Emails Show Deep State Conspiring Against Trump
powerlineblog.com
Judicial Watch has tirelessly pursued government documents relating to the Russia hoax, and has made them public as they have been wrested from the grasp of Washington bureaucrats. Today Judicial Watch released three emails exchanged between Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, a Hillary Clinton donor, and Bruce Ohr. Ohr was one of the most senior officials in the Department of Justice. His wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS, which was hired by the Clinton campaign to fabricate dirt on Donald Trump. Fusion GPS ultimately came up with the Christopher Steele “dossier.” Ohr and his wife were in the middle of the Democratic Party’s effort to bring down candidate, President-Elect and President Donald Trump.
The emails are embedded below. They are all dated November 21, 2016, just 13 days after the presidential election. But it is significant that the emails post-date the election. These Democratic Party bureaucrats were no longer trying to help Hillary Clinton win the election; rather, they were trying to undermine the President-Elect.
The first email is from Kavalec to Ohr, following up on a meeting they had just had. Kavalec refers to “the person I mentioned,” a Russian named Simon Kukes. She refers to “this campaign donation story” and forwards links to an article in Mother Jones and an Open Secrets entry. The story relates to Kukes, an American citizen who was born in Russia and who donated to Trump’s campaign. There is no evident reason why a Russian-born American’s contribution to Trump’s campaign would be noteworthy to Ohr and Kavalec, or would have anything to do with relations between the Department of Justice and the State Department, other than the fact that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was trying to blame her dismal performance on “meddling” by Russia.
Ohr’s response begins with: “Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. I really hope we can get something going here.” Judicial Watch interprets “get something going here” as referring to efforts to smear Trump with bogus Russian connections. That could be right, but the ostensible subject of the meeting between Ohr and Kavalec was the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which I believe Ohr was in charge of. So he could have been referring to that.
But Ohr’s interest, like Kavalec’s, was principally in how they could disable the incoming Trump administration. Ohr quickly pivoted to that topic: “This is very interesting–I may have heard about him [Kukes] from Tom Firestone as well, but I can’t recall for certain. We will take another look at this.”
Kavalec’s email had said that Tom Firestone “brought [Simon Kukes] in” in 2014. Firestone formerly worked for the Department of Justice in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He is now a partner in Baker McKenzie, one of the world’s largest law firms. Kavalec may have meant that Firestone brought Kukes into the CIA fold, but that is by no means clear.
The significant question, however, is: who is “we” in Ohr’s email? He says “We will take another look at this,” i.e., the fact that Kukes contributed to Trump’s campaign. There was nothing illegal or even questionable about that contribution. What was it that “we” were going to look at? Is “we” the Department of Justice? Or an embedded team of Democratic Party loyalists trying to discredit the newly-elected president?
Kavalec responded to Ohr the same day with more anti-Trump strategizing:
Just re-looking at my notes from my convo with Chris Steele…
This is the first time Steele is mentioned in the email exchange, but Kavalec evidently didn’t need to explain to Ohr that Steele was a Democratic Party hireling who had been tasked with digging up dirt, real or imagined, on Donald Trump.
…I see that Chris said Kukes has some connection to Serge Millian, an emigre who who is identified by FT as head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. According to what Chris said to me in early October…
So the State Department was talking to Hillary Clinton’s opposition researcher prior to the election.
…Millian has apparently “disappeared,” i.e., left the U.S., and hasn’t been seen recently. I don’t know anything about Millian but he is referenced in the FT story: “Trump’s Russian Connections.”
This email exchange makes it clear that senior officials in the Department of Justice and the State Department were meeting with Christopher Steele, talking about his absurd allegations against Donald Trump–it is noteworthy that Steele refuses to come to the U.S., where he could be forced to answer questions about the fabrications for which he was handsomely paid by the Clinton campaign–not only before the election, but after it as well.
Why is it the business of the Department of Justice and the State Department to conspire against the President-Elect? We, the taxpayers, pay these bureaucrats’ salaries. They spent our money trying to slander and ultimately bring down the duly elected President of the United States. This is the biggest scandal in American political history. Nothing else comes close.
A postscript: we have written about Kathleen Kavalec before. On October 11, 2016, Kavalec met again with Christopher Steele, just 20 days after her email exchange with Bruce Ohr. This time, she documented her impressions of the meeting. She concluded that Steele was a liar:
In her typed summary, Kavalec wrote that Steele told her the Russians had constructed a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” that recruited emigres in the United States to “do hacking and recruiting.”
She quoted Steele as saying, “Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami,” according to a copy of her summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United. Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.”
Kavalec also commented on Steele’s nakedly political motives:
And, as I reported earlier this week, Kavalec’s memo clearly warned that Steele had admitted his client was “keen” to get his information out before Election Day. In other words, he had a political, rather than an intelligence, deadline.
His client, as Kavalec obviously knew, was the Hillary Clinton campaign.
One wonders: did Kathleen Kavalec tell her co-conspirators that she had hard evidence that Christopher Steele was lying about Donald Trump? So far, there is no evidence of any such communication. The Democrats’ effort to bring down the Trump administration on the basis of Steele’s lies has continued, right up to the present. At this point, it is hard to say whether the Democrats who pursued their anti-Trump vendetta knew that Steele was a liar, or just didn’t care. |
