CIA Director Morrell's Briefing of Senator Reid About Trump in 2012

On August 27, 2016, Senator Harry Reid wrote to FBI Director James Comey a public letter that included the following sentence:

The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount and has led Michael Morrell, the former Acting Central Intelligence Director, to call Trump an “unwitting agent” of Russia and the Kremlin.

As the Senate Majority Leader, Reid was a member of the so-called Gang of Eight -- the Congressional leaders who were supposed to receive special briefings about Intelligence issues. 

Morell served as the Acting CIA Director during two periods:

1) July 1, 2011 to September 6, 2011

2) November 9, 2012 to March 8, 2013

It's most likely that Morrell briefed Reid about Trump during the 2012-2013 period, when Trump initially raised a stink about President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

..., Trump "became a virtual spokesperson for the 'birther' movement. The strategy worked: when Trump flirted with running for president in 2011, his popularity was concentrated among the sizable share of Republicans who thought that President Obama was foreign born or a Muslim or both."

In 2010, at the urging of Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential campaign, and with Cohen's involvement, the tabloid began questioning Obama's birthplace and citizenship.

In March 2011, during an interview on Good Morning America, Donald Trump said he was seriously considering running for president, that he was a "little" skeptical of Obama's citizenship, and that someone who shares this view should not be so quickly dismissed as an "idiot" (as Trump considers the term "birther" to be "derogatory"). ....

Later [in late March 2011], Trump appeared on The View repeating several times that "I want him [Obama] to show his birth certificate." He speculated that "there [was] something on that birth certificate that [Obama] doesn't like" ....

In an NBC TV interview broadcast on April 7, 2011, Trump said he would not let go of the issue, because he was not satisfied that Obama had proved his citizenship.

After Obama released his long-form birth certificate on April 27, 2011, Trump said "I am really honored and I am really proud, that I was able to do something that nobody else could do."

On October 24, 2012, Trump offered to donate five million dollars to the charity of Obama's choice in return for the publication of his college and passport applications before October 31, 2012.

When Morrell became the Acting CIA Director in July 2011, the birth-certificate issue already had died down, because Obama had released the long-form certificate a couple months earlier, in April 2011. 

When Morell became the Acting CIA Director again in early November 2012, the birth-certificate issue had come back to life recently, in late October 2012, when Trump had offered the $5 million. Therefore, I will assume that Morrell briefed Reid about Trump during November 2012.

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So, during November 2012, Morrell officially told Reid that the CIA assessed Trump to be "an 'unwitting agent' of Russia and the Kremlin" (according to Reid's letter in August 2016). 

What was the CIA's basis for such an assessment? I doubt that the basis was merely some FBI assessment that the CIA had been told about. Morrell would not brief Reid about an FBI assessment.

I think that, rather, Morrell's briefing of Reid about Trump was based largely on a CIA source -- Oleg Smolenkov, an assistant to Yuri Ushakov, who in November 2012 was the Deputy Chief of the Government Staff of the Russian Federation.

In this situation, it's likely that the CIA had asked Smolenkov about Trump in 2011 or 2012 and that Smolenkov subsequently had reported to the CIA that Trump was an "unwitting agent of Russia and the Kremlin". Then that information was included in Morrell's briefing of Reid in November 2012.

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In November 2012, the FBI Director was Robert Mueller. At that time, Comey was not even in the US Government; he was working for Bridgewater Associates, an investment-management firm. Comey did not become the FBI Director until September 2013.

Therefore, when Reid wrote his public letter to Comey in August 2016, he well might have refrained from mentioning whatever Mueller might have briefed him about Trump in November 2012. Perhaps Mueller had briefed Reid about Trump, or perhaps he had not done so.

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The FBI had its own source about Trump -- former KGB officer Yuri Shvets, who had immigrated to the USA and then had begun to brief FBI Counterintelligence in 1994. At some unknown point in time, Shvets began to report that the KGB had initiated a program to "compromise" Trump in about 1987. 

If the KGB indeed did initiate such a program, then Shvets himself was not involved in it. Shvets collected intelligence about Washington DC, whereas Trump lived in New York City. However, it is possible that Shvets did learn about a KGB program to compromise Trump.

