'Russiagate' Inquiry Best Left to Congress, DOJ

The 'Russiagate' Inquiry Best Left to Congress, DOJ - Not Rampant Speculation

Much is seemingly coming to light revealing, disturbingly so, what Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard terms a "treasonous conspiracy" by the Obama administration and top intelligence officials to amplify "manufactured intelligence that claims that Russia had helped" Trump win the 2016 presidential election.

Troubling information in these reports continues to seemingly be broadly ignored, or dismissed, by the legacy media networks, as they incessantly pushed false propaganda narratives based on salacious opposition research allegedly paid for by the Clinton campaign and allegedly approved by Hillary that put Trump’s presidency, and yes international credibility, through hell throughout his first term of office.

We have learned, for example, that former Director of National Security James Clapper, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and others were purportedly present in the Oval Office on July 28, 2016, when CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama and FBI Director James Comey on intelligence he’d received from one of Hillary Clinton's campaign foreign policy advisers "to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service."

After that briefing, the CIA had forwarded a memorandum to FBI Director Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, with the subject line: "Crossfire Hurricane," stating: "An exchange (REDACTED) discussing U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server."

Just three days after the meeting, on July 31, 2016, the FBI opened that original Trump-Russia Crossfire Hurricane investigation, used as a premise to spy on the Trump campaign and White House, to conduct congressional investigations, and to initiate a highly publicized Robert S. Mueller Special Counsel probe that haunted and undermined functioning of his presidency.

We have since also learned that Barack Obama in an August 2016 Daily Presidential Brief (DPB) that there was no credible evidence that Trump or his advisers had ever colluded with Russian agents.

Nevertheless, then-President Obama reportedly instructed CIA Director Brennan to ignore the DPB assessment despite objections from informed intel officials including the former CIA deputy director.

According to newly released intel correspondence: "Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that 'my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.'"

In January 2017, after Trump’s victory and during the presidential transition period, FBI Director Comey briefed the new president on the now-infamous anti-Trump dossier fictionally authored by Christopher Steel containing allegations of purported coordination between Trump and the Russian government.

Comey then leaked discussion that Trump was under investigation to the New York Times via a close Columbia University law professor friend to publicize the phony scandal.

Brennan was present for that briefing, which took place at Trump Tower in New York City.

Subsequent House Intelligence Committee hearings conducted depositions of top Obama intelligence officials, including DNI Clapper, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and AG Lynch, among others, whereby none found any evidence of criminal coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, while not reaching a determination on obstruction of justice.

According to transcripts between 2017-2018 regarding whether they had or had not seen evidence of such collusion, coordination or conspiracy that had driven the FBI's initial case, and later the special counsel probe, Clapper testified: "I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election."

Lynch said she did not recall being briefed.

Perhaps the most intriguing alleged omission in the new revelations released by Director Gabbard is that former CIA Director Brennan allegedly had not only known that the Trump Russia collusion claim was cooked up and paid for by the campaign as a distraction from her having illegally deleted some 30,000 unauthorized emails on her private server, but that the FBI had intercepted communications that the Russians were fully aware of this as well and that Putin actually preferred Clinton over Trump as victor.

Gabbard told Fox News’s "Sunday Morning Futures" that she couldn’t fathom why John Durham and the Mueller investigation report didn’t highlight evidence her team found, stating: "The only logical conclusion that I can draw in this . . . is that there was direct intent to cover up the truth about what occurred and who was responsible and the broad network of how this seditious conspiracy was concocted and who exactly was responsible for carrying it out."

In any case, an argument may be made that John Brennan still wouldn’t be off the hook. This, in light of his May, 2023 testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, claiming, "The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment."`

But does it really matter?

Apparently not from the perspective of anti-Trump legacy media networks who obviously view it as "old news," not worth reporting.

All of this is a matter for Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.

(Related  articles may be found here, and here.)

• Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.