MEGA-THREAD: NYT bombshell Papadopoulos report, biggest Trump-Russia news since Flynn plea. [View all]

[L. Coyote]

Link to tweet

2/ As has been discussed by @AshaRangappa_, the Steele Dossier alone would never have been enough to earn the FBI the July 2016 FISA warrant it was granted to monitor Carter Page. So attorneys and those in intelligence long ago knew the Dossier didn't launch the probe by itself.

3/ The NYT story gives us—it appears—an additional piece of the warrant application the FBI filed to get a FISA warrant in July '16. But again, this is merely a piece—as was the Dossier. We know multiple intelligence agencies, not just Australia's, provided the FBI with evidence.

4/ So Trump's claim that the FBI grabbed a dossier of raw intelligence it hadn't yet confirmed and ran to the FISA court to secure a warrant to wiretap Americans connected to the Trump campaign has been laughably false from Day 1. And media has not done enough to underscore that.

5/ What we learn from the NYT (though again it's not—contrary to what the NYT seems to believe from its headline—what makes today's breaking news significant) is that the Australians informed U.S. law enforcement in July 2016 that Papadopoulos had made covert contact with Russia.

6/ In fact, while today's NYT story is indeed this month's second-biggest Trump-Russia revelation—after the December 1 guilty plea by Mike Flynn—what makes it significant isn't that it rebuts Trump's false claims but that it may have *sealed the Trump-Russia collusion narrative*.

7/ If the NYT understood this, it would've led with it. But one must know the *prior* reporting on Papadopoulos to understand why today's news constitutes one of the biggest revelations in the 18-monthy history of the Trump-Russia probe. So I'll *briefly* summarize what we know.

8/ On September 22—40 days before we learned Papadopoulos was cooperating with the Mueller probe—I said that he had directly identified himself to Trump as a Kremlin agent in March 2016. This led to major-media coverage of the now-infamous "TIHDC meeting."

Link to tweet

9/ It hadn't previously been discussed that Papadopoulos was at the first meeting of Trump's national security (NatSec) team at the Trump International Hotel in DC (TIHDC) on March 31, 2016. But he was there—a *week* after revealing himself as a Kremlin agent to the NatSec team.

10/ So when (per the NYT) Papadopoulos revealed in May '16 to an Australian diplomat that he knew Russia had committed major federal crimes against the U.S.—via computer theft and fraud—it was two months after he told Trump's NatSec team *and Trump* he was in contact with Russia.

11/ The nature of the contact that Papadopoulos revealed in March 2016 to Trump and his team was that he was a *legal* agent—in the law we'd say "special agent"—of the Kremlin. He was authorized to represent the Kremlin's interests in setting up a clandestine Trump-Putin meeting.

12/ That authority came to Papadopoulos—from Kremlin officials—through another Kremlin agent, Joseph Mifsud. This is why Papadopoulos, per public reporting by WP, identified himself to Trump on March 31, 2017 as a Kremlin "intermediary" designated not by Trump but by the Kremlin.

13/ As has been exhaustively detailed by WaPo (WP), Trump's NatSec team spent *two months*—from March to May of 2016—discussing how to handle Papadopoulos' "offer" of acting as an intermediary between Trump and Putin. They did *not* dismiss the offer in March, whatever some say.

14/ It was in the *middle* of this deliberation by the NatSec team that Papadopoulos, in April 2016, was told the Kremlin had committed federal computer crimes by stealing emails from a presidential candidate. Papadopoulos *knew* his team was then deliberating a Trump-Putin meet.

15/ During this period, Papadopoulos was *personally* hounding top Trump officials—per the WP—to give him more authority and allow him to travel abroad to arrange a Trump-Putin meeting. His April intelligence on the Clinton emails was *without a doubt* a card he would've played.

16/ So while Australian law enforcement knew of the stolen Clinton emails in May 2016, and the FBI knew by July 2016 (via Australia), it's a *lock* that Papadopoulos gave this intel to Trump and his campaign—from whom he wanted present authority *and* a future job—in April 2016.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet