The Real US Intel Experts Will Find the Mole Inside the Trump Team, But When Will AG Sessions Do His Job?

THE WEEK IS STARTING OFF FAST. The Deep State -- FBI? CIA? NSA? -- planted a mole in the Trump campaign. • • • KIMBERLEY STRASSEL OF THE WSJ BROKE THE NEWS. Zero Hedge covered her story on Friday with this report : "On Wednesday we reported on an intense battle playing out between House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (D-CA), the Department of Justice, and the Mueller investigation concerning a cache of intelligence that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein refuses to hand over -- a request he equated to 'extortion.' On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Nunes was denied access to the information on the grounds that it 'could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a US citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI.' After the White House caved to Rosenstein and Nunes was barred from seeing the documents, it also emerged that this same intelligence had already been shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 US election. On Wednesday afternoon, however, news emerged that Nunes and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) would receive a classified Thursday briefing at the DOJ on the documents. This is, to put it lightly, incredibly significant." • Why, asked Zero Hedge : "Because it appears that the FBI may have had a mole embedded in the Trump campaign. • Zero Hedge was referring to a bombshell op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberley Strassel, a respected political journalist who is a member of the WSJ editorial board, who wrote : "I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it. It would therefore be irresponsible to publish it.” • Fox News reported the Strassel bombshell : "She urged the FBI to 'come clean' on surveillance of the Trump campaign, noting 'the American people need to see this.' " Fox News said : "The Department of Justice lost its latest battle with Congress Thursday when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications. Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation. In a Thursday press conference, Speaker Paul Ryan bluntly noted that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret source was 'wholly appropriate,' 'completely within the scope' of the committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and 'something that probably should have been answered a while ago.' Translation : The department knew full well it should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year, but instead deliberately concealed it." Fox concludes : "We’ve barely scratched the surface of the FBI’s 2016 behavior, and the country will never get the straight story until President Trump moves to declassify everything possible. House investigators nonetheless sniffed out a name, and Mr. Nunes in recent weeks issued a letter and a subpoena demanding more details. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s response was to double down -- accusing the House of 'extortion' and delivering a speech in which he claimed that 'declining to open the FBI’s files to review' is a constitutional 'duty.' Justice asked the White House to back its stonewall. And it even began spinning that daddy of all superspook arguments -- that revealing any detail about this particular asset could result in 'loss of human lives.' This is desperation, and it strongly suggests that whatever is in these files is going to prove very uncomfortable to the FBI." • BUT, go back to that "constitutional duty" gibberish offered by the DOJ -- the constitutional "duty" of the DOJ and every executive agency is to report to and cooperate with the Congress that has constitutional "oversight" responsibility for all these agencies. Hiding evidence and lying to Congress is not, never has been, and will never be a "constitutinoal duty." • • • DID THE FBI SPY ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN. Of course it did. We already know that -- the illegaly obtained Carter Page FISA warrant, the electronic surveillance of General Flynn and George Papadopoulos, the unmasking by Obama White House national security advisor Susan Rice of many Americans in the Trump team picked up in NSA's surveillance of foreigners under FISA warrants -- all that was done so Obama & Co could SPY on Trump. Zero Hedge said last Friday of the Kimberley Strassel revelation : "Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications. Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation....The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a 'top secret intelligence source' of the FBI and CIA, who is a US citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe. When government agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign." Zero Hedge draws the right conclusion : "This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting. It would also be a major escalation from the electronic surveillance we already knew about, which was bad enough. Obama political appointees rampantly 'unmasked' Trump campaign officials to monitor their conversations, while the FBI played dirty with its surveillance warrant against Carter Page, failing to tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that its supporting information came from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now we find it may have also been rolling out human intelligence, John Le Carré style, to infiltrate the Trump campaign." • BUT? the real point Zero Hedge made on Friday was this : "When? The bureau has been doggedly sticking with its story that a tip in July 2016 about the drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos launched its counterintelligence probe. Still, the players in this affair -- the FBI, former Director Jim Comey, the Steele Dossier authors -- have been suspiciously vague on the key moments leading up to that launch date. When precisely was the Steele Dossier delivered to the FBI? When precisely did the Papadopoulos information come in? And to the point, when precisely was this human source operating? Because if it was prior to that infamous Papadopoulos tip, then the FBI isn’t being straight. It would mean the bureau was spying on the Trump campaign prior to that moment. And that in turn would mean that the FBI had been spurred to act on the basis of something other than a junior campaign aide’s loose lips." • Zero Hedge drew some conclusions about who the mole might be : "We also know that among the Justice Department’s stated reasons for not complying with the Nunes subpoena was its worry that to do so might damage international relationships. This suggests the “source” may be overseas, have ties to foreign intelligence, or both. That’s notable, given the highly suspicious role foreigners have played in this escapade. It was an Australian diplomat who reported the Papadopoulos conversation. Dossier author Christopher Steele is British, used to work for MI6, and retains ties to that spy agency as well as to a network of former spooks. It was a former British diplomat who tipped off Senator John McCain to the dossier. How this 'top secret' source fits into this puzzle could matter deeply." As Kimberley Strassel wrote : "What is clear is that we’ve barely scratched the surface of the FBI’s 2016 behavior, and the country will never get the straight story until President Trump moves to declassify everything possible. It’s time to rip off the Band-Aid." • • • RUSH LIMBAUGH ASKS WHY OBAMA'S FBI PUT A MOLE IN TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN. Last Friday on his radio program, Rush Limbaugh discussed WSJ columnist Kim Strassel's report that the FBI had a spy embedded in the Trump campaign : "I spent some time putting together 3 stories, a Kimberley Strassel column from last Friday, the Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday that I'm sure she wrote, and a Washington Post story on Wednesday involving Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee demanding to see evidence from the FBI of a source of information and that DOJ Rod Rosenstein is refusing to let Nunes see this stuff. Whatever was ultimately shared was heavily redacted...it led to my belief, it was not hard to figure out, it looked like that, in fact, the FBI had an informant in the Trump campaign. We still don't know when, and it will be interesting what we do learn, to find out when this plant was implanted in the FBI. Did it happen before the FISA warrant request or after that happened?...because when we find out when the FBI put informants in the Trump campaign, then a lot of other things they have said will either be demonstrated as true or they have lied to us. Well Kimberley Strassel is back today with a column about that FBI source. Did the bureau engage outright spying against the 2016 Trump campaign. I'm going to read you the last paragraph : 'We also know that among the Justice Department’s stated reasons for not complying with the Nunes subpoena was its worry that to do so might damage international relationships.' Okay, whoa. This suggests the 'source' may be overseas, have ties to foreign intelligence, or both. That’s notable, given the highly suspicious role foreigners have played in this escapade....It was a Clinton-donating Australian diplomat who ratted out Papadopoulos. The FBI has said 3 things : 1. They have said that this whole investigation began with a FISA warrant on Carter Page. 2. Then they said it began with the FISA warrant, we found out Trump was colluding. 3. They said it didn't begin with Carter Page, but it began with Papadopoulos. We've had 3 different versions of when the FBI investigation began. So they have a plant, they had a spy, they had an informant in the Trump campaign. Now, a lot of people have been speculating who it is. I don't have any idea, folks. I really don't know. A lot of people think its Papadopoulos, a lot of people think George Nader. I haven't the slightest idea and I'm content to wait to find out, because to me that's not the point. For our purposes, the important thing is that the Obama administration infiltrated the Trump campaign with a spy. That's the important thing. Who it is, we will eventually learn, but we don't need to know who it is to know what the FBI did. and when I say the FBI, I mean the Obama administration, they infiltrated the Trump campaign with a spy. Aand while they have that spy implanted, they were unmasking and leaking and obtaining FISA spying warrants and conducting