There is a very important article posted last night on The Daily Caller [SEE HERE] The article surrounds a discovery that Robert Mueller’s lead attorney Andrew Weissmann worked with four AP journalists on both the story of Paul Manafort’s business interests; and, more importantly, and jawdroppingly, the evidence for Mueller to use against Paul Manafort.

Read the article HERE. I’ll try to explain why this appears so important.

The gist of the story is that Andrew Weissmann was meeting with AP reporters in April of 2017, approximately a month prior to the formal construct of the Robert Mueller investigation. The information from the meeting, which was essentially based on research provided by the “reporters” about Paul Manafort, was then later used in the formation of the underlying evidence against Manafort to gain a search warrant.

To understand the implications we must overlay a set of facts that has perplexed CTH for almost a year. Back in April 2017 Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, declassified a FISA court ruling that had/has massive potential implications. The 99-page ruling, written by FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer, outlined structural issues and admissions by the DOJ and FBI about violations of search queries within the NSA and FBI database.

(PDF Link)

Essentially, the underlying evidence within the Collyer FISA report, outlines how the DOJ National Security Division (John P Carlin), FBI and NSA (Admiral Mike Rogers) informed the court that unauthorized access to the NSA/FBI database had been ongoing for a long period of time. The “unauthorized access” was primarily driven by contractors who had access to the information database and were using it in 2015 and 2016. According to the report over 85% of searches conducted were “unauthorized” abuses of the system. DOJ-NSD head John Carlin resigned in 2016 immediately after informing the court.

Since the discovery of this issue a great deal of disconnected information has followed. Including how FBI Director James Comey allowed his friend Daniel Richman to have “special access” to this information database.

The term “contractors” is opaque in the ruling, and there are hundreds of redactions protecting the names of the individuals and groups who participated in the unauthorized searches. However, within the testimony of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson; and the story of the Steele Dossier and Nellie Ohr; we discover a nexus of information users.

Fusion GPS was/is essentially in the ‘information for hire‘ business, selling to clients for a price and using networks of journalists and former government officials to transmit, share and disseminate information on behalf of their clients. Essentially, Fusion GPS is an opposition research group with a network of journalists, paid and unpaid, that it uses to frame constructed narratives to the benefit of their clients. In the spring, summer and fall of 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign was one such client.

In April 2017, at the time of this meeting with AP reporters, Andrew Weissmann was chief of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section. Weissmann joined the special counsel a month later, May 2017.

We already know the FISA searches were essentially political opposition research being conducted by these opaque ‘contractors’. We know the ideology within the DOJ-NSD and FBI, the generic intent of their motive, from the communication amid the group doing the Clinton and Trump investigations; text messages, memos and emails which have since become public.

A common sense review of all facts outlines a strong likelihood these database searches were ongoing by groups and individuals affiliated with Fusion GPS and other political networks. It’s a simple process of selling information.

We also know that Christopher Steele was a beneficiary of information provided within this process; and we know that Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS) was conducting research into Paul Manafort as part of his personal oppo research and political/business endeavors. We also know that Fusion-GPS paid journalists (would love to see those names now); and from British court documents -and Simpson transcript- we know Fusion-GPS coordinated meetings between journalists and contractors like Christopher Steele:

(Source – Page #8 pdf)

Within the underlying story of how a FISA Title-1 surveillance application was assembled against U.S. person Carter Page, we clearly see how intelligence was laundered through a process of leaking to the media and then cycling the media article back into official intelligence reports. The Carter Page FISA application used media stories as underlying evidence for the search warrant. The media stories came from officials within the FBI, and Fusion GPS; the FBI was essentially manufacturing the evidence they needed.

So, with all of that in mind, this meeting between Andrew Weissmann and AP reporters, as outlined by The Daily Caller, is essentially another round of same-method manufacturing of evidence; it is a collaborative effort. The result therein is information to be exploited by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to gain search warrants against Paul Manafort.

(Story Link – email pdf link)

ANOTHER Mueller deputy caught sending anti-Trump message https://t.co/Cs61Z51QRA via @MailOnline — David Martosko (@dmartosko) December 6, 2017

Here’s what I don’t understand. Not a single congressional hearing has ever questioned the FISA search issues? Not a single question to a single witness, specifically Comey or Yates, ever asked them about the DOJ-NSD and FBI abuse of the FISA database.

The origin of almost all of the corruption seems to consistently circle back to the abuse of the FBI and NSA database which is very much documented and never subject to being refuted. Yet for some reason I cannot fathom, the historic FISA surveillance/search abuse issue is never brought up by anyone, any investigative authority, in any aspect of this ongoing storyline.

It all starts with abuses of the FISA system for political opposition research; yet we never hear a single voice calling attention to the DOJ-NSD and FBI abuse of this system. Frustrating…

The Intelligence Laundry