Both John Brennan and James Comey used Peter Strzok to damage President Donald Trump. Strzok is the disgraced FBI agent and fired Robert Mueller team member whose text messages with mistress Lisa Page form the biggest scandal in FBI history. The lovers conspired to illegally bring down Trump, all while the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign.

Strzok interviewed Hillary Clinton without putting her under oath, and granted immunity to Cheryl Mills and Clinton’s other associates right before he flew to London to meet with Christopher Steele to work on the anti-Trump dossier, which was sponsored by the Clinton-funded firm Fusion GPS. That dossier was used to fraudulently obtain FISA warrants to surveil Trump Tower. Barack Obama read bits of the dossier in his daily presidential briefings, courtesy of Brennan. Fusion GPS, meanwhile, sent operatives into Trump Tower to entrap Don Jr. and Jared Kushner in a meeting with planted Russians.

When it was time for the conspirators to focus on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, Strzok was there to run information about the adviser to the Australians. When it was time to take out Trump’s national security adviser General Michael Flynn, Strzok was there to stage an “ambush” interrogation of Flynn without Flynn’s lawyer present.

Let’s walk through Strzok’s amazing Zelig-like role in every facet of Operation Crossfire Hurricane:

Brennan hired Strzok to write the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January 2017.

Big League Politics

This was an official document used to spur on the Robert Mueller investigation. But the document did not actually find any evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, it merely said that Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump and that Russia “developed a clear preference for Trump.” The Christopher Steele dossier was added as an “appendix” to the ICA report, even though Brennan lied and told Congress that it was never used.

Comey Sent Strzok To London To Meet With The Australians About George Papadopoulos

BLP

George Papadopoulos was surveilled in real time by the FBI. Who set him up? Peter Strzok, whose meeting with the Australian ambassador in London provided key basis for the creation of Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to none other than the New York Times.

Tyler Durden Explains: 

• “The FBI sent counterintelligence agents, one of whom was Peter Strzok, to London in the summer of 2016 to meet with Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, to describe his meeting with Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos.
• The meeting with Downer was described as “highly unusual,” and “helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation.”
• The FBI kept details of the operation secret from most of the DOJ – with “only about five Justice Department officials” aware of the full scope of the case.”

Strzok Cleared Hillary Clinton Right Before He Left For London

Big League Politics called attention in July 2017 to the fact that Strzok was serving on the Mueller team after personally overseeing the Hillary Clinton email investigation at the FBI and personally conducting the interview with Hillary Clinton that was not under oath and which led to no incarceration for the Democrat candidate.

Strzok also withheld information about the Hillary case from Congress according to this text:

With the pressure on, Strzok’s wife Melissa Hodgman, Associate Director of the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is scrubbing her Obama and Clinton links. Hodgman was promoted by Obama just two weeks before FBI director James Comey re-opened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in 2016, leading political insiders to suspect that Hodgman might have been involved in the federal government’s cover-up.

Some of the Liked pages on her Facebook account on December 3 included “Thank You Obama” and “We Voted For Hillary.”

Strzok Sets Up Flynn

On January 24, 2017, Peter Strzok interviewed General Michael Flynn inside the White House alongside another agent. Flynn’s lawyer was not present. Flynn apparently did not tell the White House about his meeting. Guess who did? Sally Yates, the anti-Trump deputy attorney general whose underling told the FBI to shut down the Clinton Foundation case. Yates informed the White House on January 26 that Flynn met with the FBI.

That was the beginning of the end for the original Trump White House.

Strzok was close personal friends with the foreign intelligence judge Rudolph Contreras who accepted General Flynn’s guilty plea. Contreras recused himself after he already accepted Flynn’s guilty plea.

Strzok and Page detailed their plan to meet with Contreras in a July 25, 2016 series of texts:

PAGE: “Rudy is on the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]! Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”

STRZOK: “I did. I need to get together with him.”

PAGE: “said he’d gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at.”

Strzok and Page’s Texts Revealed Their Anti-Trump Plot

It is well known that Strzok and Page discussed their anti-Trump conspiracy many thousands of times over text messages that have been mostly released. The lovers’ repeated references to “CF” refer to “Crossfire.” Here are Hot Air’s favorites:

“Strzok: God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.

Strzok: Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support…

Strzok: I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.”

Brennan Plotted For Years To Get Trump, Starting with a Fly-By-Night Operation in Reno

A whistleblower case currently in federal court in Washington, D.C. stands to bring out incredible allegations of John Brennan and James Clapper’s moves against Trump, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and the former presiding judge of the FISA court Reggie Walton.

Real estate mogul Timothy Blixseth admitted that he saw records from CIA and NSA whistleblower Dennis Montgomery proving that Clapper and Obama CIA director John Brennan oversaw repeated spying on the phone calls of President Donald Trump and millions of other private American citizens, including Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and FISA court judge Reggie Walton. Fired former FBI director James Comey received evidence from the whistleblower’s lawyer but sat on it.

