IG Report

The FISA Court Should Be Shut Down

Published by Papa Giorgio

AMERICAN GREATNESS has more on this… here is a snippet of the video:

“The point here Martha is the court knew about all of this,” Nunes said. “I’m glad they’ve acted, I’m glad they said something, but the court needs to be ended,” he argued.

The California Republican voiced concern that neither the FBI and FISA judges can be trusted with powerful surveillance powers on Sunday as well, telling Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that the FISA court is in “tremendous jeopardy.”

“We cannot support the FISA court right now,” he said flatly. “The judges are refusing to take action against these dirty cops and dirty lawyers who did this.”

REMEMBER, Judge Collyer signed off on a Carter Page warrant… (July 2018) via, “DOJ Releases Carter Page FISA Applications – Critics Proven Right”

RIGHT SCOOP notes the case presented to Judge Collyer 2-and-a-half years ago explaining all that the IG Report just confirmed:

Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation filed a secret motion with the FISA court to act on application abuses all the way back in 2017, but just five days later the FISA court, via Judge Rosemary Collyer, denied their claim. Below is a statement from Mark Levin:

Over 2 1/2 years ago, a Landmark Legal Foundation asked Judge Collyer to act on the FBI abuses committed on the court and she denied our request. Now, she asserts she has the power to act. Better late than never, I guess, but the judge should have acted much earlier.

This is the same Judge Rosemary Collyer who rebuked the FBI today.

It just goes to show you how Landmark Legal was on this well before the OIG was ever asked to investigate the FISA abuses. Levin is right though, the FISA court should have acted then as some of this was known back in 2017…..

RIGHT SCOOP has the letter to the FBI. Devin Nunes had it right on Sunday…. shut down the FISA court!

FBI “Effectively Meddled” in 2016 Presidential Campaign

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via POWERLINE:

  • Quotable quote: “The DNC pays for the Steele dossier, solicits the Steele dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, surveil a presidential campaign, all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary. That has got to be a first time in history. In fact, let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI during the campaign like the Trump campaign was?” (Answer: No.)

Senator Josh questioned Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz about his report detailing widespread misconduct related to the 2016 counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign. Senator Hawley expressed deep concern about the revelation that the FBI doctored evidence to obtain a surveillance warrant against a Trump campaign official asking, “Is it worse to have a foreign government trying to meddle in our elections, or is it worse to have our own government meddling in the election?”

Sen. Hawley also asked Inspector General Horowitz if this was the first time the FBI used partisan-funded opposition research to obtain FISA warrants against an American presidential campaign saying, “The DNC pays for the Steele Dossier, solicits the Steele Dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, and surveil a presidential campaign all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary. That has got to be a first time in history. In fact let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware of ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI like the Trump campaign was?”

Inspector General Horowitz told Senator Hawley that to his knowledge that to his knowledge this was the first time a presidential campaign had been targeted in this manner

Sen. Ben Sasse: “What the hell was he doing here?”

Published by Papa Giorgio

Ben is great when he is conservative. (Remember, he is no fan of Trump.) He humbly eats crow regarding his and Sen Mike Lee’s conversations. Concerns he said were impossible, came to fruition against a President of the United States of America. He also ends with a very quick discussion of the FBI investigating Trump rather than defensively briefing his about their concerns:

NOQ REPORT mentions this regarding the above cataloging of Senator Sasse:

….Sasse then went into a lengthy description of the dynamic between law enforcement agencies and ODAG, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General which has primary oversight. If Ohr hadn’t been off on assignment on an unrelated task force, he would have been responsible for seeing the clear violations of protocols the FBI had engaged in with regards to the Trump campaign. Instead, he inserted himself into the matter and helped prolong the wrongdoing that was taking place.

In November, 2016, the FBI “closed” (meaning released from being an informant) Steele because he had leaked information to Mother Jones magazine. That’s when Bruce and Nellie Ohr got involved.

“The FBI was not a reluctant participant in this relationship that was a conduit from Bruce Ohr – through Bruce Ohr to Steele – as we lay out here (pointing to the IG report),” Horowitz said, “So I just want to be clear. They’re not saying ‘we don’t want to deal with him.’ They’re saying “oh, ya, call… essentially if you have something we would love to hear from him.”

This is huge. It demonstrates the FBI went far out of its way to make sure they had access to Christopher Steele even after he had been “closed.” They needed the Steele Dossier to remain as the key for them to continue renewing warrants and spying on the administration in its early days even though they had come to the conclusion it was debunked months before.

The exchange between Sasse and Horowitz demonstrates the measures by which the FBI forced the issue to continue engaging with Christopher Steele through Bruce Ohr. It reeks of more than bias. Ohr was their best shot at the so-called “coup.”

Some More Commentary On IG Related Stuff

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Hat-Tip to OK BOOMER) Trey Gowdy shares his biggest takeaways from the DOJ Inspector General’s FISA abuse report on ‘The Story with Martha MacCallum.’

The next article is thanks to AMERICAN GREATNESS: “Ratcliffe: Dems Withholding Transcript That Reveals How ‘Whistleblower Got Caught With Chairman Schiff’”

…Ratcliffe pointed out that Democrats keep using the word “demand” do describe Trump’s suggestion to the Ukraine president that corruption involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden should be looked into.

“Guess which word isn’t anywhere in the transcript?” Ratcliffe asked before informing the committee that the word is “demand.”

“Nowhere in that transcript does the president make a ‘demand,’” he declared. “Do you know where the word ‘demand’ came from? It came from the whistleblower.  That’s the first time we heard the word demand,” Ratcliffe explained.

When he notified the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community, he said President Trump made a demand! He thought he could do that because he thought no one would ever be able to prove that because what president would take the unprecedented step of releasing a transcript with a foreign leader. This president did! Something that the whistleblower never expected.

President Trump, we keep hearing, got caught. President Trump, we keep hearing, is obstructing justice. The president that took the unprecedented step of releasing a transcript so that everyone could see the truth is not obstructing congress. The president didn’t get caught. The whistleblower got caught. The whistleblower made false statements. The whistleblower got caught with Chairman Schiff!

