TOTAL GARBAGE:

Trump accidentally undercuts his own “deep state” FBI conspiracy theory

– Aaron Rupar / Vox

– Debunked by Victor Takacs / Free State of V

Aaron Rupar Lies a Lot | Victor Takacs

Article by Aaron Rupar ~ Vox News (BLACK TEXT) Trump accidentally undercuts his own “deep state” FBI conspiracy theory

Debunked by Victor Takacs ~ Free State of V (RED TEXT)

Aaron Rupar Lies a Lot: This title is speculative at best as it supposes that because the FBI did not leak any information before the 2016 election, there was no wrongdoing. FBI wrongdoing has already been proven. As far as a conspiracy, one has to look no further than Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Their anti-Trump communications exhibit a bias that may have shaped an unlawful FISA warrant application that used unverified evidence of collusion. A conspiracy involves two people or more. By its very definition, Strzok and Page constitute a conspiracy.

Trump thinks Obama had it out for him in 2016. George Stephanopoulos debunked that idea with one question.

Aaron Rupar Lies a Lot: Once again, this is speculative at best as it supposes that because the FBI did not leak any information before the 2016 election, there was no wrongdoing. The President of the United States receives daily briefings from intelligence agencies. Chances are that if a warrant was obtained from FISA judges to surveil the Trump Campaign, you can bet your bottom dollar that former President Obama knew about it. Moreover he probably supported it. Why? Obama and Trump are obviously not best friends, Hillary Clinton had worked for the Obama Administration, and I’m pretty sure Obama probably believed that Trump was in fact working with the Russians. According to White House IT personnel, they were instructed by National Security Adviser Susan Rice to stand down and not engage any Russians or respond to any Russian activity online when they discovered it. Could that directive have come from Obama, because he wanted the activity to continue so as to implicate the Trump Campaign with more evidence? We shall find out.

During an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that aired in full on Sunday, President Donald Trump accidentally undercut the conspiracy theory he’s been pushing about how the Obama-era FBI leadership purportedly conspired to keep him from winning the 2016 election.

There’s no doubt that many within the bureaucratic layers of the Executive Branch, including the FBI, did not want Trump to win the election. In all probability, most never really worried however. Polling data in the lead up to election day showed Hillary Clinton coasting to a secure victory. Just in case that did not happen, Peter Strzok, an FBI investigator on the Hillary Clinton Email Probe and later the lead on the Trump-Russian Collusion Investigation, was poised to step in in a big way. The insurance policy he eluded to in text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, would kick in after an unlikely Trump victory. And man oh man, did it ever. You see, it wasn’t just about keeping Trump from winning. It was also about using Russian Collusion to drive him from office should he be elected. What’s the rest of the story? Well, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe is now under criminal investigation for having leaked and/or authorized leaks and then lying about it. Former Director of the FBI, James Comey authorized his friend to leak his memos (notes taken in meetings with President Trump) with the intent of kick starting a special counsel investigation. There’s your leak, Mr. Rupar. Once again, ladies and gentlemen: Aaron Rupar Lies a Lot. Enter Bob Mueller, only to remain in his role of Special Counsel for over two years.

After Trump demeaned top FBI brass as “lowlives,” claimed that the entire investigation into Russian interference and his campaign’s role in it was “a setup” that President Barack Obama “must have known about,” and referenced an August 2016 text message in which then-FBI agent Peter Strzok mentioned “an insurance policy,” Stephanopoulos asked him a critical question.

President Trump demeaned those in the FBI who deserved to be demeaned. He made his respect for the Bureau as a whole well known but verbally inserted his disdain for the officials who behaved unethically.

“If they were determined to prevent you from becoming president, why wouldn’t they leak it beforehand?” he said.

Here’s why the FBI didn’t leak information on the Russia Investigation prior to the election. Firstly, the whole damn world thought Hillary had the presidency in the bag. Trump’s prospects were less than a long shot. Conversations among the Crossfire Hurricane team at the time reflected this. Many on the team favored dropping the investigation, because they were convinced that Hillary’s upcoming victory would make it irrelevant.

Moreover at a time when the Clinton Email Investigation was over a year old, the Trump-Russia Investigation’s incipience came about in June of 2016, a mere 4 to 5 months before the election on November 8, 2016. A FISA warrant wasn’t approved by judges until October of 2016, even though earlier insufficient applications from the FBI had been made. It’s difficult to leak about such a young investigation. There’s not much there yet, and it’s hard to know about credibility as well. The transcript below, from a PBS interview of Comey echoes this sentiment:

But instead of pushing back, Trump acknowledged that Stephanopoulos’s premise was correct.