LISTEN TO THE BLIXSETH TAPE RIGHT HERE

In an audiotaped interview — conducted before Trump ever ran for president — Blixseth spoke to former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and detective Mike Zullo. The audio was released in connection with a civil contempt case that the Department of Justice filed against Arpaio. The audio of this conversation appears to only be preserved in one location on the Internet, on a whistleblower Soundcloud page.

“This guy showed me 900 million phone calls. And I see myself in there. I see people I know. I see Donald Trump in there a zillion times, and Bloomberg is in there,” Blixseth said on the tape, referring to information that Montgomery allegedly showed him.

“He’s a very genius computer guy,” Blixseth said of Montgomery. “What they did is, they were actually working for the CIA. And they mask it as — I’m sure you’ll remember this — the contracts with the CIA, of which I had many copies, said that they were decoding Al-Jazeera television, said that there was broadcast embedded, remember that? Owned by Gore? Al Gore’s got part of it now. But it was all bullshit. That was bullshit. That was a front by the CIA. And this guy [Montgomery] worked for Brennan and Clapper. Those were the two guys running it,” Timothy Blixseth told Arpaio and Zullo on the tape.

“He started out in 2004 with another partner in Reno, Nevada, called eTreppid. They collected about $40 million from the CIA. Top security clearance. All kinds of letters…In 2006 they started a new company that [my ex-wife] owns, and they started doing the same business for the government. What it really turns out they were doing is they were hacking into all of America.

Big League Politics called the listed number for eTreppid Technologies, but we were told that Montgomery no longer works there. “That company closed down years ago, sir,” a representative said of eTreppid Technologies. When asked what the company is called now, the representative said, “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss any more with you.”

Blixseth claimed in his conversation with Zullo and Arpaio that Brennan and Clapper were running the operation.

“Everything they said they didn’t do, that Brennan said recently, mainly Clapper. It’s all bullshit. And I’ve got it right here,” Blixseth said.

On the explosive tapes, Blixseth walks Arpaio and Zullo through the details of the program on a computer screen. At one point, the three begin pulling up specific names of targeted individuals.

“You know who that guy is? That’s the head of the FISA court they hacked into, Reggie Walton,” Blixseth tells the investigators.

“John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, was hacked,” Blixseth tells Arpaio and Zullo.

Insiders have always been skeptical of Roberts’ motives for siding with President Obama on Obamacare.

On August 4, 2005, Matt Drudge reported: “The NEW YORK TIMES is looking into the adoption records of the children of Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate the status of adoption records of Judge Roberts’ two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals. Judge Roberts and his wife Jane adopted the children when they each were infants. Both children were adopted from Latin America. A TIMES insider claims the look into the adoption papers are part of the paper’s “standard background check.” Bill Borders, NYT senior editor, explains: “Our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue.”

OBAMA Kept The Scheme Going Overseas

House lawmakers are zeroing in on a meeting that German chancellor Angela Merkel held with President Obama at a key moment as one of the FISA warrants against Trump was set to expire. Lawmakers are aware of the role of foreign governments in collaborating with U.S. intelligence agencies in the Trump investigation as recently as 2017.

Germany provided information beginning in 2015 to aide British spies and the Obama administration in compiling the Christopher Steele “dossier.”

Obama had been called out by the Drudge Report for visiting foreign leaders in Europe in the spring of 2017 right before President Trump visited those leaders in Europe. It turns out that one of those Obama meetings is now under scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein gave a redacted document to Rep. Devin Nunes, showing two major redactions about the creation of the Trump “Dossier” and the launch of FISA warrants and Robert Mueller’s investigation during the 2016 campaign. The redactions were: “the name of a country and the name of a foreign agent who supplied information.”

Now we know: the country is Germany and the foreign agent was either Angela Merkel or someone who worked for Angela Merkel in foreign intelligence.

The redacted sections will be referencing one of the European countries and agents that share SIGINT (signal intelligence) to US Intelligence,” says Chuck Marler, a longtime agent of the FBI Special Surveillance Group under Robert Mueller, who is an official whistleblower in this case.

SIGINT countries were involved in sharing information that helped the Christopher Steele dossier to come together. The Guardian reported in an amazingly under-covered article: “Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.”

So Germany helped build the dossier. When does Merkel re-emerge in this picture?

“Fast forward to April/May 2017, roughly the same time the fourth and final FISA warrant was running out (because the Carter Page story was determined false). Rosenstein and McCabe were in desperate need of renewed help from intelligence to keep the Russian Collusion narrative alive,” Marler reports.

“Well they weren’t going to get help from the CIA because Pompeo was now CIA Director and wouldn’t help with a faux collusion narrative. In comes Obama to the rescue. He meets with Merkel in private (the US no longer monitored her communications because of the previous mishap) to beg for some more Sigint information to keep the collusion narrative alive. Conveniently he meets her hours prior to Trump’s meeting and his stay in her heavily monitored territory.”

