Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

conix, Mark Penn's shallow article is obviously basically politically inspired. Take this bit

"But it is backfiring. They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? That’s left out of their narrative. Downer’s signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You don’t need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, which then called the FBI to complete the loop. This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start."
.. your link .. http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/388549-stopping-robert-mueller-to-protect-us-all

So you have Penn asking a question which he was not really interested in learning
the answer to. He was interested in only feeding into an anti-truth conspiracy theory.

How did the info get to the FBI? Here you go

Joe Hockey discussed Alexander Downer's Russia revelations with FBI
By David Wroe
Updated2 January 2018 — 12:34amfirst published 1 January 2018 — 5:29pm
[...]
"Fairfax Media has confirmed independently that the conversation first reported by The New York Times took place. In May 2016, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told Mr Downer over drinks at an upscale London wine bar that the Russians had a dirt file on rival candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked Democratic Party emails.

Mr Downer conveyed the conversation to Canberra via an official cable, though apparently not immediately – perhaps because he did not take the 28-year-old adviser's claims altogether seriously until the hacked emails were released by Wikileaks in late July."
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/joe-hockey-discussed-downers-russia-revelations-with-fbi-20180101-h0c58c.html

Penn's article is dated May 20, 2018. The SMH article above was originally dated January 1, 2018. So Penn had some
4.5 months to learn the Downer-Papadopolous info got to the FBI via the Australian ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey.

Penn's question clearly suggests he was only interested in feeding into anti-FBI, anti-Democrat conspiracy crap.