There’s nothing to push back against. How asinine it is to assume that there was no wrongdoing just because the FBI didn’t leak before the election. Let’s not forgot that Obama is president for almost three months after the election. There was a post election window for wrongdoing by the administration. Wouldn’t you agree?

“You know what, you’d have to ask them,” Trump said. “And you know what — had that gone out before the election, I don’t think I would have had enough time to defend myself.”

Once again, Aaron Rupar Lies a Lot. Judy Woodruff did ask them, or at least one of them. President Trump is right. There may not have been enough time for defense positioning prior to the election, just like there was not enough time to gather substantial credible material for leaks. Yes. Some of these FBI officials in the end were reckless, but were they reckless enough to lose their jobs over false leaks? I doubt it. Eventually fate would have its way, and investigation would lead to some being fired. Even more will be fired and even prosecuted in the future as more evidence of their lawbreaking surfaces in ongoing investigations.

In other words, even Trump agrees that had top FBI officials leaked word about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia being under investigation in the months leading up to the election, it likely would have been fatal to his presidential hopes.

Mr. Aaron Rupar: I agree. Common sense establishes this.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, then-FBI Director James Comey repeatedly publicized the bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, while Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani appeared to be the recipient of leaks about it. Two days before Comey sent a letter to Congress announcing that the Clinton email case had been reopened, Giuliani went on Fox News and said Comey had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.” Giuliani later admitted to receiving a heads up about the “surprise.”

Aaron Rupar Lies a Lot. The leaks to Giuliani came out of the New York FBI Office. They were traced back to anti Hillary Clinton FBI personnel. She definitely got smacked around by the FBI as well, but she had obstructed justice and was guilty as sin. Meanwhile the FBI, the democrats, etc., laid down the gauntlet that would put Donald Trump through years of hell. To think, in the end that he had never done anything wrong. That doesn’t raise red flags for you? Here is another transcript, pertinent to the leaks to Giuliani, from the PBS interview of Comey by Woodruff:

In short, the actual timeline of events in 2016 suggests that if anything, the FBI’s actions were a net positive for Trump’s campaign, not a negative. But that reality is inconvenient for Trump, so he’s trying to rewrite history — in more ways than one.

Prior to the election, the case can be made that the FBI had created a net positive for Trump. After the election, as I said before, Trump would go through hell. He continues to experience a hatred the likes of which no president has had to deal with. The spying saga had only just begun before the election, but more spying after the election would inflate the false narrative of Russian collusion. Aaron Rupar lies a lot.

The FBI actually had good reason to launch a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign

Mr. Aaron Rupar: No they didn’t. Why didn’t they ask Trump about it? Why didn’t they try to work with Trump on it? Why not interrogate Papadopoulos? Better yet, why not consult Carter Page on the whole ordeal? Carter Page, who was an adviser to the Trump Campaign, had been a trusted FBI ally for years. He had even served as an informant for them. However the FBI chose to obtain a search warrant to spy on him so as to gain a backdoor entrance into the campaign as a whole.

Here is a video that features Carter Page talking about his previous service as a US government informant:

So here we have Hillary’s campaign obtaining opposition research out of Russia through a British intelligence official, Hillary herself using her position as secretary of state to curry favor for multiple foreign nations, being complicit in the sale of 20% of America’s uranium to a Russian company, running her emails through a private server, etc. Yet, Donald Trump is investigated because one of his advisers gets drunk and talks nonsense about Russia having dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Alexander Downer, the Australian ambassador to Britain.

While we’re on the Clintons and collusion, check out this collusion story from 1996 featured in a Free State of V article originally published on April 17, 2019:

Not only is there no evidence that the FBI tried to derail Trump’s presidential bid with leaks or in any other way, but it’s worth noting that bureau brass had good reason to be investigating Trump in the first place.

Mr. Aaron Rupar: Once again, no they did not. An investigation was not necessary. Other means of quenching this curiosity about the campaign and Russia could have been undertaken. Perhaps they shouldn’t have done anything. They didn’t do anything about the Hillary Clinton Campaign or the DNC’s cozy relationship with Christopher Steele, the creator of the fake dossier. Mr. Steele was paid by the DNC on eleven separate occasions in 2016. He was also on the Kremlin payroll it appears. Now how’s that for collusion? Take a gander at the tweet from Judicial Watch below for more information.