Ratcliffe noted that rather than run the impeachment inquiry out of the House Judiciary where it belonged, Democrats put the highly conflicted chairman of the Intelligence Committee in charge of the case.

“The person who got caught with the whistleblower!” Ratcliffe exclaimed.

The Texas Republican recalled how Schiff had initially denied having any contact with the anti-Trump complainant identified online as Eric Ciaramella (seen below shaking hands with former president Barack Obama).

[….]

When questioned by Ratcliffe during his closed door testimony on October 4, Atkinson revealed information about a potential link between Schiff or his staff and the whistleblower.

Responding to a question about the transcript on Twitter last month, Ratcliffe said: “It’s because I asked IG Atkinson about his ‘investigation’ into the contacts between Schiff’s staff and the person who later became the whistleblower. The transcript is classified ‘secret’ so Schiff can prevent you from seeing the answers to my questions.”

This article excerpt comes by way of RED STATE: “Kimberley Strassel: ‘Buried in the IG Report is a Line that Poses an Enormous Question, Central to Everything’”

On Wednesday evening, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel noticed something peculiar in the IG report and posed a question via a twitter thread:

Buried in the IG report is a line that poses an enormous question, one that is central to everything, and really must be answered. Remember: According to all relevant players, prior to July of 2016, nobody had a Trump-Russia collusion narrative on their minds.

Indeed, the FBI says it was only the Downer tip-off at end-July that spurred the investigation. Downer for his part says it was public revelation in July of the DNC hack that caused him to finally wonder about collusion and connect his spring conversation with Papadopoulos.

Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson, meanwhile, in Senate testimony, “stress[ed]” he hired Steele in May to look at Trump’s “business activities” in Russia….By Simpson’s telling (under penalty of perjury), Steele just sort of stumbled on this much “broader” “political conspiracy.”

But here is what Steele told the IG: That in May 2016, Simpson approached Steele to “assist in determining Russia’s actions related to the 2016 election”; “whether Russia was trying to achieve a particular election outcome”; and…

“whether there were any ties between the Russian government and Trump and his campaign.” (Page 93) Seems Simpson had a pretty good bead on the “narrative” long before the govt. claims to have had it and before even his own source had reported it to him. Huh.

Let’s hope Attorney John Durham provides some answers on who exactly knew what in the spring of 2016.

The answer could be that Glenn Simpson and his wife, Mary Jacoby, wrote the script a long time ago.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) appeared on Fox News’  “Hannity” in the spring to discuss the origins of the Steele dossier. He said it should really be called the “Simpson” dossier. Although Christopher Steele likely contributed “stories” to the dossier, and his years of experience in British intelligence lent credence to the document, Nunes said he believed that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson may actually have written the majority of it.

[….]

Simpson hired Christopher Steele in June 2016. According to Smith, Steele had been “identified as a British spy in 1999.” He had been chief of the “Russia desk when Russian assassins killed FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London and was hardly in a position to make discreet inquiries. Still, Simpson must have thought Steele’s name at a minimum would be useful in marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Reportedly, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI, and journalists love spies who spill secrets.”

IG Report Slams FBI and Others (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

JUMP to the FACEBOOK CONVO | JUMP to DAVID FRENCH

During that December 2018 hearing, Rep. Trey Gowdy posed this question to Comey: “Late July of 2016, the FBI did, in fact, open a counterintelligence investigation into, is it fair to say the Trump campaign or Donald Trump himself?”

“It’s not fair to say either of those things, in my recollection,” Comey retorted. “We opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference efforts. And those four Americans did not include the candidate.”

[….]

So, not only did the Obama administration’s FBI target the Trump campaign in the heat of the 2016 presidential election, but they used an intelligence briefing of candidate Trump to gather “evidence,” and even memorialized Trump’s comments in official FBI documents related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Nonetheless, Comey lied to Americans in order to keep up the appearance that the Steele dossier was in some way legitimate or that he was unaware of it’s illegitimacy.

The new report from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress about whether the dossier authored by Christopher Steele was used in the Obama administration’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

An example of a lie by ADAM SCHIFF, which he KNEW was a lie when he said it:

FBI and officials did not “abuse” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.

In fact, DOJ and the FBI would have been remiss in their duty to protect the country had they not sought a FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, someone the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government. DOJ met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet probable cause requirement, by demonstrating: contemporaneous evidence of Russia?s election interference;

Christopher Steele’s raw intelligence reporting did not inform the decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. In fact, the FBI’s closely-held investigative team only received Steele’s reporting in mid-September more than seven weeks later.

(DEF-CON)

An example of a JOHN BRENNAN lie… which he knew was a lie when he said it:

Mr. Gowdy: Do you know if the Bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as any — as part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?

Mr. Brennan: I have no awareness.

Mr. Gowdy: Did the CIA rely on it?

Mr. Brennan: No.

Mr. Gowdy: Why not?

Mr. Brennan: Because we — we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. It was — it was not.

[….]

Except, on Page 179 of the FISA report we find that former FBI Director James Comey told investigators that he remembers being “part of a conversation, maybe more than one conversation, where the topic was how the [Steele] reporting would be integrated, if at all, into the IC assessment.” 

Comey added that Brennan and other officials argued that the Steele dossier was found credible by intelligence community analysts, and that while they did not want to include it in the main body of the ICA, “they thought it was important enough and consistent enough that it ought to be part of the package in some way, and so they had come up with this idea to make an [appendix]. 

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General William Barr spoke to NBC News’ Pete Williams about the findings on the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the Russia investigation and his criticisms of the FBI.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr sits down with the Wall Street Journal to discuss the information released within the IG report on FBI 2016 election surveillance against candidate Trump; and FISA exploitation for use therein.

FACEBOOK MEANDERINGS

As I was driving around today in slow or stopped traffic, I gave my thoughts about what I was hearing today:

Just a quick note here. The four U.S. citizens spied on by the government we’ll have a great case to make in court to sue set government (during the whole Russian Collusion conspiracy against Trump). So not only did the original investigation cost many millions of dollars, it is possible that many millions more is going to be doled out.

