By Brian Cates
Thanks to Robert Mueller’s final report and the report from DOJ’s Inspector General Horowitz on the FBI’s FISA abuses, we have a far clearer picture of what really happened during the 2016 election and the first three years of the Trump presidency.
Because Democrats and the DNC Media Complex won't tell you the truth, here's what really happened the last four years.
The Spying Begins
The SpyGate plotters in the FBI start spying on Donald Trump and his team in 2015. They claim they started in late July of 2016, but that’s a lie.
Their spying is cloaked as a counterintelligence investigation. The FBI lies to the FISA Court saying they have “probable cause,” alleging they have solid, verified evidence that Carter Page is acting as an agent of a foreign power. They also "suspect", Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort are doing the same.
To get FISA warrants to spy on Trump’s campaign, the FBI uses a fake Trump/Russia dossier. That dossier came from a Clinton political operative, former MI6 spy Christopher Steele. The spying continues after Trump wins the election. They spy on his transition team, and they spy after Trump enters the White House.
The FBI continues to make use of Steele’s fake Trump/Russia allegations even after becoming aware that Steele was being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign to come up with damaging opposition research targeting the Trump campaign.
The FBI renews Page’s warrant three times. This means they are doing “legal” electronic spying on Trump and his close associates for 11 months, from Oct '16 to Sept '17.
Exculpatory Evidence
During this time, the FBI accumulates exculpatory evidence about Page, Flynn, Manafort and Papadopoulos, but the agency withholds that evidence from the FISA Court in each of the three warrant renewal applications.
Investigators from the DOJ’s Inspector General’s Office [OIG] catch Kevin Clinesmith (the FBI lawyer in charge of handling the FISA warrant renewals) tampering with a CIA email. Reason: The FBI had asked the CIA if Page's claims about being a CIA contact were true. The CIA had affirmed to the FBI that Page was indeed an operational contact for their agency.
In fact, from 2008-2013, Page was working closely with the CIA in helping bust up a Russian spy ring. That continued well through the time period of the FISA warrant. So, yes, Page had been communicating with the CIA about his Russian contacts all the way up thru 2016-17.
Unfortunately, this response to the FBI’s query is not what the SpyGate plotters want to hear.
How can the FBI continue using Page's contacts with Russian government and intelligence officials as evidence he's a Russian agent if Page is working with the CIA, briefing them about these contacts? To fix this problem, Clinesmith decides to edit the CIA's response to the FBI's query. He alters the email to show the CIA saying Page was not a contact for their agency.
Also, in January of 2017, the FBI finally gets around to interviewing Steele's main source for the allegations against Carter Page in the dossier. The source completely disavows Steel’s allegations, which the FBI had used when obtaining the warrant.
The source tells the FBI that Steele was LYING to them because he – the source – never told Steele many of the allegations that appear in the Page FISA warrant. The source says that, at best, SOME of what Steele conveyed were gross exaggerations. The source is horrified to see Steele positioning their conversations as “covert intelligence” from a highly placed informant inside the Russian government.
Again, this is NOT what the SpyGate plotters want to hear, so they also withhold the source’s testimony from the FISA Court.
To recap, the FBI is not only hiding what the CIA said about Page, they’re also hiding what Steele's “source” told them.
Comey fired; Mueller hired
In May of 2017, FBI Director Comey is fired, so he leaks one of his memos to the New York Times. Comey gets called to testify before Congress where he DEMANDS the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. He demands a special focus on the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is tapped to be the Special Counsel. He assembles a team of 13 Angry Democrats and begins his investigation.
Two investigations meld into one. We have many of the members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence team converging with Mueller’s Special Counsel on a quest for their Holy Grail: any evidence they can find of Trump crimes and/or Russian collusion.
In late September 2017, the last FISA renewal runs out and the Mueller Special Counsel is left without its influence on the hunt for their Holy Grail.