The FBI launched a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian agents in July 2016, after Australia’s top diplomat in Britain informed his American counterparts about a conversation he had two months earlier with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

During a night of heavy drinking in London, Papadopoulos bragged to the Australian about his knowledge that Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign,” as the New York Times put it in a December 2017 report.

You don’t have to take the Times’s word for it. Even the so-called “Nunes memo,” prepared by then-House Intelligence Committee chair and staunch Trump ally Devin Nunes (R-CA) and released early last year, acknowledges that the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign was “triggered” by evidence presented to American officials about Papadopoulos having secretive contacts with Kremlin agents when it was released about a year ago.

The Papadopoulos – Ambassador Downer Run-in

But Trump and his allies have tried to muddy the waters about the origins of the Russia investigation by insisting it actually started with the Steele dossier, an unverified opposition research document that includes outrageous claims about the Russian government taping Trump watching prostitutes urinate on a hotel bed in Moscow in 2013. Fox News has helped Trump normalize this lie, and Trump backers have continued to push it during national television interviews — including as recently as Sunday, when Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) did so during an appearance on Meet the Press.

Even though the Nunes memo and the Mueller report acknowledge that the Russia investigation originated with Papadopoulos boasting about his inside knowledge of what Russian hackers were up, the efforts of Trump and his allies to draw this into question have had an impact. There are multiple active investigations into the origins of the Russia investigation, and during his testimony before the Senate last month, Attorney General William Barr suggested, without evidence, that there’s more to the story than has so far publicly been revealed.

Aaron Rupar lies a lot. What is the rationale here? So because there were no FBI leaks about the Trump-Russia Investigation before the election, there was no wrongdoing?Moreover, is it because the President and his allies have said that the investigation began with the Steele dossier, there was no wrongdoing? That logic just does not add up. Papadopoulos was set up by either American intelligence personnel or foreign intelligence personnel at the direction of the American government. He believes it was a CIA operation, but the New York Times thinks it was an FBI operation. Either way, something was amiss in London in May of 2016.

Take a look at this video that features content suggesting Papadopoulos was set up:

The premise that it was the Steele dossier that started the investigation is not entirely wrong. After all, the dossier was used to secure the first FISA warrant in October of 2016 after multiple warrant applications from the FBI had been denied since May of 2016. It seems now that it was the dossier that tipped the FISA court in favor of warrant issuance. There cannot be surveillance without a warrant. Therefore the origin of the full blown investigation with all means of investigating available, is indeed resultant of the FBI’s presentation of the Steele dossier to the FISA judges.

Now back to Papadopoulos. The idea was that he would be the one to spill the beans on collusion. Papadopoulos even thinks Australian Ambassador Alexander Downing may have been part of the whole scheme. He thinks Downing was recording their conversation. After the Downing meeting, Papadopoulos was approached by odd characters Stefan Halper and his counterpart Azra Turk. They were obsessed with finding out everything they could about Trump and his ties to Russia. Prior to Downing, Halper, and Turk, it was the Italian Joseph Mifsud who had made the claim to Papadopoulos in Rome that he had Russian contacts who were in possession of Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails. Who is Joseph Mifsud? Mr. Mifsud was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. These people were directed to extract information from Papadopoulos. When they couldn’t get any, their new target became Carter Page, an aforementioned foreign policy adviser to the Trump Campaign.

A May 30, 2019 Free State of V article has additional information on George Papadopoulos. As you can see, Aaron Rupar lies a lot:

Trump and his allies struggle with tough interviewers

The gaping hole in Trump’s FBI conspiracy theory that Stephanopoulos identified in his line of questioning has long been one Trump allies have struggled to explain — at least in contexts where interlocutors are willing to challenge them. For instance, during an interview in late 2017, CNN host John Berman quickly debunked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) when he echoed Trump and claimed the FBI had it out for Trump.

“You think James Comey — it went all the way to the top of the FBI — to keep Donald Trump from being president,” Berman said. “If that’s true, why then did he come out, again, and open up the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and never even tell us before the election about the investigation into alleged Trump collusion? If he was trying to keep Donald Trump from getting elected, don’t you think he might tell voters that?”

All Jordan could say to Berman was “we’ll find out” — a response nearly as lame as the “you’d have to ask them” Trump offered to Stephanopoulos.

Aaron Rupar lies a lot. There’s no struggle with interviewers here. It’s all a matter of opinion and bias. True justice can slice through opinion and bias like the sharpest knife on Earth, and patience is a virtue. Be patient, for the journey toward truth and justice can be longer than expected, but it’s the greatest destinations that are the furthest away.