According to the explosive report from Special Counsel John Durham, Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI probe which was investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election, mysteriously lost a critical memo from the Central Intelligence Agency to their lead agent Peter Strzok detailing intelligence that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may have concocted a scheme to frame Donald Trump.
Perkins Coie, the legal firm hired by Clinton’s campaign, funded Fusion GPS, which paid Christopher Steele, the dossier’s author. Clinton’s campaign was billed for “white papers” that Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussman gave to the FBI in which he allegedly argued that Trump was in league with Russia.
The CIA made this clear in a “referral memo” dated September 7, 2016, sent to FBI Director James Comey and copied to Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok.
Former CIA Director James Brennan informed President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey on the news immediately.
The news that the FBI had gotten this material but that their superiors had allegedly withheld it from them was met with “surprise and dismay” among several agents, according to Durham’s account.
Agents with Crossfire Hurricane often didn’t understand why superiors pushed them so hard to look at something that seemed so feeble. A “visibly upset” agent reportedly admitted that he had felt like an idiot while looking into dead-end leads but had assumed that a superior had better evidence to base their decisions.
He shared that another employee frequently wondered, “What are we even doing here?”
This individual voiced his disagreement with the surveillance of Trump associate Carter Page to Deputy Assistant Director Jennifer Boone, but “he was largely ignored and directed to continue.”
According to the article, a high-ranking FBI officer ordered that no written documentation be produced after analysts determined that the evidence of wrongdoing by Trump associates was inadequate.
Igor Danchenko, the primary sub-source, could not back up any of the claims made in the dossier. Durham stated that the FBI wasted hundreds of hours investigating false leads and conducting interviews with people only marginally related to the case but never bothered to speak with a few key witnesses who may have provided immediate clarity.
Sounds like a witch hunt.