Here’s an article from The Independentdescribing how President Trump visited Brussels the same day Angela Merkel met with Obama in Berlin:

“Barack Obama is to visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on his first trip to Europe since leaving office.

The former US President will travel to Germany for the launch of a summer of special events to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant church.

He will arrive in Germany on the same day as his successor Donald Trump is due in Brussels for a meeting with other NATO leaders – the first scheduled foreign visit for the President since taking office.

Mr Obama is due to give a speech in the German capital and take part in a discussion on democracy with Ms Merkel, who he once called his “closest ally.'”

This is quite the investigative report. Obama and Hillary led others in the commission of the political crime of the century.  They all need to be brought to justice and punished for their crimes. 

[Removed]

What crimes?

I guess that you will have to read the very lengthy seeded article to find out.  

Wow, not much more to say than that.

During the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, the leaders of the conservative news outlet Washington Free Beacon hired a private intelligence company, Fusion GPS, to conduct research into the candidates, including Trump. Early in the year, the Free Beacon's interest in the work lapsed.

Other than the DNC were not the original sponsors of Mr. Steeles dossier, may want to round up a conservative or two since you are seeking balance. 

Other than the DNC were not the original sponsors of Mr. Steeles dossier,

If you've read it, you'd know The Steele dossier was the exclusive work product of Christopher Steele.  The Republicans project consisted of gathering publicly available information. Steele was hired to gather and report private information from his Russian sources.

Conflating the two separate projects is disingenuous, to put it mildly.  

Sorry, the Clinton Campaign and DNC are solely responsible for the Steele Dossier. Nice, try at rewriting basic facts. Unless you think that NBC News is lying.

nbcnews

Fusion had been hired to get information on Trump during the primaries by a Republican media firm, Washington Free Beacon. When Trump became the Republican nominee, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party began picking up the tab for the Fusion research. Fusion owner Glenn Simpson hired Steele, a Russia expert, to gather information from his sources in Russia .

Here is further backup from the Free Beacon itself.

washingtonexaminer

T he Washington Free Beacon did not bankroll the Steele dossier, a highly dubious work of opposition research alleging the Russians have compromising personal and financial information on Donald Trump.

Rather, the conservative newsroom hired the same research firm that later created it, Fusion GPS, in 2016 to investigate Trump and other Republican candidates during the GOP primaries.

After Trump had won the nomination, the Free Beacon dropped the project. It was at that point that Democratic operatives swooped in, bringing along with them former British spy Christopher Steele. It is from Steele’s work that we get all this Russia business.

To reiterate, the Free Beacon had nothing to do with Steele or his work on the dossier.

“The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele,”  the group’s top brass said in a statement . “Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.”

So please drop the false narrative that has been repeatedly disproven.

It says exactly what Luther said. 

Fusion had been hired to get information on Trump during the primaries by a Republican media firm, Washington Free Beacon.When Trump became the Republican nominee, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party began picking up the tab for the Fusion research.

They might not have been around for some of the outcome yet they started it and it was taken over by the DNC.

and it was taken over by the DNC.

And then it was the Clinton campaign that originated the "dossier" via Fusion GPS

I would say it was fusion gps that originated it.

john mcstain had a hand in that as well

The go-between or as they called it in the Godfather "the buffer"?  No, the Clinton campaign dosen't get off that easily. Keep your eye on Lindsey Graham & the Senate Judiciary Committee. Let's see how much they get away with this time.

McCain never could get over what Trump said about him. It was the only weakness McCain had and it had consequences for the GOP & the nation.

john mcstain had a hand in that as well

Way to disrespect a fallen hero.

The fact is, the dossier still has not been proved false, the dossier didn't actually come to any conclusions, it was merely the collection of information, professional opinions and facts Steele gathered that could be used to compromise Donald Trump. Just because Mueller never found a direct link, never found the actual smoking gun, doesn't mean a gun was never fired. It's entirely possible Trump is compromised and Putin does have a pee tape of him, but we may never find out the truth because the evidence has been carefully concealed or destroyed. No records of the Presidents conversations with Putin on multiple occasions and the way Trump bends over backwards to appease Putin at almost every step is evidence of coordination out in the open. And while it may not be against the law for a President to decide to change foreign policy to be friends with other countries leaders, to do so with a nation that assassinates journalists, political opponents, dissenters and defectors, illegally invades neighboring countries and violently seize territory while lying and hiding behind soldiers who've had their insignia ripped off, and attacked our nation and election process intending to manipulate American voters to vote for their desired candidate, it's certainly distasteful and embarrassing for actual patriotic Americans with any pride and self respect left.

Way to disrespect a fallen hero.

fuk mcstain.

just because he served in the military does not make him immune from his following actions.

he will be remembered as a piece of shit and no more than that.

et they started it and it was taken over by the DNC.

