High-level summary of events as I understand them:
During the 2016 campaign, there were tens of thousands of unauthorized users accessing the NSA database.
An audit caught this activity, and NSA director Mike Rogers greatly restricted access to the database.
Those who were using the database to monitor the Trump campaign (unclear exactly who that was; the article only speculates) needed a new way to continue monitoring.
Trump hired Paul Manafort, who was previously under FBI investigation.
This was used as a fig leaf to get a formal FISA warrant, with the Steele Dossier as the lynchpin of the application.
Now Trump could be monitored legally. (Yes, the warrant should never have been granted, which brings the legality back into question, but this was certainly more "by-the-book" than unauthorized access to the NSA database)
Apparently they never got any really good dirt on Trump, because they would have used it. But oh well, Hillary was going to win anyway.
Hillary loses to Trump. (Lol.)
This whole operation should have been shut down and no one would have been the wiser. But anti-Trump fanatics in the intelligence apparatus kept the Manafort investigation open, then briefed Trump on it, then leaked that briefing to the press, and we were off to the races. This was a Hail Mary to cause chaos for the new administration. That it did.
But once again Trump gummed up the works by winning a political fight they never expected him to. Now he knows what took place, and he's letting Barr and Durham build up a mountain of evidence, while the guilty parties twist in the wind.
The problem with Manafort is that all his nefarious activity happened with Podesta and Democrats, and they had no good reason to ‘reopen’ that case (until the forged ‘black ledger’ was ‘discovered’ in Ukraine conveniently).
Nevertheless, Fusion GPS owner Glen Simpson had already written an article that included Manafort in 2007 (as oppo publicity to smear Manafort when he ran McStain’s campaign), and he had the most (pretty much the only) connections to dirty Russians that could allow a line to be drawn to Trump. But they didn’t want to make him the actual raison d’etre for ‘Crossfire Hurricane’.
Their solution was to go ahead and use the old article for the meat of the dossier, and then just include other Trump members into the dossier allegations, and start the investigation on the others, and the two best candidates were Papadopolous and Page.
Problem was, Page had already helped the CIA against Russia (and therefore was on record as a willing source of trusted info, negating a justifiable need to minimize privacy intrusions in counter intelligence rules) and Papadopolous didn’t have any believable network of Russian contacts. So they just forged a memo to say Page wasn’t a CIA asset, and then claimed that Page and Papadopolous were somehow working together to allow one to use the other’s contacts (without evidence, of course).
They needed something “new” in the case to justify getting a search warrant. Best of all, they didn’t actually cite the fraudulent ‘black ledger’, they cited reporting about it.
The name that's supposed to be attached to the unmaskings is Samantha Powers ... but she's flat said "I didn't". So, everyone playing a little coy not knowing if she really did it or someone 'used her name' .
This leads to another entire rabbit-hole, but the core piece is completely true: All the same effing core people were the ones in charge of "Investigating Hillary Clinton's emails and Benghazi". Flynn's case dropped? ... The same day the DNI releases interview of the Cloudstrike employee "Shawn Henry".
It takes some puzzling with a piece of paper to make a timeline - but it fundamentally highlights "This is not an effing Russian hack in the first damn place". The entire Russian hack story is a coverup itself
Of course, Samantha Powers could truthfully say "I didn't". I kinda believe it -- she doesn't have all the Iranian ties of Barry's inner circle. She can always claim later that it was a collective administrative decision and her name was used as a placeholder. If she got pulled into the briefings circle, she would probably have had to play along, these are after all, murderous traitors. If their goose is cooked, lower ranking traitors like Powers are going to squeal. Looking forward to them squealing.
Main point on which Brennan and Obama agreed is that Islamic terrorism doesn't exist, they're all lone wolves. When Flynn targeted radical Islam and then joined the Trump campaign... the Islamic brigade was triggered to the max.
Guess who was Flynn's prosecutor who made threats against his son? Zainab Ahmad.
High-level summary of events as I understand them:
The problem with Manafort is that all his nefarious activity happened with Podesta and Democrats, and they had no good reason to ‘reopen’ that case (until the forged ‘black ledger’ was ‘discovered’ in Ukraine conveniently).
Nevertheless, Fusion GPS owner Glen Simpson had already written an article that included Manafort in 2007 (as oppo publicity to smear Manafort when he ran McStain’s campaign), and he had the most (pretty much the only) connections to dirty Russians that could allow a line to be drawn to Trump. But they didn’t want to make him the actual raison d’etre for ‘Crossfire Hurricane’.
Their solution was to go ahead and use the old article for the meat of the dossier, and then just include other Trump members into the dossier allegations, and start the investigation on the others, and the two best candidates were Papadopolous and Page.
Problem was, Page had already helped the CIA against Russia (and therefore was on record as a willing source of trusted info, negating a justifiable need to minimize privacy intrusions in counter intelligence rules) and Papadopolous didn’t have any believable network of Russian contacts. So they just forged a memo to say Page wasn’t a CIA asset, and then claimed that Page and Papadopolous were somehow working together to allow one to use the other’s contacts (without evidence, of course).
I'd really like to see Podesta's Immunity Agreement.
It just screams at me "They told Al Capone to roll over on the busboy for a dime bag for total immunity" sort of thing.
They needed something “new” in the case to justify getting a search warrant. Best of all, they didn’t actually cite the fraudulent ‘black ledger’, they cited reporting about it.
‘Cause, gotta stay honest, right?
The name that's supposed to be attached to the unmaskings is Samantha Powers ... but she's flat said "I didn't". So, everyone playing a little coy not knowing if she really did it or someone 'used her name' .
This leads to another entire rabbit-hole, but the core piece is completely true: All the same effing core people were the ones in charge of "Investigating Hillary Clinton's emails and Benghazi". Flynn's case dropped? ... The same day the DNI releases interview of the Cloudstrike employee "Shawn Henry".
It takes some puzzling with a piece of paper to make a timeline - but it fundamentally highlights "This is not an effing Russian hack in the first damn place". The entire Russian hack story is a coverup itself
Of course, Samantha Powers could truthfully say "I didn't". I kinda believe it -- she doesn't have all the Iranian ties of Barry's inner circle. She can always claim later that it was a collective administrative decision and her name was used as a placeholder. If she got pulled into the briefings circle, she would probably have had to play along, these are after all, murderous traitors. If their goose is cooked, lower ranking traitors like Powers are going to squeal. Looking forward to them squealing.
Main point on which Brennan and Obama agreed is that Islamic terrorism doesn't exist, they're all lone wolves. When Flynn targeted radical Islam and then joined the Trump campaign... the Islamic brigade was triggered to the max.
Guess who was Flynn's prosecutor who made threats against his son? Zainab Ahmad.
Runs off to Kenya. Or was it Indonesia... 8-p
Your summation is not very good. EVERY ONE SHOULD READ THE ARTICLE, it is not that long.