Despite the FBI’s 11 months of intensive, super-wide surveillance of Trump & his associates, the Crossfire Hurricane team has NOTHING to hand off to Mueller. The only crimes identified turn out to be some bank/tax fraud crimes by Manafort and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and a raft of process perjury charges against Flynn, Papadopoulos and Roger Stone.
Special counsel expands its search
Now all hope rests on Mueller’s Special Counsel team, and they are gifted by US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with a new super-duper wide scope of authority for their intensive and exhaustive investigation.
With that gift, Mueller and his pack of crack bloodhounds search far and wide, high and low, carefully looking behind every rock, bush and tree for 2 1/2 years. And they find … nothing. They even use that super-duper wide scope provided by Rosenstein to go frantically digging through long-deceased Fred Trump's estate taxes. Nothing.
Throughout this 2 1/2 year period that Mueller and his team of 13 angry Democrats are doing all this furious and futile searching, the Fake News Media is being fed a TON of fake leaks, and they regale the public with ribald tales of all the evidence they claim Mueller is finding! Mueller's team is doing everything but investigating what brought them there in the first place; the allegations within the Steele dossier. Mueller states that wasn't in his "purview".
Anonymous leakers string gullible news reporters along for years about how Trump’s close associates are “flipping” on Trump and singing like canaries to Mueller as they expose all the secret coordination between Trump and his master in Moscow, Vladimir Putin.
According to some of these Fake News outlets, Trump is supposedly in a depression inside the White House, stumbling around in a stupor in his bathrobe, chugging Diet Coke and morosely watching The Gorilla Channel in an attempt to cheer himself up as the walls start closing in on him.
Schiff and Nunes
One bug eyed crazy member of Congress (a Democrat, naturally) gets himself plenty of TV-face time by making extravagant claims about all the good, solid, “more than circumstantial evidence” he's seen proving Trump/Russia Election Collusion.
“I’m telling you I’ve seen it … I’ve seen the mountains of good, solid, verified Trump/Russia evidence with my own bug-eyed eyes!”
This crazy bug-eyed Democrat is also in a locked battle for two years with Republican Rep. Devin Nunes. Both men produce dueling memos in February of 2018 about claims of FBI abuse of the FISA system.
Schiff: “My memo is awesome, all the news media outlets say so, they are completely backing me!”
Nunes: [internally laughing]
Nunes’ memo is released first, detailing serious abuses and problems with the Carter Page FISA warrant, alleging the FBI is hiding key information from the Court. Schiff's response memo is a repudiation of the Nunes memo, claiming Nunes is deliberately lying and misleading the public for his own partisan political purposes.
Which memo is truthful is a matter that remains unresolved all through 2018 and nearly all of 2019.
Fakers exposed
Meanwhile, the Mueller Special Counsel drags on. Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigns in late 2018 and is temporarily replaced by Matthew Whitaker. In February of 2019, Whitaker suddenly announces Mueller is wrapping up his investigation. Many media outlets and political commentators refuse to believe him.
It turns out Whitaker is telling the truth. Mueller really is ending his investigation, and the only unfinished business ends up being the sentencing of Manafort surrogate Richard Gates, and yet another useless process perjury charge against ...Roger Stone.
Democrats and the Fake News Media scramble to adjust to the new reality while avoiding any accountability whatsoever. After more than two years of selling fake news about Mueller having real Trump/Russia Election Collusion evidence, the charlatans and fakers get exposed when Mueller releases his final report.
The best Mueller’s team could do was a vague obstruction argument based on a gymnastic, pretzel-like reading of an obstruction-of-justice statute. With a case so weak he is unwilling to make a charge himself, Mueller punts it upstairs to the new Attorney General, William Barr.
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein look at Mueller's final offering, they have a good laugh, shitcan it, and go out for beer and pizza.
And that's what happened. The 2 1/2 year-long exhaustive investigation by Mueller’s 13 Angry Democrats killed the Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax.