Do you not understand what the dossier is?  Have you not read it?  It's the work product of Christopher Steele. It's proprietary information he collected from his sources. 

Again, this is public knowledge and shouldn't have to be explained.  The work that was paid for by the Washington Examiner doesn't appear in the dossier.  It was a collection of publicly available information (like newspaper stories).   Steele was hired when the DNC wanted to look at Trump and Russia specifically.  It was a separate project entirely and had nothing to do with Christopher Steele and his collection of Russian propaganda.  

Lindsey Graham

Is an idiot.

Still the same company through it all. Does not change that. The only difference is who paid for it.

Do,you understand the concept of authorship? 

Do you understand paying for a service?

o you understand paying for a service?

Did you really not know that Steele wasn't hired  until the Republican project was completed? How is it not possible to know that at this point? 

Because Steele was exclusively paid by the DNC/Clinton.  

So you are right, not only is the dossier the exclusive work product of Steele, he was only paid for his work by the Democrats.  Thank you for further illustrating my point. 

It’s simply a derailing diversion to say that the GOP had anything to do with the Steele dossier.  

its very sad to see. 

At this point, they have to stoop to gaslighting the forum.

Anything they can do to cover up and hide from their crimes of the century.  

This goofy shit is like a wet dream of right wing conspiracy nuts. 

---------

“Here is Veselnitskaya seated behind Obama ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul at a June 2016 congressional hearing focused on Russia.

----

 Maybe they can get someone on NT to photoshop an image of her sitting on his lap. 

like a wet dream of right wing conspiracy nuts

In the wake of the Mueller report, I don't think the Left gets to talk about "conspiracy nuts" anymore. The hypocrisy of that is galactic in its scale.

Exactly.  It’s time to punish those who conspired to bring the fake charges against the President.  

No one has brought charges against the "president". Not yet.

And they never will...

like a wet dream of right wing conspiracy nuts

In the wake of the Mueller report, I don't think the Left gets to talk about "conspiracy nuts" anymore. The hypocrisy of that is galactic in its scale.

Are you serious? Right wing conspiracy nuts far precede Trump and unfortunately they will probably still be here long after Trump is gone. 

Are you serious?

Very much. And your whataboutism is not only inappropriate but any example you might try to offer pales in comparison by orders of magnitude. I don't think we have seen such egregious yellow journalism with the stakes so high. Ever. And it was fueled by lies from a whole host of elected representatives. Sadly, they unashamedly continue their efforts.

Sit tight.

The dossier was not used for criminal purposes until after it was abandoned and the Dems took it over.  

This is a long article, but if you read it you will see how baseless the seeded article is.  It is a shame that we have to tolerate the nonsense conspiracy crap that is posted on this forum. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How F.B.I. Embarked, With Strictest Secrecy, On Trump Team's Trail: [National Desk]

Apuzzo, Matt ; Goldman, Adam ; Fandos, Nicholas . New York Times , Late Edition (East Coast); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]17 May 2018: A.1.

WASHINGTON -- Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.

Their assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the Australian ambassador, who had evidence that one of Donald J. Trump's advisers knew in advance about Russian election meddling. After tense deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander Downer, to sit for an F.B.I. interview to describe his meeting with the campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.

The agents summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to Washington on Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the investigation was opened. Their report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation. But at the time, a small group of F.B.I. officials knew it by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane .

The name, a reference to the Rolling Stones lyric "I was born in a crossfire hurricane ," was an apt prediction of a political storm that continues to tear shingles off the bureau. Days after they closed their investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, agents began scrutinizing the campaign of her Republican rival. The two cases have become inextricably linked in one of the most consequential periods in the history of the F.B.I.

[Read our briefing on secret government code names]

This month, the Justice Department inspector general is expected to release the findings of its lengthy review of the F.B.I.'s conduct in the Clinton case. The results are certain to renew debate over decisions by the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, to publicly chastise Mrs. Clinton in a news conference, and then announce the reopening of the investigation days before Election Day. Mrs. Clinton has said those actions buried her presidential hopes.

Those decisions stand in contrast to the F.B.I.'s handling of Crossfire Hurricane . Not only did agents in that case fall back to their typical policy of silence, but interviews with a dozen current and former government officials and a review of documents show that the F.B.I. was even more circumspect in that case than has been previously known. Many of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

Agents considered, then rejected, interviewing key Trump associates, which might have sped up the investigation but risked revealing the existence of the case. Top officials quickly became convinced that they would not solve the case before Election Day, which made them only more hesitant to act. When agents did take bold investigative steps, like interviewing the ambassador, they were shrouded in secrecy.

Fearful of leaks, they kept details from political appointees across the street at the Justice Department. Peter Strzok, a senior F.B.I. agent, explained in a text that Justice Department officials would find it too "tasty" to resist sharing. "I'm not worried about our side," he wrote.

