Michael Horowitz

Retired Adm. Mike Rogers Assisting Durham Russia Probe

Published by Papa Giorgio

NATIONAL REVIEW’S article starts out noting the cooperation:

Former National Security Agency director and retired Adm. Michael Rogers has met multiple times with U.S. attorney John Durham as part of an ongoing probe into the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign, The Intercept reported Friday.

Rogers, who served as NSA director under Obama and Trump, “has cooperated voluntarily,” according to sources. Durham, who did not agree with DOJ inspector general Mike Horowitz’s report on the predication of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, is also looking into what role former CIA director John Brennan played in the 2017 intelligence community assessment that detailed Russian interference in the election….

More at GATEWAY PUNDIT:

This is the biggest single development in the Durham Investigation to date.  We were told according to public reports that Admiral Rogers met several times with John Durham and that we now know that Admiral Rogers, who is the central figure in uncovering the illegal electronic spying done by the Obama Administration, prior to the Carter Page FISA warrant.  The spying that went on from 2012 to 2016, involving FBI contractors illegally accessing NSA data.

Mr. Rogers discovered that, reported it to the FISA Court, all of that spying was stopped and has led to this crescendo of illegal activity by Comey, Clapper and Brennan.  It led into the so-called ‘Crossfire Hurricane investigation to cover up that previous spying that had been going on.

Rogers has an electronic trail of all the spying that went on over 5 years.  He has personal notes, ala James Comey, only this time they are not self-serving notes, they are the truth.

Mike Rogers I have described as the Rosetta Stone of this investigation.  This is the single most important development in this.  I have been suggesting for a long time that ultimately Rogers would be the key to any criminal investigation.  That is coming true.  What we now know will happen is I can be fairly comfortable in suggesting there will be a substantial criminal conspiracy indictment involving a lot of people with the electronic spying that was done.”

[….]

We reported in April 2018 that:

On April 26, 2017, an unsealed FISA Court Ruling unveiled a number of criminal activities that Barack Obama’s FBI and DOJ participated in during his time in office.  The report to date received little attention.  Now interest is brewing due to the recent actions of Congress and the report that is expected to be released in the upcoming weeks.

The FISA Court Ruling shows widespread abuse of the FISA mandate. According to the report, Obama’s FBI and DOJ performed searches on Americans that were against their 4th Amendment rights.  This went on for years.  One paragraph in the report states that 85% of the Section 704 and 705(b) FISA searches made during this time were non-compliant with applicable laws and therefore criminal.

This heavily redacted report also stated that James Clapper’s NSA had an “institutional lack of candor”.  When this report came out there was little mention in the MSM and the FISA Court did little to nothing to bring the culprits in front of the court and hold them accountable.

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!

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.”

Lindsey Graham and IG Horowitz

Published by Papa Giorgio

This first video is the opening statement by Sen. Graham. And it is important because he details the bias of agents and others involved in the case against Trump and his campaign:

What followed by Lindsey Graham was an excellent Q&A, which I detail a few parts of:

Here is the transcript of a few spots:

  • Sen. Graham (2:58): “There are five people in that interview, right?”
  • IG Horowitz (3:01): “Correct”

[….]

  • Sen. Graham (3:09): “Did they have a duty to report to their supervisors and eventually to the court this [ex]sculpatory information?”
  • IG Horowitz (3:16): “Absolutely”
  • Sen. Graham (3:17): “They did not”
  • IG Horowitz (3:18): “They did not”
  • Sen. Graham (3:19): “Why”
  • IG Horowitz (3:20): “That’s the question, um, I can’t specifically answer for you”
  • Sen. Graham (3:25): “Can you it wasn’t because of political bias?”
  • IG Horowitz (3:28): “On decisions regarding those FISA matters, I do not know their state of mind at this point.”

[….]

  • Sen. Graham (11:33): “Would you have submitted the warrant application as a lawyer?”
  • IG Horowitz (11:38): “Let me put it this way, I would not have submitted the one the put in… no doubt about it it had no business going in with that…” (audio trail off, Sen. Graham continues)
  • Sen. Graham (11:45): “So what I want you to know is that in January 2017 the whole foundation for surveilling Carter Page collapses. Exculpatory information is ignored. They lie to the [FISA] court about what the interview was all about – is that a fair summary so far?…”
  • IG Horowitz (12:05): “Um… I’ll ahh… they certainly misled the… [stammering] … it was misleading to the [FISA] court.”
  • Sen. Graham (12:12): “Okay. Fair enough. And in January – about six months later – when they find more information that could be helpful to Mr. Page, they lie about it. You feel like MR. Page was fairly treated by the Department of Justice and the FBI?”
  • IG Horowitz (12:27): “Um… I don’t think the Department  of Justice fairly treated these FISAs, and he was on the receiving end of them.”
  • Sen. Graham (12:32): “You would not want to be on the receiving end of this, would you?”
  • IG Horowitz (12:35): “I would not want agents or anybody failing to put forward all the information their obligated to tell the [FISA] court…”

Graham’s closing statement as well is worth while:

BONUS ~ TED CRUZ:

BONUS ~ THE FIVE

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.” …..

Fear of Barr (Strassel)

Published by Papa Giorgio

HUGH HEWITT reads Kimberly Strassel’s column, earlier today:

A little POWRLINE intro please: The Democrats’ hysteria over Attorney General William Barr is directly proportional to their fear of the damage they fear he might do, Kim Strassel explains in her Wall Street Journal Potomac Watch column HERE:

The only thing uglier than an angry Washington is a fearful Washington. And fear is what’s driving this week’s blitzkrieg of Attorney General William Barr.

