News Analysis<\/em><\/p>\n Although the details remain complex, the structure underlying Spygate\u2014the creation of the false narrative that candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia, and the spying on his presidential campaign\u2014remains surprisingly simple:<\/p>\n 1. CIA Director John Brennan, with some assistance from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, gathered foreign intelligence and fed it throughout our domestic Intelligence Community.<\/p>\n 2. The FBI became the handler of Brennan\u2019s intelligence and engaged in the more practical elements of surveillance.<\/p>\n 3. The Department of Justice facilitated investigations by the FBI and legal maneuverings, while providing a crucial shield of nondisclosure.<\/p>\n 4. The Department of State became a mechanism of information dissemination and leaks.<\/p>\n 5. Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided funding, support, and media collusion.<\/p>\n 6. Obama administration officials were complicit, and engaged in unmasking and intelligence gathering and dissemination.<\/p>\n 7. The media was the most corrosive element in many respects. None of these events could have transpired without their willing participation. Stories were pushed, facts were ignored, and narratives were promoted.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with a simple premise: The candidacy of Trump presented both an opportunity and a threat.<\/p>\n Initially not viewed with any real seriousness, Trump\u2019s campaign was seen as an opportunistic wedge in the election process. At the same time, and particularly as the viability of his candidacy increased, Trump was seen as an existential threat to the established political system.<\/p>\n The sudden legitimacy of Trump\u2019s candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment. Here was a true political outsider who held no traditional allegiances. He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn\u2019t be bought, and he didn\u2019t care what others thought of him\u2014he trusted himself.<\/p>\n Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried. Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy, regulations, and the power of special interests. He challenged Congress. He challenged the United Nations and the European Union. He questioned everything.<\/p>\n Brennan became the point man in the operation to stop a potential Trump presidency. It remains unclear whether his role was self-appointed or came from above. To embark on such a mission without direct presidential authority seems both a stretch of the imagination and particularly foolhardy.<\/p>\n Brennan took unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates\u2014primarily from the UK<\/a>, but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia.<\/p>\n Individuals in official positions in UK intelligence, such as Robert Hannigan\u2014head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, Britain\u2019s equivalent of the National Security Agency)\u2014partnered with former UK foreign intelligence members. Former MI6 head Sir Richard\u00a0Dearlove<\/a>, former Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, and private UK intelligence firm\u00a0Hakluyt<\/a>\u00a0all played a role.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2016, Hannigan traveled to Washington to\u00a0meet with<\/a>\u00a0Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. On Jan. 23, 2017\u2014three days after Trump\u2019s inauguration\u2014Hannigan\u00a0abruptly announced<\/a>\u00a0his retirement. The Guardian openly\u00a0speculated<\/a>\u00a0that Hannigan\u2019s resignation was directly related to the sharing of UK intelligence.<\/p>\n One method used to help establish evidence of collusion was the employment of \u201cspy traps.\u201d Prominent among these were ones set for Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The intent was to provide or establish connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The content and context mattered little as long as a connection could be established that could then be publicized. The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was another such attempt.<\/p>\n Western intelligence assets were used to initiate and establish these connections, particularly in the cases of Papadopoulos and Page.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Brennan\u00a0formed<\/a>\u00a0an inter-agency task force comprising an estimated six agencies and\/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry into Trump and possible Russia connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and National Security Agency (NSA) handled foreign and intelligence aspects.<\/p>\n Brennan\u2019s inter-agency task force is not to be confused with the July 2016 FBI counterintelligence investigation, which was formed later at Brennan\u2019s urging.<\/p>\n During this time, Brennan also employed the use of\u00a0reverse targeting<\/a>, which relates to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen. This effort was uncovered and\u00a0made public<\/a>\u00a0by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in a March 2017press conference<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cI have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were monitored and disseminated out in intelligence-reporting channels. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign-intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don\u2019t know exactly how that was picked up but we\u2019re trying to get to the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As this foreign intelligence\u2014unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels\u2014was gathered, Brennan began a process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation. Brennan repeatedly noted this during\u00a0a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cI made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the [FBI].\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Brennan also admitted that his intelligence helped\u00a0establish<\/a>\u00a0the FBI investigation:<\/p>\n \u201cI was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n This admission is important, as\u00a0no official intelligence<\/a>\u00a0was used to open the FBI\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n Once the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, Brennan shifted his focus. Through a series of meetings in August and September 2016, Brennan informed the congressional Gang of Eight regarding intelligence and information he had gathered. Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately, calling into question whether each of the members received the same information. Efforts to\u00a0block<\/a>\u00a0the release of the transcripts from each meeting remain ongoing.<\/p>\n The last major segment of Brennan\u2019s efforts involved a series of three reports and greater participation from Clapper. The first report, the\u00a0\u201cJoint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security<\/a>,\u201d was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The second report,\u00a0\u201cGRIZZLY STEPPE \u2014Russian Malicious Cyber Activity<\/a>,\u201d was released on Dec. 29, 2016. The third report,\u00a0\u201cAssessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections<\/a>\u201d\u2014also known as the Intelligence Community assessment (ICA)\u2014was released on Jan. 6, 2017.<\/p>\n This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump. Notably, Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning only a moderate confidence level.<\/p>\n Although the FBI is technically part of the DOJ, it is best for the purposes of this article that the FBI and DOJ be viewed as separate entities, each with its own related ties.<\/p>\n The FBI itself was comprised of various factions, with a particularly active element that has come to be known as the \u201cinsurance policy group.\u201d It appears that this faction was led by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and comprised other notable names such as FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and FBI general counsel James Baker.<\/p>\n The FBI established the counterintelligence investigation into alleged Russia collusion with the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016. Comey initially refused to say whether the FBI was investigating possible connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. He would continue to refuse to provide answers until March 20, 2017, when he disclosed\u00a0the existence of the FBI investigation\u00a0during<\/a>\u00a0congressional testimony.<\/p>\n Comey also testified that he did not provide notification to the Gang of Eight until early March 2017\u2014less than one month earlier. This admission was in stark contrast to actions taken by Brennan, who had notified members of the Gang of Eight individually during August and September 2016. It\u2019s likely that Brennan never informed Comey that he had briefed the Gang of Eight in 2016. Comey did note that the DOJ \u201chad been aware\u201d of the investigation all along.<\/p>\n Following Comey\u2019s firing on May 9, 2017, the FBI\u2019s investigation was transferred to special counsel Robert Mueller. The Mueller investigation remains ongoing.<\/p>\n The FBI\u2019s formal involvement with the\u00a0Steele dossier<\/a>\u00a0began on July 5, 2016, when Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attach\u00e9 at the US Embassy in Rome, was dispatched to visit former MI6 spy Christopher Steele in London. Gaeta would return from this meeting with a copy of Steele\u2019s first memo. This memo was given to Victoria Nuland at the State Department, who passed it along to the FBI.<\/p>\n Gaeta, who also headed the FBI\u2019s Eurasian Organized Crime unit, had known Steele since at least 2010, when Steele had provided assistance to the FBI\u2019s investigation into the\u00a0FIFA corruption scandal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prior to the London meeting, Gaeta may also have met on a less formal basis with Steele\u00a0several weeks<\/a>\u00a0earlier. \u201cIn June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA,\u201d The Guardian reported. \u201cHis information started to reach the bureau in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that there was no \u201cdossier\u201d until it was fully compiled in December 2016. There was only a sequence of documents from Steele\u2014documents that were passed on individually\u2014as they were created. Therefore, from the FBI\u2019s legal perspective, they didn\u2019t use the dossier. They used individual documents.<\/p>\n For the next month and a half, there appeared to be little contact between Steele and the FBI. However, the FBI\u2019s interest in the dossier suddenly accelerated in late August 2016, when the bureau\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0Steele \u201cfor all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources.\u201d<\/p>\n In September 2016, Steele traveled back to Rome to meet with the FBI\u2019s Eurasian squad once again. It\u2019s likely that the meeting included several other FBI officials as well. According to a\u00a0House Intelligence Committee minority memo<\/a>, Steele\u2019s reporting reached the FBI counterintelligence team in mid-September 2016\u2014the same time as Steele\u2019s September trip to Rome.<\/p>\n The reason for the FBI\u2019s renewed interest had to do with an adviser to the Trump campaign\u2014Carter Page\u2014who had been in\u00a0contact<\/a>with Stefan Halper, a CIA and FBI source, since July 2016. Halper\u00a0arranged to meet<\/a>\u00a0with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at aCambridge symposium<\/a>, just three days after Page took a trip to Moscow. Speakers at the symposium included Madeleine Albright, Vin Webber, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.<\/p>\n Page was now the FBI\u2019s chosen target for a FISA warrant that would be obtained on Oct. 21, 2016. The Steele dossier would be the primary evidence used in obtaining the FISA warrant, which would be renewed three separate times, including after Trump took office, finally expiring in September 2017.<\/p>\n After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ\u2019s Office of the Inspector General.<\/p>\n Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were two prominent members of the FBI\u2019s \u201cinsurance policy\u201d group. Strzok, a senior FBI agent, was the deputy assistant director of FBI\u2019s Counterintelligence Division. Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, served as special counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.<\/p>\n Strzok was in charge of the investigation into Hillary Clinton\u2019s use of a private email server for government business. He helped FBI Director James Comey draft the statement exonerating Clinton and was personally responsible for changing specific wording within that statement that reduced Clinton\u2019s legal liability. Specifically, Strzok changed the words \u201cgrossly negligent,\u201d which could be a criminal offense, to \u201cextremely careless.\u201d<\/p>\n Strzok also personally led the FBI\u2019s counterintelligence investigation into the alleged Trump\u2013Russia collusion and signed the documents that opened the investigation on July 31, 2016. He was one of the FBI agents who interviewed Trump\u2019s national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Strzok met multiple times with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and received information from Steele at those meetings.<\/p>\n Following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Strzok would join the team of special counsel Robert Mueller. Two months later, he was removed from that team after the DOJ inspector general discovered a lengthy series of texts between Strzok and Page that contained politically charged messages. Strzok would be fired from the FBI in August 2018.<\/p>\n Both Strzok and Page engaged in\u00a0strategic leaking<\/a>\u00a0to the press. Page did so at the direction of McCabe, who directly\u00a0authorized<\/a>\u00a0Page to share information with Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett. That information was used in an Oct. 30, 2016, article headlined\u00a0\u201cFBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe<\/a>.\u201d Page leaked to Barrett thinking she had been granted legal and official authorization to do so.<\/p>\n McCabe would later\u00a0initially deny<\/a>\u00a0providing such authorization to the Office of Inspector General. Page, when confronted with McCabe\u2019s denials, produced texts refuting his statement. It was these texts that led to the inspector general uncovering the texts between Strzok and Page.<\/p>\n The two exchanged thousands of texts, some of them indicating surveillance activities, over a two-year period. Texts sent between Aug. 21, 2015, and June 25, 2017, have been made\u00a0public<\/a>.\u00a0The series comes to an end with a final text by Page telling Strzok, \u201cDon\u2019t ever text me again.\u201d<\/p>\n On Aug. 8, 2016, Stzrok wrote that they would prevent candidate Trump from becoming president:<\/p>\n Page: \u201d[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!\u201d<\/p>\n Strzok: \u201dNo. No he won\u2019t. We\u2019ll stop it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n On Aug. 15, 2016, Strzok sent a text referring to an \u201cinsurance policy\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cI want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy\u2019s office\u2014that there\u2019s no way [Trump] gets elected\u2014but I\u2019m afraid we can\u2019t take that risk. \u2026 It\u2019s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you\u2019re 40.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The \u201cinsurance policy\u201d appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump\u2013Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation, led by McCabe, could continue unhindered.<\/p>\n The Department of Justice, which comprises\u00a060 agencies<\/a>, was transformed during the Obama years. The department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political affiliation.<\/p>\n However, a\u00a0series of investigative articles<\/a>\u00a0by PJ Media published during Eric Holder\u2019s tenure as attorney general revealed an unsettling pattern of ideological conformity among new hires at the DOJ: Only lawyers from the progressive left were hired. Not one single moderate or conservative lawyer made the cut.\u00a0This is significant as the DOJ enjoys significant latitude in determining who will be subject to prosecution.<\/p>\n The DOJ\u2019s job in Spygate was to facilitate the legal side of surveillance while providing a protective layer of cover for all those involved. The department became a repository of information and provided a protective wall between the investigative efforts of the FBI and the legislative branch. Importantly, it also served as the firewall within the executive branch, serving as the insulating barrier between the FBI and Obama officials. The department had become legendary for its stonewalling tactics with Congress.<\/p>\n The DOJ, which was fully aware of the actions being taken by James Comey and the FBI, also became an active element acting against members of the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, along with Mary McCord, the head of the DOJ\u2019s National Security Division, were\u00a0actively involved<\/a>\u00a0in efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn from his position as national security adviser to President Trump.<\/p>\n To this day, it remains unknown which individual was responsible for making public Flynn\u2019s call with the Russian ambassador. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to a process crime: lying to the FBI. There have been\u00a0questions raised<\/a>\u00a0in Congress regarding the possible alteration of FD-302s, the written notes of Flynn\u2019s FBI interviews. Special counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly deferred Flynn\u2019s sentencing hearing.<\/p>\n David Laufman, deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterintelligence at the DOJ\u2019s National Security Division, played a key role in both the Clinton email server and Russia hacking investigations. Laufman is currently the attorney for Monica McLean, the long-time friend of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while in high school. McLean was also\u00a0employed<\/a>\u00a0by the FBI for 24 years.