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Category: "Politics" -
What stunned me was the fact that despite the release of one of the most important IG reports in US government history, the Wall Street Journal, during the entire week of its release, went into an alarming media blackout regarding Horowitz and his investigational findings, until today.
Meanwhile, this wide-ranging summary goes a long way in, perhaps, killing whatever remains of Mueller's heavily biased investigation into what amounts to a Deep State/Democrat mounted bit of conspiracy-fiction.
It was a political fiction frame-up contrived to bring down a presidential election utilizing the help of Russian-colluded misinformation, which ultimately amounts to treason and should be pursued on that basis...But, what's truly sad are all the anti-Trump left-wingers, reporters, and neocons who stupidly believed that all of the bed-peeing fiction was true, and still do, to this very day...
~Refocus Notes
The Wall Street Journal
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation may face a serious legal obstacle: It is tainted by antecedent political bias. The June 14 report from Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, unearthed a pattern of anti-Trump bias by high-ranking officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Some of their communications, the report says, were “not only indicative of a biased state of mind but imply a willingness to take action to impact a presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.” Although Mr. Horowitz could not definitively ascertain whether this bias “directly affected” specific FBI actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, it nonetheless affects the legality of the Trump-Russia collusion inquiry, code-named Crossfire Hurricane.
Crossfire was launched only months before the 2016 election. Its FBI progenitors—the same ones who had investigated Mrs. Clinton—deployed at least one informant to probe Trump campaign advisers, obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretap warrants, issued national security letters to gather records, and unmasked the identities of campaign officials who were surveilled. They also repeatedly leaked investigative information.
Mr. Horowitz is separately scrutinizing Crossfire and isn’t expected to finish for months. But the current report reveals that FBI officials displayed not merely an appearance of bias against Donald Trump, but animus bordering on hatred. Peter Strzok, who led both the Clinton and Trump investigations, confidently assuaged a colleague’s fear that Mr. Trump would become president: “No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” An unnamed FBI lawyer assigned to Crossfire told a colleague he was “devastated” and “numb” after Mr. Trump won while declaring to another FBI attorney: “Viva la resistance.”
The report highlights the FBI’s failure to act promptly upon discovering that Anthony Weiner’s laptop contained thousands of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Investigators justified the delay by citing the “higher priority” of Crossfire. But Mr. Horowitz writes: “We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on [the] investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”
Similarly, although Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that then-FBI Director James Comey was trying to influence the election, Mr. Comey did make decisions based on political considerations. He told the inspector general that his election-eve decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation was motivated by a desire to protect her assumed presidency’s legitimacy.
The inspector general wrote that Mr. Strzok’s text messages “created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.” The report adds, importantly, that “most of the text messages raising such questions pertained to the Russia investigation.” Given how biases ineluctably shape behavior, these facts create a strong inference that by squelching the Clinton investigation and building a narrative of Trump-Russia collusion, a group of government officials sought to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s electoral chances and, if the unthinkable happened, obtain an insurance policy to cripple the Trump administration with accusations of illegitimacy.
What does this have to do with Mr. Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 after President Trump fired Mr. Comey? The inspector general concludes that the pervasive bias “cast a cloud over the FBI investigations to which these employees were assigned,” including Crossfire. And if Crossfire was politically motivated, then its culmination, the appointment of a special counsel, inherited the taint. All special-counsel activities—investigations, plea deals, subpoenas, reports, indictments, and convictions—are the fruit of a poisonous tree, byproducts of a violation of due process. That Mr. Mueller and his staff had nothing to do with Crossfire’s origin offers no cure.
When the government deprives a person of life, liberty or property, it is required to use fundamentally fair processes. The Supreme Court has made clear that when governmental action “shocks the conscience,” it violates due process. Such conduct includes investigative or prosecutorial efforts that appear, under the totality of the circumstances, to be motivated by corruption, bias or entrapment.
In U.S. v. Russell (1973), the justices observed: “We may someday be presented with a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction.” It didn’t take long. In Blackledge v. Perry (1974), the court concluded that due process was offended by a prosecutor’s “realistic likelihood of ‘vindictiveness’ ” that tainted the “very initiation of proceedings.”