If so, then Shvets probably would not have included such hearsay information about Trump during his initial FBI debriefings. Rather, it's much more likely that Shvets's memories about the Trump program were brought to the surface during 2011-2012, when Trump raised a stink about Obama's birth certificate. Only then did Shvets begin to tell FBI Counterintelligence his sketchy memories about a KGB program to compromise Trump. Of course, I am just speculating about this particular sequence of events.

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By late 2012, both the CIA and FBI suspected that Trump was at least an "unwitting agent" of Russian Intelligence.

I myself do not agree with any such suspicion that Russian Intelligence had any program to compromise Trump or that he ever was compromised -- or that he ever colluded with Russian Intelligence.

Senator Reid's Letters to FBI Director Comey

This letter clarifies my previous blog article, titled The FBI's Leaks About Its Investigation of Trump, where I wrote:

The official story is that the FBI indeed was investigating [President Donald] Trump for good reason, but was keeping its investigation very secret. The culprit who revealed the FBI investigation to the public was Senator Harry Reid. He did so on October 30, nine days before the election.

The situation seems to be that Reid -- because he was the Senate leader -- had been briefed about the FBI investigation of Trump, but Reid was supposed to keep that investigation secret from the public. However, Reid was so angry at [FBI Director James] Comey for recently re-opening the investigation of Hillary Clinton's e-mails that Reid revealed to the public the FBI investigation of Trump.

However, I wonder whether Comey really wanted Reid to keep the FBI investigation of Trump secret. Perhaps Comey expected and even wanted Reid to reveal the FBI investigation right after the briefing.

Now that I have reviewed Reid's letter, I recognize that I was wrong to write that Reid had "revealed the FBI investigation to the public". Rather, Reid's letter indicated only that Comey possessed "explosive information". The letter's essential text (emphasis added):

Dear Director Comey:

Your actions in recent months have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another. I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election. Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.

The double standard established by your actions is clear.

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.

By contrast, as soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible.

Moreover, in tarring Secretary Clinton with thin innuendo, you overruled longstanding tradition and the explicit guidance of your own Department. You rushed to take this step eleven days before a presidential election, despite the fact that for all you know, the information you possess could be entirely duplicative of the information you already examined which exonerated Secretary Clinton.

As you know, a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates on March 10, 2016, makes clear that all Justice Department employees, including you, are subject to the Hatch Act. The memo defines the political activity prohibited under the Hatch Act as “activity directed towards the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.”

The clear double-standard established by your actions strongly suggests that your highly selective approach to publicizing information, along with your timing, was intended for the success or failure of a partisan candidate or political group.

Please keep in mind that I have been a supporter of yours in the past. When Republicans filibustered your nomination and delayed your confirmation longer than any previous nominee to your position, I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant.

With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong.

Sincerely,

Senator Harry Reid

Reid's letter does not state explicitly that the FBI was conducting an investigation of Trump.

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Two months earlier, on August 27, 2016, Reid had written a previous letter to Comey, which said (emphasis added):

Dear Director Comey:

I have recently become concerned that the threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential election is more extensive than widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results. The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount and has led Michael Morrell, the former Acting Central Intelligence Director, to call Trump an “unwitting agent” of Russia and the Kremlin. The prospect of a hostile government actively seeking to undermine our free and fair elections represents one of the gravest threats to our democracy since the Cold War and it is critical for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use every resource available to investigate this matter thoroughly and in a timely fashion. The American people deserve to have a full understanding of the facts from a completed investigation before they vote this November.

As you know, Russia’s intent to influence the outcome of our presidential election has been well-documented by numerous news organizations. For example, it has been reported that your agency is currently investigating the cyber theft of thousands of documents from several Democratic organizations, including, but not limited to, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Already, a consensus of national security experts publicly concluded that actors of the Russian government carried out these cyber attacks.

It is of vital public interest to understand the chain of custody of these illegally obtained documents from the time they were stolen to the time of public dissemination, including any evidence of complicit intermediaries between the Russian government, those who leaked the material and any United States citizen.