criminal investigations of Trump advisors." As Limbaugh said : "This is a big deal, it is a gigantic big deal." • But, then Rush makes some educated guessesa bout who the spy was : "I think, if you dig deeper you would have to conclude that it's an American, that the CIA, the FBI, no doubt M-I5 ran in Britain, and I think it's probably somebody that Christopher Steele knows. I don't think it is Papadopoulos, I think they ran the spy on Papadopoulos. And I think they've deployed their spy on some of the sources that Christopher Steele worked in prepping his Dossier. Remember, Steele did all of his work in Britain, he hasn't set foot in Russia for 20 years. He was outed in Russia as a British operative in the late 90s. He has not been able to go back. And all of his sources are, the vast majority of them, are Russian. So he's apparently talking on the phone. I think the spy that the FBI had in the Trump campaign was run on Papadopoulos and some of the sources that Steele worked." • But, as Rush Limbaugh concludes : " Everybody now...is convinced that the FBI....had somebody in there actually looking for collusion, and they still don't have any. What does it say that after they even have the audacity to plant an informant in the presidential campaign of one candidate, not Hillary, but Trump. It tells you they really believe this non-sense that the Russians and Trump were buddies, and are colluding to steal the election and that just boggles my mind. This is going to be one of the most embarrassing periods in the FBI's history when all of this is finally revealed and history is written...Kimberley Strassel makes this observation, and in fact, in her column today, begs, encourages pleads with the President to do it, but he doesn't do it. The President could declassify, she's right, everything. The FISA warrant application, who is this spy, this informant. When was the spy hired? Who did it? Everything Devin Nunes wants to see, Trump could order to be classified. Why doesn't he do it?" • I tihnk the simple answer to that last question is that there must be some legitimate sources whose identity needs to to protected by redaction. Will the DOJ and FBI do that nad release documents that will then incriminate their agencies? Not likely, is it. So, somehow, President Trump needs to break through the FBI / DOJ stonewall and get the information released. Again we ask -- where is Attorney General Sessions in this shoddy affair? He is the official who should be doing this work, not the President. • In another article, published last Friday, Gateway Pundit quoted Law professor and author Glenn Reynolds who posted his thoughts on the latest developments. Gateway Puindit says : "Glenn pointed out months ago that the spying on Trump was worse than we can even imagine : Flashback, March 2017 : 'Hypothesis : The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.' Plus : 'But if they thought Hillary was sure to win, why bother spying on Trump? A sinister reason : To prosecute him -- for something, anything they could discover -- after he lost, so as to properly cow Hillary’s opposition. That might be true, but on the other hand, LBJ spied on Goldwater when his win was assured, and Nixon did the same vs. McGovern. Why would unthreatened incumbents spy on opponents they expect to lose? Maybe they do it for the same reason a dog licks himself: Because he can.' Still just a hypothesis, but one that seems increasingly likely to be true. And if it is, the sinister reason also seems more likely to be true." • • • THE LONDON CONNECTION. The pundits who are guessing about who the mole is in last Friday's revelation by Kimberley Strassel all seem to focus on a London nexus. • Surprisingly, on March 25, the Daily Caller published an article titled "EXCLUSIVE: A London Meeting Before The Election Aroused George Papadopoulos’s Suspicions." Reporter Chuck Ross wrote in March : "Two months before the 2016 election, George Papadopoulos received a strange request for a meeting in London, one of several the young Trump advisor would be offered -- and he would accept -- during the presidential campaign. The meeting request, which has not been reported until now, came from Stefan Halper, a foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor with connections to the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6. Halper’s September 2016 outreach to Papadopoulos wasn’t his only contact with Trump campaign members. The 73-year-old professor, a veteran of three Republican administrations, met with two other campaign advisors, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned. Papadopoulos now questions Halper’s motivation for contacting him, according to a source familiar with Papadopoulos’s thinking. That’s not just because of the randomness of the initial inquiry but because of questions Halper is said to have asked during their face-to-face meetings in London. According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos : 'George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?' Papadopoulos told Halper he didn’t know anything about emails or Russian hacking, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. The professor did not follow up on the line of inquiry." The Daily Caller reported that : "Halper first