<\/p>\n Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a\u00a0key role<\/a>\u00a0in Spygate. Ohr held\u00a0two important positions<\/a>\u00a0at the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. As associate deputy attorney general, Ohr was just four offices away from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and he reported directly to her. As director of the task force, he was in charge of a program described as \u201cthe centerpiece of the attorney general\u2019s drug strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known since atleast 2006<\/a>, well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr,\u00a0an expert<\/a>\u00a0on Russia and Eurasia who began working for Fusion GPS sometime in\u00a0late 2015<\/a>. Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier.<\/p>\n According to testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok, he and Ohr met at least five times during 2016 and 2017. Strzok was working directly with then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.<\/p>\n Additionally, Ohr met with the FBI at least\u00a012 times<\/a>\u00a0between late November 2016 and May 2017 for a series of interviews. These meetings could have been used to\u00a0transmit<\/a>\u00a0information from Steele to the FBI. This came after the FBI had formally severed contact with Steele in late October or early November 2016.<\/p>\n John Carlin is another notable figure with the DOJ. Carlin was an assistant attorney general and the head of the DOJ\u2019s National Security Division until October 2016. His role will be discussed below in the section on FISA abuse.<\/p>\n Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as \u201cSpygate.\u201d He directed the activities of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous \u201cinsurance policy\u201d text message.<\/p>\n McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.<\/p>\n On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He was placed into a somewhat chaotic situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months earlier, on March 2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.<\/p>\n Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased scrutiny as the result of actions taken leading up to and following the election, particularly Comey\u2019s handling of the Clinton email investigation.<\/p>\n On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject of the memo was \u201cRestoring Public Confidence in the FBI.\u201d Comey was fired that day.<\/p>\n McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration for the permanent position.<\/p>\n On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the FBI\u2019s Inspection Division (INSD) regarding apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal article, \u201cFBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe\u201d by Devlin Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, \u201cA Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the darker aspects of McCabe\u2019s role in Spygate fully known.<\/p>\n In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions, regarding potential lack of candor before Congress in relation to Sessions\u2019s contacts with Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.<\/p>\n Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.<\/p>\n On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly record President Trump. This remark was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former FBI general counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence. Rosenstein issued a statement denying the accusations.<\/p>\n The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was \u201cpushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president.\u201d<\/p>\n An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the conversation somewhat differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying, \u201cWhat do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?\u201d<\/p>\n Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met with Mueller, reportedly as an interview for the FBI director job.<\/p>\n On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump\u2019s meeting with Mueller\u2014and the day after Rosenstein\u2019s encounters with McCabe\u2014Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.<\/p>\n The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any expansion of Mueller\u2019s investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.<\/p>\n Interestingly, without Comey\u2019s memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed\u2014the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would have remained in charge of the Russia investigation. McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was reportedly under consideration. Regardless, without Comey\u2019s leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement and the FBI would have retained control.<\/p>\n On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.<\/p>\n On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on \u201cthe scope of investigation and definition of authority\u201d that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the new FBI director.<\/p>\n Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray were tasked with overseeing all leak investigations.<\/p>\n That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove any residual FBI influence\u2014specifically that of McCabe\u2014from the Russia investigation. The appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely neutralized.<\/p>\n On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.<\/p>\n The State Department, with its many contacts within foreign governments, became a conduit for the flow of information. The transfer of Christopher Steele\u2019s first dossier memo was personally\u00a0facilitated<\/a>\u00a0by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy.<\/p>\n Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele\u2019s involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he began to\u00a0provide reports<\/a>\u00a0informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a \u201cprivate client\u201d but were \u201cshared widely within the U.S. State Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of\u00a0the U.S. response to Putin\u2019s annexation of Crimea<\/a>\u00a0and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine,\u201d the Guardian reported.