For example, it has come to my attention that last week, video evidence came to light of an individual with long ties to Donald Trump and his top campaign aides claiming to be in communication with WikiLeaks, the organization that posted online the 20,000 DNC documents illegally obtained by Russia. The prospect of individuals tied to Trump, Wikileaks and the Russian government coordinating to influence our election raises concerns of the utmost gravity and merits full examination.

Further, there have been a series of disturbing reports suggesting other methods Russia is using to influence the Trump campaign and manipulate it as a vehicle for advancing the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin. For example, questions have been raised about whether a Trump advisor who has been highly critical of U.S. and European economic sanctions on Russia, and who has conflicts of interest due to investments in Russian energy conglomerate Gazprom, met with high-ranking sanctioned individuals while in Moscow in July of 2016, well after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee. (The same individual recently broke precedent by giving a speech critical of U.S. policy while in Moscow.) Any such meetings should be investigated and made a part of the public record. Indeed, the recent staff changes within the Trump campaign have made clear that the Trump campaign has employed a number of individuals with significant and disturbing ties to Russia and the Kremlin.

The foregoing - and more - has led me to believe that this matter should be fully investigated and the investigation made public.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

HARRY REID
Democratic Leader

In this letter too, Reid does not reveal that the FBI was investigating Trump. On the contrary, the letter suggested only that the FBI should investigate Trump.

The FBI's Leaks About Its Investigation of Trump

In an earlier blog article, titled Yuri Shvets and FBI Counterintelligence, I argued that former KGB officer Yuri Shvets, having immigrated to the USA, began to provide information to FBI Counterintelligence in 1994. Eventually Shvets claimed that the KGB had begun a secret operation in about 1987 to recruit Donald Trump as an agent.

I assume that, based on Shvet's claims, FBI Counterintelligence began already in the 1990s to investigate Trump. I speculate further that this investigation was boosted in 2012, when Trump raised a stink about President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Perhaps FBI Counterintelligence suspected that Trump was doing so as part of a Russian Intelligence effort to meddle in the USA's elections.

I speculate further that this investigation was boosted again in mid-2015, when Trump declared his candidacy for the Presidency. I speculate further that FBI Director James Comey reassigned FBI officer Michael Gaeta to the US Embassy in Rome, Italy, in order to collect in Europe information about Trump. Although Gaeta supposedly was working for the FBI Legate at that Embassy, he really was working for and reporting to FBI Counterintelligence.

The FBI kept this investigation extremely secret. The main reason that if Trump or Russian Intelligence became aware of the investigation, then the FBI's collection of information might be frustrated.

As the election race continued through the year 2016, however, another consideration grew within the FBI leadership. Although the investigation should remain very secret, the public -- in particular, elite opinion-makers -- should be warned subtly that Trump might be a secret agent for Russian Intelligence.

In this blog article here, I speculate about how the FBI leadership leaked such warnings about Trump. I cannot provide convincing evidence. I hope I can provide some ideas, however, about how such leaks might have been done.

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According to the official story, told in the Horowitz report, Christopher Steele delivered his Dossier reports to FBI official Michael Gaeta for the first time on July 5, 2016. The first delivered report was Number 80. I think that Steele already had delivered 79 reports, which have kept secret from the public to the present.

Steele formally worked for the company Fusion GPS and delivered his reports primarily to that company. He numbered his reports sequentially as he delivered them to that client. However (I speculate), he delivered them also to Gaeta, who forwarded them directly to FBI Counterintelligence. This arrangement was very secret. Not even Gaeta's supposed boss, the FBI Legate at the USA's Rome Embassy, was aware that Gaeta was collecting information in Europe about Trump from Steele and from other sources and was sending it directly to FBI Counterintelligence.

In this arrangement, FBI Counterintelligence was able to suggest to Steele (i.e. to Fusion GPS) particular subjects to research. Eventually, as the FBI prepared its FISA applications against Trump, Steele was tasked subtly to provide information quickly that might be necessary to justify the application.

Also in this arrangement, as the FBI leadership decided to warn the public subtly about Trump, Steele and Fusion GPS could be encouraged to leak insinuations about Trump to journalists. Supposedly, Gaeta forbad Steele to do such leaking and ultimately punished Steele by firing him from his position as a paid secret informant. However, there might be much more to that story. For example, perhaps Steele had been encouraged to leak, but he eventually did so in a blatant manner that angered Gaeta.

