The Russia Hoax Dump

Well maybe here we go again. I find myself overwhelmed by "sources" that are far too complex for my feeble truth-loving Conservative wannabe mind to process. Yesterday I was listening to the hearing of a US Senate committee chaired by Neocon and (now deceased) John McCain apologist Lindsey Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina. Since Trump's election in 2016 Graham has been waffling between being a Trump despiser and a Trump supporter so in my mind he is anything but trustworthy. He has an agenda and he uses his power to advance that agenda even if it does involve some serious arm-twisting. Of course as is the case now with virtually any government business his agenda isn't "overt"... anything but.

The Senate hearing yesterday that I overheard "live" online concerned the report issued on November 9, 2019 by the team from the OIG - Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice - led by Michael Horowitz who was the person being interviewed at this Senate hearing. I refer to this report as the IG report.

Deep State

Curiously one of the Democrat senators chose this hearing as her soapbox for announcing to the American people and to the world that there is no such thing as the "Deep State" and that this IG report proves it. The senator making this point also dwelled on the notion that there was no political bias involved with the FBI investigation, a conclusion not at all supported nor refuted by Horowitz, the witness - hard to believe I know but apparently true. Wouldn't it fall on the OIG team investigating this abuse of power to determine if political bias motivated the abusers? Apparently not.
The Senator is Dianne Feinstein, Democrat from California.

This Feinstein claim that this report and these hearings prove there is no "Deep State" is hilarious to me considering that what this report is all about is how the deep state bungled their effort to engulf Donald Trump in all sorts of accusations and to spy on and smear and destroy the careers of people related to the Trump campaign while at the same time trying every method possible to mask and cover up their efforts to bring Trump down - all while claiming "national security" as their justification. In my mind the term "National Security" is virtually synonymous with the term "Deep State". The term Deep State refers to that set of all career bureaucrats and power brokers who see themselves as the definers, overseers, and protectors of "National Security" who ensure that the voters and elected transients in government don't mess up the domestic and foreign policies of the United States. These bureaucrats don't take orders from the political class, they tell the political class what needs to be done and they ensure that their Deep State plans are carried out. Many of the individuals responsible for this particular breach of the Constitution just plain are the Deep State. Feinstein is scamming us.

Republicans Playing Along

It does appear to me that the Republicans are playing along with this effort to mask and hide the Deep State. Ask yourself why...

Names Involved

Kevin Clinesmith

the individual some identify as the FBI lawyer who falsified a FISA application to hide a known connection between Carter Page (the target of FISA warrants to surveil the Trump campaign in 2016) and the CIA, presumably to eliminate the possibility that the FISA warrant would be in jeopardy if the judge involved knew of the CIA connection.
His name does not appear in the IG report.
Questions:
Which FISA application did this alteration pertain to?
When did this falsification take place? Senator Lindsey Graham says it was June 2017. See the 36 minute mark in this YouTube video: Graham opens IG hearing with scathing take on FISA report: The system failed
What was Carter Page's CIA connection that this falsification masked?
Why was someone with CIA connections involved in Trump's campaign in the first place especially considering that he had Russian connections that were felt to need a FISA warrant to investigate? Was Page a CIA/FBI/"Deep State" plant designed to bring Trump's campaign and presidency down?

George Papadopoulos

Wikipedia - turned 29 years old in August of 2016. At age 28 he served on Ben Carson's campaign and moved on to the Trump campaign. I just ran a search and found that his name appears 386 times in the IG report.

Carter Page

Wikipedia - The suspect in four FBI FISA warrants for surveillance of the Trump campaign starting in October 2016. Trump characterizes these FISA warrants and related surveillance as "spying" on his campaign.

Page's name appears hundreds of times in the IG report but according to footnote 19 on page 12 of that report, "The OIG did not seek to interview Carter Page or any other subject in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation because their actions were not the focus of our review." Go figure.

Joseph Mifsud

Wikipedia - From Malta or London or wherever, seemingly with connections to Italy and Russia

IG report Page 168 footnote 309 indicates that Mifsud was the person who informed George Papadopoulos (then working in the Trump campaign) that the Russians were offering dirt on the Clinton campaign and it was speculated this dirt may have included hacked DNC emails. This footnote indicated that Mifsud denies these allegations.

The IG report discusses a "trusted source" relating to an FFG (Friendly Foreign Government) - see page 53 of that report. The discussions I saw at yesterday's Senate hearings seemed to use this "trusted" source as evidence that the initiation of the FBI investigation into suspected Trump campaign collusion with the Russians was not politically motivated. In fact that conclusion seemed to me to be the one thing that Democrats at this hearing tried to get the public (and the media) to take away from this hearing, their primary focal point of the discussion.

So was Joseph Mifsud the "trusted source"?

Was the trusted foreign government source some sort of foreign intelligence agency that relied on the Mifsud Russia information?

Was it a setup?

If Mifsud was not related to this "trusted source" FFG information then what is this IG report referring to? Isn't it crucial to know if the source was valid before assuming this anti-Trump effort wasn't politically motivated? Why are they keeping this source a secret? Is the source national security related (deep state)?

Karen Greenaway

Name added 12/18/19
This person's name does not seem to appear in Wikipedia.

This name came to my attention in this article:

This Is Why They Must Impeach...

As an agent for the FBI this person is said to have worked to impede Ukraine officials from investigating corruption involving Obama admiration officials.

Here's an article by John Solomon dated 3/26/19 from "The Hill" where this person's roll is mentioned:

US Embassy pressed Ukraine to drop probe of George Soros group during 2016 election
If you can't understand the connection between the "Russia interfered in the 2016 election" narrative and the Ukraine corruption scandal this article might help shed some light for you.
The article points out that Greenaway left the FBI and joined the George Soros funded group called AntAC. The Ukraine story gets pretty twisted at this point where it appears we have Obama administration anti-corruption efforts directly opposing Ukrainian government anti-corruption work which calls into question George Soros related anti-corruption in the Ukraine work. Here's a "Daily Beast" article from September 26, 2019 in defense of Soros:
Rudy’s Big Plan to Defend Trump on Ukraine: Play the George Soros Card
To me, this article reads like Mainstream Media propaganda but you be the judge of that.
One takeaway that I get from these two articles is that it would be quite easy once you accept that the "Deep State" actually exists to include George Soros in its ranks. Soros is a thoroughly creepy person with his fingerprints all over everything anti-Trump.