In Young v. U.S. ex rel. Vuitton (1987), the justices held that because prosecutors have “power to employ the full machinery of the state in scrutinizing any given individual . . . we must have the assurance that those who would wield this power will be guided solely by their sense of public responsibility for the attainment of justice.” Prosecutors must be “disinterested” and make “dispassionate assessments,” free from any personal bias.
In Williams v. Pennsylvania (2016), the court held that a state judge’s potential bias violated due process because he had played a role, a quarter-century earlier, in prosecuting the death-row inmate whose habeas corpus petition he was hearing. The passage of time and involvement of others do not vitiate the taint but heighten “the need for objective rules preventing the operation of bias that might otherwise be obscured,” the justices wrote. A single biased individual “might still have an influence that, while not so visible . . . is nevertheless significant.”
In addition to the numerous anti-Trump messages uncovered by the inspector general, there is a strong circumstantial case—including personnel, timing, methods and the absence of evidence—that Crossfire was initiated for political, not national-security, purposes.
It was initiated in defiance of a longstanding Justice Department presumption against investigating campaigns in an election year. And while impartiality is always required, a 2012 memo by then-Attorney General Eric Holder emphasizes that impartiality is “particularly important in an election year,” and “politics must play no role in the decisions of federal prosecutors or investigators regarding any investigations. . . . Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
Strong evidence of a crime can overcome this policy, as was the case with the bureau’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email server, which began more than a year before the 2016 election. But Crossfire was not a criminal investigation. It was a counterintelligence investigation predicated on the notion that Russia could be colluding with the Trump campaign. There appears to have been no discernible evidence of Trump-Russia collusion at the time Crossfire was launched, further reinforcing the notion that it was initiated “for the purpose” of affecting the presidential election.
The chief evidence of collusion is the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s servers. But nothing in the public record suggests the Trump campaign aided that effort. The collusion narrative, therefore, hinges on the more generic assertion that Russia aimed to help Mr. Trump’s election and that the Trump campaign reciprocated by embracing pro-Russian policies. Yet despite massive surveillance and investigation, there’s still no public evidence of any such exchange—only that Russia attempted to sow political discord by undermining Mrs. Clinton and to a lesser extent Mr. Trump.
Some members of the Trump team interacted with Russians and advocated dovish policies. But so did numerous American political and academic elites, including many Clinton advisers. Presidential campaigns routinely seek opposition research and interact with foreign powers. The Clinton campaign funded the Steele dossier, whose British author paid Russians to dish anti-Trump dirt. The Podesta Group, led by the brother of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, received millions lobbying for Russia’s largest bank and the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, both with deep Kremlin ties. The Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton took millions from Kremlin-connected businesses.
No evidence has emerged of Trump-Russia collusion, and Mr. Mueller has yet to bring collusion-related charges against anyone. Evidence suggests one of his targets, George Papadopoulos, was lured to London, plied with the prospect of Russian information damaging to Mrs. Clinton, and taken to dinner, where he drunkenly bragged that he’d heard about such dirt but never seen it. These circumstances not only fail to suggest Mr. Papadopoulos committed a crime, they reek of entrapment. The source of this information, former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, admits Mr. Papadopolous never mentioned emails, destroying any reasonable inference of a connection between the DNC hack and the Trump campaign.
Crossfire’s progenitors thus ignored an obvious question: If Russia promised unspecified dirt on Mrs. Clinton but never delivered it, how would that amount to collusion with the Trump campaign? If anything, such behavior suggests an attempt to entice and potentially embarrass Mr. Trump by dangling the prospect of compromising information and getting his aides to jump at it.
Given the paucity of evidence, it’s staggering that the FBI would initiate a counterintelligence investigation, led by politically biased staff, amid a presidential campaign. The aggressive methods and subsequent leaking only strengthen that conclusion. If the FBI sincerely believed Trump associates were Russian targets or agents, the proper response would have been to inform Mr. Trump so that he could protect his campaign and the country.
Mr. Trump’s critics argue that the claim of political bias is belied by the fact that Crossfire was not leaked before the election. In fact, there were vigorous, successful pre-election efforts to publicize the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Shortly after Crossfire’s launch, CIA Director John Brennan and Mr. Comey briefed Congress, triggering predictable leaking. Christopher Steele and his patrons embarked on a media roadshow, making their dossier something of an open secret in Washington.
