Victoria Taft
PJ MediaMon, 09 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
© Twitter.comUS Attorney General William Barr
I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya
The Department of Justice Inspector General's (IG) report into the FBI lying to the FISA Court to get warrants to spy on the Trump campaign is 433 pages. It took AG Bill Barr one paragraph to translate what all of it means in the real world. Oh, and don't pick it up because you might burn yourself.
The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump's administration. In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source. ...[T]he malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General's report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.
Because the IG has no right to subpoena and can't lock anyone up, he can only refer people for prosecution.
Currently, most of the people who conducted the abuse have been fired and were out of the purview of the IG.The IG report, however, found that officials lied and omitted helpful information to Trump campaign officials who were being spied on, but couldn't determine if the malfeasance was politically motivated. U.S. Attorney John Durham is looking into why the Trump spying case was hatched by people clearly pulling for Hillary Clinton to win the election.
Durham also issued an extraordinary statement today, saying:
Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.
The Durham investigation may be the final word on the Obama administration spying scandal into the campaign of a political rival.
The Durham investigation and IG report releases are the chief reasons why the Democrats have rushed the impeachment hearings to get ahead of the damning news of Democrat political chicanery and potential lawbreaking in the 2016 election.
Comment: Epoch Times, 9/12/2019: Surveillance of Trump Campaign 'a Clear Abuse of the FISA Process'
Attorney General William Barr: "The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory. While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General's report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process."
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded in a report released on Dec. 9 that the four applications for warrants to spy on Page contained 17 significant errors. The errors and other failures amounted to "serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents."
Barr said FBI Director Wray is "dismayed" by the handling of the FISA applications. Wray is expected to announce a comprehensive set of reforms on Dec. 9, according to Barr.
In late October 2016, the FBI secured a FISA warrant to surveil Page. The bureau renewed the warrant three times, surveilling Page for a total of twelve months.
The FISA warrant application featured claims from an unverified dossier of opposition research on Trump. Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled the dossier by using second- and third-hand sources with ties to the Kremlin.
"Steele himself was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting. Steele instead relied on a Primary Sub-source for information, who used his/her network of sub-sources to gather information that was then passed to Steele," the inspector general's report said.
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee ultimately paid for Steele's work, a fact the FBI did not disclose in the warrant application.
While the extent of the surveillance granted in Page's case remains classified, FISA warrants allow for some of the most intrusive spying under the law. Under the so-called "two-hop" rule, investigators could collect the communications of every person Page interacted with as well every person who communicated with Page's contacts. As a result, it is possible that the FBI obtained the communications of the entire Trump campaign, both retroactively and in real-time.
A number of FBI officials directly involved in preparing and signing the FISA warrants have all either left or been fired from the bureau, including Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok.
The scandal surrounding the surveillance warrants was amplified by the discovery of biased text messages between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page, [who] mulled "impeachment" once around the time they joined special counsel Robert Mueller's team. Horowitz concluded that Strzok and Page's biased messages "cast a cloud" over the investigation, but was unable to find evidence to support the claim that the bias had an effect on any investigative decisions.
Horowitz formally announced the investigation into the Carter Page FISA in March 2018. He submitted a draft report to the DOJ in September. Horowitz said at the time that his team reviewed more than 1 million documents and interviewed more than 100 witnesses.
See also:
Well, NO criminal charges . . . barely even qualifies as a 'limited hangout'; so I guess, ITYS.
We lost our government around 4/81 - or 11/63 or . . . 1913... sad but true.
RC