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On March 17, 2017, James Wolfe, the Director of Security for the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), provided to journalist Ali Watkins (his former lover) the entire FISA warrant targeting Carter Page. Wolfe was caught in October 2017 and eventually was charged -- but only for lying to investigators. Wolfe pled guilty to that lesser charge and never was charged for leaking the FISA warrant -- a top secret document. Wolfe was sentenced to only two months in jail.

Why was Wolfe not charged for leaking the FISA warrant that targeted Page?  Blogger Sundance has speculated that Wolfe had leaked the FISA warrant at the behest of some top members of the SSCI.

.... lawyers for Mr. Wolfe have sent letters to every Senator who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. ... The lawyers for Wolfe are putting the senators on notice they might be called as defense witnesses.  ....

Remember, Wolfe isn’t charged with the leaks, he’s charged with lying to the FBI. His lawyers inferring that Senators might be called to rebut the allegations, seems to imply that Senators might have authorized the content of those allegations; or, put simply, Senators might have authorized or instructed Wolfe to make the leaks to the media. [emphasis added]

I had been persuaded by Sundance's speculation, but recently I myself have begun to speculate along a different line. I wonder whether Wolfe leaked the FISA warrant not at the behest of some SSCI members -- but rather at the behest of FBI Director Comey.

Comey devoted a lot of thought and effort to his leaking techniques, managing to escape legal punishment even if he were caught. 

By leaking the FISA warrant through the SSCI's Director of Security, Comey created an illusion that the FBI had nothing to do with the leak. The apparent culprit was the SSCI, which is not even in the Executive Branch.

Also, as long as Comey was the FBI Director, the FBI never was able to catch Wolfe. Only after Comey was fired from the FBI in May 2017 did the FBI catch Wolfe in October 2017. Then, even after Wolfe was caught, he was not charged with leaking the FIsA warrant, because he threatened to reveal that he had done so at the behest of FBI Director Comey.

That is my speculation, which I cannot prove.

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Long before Wolfe leaked the FISA warrant to Watkins in March 2017, someone leaked general information about the FISA warrant to another journalist, Louise Mensch, the British owner of the website Heat Street, revealed on November 7, 2016, (the day before the election) that the FBI had obtained a FISA warrant targeting Trump.

Ali Watkins, born in 1991, is 20 years younger than Louise Mensch, born in 1971, but I wonder whether Wolfe ever had a romantic relationship likewise with Mensch.

James Wolfe and FISA Leak Recipient Ali Watkins

FISA Leak recipient Louise Mensch

There might be a pattern here. Part of the pattern might be that Wolfe was told to leak by Comey, who firmly believed that Trump was an agent of influence, controlled by Russian Intelligence. Comey wanted to warn the public subtly that Trump was being investigated formally by the FBI on suspicion of colluding with Russian Intelligence.. 

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(The following three paragraphs are incorrect, but I am leaving them here for discussion. I have published a correction in my following blog article, Senator Reid's Letters to FBI Director Comey.) 

The official story is that the FBI indeed was investigating Trump for good reason, but was keeping its investigation very secret. The culprit who revealed the FBI investigation to the public was Senator Harry Reid. He did so on October 30, nine days before the election. 

The situation seems to be that Reid -- because he was the Senate leader -- had been briefed about the FBI investigation of Trump, but Reid was supposed to keep that investigation secret from the public. However, Reid was so angry at Comey for recently re-opening the investigation of Hillary Clinton's e-mails that Reid revealed to the public the FBI investigation of Trump. 

However, I wonder whether Comey really wanted Reid to keep the FBI investigation of Trump secret. Perhaps Comey expected and even wanted Reid to reveal the FBI investigation right after the briefing.

