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What did Barack Obama know about the plot to link Donald Trump to Russia and when he did he know it? Unlike the Watergate era, when all the insiders in government and media rushed to discover what Nixon knew, only the outsiders have dared to ask about Obama.

Major credit here goes to Rep. Devin Nunes and his chief investigator Kash Patel, Inspector General Michael Horowitz, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and most recently Special Counsel John Durham. For all their good efforts, however, this probe remains very much a work in progress.

That caution established, the answer to the question in the headline is becoming increasingly clear. The information contained in Durham’s recent indictment of Russian national Igor Danchenko, when coupled with the CIA notes declassified in October 2020 by Ratcliffe, leads directly to the White House. In the past week, these revelations have gotten a fair share of attention, at least on the right side of the blogosphere. They deserve it.

What has not gotten attention, however, is the specious counter-narrative that Obama and his allies have been quietly constructing for the last five years. Deconstructing this counter-narrative may not put Obama’s Praetorian guard in prison, but it should provide Watergate-level amusement for those of us who believe prison is where Obama’s people belong.

The Rosetta Stone of the counter-narrative may well be a comprehensive article in the Washington Post from June 2017. Perhaps more than any other bit of Trump era “journalism,” this article — complete with photos and flow charts — revealed the major media’s eagerness to enable the ongoing Democrat-Deep State disinformation campaign. A July 2017 update — “The Post’s new findings in Russia’s bold campaign to influence the U.S. election” — contained even more bogus charts and timelines.

The Post article told of an early August 2016 “intelligence bombshell” sent by the CIA to then President Obama with “eyes only” instructions. “To guard against leaks,” the Post continued, “subsequent meetings in the Situation Room followed the same protocols as planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid.” In its flow chart of events, the Post identified CIA Director John Brennan as the man who sounded the alarm:

CIA Director John Brennan first alerts the White House in early August that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an operation to defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

Brennan’s contemporaneous notes, however, tell a different story. As Ratcliffe explained Sunday on Fox News, Obama did receive an intelligence bombshell from Brennan in early August 2016. Like the Post reporters, Ratcliffe used the word “early” to mark the time in August 2016 when Obama, Brennan, and others met to discuss Russian interference.

From Brennan’s contemporaneous notes, however, we know the conspirators discussed not a real plot by Russia but a fictional plot ginned up by Hillary Clinton foreign policy advisor Chuck Dolan “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

read more here: https://spectator.org/what-did-obama-know-and-when-did-he-know-it-2/