Here's why Comey may have stayed silent on Russia probe before election & it should terrify Trump

[Amaryllis]

FBI was monitoring Trump Tower for "more than three decades" . They would have had to pick up a lot of incidental intel. Maybe this is where T is getting the Obama wiretap story.

Raw Story
3-31-17

Snip

The stark difference between FBI director James Comey’s radio silence on the bureau’s continuing investigation into then-Republican candidate Trump, and the director’s willingness to discuss the investigation into former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s private email server raises serious questions—chief among them, why? What was behind the unwillingness to disclose an ongoing investigation into Trump’s ties to the Russian government?

According to a WhoWhatWhy exposé, published Thursday on AlterNet, the FBI declined to inform the U.S. public about ties between Trump and the Russian government for fear of exposing informants and “[jeopardizing] a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump.”

A two month-long investigation by the publication revealed that FBI agents likely feared exposing an ongoing operation against “an organized crime network headquartered in the former Soviet Union.” This Russia mob “is one of the Bureau’s top priorities,” spans several decades, and is intricately linked with associates of Trump and businesses the president owns.

As the report notes, federal officials were intent on protecting an FBI source—a convicted criminal with deep links to the organized crime network—upon whom the bureau came to rely for information about this crime network. Some federal officials “were so involved in protecting this source” they later became a part of his personal defense counsel; upon his conviction government attorneys urged for “extreme leniency” toward this man.

The article further reveals that among the many details Comey was unable to discuss during his Mar. 20 testimony into the government’s investigation of Trump associates and Russian operatives was the fact that “for more than three decades the FBI has had Trump Tower in its sights,” monitoring its occupants deep ties to organized crime networks. According to the report, one former Trump Organization adviser, Felix Stater, fits the bill for the FBI’s source into the Russia-based crime ring.

Much more:
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/heres-why-comey-may-have-stayed-silent-on-the-russia-probe-before-we-voted-and-it-should-terrify-trump/

[Mme. Defarge]

1. So, was the FBI

trying to prevent the worst that could happen? Maybe it already has.

[Nitram]

8. I suspect the FBI had a short-sighted focus on organized crime, their usual target,

and failed to take the appropriate steps to expose Trump when he unexpectedly became the nominee and then president. I also suspect that Comey's hatred of Clinton may have blinded him to the danger posed by trump.

[Fast Walker 52]

9. No, not that. It's not unlike what may have happened with the intel agencies prior to 9/11

There was just a lot of bureaucracy and institutional myopia, it seems.

[Merlot]

2. I always said that trumpfts run for president was

his "get out of jail free" card. My feeling was that between the russian mobsters and his business debts, as well as all the lawsuits that he would not be able to pay, he used running for president as a way to avoid all these things.

[woodsprite]

3. If it weren't for the fact that Comey helped hand him the election by resurrecting the email story.

[yodermon]

13. Guiliani and the corrupt NY FBI field office were planning to leak that anyway.

Ya think Rudy was gonna run that past Comey first? Comey pre-empted them to try to minimize the propaganda impact.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

FACT 6: Rogue NYPD and FBI agents repeatedly leaked anti-HRC intel to Giuliani and Prince, and thus Trump, during the presidential campaign.

FACT 7: Trump had lined up a national anti-HRC disinformation campaign for the week before the vote. Comey stopped it with the Comey Letter.

FACT 8: Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and rogue NYPD and FBI agents effectively blackmailed Comey into inserting himself into the election.

[Fast Walker 52]

17. hmmm, wow... that seems awfully generous to Comey

Not sure I buy it

[woodsprite]

19. I keep going back/forth on Comey.

A friend works for him and he said he'd follow him anywhere, really trusts him. I know this guy isn't a repub douchebag so I've been trying to keep an open mind about Comey, but I'm still skeptical.

[yodermon]

20. 1) Obama picked him, and 2) The way he stood up to Alberto Gonzales was impressive.

I did hear that his testimony about the Gonzales affair may have been a bit embellished, but still.

[watrwefitinfor]

4. So if they've been conducting this important investigation "for decades"

when do they expect to actually move on it???

Seems to me it should be now or never. I mean which is more important, a gang of international hoodlums, or the survival of the United States?

Or is their plan to just continue collecting data for more decades while we the people of these United States go down Donald's drain?

