The Spygate operation looks like an attempt to entrap Trump

J.E. Dyer:

The few people who have looked at this so far haven’t known what to make of it. I don’t claim to have a definitive answer right now either. But with the corporate mindset on Spygate / Russiagate finally shifting to where it’s been headed for months now – toward the recognition that “X”-gate started well before the FBI put down the stake of a formal predicate for an “investigation,” in July 2016. This is an excellent time to deploy the chip.

Here is the context in which to view it. If the FBI’s (and other U.S. agencies’) “Trump-Russia probe” started before there were supposedly specific, documented suspicions about George Papadopoulos, that means two things of overriding importance.

First, it means the “Papadopoulos” narrative about how the suspicions supposedly arose is no longer a constraint for reconstructing what happened.

And second, it means that nothing is constraining us to assume it was a good-faith investigation at all.

We are not constrained to assume otherwise either. But we are free to test our data points against differing hypotheses and see which one the data points fit the best.

The Obama administration’s activities can be interpreted in basically one of two ways. The operations, to recap, were deploying an informant to seek access to the Trump campaign. Reportedly – potentially – putting at least one informant into the campaign (not demonstrated as yet, and the informant(s) not identified); placing Trump associates under FBI-managed electronic surveillance of various kinds; and unmasking at least some Trump associates, in their communications, at the National Security Council level.

These activities are separate from the related activities of the Clinton campaign and the media. But they were demonstrably coordinated, via some of the links we know about, among the three sets of actors: the Obama agencies, the Clinton campaign (and Democratic organizations), and the media.
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For example, the investigation, on the government end, has leaked like a sieve. It has continuously been disclosing tendentious and self-serving information to the media since at least July 2016. In all my years as a sentient adult, I don’t recall that ever being characteristic of legitimate FBI investigations.

Couple that with things like the off-the-wall use of the Clinton-commissioned Steele dossier to justify the FISA application on Carter Page. The John Brennan (! – CIA director?) suasion blitz with Congress in late August 2016, trying to put heat on James Comey. The illegal leak to the media of highly classified intelligence in which Michael Flynn was illegally identified by name – even just these three threads show a pattern of trying to force dynamic effects via unsanctioned means. That pattern leads us directly away from “FBI investigation.”

The overall character of this thing looks more like an operation run against Trump. That would be the second basic interpretation. We can’t tell yet if it might have been an operation to try to discover and exploit dirt on Trump (a fishing expedition), or an operation to plant dirt on Trump.
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One thing that is clear to me is that there was nothing about this operation that was meant to help or protect Trump.  That argument that surfaced after the revelations about the informant/spy is laughable.  If that was its goal there would have been no leaks aimed at discrediting Trump and delegitimizing his victory in the election.   There would have been no leaks alleging Trump campaign collusion with the Russians.  From the beginning, Trump was a target of an operation that initially was trying to defeat him and later turned into a coup attempt.