Only about five Justice Department officials knew the full scope of the case, officials said, not the dozen or more who might normally be briefed on a major national security case.

The facts, had they surfaced, might have devastated the Trump campaign: Mr. Trump's future national security adviser was under investigation, as was his campaign chairman. One adviser appeared to have Russian intelligence contacts. Another was suspected of being a Russian agent himself.

In the Clinton case, Mr. Comey has said he erred on the side of transparency. But in the face of questions from Congress about the Trump campaign, the F.B.I. declined to tip its hand. And when The New York Times tried to assess the state of the investigation in October 2016, law enforcement officials cautioned against drawing any conclusions, resulting in a story that significantly played down the case.

Mr. Comey has said it is unfair to compare the Clinton case, which was winding down in the summer of 2016, with the Russia case, which was in its earliest stages. He said he did not make political considerations about who would benefit from each decision.

But underpinning both cases was one political calculation: that Mrs. Clinton would win and Mr. Trump would lose. Agents feared being seen as withholding information or going too easy on her. And they worried that any overt actions against Mr. Trump's campaign would only reinforce his claims that the election was being rigged against him.

The F.B.I. now faces those very criticisms and more. Mr. Trump says he is the victim of a politicized F.B.I. He says senior agents tried to rig the election by declining to prosecute Mrs. Clinton, then drummed up the Russia investigation to undermine his presidency. He has declared that a deeply rooted cabal -- including his own appointees -- is working against him.

That argument is the heart of Mr. Trump's grievances with the federal investigation. In the face of bipartisan support for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, Mr. Trump and his allies have made a priority of questioning how the investigation was conducted in late 2016 and trying to discredit it.

"It's a witch hunt," Mr. Trump said last month on Fox News. "And they know that, and I've been able to message it."

Congressional Republicans, led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, have begun to dig into F.B.I. files, looking for evidence that could undermine the investigation. Much remains unknown and classified. But those who saw the investigation up close, and many of those who have reviewed case files in the past year, say that far from gunning for Mr. Trump, the F.B.I. could actually have done more in the final months of 2016 to scrutinize his campaign's Russia ties.

"I never saw anything that resembled a witch hunt or suggested that the bureau's approach to the investigation was politically driven," said Mary McCord, a 20-year Justice Department veteran and the top national security prosecutor during much of the investigation's first nine months.

Crossfire Hurricane spawned a case that has brought charges against former Trump campaign officials and more than a dozen Russians. But in the final months of 2016, agents faced great uncertainty -- about the facts, and how to respond.

Anxiety at the Bureau

Crossfire Hurricane began exactly 100 days before the presidential election, but if agents were eager to investigate Mr. Trump's campaign, as the president has suggested, the messages do not reveal it. "I cannot believe we are seriously looking at these allegations and the pervasive connections," Mr. Strzok wrote soon after returning from London.

The mood in early meetings was anxious, former officials recalled. Agents had just closed the Clinton investigation, and they braced for months of Republican-led hearings over why she was not charged. Crossfire Hurricane was built around the same core of agents and analysts who had investigated Mrs. Clinton. None was eager to re-enter presidential politics, former officials said, especially when agents did not know what would come of the Australian information.

The question they confronted still persists: Was anyone in the Trump campaign tied to Russian efforts to undermine the election?

The F.B.I. investigated four unidentified Trump campaign aides in those early months, congressional investigators revealed in February. The four men were Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. Each was scrutinized because of his obvious or suspected Russian ties.

[Here are the key themes, dates and characters in the Russia investigation]

Mr. Flynn, a top adviser, was paid $45,000 by the Russian government's media arm for a 2015 speech and dined at the arm of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Manafort, the campaign chairman, had lobbied for pro-Russia interests in Ukraine and worked with an associate who has been identified as having connections to Russian intelligence.

Mr. Page, a foreign policy adviser, was well known to the F.B.I. He had previously been recruited by Russian spies and was suspected of meeting one in Moscow during the campaign.

Lastly, there was Mr. Papadopoulos, the young and inexperienced campaign aide whose wine-fueled conversation with the Australian ambassador set off the investigation. Before hacked Democratic emails appeared online, he had seemed to know that Russia had political dirt on Mrs. Clinton. But even if the F.B.I. had wanted to read his emails or intercept his calls, that evidence was not enough to allow it. Many months passed, former officials said, before the F.B.I. uncovered emails linking Mr. Papadopoulos to a Russian intelligence operation .

Mr. Trump was not under investigation, but his actions perplexed the agents. Days after the stolen Democratic emails became public, he called on Russia to uncover more. Then news broke that Mr. Trump's campaign had pushed to change the Republican platform's stance on Ukraine in ways favorable to Russia.

The F.B.I.'s thinking crystallized by mid-August, after the C.I.A. director at the time, John O. Brennan, shared intelligence with Mr. Comey showing that the Russian government was behind an attack on the 2016 presidential election. Intelligence agencies began collaborating to investigate that operation . The Crossfire Hurricane team was part of that group but largely operated independently, three officials said.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said that after studying the investigation as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he saw no evidence of political motivation in the opening of the investigation.