In all their pre-July 2016 spying they found no Trump crimes.
In all their post-July 2016 spying before they got the Page FISA warrant they found no Trump crimes.
In all their FISA spying from Oct '16 to Sept '17 they found no Trump crimes.
See a pattern emerging?
Finally, despite 13 Angry Democrats on Mueller’s team investigating from June 2017 all the way to February of 2019 – they found … no Trump crimes.
Amazing, isn't it?
Ponder this. From the moment Trump announced his presidential run in 2015 to the moment he won the Presidency, Trump was THE most-thoroughly vetted Presidential candidate in US History.
You know they tried.
They tried and they failed.
A crime must be invented
If all that spying and intercepting and transcribing and circulating and investigating of Trump and his close associates for more than FOUR YEARS had produced ANYTHING REAL, you would have SEEN it by now.
This is why, by late Spring/early Summer of 2019, the Democrats and DNC Media realized if they were EVER going to get Trump impeached or successfully damage his re-election efforts, they would need to INVENT crimes.
So put yourselves in the shoes of the Democratic leadership and the DNC Media Complex back in April/May of this year. After almost four years or relentless searching, you can't find any real Trump crimes, but then the WRONG GUY wins the Presidency in Ukraine and you learn that Trump and Rudy Giuliani are working with this new President to look into massive corruption in his country. Their focus is on billions of US taxpayer dollars sent to Ukraine as foreign aid that just up and disappeared.
What to do?
If you are part of the Democratic Party leadership or among the executives in the DNC Media Complex, you INVENT a crime involving a phone call. This invented crime will then be “exposed” by a criminal leaker, but to keep it sounding legit, you will call this person a whistle blower.
Ironically, former Vice President Joe Biden got caught on video openly boasting about forcing the former Ukrainian government into a quid quo pro by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee that had already been agreed to.
In other words, the fake crime the Democrats used as a catalyst for impeaching Trump is exactly what Biden is shown bragging about in the viral video. That’s how incredulously absurd this all is.
Democrats do not want ANYBODY investigating what Biden and others did in Ukraine from 2012 to 2019. President Trump was doing his job: trying to enforce the law and honor treaties in an effort to discover where our taxpayer-funded foreign aid really went, but Democrats are lying about that activity, saying it’s a CRIME.
This is how we got where we are at today with this absurd impeachment theater. Schiff continues telling bald faced lies, first denying his staff coordinated with the fake whistleblower, then admitting it but insisting he doesn't know the leaker's name.
And, after 2 months of babbling about extortion and bribery, Pelosi and company rolled out two absurd articles about "abuse of power" and "contempt of Congress."
It looks like a farce because it IS a farce.
Trump calls their bluff
It’s been a two-month long farce in which Democratic leadership and DNC Media outlets gaslit the entire country by claiming the criminal leaker of the Ukraine phone call is some kind of heroic whistleblower and his name must be **protected**.
It’s absurd that Schiff & Nadler pretended they don't know the leaker’s name, and DNC media outlets pretend that PUBLISHING the name is A Very Bad Thing.
It's literally right out of Harry Potter! The criminal leaker of the Ukraine phone call has become "He Who Must Not Be Named!"
Recently, Trump called this stupid bluff by deliberately retweeting the tweet shown below, which many people tell me they can STILL see on his timeline:
So now, after months of making the absurd claim that saying that nobody can say this leaker’s name, they HAVE to claim Trump just broke the law.
He called their bluff.
This means the Democratic leadership and the DNC Media have only two choices:
They have to raise or they have to fold.
The clock is now ticking … which will they do?
Brian Cates entered the political arena in March 2012, following the death of Andrew Breitbart. He is currently a political columnist for The Epoch Times and UncoverDC. Brian is based in South Texas and is the author of: “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!”
Twitter: @drawandstrike
SubscribeStar: Brian Cates
Epoch Times: Brian Cates
