia investigation, and he said it was because the Director of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap had recommended it not be done—as usual it wasn’t Comey’s fault.

The DOJ has a specific unit called the National Security Division (NDS) that focuses on counterintelligence. This is one of the departments that Bruce Ohr was a part of before he was demoted for his undisclosed contacts with both Simpson and Steele in 2016. This department was flying without oversight as well during this time, because Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates told DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz that he had oversight over everything in the DOJ except for the NSD. This means that all activity being done in that division regarding the illegal use of surveillance was not being internally overseen.

Now we can introduce the other players here aside from Simpson, his wife, Nellie Ohr, and Steele.

• DOJ side: Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates; Assistant AG Head of National Security Division John P Carlin; Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr; and legal liaison between Main Justice and FBI, Attorney Lisa Page.
• FBI side: FBI Director Jim Comey; Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe; Director of Counterintelligence W.H. “Bill Priestap”; FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker; and lead FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok.

August 2016: The lead FBI Agent in charge of the Trump/Russia counterintelligence operation, Peter Strzok told his FBI Attorney and mistress, Lisa Page, while in FBI Deputy-Director Andrew McCabe’s office:

I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.

This indicates, that whatever the insurance policy was, it was being crafted for sometime, and that it was coming from within the intelligence community.

According to court documents regarding a defamation lawsuit against Steele, it is known that the dossier “author” reached out to Sir Andrew Wood, Britain’s former Ambassador to Russia (’95-’00) in August 2016—this will become more significant later. It was an attempt by Steele to increase the credibility of his dossier—remember, he is only “receiving” most of the intelligence by his own admission.

August 5 2016: The next three pages of the dossier show great consternation supposedly within the Kremlin over the U.S. ratcheting up their investigation into the DNC hacks and alleged concern about Trump’s “psychological state and fitness for office.” Doesn’t this sound just like the DNC and their willing allies in the media? That’s right, they financed it.

August 10 2016: Next three pages come out. These make mention of Michael Flynn now as being among those inner Trump people who are being cultivated by the Russians. To that point only Page and Paul Manafort had been referenced in the dossier. It is assumed by the dossier’s author—this according the Russian “sources”—that there will be no new leaks that are damning to Clinton.

August 22 2016: These two pages appear out of order, but are related to supposed Russian concerns about the resignation of Paul Manafort from the Trump campaign following revelations about his work on behalf of the pro-Russian Ukrainian government front that Manafort had done work for in 2013-14.

The previous two pages were dated October 20, 2016, but referenced Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen’s, fabricated August trip to Russia. How could this have been so wrong, and why was it added after the dossier started being peddled to media outlets—this starts in September? The answer that makes the most sense is because another Michael Cohen was found to be traveling to Prague and Russia in August, but not discovered until October using the surveillance techniques of the FBI, and this information was then passed to Steele.

September 2016: NSA Director Rogers is in the midst of his investigation regarding the illegal surveillance using the “About Queries,” and Assistant Attorney General in charge of the DOJ NDS Division, John P Carlin, preempts Rogers findings by filing a notification with the FISA Court on 26th September 2016. He then delivers his intent to retire at the end of October. Carlin would have already known about NSA-Director Roger’s investigation, so why pre-empt it, and then head out the door? Probably because the work that it had accomplished was done—namely the illegal surveillance of Trump and associates, and the Trump dossier that it had helped create was in its final stages—and since the surveillance was going to come out anyway, why not make it look like they had discovered it on their own? Carlin also never informed Admiral Rogers.

September 14 2016: Four more pages of the dossier are released to Fusion GPS, and the FBI.

September 21 2016: It is discovered that Anthony Weiner, husband to Huma Abedin, chief aide to Hillary Clinton, has been sexting a 15-year-old girl. As part of the ensuing investigation, the NYPD gets ahold of his laptop, which has a cache of emails that Abedin had stored on there. This is important because it meant that people outside of the careful “special unit“—which included many of the same people included in the anti-Trump scheme—that had been set-up to conduct the original Clinton email scandal, knew that more emails had been discovered. There was no choice but for the FBI to “look into” the matter.

Update: Sometime in this month—see the Nunes memo—Bruce Ohr met with Steele, and in conversation confirmed that he had a deep personal animus against Trump and was “passionate about him not being president.” This information was given to the FBI by Ohr after the election. However, it was left out of the applications for legal surveillance on Trump and associates that came in October.

