US Attorney John Durham has requested an interview with former CIA Director John Brennan. Durham also wants to question former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. According to the Washington Examiner, Durham also has his eyeballs on former FBI counter-terrorism honcho Peter Strzok. And on British spy Christopher Steele. These would be the four Riders of the Russian Collusion Apocalypse.

A sure sign Durham has indeed demanded a sit down from the former top spooks? Politico ran an article Tuesday that may have well come out of Brennan’s mouth. The hit piece was all about President Trump’s “obsession” with Brennan and “quest for vengeance.”

The author … or shall I say transcriber … actually managed to erase history. Of course he neglected to mention Brennan’s continual, emotional, unprecedented assaults on the president. But he went further, and denied a matter of public record: That Brennan flat out lied to Congress about his agency spying on Senate staffers. And as Victor David Hanson points out, Brennan lied to Congress on several other occasions.

For that matter, Clapper has also admitted to lying to Congress.

Durham Goes Beyond Origins

Durham was tasked by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Or as Strzok called it, the “insurance policy.” Another term would be the anti-Trump “black op.” Arguably, “seditious conspiracy.” You may prefer “coup attempt.”

In an up-and-up situation, determining an investigation’s origins would take all of five minutes. However, as Barr said a few months back, the more questions he asked, the more questions he had. The answers did not match the public record. The official stories about the origins of the spying on the Trump campaign fell apart quicker than the Redskins season. Barr’s been around the Swamp long enough to recognize the smell of rats. Now Fox News reports, Durham has expanded his investigation based on evidence he and Barr uncovered in Rome.

Dialing In Joseph Misfud

We learned last week that Durham got hold of two Blackberries belong to Maltese professor Joseph Misfud. The official line from Mueller, FBI and their media cohorts? That Misfud was a Russian asset. (Then again, according to Hillary Clinton, who isn’t?). However, far more evidence suggests Misfud is a Western intelligence asset. In other words, Misfud was involved in setting up young Trump campaign worker George Papadapoulos on behalf of Trump’s enemies in DC. The phones could provide the proof.

It’s no coincidence the Democrats went nuts for impeachment the minute they learned that the truth might out. That Attorney General Barr and Durham were visiting countries like Italy (which protected Misfud). And Australia (which provided Ambassador Alexander Downer). And Ukraine (which provided dirt on Paul Manafort at the Obama administration’s request).

Framing General Flynn

We know about the Blackberries because of Lt. General Michael Flynn’s new attorney Sidney Powell. She wants the data from them, believing Misfud knows about the efforts to frame Flynn going back as early as 2014.

For the record, Donald Trump at that time was still hosting The Apprentice. So the New York Times‘ farcical notion that the “Deep State” consists of honorable patriots saving the republic is downright pitiful. The same gang, including Stefan Halper, went after General Flynn.

Durham Expands from “Origins” to Mueller Appointment

Yet, Brennan and Clapper have a bigger problem. Bigger than the origins of the Collusion counter-intelligence against Trump. Durham has reportedly expanded his investigation timeline past the creation of the Mueller Special Counsel. Meaning, the dubious origins of the Special Counsel. And the schemes of government officials after the election of President Trump.

This means not only the spying, not only the enlisting of foreign governments and agents to help undermine Trump, but also such things as:

• Rob Rosenstein’s suggestion of wearing a wire to bug the President.
• Talk of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump.
• Former FBI Director James Comey placing informants in the Trump White House.
• The historic amount of leaking out of the Intelligence Community, including presidential phone calls with foreign leaders.
• How exactly Robert Mueller ended up as Special Counsel. This despite his clear conflicts of interest and apparent mental incapacitation. Was Mueller forgetting his phone in the White House part of Rosenstein’s efforts to bug the White House?
• How known anti-Trumpers and even former Clinton lawyers ended up on Mueller’s team.
• How Michael Flynn was framed both in 2014 and 2017. Why Strzok’s bias wasn’t revealed until the day after Flynn’s plea. Why Flynn’s lawyers were denied exculpatory evidence?
• How did former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe carry out his edict, “First we f*** Flynn. Then we f*** Trump.”
• And the piece de resistance. What exactly happened in the January 5, 2017 White House meeting with President Obama, VP Biden, Clapper, Brennan, Comey, Susan Rice, et al. At that meeting this cabal decided what it would and wouldn’t tell President-elect Trump about the Trump-Russian investigation.

