John Solomon’s report on the FBI contacting Oleg Deripaska in September 2016 for help to structure a narrative of Russian involvement in the Trump Campaign via Paul Manafort has multiple ramifications. (Article Here) Here’s some preliminary thoughts on the issue.

♦In 2009 the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, requested the assistance of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in an operation to retrieve former FBI officer and CIA resource Robert Levinson who was captured in Iran two years earlier. The agent assigned to engage Deripaska was Andrew McCabe; the primary FBI need was financing and operational support. Deripaska spent around $25 million and would have succeeded except the U.S. State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, backed out.

♦In September of 2016 Andrew McCabe is now Deputy Director of the FBI, when two FBI agents approached Deripaska in New York – again asking for his help. This time the FBI request was for Deripaska to outline Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as a tool of the Kremlin. Deripaska once hired Manafort as a political adviser and invested money with him in a business venture that went bad. Deripaska sued Manafort, alleging he stole money. However, according to the article, despite Deripaska’s disposition toward Manafort he viewed the request as absurd. He laughed the FBI away, telling them: “You are trying to create something out of nothing.”

Several issues make this interesting:

#1. Was the DOJ/FBI trying to use Deripaska to frame candidate Donald Trump? Was this part of their 2016 insurance policy?

-or-

Was the FBI (Deputy Director McCabe) looking to duplicate the use of Deripaska for financing a covert FBI operation in 2016, just like Andrew McCabe did in 2009?

#2. John Solomon reports that Deripaska wanted to testify to congress last year (2017), without any immunity request, but was rebuked. Who blocked his testimony?

#3. In 2017 Oleg Deripaska was represented in the U.S. by Adam Waldman. Mr. Waldman was also representing Christopher Steele, the author of the Dossier. Waldman was the liaison Senator Mark Warner (Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman) was using to try and set up a secret meeting with Christopher Steele. {Text Messages}

As you can see from the text messages (more here), the House Intelligence Committee wanted to interview Deripaska. However, based on their ongoing contact and relationship Deripaska’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, asks Senator Mark Warner for feedback.

If Deripaska was blocked from testifying to congress, it was obviously not from the HPSCI (Nunes Committee), but rather by the Senate Intel Committee, Mark Warner. Why?

#4. Why would Adam Waldman and Oleg Deripaska (personally) be reaching out to John Solomon now to share the story of the FBI conduct in 2016? Why now? There were sanctions levied against Derispaska’s business interests by the Trump administration in 2017. Does his hope to get sanctions removed/lessened lie behind a current motive?

#5. Attorney and Lobbyist Adam Waldman represented both Oleg Deripaska and Christopher Steele. This does not seem accidental. Was Deripaska part of Steele’s network? Or, more alarmingly, was Christopher Steele working for Oleg Deripaska?

Watch the first minute of this video. February 13th, 2018 Hearing:

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Another question: Was Deripaska willing to finance or facilitate the Steele Dossier, or some aspect therein, to the extent that it dirtied-up Paul Manafort – from a distance. Yet when asked directly to participate he didn’t want personal attachment on dubious endeavors?

#6. Did Robert Mueller omit any mention of Oleg Deripaska from his 2017 Manafort indictment purposefully? Is some evidence against Manafort related to a Deripaska vendetta? Or, was Robert Mueller hoping to hide his prior professional work relationship with Deripaska?

#7. On February 9th, 2018, Senator Chuck Grassley asked Deripaska’s London Lawyer, Paul Hauser, questions about Deripaska and his connections to Christopher Steele:

(Link to Grassley Letters)

Oleg Deripaska’s British lawyer, Paul Hauser, responded with the following letter:

A very lawyer-ish response. However, based on the 2017 text messages unknown at the time Grassley made the inquiry, it would appear Chairman Grassley asked the wrong lawyer:

Senator Grassley should have asked Adam Waldman who was obviously representing Deripaska’s interests in the U.S. {text message links}

♦Summary, there’s obviously a great deal that could be learned from testimony of Oleg Deripaska as to the nature of his engagements in/around 2016 and the network of known characters engaged in contact within the U.S. intelligence apparatus, both inside the U.S. and abroad.

The fact that Deripaska is openly willing to engage with journalists on this story and his involvement therein, could open a new line of inquiry about the validity and origination of the Mueller investigation.

Then again, a seemingly incurious media might find their Russian Collusion/Conspiracy narrative was built upon a fraudulent CIA/DOJ/FBI foundation…..

So…

If the usual suspects, New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, avoid the Oleg Deripaska revelations, well, we’ll have our answer.