Damage control from media who pushed Russian collusion hoax

 Jack Cashill:

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What Meier does not even hint at in this 2600-word article, largely excerpted from his forthcoming book, Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube and the Rise of Private Spies, are the political consequences of the three-year media feeding frenzy between the dossier’s rise and fall.  Not surprisingly, Meier makes zero mention in this lengthy excerpt of how then-President Barack Obama and his operatives used the dossier to rig the 2016 election and subvert the Trump presidency.  This omission is classic “limited hangout.”

According to a lawsuit filed by Watergate conspirator Hunt, “A ‘limited hangout' is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting -- sometimes even volunteering -- some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”

By focusing on the media failure to see through the Steele dossier, as part of a larger problem with reliance on “private spies,” Meier spares Times readers knowledge of just how the dossier was used in 2016. Working with Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence (HPSCI), author Lee Smith provides arguably the clearest analysis of Steele’s mischief in his 2019 book, The Plot Against the President.

According to Smith, Steele started speaking with Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson and the Justice Department’s Bruce Ohr on the subject of Trump-Russia in January 2016. In October 2015, Simpson had hired Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, a Russian expert, to investigate, in her words, “the relationship of Donald Trump with Russian organized crime figures.”

In April 2016, the Clinton campaign and DNC hired Fusion GPS to share its Russian dirt on Trump with the media. Leading from behind as was his wont, Obama was never so far behind that he could not see what was to come. From time to time he showed his hand, starting with an April 2016 appearance on a Fox News Sunday morning show with Chris Wallace.

When asked about Hillary Clinton’s nonsecure email system, Obama opined, “She has acknowledged -- that there’s a carelessness, in terms of managing emails, that she… recognizes.” That conceded, he added, “I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America’s national security.”

Hillary was Obama’s chosen successor. He was confident his secrets of state would be safe with her. If she were indicted for her apparent crime, the White House could easily fall into enemy hands. If James Comey and his colleagues were uncertain of Obama’s will before that appearance, they no longer were.

By May 2016, relying on Nellie Ohr’s research, Fusion prepared a series of what Nunes called “protodossiers” on Trump-Russia. “It wasn’t front-page material,” reports Smith. “Still, the proto-dossiers provided journalists with some leads.”

In that same month, May 2016, Fusion hired Steele to flesh out the proto-dossiers. In so doing, Steele, a self-avowed Trump hater, shifted the emphasis of the investigation. Whereas Ohr had been looking into connections between Trump’s people and Russian crime lords, Steele’s goal was to frame Trump as a tool of the Kremlin.

The plot was in gear. On June 20, Steele introduced the first of the memos that would comprise the Steele dossier. In late June, a British counterpart allegedly tipped off CIA chief John Brennan that something was rotten at Trump Tower. On July 5, the FBI met secretly with Steele in London. On that very same day, Comey cleared Hillary Clinton of criminal charges.

The task had fallen to the now notorious Peter Strzok, the FBI’s lead investigator on the Clinton email case -- code name “Midyear Exam” -- to align the FBI’s messaging with that of the White House. It was he who changed the language in an earlier draft by Comey from “gross negligence” -- the exact words in the Espionage Act -- to “extremely careless,” the words Obama introduced and Comey eventually used.

In her testimony before the HPSCI, Strzok’s FBI lover, Lisa Page, acknowledged that the directive had come from Obama’s DoJ not to charge Hillary with a crime. With Clinton now the certain nominee, the pressure increased to protect her candidacy and Obama’s legacy.

As the summer of 2016 progressed, Steele shared his research about Donald Trump memo by memo not just with the FBI, but also with the DoJ, the State Department, and select media. The cumulative tale the Steele memos told was that Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russian government and was colluding with it to steal the upcoming election.

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There is more.

This coup attempt had many coconspirators and Obama was chief among them.  They all should have been brought to justice, but instead, they arrange the Muller probe to try to entrap the President and the people who supported him.  It was an extension of the plot against the President.