On Aug. 29, 2016, the New York Times published a letter to Mr. Comey from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, saying he’d learned of “evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” which had “employed a number of individuals with significant and disturbing ties to Russia and the Kremlin.” On Aug. 30, the ranking Democratic members of four House committees wrote a public letter to Mr. Comey requesting “that the FBI assess whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests” may have contributed to the DNC hack so as “to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.”
On Sept. 23, Yahoo News’s Michael Isikoff reported the Hill briefings and the Steele dossier’s allegations regarding Carter Page. On Oct. 30, Harry Reid again publicly wrote Mr. Comey: “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government.”
That these leaking efforts failed to prevent Mr. Trump’s victory, or that Mr. Comey’s ham-fisted interventions might have also hurt Mrs. Clinton’s electoral prospects, does not diminish the legal significance of the anti-Trump bias shown by government officials...
If this leading open-borders presidential nut-job wins, it's already very easy to see that Mexico will further degrade into a Venezuela-esque shit-hole, in short order.
This assumes, by the way, that Mexico's leading presidential candidate doesn't foment what will amount to a coerced invasion of America's southern border, prompting a trade war and then a massive US-Mexico skirmish (that will be over quickly) into what could only be described, even now, as a preeminent failed state.
Most of us would dearly love to hear Trump's response on this...
Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called for mass immigration to the United States during a speech Tuesday declaring it a “human right” for all North Americans.
“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”
He then declared it as “a human right we will defend,” eluniversal.com reports.
While the election is not until July 1, Obrador is by far the frontrunner.
Obrador in April delivered speech criticizing Trump and promising that Mexico will not become a “piñata” for any foreign government, Global News reports.
The former mayor of Mexico City, Obrador holds progressive populist views. The 64-year-old ran unsuccessfully for president twice before, according to DW.
Fox’s Tucker CarlsonnotedThursday that Obrador has previously proposed granting amnesty to Mexican drug cartels. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added.
GOP LAWMAKER SAYS EVIDENCE MIGHT HAVE BEEN TAMPERED WITH IN FLYNN CASE, 6/21/2018
The Hill
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) suggested Thursday in an interview with Hill.TV's "Rising" that evidence may have been tampered with in the case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Meadows, the leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of President Trump's, said he and other lawmakers are finding evidence of possible tampering, an allegation he previously made at a House hearing where Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified.
"Justice should be meted out evenly, and yet we’re finding that evidence could have been tampered with," Meadows said.
Meadows suggested one focus is whether FBI interview reports — known as 302 reports — about Flynn were altered to improve the chances he'd be prosecuted.
"I brought this up with the inspector general the other day. Some of those key witnesses will be asked to appear before House Oversight," he added.
The question about the FBI interview reports, he said, was "were they changed to change the outcome of prosecution decisions. I think they might have."
"We’re not going to yield until we get an answer," he added.
It's unclear what evidence he has to support the tampering claim, as he has not presented it publicly.
Trump fired Flynn in February 2017 after a short time on the job. He said at the time it was because Flynn lied to Vice President Pence, andlater indicated it had to do with Flynn lying to the FBI.
Flynn pleaded guiltyin December to lying to the FBI as part of special counselRobert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Meadows has been among the most vocal lawmakers in his criticism of the Justice Department and its handling of the Russia probe. He and other conservatives have eagerly pursued access to Justice Department documents.
While the conservative lawmakers have received thousands of documents from the agency, they say they have not been able to review key documents nor have they received as many documents as they've requested, leading to rising tensions between Republicans and federal officials.
Meddling in an election is such a crime, such a huge crime. The Drive-Bys want to go to war with Russia over their meddling in our election, but guess what?
Thanks to the inspector general report, we now have absolute proof, absolute proof — and documented evidence, by the way — that the top leadership of the FBI was meddling in the 2016 election. Isn’t this amazing? The meddling in the election was not happening in Russia; it was happening in the FBI. Oh, the Russians might have tried some stuff in the Democrat primaries, but it was the top level of the FBI meddling in the 2016 election.
