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Heisman
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RE: The Strzok-Page Texts and the Origins of the Trump-Russia Investigation
And this may be the moment where the entire Trump-Russian collusion idea was hatched.
Quote:In the wee hours of Thursday morning, July 28, while they separately watched the Democratic National Convention — cooing over Vice President Joe Biden (“he’s just a really sincere guy”) and grousing over “stupid *ss Bernie supporters” — Strzok and Page perused a Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo post entitled, “Trump & Putin. Yes, It’s really a Thing.”
It’s an interesting article. Marshall observed that Donald Trump was deeply dependent on Russian financing. In just the last year, his debt load had increased by $280 million (to a staggering $630 million); he’d had trouble finding financing because of prior bankruptcies; and thus he’d relied heavily on Russian capital to rebuild his business. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son Donald Jr. had told a real-estate conference in 2008.
Marshall pointed out that shady Russian oligarchs were involved in Trump development ventures; that Trump’s tax returns might reveal the depth of financial ties to Moscow, but Trump had refused to disclose them; that Trump had chosen to bring into his campaign Paul Manafort, who had worked for years for a Kremlin-backed Ukrainian party, and Carter Page, a Putin apologist with financial ties to Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled energy behemoth; that Putin had “aligned all Russian state controlled media behind Trump”; and that the Trump campaign, though otherwise indifferent to the party platform during the Republican convention, had intervened to water down a provision on providing assistance to Ukraine against Russian aggression. (That last claim has been persuasively rebutted, by Byron York, among others.)
Just as Page urges this column on Strzok, there is a redacted passage.
Why? What could possibly have been said by Page to her lover about the article that required redacting?
It continues.
Quote:Minutes later, after Strzok has read it, there is another redacted message. Then, Strzok says, “This article highlights the thing I mentioned to you earlier, asking if Bill had noted it to the 7th floor. I’m going to send it to him.”
Hmmmmmm. Interesting, no?
Quote:“Bill” is Bill Priestap, at the time the assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division, one of the Bureau’s highest-ranking officials. It was Priestap’s division, in which Strzok was about to become his deputy, that would run the newly opened Trump-Russia case file. Minutes later, over a period of 50 minutes, Strzok and Page exchange 13 texts, some of them apparently lengthy. All of them have been blacked out by the Justice Department.
Later that day, while they’re in the office at around 5 p.m., Strzok texts Page: “Hey if you discussed the new case with Andy would appreciate any input/guidance before we talk to Bill at 3.” “Andy,” of course, is Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s No. 2 official. Strzok wanted to know what McCabe was thinking before making a plan with Priestap.
After 8 p.m., Strzok tells Page about what appear to be Justice Department officials who will be involved in the Trump-Russia investigation. Again, though, the Justice Department has redacted most of these names — other than an apparent reference to Trisha Anderson, then of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. (Ms. Anderson is married to Charles Newman, then a lawyer in the Obama White House for the National Security Council). Strzok texts, “Trisha mentioned to [REDACTED] to put [REDACTED] on this new case for seniority until she comes back from al” (“al” is “annual leave” — vacation time in government-speak).
By that weekend, as a result of consultations within these government agencies, Strzok was headed to London.
Where he would most surely meet with the guy who paid Papadoc for the speech.
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