Who can take a city, burn it to the ground? Umbrella Man can, at least according to the search warrant application/affidavit filed by Minneapolis police officer Erika Christensen in the summer of 2020.
According to Officer Christensen, Umbrella Man is a white supremacist who set off the week of riots and arson throughout the Twin Cities by knocking out the windows at AutoZone on Lake Street at Minnehaha Avenue in south Minneapolis on May 27. Did Umbrella Man also burn the AutoZone down? I can’t tell who burnt it down from Libor’s story, but it was in fact torched.
Libor quoted Christensen’s affidavit: “This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city.” Umbrella Man himself does not seem to have committed the arson that destroyed the AutoZone premises. Below is the tweet with the video featuring Umbrella Man at work.
Over two years later Umbrella Man has not been arrested. Charges have not been brought against him. Umbrella Man remains at large. Libor did not identify him in his July 28 story because he has not been charged.
Officer Christensen’s account of events was taken at face value in the numerous news accounts that immediately followed the Star Tribune story, but it is ludicrous. Spectator USA’s pseudonymous Cockburn conducted a reality check in “The curious Umbrella Man myth.” Subhead: “Cockburn hasn’t seen this many people excited about an umbrella since Mary Poppins hit theaters in 1964.” Cockburn drily noted in July 2020: “Cockburn would have thought that the carnage of the past month would render one man’s window smashing a historical footnote. But instead, the opposite has happened, for the usual 2020 reason: it is politically useful.”
I thought Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was responsible for the key event that led to the destruction wrought throughout the Twin Cities following the death of George Floyd. The key event was the abandonment of the Third Precinct headquarters on May 28.
Mayor Frey too remains at large. His dereliction was not illegal.
Officer Christensen’s affidavit superimposed a mythical narrative over the events as we saw them unfold. Cockburn observed that it took him “just a single minute on Google to discover rioting and destruction from May 26 — the day before Umbrella Man supposedly kicked everything off.”
Whatever happened to Umbrella Man? He was identified by name and cell phone number in Officer Christensen’s affidavit. He appears to be a bad dude, but did he do more than is depicted in the video above?
There is a yearning on the left to attribute the wave of destruction that emanated from the Twin Cities to “white supremacy” or to “white supremacists.” The left-wing Minnesota Reformer site checked in on the case against Umbrella Man last year in Deena Winter’s story “What’s up with ‘Umbrella Man’?”
Winter reviewed the allegations regarding Umbrella Man, although she too withheld his identity because he had not been charged. Winter quoted Minneapolis Police spokesman John Elder: “It remains an open case and is still being investigated.” Elder refrained from any comment on whether the man listed in the search warrant is a suspect. “The investigator has not authorized the release of information on the case as this remains an open investigation,” Elder told Winter via email.
Winter said nothing about Officer Christensen. Perhaps coincidentally, Officer Christensen is “a frequent letter-writer to the Star Tribune” and the Minneapolis police department’s “rare ‘out’ liberal,” as she described herself in this 2019 Star Tribune column. See Christensen’s letters to the editor here (May 8, 2017) and here (March 25, 2019).
Now the FBI has issued a press release (with new photos) seeking the public’s help in identifying Umbrella Man. Minnesota Public Radio reports on it here. MPR’s Matt Sepic notes in his penultimate paragraph (link in the original): “In a 2020 search warrant, a Minneapolis police investigator [i.e., Christensen] identified the suspect as a Ramsey, Minn. man and alleged he was a ‘known associate’ of the Aryan Cowboys white supremacist gang. MPR News is not naming the man, now 34, because he was never arrested or charged.”
Sepic does not observe that the man whose identity he declines to disclose is apparently not Umbrella Man. The Minneapolis police and the FBI know his name his name and address. Libor Jany knows who he is, as does Sepic himself. The Star Tribune story by Stephen Montemayor doesn’t mention the paper’s knowledge of his identity, but they’re in on it too.
I infer that the Aryan Cowboy known to them is not Umbrella Man. I should think that would be news, but neither MPR nor the Star Tribune explicitly addresses this point.
Focusing on recent comments from Kanye West, Donald Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait writes that there’s no comparison between how the two political parties handle antisemitism. Chait, you won’t be surprised to learn, minimizes the anti-Jewish strain infecting factions of the left and wildly overstates the antisemitism on the right.
Chait begins by reminding us that Ilhan Omar once said some “ugly things,” by which he means “Protocols of Zion”-style conspiracies about Jews’ supernatural ability to hypnotize the world for “evil.” Even “more significant,” he goes on, is what happened next: Omar apologized (as did Taylor Greene, so what?). He then points out that Democrats “voted for a House resolution denouncing ‘the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance, especially in the context of support for the United States–Israel alliance’ as a form of antisemitism.” I wonder why they had to do that?
Let’s recall that the first revelations of Omar’s antisemitism brought no real rebuke. Long after everyone knew about Omar’s outlook on Jews, Nancy Pelosi appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone’s “women shaping the future” issue. It wasn’t until Omar alleged that Jewish “political influence in this country” was pushing “allegiance to a foreign country,” that there was any left-wing backlash — and then, almost exclusively from Jewish Democrats. And, yes, Omar’s party voted for a House resolution mentioning Alfred Dreyfus and Leo Frank, and denouncing anti-Japanese discrimination during World War II, Islamophobia, and the America First Committee, but not the Minnesotan. Of course, Omar voted for a diluted, platitudinous laundry list of censurable hatreds. It meant nothing. Omar was coddled then, as she is coddled now.
Let’s also remember that Omar replaced Keith Ellison, a “former” acolyte of Louis Farrakhan, who accidentally kept going to meetings with the antisemitic minister after he was elected to Congress. Actually, the then-deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ellison attended a private dinner with Iranian regime “president” Hassan Rouhani, Farrakhan, and Democratic Congressmen Andre Carson and Gregory Meeks.
Then again, the Congressional Black Caucus has a long relationship with the notorious antisemite, inviting him to address their events and attending his. Maxine Waters can be seen on video schmoozing with the leader of the Nation of Islam, who called Hitler a “very great man” and compared Jews to “termites.” Danny Davis, who serves on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, called him an “outstanding human being” in 2018 — the same year Taylor Greene was writing about Jewish space lasers on comment boards. Only one of these two incidents merits any coverage, for some reason.
More pernicious than any trope or dog whistle or conspiracy about Rothchild weather machines is “anti-Zionism.” It is the predominant justification for violence, murder, and hatred against Jews in Europe and the Middle East, on American college campuses, and in the progressive protest movement. The left “handles” this movement by giving its champions columns in The New York Times and normalizing it within their political ranks.
This is the preferred antisemitism of “The Squad.” Yet when conspiracy nut Rashida Tlaib — who doesn’t even make an appearance in Chait’s column — tells her audience that “behind the curtain,” the forces who stop a “free Palestine” are the “same people” who exploit “regular Americans” for “their profit,” even the typically spineless Jonathan Greenblatt calls it out. In response, Chait, who goes around smearing millions as fascists, writes that criticism of Tlaib is a “classic example of right-wingers using the ultra-sensitive standards, with the least generous interpretation.”
Then, let’s not forget Rev. Al Sharpton, perhaps the most notorious antisemite of the past 30 years; a man who used a tragic 1991 car accident to incite a three-day race riot in Crown Heights. A man who spread conspiracies about the Jewish “nexus” between “Tel Aviv” and “South Africa” and the “diamond merchants” of Crown Heights (“apartheid regime” is still the preferred smear of many progressives.) There is much more to Sharpton’s vile history.
Yet virtually every Democrat running for president still visits this kingmaker. That includes 2024-28 presidential prospects such as Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete. Sharpton was also Barack Obama’s former “go-to man” on race. Which reminds me: How many Republican presidential candidates have been mentored by a racist Jew-hater like Rev. Wright? And if they had been, how many incriminating photos would the media suppress for them?
Yes, Kanye is clearly a Jew hater. The Black Israelite stuff is venomous. Perhaps conservatives will have learned a lesson about attempting to appropriate celebrity notoriety, though I doubt it. But as far as I can tell, no elected Republican or prominent conservative, save Candace Owens, has been out there defending his comments.