It was at the end of this month that details of Steele’s dossier are first revealed to members of the media. Steele revealed in his London court filings that he was directed by Fusion GPS to brief reporters at outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Yahoo! News and Mother Jones about his Trump findings. Yahoo news is the only one to have run a story, written by Michael Isikoff, on September 23, 2016, that cites contents from the dossier—though no one in the public even knew about the dossier’s existence.

The Obama campaign also made a large payment of $700,000 to Perkins Coi at the end of the month, again for “legal services.” Was this a payoff for the completed efforts, begun in April?

October 2016: In preparation for what appeared to be their big October surprise against Donald Trump—remember, the Dossier is Democrat opposition research—the different people involved in this thing, all began meeting with one another—to collaborate? Bruce Ohr meets, in undisclosed contacts, with Steele something for which Ohr was initially demoted from his position in the DOJ NDS department. FBI counsel James Baker, then meets with David Corn of Mother Jones, something only newly made known, and for which Baker was demoted as well.

October 7 2016: Despite the dossier author, having his supposed Russian contacts asserting back on August 10 that the damaging leaks against Clinton were done with, we have WikiLeaks begin releasing a series of emails and documents sent from or received by Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, including Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to banks. But I thought they were doing the bidding of the Russians? The Clinton campaign again repeated the accusation that Wikileaks was doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “dirty work.”

October 7 2016: The same day Wikileaks dropped it’s Podesta leak, the ODNI Chief, James Clapper, and DHS Secretary, Ashton Carter, issued their “Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security” illustrating “grave” concerns about Russian attempts at attempting to meddle in the 2016 elections using cyber attacks.

October 18 2016: Three more pages of the dossier are printed out, which claim substantiation by Russian sources that Carter Page did hold his secret meetings with Igor Sechin in Russia in July. They also throw in a mention at the end that Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, is a key go between with the Russians.

October 19 2016: Two more pages referencing Michael Cohen’s covering up of Carter Page’s and Paul Manafort’s Russian exposure are submitted.

October 20 2016: Michael Cohen’s—but not the Michael Cohen who is Trump’s lawyer—August trip to Prague and alleged meeting with Russians is detailed in two pages.

Update: October 21 2016: Per the released Nunes memo, we now know this to be the date the official approval was given to surveillance of Carter Page. This is when legal cover was given to the months of surveillance activity that was likely already taking place. However, that cover was incidental to the legalization the surveillance application for Page gave to the entire investigation. Page’s surveillance was not authorized under the FISA 702 classification, Title VII, but under Title I. This means they actually went after Page as though he were a foreign agent! Three renewal FISA applications against Carter Page were also applied for and granted and all of them were in large measure based on the information contained in the dossier. It was no less than Deputy Director Andrew McCabe who admitted in his classified testimony before the Intelligence Committee that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele dossier information. This means the dossier was the primary tool used to get the initial warrants and hence the basis for all the other ones.

This is also significant because by declaring Page a spy, all contact between him and anyone else in the Trump campaign could be surveilled with impunity, no need to dance around the edges now. This is highly probable when you consider what happened after the election and names of Trump people like Michael Flynn were being leaked to the press.

This original FISA request used the September 23, 2016 Yahoo news article as corroborating evidence to support the dossier’s claims in the FISA application. It was the Steele himself  who had briefed Yahoo news about the content of the dossier, which means the article was based on the dossier rather than corroborating it!

October 28 2016: James Comey sent a letter to Congress in which he mentions the fact that new Clinton emails have been found on Weiner’s laptop and that they are being looked into. Nowhere did he announce that the investigation was re-opened or anything else, and it wasn’t a public letter or announcement, as with his exoneration of Clinton though he must have known it would get made public. In fact, at the time, Clinton’s team made note of the fact that Comey did not say the investigation was re-opened, though they seemed irritated about the letter at the time.

October 31 2016: Mother Jones released a story regarding the collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, and cites information from the dossier—still not public at that time—as well as senior intelligence sources within the FBI that corroborate it—Corn claims that FBI counsel Baker was not his source despite the private meeting they had with one another.

Update: It is now confirmed that Steele was the contact with Corn, and it was for this that he was fired as a source by the FBI. Steele kept his former contacts with the media from the FBI.

Also in October 2016, as the DOJ lawyers formatted the FBI information (Steele Dossier etc.) for the new FISA application, and the head of the NSD, John Carlin, leaves his job. It would have specifically been John Carlin’s responsibility to ensure a valid legal basis for the FISA application submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). So the lawyers who take this to the DOJ to then pass on to the FISA court—Lisa Page and James Baker? —do not have their work properly vetted before it is sent to the court for approval.