<\/p>\n In July 2016, when the FBI wanted to send Gaeta to visit Steele in London, the bureau\u00a0sought permission<\/a>\u00a0from the office of Nuland, who provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018,\u00a0appearance<\/a>\u00a0on CBS\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cIn the middle of July, when [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That\u2019s something for the FBI to investigate.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Steele also\u00a0met with<\/a>\u00a0Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy for Libya. Steele and Winer had known each other since at least 2010. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Winer wrote the following:<\/p>\n \u201cIn September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the \u2018dossier.\u2019 Steele\u2019s sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In a strange turn of events, Winer also received a\u00a0separate dossier<\/a>, very similar to Steele\u2019s, from long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This \u201csecond dossier\u201d had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer then met with Steele in late September 2016 and gave Steele a copy of the \u201csecond dossier.\u201d Steele went on to\u00a0share<\/a>\u00a0this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it to corroborate his dossier.<\/p>\n Other foreign officials also used conduits into the State Department. Alexander Downer, Australia\u2019s high commissioner to the UK,\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0funneled his conversation with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos\u2014later used as a reason to open the FBI\u2019s counterintelligence investigation\u2014directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Downer details landed with the embassy\u2019s then-charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton\u2019s State Department,\u201d The Wall Street Journal\u2019s Kimberley Strassel wrote in a May 31, 2018,\u00a0article<\/a>.<\/p>\n If true, this would mean that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.<\/p>\n Curiously, details surprisingly similar to the Papadopoulos\u2013Downer conversation show up in the\u00a0first memo<\/a>\u00a0written by Steele on June 20, 2016:<\/p>\n \u201cA dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls. \u2026 It has not yet been distributed abroad, including to Trump.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee both occupied a unique position. They had the most to gain but they also had the most to lose. And they stood willing and ready to do whatever was necessary to win. Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign manager, Robby Mook, is credited with being the first to raise the specter of candidate Donald Trump\u2019s alleged collusion with Russia.<\/p>\n The entire Clinton campaign willfully promoted the narrative of Russia\u2013Trump collusion despite the uncomfortable fact that they were the ones who had engaged the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele through their law firm Perkins Coie. Information flowed from the campaign\u2014sometimes through Perkins Coie, other times through affiliates\u2014ultimately making its way into the media and sometimes to the FBI. Information from the Clinton campaign may also have ended up in the Steele dossier.<\/p>\n Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign, in tandem with Jake Sullivan, the senior policy adviser to the campaign,\u00a0took the lead<\/a>\u00a0in briefing the press on the Trump\u2013Russia collusion story.<\/p>\n Another example of this behavior can be seen from an instance when Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmannleaked<\/a>\u00a0information from Steele and Fusion GPS to Franklin Foer of Slate magazine. This event is described in the House Intelligence Committee\u2019s final report on\u00a0Russian active measures<\/a>, in footnote 43 on page 57. Foer then published the article\u00a0\u201cWas a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?<\/a>\u201d on Oct. 31, 2016. The article concerns allegations regarding a server in the Trump Tower.<\/p>\n The Slate article managed to attract the immediate attention of Clinton, who posted a\u00a0tweet<\/a>\u00a0on the same day the article was published:<\/p>\n \u201cComputer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Attached to her tweet was a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0from Sullivan:<\/p>\n \u201cThis could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.<\/p>\n \u201cThis secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump\u2019s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These statements, which were later proven to be incorrect, are all the more disturbing with the hindsight knowledge that it was a senior Clinton\/DNC lawyer who helped plant the story. And given the prepared statement by Sullivan, the Clinton campaign knew this.<\/p>\n This type of behavior would be engaged in repeatedly\u2014damning leaks leading to media stories, followed by ready attacks from the Clinton campaign.<\/p>\n Alexandra Chalupa is a Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee. Chalupa\u00a0met with top officials<\/a>\u00a0in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia. Chalupa began\u00a0investigating<\/a>\u00a0Manafort in 2014. In late 2015, Chalupa expanded her opposition research on Manafort to include Trump\u2019s ties to Russia. In January 2016, Chalupa shared her information with a senior DNC official.<\/p>\n Chalupa\u2019s meetings with DNC and Ukrainian officials would continue. On April 26, 2016, investigative reporter Michael Isikoffpublished<\/a>\u00a0a story on Yahoo News about Manafort\u2019s business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a DNC email leaked by\u00a0Wikileaks<\/a>\u00a0that Chalupa had been working with Isikoff\u2014the same journalist Christopher Steele\u00a0leaked to<\/a>\u00a0in September 2016. Manafort would later be indicted for Foreign Agents Registration Act violations that occurred during the Obama administration.<\/p>\n International law firm Perkins Coie served as the legal arm for both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Ties to Perkins Coie extended beyond the DNC into the Obama White House.<\/p>\n Bob Bauer, a partner at the law firm and founder of its political law practice, served as\u00a0White House counsel<\/a>\u00a0to President Barack Obama throughout 2010 and 2011. Bauer was also\u00a0general counsel<\/a>\u00a0to Obama\u2019s campaign organization, Obama for America, in 2008 and 2012.