So Chait is compelled to make big deal out of the fact that Kanye’s being de-banked by JP Morgan — a false claim, it turned out — “inspired the right-wing media to rallytohisdefense.” None of his hyperlinks, one leading to alleged “right winger” Matt Taibbi, defends Kanye’s rhetoric. Chait might not be familiar with the concept of a neutral principle, but it is possible to worry about the precedent of de-banking people over their words without supporting the sentiment — especially because left-wingers conflate political speech they dislike with fascism and racism all the time. I would no sooner want to see Kanye de-banked for his ugly words than Alice Walker or Tamika Mallory or Linda Sarsour or Sophie Ellman-Golan.
That said, no one is innocent. It’s true that Trump’s ham-fisted tropes regarding Jews are insulting and stupid. Does the former president hold rancor against Jews? Probably no more animosity than Joe Biden holds toward American Indians or blacks. His comments reflect a preternatural ego that sees any failure to support him not only as a personal affront but a betrayal of your own interests.
I’m less offended by the notion that Jews should care about Israel — they should — than I am by, say, Raphael Warnock’s spreading a blood libel about the sole democracy in the Middle East or people belittling the memory of the Holocaust by comparing everything they dislike to Nazis or politicians sending pallets of cash to those threatening a new one. To each his own, I guess. Of course, what I really wish is that politicians would stop speaking about Jews altogether. But since this hasn’t been the case in centuries, I doubt anything will change soon.
And you’ll get no argument from me on the loathsome Paul Gosar or conspiracy-mongering Taylor Greene (game recognizes game.) Though Chait fails to mention that Kevin McCarthy has condemned Greene on more than one occasion — which I guess puts him in the lead over Pelosi. Rather, Chait has to spin the fiction that Taylor Greene, a woman who has never written a piece of important legislation or affected the party’s position on a single issue, is de facto leader of the Republican Party — or, rather, future leader. The reality is that both McCarthy and Pelosi are forced to placate their fringes in the pursuit of power. Only one, however, gets a pass.
Who can take a city, burn it to the ground? Umbrella Man can, at least according to the search warrant application/affidavit filed by Minneapolis police officer Erika Christensen in the summer of 2020.
According to Officer Christensen, Umbrella Man is a white supremacist who set off the week of riots and arson throughout the Twin Cities by knocking out the windows at AutoZone on Lake Street at Minnehaha Avenue in south Minneapolis on May 27. Did Umbrella Man also burn the AutoZone down? I can’t tell who burnt it down from Libor’s story, but it was in fact torched.
Libor quoted Christensen’s affidavit: “This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city.” Umbrella Man himself does not seem to have committed the arson that destroyed the AutoZone premises. Below is the tweet with the video featuring Umbrella Man at work.
Over two years later Umbrella Man has not been arrested. Charges have not been brought against him. Umbrella Man remains at large. Libor did not identify him in his July 28 story because he has not been charged.
Officer Christensen’s account of events was taken at face value in the numerous news accounts that immediately followed the Star Tribune story, but it is ludicrous. Spectator USA’s pseudonymous Cockburn conducted a reality check in “The curious Umbrella Man myth.” Subhead: “Cockburn hasn’t seen this many people excited about an umbrella since Mary Poppins hit theaters in 1964.” Cockburn drily noted in July 2020: “Cockburn would have thought that the carnage of the past month would render one man’s window smashing a historical footnote. But instead, the opposite has happened, for the usual 2020 reason: it is politically useful.”
I thought Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was responsible for the key event that led to the destruction wrought throughout the Twin Cities following the death of George Floyd. The key event was the abandonment of the Third Precinct headquarters on May 28.
Mayor Frey too remains at large. His dereliction was not illegal.
Officer Christensen’s affidavit superimposed a mythical narrative over the events as we saw them unfold. Cockburn observed that it took him “just a single minute on Google to discover rioting and destruction from May 26 — the day before Umbrella Man supposedly kicked everything off.”
Whatever happened to Umbrella Man? He was identified by name and cell phone number in Officer Christensen’s affidavit. He appears to be a bad dude, but did he do more than is depicted in the video above?
There is a yearning on the left to attribute the wave of destruction that emanated from the Twin Cities to “white supremacy” or to “white supremacists.” The left-wing Minnesota Reformer site checked in on the case against Umbrella Man last year in Deena Winter’s story “What’s up with ‘Umbrella Man’?”