Update: In fact it is now known that they purposefully made sure to keep from the FISA court the reality that the application for legalizing surveillance on Carter Page was based on a document—the dossier—which they knew to be have been paid for by “political actors” as opposition research!

Also, remember the initial FISA request was considered overly broad. However, we now know that indeed both Carter Page and Paul Manafort were surveilled specifically, and they, along with “Michael Cohen,” and Michael Flynn are the only names specifically mentioned in the dossier. Amazingly, surveillance of Page had begun sometime in the summer of 2016—July?—and he first appeared in the dossier in July following his publicly known trip to Russia. Update: The FISA application approval for legal surveillance of Page would have made all illegal surveillance retroactively legal!

That same month, the NSA compliance officer completed his review and briefed Rogers of 702(17) violations, email collection and phone surveillance. Rogers then proceeds to inform FISC on October 26, 2016, though they had already been told by Carlin at the DOJ, unbeknownst to Rogers.

It is important to remember that Obama DNI James Clapper flat out denied that any actual warrant for surveillance was issued by a FISA court. He is technically correct, because a warrant in the traditional sense comes before any surveillance of a target begins. Using the “About Queries”—probably Strzok and Bruce Ohr—this illegal activity could be retroactively made legal by a FISA court. This is what was denied in June, to cover the earlier activity, but was then okayed in October, thus making all of the illegal activity legal.

Why did the October warrant get issued? Because the now completed—the only other installment came on December 13, and was merely a further hit job on Cohen, outlining how he tried to further cover-up Russian cyber-involvement in helping then-President elect Trump win—dossier was a “comprehensive” and “independent” source that “corroborated” the intelligence collected illegally by the ongoing surveillance—the information that was being gathered by counterintelligence agents in both the DOJ and FBI, and then disseminated through Nelli Ohr at Fusion GPS, to Christopher Steele, who continued to dress the information he received up with other information, including publicly known information, such as Carter Page’s July trip to Russia.

The FBI originally planned to pay Steele $50,000 for his dossier, before a New York Times report quashed that, probably in an attempt to make it seem even more legit. Something along the line of: they had found out about it, and wanted to see if it confirmed their own work. Update: We find from the released Nunes memo that the FBI did in fact pay do Steele for his work.

However, they already had the contents of the dossier—remember, Steele had already briefed someone in the FBI about it in June, and that presumably continued all throughout the process—as has now been made known and publicly reported, and that dossier formed part of the basis, if not the entire basis, for the approved FISA “warrants.” It is highly likely that what was presented to the FISA court essentially all came from U.S. intelligence sources, who were working without oversight of any kind, and who secretly fed what they gleaned to Steele, via Nellie Ohr of Fusion GPS, and then, when Steele had added his own “Russia” stuff to it, it was taken, along with the intelligence that had helped create it, and given to the court. Now you had “corroboration” of suspicious activity and that convinced the FISA judge to “allow” the surveillance, and thus give legal backing to the investigation that had been going on since July.

Also, it was at the end of this month, following NSA Director Rogers’ review of the illegal surveillance that we find DNI Clapper, along with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter calling for Rogers’ to be removed from his post. I guess he wasn’t being a team player, and they determined he needed to go.

November 6 2016: Comey said that based on a review of the emails discovered on Weiner’s laptop that the agency had not changed its opinion that Clinton should not face criminal charges.

November 8, 2016: Donald Trump wins the presidency! One thing that Simpson had made clear is that he was upset the media did not print the dossier’s contents before the election. He intimated that he had wanted the connections between Trump and Russia to be printed so that it would take the public’s eyes off of Clinton and her email scandal—which we now know the FBI, and the same team of players in fact, was scheming to let her off the hook for.

November 17, 2016: If Admiral Rogers had Clapper and other members of the Obama team mad at him before, his unprecedented trip to Trump Tower, to meet with then-president-elect Donald Trump ten days after the election must have incensed them. Why did he make this trip? The most likely reason was so that he could recommend that Trump move his headquarters—though it appears that he left out the fact that numerous members of his team, and perhaps Trump himself were being surveilled by members of the counter-intelligence community. At this time, absolutely no one in the government was aware of an investigation into Trump, because Congress wasn’t being fed into the loop, as previously mentioned, so know one outside the intelligence community would have known about the surveillance. Roger’s knew about it because of his review. Once Trump had been elected, they would have set up a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility(SCIF) in Trump Tower. This is a compartment that allows for people to review material, or have conversations, without outside sources picking up on it. In other words, if Rogers wanted to make sure his conversation with Trump remained secret, without anyone else listening in, he would have needed a SCIF to do it. This also assumes that all of Trump Tower is under surveillance.