Leaks of Classified Information Before and During Trump

Fusion GPS and "the outside computer experts"

On April 25, 2022, John Durham submitted a court filing that includes (on page 11) the following quotation from a 2019 book -- Crime in Progress: Inside The Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump -- written by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the co-founders of the company Fusion GPS. In that quotation, Durham replaced a woman's name with a bracketed phrase that I have highlighted here:

Fusion’s in-house cyber ninja, [name of the Government’s expected Fusion GPS trial witness], was asked to analyze the DC Leaks site. Her assessment came back quickly. ‘The poor English and amateurish site architecture — no SSL encryption, open downloads folder — screams ‘Russian hackers’ to me,’ she said.

Durham's bracketed phrase indicates that Durham plans to indict Fusion GPS on criminal charges and that the woman employee will testify against the company.

(I have not seen the book itself, and so I have not been able to read the woman's name in that quotation. The book is not in stock in my local bookstores, and so I have special-ordered it. When I learn the woman's name, I will provide it here.)

Cover of the book Crime in Progress,
written by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritch

Durham's court filing does not specify the illegal acts allegedly committed by Fusion GPS. Here in this blog article, I speculate that Fusion GPS committed those acts by briefing some journalists about alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia's Alfa Bank. Normally, briefing journalists is not a crime, but in this case Fusion GPS was participating in a conspiracy to fraudulently cause the US Government to launch an investigation of those alleged Trump-Alfa links. The conspirators intended to reveal the investigation to the US electorate in order to affect the Presidential election scheduled for November 8, 2016. 

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Durham's court filing included a separate file of some e-mails that Fusion GPS sent and received during the months May-September 2016. That separate file was supposed to be sealed from the public's reading, but was accidentally unsealed and readable for a while. Fortuitously, I downloaded it to my own computer, and so I am able to quote and discuss some of those e-mails here.

From several of those e-mails, I deduce that Fusion GPS briefed several journalists about Internet data that Rodney Joffe and his fellows were collecting about alleged computer communications between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank. I speculate further that the company's "cyber ninja" is supposed to testify about such briefings in the "expected Fusion GPS trial" that Durham mentioned in his court filing.

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On Friday, September 23, Fritsch met with several journalists, who included 1) Eric Lichtblau, a reporter at the Washington Bureau of The New York Times newspaper and 2) Mark Hosenball, a reporter at the Reuters news agency. Then in the following days, Fritsch exchanged e-mails separately with Lichtbau and Hosenball. In his sealed file, Durham provided the case judge with some (not all) of those e-mails in order to support some of Durham's legal arguments.

Specifically, some of the e-mails might indicate that, at that Friday meeting, Fritsch briefed the journalists about some Internet information that was being provided to Fusion GPS by Joffe and his fellows. More specifically, some e-mails mentioned "the outside computer experts", which might be Joffe and his fellows.

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On Saturday, September 24 -- the day after Fritsch briefed the journalists -- Fritsch sent the journalists an e-mail that comprised the following uncapitalized phrases. (The e-mail was a single paragraph, which I have separated below into five paragraphs.)

gents. good to see you yesterday. sounded like you might be interested in some of the attached russia-related material. these are internal, open source research drafts, as agreed. pls treat this as background / not for attribution. as you'll see, it's all easily replicated anyway.

can also send you a shnaider / toronto memo once i dig it out.

I'm skipping over felix sater and bayrock. believe your guys have done that up ... leave it to you to distribute internally, or not, as you see fit.

don't believe sunny isles / hollywood or panama or toronto have been touched by brands xy or z. amazingly.

don't think anyone has done up the trump tower poker ring story either. pretty vivid color there.

In this blog article, I will not discuss that e-mail's references (shnaider, toronto memo, felix sater, etc.). I quote that entire e-mail in order to show that Fritsch briefed the journalists about a variety of topics that might incriminate Trump. Fritsch urged the journalists to investigate and report to the public those topics.

Durham's court filing does not include the files that Fritsch attached to this e-mail, but the e-mail's text provides the following clues about those attachments:

At least some of the attached files were related to Russia.

All of the attached files were "internal, open source", meaning that they were created by Fusion GPS based on information sources that were available to the public.

The attached files did not include a so-called "shnaider / toronto memo" and also did not include information about "felix sater and bayrock".

The attached files did include some information about "sunny isles / hollywood and panama and toronto" and about "the trump tower poker ring story".

