Image via George Papadopoulos’s LinkedIn account

Sometimes I think that if President Trump was able to put his Tweets on pay-per-view and charge royalties when pundits talk about them, we could retire the national debt in short order. Last evening this tweet came smoking off the presidential smartphone:

Wow, Strzok-Page, the incompetent & corrupt FBI lovers, have texts referring to a counter-intelligence operation into the Trump Campaign dating way back to December, 2015. SPYGATE is in full force! Is the Mainstream Media interested yet? Big stuff!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2018

This is the background.

Earlier this week the Senate Homeland Security committee released some 500 pages of documents received from Justice. Some of those pages were texts between FBI counterintelligence official Peter Stzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page and they were heavily redacted. Now there are other copies of some of the texts out there, provided the the DOJ IG which are less redacted. It seems like someone ran the two sets against each other to read what had been redacted.

OCONUS is short for Outside Continental United States (which, oddly enough, also includes Alaska and Hawaii), it is short for “foreign country.” But the stunner is why did the FBI redact the word “lures?” You can see the entire message string here on PDF page 159 of 502. Note the date is just as the first GOP primary events loom on the horizon and it was obvious that the winner was not going to be either Scott Walker or Jeb Bush.

Unleashed on Twitter, it looked like this

https://twitter.com/Nick_Falco/status/1003673455496052736

https://twitter.com/MJASheridan/status/1003682220895277056

https://twitter.com/MJASheridan/status/1003685153233932288

From there, the contagion leapt species:

#DeepStateObstruction– @JudicialWatch’s Chris Farrell: There was a concerted effort by FBI agents to attack & undermine candidate @realDonaldTrump. It’s indisputable & violation of law. #MAGA #TrumpTrain #DTS #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/jGjezDThe9

— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) June 5, 2018

Here’s link to over 500 pages of docs including Strzok-Page texts which refer to “oconus lures”: https://t.co/egP9yGCISo …

— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) June 5, 2018

Double FBI bombshells: McCabe asks for immunity in IG hearing as it’s revealed Strzok may have played a larger role in the Clinton & Russia probes than previously known pic.twitter.com/JmBnTFSiSf

— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) June 6, 2018

That provoked Trump’s tweet.

And that drew much more attention to the subject than it would have otherwise received.

In return, that led to a ferocious attack by a James Comey minion, Josh Campbell, who is now employed by CNN to cover James Comey (see here | here).

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1004170260713385984

I’d pretty well ignored all of this until Campbell weighed in. He’s right, of course, there is zero evidence that this relates to anything to do with the 2016 campaign. By the same token, there is zero evidence that it doesn’t and knowing the genesis of the FBI’s mucking about in the Trump campaign was as a counterintelligence investigation and Strzok was the number two guy in the FBI counterintelligence division makes this seem curious. The “lures” thing stands out as a flare because of the redaction. But the adamant response to Trump’s tweet, the ALL CAPS, screams, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The response is overkill in relation to the subject.

This is one person who takes a stab at explaining “lures” in order to bat the story down, but I think she actually makes it worse.

In real life, or at least according to the US Attorneys' Manual, a "lure" is a way of getting a defendant to go into a territory where you can arrest them.

I have no idea what the particular "oconus lures" referred to here are, but lures are used to make arrests, not get intel. pic.twitter.com/C9twX3D0rD

— Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) June 6, 2018

There are two problems with saying the word “lures” is used in the Strzok-Page texts in the context of the definition proffered. One, Strzok is not really in the business of making arrests. He is in the business of doing counterintelligence. And why would you want “oconus lures” if the purpose is to get the person you’re targeting to come to the United States so they can be arrested? It would seem to make more sense, operationally and grammatically, if “oconus lures” are “lures” that are based outside the United States to “lure” subjects of counterintelligence investigations into a situation useful to the FBI. Like, for instance, a false flag purchaser of classified documents.

That is not to say that this has anything to do with the Trump campaign. But still, it is intriguing. It definitely merits some follow up. Because Halper was on the FBI payroll in October and the first contact between George Papadopoulos and this Joseph Mifsud character, who apparently is the guy who allegedly told Papadopoulos about the Russians having “dirt” on Hillary, was in February 2016.

As they say, it isn’t the seriousness of the evidence that is important, it is the seriousness of the allegation.

=========
=========
Like what you see? Then visit my story archive.
Follow @streiffredstate

I’m on Facebook. Drop by and join the fun there.
=========
=========