The next day, Comey runs up to Trump Tower to brief Trump on the “salacious details” of the Steele Dossier. He conveniently leaves out what he already knows: The dossier is bogus. Unverified. The work of a Trump-hating former British spy. That Hillary Clinton paid for it. You know, the information that would allow Trump and his allies to squash the Dossier Frenzy in its infancy.

Comey barely reaches the lobby of Trump Tower before his secret meeting leaks to CNN (now home of James Clapper). This gives CNN the “news hook” it needed to run a story about the Steele Dossier. And run. And run. And run. And run. And run. The Trump Russia Collusion hysteria is on. Mission Accomplished.

What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?

In Susan Rice’s CYA email to herself Inauguration Day, she quotes Obama twice as saying he wanted things “done by the book.” Putting aside that nobody outside of TV detective shows says that, Obama did not say which book. It certainly wasn’t one containing the U.S. Constitution or the phrase “peaceful transition of power.” A better bet? Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

What exactly did Obama know? If he didn’t know the dossier was bogus, and that Comey didn’t tell the president-elect everything pertinent about it, that foreign intelligence assets were being used against a political opponent — against his successor in the highest office in the land — why isn’t he yelling bloody murder?

Oh, but he did know. He did know. As Lisa Page famously texted “POTUS wants to know everything we are doing.”

Questions for Brennan and Clapper

So sometime soon John Durham is going to put John Brennan and James Clapper on the hot seat. That’s presuming he can pry them off the sets of MSNBC and CNN. The questions for these two are legion. I have a few of my own to add.

1. Mr. Brennan, who ordered your agents to tell the musician Moby that the Steele dossier was 100% legit? (By January 2017, you knew it for an unverified piece of Hillary Clinton funded propaganda.) Who authorized agents to conduct a black op against the duly elected President of the United States?
2. Mr. Brennan, why did you insist to former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid the information from the dossier was valid when it was not?
3. Who leaked Comey’s Trump Tower meeting to CNN? Was that part of the plan worked out in the Oval Office? If not, what steps did you take to find out who leaked it? Did Obama express any outrage at the leak? 
4. You have been hostile towards this president to an historic, unprecedented degree. You’ve claimed at one point or another that he was a traitor, a Russian agent, and mentally unfit. If you believed that, why wouldn’t you have used every power, legal or illegal, to remove such a danger? Did you see it as your patriotic duty, as The New York Times suggests?
5. Was any other 2016 Republican candidate targeted?
6. Mr. Clapper, why did you and Obama want to fire former NSA director Mike Rogers after he paid a visit to President-elect Trump? Was it because you feared he had tipped Trump off to the fact that Trump Tower was bugged? Did your plans get ruined after Trump suddenly moved his transition out to his club in New Jersey?
7. Who hired Stefan Halper to take part in the operation against the Trump campaign? Somebody authorized hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money for his services. When did President Obama sign off on bringing in foreign intelligence services into the operation?
8. Speaking of Halper, he recently admitted in court papers he was a U.S. government agent when he set out in 2014 to smear Lt. Gen. Flynn as compromised by Russia. Which of you ordered him into action? 
9. You were were soooooooo concerned about Russian interference in the 2016 election, right? Why weren’t you concerned about one candidate’s family receiving literally tens of millions of dollars from the Russians? Or her associates meeting with Russians to collect dirt on Trump? Or, for that matter, her connections to the efforts to build the Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley, Soklovo? A project our military warned might be a front for economic and military espionage.
10. Mr. Clapper, you said recently the IC community only did what commander-in-chief Obama ordered you to do. So detail how this entire Trump Russia Collusion narrative is his doing. He wanted to know “everything.” When exactly did he approve everything?
11. You had no real predicate for the counter-intelligence operation against Trump. The information that was used to predicate the information was fully created by U.S. and Western intelligence operatives. You kept at it even after six months of investigation by Peter Strzok showed no Trump-Russia collusion existed. After Trump’s election you took part in a dissemination campaign. You spread the false Steele dossier around town and through your media partners.You took the same tactics used by the CIA to overthrow unfavorable governments around the world. But you used them against our own duly elected president-elect. How is this not — at best — sedition and — at worse — an attempted coup? How are you not a traitor?

 

Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream and co-author, with @JZmirak, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration. You can follow him at @StreamingAl. And if you aren’t already, please follow The Stream at @Streamdotorg.