Now… Adam Schiff has himself (against proper procedure) gone and gotten metadata from phone companies and then matched it up with journalist an opposing political persons phones. Without a warrant. I assume another criminal case will start around this… And, much like the other case millions of dollars may be doled out to these individuals who had their metadata illegally seized by the government.

BY THE WAY, you can read here “Democrats” when I say government. Ultimately all the taxpayers will have to — and have paid for it. But these incurred cost come by way of Democrats alone. (As well as never Trumper’s)

So two articles of impeachment have been put forward. Bribery was what CNN says was the Crux of the case a few weeks ago. However, remember all the terms changed over time: quid pro quo, to extortion, to bribery, to obstruction of justice. None of these are part of the impeachment articles. One impeachment article is “obstruction of Congress” (read here Democrats). What a joke! I think a bulk of the American voters see through this sham/witch Hunt.

RESPONSE:

After another quick link of mine linked to this REASON.ORG article, a friend said this on Facebook:

IG Report, Chapter 12: Conclusions & Recommendations (p. 411)–CHS refers to “confidential human sources”:

“We did not find any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to conduct these operations. Additionally, we found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any CHSs within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign.”

Yes, there were problems with some aspects of FISA, but those issues were later. The investigation began earlier, based on reports from a friendly government that there might be connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. Bottom line: the Trump accusation that this was all a witch hunt with political motives has been debunked.

This was my response[s], and it is solid!

JIM G. — two things, well, three. The first is, Horowitz had no subpoena power. So, for instance, he wanted to interview Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS. Glenn simply declined. In other words, Horowitz had an incomplete picture. (Durham and Barr traveled to Italy and other places to talk to what we [not you] know were players involved in those countries.) That is number one.

Number two… and this is a common sense one. Of all the mistakes documented plus the Woods violation… Why didn’t a single one break in Trump’s favor? In other words, FBI director Wray is putting forward 40-changes to stop this from happening again. (Which wouldn’t have happened is Hillary were elected.) If Director Wray were to say, “wow, that was something from this whole thing that worked well. We should keep that.” Or if half, or even a quarter of the mistakes broke in Trump’s favor, I wouldn’t be skeptical.

And third, remember, the Steele Report (as I said in the past) was almost the exclusive bulk of the info to obtain the FISA warrants. Prior to this multiple voices in the FBI warned against Steele. The CIA warned the FBI NOT to use it. Yet:

…DOJ IG Michael Horowitz, who assumed his position during the Obama administration, and his team reported that “Steele’s handling agent” in the FBI “told us that when Steele provided him with the first election reports in July 2016 and described his engagement with Fusion GPS, it was obvious to him that the request for the research was politically motivated.”

In addition, the “supervisory intelligence analyst who supervised the analytical efforts for the Crossfire Hurricane team (Supervisory Intel Analyst) explained that he also was aware of the potential for political influences on the Steele reporting.”

The Horowitz report explained that the FBI was still able to use the Steele dossier even if it was clear that it contained opposition research connected to the Hillary Clinton campaign….

(PJ-MEDIA)

I also just found out that Horowitz wanted to speak to Comey (supporting point #1). But he couldn’t because Comey didn’t sign back up for his top secret clearance, so he couldn’t be interviewed in depth. Durham has the ability to compel testimony.

ACE OF SPADES has this great

The IG report might have falsely claimed that there was no evidence of political bias in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, BUT IT FOUND THAT ALL OF DEVIN NUNES’ CLAIMS ABOUT LIES TOLD TO SECURE THE FISA WARRANT WERE TRUE, AND ALL OF ADAM SCHIFF’S COUNTER-CLAIMS WERE FALSE:

The memo from the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee reported:

  • A salacious and unverified dossier formed an essential part of the application to secure a warrant against a Trump campaign affiliate named Carter Page. This application failed to reveal that the dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
  • The application cited a Yahoo News article extensively. The story did not corroborate the dossier, and the FBI wrongly claimed Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, was not a source for the story.
  • Nellie Ohr, the wife of a high-ranking Justice Department official, also worked on behalf of the Clinton campaign effort. Her husband Bruce Ohr funneled her research into the Department of Justice. Although he admitted that Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” this and the Ohrs’ relationship with the Clinton campaign was concealed from the secret court that grants surveillance warrants.
  • The dossier was “only minimally corroborated” and unverified, according to FBI officials.
  • All of these things were found to be true by the Inspector General Michael Horowitz in his December 9 report. In fact, Horowitz detailed rampant abuse that went far beyond these four items.
  • The Democratic minority on the committee, then led by Rep. Adam Schiff, put out a response memo with competing claims:
  • FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant.
  • The DOJ “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”
  • In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele’s reporting.
  • The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect “valuable intelligence.”
  • “Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias.”
  • The FBI conducted a “rigorous process” to vet Steele’s allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.
  • Steele’s prior reporting was used in “criminal proceedings.”

Each of these claims were found by Horowitz to be false….

(EMPHASIS ADDED)

DAVID FRENCH FODDER

One of the many nuggets from ACE OF SPADES is this from MSNBC: National Review Writer On Why Nunes Should Step Down (March 2017). In the video from MSNBC we see David French retroactively go down in flames! ALSO:

Suffice it to say, ACE destroys David French and Adam Schiff!

Here is more regarding the IG REPORT with thanks to FLOPPING ACES!

The DOJ Inspector General’s report disclosed a multitude of FISA violations by the FBI. As noted by John Solomon, there were 51 Woods violations and nine false statements made to the FISA Court.

To understand just how shoddy the FBI’s work was in securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting the Trump campaign, you only need to read an obscure attachment to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report.

Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is true.

The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page starting in October 2016.

A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: “Supporting document shows that the factual assertion is
inaccurate.”

For those who don’t speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official file.

More at the link.