The e-mail's text does not mention the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). Perhaps that text did not mention the DNS simply because Fritsch did not discuss the DNS in that Friday meeting. Or else, perhaps that text did not mention the DNS, because Fritsch deliberately avoided writing about that topic because of secret precautions.

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The DNS topic did arise, however, during a subsequent exchange of e-mails between Fritsch and NYT journalist Lichtblau. On Tuesday, September 27, Lichtblau sent Fritsch an e-mail comprising just the following question:

Did you say that Millian had an alfa email address. or was that someone else?

(Sergey Millian was the Chairman of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. He was an acquaintance -- perhaps an associate -- of Donald Trump.)

It seems that Lichtblau's question was about a topic that Fritsch had briefed to the journalists during the Friday meeting  but had not mentioned in his Saturday e-mail or explained in that  e-mail's attachments.

Responding on that same Tuesday to Lichtblau's question about Millian's e-mail address, Fritsch sent him a  print-out from the IPTracker.org website. The print-out indicated that the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce had been using a Russia-based server until August 23, 2016, and then a US-based server afterwards.  

If you try to go to IPTracker.org, you are transferred automatically to http://www.ipdatabase.com/. I do not know the significance of that change. In any case, this search tool is publicly available, but I assume that Fusion GPS's staff -- even its "cyber ninja" -- did not know how to use it effectively. I speculate that this service was used by "the outside computer experts" to inform Fusion GPS. (Click on the images to enlarge them).

I do not recognize any reference to Alfa Bank in this print-out. I think that only a DNS expert would recognize any such reference.

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On October 5, Fritsch sent, separately, to the journalists a 14-page "Overview" of the Russian company Alfa Group. 

On that same October 5, Reuters journalist Hosenball responded with an e-mail that said (emphasis added):

yep got it. but is that from you all or from the outside computer experts?

On that same October 5, Fritsch responded to Hosenball (emphasis added):

the DNS stuff? not us at all. outside computer experts. we did up an alfa memo unrelated to all this.

The 14-page "Overview" is not "DNS stuff", so this exchange of e-mails between Hosenball and Fritsch is puzzling.  However, I presume that Fritsch and Hosenball are talking about Joffe and his fellows.

I assume that Fritsch's concluding remark -- "we did up an alfa memo unrelated to all this" -- refers to Christopher Steele's Dossier report about Alfa Bank.

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Later on that same October 5, Fritsch sent Hosenball yet another e-mail that says:

alfa was something we did unrelated to this. I sent you what we have BUT it gives you a tutanota address to leave questions.

1) Leave questions at: tea.leaves@tuta.io

This e-mail indicates that Fritsch previously had instructed the journalists how to contact and question "Tea Leaves", the pseudonym of April D. Lorenzen, a fellow of Rodney Joffe.

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In general, Durham's legal filing, along with its attached sealed file, indicates that Durham plans to try Fusion GPS for collaborating with Joffe and his fellows to defraud the US Government into a devious investigation of allegations about Trump and Alfa Bank. A key witness in this trial will be a "cyber ninja" who worked for Fusion GPS.

The Tape-Recorded Conversation in April 2016

On January 12, 2017 -- about a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump -- the BBC published an article titled Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here?, written by Paul Wood.

This BBC publication occurred six days after the publication -- on January 6 -- of the US Government's Background to Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. It seems that the BBC article was based on information that was not included in that Background but that was provided secretly to Wood, who described his sources as follows:

This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything - giving up classified information would be illegal - but he would confirm or deny what I had heard from other sources.

"I'm going to write a story that says…" I would say. "I don't have a problem with that," he would reply, if my information was accurate. He confirmed the sequence of events below.

In my blog article here, I am focusing on the first event in that sequence:

Last April [2016], the CIA director [John Brennan] was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States.

Subsequently, the CIA organized a six-agency joint counter-intelligence taskforce, and then in June 2016 the US Justice Department submitted a FISA application that targeted two Russian banks.  

To place those events into a broader sequence of events, Christopher Steele delivered his first Dossier reports to the FBI's Michael Gaeta in Rome on July 5, 2016, and those reports were not delivered to FBI Headquarters until September 19, 2016.