Winter reviewed the allegations regarding Umbrella Man, although she too withheld his identity because he had not been charged. Winter quoted Minneapolis Police spokesman John Elder: “It remains an open case and is still being investigated.” Elder refrained from any comment on whether the man listed in the search warrant is a suspect. “The investigator has not authorized the release of information on the case as this remains an open investigation,” Elder told Winter via email.
Winter said nothing about Officer Christensen. Perhaps coincidentally, Officer Christensen is “a frequent letter-writer to the Star Tribune” and the Minneapolis police department’s “rare ‘out’ liberal,” as she described herself in this 2019 Star Tribune column. See Christensen’s letters to the editor here (May 8, 2017) and here (March 25, 2019).
Now the FBI has issued a press release (with new photos) seeking the public’s help in identifying Umbrella Man. Minnesota Public Radio reports on it here. MPR’s Matt Sepic notes in his penultimate paragraph (link in the original): “In a 2020 search warrant, a Minneapolis police investigator [i.e., Christensen] identified the suspect as a Ramsey, Minn. man and alleged he was a ‘known associate’ of the Aryan Cowboys white supremacist gang. MPR News is not naming the man, now 34, because he was never arrested or charged.”
Sepic does not observe that the man whose identity he declines to disclose is apparently not Umbrella Man. The Minneapolis police and the FBI know his name his name and address. Libor Jany knows who he is, as does Sepic himself. The Star Tribune story by Stephen Montemayor doesn’t mention the paper’s knowledge of his identity, but they’re in on it too.
I infer that the Aryan Cowboy known to them is not Umbrella Man. I should think that would be news, but neither MPR nor the Star Tribune explicitly addresses this point.
We are within three weeks of the midterm elections. Democrats’ control of the White House leaves them in a good position to mitigate anticipate losses by taking action to affect the political environment. President Biden’s handlers seem to me not to have chosen well so far.
The Biden economy inflicts pain on a daily basis. What have they got for that? They served up the Inflation Reduction Act. In other words, they have nothing to mitigate the inflation they ignited. On the contrary, they have more kindling for the fire. And they count on their ability to play on the stupidity of voters abetted by their media adjunct.
Democrats haven’t done much bragging about the IRA on the campaign trail. One can reasonably infer that, insofar as it was enacted to serve their immediate political needs, it has proved a bust.
Ira, by the way, means anger in Latin. The IRA is aptly named in that sense. It still makes me irate. It is galling. Seneca’s De Ira offers stoic advice. The wrath abides.
The White House seeks to turn the wrath to the issue of abortion. They have gone all in on it. Even Ray Charles would be able to see that. They are devoted to the sacramental view of abortion. Anything that limits it is profane.
Yesterday Biden spoke at a political event at the Washington’s Howard Theatre, a/k/a The Howard. The White House has posted the transcript here. Abortion was the subject of the day. As always, he introduced the autobiographical element:
[O]n January 22nd, 1973 — I hate to admit this, but I was a freshman — a 30-year-old freshman United States senator, and the Supreme Court issued its opinion on Roe v. Wade, establishing a fundamental constitutional right to choose.
Nearly 50 years later, on June 24th of this year, the Court issued the Dobbs decision. A woman — and all — all across the country, starting in my house, lost the fundamental right.
Is he referring to Dr. Jill? Is Ashley in his house? Or is he talking about the White House staff at large? Whatever, he seeks to stoke the wrath of fellow believers. He promised to sign a law to be passed by next year’s new Congress “codifying Roe.” However, we are confident that next year’s Congress will not enact such a law. The women of Biden’s house will have to shift for themselves.
Biden is making another move today. As Democrats struggle in battleground states where gas prices are sensitive — Trafalgar gives Mark Kelly a one-point edge against challenger Blake Masters in Arizona — the AP reports that Biden is set to release another 15 million barrels from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve. The The AP anticipates that “he will say more oil sales are possible this winter, as his administration rushes to be seen as pulling out all the stops ahead of next month’s midterm elections.” Perhaps it should be renamed the Democrats’ tactical petroleum reserve.
Details of the Danchenko case provide ample proof that politics, not a legitimate purpose, prompted the FBI’s launch of Crossfire Hurricane.