Horowitz also identified 17 “significant errors or omissions” in the FISA application. Among them:

1. Omitted information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an “operational contact” for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application;

2. Included a source characterization statement asserting that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings,” which overstated the significance of Steele’s past reporting and was not approved by Steele’s handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures;

3. Omitted information relevant to the reliability of Person 1, a key Steele sub-source (who was attributed with providing the information in Report 95 and some of the information in Reports 80 and 102 relied upon in the application), namely that (1) Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that Person 1 was a “boaster” and an “egoist” and “may engage in some embellishment” and (2) INFORMATION REDACTED

4. Asserted that the FBI had assessed that Steele did not directly provide to the press information in the September 23 Yahoo News article based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI that he only shared his election-related research with the FBI and Fusion GPS, his client; this premise was incorrect and contradicted by documentation in the Woods File- Steele had told the FBI that he also gave his information to the State Department;

5. Omitted Papadopoulos’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in September 2016 denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like Wikileaks in the release of emails;

6. Omitted Page’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in August 2016 that Page had “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort and that Manafort had not responded to any of Page’s emails; if true, those statements were in tension with claims in Report 95 that Page was participating in a conspiracy with Russia by acting as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign; and

7. Included Page’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in October 2016 that the FBI believed supported its theory that Page was an agent of Russia but omitted other statements Page made that were inconsistent with its theory, including denying having met with Sechin and Divyekin, or even knowing who Divyekin was; if true, those statements contradicted the claims in Report 94 that Page had met secretly with Sechin and Divyekin about future cooperation with Russia and shared derogatory information about candidate Clinton.

Do read the rest. 17 major “mistakes” and not one of them goes Trump’s way.

The FBI knew that the dossier was nearly 100% without substance, but acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe demanded it be used in the ICA. The CIA was reluctant….

(READ IT ALL)

INSTAPUNDIT notes the FBI campaign against Trump is not necessarily new:

And I have noted before the same on my site:

This is the same tactic Andrew Weissmann used on Flynn (WASHINGTON TIMES | THE FEDERALIST)….

UPDATED POST by POWERLINE intros the video for us:

In the memoir Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds’ Hit List (written with Stephen Saltarelli), Howard Root tells the story of his experience as chief executive officer of Vascular Solutions caught in the crosshairs of the federal government when prosecutors sought to put his company out of business and to send him to the big house. Howard touched on one aspect of his story in the Wall Street Journal column “Sally Yates’s legacy of injustice at the Department of Justice.”

Howard is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. Among other things, he is a corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur, inventor, and corporate executive.

Howard faced down the government. The jury didn’t think much of the government’s case. It returned with a verdict of acquittal on all charges after a day of deliberations, and that includes the time spent electing a foreman.

Howard’s case is important in its own way. The crimes charged were bogus. The government procured testimony through serious prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecution represented fruit of the poisonous Yates Memo tree. Howard had the resources to fight the government’s case against him and his company, but it exacted an enormous toll. The case cries out for study and reform.

Howard has thus sought to engage prosecutors in discussion of the case in person before professional audiences of lawyers and businessmen for whom it holds immediate relevance. The prosecutors and their superiors in the department have sought to keep Howard from speaking to such audiences. When I wrote the Department of Justice to request its explanation for what it was doing, it declined to comment (a week after I asked the question).

Former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy was more forthcoming. He called out the Department of Justice’s behavior as “a disgrace.”

The Department of Justice declines to answer to Howard or me but it has at long last responded to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Utah Senator Mike Lee. Senators Grassley and Lee sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seeking an update on the Justice Department’s inquiry into professional misconduct committed by prosecutors and higher-ups who brought the charges against Howard and have since sought to prevent him from being heard. I posted the Grassley/Lee letter in “Fear & loathing at the DoJ, cont’d.”

In their letter Senators Grassley and Lee noted that “reports suggest a pattern of threatened and actual retribution against defendants and witnesses borne out of the Department’s disappointment with the outcome of a particular case. This not only casts doubt on the Department’s ability to accept the results of judicial proceedings in a professional manner befitting the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, but it significantly undermines our confidence in its commitment to hold government attorneys accountable for questionable actions that may have occurred in the course of this case or other cases.” …..

Comey’s Tarnished Image – IG REPORT

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • “The lion’s share of the Inspector General’s investigation deals with lying to the FISA court in order to gain a wiretap warrant to spy on a former associate of President Donald Trump, Carter Page…James Comey is one of the individuals who signed off on a FISA warrant and concealing evidence and deceiving the judges. That’s — according to my count — six different potential felonies.” — Gregg Jarrett

Here is Comey’s Tweets HOTAIR focuses on:

And here is HOTAIR’S EXCELLENT response:

…Ahem. The report does say that Comey didn’t leak his memos directly to the media. However, Horowitz describes how Comey used a cutout to achieve the same thing, a point which Comey had already admitted in public testimony:

At the time, the OIG also was aware of Comey’s June 8, 2017 congressional testimony that he had authorized a friend (who was also one of his personal attorneys) to provide the contents of Memo 4 — which did not contain any classified information — to a reporter for The New York Times. The focus of the OIG’s investigation was to determine whether Comey violated Department or FBI policies, or the terms of his FBI Employment Agreement, in his handling of the Memos during and after his tenure as FBI Director. The OIG’s investigation included review of the Memos as well as numerous additional documents, emails, and news articles; and forensic analysis of certain computer systems. As part of this investigation, the OIG also interviewed 17 witnesses, including former Director Comey and Daniel Richman, the individual who, at Comey’s request, shared the contents of one of the Memos with a reporter for The New York Times.

Emphasis mine. This can literally be found on Page 1 of the report. Comey is parsing out his vindication on the thin edge that the memo he directed Richman to leak to the Times didn’t have classified material in it, but as Horowitz points out, Memo 4 was designated “For Official Use Only.” This is what Comey’s claiming as vindication:

Comey instructed Richman to share the contents of Memo 4, but not the Memo itself, with a specific reporter for The New York Times. Comey did not seek FBI authorization before providing the contents of Memo 4, through Richman, to a reporter. As noted above, the FBI later marked Memo 4 “For Official Use Only” and determined that it did not contain classified information. We found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the Memos to members of the media.

Why did Comey direct Richman to leak Memo 4? Politics:

Comey sends a digital photograph of Memo 4 (describing the meeting in which Comey wrote that President Trump made the statement about “letting Flynn go”) to Richman via text message from Comey’s personal phone. Comey asks Richman to share the contents, but not the Memo itself, with a specific reporter for The New York Times. Comey’s stated purpose is to cause the appointment of a Special Counsel to ensure that any tape recordings that may exist of his conversations with President Trump are not destroyed. Richman conveys the substance of Memo 4 to the reporter.

Horowitz makes specific mention of Comey, Richman, and Memo 4 in his conclusion. It’s clear that Horowitz doesn’t see the lack of classification as any sort of vindication for Comey:

However, after his removal as FBI Director two months later, Comey provided a copy of Memo 4, which Comey had kept without authorization, to Richman with instructions to share the contents with a reporter for The New York Times. Memo 4 included information that was related to both the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Flynn and, by Comey’s own account, information that he believed and alleged constituted evidence of an attempt to obstruct the ongoing Flynn investigation; later that same day, The New York Times published an article about Memo 4 entitled, “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation.”

The responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement information falls in large part to the employees of the FBI who have access to it through their daily duties. On occasion, some of these employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges, or higher ranking FBI and Department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters. They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions. But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.

Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.

You’d better believe an apology is owed, but it’s not owed to Comey. It’s owed from Comey. Clearly, we will wait a very long time to hear it.

Update: Maybe Comey should check in with his town hall partners at CNN before demanding apologies. They read the report and don’t seem to think it’s very vindicate-y:

LEGAL INSURRECTION chimes in with similar warnings by Horowitz to Comey:

The IG found “no evidence” that Comey or his lawyers provided the media with classified information.

However, the IG “concluded that Comey’s retention, handling, and dissemination of certain Memos violated Department and FBI policies, and his FBI Employment Agreement.”

[….]

Horowitz wrote (emphasis mine):

The responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement information falls in large part to the employees of the FBI who have access to it through their daily duties.On occasion, some of these employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges, or higher ranking FBI and Department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters. They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions. But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.

Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information. Comey said he was compelled to take these actions “if I love this country…and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI.” However, were current or former FBI employees to follow the former Director’s example and disclose sensitive information in service of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly, as Comey himself noted in his March 20, 2017 congressional testimony. Comey expressed a similar concern to President Trump, according to Memo 4, in discussing leaks of FBI information, telling Trump that the FBI’s ability to conduct its work is compromised “if people run around telling the press what we do.” This is no doubt part of the reason why Comey’s closest advisors used the words “surprised,” “stunned,” “shocked,” and “disappointment” to describe their reactions to learning what Comey had done.

Horowitz stressed that FBI employees must “adhere to Department and FBI policies,” especially when they come across “extraordinary circumstances or compelling personal convictions.”

The IG criticized Comey for not using the “several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a Special Counsel.” He told the IG office that a Special Counsel “was his goal in making the disclosure.”

Horowitz reminded Comey:

What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome……

FOX NEWS lists some of the “infractions specifically:

  • “Comey did not seek authorization from the FBI before providing Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to his attorneys.” (page 2)
  • “Comey did not seek FBI authorization before providing the contents of Memo 4, through Richman, to a reporter.” (page 2)
  • “As described in this report, we conclude that Comey’s retention, handling, and dissemination of certain Memos violated Department and FBI policies, and his FBI Employment Agreement.” (page 3)
  • “Comey told the OIG that he did not notify anyone at the FBI that he was going to share these Memos with anyone, and did not seek authorization from the FBI prior to emailing these four Memos to Fitzgerald.” (page 38)
  • “Accordingly, Comey stated that he did not notify anyone at the FBI that he was going to share the contents of the Memo 4 with Richman or the media, and that he did not seek authorization from FBI to provide Memo 4 to Richman.” (page 40)
  • “Accordingly, after his removal as FBI Director, Comey violated applicable policies and his Employment Agreement by failing to either surrender his copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to the FBI or seek authorization to retain them; by releasing official FBI information and records to third parties without authorization; and by failing to immediately alert the FBI about his disclosures to his personal attorneys once he became aware in June 2017 that Memo 2 contained six words (four of which were names of foreign countries mentioned by the President) that the FBI had determined were classified at the ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ level.” (page 52)
  • “Despite knowledge that Memo 3 contained classified information, Comey did not appropriately mark Memo 3 with classification banners, portion markings, or a classification authority block. By failing to do so, Comey violated Executive Order 13526 and Intelligence Community, Department, and FBI policies governing marking of classified information.” (page 53)
  • “Comey’s actions with respect to the Memos violated Department and FBI policies concerning the retention, handling, and dissemination of FBI records and information, and violated the requirements of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreement.” (page 54)
  • “Comey violated Department and FBI policies, and the terms of his FBI Employment Agreement, by retaining copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 after he was removed as Director, regardless of each Memo’s classification level.” (page 55)
  • “As a departing FBI employee, Comey was required to relinquish any official documents in his possession and to seek specific authorization from the FBI in order to personally retain any FBI documents. Comey failed to comply with these requirements.” (page 55)
  • “As the FBI Director and Head of a Department Component, Comey was required to apply for and obtain authorization from the Assistant Attorney General for Administration to retain any FBI records after his removal. Comey violated these Department and FBI policies by failing to surrender his copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 upon being removed as FBI Director and by failing to seek authorization to retain them.” (page 55)
  • “Comey violated FBI policies and the requirements of his FBI Employment Agreement when he sent a copy of Memo 4 to Richman with instructions to provide the contents to a reporter, and when he transmitted copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and a redacted version of 7 to his three attorneys.” (page 56)
  • “Comey violated FBI policy and the requirements of his FBI Employment Agreement when he chose this path.” (page 56)
  • “Comey was not authorized to disclose the statements he attributed to President Trump in Memo 4, which Comey viewed as evidence of an alleged attempt to obstruct the Flynn investigation and which were relevant to the ongoing Flynn investigation.” (page 56)
  • “Rather than continuing to safeguard such evidence, Comey unilaterally and without authorization disclosed it to all.” (page 56)
  • “However, Comey’s own, personal conception of what was necessary was not an appropriate basis for ignoring the policies and agreements governing the use of FBI records, especially given the other lawful and appropriate actions he could have taken to achieve his desired end.” (page 57)
  • “The unauthorized disclosure of this information—information that Comey knew only by virtue of his position as FBI Director—violated the terms of his FBI Employment Agreement and the FBI’s Prepublication Review Policy.” (page 57)
  • “However, Comey was not authorized to provide these Memos to his attorneys without prior approval from or coordination with the FBI.” (page 58)
  • “By providing Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to his attorneys without seeking FBI approval, Comey took for himself the ‘carte blanche authority’ expressly denied by the courts, in clear violation of the FBI’s Prepublication Review Policy and the requirements of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreement. As a result, Comey not only disclosed sensitive law enforcement information to his personal counsel but also a small amount of information contained in Memo 2 that the FBI subsequently determined was classified at the ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ level.” (page 58)
  • “Once he knew that the FBI had classified portions of Memo 2, Comey failed to immediately notify the FBI that he had previously given Memo 2 to his attorneys.” (page 59)
  • “The FBI’s Safeguarding Classified National Security Information Policy Guide clearly states that ‘[a]ny person who has knowledge that classified information has been or may have been lost, compromised, or disclosed to an unauthorized person must immediately report the circumstances to his or her security office.’ Comey violated this requirement by failing to immediately inform the FBI that he provided Memo 2 to his attorneys.” (page 59)
  •  “By not immediately reporting that he had provided Memo 2 to his attorneys when Comey first learned that the FBI had designated a small portion of Memo 2 as classified at the ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ level, Comey violated FBI policy.” (page 59)
  •  “However, after his removal as FBI Director two months later, Comey provided a copy of Memo 4, which Comey had kept without authorization, to Richman with instructions to share the contents with a reporter for The New York Times.” (page 60)
  •  “But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information. Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility.” (page 60)
  •  “We have previously faulted Comey for acting unilaterally and inconsistent with Department policy. Comey’s unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information about the Flynn investigation merits similar criticism.” (page 61)
  •  “Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a Special Counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure. What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.” (page 61)