In other words, the delivery of the tape-recording to the CIA Director happened much earlier and more consequently than the first delivery of any Dossier report. Well before Gaeta received the first Dossier reports on July 5, 2016, the joint counterintelligence taskforce already had been organized and then, in June 2016, a FISA application had been submitted to a FISA judge.

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Perhaps the tape-recording indeed was "passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic states". Or perhaps the BBC reporter Paul Wood was deceived on that point so that the actual source of the tape-recording would remain secret.

I speculate that the actual source of the tape-recording was CIA Director Brennan's spy in Russia's Presidential Administration, Oleg Smolenkov. Smolenkov was spying for Brennan in that Presidential Administration until about June 2017, when Brennan's CIA arranged for him to defect to the USA. 

(I speculate that the defection was done in that June largely because Robert Mueller's investigation of the alleged Russia-Trump collusion had been initiated in mid-May 2016.)

Sure, Brennan would pay serious attention if Estonian Intelligence gave him a tape-recording of some people talking about "money from the Kremlin going to the US presidential campaign".

However, if Brennan would pay much, much more attention if his precious spy Smolenkov gave him a tape-recording of Presidential Administration officials discussing such transfers of money. Such a tape-recording might cause Brennan to organize a joint taskforce.

Keep in mind that Brennan received the tape-recording in April and organized the task force in June 2016. The tape-recording raised suspicions about Russia's Alfa Bank.

Not until July 2016 did Christopher Steele provide his first Dossier reports to his FBI case officer Michael Gaeta.

The US Intelligence Community's suspicions about Alfa Bank began much earlier than any suspicions raised by Steele's Dossier reports.

The FISA Warrants Against Two Russian Banks

Two British publications -- BBC and The Guardian -- indicate that Estonian Intelligence discovered that money was being transfered through two Russian banks to members of Donald Trump's campaign staff during the USA's 2016 election race. That information from Estonia caused the FBI to request FISA warrants against the two banks and also against four campaign staff members -- who must have been Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos -- in June 2016. However, the FISA judge rejected the FBI's application as being too broad.

Therefore, the FBI revised its FISA application. A major change was to remove Papadopoulos. After all, the only three of the four campaign staff members who had done any business in Russia were Page, Manafort and Flynn. However, the FISA judge rejected the revised application in July 2016.

Therefore, the FBI revised its FISA application yet again, this time removing also Manfort and Flynn -- leaving only Page. Also, the FBI removed the two banks.

The remnant FISA application -- now targeting only Page -- was approved by the FISA judge on October 15, 2016.

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One of the two banks must be Alfa Bank. I speculate that the second banks was an Alfa Bank affiliate that specialized in Estonia.

Page and Manafort, separately, had done legitimate business in Russia for many years. Flynn had been paid to attend an event in Moscow in December 2015. Because of those legitimate business activities, there is no apparent reason why any Alfa Bank transactions involving any of those three men would raise suspicions -- especially within Estonian Intelligence.

In the first half of 2016, none of these three was famous for belonging to Trump's campaign staff. It's preposterous to think that some Estonian Intelligence officer would see an Alfa Bank transfer of money to, for example, Carter Page and would suspect that the money was related to Page's obscure position as an advisor to the Trump campaign. 

I speculate that US Intelligence knew that Estonian Intelligence was capable to monitor some Alfa Bank transactions. Estonian Intelligence was able to do so through an Alfa Bank affiliate headquartered in Estonia. Knowing that capability, US Intelligence asked Estonian Intelligence to look for transactions involving Page, Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos.

Something like that happened. It did not happen that Estonian Intelligence, on its own initiative, noticed some Alfa Bank transactions involving any of those four persons and recognized them as being related to Trump's election campaign. However, some British reporters were told a story that was false in the element that the initiative in this situation was from Estonian Intelligence.

Apparently, Estonian Intelligence was able to discover at least one such transaction -- and it must have been an Alfa Bank transaction of money to Page. At the request of US Intelligence, Estonian Intelligence discovered this Alfa Bank transaction of money to Page no later than June 2016 -- the month when the first FISA application was submitted to the FISA judge.

Now I will quote the two British articles.

