"Disgraceful delay! Republican Senate finally approves subpoenas for Russiagate ringleaders (Video)"
The Duran (September 21, 2020)
https://theduran.com/disgraceful-delay-republican-senate-finally-approves-subpoenas-for-russiagate-ringleaders/
Alex Christoforou: "OK, Alexander, let's go back to our friends, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Halper, and spygate-Russiagate-Obamagate, call it what you want. Let me read you the headline from Zerohedge:
Subpoenas Authorized for Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Halper and Other 'Spygate' Figures"
"So, Alexander, these are the names, of which subpoenas have been authorized: Comey, Brennan, Clapper, and Halper. Let me read you the first paragraph, real quick:
The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted on Wednesday to authorize subpoenas for dozens of Obama-era officials involved in 'spygate,' including former FBI Director James Comey, Former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper -- and longtime US intelligence operative Stephan Halper, who the Obama administration paid nearly half-a-million dollars to help teh FBI spy on the 2016 Trump campaign.
Alex Christoforou: "Wow. What a group of people assembled there, huh? "
[1:09] Alexander Mercouris: "Absolutely. Absolutely." And I'm going to say this: from an investigator's point of view, the one that I would be most interested in asking questions of is Stephan Halper. You may remember we did programs recently about him and he was part of a group of three people with Christopher Andrew and Christopher Steele who were these three prople in Britain, people who met in Cambridge. And there have been suggestions that they were the people who cobbled together the various parts of Russiagate. Halper is somebody who was involved in identifying Carter Page as somebody to be, you know, followed and looked at. He was close to Christopher Steele and also, he was the person who was very closely involved in implicating -- you know, framing -- George Papadopoulus. So he's a key player in all of this. He also had some kind of a rolein the Flynn Affair. So he's somebody who's been able to stay out of the picture. He has not been publicly questions up to now. The fact that there is a subpoena is incredibly useful and he might, finally, be forced to answer publicly some questions. And, of course, all the others, too. I mean, you know, if they finally get exposed to some really aggressive questioning. Not the kind of questioning like: 'Tell us Director, why do you believe that the Russians wanted to disrupt our glorious democracy?' Instead of that kind of question, you know: 'Why did you not follow proper protocols in the Flynn case? (to Comey). Or 'What did you really get from this Russian spy, you said, in the Kremlin? And who was he, really?' (to Brennan). And 'How did you put together this omni-report?' (to Brennan). All of those sorts of questions. If we get real questions like that, this could be quite interesting."
[3:24] Alesander Mercouris: ""But, I have to say it: it has come so late. This thing should have happened a year ago, directly after Mueller published his report. We really don't really know that much more now than we knew then. We had most of the information already then. So why have these worthy Senators waited so long? A month before the election. It's desperately late in the day to be talking about launching investigations of this kind. And I predict, by the way, that all of these people who have been handed these subpoenas are going to defy them and are going to refuse to testify in the expectation -- or in the hope, rather -- that Biden will be elected in November and the whole thing will fall apart. So if it happens, it will be a wonderful thing provided these people were asked proper questions.
[4:25] Alesander Mercouris: "But, it has been left so late that that in itself makes one wonder about the real intentions of the people who've organized it. Whether it's people in the Senate worried about the fact that the elections are coming. It's not just the president that Americans are electing. It's both houses of Congress. The Senate looks rather sticky for the Republicans, and it may be that they're trying to get the Republican base to come out and vote for them, by saying: 'We understand that you're not very happy with us because we didn't give the president, Donald Trump, all the support he deserved, but we're doing our best now.' So there may be some element of that in this.
[5:18] Alex Christoforou: "I think it's completely that, Alexander. You hit it perfectly. You hit the nail with the hammer. Everyone knows now that the Republicans, these RHINOs in the Senate, these Republcians [in name only] in the Senate knew the whole thing was a hoax. They knew it in 2017. Yet they propped up the entire Russia-gate Robert Mueller 'Man of Integrity' BS all the way up to 2020. All the way up to today until the whole narrative of Russia-gate, Ukraine-gate, Obama-gate started to be exposed and started to literally crumble. And they got exposed. They got exposed for knowing the whole thing was a hoax; for knowing that they were conning the American public by going through this entire charade with the Mueller Report. That's why they're doing this two months, not even two months, less than two months before the election. These guys don't want to lose their cushy Senate seats. That's why they're doing it. They're actively working against Trump. This is from Fox News, because there's a lot of names that we should touch upon:"
The committee also authorized subpoenas for Siney Blumenthal, former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough, former FBI counsel Lisa Page, former FBI agent Joe Pientka, former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former FBI director of counterintelligence Bill Priestap, former White House national security advisor Susan Rice, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith - who pleaded guilty to making a false statement in the first criminal case arising from U.S. Attorney John Durham's review of the investigation into [alleged] links between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign - among others.
[7:14] Alex Chrisoforou: "This is quite a list of people, and they should have done this -- because there are so many that they have to get to and there's so much to unpack, to uncover. So many lies to uncover. And these are Obama people, Obama's core team. This is his "A" Team, right here. So many lies to unpack. This should have been done two years ago."
Alexander Mercouris: "Absolutely. You're perfectly right, by the way. I've been reading Byron York's book, Obsession, but we had already established the fact in our programs, everybody in Washington who was in the know, and that includes every Senator, basically, knew, by September 2017, that Russia-gate was a hoax. Every one of them. Certainly all the Republicans knew. And what did these people do? They went on reciting endlessly the mantra: Robert Mueller is this great person of integrity. Donald Trump should wait until his investigation is concluded. And so it went on through 2018. And it would have gone on through 2019 if Trump hadn't found himself a real attorney general. Because he wasn't getting any help from the Republicans in the Senate at all. One or two people like Grassley every so often would come up with some kind of mumbled comment or would write some kind of weak letter to the Justice Department. But, essentially, they did nothing. And now, suddenly, less than two months before the election, they suddenly discovered there was a conspiracy, that there was actually a conspiracy, but not a conspiracy with the Russians, but a conspiracy between the Democrats and people within the U.S. government, and within the Obama administration to derail Donald Trump, and they're all of a sudden calling all these people in.
[9:15] "By the way, notice two names are missing. Those are: the [former] President Barack Obama and Joe Biden who was, of course, the Vice President. I suspect that they can't call Joe Biden because the Hatch Act might make that difficult. That's the act that prevents investigations into people who are standing for elective office just before the election. But Obama, of course they could call him. And if they really wanted to create fireworks they would have called him. But they haven't."
[9:48] Alex Christoforou: "What a joke these guys are. They did a massive disservice to the American people, the Republicans. In the Senate. The Republicans in Congress, in the House, they came through.
[10:02] Alexander Mercouris: "A different story completely. What I will say is: Nonetheless, I hope that something will come out of this provided Trump wins, which I expect. But provided Trump wins, this thing has got some momentum behind it. And hopefully after the election it will continue with that momentum and it will carry on. And then we might get a Senate report on Russia-gate which actually makes sense as opposed to the idiotic one we were talking about a few weeks ago."