"There was a growing body of evidence that a foreign government was attempting to interfere in both the process and the debate surrounding our elections, and their job is to investigate counterintelligence," he said in an interview. "That's what they did."

Abounding Criticism

Looking back, some inside the F.B.I. and the Justice Department say that Mr. Comey should have seen the political storm coming and better sheltered the bureau. They question why he consolidated the Clinton and Trump investigations at headquarters, rather than in a field office. And they say he should not have relied on the same team for both cases. That put a bull's-eye on the heart of the F.B.I. Any misstep in either investigation made both cases, and the entire bureau, vulnerable to criticism.

And there were missteps. Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director, was cited by internal investigators for dishonesty about his conversations with reporters about Mrs. Clinton. That gave ammunition for Mr. Trump's claims that the F.B.I. cannot be trusted. And Mr. Strzok and Lisa Page, an F.B.I. lawyer, exchanged texts criticizing Mr. Trump, allowing the president to point to evidence of bias when they became public.

The messages were unsparing. They questioned Mr. Trump's intelligence, believed he promoted intolerance and feared he would damage the bureau.

The inspector general's upcoming report is expected to criticize those messages for giving the appearance of bias. It is not clear, however, whether inspectors found evidence supporting Mr. Trump's assertion that agents tried to protect Mrs. Clinton, a claim the F.B.I. has adamantly denied.

Mr. Rubio, who has reviewed many of the texts and case files, said he saw no signs that the F.B.I. wanted to undermine Mr. Trump. "There might have been individual agents that had views that, in hindsight, have been problematic for those agents," Mr. Rubio said. "But whether that was a systemic effort, I've seen no evidence of it."

Mr. Trump's daily Twitter posts, though, offer sound-bite-sized accusations -- witch hunt, hoax, deep state, rigged system -- that fan the flames of conspiracy. Capitol Hill allies reliably echo those comments.

"It's like the deep state all got together to try to orchestrate a palace coup," Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said in January on Fox Business Network.

Cautious Intelligence Gathering

Counterintelligence investigations can take years, but if the Russian government had influence over the Trump campaign, the F.B.I. wanted to know quickly. One option was the most direct: interview the campaign officials about their Russian contacts.

That was discussed but not acted on, two former officials said, because interviewing witnesses or subpoenaing documents might thrust the investigation into public view, exactly what F.B.I. officials were trying to avoid during the heat of the presidential race.

"You do not take actions that will unnecessarily impact an election," Sally Q. Yates, the former deputy attorney general, said in an interview. She would not discuss details, but added, "Folks were very careful to make sure that actions that were being taken in connection with that investigation did not become public."

Mr. Comey was briefed regularly on the Russia investigation, but one official said those briefings focused mostly on hacking and election interference. The Crossfire Hurricane team did not present many crucial decisions for Mr. Comey to make.

Top officials became convinced that there was almost no chance they would answer the question of collusion before Election Day. And that made agents even more cautious.

The F.B.I. obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters -- a secret type of subpoena -- officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. That has become a politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump's allies questioning whether the F.B.I. was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap campaign officials.

Looking back, some at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. now believe that agents could have been more aggressive. They ultimately interviewed Mr. Papadopoulos in January 2017 and managed to keep it a secret, suggesting they could have done so much earlier.

"There is always a high degree of caution before taking overt steps in a counterintelligence investigation," said Ms. McCord, who would not discuss details of the case. "And that could have worked to the president's benefit here."

Such tactical discussions are reflected in one of Mr. Strzok's most controversial texts, sent on Aug. 15, 2016, after a meeting in Mr. 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," Mr. Strzok wrote, "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."

Mr. Trump says that message revealed a secret F.B.I. plan to respond to his election. "'We'll go to Phase 2 and we'll get this guy out of office,"' he told The Wall Street Journal. "This is the F.B.I. we're talking about -- that is treason."

But officials have told the inspector general something quite different. They said Ms. Page and others advocated a slower, circumspect pace, especially because polls predicted Mr. Trump's defeat. They said that anything the F.B.I. did publicly would only give fodder to Mr. Trump's claims on the campaign trail that the election was rigged.

Mr. Strzok countered that even if Mr. Trump's chances of victory were low -- like dying before 40 -- the stakes were too high to justify inaction.

Mr. Strzok had similarly argued for a more aggressive path during the Clinton investigation, according to four current and former officials. He opposed the Justice Department's decision to offer Mrs. Clinton's lawyers immunity and negotiate access to her hard drives, the officials said. Mr. Strzok favored using search warrants or subpoenas instead.

In both cases, his argument lost.