Here is my RPT Page’s Facebook post with the above info:

The Big Three Question Inspector General Horowitz

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is the full video of Rep. Trey Gowdy’s questions to Inspector General Horowitz at the Committee on the Judiciary and Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Joint Hearing.

There are isolated segments at HOT AIR regarding their story on the above:

Gowdy: Why Didn’t Comey Try To Get A Special Counsel Appointed In The Hillary Probe Instead Of Deciding Everything Himself?

Via Mediaite, a perfectly fair question. Comey’s answer, I assume, would be that investigating a sitting president, which is what Trump was when Mueller was appointed, is different from investigating a would-be president, which is what Clinton was during Emailgate. Yes, there’s a conflict in a Democratic-run DOJ deciding whether to indict the Democratic nominee, all but dooming her electoral chances if they chose to proceed. But it’s not the sort of direct conflict involved when the DOJ is required to investigate its own boss, as has been the case with Trump and Russiagate since January 20, 2017.

But that raises a question. Why didn’t Comey demand a special counsel on January 20, 2017 instead of waiting until he was fired and then trying to get a special counsel appointed by releasing his memo about Trump and Mike Flynn? 

[….]

Because he, an American super-patriot and man of unimpeachable integrity, was available to make the decision himself. Who needs Bob Mueller investigating Hillary when you could have James “Solon” Comey giving thumbs up or thumbs down as needed?

The punchline, as Gowdy explains at length in the second clip (via the Free Beacon) in an exchange with IG Michael Horowitz, is that Comey was wrong in thinking Emailgate was being run with integrity. Anti-Trump partisan Peter Strzok was his lead investigator. And Comey himself had begun preparing to announce that Clinton lacked the intent needed to establish a crime in mishandling classified information even before the FBI interviewed her to try to determine whether that intent existed. The outcome of that probe was prejudged before it ended, Gowdy notes, and, per Strzok’s texts to Lisa Page, the outcome of the Russiagate probe seems to have been prejudged before it began….

MORE:

BTW, this is an interesting SIDE-NOTE about Strzok… he is a typical #NeverTrump guy:

  • Here’s an interesting and sometimes overlooked fact about Strzok: he’s not a liberal. In his emails, Strzok describes himself as a conservative Democrat. There is the suggestion that he supported John Kasich for president in 2016. (POWERLINE)

IG Report (Articles and More)

Published by Papa Giorgio

  • FBI Agent’s Text Disclosed By Justice Watchdog: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump From Becoming President (CNBC, by Tucker Higgins | June 13, 2018)
  • Seven Highlights From Bombshell IG Report On The DOJ, FBI Clinton Email Probe (FOX NEWS, by Gregg Re | June 13, 2018)
  • Devin Nunes: IG Report Shows DOJ/FBI Guilty of ‘Obstruction of a Congressional Investigation’; Text Message in Report Were Requested by Congress ‘Late Last Year’: ‘Why Did I Only Find Out Today?’ (FOX NEWS, by Ingraham Angle | June 13, 2018)
  • IG Report: DOJ Official Sought Clinton Campaign Job For Son, Then Shared Case Info With Podesta (FOX NEWS, by Adam Shaw | June 13, 2018)