<\/p>\n Perkins Coie partners Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann each played critical roles and were the ones who hired Fusion GPS and Steele. Sussmann\u00a0personally handled<\/a>\u00a0the alleged hack of the DNC server. He also transmitted information, likely from Steele and Fusion GPS, to James Baker, then-chief counsel at the FBI, and to several members of the press.<\/p>\n According to a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0dated Oct. 24, 2017, written by Matthew Gehringer, general counsel at Perkins Coie, the firm was approached by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson in early March 2016 regarding the possibility of hiring Fusion GPS to continue opposition research into the Trump campaign. Simpson\u2019s overtures were successful, and in April 2016, Perkins Coie\u00a0hired<\/a>\u00a0Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC.<\/p>\n Sometime in April or May 2016, Fusion GPS\u00a0hired<\/a>\u00a0Christopher Steele. During this same period, Fusion also reportedly\u00a0hired<\/a>\u00a0Nellie Ohr, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele would complete his first memo on June 20, 2016, and send it to Fusion via enciphered mail.<\/p>\n Perkins Coie appears to have also been acting as a conduit between the DNC and the FBI.\u00a0Documents<\/a>suggest that Sussmann was feeding information to FBI general counsel James Baker and at least one journalist ahead of the FBI\u2019s application for a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n The information provided by Sussmann may have been used by the FBI as \u201ccorroborating information.\u201d<\/p>\n The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by\u00a0Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333<\/a>, also known as Obama\u2019s\u00a0data-sharing order<\/a>. With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.<\/p>\n Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn\u2019t sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.<\/p>\n The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.<\/p>\n An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017,\u00a0MSNBC interview<\/a>, where she detailed how the Obama administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:<\/p>\n \u201cI was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill \u2026 \u2018Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff\u2019s dealing with Russians, [they] would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. \u2026 That\u2019s why you have the leaking.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Many of the Obama administration\u2019s efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.<\/p>\n DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the attorney general\u2019s office. According to\u00a0congressional testimony<\/a>\u00a0by Horowitz:<\/p>\n \u201cWe got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. \u2026 It was simply a decision by the General Counsel\u2019s Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren\u2019t going to give us that information.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These new restrictions were\u00a0put in place<\/a>\u00a0by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.<\/p>\n On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a\u00a0letter to Congress<\/a>\u00a0asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015, with a\u00a058-page memorandum<\/a>. The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III\u2014including intercepted communications and national security letters.<\/p>\n The New York Times recently\u00a0disclosed<\/a>\u00a0that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n At other times, the Obama administration\u2019s efforts were more direct. The\u00a0Intelligence Community assessment<\/a>\u00a0was released internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email\u00a0documenting<\/a>\u00a0the meeting.<\/p>\n The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.<\/p>\n Comey would only inform Trump of the \u201csalacious\u201d details contained within the dossier. He later\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0on CNN in an April 2018 interview why:<\/p>\n \u201cBecause that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Shortly after Comey\u2019s meeting with Trump, both the Trump\u2013Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The significance of the meeting was material, as Comey\u00a0noted in a Jan. 7 memo<\/a>\u00a0he wrote:<\/p>\n \u201cMedia like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey briefed Trump that\u00a0CNN reported<\/a>\u00a0on the dossier. It was later\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey\u2019s meeting with Trump to CNN.<\/p>\n The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of\u00a0intelligence unmaskings<\/a>, the process whereby a U.S. citizen\u2019s identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.<\/p>\n The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump\u2019s newly appointed national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ\u2019s National Security Division,\u00a0led that effort<\/a>.<\/p>\n President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ. The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.<\/p>\n Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold the president\u2019s executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department\u2019s senior leadership. The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.<\/p>\n Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney\u2019s office. Phillips, after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.<\/p>\n It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming under intense scrutiny.<\/p>\n The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates\u2019s efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian ambassador.<\/p>\n Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.<\/p>\n Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama\u2019s prior order.<\/p>\n On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings appear to have been unexpected.