Mr. Barr tolerantly sat through hours of Democratic insults at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. His reward for his patience was to be labeled, in the space of a news cycle, a lawbreaking, dishonest, obstructing hack. Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly accused Mr. Barr of lying to Congress, which, she added, is “considered a crime.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said he will move to hold Mr. Barr in contempt unless the attorney general acquiesces to the unprecedented demand that he submit to cross-examination by committee staff attorneys. James Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, lamented that Donald Trump had “eaten” Mr. Barr’s “soul.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren demands the attorney general resign. California Rep. Eric Swalwell wants him impeached.

These attacks aren’t about special counsel Robert Mueller, his report or even the surreal debate over Mr. Barr’s first letter describing the report. The attorney general delivered the transparency Democrats demanded: He quickly released a lightly redacted report, which portrayed the president in a negative light. What do Democrats have to object to?

Some of this is frustration. Democrats foolishly invested two years of political capital in the idea that Mr. Mueller would prove President Trump had colluded with Russia, and Mr. Mueller left them empty-handed. Some of it is personal. Democrats resent that Mr. Barr won’t cower or apologize for doing his job. Some is bitterness that Mr. Barr is performing like a real attorney general, making the call against obstruction-of-justice charges rather than sitting back and letting Democrats have their fun with Mr. Mueller’s obstruction innuendo.

But most of it is likely fear. Mr. Barr made real news in that Senate hearing, and while the press didn’t notice, Democrats did. The attorney general said he’d already assigned people at the Justice Department to assist his investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. He said his review would be far-reaching—that he was obtaining details from congressional investigations, from the ongoing probe by the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and even from Mr. Mueller’s work. Mr. Barr said the investigation wouldn’t focus only on the fall 2016 justifications for secret surveillance warrants against Trump team members but would go back months earlier.

He also said he’d focus on the infamous “dossier” concocted by opposition-research firm Fusion GPS and British former spy Christopher Steele, on which the FBI relied so heavily in its probe. Mr. Barr acknowledged his concern that the dossier itself could be Russian disinformation, a possibility he described as not “entirely speculative.” He also revealed that the department has “multiple criminal leak investigations under way” into the disclosure of classified details about the Trump-Russia investigation.

Do not underestimate how many powerful people in Washington have something to lose from Mr. Barr’s probe. Among them: Former and current leaders of the law-enforcement and intelligence communities. The Democratic Party pooh-bahs who paid a foreign national (Mr. Steele) to collect information from Russians and deliver it to the FBI. The government officials who misused their positions to target a presidential campaign. The leakers. The media. More than reputations are at risk. Revelations could lead to lawsuits, formal disciplinary actions, lost jobs, even criminal prosecution.

The attacks on Mr. Barr are first and foremost an effort to force him out, to prevent this information from coming to light until Democrats can retake the White House in 2020. As a fallback, the coordinated campaign works as a pre-emptive smear, diminishing the credibility of his ultimate findings by priming the public to view him as a partisan.

That’s why Mr. Barr isn’t alone in getting slimed. Natasha Bertrand at Politico last month penned a hit piece on the respected Mr. Horowitz. It’s clear the inspector general is asking the right questions. The Politico article acknowledges he’s homing in on Mr. Steele’s “credibility” and the dossier’s “veracity”—then goes on to provide a defense of Mr. Steele and his dossier, while quoting unnamed sources who deride the “quality” of the Horowitz probe, and (hilariously) claim the long-tenured inspector general is not “well-versed” in core Justice Department functions.

“We have to stop using the criminal-justice process as a political weapon,” Mr. Barr said Wednesday. The line didn’t get much notice, but that worthy goal increasingly looks to be a reason Mr. Barr accepted this unpleasant job. Stopping this abuse requires understanding how it started. The liberal establishment, including journalists friendly with it, doesn’t want that to happen, and so has made it a mission to destroy Mr. Barr. The attorney general seems to know what he’s up against, and remains undeterred. That’s the sort of steely will necessary to right the ship at the Justice Department and the FBI.

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)

Rep. Devin Nunes Wants To Share What He Saw

Published by Papa Giorgio

Last night on Fox News at Night with Shannon Bream, there was an interesting segment with a relatively unfamiliar face. Policy Advisor and Author, Sidney Powell, appeared on the show to discuss the concluding DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, aspects to the current congressional investigations. (CONSERVATIVE TREE HOUSE )

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told fellow Republicans he has witnessed evidence demonstrating a clear “abuse” of government surveillance programs by FBI and Justice Department officials, according to a new report. (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)….

…House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes told Republican colleagues in two closed-door meetings this week he has seen evidence that shows clear “abuse” of government surveillance programs by FBI and Justice Department officials, according to three sources familiar with the conversations, raising more questions about whether the controversial anti-Trump dossier was used by the Obama administration to authorize surveillance of advisers to President Trump.

The California Republican made his comments in private meetings with GOP colleagues as he tried to round up votes in favor of renewing a key section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as Section 702, which eventually passed in the House on Thursday.

That part of the law specifically gives the U.S. government the power to get access to communications, such as emails or phone calls, of foreigners outside the United States who may be plotting a terrorist attack but does not allow the government to target Americans.

[….]

Nunes privately told GOP lawmakers that he will be pushing as early next week to secure access for all 435 members of Congress to see the same documents to decide for themselves what happened, as some of his Republican colleagues have already said they believe the dossier was a significant factor in surveillance of Trump officials.

“But I think that there is a broader question here,” conservative North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows told Fox News this week. “Why would the FBI use a Democrat paid-for dossier to actually surveil another campaign?”…

When a Congressman want to show ALL of Congress something — you know it is serious.