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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNew Yorker article explains Clinton campaign/Obama/Biden knew nothing about Steele dossier/FBi probe
Entire lengthy article is very informative- posted four paragraphs
"For all the Republicans talk of a top-down Democratic plot, Steele and Simpson appear never to have told their ultimate clientthe Clinton campaigns law firmthat Steele had gone to the F.B.I. Clintons campaign spent much of the summer of 2016 fending off stories about the Bureaus investigation into her e-mails, without knowing that the F.B.I. had launched a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump teams ties to Russiaone fuelled, in part, by the Clinton campaigns own opposition research. As a top Clinton-campaign official told me, If Id known the F.B.I. was investigating Trump, I would have been shouting it from the rooftops!
On January 5, 2017, it became clear that at least two Washingtonians remained in the dark about the dossier: the President and the Vice-President. That day, in a top-secret Oval Office meeting, the chiefs of the nations top intelligence agencies briefed Obama and Biden and some national-security officials for the first time about the dossiers allegation that Trumps campaign team may have colluded with the Russians. As one person present later told me, No one understands that at the White House we werent briefed about the F.B.I.s investigations. We had no information on collusion. All we saw was what the Russians were doing. The F.B.I. puts anything about Americans in a lockbox.
One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Muellers investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as a senior Russian official. The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what hed heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trumps initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romneys run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policyand an incoming President.
As fantastical as the memo sounds, subsequent events could be said to support it. In a humiliating public spectacle, Trump dangled the post before Romney until early December, then rejected him. There are plenty of domestic political reasons that Trump may have turned against Romney. Trump loyalists, for instance, noted Romneys public opposition to Trump during the campaign. Roger Stone, the longtime Trump aide, has suggested that Trump was vengefully tormenting Romney, and had never seriously considered him. (Romney declined to comment. The White House said that he was never a first choice for the role and declined to comment about any communications that the Trump team may have had with Russia on the subject.) In any case, on December 13, 2016, Trump gave Rex Tillerson, the C.E.O. of ExxonMobil, the job. The choice was a surprise to most, and a happy one in Moscow, because Tillersons business ties with the Kremlin were long-standing and warm. (In 2011, he brokered a historic partnership between ExxonMobil and Rosneft.) After the election, Congress imposed additional sanctions on Russia, in retaliation for its interference, but Trump and Tillerson have resisted enacting them.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier?mbid=social_twitter
JI7
(89,250 posts)wishstar
(5,269 posts)Contemporaneous F.B.I. text messages disclosed recently by the Wall Street Journal reflect a similar complacency. In August, 2016, two F.B.I. employees, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, texted about investigating possible collusion between Trump and the Russians. omg i cannot believe we are seriously looking at these allegations and the pervasive connections, Strzok wrote. Page suggested that they could take their time, because there was little reason to worry that Clinton would lose. But Strzok disagreed, warning that they should push ahead, anyway, as an insurance policy in case Trump was electedlike the unlikely event you die before youre 40.
When excerpts of these texts first became public, Trump defenders such as Trey Gowdy seized on them as proof that the F.B.I. had schemed to devise an insurance policy to keep Trump from getting elected. But a reading of the full text chain makes it clear that the agents were discussing whether or not they needed to focus urgently on investigating collusion.
BigmanPigman
(51,594 posts)didn't want to politicize this so they held back. I would like to know what in the Hell Comey was doing by bringing up A. Weiner's emails 10 days before the election?!?!? No one should buy his fucking book when it comes out as far as I am concerned.
phylny
(8,380 posts)I cannot understand why he said what he said, both when "exonerating" Clinton (paraphrasing: We found nothing, but she was sloppy!) to the Weiner email "reveal."
That is strange how the FBI would not tell anyone that they were investigating Trump. Strange.
njhoneybadger
(3,910 posts)DURHAM D
(32,610 posts)information. It seems to me that Hillary is entitled to a refund from Fusion.
Also, fuck Comey. He is a sexist pig Republican.