July 26, 2020
A seven-page summary of Trump’s intelligence briefing by the agent who helped lead it – Joe Pientka was recently declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. This document provides further proof that the Obama administration harnessed its immense powers in search of information to prevent Trump’s presidency.
On August 17, 2016 candidate Trump, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Lt. General Michael Flynn went to the FBI’s New York field office purportedly for a counterintelligence briefing. FBI Supervisory agent Joe Pientka gave a brief 13-minute presentation on counterintelligence security, advising the Trump team on the ways malign foreign intelligence operations may attempt to target them. Briefings from officials with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence followed.
Trump and his team had every reason to believe this meeting was for their benefit, and that the FBI was an ally. However, Pientka’s notes reveal the FBI had an ulterior motive. The briefing was a pretext to collect intelligence on Trump and his advisors. In his notes, Pientka wrote that while the ODNI gave their briefs he “actively listened” for responses “regarding the Russian Federation” from the Trump team.
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The briefing took place two weeks after the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, and one day after the FBI began a counterintelligence investigation against Mike Flynn – Crossfire Razor.
Incredibly, four years later, and the American people still don’t have a plausible reason why the Obama DOJ/FBI was investigating Trump and members of his team.
If the FBI had legitimate concerns that Trump’s campaign was compromised, why did they not warn him? It’s obvious- because Trump was the opponent. He was the target. Those at the upper echelons of the DOJ/FBI were desperate to find dirt on Trump to prevent and then end his presidency.
Peter Strzok
One of the agents who signed off on Pientka’s notes was Peter Strzok. Reminder- Strzok was the lead agent in charge of Crossfire Hurricane. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to continue the investigation into Trump and Russian collusion, Mueller assigned Strzok to his team.
Strzok was eventually fired from the Mueller probe when his deep animus and bias against Trump became apparent. This revelation came when a slew of text exchanges between him and his former lover, then FBI lawyer Lisa Page were discovered.
An exchange on August 8, 2016, a week before the counterintelligence briefing given to Trump, Page wrote to Strzok, Trump is “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok replied, “NO. NO, he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
A week later on August 15, Strzok texted Page about an “insurance policy” seemingly to keep Trump from becoming president. Strzok wrote:
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy [McCabe’s] office- that there’s no way he gets elected -but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the untimely event you die before you’re 40…”
Was the “insurance policy” the FBI investigations into the Trump campaign?
Kevin Clinesmith
FBI agent Kevin Clinesmith also approved of Pientka’s written account of the briefing given to Trump and his advisors. Clinesmith gained notice when the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his critical report on the FBI’s handling of surveillance warrant applications targeting Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Horowitz reported that Clinesmith falsified evidence used to obtain one of the warrants to spy on Page. From 2008-2013 Page had provided helpful information to the CIA on the Russians. This fact makes it highly unlikely that a few years later, Page would have worked with the Russians against the United States.
If this information made it to the FISA Court, it is doubtful that the warrants to surveil Page would have received approval.
However, Clinesmith found a way to conceal Page’s relationship with the government agency. He altered an email from the CIA, which confirmed that Page had helped them.
According to Horowitz, Clinesmith “altered the liaison’s email by inserting the words ‘not a source’ into it, thus making it appear that they had said that Page was ‘not a source’ for the CIA.
“Relying upon this altered email, [Clinesmith] signed the third renewal application that again failed to disclose Page’s past relationship with the other agency,” Horowitz wrote.
Shortly after Trump won the election, Clinesmith texted another FBI official that “the crazies won finally”. In another text, when asked if he intended to stay in his position, he responded, “viva la resistance.”
Despite the initial media reports describing Clinesmith as being a “low-level attorney,” Horowitz found that Clinesmith was “the primary FBI attorney assigned to [the Trump-Russia] investigation in early 2017.” He was also part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
For the first three years of Trump’s presidency, the media pounced on every leaked detail that could implicate Trump in collusion with Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. The coverage accusing Trump of nefarious dealings with Russia was incessant. Now that it’s clear that the Russian collusion narrative has crumbled, the media is silent.
Shamefully, other than Fox News and other conservative media outlets no mainstream media is covering what should be the biggest news story in decades: the Obama administration targeted the opposing party’s presidential campaign. This is now undeniable.