Policy and Tradition

The F.B.I. bureaucracy did agents no favors. In July, a retired British spy named Christopher Steele approached a friend in the F.B.I. overseas and provided reports linking Trump campaign officials to Russia. But the documents meandered around the F.B.I. organizational chart, former officials said. Only in mid-September, congressional investigators say, did the records reach the Crossfire Hurricane team.

Mr. Steele was gathering information about Mr. Trump as a private investigator for Fusion GPS, a firm paid by Democrats. But he was also considered highly credible, having helped agents unravel complicated cases.

In October, agents flew to Europe to interview him. But Mr. Steele had become frustrated by the F.B.I.'s slow response. He began sharing his findings in September and October with journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and elsewhere, according to congressional testimony.

So as agents tried to corroborate Mr. Steele's information, reporters began calling the bureau, asking about his findings. If the F.B.I. was working against Mr. Trump, as he asserts, this was an opportunity to push embarrassing information into the news media shortly before the election.

That did not happen. Most news organizations did not publish Mr. Steele's reports or reveal the F.B.I.'s interest in them until after Election Day.

Congress was also increasingly asking questions. Mr. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, had briefed top lawmakers that summer about Russian election interference and intelligence that Moscow supported the Trump campaign -- a finding that would not become public for months. Lawmakers clamored for information from Mr. Comey, who refused to answer public questions.

Many Democrats see rueful irony in this moment. Mr. Comey, after all, broke with policy and twice publicly discussed the Clinton investigation. Yet he refused repeated requests to discuss the Trump investigation.

Mr. Comey has said he regrets his decision to chastise Mrs. Clinton as "extremely careless," even as he announced that she should not be charged. But he stands by his decision to alert Congress, days before the election, that the F.B.I. was reopening the Clinton inquiry.

The result, though, is that Mr. Comey broke with both policy and tradition in Mrs. Clinton's case, but hewed closely to the rules for Mr. Trump. Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that alone proves Mr. Trump's claims of unfairness to be "both deeply at odds with the facts, and damaging to our democracy."

Spying in Question

Crossfire Hurricane began with a focus on four campaign officials. But by mid-fall 2016, Mr. Page's inquiry had progressed the furthest. Agents had known Mr. Page for years. Russian spies tried to recruit him in 2013, and he was dismissive when agents warned him about it, a half-dozen current and former officials said. That warning even made its way back to Russian intelligence, leaving agents suspecting that Mr. Page had reported their efforts to Moscow.

Relying on F.B.I. information and Mr. Steele's, prosecutors obtained court approval to eavesdrop on Mr. Page, who was no longer with the Trump campaign.

That warrant has become deeply contentious and is crucial to Republican arguments that intelligence agencies improperly used Democratic research to help justify spying on the Trump campaign. The inspector general is reviewing that claim.

Ms. Yates, the deputy attorney general under President Barack Obama, signed the first warrant application. But subsequent filings were approved by members of Mr. Trump's own administration: the acting attorney general, Dana J. Boente, and then Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general.

"Folks are very, very careful and serious about that process," Ms. Yates said. "I don't know of anything that gives me any concerns."

After months of investigation, Mr. Papadopoulos remained largely a puzzle. And agents were nearly ready to close their investigation of Mr. Flynn, according to three current and former officials. (Mr. Flynn rekindled the F.B.I.'s interest in November 2016 by signing an op-ed article that appeared to be written on behalf of the Turkish government, and then making phone calls to the Russian ambassador that December.)

In late October, in response to questions from The Times, law enforcement officials acknowledged the investigation but urged restraint. They said they had scrutinized some of Mr. Trump's advisers but had found no proof of any involvement with Russian hacking. The resulting article, on Oct. 31, reflected that caution and said that agents had uncovered no "conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government."

The key fact of the article -- that the F.B.I. had opened a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign -- was published in the 10th paragraph.

A year and a half later, no public evidence has surfaced connecting Mr. Trump's advisers to the hacking or linking Mr. Trump himself to the Russian government's disruptive efforts. But the article's tone and headline -- "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia" -- gave an air of finality to an investigation that was just beginning.

Democrats say that article pre-emptively exonerated Mr. Trump, dousing chances to raise questions about the campaign's Russian ties before Election Day.

Just as the F.B.I. has been criticized for its handling of the Trump investigation, so too has The Times.

For Mr. Steele, it dashed his confidence in American law enforcement. "He didn't know what was happening inside the F.B.I.," Glenn R. Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, testified this year. "And there was a concern that the F.B.I. was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people."

Assurances Amid Doubt

Two weeks before Mr. Trump's inauguration, senior American intelligence officials briefed him at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Russian hacking and deception. They reported that Mr. Putin had tried to sow chaos in the election, undermine Mrs. Clinton and ultimately help Mr. Trump win.

Then Mr. Comey met with Mr. Trump privately, revealing the Steele reports and warning that journalists had obtained them. Mr. Comey has said he feared making this conversation a "J. Edgar Hoover-type situation," with the F.B.I. presenting embarrassing information to lord over a president-elect.