And the FBI’s top watchdog, the inspector general, Mr. Horowitz, says he was very concerned about this. But he says it’s okay, in the end, because he didn’t see any evidence that the meddling was due to political bias. (chuckling) Right. Yeah. Just like Comey said, “Yeah, Hillary, she broke all kinds of laws here, but we couldn’t find where she meant to. We just couldn’t determine that she intended to.”
And just like Horowitz, “Yeah, these guys were doing a lot of stuff, but we just couldn’t find that political bias led them to it.” That takes to us Trey Gowdy, Washington this morning, a joint hearing, House Government Oversight Committee and Judiciary Committee. Michael Horowitz and his report. Listen to Trey Gowdy…
GOWDY: So Page wrote, “Trump’s not ever going to be become president, right?” with a question mark, then “Right?” with a question mark and an exclamation point in case anybody reading it may have missed the point of her emphasis. Peter Strzok responded, “No. No, he’s not. We’ll stop it.” Do I have that text exchange right?
HOROWITZ: You do.
GOWDY: Now, Lisa Page was an FBI lawyer who worked on the Clinton email investigation?
HOROWITZ: That’s correct.
GOWDY: Did she also work on the Russia investigation?
HOROWITZ: She did.
GOWDY: How about the Mueller special counsel team?
CALLER: She did for a period of time.
GOWDY: All right. So we’re three for three on her working on the two most important bureau investigations in 2016 and beyond. Now, is this the same Lisa Page that Andy McCabe used to leak information to I news outlet?
HOROWITZ: She was a special counsel, and as we indicated in our earlier report, she was the individual through whom he provided that information.
GOWDY: The same Lisa Page who admonished the agent interviewing Hillary Clinton not to go into that interview “loaded for bear” because Clinton might be the next president, and it’s the same Lisa Page who said Trump was “loathsome,” “awful,” “the man cannot become president; Clinton just has to win,” and that Trump “should go F— himself.” And we are somehow supposed to believe that she did not prejudge the outcome of that investigation before it was over? She already had Hillary Clinton winning. I don’t know how you can win if you’re gonna wind up getting indicted and/or plead guilty or be convicted of a felony.
RUSH: It’s impossible for us to replay the whole thing. We’d have had to go gavel to gavel on it. Gowdy was at this for about 20, 25 minutes. Just hammered Horowitz. But he wasn’t hammering Horowitz. He was just getting Horowitz to admit what was in the report but in an entirely different context. (snort) Gowdy made it plain that it was nothing but political bias guiding all these people, and he was stunned that nobody could see it in terms of the final report. Here’s the next example.
GOWDY: Senior FBI agent Peter Strzok wrote, “No. No, he’s not. We’ll stop it.” I think this is the same Peter Strzok who worked on the Clinton email investigation? Do I have that right?
HOROWITZ: That’s correct.
GOWDY: Same Peter Strzok who not only worked the Russia investigation when it began, was one of the lead investigators at the inception of the Russia probe. Do I have the right Peter Strzok?
HOROWITZ: That’s my understanding.
GOWDY: Now, is it the same Peter Strzok who was put on the Mueller special counsel team?
HOROWITZ: Yes.
GOWDY: Same Peter Strzok. And this is not the only time he managed to find the text feature on his phone, either. This is the same Peter Strzok who said, “Trump is an idiot. Hillary should win 100 million to zero.” Now, Mr. Inspector General, that one is interesting to me, because he’s supposed to be investigating her for violations of the Espionage Act, and he can’t think of a single, solitary American that wouldn’t vote for her for president. Can you see our skepticism?
RUSH: Right. Now, we’ve got two more from Gowdy. But when it was his turn, Elijah Cummings of the Congressional Black Caucasians, he is the ranking Democrat on the committee. And you know what he did? This is a joint committee on the inspector general report. You know what Elijah Cummings did? He launched into the separation of criminals and their children at the border! He had nothing to say.