  • THE INSPECTOR GENERAL PUT TOGETHER AN INSANE FBI LEAK CHART UPON FINDING RULES ‘WIDELY IGNORED’ (THE FEDERALIST, by Mollie Hemingway | June 14, 2018)
  • IG Finds FBI Agents “Willingness” To Damage Trump Presidency (SARA CARTER | June 14, 2018)
  • ‘Viva Le Resistance’: Ig Report Reveals More Justice Department Bias As FBI Lawyer Working On Mueller’S Russia Probe Texted Colleague That He Was ‘Numb’ After Trump’s Election (DAILY MAIL, by  Geoff Earle | June 14, 2018)
  • Team Mueller Lawyer: “Viva Le Resistance” (POWERLINE, by Steven Hayward | June 14, 2018)
  • IG Revelations On Agent/Journo Gift-Giving Could Be Federal Crimes (DAILY CALLER, by Kevin Daley | June 14, 2018)
  • Meet the Other Amorous FBI Staffers Who Texted About the Clinton Email Investigation (THE WEEKLY STANDARD, by Eric Felten | June 14, 2018)
  • Five Anti-Trump FBI Officials Referred For Disciplinary Action Over Private Messages (DAILY CALLER, by Chuck Ross | June 14, 2018)
  • Clearly, There Is No Bias Problem At The FBI (HOT AIR, by John Sexton | June 14, 2018)
  • Leak-O-Rama: IG Says Lots Of FBI Employees Were Talking To Reporters — And Some Even Received Benefits (HOT AIR, by AllahPundit | June 14, 2018)
  • FBI Official: Clinton’s Answers To Us Were “Hard To Impossible To Believe” (DAILY CALLER, by Andrew Kerr | June 14, 2018)
  • IG Report: No ‘Confidence’ Peter Strzok’s Decisionmaking ‘Free from Bias’ (AMERICAN SPECTATOR, by Daniel Flynn | June 14, 2018)
  • FBI Employee to FBI Attorney for Russia Investigation: ‘YOU PROMISED’ Trump Would Never Get Elected (CNS NEWS, by Terence P. Jeffrey | June 14 2018)
  • IG Report Released (ACE OF SPADES | June 14 2018)
  • Standard Everday Cucks Vs. Super Mega Incel Cuck (ACE OF SPADES | June 14 2018)
  • OIG Report, Thread Two | Plus: Another Mueller Prosecutor Finally Removed Over Anti-Trump, “Viva La Resistance!” Texts (ACE OF SPADES | June 14 2018)
  • FBI Agent Assigned to Clinton Email Probe: I’m Getting Out My Guns If Clinton Doesn’t Win the Election (ACE OF SPADES | June 14 2018)
  • IG Report: FBI Agents Regularly Received ‘Improper’ Gifts From Reporters in Exchange For Leaks (GATEWAY PUNDIT, by Cristina Laila | June 14, 2018)
  • IG Report: Disciplinary Action Recommended For Five FBI Agents–Oh, And Bureau Employees Got Free Stuff From Reporters (TOWNHALL, by Matt Vespa | June 14, 2018)
  • Strzok, Page Texts: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump From Being President (WESTERN JOURNAL, by Randy DeSoto  | June 14, 2018)
  • From 9/11 To Spygate: The National Security Deep State (FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE, by Daniel Greenfield | June 14, 2018)
  • Shell-Shocked FBI Employees On Trump’s 2016 Win: Trump Voters Are ‘Poor, Lazy Pieces of Shit’ (TOWNHALL, by Matt Vespa | June 14, 2018)
  • Marco Rubio Wants To Know Why This From The IG Report Isn’t Getting More Focus In The Media? (RIGHT SCOOP | June 14, 2018)
  • Bloomberg: Cancel Horowitzmas … For Now; Update: “We’ll Stop” Trump? (HOT AIR, by Ed Morrissey | June 14, 2018)
  • Hillary Responds To IG Report (POWERLINE, by Steven Hayward | June 14, 2018)

Insubordination and Bias at FBI:

The inspector general report is careful in its conclusions, but damning on the facts.

By Kimberley A. Strassel | June 14, 2018

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 500-page report covers plenty, but it can be distilled to two words he uses to describe the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the 2016 election: insubordination and bias. Two terms that are chilling in connection with such a powerful agency.

That won’t be the message from Democrats and most of the press, who will focus on a few episodes they will claim cost Hillary Clinton an election. Watch for them to blame former FBI Director James Comey, whom the report faults for “a serious error of judgment,” for having “concealed information” from superiors, and for “violation of or disregard for” departmental and bureau policies.

True, the report is damning about the man who lectures Americans on “higher loyalty.” It describes how an “insubordinate” Mr. Comey was, as early as April 2016, considering how to cut his Justice Department bosses from a public statement exonerating Hillary Clinton. He hid this scheme for fear “they would instruct him not to do it”—and therefore was able to “avoid supervision.” He then “violated long-standing Department practice and protocol” by using his July 5 press conference for “criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct.” In October, he made public that the FBI had reopened the investigation, even though the Justice Department recommended he not do so. Mr. Comey went rogue, and President Trump had plenty of justification in firing him in May 2017.

Yet it is the report’s findings on the wider culture of the FBI and Justice Department that are most alarming. The report depicts agencies that operate outside the rules to which they hold everybody else, and that showed extraordinary bias while investigating two presidential candidates.

There’s Loretta Lynch, who felt it perfectly fine to have a long catch-up with her friend Bill Clinton on a Phoenix tarmac and whom the inspector general slams for an “error in judgment.” Mr. Comey’s entire staff was complicit in concealing the contents of the July press conference from Justice officials. We discover that significant FBI “resources” were dedicated in October to spinning FBI “talking points” about the Clinton investigation—rather than actually investigating the new Anthony Weiner laptop emails the bureau discovered in September. We even find that Mr. Comey used personal email and laptops to conduct government work.

There’s former Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, who was tipping off the Clinton campaign even as he took part in the investigation, and who “failed to strictly adhere to [his] recusal” when he finally stepped away. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe also did not “fully comply with his recusal,” and he’d already been found to have lied to the bureau about a leak to the media. Speaking of leaks, Mr. Horowitz needed full attachments and charts to list the entire “volume of communication” between FBI employees and the press. Not only did these folks have “no official reason to be in contact with the media,” but they also “improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”

Be ready to hear the report absolves the FBI and DOJ of “bias.” Not true. It very carefully states that “our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.” Put another way, he never caught anyone writing down: Let’s start this Trump investigation so we can help Hillary win.

But the bias is everywhere. It’s in the texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and those of three other employees who are routinely “hostile” to Candidate Trump. It’s in Ms. Page’s freak-out that Mr. Trump might win the presidency and Mr. Strzok’s reply: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” It’s in a message from an unnamed agent in November 2016 who writes that although the FBI found Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “lied,” it doesn’t matter since “no one at DOJ is going to prosecute.” To which a second agent replies. “Rog—noone is going to pros[ecute] even if we find unique classified.”