In a contemporaneous memo, Mr. Comey wrote that he assured Mr. Trump that the F.B.I. intended to protect him on this point. "I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook," Mr. Comey wrote of Mr. Steele's documents. "I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the F.B.I. had the material."

Mr. Trump was not convinced -- either by the Russia briefing or by Mr. Comey's assurances. He made up his mind before Mr. Comey even walked in the door. Hours earlier, Mr. Trump told The Times that stories about Russian election interference were being pushed by his adversaries to distract from his victory.

And he debuted what would quickly become a favorite phrase: "This is a political witch hunt."

Follow Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos on Twitter: @adamgoldmanNYT and @npfandos.

Credit: MATT APUZZO, ADAM GOLDMAN and NICHOLAS FANDOS; Reporting was contributed by Michael S. Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere, Mark Mazzetti and Matthew Rosenberg.

Wow, a Strzok, Page, and Yates love fest article. What a piece of unmitigated garbage.

Love this part.

CrossfireHurricanebegan with a focus on four campaign officials. But by mid-fall 2016, Mr. Page's inquiry had progressed the furthest. Agents had known Mr. Page for years. Russian spies tried to recruit him in 2013, and he was dismissive when agents warned him about it, a half-dozen current and former officials said. That warning even made its way back to Russian intelligence, leaving agents suspecting that Mr. Page had reported their efforts to Moscow.

Relying on F.B.I. information and Mr. Steele's, prosecutors obtained court approval to eavesdrop on Mr. Page, who was no longer with the Trump campaign.

That warrant has become deeply contentious and is crucial to Republican arguments that intelligence agencies improperly used Democratic research to help justify spying on the Trump campaign. The inspector general is reviewing that claim.

Please provide all charges that have been brought against Carter Page. I will save you the effort, there are none. Steele's Dossier is as full of shit, as are the FBI's FISA wire taps. Page should have been the very first person charged by Mueller.  Instead he was dropped and forgotten; but if they had gone after him with nothing it would call into question their entire investigation.

You do understand that there are people who are investigated and not charged , don't you? It happens every day. 

What this NYT article shows rather definitively is that there was no conspiracy against Donald Trump. 

I will believe the NYT before I believe Big League Politics, a brainchild of Breitbart, any day of the week .

The seeded article is deep state conspiracy nonsense. 

Wrong. The conspiracy was approved by non other than Hussein Obama and coordinated through his criminal hirelings including Samantha Powers, Brennan, Clapper, Ben Rhodes, McCabe, Strozk, and others.   The anti American media were complicit in their active participation and zeal to destroy not just President Trump, but all conservatives who oppose the Marxist, Godless forced collectivism of the Democrats and the Establishment Republicans.

That's just paranoia speech.

The reach of The Deceiver is long.  His Shadow is longer.

This is a long article, but if you read it you will see how baseless the seeded article is.  It is a shame that we have to tolerate the nonsense conspiracy crap that is posted on this forum. 

Instead of copying/pasting the article and its superfluous info, simply linking the  old NYT article from May 2018 would have sufficed.  Here's the link you could have used:

nytimes

You do what you want to do, and I will do what I want to do. New York Times is behind a pay wall, so I posted the whole thing. Now mind your own business. 

Such a hostile comment!

You mean that you paid the fake news NY Slimes to post that here?  

Why not make it your own competing seed instead of going after the credibility of my seed with fake news from The NY Times?  

lol. 

You go with "Big League Politics"(Breitbart)

and I will go with the New York Times

and I will get to the truth before ye. 

no you won’t.  Breitbart is a far better news source as is World Net Daily.  All the sites on my avatar are better news sources than the New York Slimes and the Bezos affair Post.  

You sound like a little kid.

I’d like to thank whoever flagged the above even though it was ruled ok for him to say that about me.  I appreciate the effort.  

[deleted]

No, that would be comparing kids to the racists and perverts that were/are the SPLC.  I am actually young at heart. 

Not to mention in testimony to congress, they said the dossier was not the reason for their FISA warrants.

But that fact seems to slip right on by some people.

Too bad the right still hasn't been able to get their lies to line up with facts.  I think all the people that put that piece of trash together should be fired, immediately 

While you are firing those morans how about firing  Turtle McConnell for being so stupid and Anti-Amerian

They should be rewarded for telling the real truth about what happened. 

Not sure who 'the they' are you are referencing...………...but...……..this whole ( piece ) is absolute proof that the Russian Autocracy is still here, still interfering and still supplanting Trump.

It is not necessary to inquire why?  I know why.

The mainstream media along with Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and the Democrat have been unwittingly useful to Putin in destabilizing America. Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2019.

Putin loves the democrat party!  

the failed coup has only made our president 100 times stronger than he was before.

thanks obama, the resistance, and all who made this possible

It was great watching him speak in front of that crowd in Michigan last night.