MARGOT CLEVELAND
The Virginia jury deciding the fate of Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, continues deliberations Tuesday on the false statements charges brought by Special Counsel John Durham. No matter the eventual verdict, however, like Durham’s prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, the criminal case against Danchenko revealed extensive evidence of malfeasance by the Crossfire Hurricane team.
A catalog of these new revelations will be forthcoming, but one detail deserves a singular focus now: The criminal case against Danchenko confirmed that Crossfire Hurricane was never properly predicated and that instead, politics prompted the targeting of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
This conclusion follows from two facts: First, after Danchenko allegedly told a colleague he knew people who would buy classified information, the FBI did not launch a full investigation into the Russian until obtaining corroborating evidence. And second, as revealed last week during the Danchenko trial, the FBI refused to open an investigation into the Clinton-connected Charles Dolan, as some members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team believed appropriate.
Revisiting Crossfire Hurricane
In December of 2019, the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General issued a scathing 478-page report on the DOJ and FBI’s abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or “FISA,” to obtain a court order to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. While in the OIG report Inspector General Michael Horowitz identified 17 specific “inaccuracies and omissions” contained in the FISA application — there were actually eighteen — Horowitz also concluded the Crossfire Hurricane investigation had been properly predicated under the Attorney General Guidelines and had been opened for an “authorized purpose” and without any evidence of a political motivation.
Horowitz explained the purported predication for the investigation in the OIG report as follows:
The FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, just days after its receipt of information from a Friendly Foreign Government (FFG) reporting that, in May 2016, during a meeting with the FFG, then Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos “suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).” The FBI Electronic Communication (EC) opening the Crossfire Hurricane investigation stated that, based on the FFG information, “this investigation is being opened to determine whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign are witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia.”
The OIG report then noted it did not find any evidence indicating anything “other than the FFG information was relied upon to predicate the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” Horowitz added that, while they hadn’t noted it in the opening communication, “the FBI officials involved in opening the investigation had reason to believe that Russia may have been connected to the Wikileaks disclosures that occurred earlier in July 2016, and were aware of information regarding Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. elections.”
Moreover, according to the OIG report, the officials opening Crossfire Hurricane did not know of the various memoranda Steele had crafted and previously provided to an FBI liaison stationed in Rome; they would only learn of Steele’s election reporting weeks later. Thus, the OIG report concluded that Steele’s reports played no role in the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Following the release of the OIG’s report, Durham made the unprecedented move of issuing a press statement publicly disagreeing with Horowitz’s conclusion that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was properly opened. Durham noted in his press release that, unlike the OIG, his “investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.” Rather, Durham explained that his team’s “investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.” Based on that evidence, Durham rejected the OIG report’s “conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
In a press release, then-Attorney General Bill Barr concurred with Durham’s conclusion, writing: “The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
While Durham and Barr both rejected the OIG’s conclusion that the FBI had acted appropriately in opening Crossfire Hurricane, their statements left unanswered the question of whether the Steele dossier played a role in the FBI’s decision to launch an investigation into the Trump campaign. During the Danchenko trial, however, Brian Auten, an FBI supervisor analyst who had joined the Crossfire Hurricane team at its inception, testified unequivocally that the FBI opened the investigation “based on information that came from a friendly foreign government … that the Trump team had received the suggestion that Russia could assist the Trump team” by providing information “that would be detrimental to Hillary Clinton and to President Obama.” Auten also testified that FBI headquarters did not receive the Steele reports until Sept. 19, 2016, even though Steele had provided the supposed intel to an FBI liaison earlier in Rome.
Given that, according to trial testimony, Auten is currently facing a suspension from the FBI for his conduct related to the investigation of Crossfire Hurricane, it seems unlikely Auten would lie about when FBI headquarters learned of the Steele dossier or about the bureau’s rationale for launching Crossfire Hurricane. But his then-higher-ups, such as Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and James Comey, also may not have been forthright with Auten.
What the Danchenko Case Tells Us
But even assuming the Steele dossier had nothing to do with the FBI’s decision to launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, evidence disclosed over the course of the Danchenko case confirms Durham and Barr’s conclusion that the investigation was not properly predicated. Instead, politics prompted the Obama administration’s FBI to launch a full investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The evidence comes in the form of disparate treatment, first between the Trump campaign and Danchenko.