<\/p>\n In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a\u00a0series of payments<\/a>\u00a0to several as-of-yet-unnamed reporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.<\/p>\n Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In\u00a0September 2016<\/a>, he met with a number of U.S. journalists for \u201cThe New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN,\u201d according to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.<\/p>\n In\u00a0mid-October<\/a>\u00a02016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother Jones reporter David Corn.<\/p>\n Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant\u2014likely the unredacted version\u2014has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.<\/p>\n On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article \u201cA Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy<\/a>.\u201d In the article, she identified \u201cMale-1,\u201d referred to in\u00a0court documents<\/a>\u00a0relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, \u201cFBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page<\/a>,\u201d confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA warrant.<\/p>\n The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and\u00a0charged<\/a>\u00a0with one count of lying to the FBI. Wolfe\u2019s\u00a0indictment<\/a>alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.<\/p>\n It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application.<\/p>\n According to the\u00a0indictment<\/a>, Wolfe\u00a0exchanged<\/a>\u00a082 text messages with Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call.<\/p>\n The original Page FISA application is 83 pages long, including one final signatory page.<\/p>\n In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.<\/p>\n Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.<\/p>\n House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0that evidence within the FISA application shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.<\/p>\n Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit their complicity.<\/p>\n UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s GCHQ was involved in\u00a0collecting information<\/a>\u00a0regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to\u00a0meet<\/a>\u00a0personally with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.<\/p>\n Hannigan\u2019s meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn\u2019t Hannigan\u2019s counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan\u00a0abruptly announced<\/a>\u00a0his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017\u2014three days after Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK\u2019s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos\u2014some repeatedly so.<\/p>\n Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove.<\/p>\n Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to\u00a0work<\/a>\u00a0with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge\u00a0symposium<\/a>\u00a0that Halper invited Carter Page to attend.<\/p>\n Dearlove knows Halper through their\u00a0mutual association<\/a>\u00a0at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic\u00a0intelligence and advisory firm<\/a>\u00a0Hakluyt<\/a>, which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services.<\/p>\n Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has\u00a0co-authored<\/a>\u00a0two books.<\/p>\n Downer, who\u00a0met<\/a>\u00a0Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting\u00a0established<\/a>\u00a0through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the\u00a0advisory board<\/a>\u00a0of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still\u00a0maintains contact<\/a>\u00a0with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau\u2019s counterintelligence investigation into Trump\u2013Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.<\/p>\n The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the formerBritish ambassador<\/a>\u00a0to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later\u00a0relayed<\/a>\u00a0information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017,\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.<\/p>\n Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations\u2014including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application\u2014received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, \u201cPlease, can we talk.\u201d Those \u201callies\u201d were almost certainly the UK and Australia.<\/p>\n In a\u00a0Twitter post<\/a>, Trump wrote that the \u201ckey Allies called to ask not to release\u201d the documents.<\/p>\n Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?<\/p>\n Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release appears to be because they don\u2019t want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.<\/p>\n Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.<\/p>\n Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele\u00a0maintains contact<\/a>\u00a0with British intelligence,\u00a0Sir Richard Dearlove<\/a>, and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.<\/p>\n Steele appears to have been\u00a0represented<\/a>\u00a0by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from\u00a0texts sent<\/a>\u00a0by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:<\/p>\n \u201cHi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort. I will be with him next tuesday for a week.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Steele also appears to have\u00a0lobbied<\/a>\u00a0on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in\u00a0emails<\/a>\u00a0between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently\u00a0disclosed<\/a>\u00a0by the Washington Examiner:<\/p>\n \u201cSteele said he was \u2018circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting\u2019 on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a \u2018tool\u2019 of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler, who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, at which she discussed the\u00a0Magnitsky Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson\u00a0met with<\/a>\u00a0Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.<\/p>\n A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans\u2019 communications. The FBI specifically provided outside contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.