Barack Obama didn’t like Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama didn’t even care about Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. Barack Obama would have liked nothing more than to watch Hillary Clinton go down in a ball of flames, until something happened in 2016 that changed the dynamic.
Suddenly, Barack Obama needed Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election…
That my friends, is the reason why so many people get lost in the story of the 2016 election and the eventual Trump-Russia conspiracy. However, once you understand what changed in those April and May 2016 moments, everything reconciles.
The U.S. government under the President Obama administration was spying on American citizens.
It started with Barack Obama and AG Eric Holder’s use of the IRS database in the 2010 midterm, against the primary threat of the Tea Party movement. However, an IRS whistleblower from the Cincinnati field office took the continued use of the IRS off the table. From the period of mid-2012 to April-2016, the administration factually and demonstrably shifted to using the power of electronic surveillance to conduct political spying operations using the NSA database and the metadata captures within it.
However, once that NSA surveillance and spying was identified in April 2016, President Obama had a problem. That’s where the Obama alignment with the Clinton ‘dirty trick’ comes into play. After May 2016, Obama needed Hillary Clinton to win the election. The rest is “Russiagate” history.
Those who remember the 2015/2016 presidential race will remember President Obama never campaigned for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 primary. After all, Bernie Sanders was potentially going to upend Clinton until the DNC stepped heavily on the scales to assist her and team Sanders was furious. Then suddenly, following the California primary, Barack went all in.
There is a distinct timeline shift during this period that most seem to overlook because “Russiagate” was/is easily the shiniest thing for people to follow. However, it was the precursor scandal, ‘spygate’, that is more critical yet gets almost no attention.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has announced his resignation from the state AG position to take a role at the top of the FBI silo. Pam Bondi has appointed Andrew Bailey as Co-Deputy FBI Director to serve alongside Dan Bongino.
This outcome and appointment make a lot of sense. Missouri AG Andrew Bailey helped expose the DHS manipulation of social media and has pushed the envelope against the Deep State/Lawfare attacks against Donald Trump.
Bailey has used the power of his office for good purposes and provided cautious optimism he could do the same at a federal level in the position. {GO DEEP}
Two weaknesses with the appointment of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were that neither of them had large institutional leadership experience, and neither had organized long investigative processes within the legal system. The concerns therein were never about intent, but rather, their ability.
Andrew Bailey provides a boost in experience that both the Director and Deputy are lacking. This is not a slight against Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, the appointment of a subject matter expert is strategically necessary.
Fox News host Bret Baier was given exclusive access to President Trump during the much-anticipated summit in Alaska.
Baier interviewed President Trump on Airforce One going to Anchorage and during the day’s events. In this interview, Baier asked President Trump what his expectations were going in. Trump noted it is not his place to negotiate the terms of a ceasefire on behalf of Ukraine; however, he is willing to be an intermediary in a focused effort to stop the conflict.
Stopping the killing is President Trump’s main priority and peace is the elusive prize. In the background, as previously noted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the administration accepts the conflict in Ukraine is essentially a proxy war between the former Biden administration officials, NATO warmongers, international banking interests and Russia.
In a moment of genuine sunlight upon the backstory, President Trump notes he told President Putin, “There’s no way we are going to make a deal” … “impossible” … “because I have wise guys who created a phony deal,” the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, “and until those things are settled up” a reset in the relationship with Russia is impossible. WATCH:
This framework essentially validates what a small group of deep weeds walkers, including myself, have suspected. From the perspective of Trump and his big picture objectives, the recent Russiagate releases and declassifications are not so much to get accountability upon the perpetrators, but rather to make the backstory so well known that a strategic reset with Russia is no longer impeded by manufactured domestic issues inside the USA.
The value in Russiagate declassification and information releases, is more about laying the groundwork for a reset – and stopping the political opposition therein. That’s the Big Picture value to President Trump.
That is quite a big and significantly magnanimous position to take by President Trump.
