The FBI never had a basis for opening its investigation of Trump campaign

Elizabeth Vaughn:

Judicial Watch received a copy of the July 31, 2016 “electronic communication” which opened the FBI’s counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, otherwise known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. This document was obtained via a FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ and the FBI. It can be viewed here and it is reprinted below this post.

Tom Fitton, the founder and president of Judicial Watch, issued the following statement:

No wonder the DOJ and FBI resisted the public release of this infamous ‘electronic communication’ that ‘opened’ Crossfire Hurricane – it shows there was no serious basis for the Obama administration to launch an unprecedented spy operation on the Trump campaign. We now have more proof that Crossfire Hurricane was a scam, based on absurd gossip and innuendo. This document is Exhibit A to Obamagate, the worst corruption scandal in American history. This document shows how Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham are right to question the predicate of this spy operation.

According to Judicial Watch, the DOJ and the FBI fought against the release of this memo for over two years. In February 2018, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, requested an unredacted copy of the EC and received a heavily redacted copy. After much effort, members of the Intelligence Committee were able to view a lightly redacted copy of the document, however, it was not released publicly. It still contained some redactions which the DOJ indicated were “narrowly tailored to protect the name of a foreign country and the name of a foreign agent.”

The memo was written by Peter Strzok.

All of the names of deep staters were redacted in the version sent to Judicial Watch. It’s amazing that the FBI was able to open an investigation based on third-hand information. The memo states that the reason for this investigation is “to determine whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign are witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia.” Did any member of the Trump campaign engage in a violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act?

In a nutshell, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer told [redacted] that two months prior, in a London bar, he had spoken to Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos said that two months earlier, a professor told him, “(the Russians) could assist the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.”

Just the News’ John Solomon points out that Strzok noted the limitations of the allegations. The memo states, “It was unclear whether he [Papadopoulos] or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.”

Former FBI official Kevin Brock spoke to Solomon about the document. He said it “did not meet the bureau’s rigorous standards for predicating the opening of a criminal or counterintelligence case.”
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Solomon asked Brock if he would have approved this investigation based on the document provided by Strzok. He replied, “Not in a millions years. I wouldn’t have approved it as a squad supervisor either. This would have set off alarm bells in any FBI field [office] for not meeting our standards for a predicate.”
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I suspect that Strzok was responding to the orders of Obama in putting the mess together.  Whether anyone is ever put in a position to ask him is prob ably still up in the air, but it would be more than passing strange for a top FBI official to do something this screwy on his own.

What the revelations do tell us is that the FBI never had a case to even investigate when it was trying to entrap Flynn.