<\/p>\n Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.<\/p>\n Bruce and Nellie Ohr have\u00a0known<\/a>\u00a0Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a\u00a0DOJ report in 2010<\/a>. In that report, Nellie Ohr\u2019s biography lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr\u00a0before and after<\/a>\u00a0the 2016 election.<\/p>\n Bruce Ohr had been in\u00a0contact<\/a>\u00a0repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign\u2014while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump\u2019s presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s\u2014memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.<\/p>\n In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has\u00a0ties to<\/a>\u00a0Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.<\/p>\n Papadopoulos and Mifsud\u00a0both worked<\/a>\u00a0at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around\u00a0November 2015<\/a>. Papadopoulos reportedly\u00a0joined<\/a>\u00a0LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson\u2019s presidential campaign. However, some\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths\u00a0until<\/a>\u00a0March 14, 2016, in Italy.<\/p>\n Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as \u201cPutin\u2019s niece,\u201d and Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.<\/p>\n Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.<\/p>\n Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos\u2013Downer meeting has been portrayed as a\u00a0chance encounter<\/a>\u00a0in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.<\/p>\n Papadopoulos was\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened to\u00a0be in London<\/a>\u00a0at exactly the same time: the FBI\u2019s head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap\u2019s visit remains unknown.<\/p>\n The Papadopoulos\u2013Downer\u00a0meeting<\/a>\u00a0was later used to establish the FBI\u2019s counterintelligence investigation into Trump\u2013Russia collusion. It was repeatedly reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton\u2019s emails. This is incorrect.<\/p>\n According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point\u00a0mentioned<\/a>\u00a0the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Screen-Shot-2018-10-15-at-8.33.20-AM.png\")
<\/a><\/a><\/h6>\nCIA Director John Brennan on March 13, 2015. Brennan played a crucial role in the creation of the Russia-collusion narrative and the spying on the Trump campaign. (Don Emmert\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n
\nFederal Bureau of Investigation<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/h6>\nFormer FBI Director James Comey on June 8, 2017. Comey opened the counterintelligence investigation into Trump on the urging of CIA Director John Brennan. (Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n
<\/a><\/h6>\nFormer volunteer Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Nov. 2, 2017. The FBI obtained a retroactive FISA spy warrant on Page. (Mark Wilson\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n
\n<\/div>\nPeter Strzok and Lisa Page<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/h6>\nThen-FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok on July 12, 2018. Strzok oversaw both the FBI\u2019s investigation into Hillary Clinton\u2019s use of a private email server and the counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump\u2019s campaign. (Samira Bouaou\/The Epoch Times)<\/h6>\n
\n<\/div>\nDepartment of Justice<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
\nDOJ Official Bruce Ohr on Aug. 28, 2018. Ohr passed on information from Christopher Steele to the FBI. (Samira Bouaou\/The Epoch Times)<\/h6>\nThe Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe<\/h2>\n
\n<\/div>\nState Department<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
\nState Department official Victoria Nuland on Nov. 4, 2015. Nuland passed on parts of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Mark Wilson\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n<\/a>
\nState Department official Jonathan Winer. Winer passed on memos from Christopher Steele to Victoria Nuland. (State Department)<\/h6>\nClinton Campaign and the DNC<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
\nJennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential run, on Oct. 28, 2016. Palmieri helped promote the Russia-collusion narrative. (Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n
\n<\/div>\nPerkins Coie<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
\nPerkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann. Sussmann transmitted information to FBI chief counsel James Baker and several journalists. (Courtesy Perkins Coie)<\/h6>\n
\nObama Administration<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
\nDeputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia\/Ukraine\/Eurasia Evelyn Farkas on May 6, 2014. (Alex Wong\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n<\/a>
\nDirector of National Intelligence James Clapper on Nov. 17, 2016. Clapper leaked information to CNN, after which he publicly condemned the leaks. (Alex Wong\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n
\n<\/div>\nExecutive Order 13762<\/h2>\n
\nMedia<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Reporter Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.<\/h6>\n
\nForeign Intelligence<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan in this file photo. Hannigan transmitted information regarding Donald Trump to John Brennan in the summer of 2016. (Romeo Gacad\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\nFusion GPS\/Orbis\/Christopher Steele<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS. The company was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC\u2013through law firm Perkins Coie\u2013to produce the dossier on Trump.<\/h6>\n<\/a>Nellie Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS to work on the dossier on Trump.<\/h6>\n
\nSpy Traps<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign was approached by several individuals with ties to UK and U.S. intelligence agencies. (Mandel Ngan\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/h6>\n