contacted Papadopoulos by email. In a September 2, 2016, message sent to Papadopoulos’s personal email account, he offered the Trump aide $3,000 to write a policy paper on issues related to Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and the Leviathan natural gas field. Halper also offered to pay for Papadopoulos’s flight and a three-night stay in London. Papadopoulos [a petroleum expert] accepted the proposal, flew to England, and met with Halper and one of his assistants. He delivered the paper electronically October 2 and received payment days later, according to documents TheDCNF reviewed." • BUT, the Daily Caller uncovered other Halper contacts with the Trump campaign. Here is the Daily Caller list of these contacts. §§ Halper met campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page -- he was the aide the FBI surveilled under an illegal obtained FISA warrant -- at a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming election, Page told TheDCNF. The pair remained in contact for several months. Page is also a prominent figure in the investigation due to allegations made against him in the infamous Steele Dossier. Page’s trip to Moscow in early July 2016 is a central piece of the Dossier. Christopher Steele, the author of the Democrat-funded report, alleges Page met secretly with two Kremlin insiders as part of the Trump campaign’s collusion effort [Page denies this and has never been charged]. Page attended the Cambridge event Halper set up, four days after that trip to Moscow. §§ Halper also requested and attended a one-on-one meeting with another senior campaign official, TheDCNF learned, held several days before Halper reached out to Papadopoulos. Halper offered to help the campaign but did not bring up Papadopoulos, even though he would reach out to the campaign aide a day or two later. • What was Halper’s intention? The Daily Caller doesn't know, but in the article, it points out that : "...a source familiar with the investigations into Russian meddling told TheDCNF Halper’s name popped up on investigators’ radar. There is no indication of any wrongdoing on his part, and it is not clear if he has been in touch with investigators. Halper’s activities are all the more eye-catching because Papadopoulos and Page are central figures in the Russia investigation. Papadopoulos, 30, pleaded guilty in October 2017 to lying to the FBI about contacts he had during the campaign with Russian nationals and London-based professor Joseph Mifsud with links to the Russian government." Mifsud reportedly told Papadopoulos in April, 2016, that he had learned the Russians had possession of “thousands” of Clinton-related emails. That conversation would later become the reason given by the FBI for its investigation into Russian interference in the presidential campaign. It is not known whether Papadopoulos told anyone on the Trump campaign about Mifsud’s remarks. • BUT, in May 2016, a month after his meeting with Mifsud, an Israeli embassy official, who Papadopoulos knew, introduced him to Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Alexander Downer. During a conversation in a bar at Kensington Gardens, Papadopoulos told Downer about the emails Mifsud had mentioned to him, according to a December 2016 New York Times report. Earlier, after WikiLeaks published the trove of stolen DNC emails in July 2016, Australian government officials told the FBI about Downer’s interaction with Papadopoulos. The FBI states, but it is not yet cast in concrete, that it opened its counterintelligence investigation July 31, 2016. The Daily Caller srote in its article : "What remains unclear is why Downer sought the meeting with Papadopoulos. Was it to become acquainted with a member of Trump’s foreign policy advisory team, or was it an opportunity to gather intelligence? The latter scenario -- of a spy operation -- is what Papadopoulos wonders was at play when Halper contacted him before the election. There are no clear connections between Halper and Downer, though the pair did speak on the same panel at a 2010 Cambridge seminar." After his bar meeting with Downer, the Daily Caller states that : "Halper’s research assistant -- a Turkish woman named Azra Turk -- also met with Papadopoulos." She arranged meetings scheduled for September 13, 2106, at the Connaught Hotel, and two days later at the Travellers Club, so Halper could discuss the policy paper Papadopoulos was to write. A source who knows Papadopoulos told the Daily Caller that during these meetings, Halper made an out-of-left-field reference to Russians and hacked emails. Turk contacted Papadopoulos to thank him for attending after the meeting. • The Daily Caller wrote that Halper’s resume provides mixed clues about why he might have reached out to Papadopoulos : "On one hand, he worked on several geopolitical policy projects as a contractor for the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon’s in-house think tank. Federal records show he has been paid $928,800 since 2012 on four separate research projects. At the time of the Papadopoulos meeting, Halper was working on a project related to China and Russia’s economic relations. There are no public records of Halper releasing reports on Turkey, Cyprus and Israel. Fitting with Papadopoulos’s