He could not say a thing that was helpful to his side on this IG report. So he used his time, most of it, to lambaste Trump and ask, “What country is this? This is the United States of America! We are separating…” You can see everybody on the committee looking around, “What’s he doing?” Well, we figured it out. He’s got nothing to say, so he totally changed the subject (sigh) and it was a testament to the powerful nature of Gowdy and his statements, which we have yet another example of here…
Rush Limbaugh
GOWDY: What do you think the “it” is in that phrase “we’ll stop it”?
HOROWITZ: Oh, I think it’s clear in the context it’s we’re gonna stop him from becoming president.
GOWDY: That’s what I thought too. Now, I wonder who the “we” is in the “we’ll stop it.” Who do you think the “we” is?
HOROWITZ: Well, I think that’s probably subject to multiple interpretations — them or a broader group beyond that.
GOWDY: How about “finish it”? When he said, “I unleashed it. Now I need to fix it and finish it,” what do you think he meant by “finish it”?
HOROWITZ: I think in the context of the emails that occurred in August, the prior August that you outlined, I think a reasonable explanation that or a reasonable inference of that is that he believed he would use or potentially use his official authority to take action.
GOWDY: But this is 24 hours into him being put on the Mueller probe. There’s no way he could have possibly prejudged the outcome of the investigation. Maybe he did. Maybe that’s the outcome-determinative bias that my Democrat friends have such a hard time finding.
RUSH: Gowdy just… There was one long passage here that he just summed all of this up in as brief a manner as I have seen it done and just destroyed these people. In fact, he even did a lot of damage to the inspector general, who maintains that he couldn’t find any bias as the reason for all of this happening. He couldn’t find any “documentary bias,” meaning he didn’t have a document where they say they were doing this ’cause they hate Republicans. But it was clear. And Gowdy just stripped all of this bare. Here’s one more example where Horowitz, under questioning, says he’s never seen this level of bias, and he’s still investigating Strzok on Russia.
GOWDY: Did you ever have an agent when you were a prosecutor with this level of bias?
HOROWITZ: My view of this was that this was extremely serious, completely antithetical to the core values. In my personal view having been a prosecutor and worked with FBI agents, I can’t imagine FBI agents suggesting, even, that they might use their powers to investigate, frankly, any candidate for any office.
GOWDY: Well, I can’t either. I am struggling to find a better example of outcome-determinative bias than that. So what am I missing?
HOROWITZ: Well, I think, uh, that certainly with regard to the, uh, Russia investigation you mentioned, as you know, we are looking at that in an ongoing way.
RUSH: Let me tell you what would happen if you watched this whole thing, as I did. If you watch Gowdy from beginning to end, with even more of what we haven’t had time to air here, you cannot conclude anything other that this is one of the sleaziest, dirtiest, most corrupt, politicized and biased attempts to destroy a particular presidential candidate while protecting another one. It is paramountly obvious.
The way Gowdy unpacked this and presented it versus the way the inspector general presents it? The two techniques, Gowdy and Horowitz, are so disparate that the conclusion has to be that the inspector general report — as filed, as reported, and as written — is actually part of the cover-up and the fix being in for all of this from the get-go. Because, folks, if this thing were interpreted as Gowdy did and written by the IG as Gowdy has interpreted it and any common sense person with the information would, these people would be in handcuffs already.
They would have been charged. The things they have done are worthy of serious criminal charges. And yet they’re still employed, many of them and still receiving paychecks. And especially they have been exonerated under the theory that there wasn’t any operational bias here that determined the outcome of any of these various operations. So I think — especially after listening to Gowdy the way he presented this today — it is clear that the ongoing effort to cover up and to water down what actually happened is still widely in practice.
Former FBI director James Comey is under investigation for mishandling classified information, DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz revealed Monday.
He is specifically under investigation for his handling of memos he wrote about interactions with President Trump while FBI director.
“Comey said he did not expect a report on his handling of classified information because ‘That’s frivolous.’ I don’t happen to think that it is frivolous”~ Sen. Chuck Grassley
“Question number one, Mr. Horowitz, are you investigating the handling of his memo and does that include the classification issues, and should Mr. Comey expect a report when it’s complete?” Grassley asked.
We are handling that referral and we will issue a report when the matter is complete, consistent with the law and rules that are — a report that’s consistent and takes those into account,” Horowitz responded.
