The Justice Department is circling in on certain “smoking gun” tapes in its internal review of the suspect origins of the Russia investigation.
Transcriptions of the recordings, according to sources who spoke with Fox News, were “made by at least one government source who met with former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos overseas in 2016, specifically looking at why certain ‘exculpatory’ material from them was not presented in subsequent applications for surveillance warrants.”
One of the key issues in the internal review is the actual start date of the FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian actors. Fox’s sources relayed that the origination of the start date could be much earlier than was initially reported. The start date is important as it reflects whether the evidence as presented was actually the reason for the investigation or whether, as some have speculated, the investigation began as an intentional attempt to disscredit Trump despite lack of evidence.
“The recordings in question pertain to conversations between government sources and Papadopoulos, which were memorialized in transcripts,” Fox News reported. “Barr and Durham are reviewing why the material was left out of applications to surveil another former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page,” sources told Fox.
“I think it’s the smoking gun,” the source said.
"FBI claims the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began on July 31st, 2016. But, in fact, it began before that. In June of 2016 before the investigation officially opened...
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...Trump campaign associates Carter Page & Stephen Miller were invited to attend a symposium at Cambridge University in July of 2016. Your office, however, did not investigate who was responsible for inviting the Trump associates to this symposium. Your investigators also...
failed to interview an American citizen who helped organize the event and invited Carter Page to it." Why is that?
-@DevinNunes question for Mueller, Mueller won't respond. #MuellerHearings
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Before President Trump won in 2016, Papadopoulos met with a Maltese professor by the name of Joseph Mifsud in London. Mifsud, according to Fox News, told Papadopoulos “the Russians had dirt in the form of emails that could damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” Papadopoulos then relayed that information to Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat. “Downer reported Papadopoulos’ comments to him to the FBI,” Fox News reported.
This is where the above-mentioned tapes come in.
Fox News’s sources are claiming “the ‘exculpatory evidence’ included in the transcripts is Papadopoulos denying having any contact with the Russians to obtain the supposed “dirt” on Clinton.”
Russia meddled in the 2016 election. The president did not conspire with Russians. Nothing we hear today will change those facts. But one element of this story remains: the beginnings of the FBI investigation into the president.
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But it is well established that Papadopoulos did in fact meet with Misfud and Downer. He also met with Stefan Halper and Azra Turk. He has admitted to Fox News he though he was being recorded and even tweeted about the possibility of “recordings” of his meeting with Downer.
The heat is now on the Clinton errand boy, and wannabe spy, Alexander Downer. The world will love to see the secret recordings of my “meeting” with him. They will be out as soon as Mifsud provides his deposition to Durham. Glorious.
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The potential existence of the recordings were previously discussed by Trey Gowdy.
“If the bureau’s going to send in an informant, the informant’s going to be wired, and if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there’s going to be a transcript of that,” Gowdy said on a previous Fox News appearance.
“Some of us have been fortunate enough to know whether or not those transcripts exist. But they haven’t been made public, and I think one, in particular … has the potential to actually persuade people,” he continued. “Very little in this Russia probe I’m afraid is going to persuade people who hate Trump or love Trump. But there is some information in these transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it’s ever made public.”
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