theory of Halper’s outreach is the professor’s longstanding connections to both British and American intelligence agency officials. He also worked at the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and in three presidential administrations." • AND, Halper is a close associate of Sir Richard Dearlove -- the former MI6 chief. The Daily Caller states that : "In December 2016, Halper, Dearlove and espionage historian Peter Morland made international news when they announced they were leaving an organization called the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar due to concerns Russian operatives had infiltrated the group. Months earlier, in early fall 2016, Dearlove reportedly met with Dossier author Steele. Steele sought out Dearlove’s advice on how to proceed with information he gathered on Trump’s ties to Russia, the Washington Post reported. • Former MI6 Moscow station chief Steele had been told Trump campaign members were colluding with Kremlin operatives to release emails stolen from the DNC. Steele’s Dossier does not mention Papadopoulos, though the former spy was made aware of the Trump campaign aide while he was working on his anti-Trump document. FBI agents asked Steele during an October 2016 meeting in Rome if he was aware of Papadopoulos. Steele did not have information on Papadopoulos, the former spy said. But Papadopoulos does have at least one possible connection to the Dossier. During the campaign, Sergei Millian approached him. Millian is a Belarus-born businessman who was allegedly an unwitting source for some of the most salacious claims in the Dossier [Millian has since disappeared]. • Halper also had connections to the CIA -- most notably through his late father-in-law, Ray Cline, according to the Daily Caller : "Cline once served as director of the CIA’s bureau of intelligence and research. He was also the agency’s top analyst during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Halper got a job as foreign policy director on George H.W. Bush’s unsuccessful 1980 presidential primary bid on Cline’s recommendation." The Daily Caller added : "Halper, who has a residence in Virginia, was also allegedly in charge of a team of former CIA analysts who kept tabs on the Jimmy Carter campaign. In an ironic twist given the Russia probe’s focus on election meddling, Halper was also linked to a Reagan-era scandal dubbed 'Briefing-gate.' Halper was one of several Reagan White House officials linked to the scandal, which involved campaign briefing materials stolen from Carter’s campaign. Prior to the 1980 election, stolen Carter-campaign briefing papers containing classified information ended up in the hands of Reagan’s campaign officials. The theft was not revealed until 1983. Halper was not directly implicated in stealing the documents, but he was identified as one of the campaign advisors who handled and disseminated them." • • • DEAR READERS, there is a mole. There may be several moles. In fact, there may be many moles. What is clear is that there is a web of Obama Deep-State-driven FBI and DOJ operatives who are still today trying to bring down the Trump presidency. If Kimberley Strassel knows who "the mole" is -- she must be referring to someone close to the Trump campaign and to Donald Trump. Whatever happened in London or Moscow would seem to me to be run-of-the-mill, although always questionable and sometimes illegal, Obama Intel aimed at developing a Trump file that could later be used to shut down his presidency if Trump actually won the election -- Obama obviously saw Trump's election as a remote possibility. But, this Kimberley Strassel mole must be someone else -- not part of the London routine Intel operations -- somebody who is a household name and a hidden #NeverTrump plant inside the Trump inner team. I won't list any names, but we all can produce a 'short list.' • And, in all of this, we must also be aware that these spies are still on the job, still surveilling and leaking and throwing up roadblocks to try to make it difficult for President Trump to devote his full time to his presidency. They have thus far failed -- witness Iran, North Korea, massive jobs growth, tax cuts, large decreases in the number of regulations, an immigration policy shift to securing US borders, and the list goes on and on. • Whoever the mole is, we will find him or her and put an end to the most sinister of the Obama Deep State moves to date. That, to paraphrase deeply compromised Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, is "our constitutional duty." And, it is time -- as it has been for many months -- for AG Sessions to act or resign -- the unconstitutional withholding of documents demanded by congressional oversight committees must stop. As for the London connection, while it may be sad to think there are British Intel operatives at high levels who would sink to political espionage against an American presidential candidate and later President -- these #NeverTrumpers are everywhere, including the UK. We already knew that, too. • And, just to remind ourselves, there are also Intel operatives everywhere, and the vast majority of American Intel operatives do great work, often in dangerous circumstances, to keep America safe. They deserve our respect and gratitude.