Remember the Time That Jim Comey Sent Peter Strzok To Brief Donald Trump On the Danger From Russia

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, testifies before a House Judiciary Committee joint hearing on "oversight of FBI and Department of Justice actions surrounding the 2016 election" on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, testifies before a House Judiciary Committee joint hearing on “oversight of FBI and Department of Justice actions surrounding the 2016 election” on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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One of the overarching mysteries of the whole Russia collusion hoax is why the FBI, despite it’s legitimate concerns about the activities of a few people in and associated with the Trump campaign, never warned the candidate about those concerns. This lack of warning was a stark break in departure from historical practice. It has, for instance, been reported the FBI did deliver such defensive briefing to Senator John McCain during the 2008 campaign and he removed a staffer who may have been a counterintelligence risk.

As it turned out, the FBI did deliver such a briefing to then-candidate Trump. The briefing was conducted by none other than Peter “Insurance Policy” Strzok at the direction of James Comey, himself.

A mid-August 2016 counterintelligence briefing for the Trump campaign did not specifically warn officials about Russian outreach to the Trump team, nor did it warn that two campaign aides, Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos, were already under FBI investigation, Fox News has learned.

The new details about the so-called “defensive briefing” have emerged from congressional letters, text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page, and sources familiar with the matter. Such briefings are designed to warn the candidate and his team about national security threats.

“There was a defensive briefing of candidate Trump on Aug. 17 of 2016,” Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Thursday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “And I can tell you what he wasn’t told: He wasn’t warned about a Russia investigation that Peter Strzok had opened 18 days earlier.”

A source familiar with sensitive records documenting the August briefing told Fox News that Strzok was in a unique — and apparently conflicted — position. Strzok opened the FBI investigation into Russian outreach to Trump campaign aides, while at the same time he was supposed to be warning the Trump campaign about Russian activities.

Critics of the Russia and special counsel probes question whether the lengthy investigation could have been shorter, or whether it could have been avoided altogether, had Strzok and others provided adequate warning.

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Of course he was conflicted. Strzok appears to have been, like the rest of FBI and Justice leadership, Hillary Clinton partisans. He could see the value of hammering the Trump campaign at some later time with allegations of “Russians in the Mist.” In fact, is was shortly before this that Strzok sent his mistress the text message that referred to the “insurance policy” and promising that Trump would never become president because they would “stop it.”

By the time that this briefing took place, the FBI already knew that George Papadopoulos didn’t know squat…he was spoonfed a rumor by another Western intelligence, if not FBI, asset. The sole person on the campaign with any major role still under suspicion was Manafort. Apparently, Mike Flynn had tickled the FBI’s sensors by making a hugely public appearance at an RT gala in Moscow. But, as far as we know, Flynn was not under any suspicion in August 2016 and he still retained his security clearances.

Ratcliffe on Thursday questioned Strzok’s role.

“Why would Peter Strzok, who would participate at [former FBI director] Jim Comey’s direction in a defensive briefing designed to protect and warn a candidate, be the same person who is in fact at that time already investigating the candidate’s campaign? That shouldn’t happen. There should be answers to those questions,” he said.

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We hope that John Durham’s investigation finds the answers because it would be interesting to hear the explanation of why the FBI refused to tell the man who would become the President of the United States that there were possible foreign agents in his inner circle so he could remedy the problem and, instead, elected to husband those allegations and use them to launch the Mueller investigation.

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