Hopefully, the MAGA base will eventually come around to this understanding, because right now they are intensely expecting criminal accountability. That’s not President Trump’s goal, he’s thinking much bigger and more consequential that holding the irrelevant gnats accountable.
Apparently, Hillary Clinton can see that. It’s such a big altruistic position her tribe appears genuinely stunned. Hopefully, the base of MAGA will also accept this strategic purpose.
First things first. It might not be the popular thing to accept, but it is increasingly clear there is no way to get to any form of accountability or legal exposure for Russiagate or the manufacturing of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, anywhere near former President Barack Obama. The concentric circles of plausible deniability are just too extensive.
Essentially, despite the evidence of the FBI participating in a manufactured investigation predicted on false pretenses, all now supported with hindsight evidence, the fact that key IC officials, namely CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, presented the illusion of credible concern, inoculates President Obama from scrutiny.
As the Supreme Court noted, the President is protected from liability for “official acts” of his office. Yes, we all know these officials knew it was a ruse; however, in 2016 the CIA and FBI were presenting the information to Obama and saying the investigative value was potentially plausible. As such, Obama would have been within his official duty to tell the IC officials to chase down the information (continue investigating it).
Then, the January 5th, 2017, meeting documented by the infamous “by the book” Susan Rice memo, further inoculates President Obama for telling the IC officials to follow careful procedures as they continued investigating whether or not the Trump-Russia collusion was a factual concern. All of these elements lead to various tentacles of plausible deniability. No court is going to find criminal action within the decision-making, regardless of how ridiculous it may look in granular hindsight.
Are all the characters guilty of perpetrating a fraud for the expressed intent of a political narrative, yes. Are they criminally liable for it, extremely unlikely.
The FBI, CIA, ODNI and DOJ declassified the annex to the John Durham investigation of the origin of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. The declassified annex was released today by Senator Chuck Grassley.
First, the basic outline. The John Durham Annex outlines how the CIA received information in mid-2016 from a “credible foreign source,” talking about Hillary Clinton’s campaign working with the FBI to manufacture a Trump-Russia conspiracy, as an October surprise.
Beginning in 2014 and continuing through 2016, Russian hackers gained access to the email accounts and main accounts of the Soros Foundation/Open Societies Foundation who was working with the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.
What the hackers discovered was a trove of information showing how the Clinton Campaign was constructing a smear job against Donald Trump with the manufacturing of a fraudulent Trump-Russia conspiracy. The emails and communication showed the Clinton Campaign was directly working with the FBI to create the smear.
A CIA source gained custody of the Russian analysis of the information. The information was then shared with the CIA, who evaluated the Russian framework as “authentic” and “valid.” The CIA then shared that information with the FBI, who said the information was “unreliable.”
Obviously, the FBI held a conflict of interest because the information received outlined their misconduct. So, the FBI claimed the information gained from the hack was false and likely Russian propaganda. However, the CIA deemed it credible because it was clearly happening in real time.
Additionally, this information was then used in the summer of 2016 by CIA Director John Brennan to brief President Obama on what the Russians knew about the Clinton Campaign working with the FBI to create this false political narrative.
Part of what the Russians knew from their intercepts was that President Obama would not support the Clinton campaign directly, but Obama had instructed Attorney General Loretta Lynch to assist Hillary Clinton’s efforts. Lynch would work with FBI officials to exonerate Hillary Clinton from her email server scandal and then greenlight the FBI to assist with the Trump-Russia smear.
The 24-page intelligence annex was compiled from memos and emails obtained by the Obama administration in the lead-up to Election Day that laid out “confidential conversations” between leaders of the Democratic National Committee — including then-Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz — and liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
The plot, the brainchild of the Clinton campaign’s then-foreign policy adviser, Julianne Smith, included “raising the theme of ‘Putin’s support for Trump’” and “subsequently steering public opinion toward the notion that it needs to equate” the Russian leader’s political influence campaign with actual hacking of election infrastructure.
Smith would go on to serve as former President Joe Biden’s ambassador to NATO. “I don’t have any comment,” she told The Post when reached by phone Thursday.