As the special counsel revealed in a pretrial filing, in late 2008, while working at left-leaning D.C. think tank the Brookings Institution, Danchenko allegedly “engaged two fellow employees about whether one of the employees might be willing or able in the future to provide classified information in exchange for money.” One of Danchenko’s colleagues, identified only as “Employee-1,” told a government contact that Danchenko believed “he (Employee-1) might be in a position to enter the incoming Obama administration and have access to classified information.” Danchenko allegedly told Employee-1 “that he had access to people who would be willing to pay money in exchange for classified information.”
When the FBI learned these details, rather than open a “full investigation” into Danchenko, the FBI instead initiated a “preliminary investigation.” The FBI only converted the “preliminary investigation” “into a ‘full investigation’ after learning that the defendant (1) had been identified as an associate of two FBI counterintelligence subjects and (2) had previous contact with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.” The FBI eventually closed its investigation into Danchenko in 2010 after the FBI incorrectly believed Danchenko had left the country.
So, when confronted with derogatory information that a Russian national connected to a left-leaning D.C. think tank had raised the possibility of purchasing classified material, the FBI opened only a “preliminary investigation.” But when Alexander Downer, a then-Australian diplomat stationed in London, told the FBI that a young Trump volunteer adviser named George Papadopoulos indicated the Russians made suggestions they “could assist the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton,” the FBI opened a “full investigation” into Papadopoulos, Page, and Paul Manafort, without obtaining any corroborating information, and later opened an investigation into Michael Flynn.
An even starker contrast is seen when comparing the FBI’s handling of longtime Democrat operative and Clinton crony Charles Dolan to the targeting of the Trump campaign.
After the Crossfire Hurricane investigation moved to Special Counsel Mueller’s command, two FBI agents, Brittany Hertzog and Amy Anderson, raised concerns about Dolan. As Hertzog explained at trial, Dolan had previously worked for a firm that managed a PR campaign for the Kremlin. Dolan also had connections to Dmitry Peskov who was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary. Additionally, Dolan had a business relationship with Olga Galkina — another Russian and a sub-source for the dossier — and traveled in 2016 to Cyprus to meet with her.
These facts raised concerns for the FBI agents, with Hertzog explaining that Peskov “was a longtime ally and close confidant to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and in that position, he would have likely overseen Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns.” Thus, Dolan’s relationship with Peskov, as well as his work for Galkina, who was herself a sub-source for the Steele dossier, raised serious concerns.
Hertzog and Anderson both wanted to interview Dolan but were prevented from doing so by Mueller’s office, which instructed them “not to take further action on the matter involving Mr. Dolan and Mr. Danchenko’s relationship.” Anderson also compiled various reports on Dolan and others into “an opening communication” to open an investigation into Dolan. Such a probe was necessary for the agents to take further investigative steps.
Anderson testified that she submitted the opening memo to her supervisor, Supervisory Special Agent Joe Nelson. The document sat there “for approximately three or four weeks,” according to Anderson, and then Nelson told her “it was not going to be opened.” Thus no investigation was opened on Dolan.
In the case of the Democrat-connected Dolan, then, the FBI refused to open an investigation to determine whether Dolan might be feeding Galkina disinformation that she would then pass on to Steele, even though the FBI knew of Dolan’s connections to Galkina, Danchenko, and Putin’s press secretary — and even though the FBI knew of Russia’s intent to interfere in the 2016 election.
While there is no evidence that Dolan engaged in any illegal or unethical conduct, his connections to high-level Russian, those providing “intel” for the Steele dossier, and to Democrats and the Clintons, far surpasses the connections Papadopoulos and Page had with the Russians and with the Trump campaign. Yet the FBI launched a full investigation into the Trump campaign through Crossfire Hurricane, while Mueller’s office refused to allow its agents to further investigate Dolan.
Of course, the FBI will never admit it targeted the Trump campaign for political reasons, but how the government responded to the derogatory information about Danchenko — launching only a preliminary investigation — and handled suspicious intel about Dolan — ignoring it — provides ample proof that politics, not a legitimate purpose, prompted the FBI’s launch of Crossfire Hurricane.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Gee—it’s almost like someone flipped a switch on January 20, 2021. Maybe, as someone over on Instapundit suggested this morning, we need a January 20 Committee.
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