Was the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory launched by John Brennan and the CIA?

Stefan Halper has been named by the media as the informant spy who was meeting with Trump campaign advisors in in July of 2016. Halper's first meeting with Carter Page was reportedly in early July 2016. This is before the FBI claims they had information a drunken Papadopoulos claimed to Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer he knew who had Hillary’s emails. The FBI has claimed this conversation was what launched the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. Let's assume the FBI is being technically factual about the July 31, 2016 start date of their investigation. If Halper wasn't working for the FBI at the time, who was paying him?

Federal records show that Stefan K. Halper has been paid $928,800 by the Federal Government since 2012 on four separate "research projects"

— Jacob Wohl (@JacobAWohl) March 26, 2018

The FBI would be unlikely to have had enough criminal cases relating to people in Great Britain, where Halper was located, to spend that kind of money. The likely answer is Hapler was doing work for the CIA. That would mean the initial contact may have been a CIA operation launched by John Brennan. The CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on Americans except under certain circumstances and it requires senior approval from several people.

Under the rules, there would have had to been evidence of involvement in espionage. What was this evidence? Remember this informing spying started before the FBI had information about the drunken Papadopoulos bar conversation with the Australian ambassador that the FBI claims caused them to launch their investigation. At that time, all they had was the very early part of the Steele Dossier. Steele reportedly first met with an FBI agent in London on July 5, 2016. Then, shortly afterwards, Halper first met with Carter Page.

So, either the FBI is lying about when they started their investigation, and why, or they handed off the initial investigation to the CIA because they didn't have enough to launch an investigation on their own. Either way, the Steele Dossier seems to be the real reason the investigation got launched. If the CIA was involved, it would have required the approval of CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper and Attorney General Loretta Lynch or, alternately, John Brennan went rogue. This likely goes to the highest levels of the Obama White House, perhaps even Obama himself.

As a side note, what's up with the leaking of Halper's name and involvement by the deep state? They are certainly trying to get the initial spin on this spying as something innocuous since it was going to come out eventually. However, I think the main spin is to portray Halper as an FBI informant and hide the CIA involvement because that opens a huge new can of worms.

Note: Edited to correct information about Papadopoulos bar conversation.

CIA Chief nominee John Brennan admits he convinced the Clinton administration not to attempt an operation to capture Osama bin Laden

Poor judgement...

Via WaPo:

A bit of news early in John Brennan’s testimony. Former CIA official Michael Scheuer has charged that Brennan, as chief of the CIA station in Saudi Arabia during the late 1990s, convinced the Clinton administration not to attempt an operation to capture Osama bin Laden. Asked by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) whether that story is true, Brennan said it was.

“Based on what I had known at the time,” he said, “I didn’t think it was a worthwhile operation and had low chances of success.”

He was not in the chain of command and had no control over decisions made in Washington — Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger ordered the operation cancelled. Brennan said he had “no second thoughts whatsoever … chances of success were minimal” and it was likely that “other individuals were going to be killed.”

John Brennan: Jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam, violent extremists victims of “political, economic and social forces,”

President Obama's former top counter-terrorism adviser and current nominee to head the CIA has said we shouldn't describe Islamic terrorists as "Jihadists." He thinks these scum who murder in the name of Allah are victims of “political, economic and social forces...” John Brennan should never be confirmed.

FOX News reported:

The president’s top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” arguing that the term “jihadists” should not be used to describe America’s enemies.

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces,” but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in “religious terms.”

He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not “terrorism,”...

“Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children,” Brennan said...

Insanity! Obama's counter-terrorism advisor: "jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam"

Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic extremists have declared jihad on America and the West. Now President Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser has said we shouldn't describe Islamic terrorists as "Jihadists." He thinks these scum who murder in the name of Allah are victims of “political, economic and social forces...” John Brennan should be fired immediately.

FOX News reported:

The president’s top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” arguing that the term “jihadists” should not be used to describe America’s enemies.

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces,” but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in “religious terms.”

He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not “terrorism,”...

“Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children,” Brennan said...