Here's an illuminating excerpt from an article posted today by "Sundance":

Former FBI Director James Comey gave a radio interview to Los Angeles radio station KNX 1070-AM after the New York Times outlined FBI spies used in the 2016 election. When questioned about the FBI using intelligence assets to engage with Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos, Comey replied:

“Really? What would you have the FBI do? We discover in the middle of June of 2016 that the Russians were engaged in a massive effort to mess with this democracy to interfere in the election. We’re focused on that and at the end of July we learn that a Trump campaign adviser — two months earlier, before any of this was public — had talked to a Russian representative about the fact that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton and wanted to arrange to share it with the Trump campaign.”

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/05/04/james-comey-justifies-fb...

First, the claim that "we discover" a Russian hack of the DNC in 2016, is likely a total fraud - there is good reason to suspect that DNC hire Crowdstrike faked the alleged hack to cover for the fact that DNC had already learned (probably via a tip off from intelligence agents monitoring the communications of Wikileaks) that someone at the DNC was planning to leak emails to Wikileaks. (Gosh, who could that have been?)

Okay, that's a bit speculative, but likely to be true in my judgment. (My older essays that will be rolling out here in the next several weeks will provide clarification.) What we know is that two-thirds of the malware found on the DNC servers had been compiled AFTER the date that Crowdstrike was brought in to investigate the "hack". And that the emails were exfiltrated from the DNC servers on May 23 and May 25 - about 3 weeks AFTER Crowdstrike had entered the system to "protect" it. Plus, as Bill Binney emphasizes, if there actually had been a hack, the NSA should have been able to tell us when the hack occurred and where the data went - which it hasn't deigned to do. And we also know that Mueller's claim that Guccifer 2.0 was the agent of the Russian hack is the sheerest BS.

But what is clearly an out-and-out lie is Comey's description of the adventures of the hapless George Papadopoulos. The "Russian representative" who told him about the Russians having Hillary's emails, Joseph Mifsud, in fact has close ties to both British and Italian intelligence - a small point that Mueller didn't get around to mentioning in his report, even though this info is readily available on the internet, thanks largely to the great independent journalism of Elizabeth Vos. (This shows that Mueller himself is party to the plot - not surprising in that he was the boss of Shawn Henry - co-founder of Crowdstrike - when Mueller headed the FBI when Henry headed counterintelligence - i.e. fucking with people). Indeed, Mifsud, after hiding out for months, is now known to be living in Italy under the protection of Italian intelligence.

https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/04/all-russiagate-roads-lead-to-london...

And now we know that many of the people that subsequently made a point of running into P and trying to get him to talk about these Hillary emails were agents for US intelligence (Halper, Turk) or Aussie diplomats linked to US intelligence via the 5 Eyes program (Downer - a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation - and his assistant Erika Thompson). These were evidently working in collaboration with Mifsud to complete the entrapment. (If Mifsud were acting for Russia, how would all of these Western Deep Staters know what he had told P?) While the vendetta of our intelligence agencies against the Trump campaign and presidency has been called "Spygate", I think that "Entrapmentgate" would be closer to the whole truth.

Comey of course backs up the Deep State's claim that their shock after learning that P had talked to a "Russian representative" about Hillary emails was the basis for their subsequent commencement of a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign in late July 2016 (Crossfire Hurricane). But the interactions of Mifsud, Downer and Thompson with P pre-dated July, as did a provocative interaction between FBI asset Henry Greenberg and Roger Stone. The former offered to sell "Hillary emails" from the Russian government to Stone for use by the Trump campaign; Stone wisely declined the offer. And, as early as September 2015, Felix Sater - revealed to be an FBI informant in recent essays by Larry Johnson - contacted Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to first suggest the Moscow Trump Tower project.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/24/special-counsel-mueller-disingenuo...

Clearly, British and US intelligence were coordinating their efforts in an attempt to entrap Trump officials, prior to the official initiation of Crossfire Hurricane. (P's interaction with Turk and Halper occurred in September.) Hence, a joint British-US counterintelligence operation was already underway prior to the start of Crossfire Hurricane, and this investigation had been initiated without sound predicate.

The REAL predicates were these - the Deep State was steamed over Trump threatening to try to get along with with the Russians, and they couldn't count on Trump to respect on-going Deep State scams like NATO. Moreover, they knew that Trump would be too much of a crass and thuggish buffoon to put a suave face on American empire. When you are slaughtering tens of thousands of people in illegal invasions, occupations, and CIA operations, you need to put a suave smiley face on - most preferably, the face of an eloquent Nobel Peace Prize winner. Obama was the ideal face for empire, and Clinton was his designated successor. A pathological liar who can tell baldfaced lies with absolute conviction, like Hillary can - not to mention being the most blood-drenched woman in history - is ideal for our Empire's needs. So the Deep State wanted to take Trump down, and they were willing to do about anything (Seth Rich, anyone?) to achieve this.

I hope that Barr (an old boss of Mueller) isn't so caught up in this sick system that he will fail to send Comey and co-conspirators to the long stay at the Graybar Hotel that they richly merit.