November 18, 2016: Those who doubt Rogers was suggesting a move, and possibly hinting at security concerns, should consider that the following day Trump moved his entire  transition team to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. It wasn’t until the beginning of March 2017 that Trump tweeted out his accusations about being spied on while in Trump Tower—something brought to him through intelligence he received. He had only been President for a little more than a month at that point. Later that month, Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is shown information for the first time, that proves the names of many people within Trump’s team, who had been picked up in the incidental surveillance, and then “unmasked” and disseminated within the intelligence community, though there did not appear to be a legitimate investigative reason for why their names were being so shared. Nunes, as a member of the Gang of Eight,is allowed to review intelligence related to U.S. intelligence operations, open and covert, but he has to ask for it.

The intelligence product would be delivered to a SCIF system for his review. It would be removed from that SCIF system after Nunes review (no systems are connected). It is important to note here that President Trump nominated Senator Dan Coats as ODNI, to replace James Clapper, on January 5th, 2017 – however, Democrats held up that nomination until March 16th, 2017. It is probably not coincidental, that a week after this appointment, on March 22, 2017, Nunes was told about the surveillance of Trump associates, and then reviewed the information. Nunes stated the intelligence product he reviewed was: not related to Russia, or the FBI Russian counter-intelligence investigation.

Also in November, and sometime after the election, we find Bruce Ohr meeting now with Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson. Were they discussing how to proceed from here? Is this the month when the “insurance policy” is being put into effect, and Simpson’s work is officially done? All signs point to yes. With the election decided, the effort is now made to make Russia an all-encompassing fall-guy that will in effect take down the duly elected Donald Trump. The only thing that Comey and friends had to do was connect their Trump/Russia investigation to something that had already had widespread concern within the intelligence community previously: the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC. The larger, mostly fabricated, narrative of Russian meddling in U.S. elections would be used to push an entirely concocted narrative about Trump/Russia collusion—it is this that Robert Mueller’s team has been focusing on, and has moved into obstruction of justice—but it was the larger issue of Russian interference into the 2016 election that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein signified as the impetus for the Mueller special counsel!

The problem for the FBI was getting the dossier into the public sphere, and they needed it to be done so that when it first appeared to the public it would be connected to a serious investigation by the FBI—in other words a leak. Enter Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Remember, I introduced Andrew Wood back in August. He was a friend of Steele’s who had been informed about the dossier. In November 2016 (post election), Wood traveled to the 2017 Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he met up with McCain, and briefed him on the contents of the dossier. McCain then told his aide, David Kramer, to get a personal briefing from Steele in Surrey, just outside of London, and then return to Washington, D.C. Once back in the states, he then went to Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson who provided Kramer with hard copies. These were then taken to McCain. He then turned them over to the FBI in January, 2017, though some media outlets said it was December 9, 2016.

It was also in this month that the “unmasking” of Trump associates started taking place at a rapid pace. Trump associates like Jared Kushner began to legitimately reach-out to Russians. Since those people are not American citizens they can be spied on with impunity. However, Trump individuals who are picked up under that monitoring are only incidentally being spied on. Their names are redacted in intelligence reviews of those contacts, unless they are unmasked, which can only be done if their is a legitimate, investigative or security reason for it to be done. In fact, in the final three months of the Obama administration, there were literally “hundreds” of requests, that were deemed legitimate at the time. Why? Because of the ongoing counter-intelligence investigation into Trump and his campaign that had finally cleared its legal hurdle in October.

The reason so many people in the Obama administration legally had access to these names, which made their way eventually to the press via illegal leaking—names like Michael Flynn—was because Obama had been sharing his Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) with upwards of 30 people, an unheard of dissemination of the intelligence contained therein. The PDB contains all the intelligence being collected on any given day, which means that, theoretically, the President and the ODNI are the only two people that knows everything related to intelligence, including ongoing investigations etc., on a daily basis. Those who the President entrusts with that information also then have access to it. I will get back to this at the end.

December 2016: On December 29, 2016 President Obama’s administration released the ‘Joint Analysis Report’ which various politicians and media claimed outlined details of Russia’s involvement hacking into targeted data, computer systems, and political networks during the election. Except, if you read it, you find it does no such thing. It outlines nothing more than vague and disingenuous typical hacking activity that is no more substantive than any other hacking report on any other foreign actor. It was this report that media outlets claimed was the work of “17 intelligence agencies,” who all agreed the Russians had tried to conduct cyber-interference in the 2016 elections. In reality, there were really only three (the CIA, NSA, and FBI), and the declassified Russian report—why was it declassified?—also lacked standard boilerplate language that it was coordinated within the U.S. Intelligence Community. It served its purpose however, as it was the first document to really open-up the “Russians tried to hack the election” narrative, a narrative that you can see was being pushed by the Clinton camp and had been drafted very early into the still publicly unknown Trump dossier.