Wat

[Fast Walker 52]

7. idea seems to be that they are protecting their asset Felix Sater, because bringing him to testify

would cause a lot of problems, and there are people pledged to protect him. It's super complicated from what I can tell, reading the WWW article.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. They did move on it, 2 days ago, when they arrested those 10 Russian mobsters in NY.

Feds Arrest 10 Bonanno Organized Crime Family Members and Associates

Ten members and associates of the Bonanno organized crime family, including alleged acting captain Ronald Giallanzo, were arrested early Tuesday by the FBI and NYPD Joint Organized Crime Task Force, officials said.
The 37-count federal indictment charges the men with operating a racketeering conspiracy since 1998 that earned them more than $26 million in illicit proceeds, according to prosecutors.

Operating mainly in the Howard Beach section of Queens, the defendants allegedly engaged in loansharking, illegal gambling, robbery, and extortion, prosecutors said.
“Through acts of violence, including murder conspiracy,” said Acting Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde, “the defendants are alleged to have amassed a fortune in ill-gotten gains.”

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/NYC-Feds-FBI-Arrest-10-Bonanno-Crime-Family-Ronald-Giallanzo-417367823.html

[Fast Walker 52]

16. I hope that's part of it!!!!

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. Yesterday teh Feds raided a Trump casino

The casino, run by an executive who cut his teeth in Atlantic City casinos then owned by Donald Trump, enlisted a slate of luminary overseers including former leaders of both the Republican and Democratic national parties in the U.S.

Its board members include James Woolsey, who ran the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s and was among national-security advisers to Trump’s presidential campaign.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh and Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, sit on an advisory committee, as does Haley Barbour, the ex-Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chairman who’s now a prominent lobbyist.

Imperial Pacific has been sued several times since it opened the casino, including in December by a former executive accusing it of violating money-laundering rules.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/fbi-agents-visit-office-of-saipan-casino-run-by-trump-protege

[marybourg]

5. Ridiculous. They skew the election toward

the shady person they've been investigating for decades, by waving a bloody shirt about the other candidate's dual-use e-mail server?

[Fast Walker 52]

6. it's certainly fucked up, but the govt has a history of such stupidity

if you read the original story, the whole story is really complicated. It's so complicated that it may never get untangled, I fear.

[Nitram]

10. The FBI needs to get is's priorities straight before it's too late.

The viability of the country's democracy is more important than one investigation into organized crime. Did they fail to realize that a presidential candidate's connection to Russian mobsters was the real story?

[Fast Walker 52]

12. I know-- seriously.

Unfortunately the WWW piece didn't offer much hope in that regard. I doesn't seem like the FBI will do this by itself-- they will need prodding from the outside.

[Fast Walker 52]

15. Seems like, it's complicated

key grafs:

Our investigation also may explain why the FBI, which was very public about its probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails, never disclosed its investigation of the Trump campaign prior to the election, even though we now know that it commenced last July.

Such publicity could have exposed a high-value, long-running FBI operation against an organized crime network headquartered in the former Soviet Union. That operation depended on a convicted criminal who for years was closely connected with Trump, working with him in Trump Tower — while constantly informing for the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ), and being legally protected by them.

Some federal officials were so involved in protecting this source — despite his massive fraud and deep connections to organized crime — that they became his defense counsel after they left the government.

In secret court proceedings that were later unsealed, both current and former government attorneys argued for extreme leniency toward the man when he was finally sentenced. An FBI agent who expressed his support for the informant later joined Trump’s private security force.

In this way, the FBI’s dilemma about revealing valuable sources, assets and equities in its ongoing investigation of links between the Trump administration and Russian criminal elements harkens back to the embarrassing, now infamous Whitey Bulger episode. In that case, the Feds protected Bulger, a dangerous Boston-based mobster serving as their highly valued informant, even as the serial criminal continued to participate in heinous crimes. The FBI now apparently finds itself confronted with similar issues: Is its investigation of the mob so crucial to national security that it outweighs the public’s right to know about their president?

Jack Blum, a former senior Senate investigator and one of America’s foremost experts on white-collar financial crime, sums up the complexity — and the urgency — of the situation:

“What makes this investigation especially difficult is that it will lead into the complex relations between the counterintelligence operations of the FBI and its criminal investigative work,” says Blum.

“Further, it is likely other elements of the intelligence community are involved and that they have ‘equities’ to protect. Much of the evidence, justifiably, will be highly classified to protect sources and methods and in particular to protect individuals who have helped one or another of the agencies involved.”

[SCVDem]

14. Does that get a do over?

We were screwed and are forced to pay for dumps crimes.