It’s in the Justice Department’s decision to cut deals with Mrs. Clinton and her staff and shelter them from a grand jury. And to agree to limitations in searching for and in devices. And in immunity agreements. The report is largely neutral on all this, giving officials the broad benefit of the doubt on “discretionary judgments made during the course of an investigation.” But it immediately follows that statement by noting that its job of evaluating the integrity of decisions was “made significantly more difficult” by the obvious bias among key players, which “cast a cloud” over the entire “investigation’s credibility.”

The current FBI and Justice Department leadership can no longer justify its refusal to come clean on its other actions. A neutral arbiter has found they made a hash of the Clinton investigation, and it is reasonable to assume that those same players made a hash of the Trump probe. The sooner they acknowledge it, the sooner Congress can move to reform these agencies so that no such thing ever happens again.

  • IG REPORT CONFIRMS OBAMA LIED ABOUT HILLARY’S EMAILS (WASHINGTON TIMES, by  Larry O’Connor | June 15, 2018)
  • FBI Attorney Who Worked on Russia Investigation Pledged Loyalty to ‘Le Resistance’ Days After Trump Was Elected (TOWNHALL, by Katie Pavlich | June 15, 2018)
  • 11 Quick Things To Know About The Inspector General’s Report (THE FEDERALIST, by Mollie Hemingway | June 15, 2018)
  • Yes, Hillary Should Have Been Prosecuted (NATIONAL REVIEW, by David French | June 15, 2018)
  • Amazing (ACE OF SPADES | June 15 2018)
  • Amazing II (ACE OF SPADES | June 15 2018)
  • Shock: Obama Lied When He Claimed He Had Only Learned of Hillary’s Illegal Off-Books Email System From the News (ACE OF SPADES | June 15 2018)
  • Mollie Hemingway: 11 Takeaways from the IG Report (ACE OF SPADES | June 15 2018)
  • Press Ignores Obama’s Lie About Emails to Hillary’s Private Server (NEWSBUSTERS, by Tom Blumer | June 15, 2018)
  • “I’M SHOCKED!” – Lindsey Graham Says Before The IG Report He Didn’t Buy Into The Anti-Trump Deep State (RIGHT SCOOP, by SooperMexican | June 15, 2018)
  • No Obstruction If Boss Cans Insubordinate Subordinate (AMERICAN SPECTATOR, by Dov Fischer | June 15, 2018)
  • Viva Le Resistance: How Political Bias Infected FBI Trump, Clinton Probes (WASHINGTON EXAMINER, by Byron York | June 15, 2018)
  • The Strange Tale of How the FBI’s Anti-Trump Bias Helped Elect Trump (NATIONAL REVIEW, by David French | June 15, 2018)
  • The Anatomy of a Partisan Pile-Up (AMERICAN SPECTATOR, by George Neumayr | June 15, 2018)
  • The FBI Inspector General Report Directly Criticized President Obama (NATIONAL REVIEW, by Dan Mclaughlin | June 15, 2018)
  • ‘No. No, He’s Not. We’ll Stop It.” (AMERICAN SPECTATOR, by Scott Mckay | June 15, 2018)
  • President Trump Responds To IG Report (POWERLINE, by John Hinderaker | June 15, 2018)
  • Comey Responds To IG Report (POWERLINE, by Scott Johnson | June 15, 2018)

ACE OF SPADES DUMP    (6-15-2015)

  • IG Report: FBI Agents Found Huma Abedin Deleting Classified/Hillary Emails From Yahoo Account But Failed to Subpoena Her Devices (GATEWAY PUNDIT, by Cristina Laila | June 15, 2018)
  • Horowitz Confirms He Did NOT Recover All ‘Missing’ Strzok-Page Text Messages (GATEWAY PUNDIT, by Cristina Laila | June 15, 2018)
  • Strzok’s “We’ll Stop It” Text Was Certainly Inappropriate, Says… Hillary’s Campaign Manager (HOT AIR, by Allahpundit | June 15, 2018)
  • DEEP STATE Scrubbed Obama’s Name from FBI Report on Hillary’s Emails (GATEWAY PUNDIT, by Jim Hoft | June 15, 2018)
  • FBI Agent Who Questioned Hillary for Email Probe Called Her ‘the President’—4 Months Before Election (CNS NEWS, by Terence P. Jeffrey | June 15, 2018)
  • Comey’s FBI Was Protecting The Legitimacy Of The Presumed Clinton Presidency (THE FEDERALIST, by David Marcus | June 15, 2018)
  • Giuliani Urges Suspension of Mueller’s Russia Probe in Wake of Watchdog Report (WESTERN JOURNAL, by Jack Davis | June 15, 2018)
  • FBI IG Report: A Slap On The Wrist (FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE, by Joseph Klein | June 15, 2018)
  • WSJ Columnist: Hey, The ‘No Bias’ Claim In DOJ IG Report Is Not What It Seems (TOWNHALL, by Matt Vespa | June 15, 2018)
  • House Judiciary Chair: Bring Me Peter Strzok (HOT AIR, by Allahpundit | June 15, 2018)
  • Trump: Aren’t You Glad I Fired Comey Now? (HOT AIR, by Ed Morrissey | June 15, 2018)

  • Problems at the Justice Department and FBI Are Serious (NATIONAL REVIEW, by Andrew McCarthy | June 16, 2018)
  • How the FBI’s Keystone Cops Hurt the Candidate They Sought to Help (AMERICAN SPECTATOR, by Daniel Flynn | June 16, 2018)
  • Are Federal and State Prosecutors Out of Control? (TOWNHALL, by Brian McNicoll | June 16, 2018)
  • HERE IT IS: The Top 10 Different Reasons The IG’s Report On the Clinton Email ‘Matter’ Is Flawed – Obama’s Deep State Runs Deep (GATEWAY PUNDIT, by Jim Hoft | June 16, 2018)