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On January 12, 2017 -- about a week before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the US President -- the BBC website published an article by Paul Wood, titled Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here?. The article contains the following passage:

.... [in the US Government] a joint intelligence and law enforcement taskforce has been looking at allegations that the Kremlin paid money to his [Trump's election] campaign through his associates.

On 15 October [2016], the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me [Paul Wood] by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community.

.... He confirmed the sequence of events below.

Last April [2016], the CIA director [John Brennan] was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States [allegedly, Estonia]. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.

The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying.

Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.

Their first application, in June [2016], was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October [2016], three weeks before election day.

Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities - in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offence.

A lawyer - outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case - told me that three of Mr Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry. "But it's clear this is about Trump," he said.

I spoke to all three of those identified by this source. All of them emphatically denied any wrongdoing. "Hogwash," said one. "Bullshit," said another. Of the two Russian banks, one denied any wrongdoing, while the other did not respond to a request for comment.

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On March 8, 2017 -- two months after Woods' article was published -- The Guardian newspaper's website published an article by Julian Borger, titled Why James Clapper's Trump comments may not conflict with reports of secret court order. That article includes the following passage:

The News Corp-owned Heat Street news site and later the BBC published reports in November [2016] and January [2017] respectively that a secret surveillance order had been issued by a special court allowing the justice department to investigate two Russian banks suspected of being part of the Kremlin’s efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and aid Trump’s.

The BBC said the justice department request had originally been based on a tip-off from an intelligence agency in one of the Baltic states, saying that the banks were being used to channel Kremlin money into the US presidential campaign.

Both reports said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court gave permission in mid-October for monitoring of the activities of the two banks that also covered Trump associates.

The Guardian has been unable to independently verify that reporting. However, the Guardian reported earlier this year that the Fisa court last summer turned down an application for an order that would have involved four members of the Trump campaign.

A source familiar with the case said that the intention behind the application was to explore the nature of contacts between individuals linked to the campaign and Moscow. ...

The Heat Street and BBC reports said that after the first unsuccessful application, the justice department had refined its request. According to the BBC, the successful application in October [2016] named only the banks as direct targets, but the request was part of a broader investigation into possible collusion, in which three Trump associates were under scrutiny. ...

.... the Trump advisers most closely linked to Russia – Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and the businessman Trump once described as a foreign policy adviser, Carter Page – had left the campaign over the summer, after reports surfaced about their ties. If they had been covered by the court order, it would not count as targeting the campaign.

“Anyone who is in the intelligence community would understand what Clapper said as there being no wiretap targeting of Trump or his campaign,” Todd Hinnen, a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the justice department, said. “I don’t think what Clapper said contradicts the BBC report that there was a Fisa order targeting Russian banks.”

The most important understanding here is that US Intelligence began looking for Alfa Bank transactions related to Trump's campaign staff no later than June 2016.

Ashli Babbitt was impulsive and violent

In past articles of this blog, I speculated that the killing of Ashli Babbitt in the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, was a hoax. Eventually I renounced that speculation and removed most of those articles from this blog. I recognize that Babbitt indeed was killed.

A week ago, on January 3, 2022, the PBS website published an article titled Ashli Babbitt, Jan. 6 insurrectionist portrayed as martyr by some, had violent past. That article indicated to me that Babbitt suffered a mental disorder of some kind. Specifically, she seems to me to have been manic-depressive -- in other words, suffering from bipolar disorder.

The article tells how Ashli -- previously named Ashli McEntee -- had an affair with a man, Aaron Babbitt, who was involved in a six-year relationship with a woman named Celeste Norris. The McEntee-Babbitt affair broke up the Norris-Babbitt relationship. Celestine Norris dumped Aaron Babbitt, and then immediately Ashli McEntee moved in with Babbitt and eventually married him, thus becoming Ashli Babbitt. During the course of this romantic drama, Ashli physically attacked Norris in 2016. Some legal proceedings followed, but Babbitt was acquitted of the criminal charges.

Although Babbitt was acquitted of the criminal charges, she seems to be to have been an extraordinarily impulsive and violent person.

The article gave me a better perspective on Ashli Babbitt's fatal decision to climb through that broken window in the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.