January 6 2017: The intelligence community releases a report—a sort of follow-up to the December 29 report—in which the same three agencies all expressed a high degree of confidence that the Russians sought to hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election—shocking how this report matches exactly what is contained in the Trump dossier. However, when it came to whether Russia-tied hackers sought to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Mike Rogers, head of NSA, and the man who blew the whistle on the illegal surveillance, expressed only “moderate confidence” in that judgment, a divergence from the CIA, headed by John Brennan—a man who was guilty of spying on Congress under Obama—and the FBI, headed by Comey.

Interestingly enough, it was this same day, that Comey met with President-elect Donald Trump and told him about the Trump dossier—it had been given to him by John McCain earlier in the week?—though as we all know they already had it. However, it was only after being given it by McCain, that the decision is made to finally tell Trump about it. Comey also tells Trump he is not under investigation personally, something which failed to get leaked. What does get leaked to the media is the fact that the dossier was mentioned to the President. When Comey was asked why he told Trump about the dossier at all, especially if it was a part of an investigation involving people within Trump’s sphere, he said it was because he knew it was going to be printed soon by the media. How would he know? Well, if you consider the backstory as laid out here, then you know how.

Buzzfeed, who was not one of the original news outlets to be briefed on the dossier’s contents back in September 2016, then published the entire contents of the dossier just four days after that meeting on January 1o. Where did they get it from? My guess is that it came from the FBI, because Simpson claimed that he was upset it was published at all in its entirety. Also, if Buzzfeed had had it earlier, why wait all of that time? Could it be because it needed to be news first, in the context of the larger Russia interference into 2016 elections narrative? Once Comey tells Trump about the dossier, and in the context of an ongoing counter-intelligence investigation, it gives free license to the media to run with the narrative that the dossier is a “verified” document, that the FBI is taking seriously in its investigation into Trump/Russia collusion, though nothing could be further from the truth.

The rest, as they say, is history.

P.S. It was mentioned at the beginning that Obama was the only player in this thing with obvious political reasons for either helping concoct this entire thing, or allowing it to play out. Consider Mary Jacob visiting the White House, and the payments to Perkins Coi that perfectly track the timeline of the construction of the dossier. If these pieces of circumstantial evidence point to Obama’s leading the effort to create the phony dossier, then you have the biggest political scandal in U.S. history being constructed by the sitting President against the nominee, and then President-elect of his political opposition Party. This narrative is made more substantive when you consider that everything that occurred, the surveillance, the FISA court applications, all of it, would have appeared in the PDB. It is supposed to. So even if Obama hadn’t started the ball rolling he certainly would have known about it, in the normal construction of the intelligence sharing apparatus. Either that, or all of it was purposely kept from the President. That would have required all members of the intelligence community to not mention anything within their sphere related to what was going on. Considering the level of collusion between anti-Trump elements within both the FBI and DOJ, this simply defies logic. It is much more likely that Obama was aware from the beginning what was going on, and there is circumstantial evidence to suggest he may have helped orchestrate it all.

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Joseph Morgan

Team Writer at Western Free Press

Joseph was born and raised in Tucson, AZ. He received a Master's in U.S. history, with an emphasis on American constitutionalism from the UA, with a minor in Aerospace Mechanical Engineering. He took a job right out of college as a financial advisor, then switched career paths to teaching History at Pima Community College, while tutoring mathematics on the side. He also writes op-eds for the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson's largest newspaper, and has recently begun a new, live, calling radio show Common Sense heard every Saturday at 1 p.m. on 1030 AM KVOI, The Voice. He has a passion for politics and debate, believing that, we the people, must converse with each other about ideas and become engaged in the political formative process, as opposed to simply reacting to what government does. His ideological emphasis, in which he believes everyone can find common ground, is natural rights philosophy.

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Latest posts by Joseph Morgan (see all)

• Schiff Memo A Total Failure. Vindicates Nunes Memo. Exposes More FBI Lies. - February 25, 2018
• FBI Texts Show Collusion Between WH and FBI on Hillary Investigation and Effort To Destroy Trump - February 9, 2018
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