Category: "Politics"
April 16th, 2018
There Goes the Bureau: Obama's Corrupt & Heavily Politicized DOJ Feuded with FBI Eventually Causing Many Top Agents to Quit
Published on April 16th, 2018 @ 08:41:00 pm , using 497 words,
The Washington Times
Acrimony between the FBI and Department of Justice was so bad in the waning days of the Obama Administration some agents quit the bureau, a former G-man said.
Feuds over the direction of investigations — and particularly some of the high-profile politically-involved probes — began to build up as the 2016 election approached, and as the FBI felt pressure from its political masters at the department.
Agents in field offices did not trust department lawyers they viewed as Washington bureaucrats, while the department’s headquarters, known in the business as Main Justice, felt rank-and-file agents weren’t following orders and, at times, strongly disagreeing with superiors.
The department’s inspector general exposed just how deep the feuding ran in a new report last week investigating the actions of former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The report recounted an August 2016 phone call from a high-level Justice Department official who complained the FBI had taken “overt” actions to investigate the Clinton Foundation, potentially embarrassing then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Mr. McCabe said he got the sense the Obama Justice Department was telling him “to shut down” the probe. Later he called the exchange as “very dramatic” and said he’d never had a confrontation like that with the Justice Department.
“The engine driving all of this, which is alluded to in the report, is that the FBI people in New York were closer to the facts on the Clinton Foundation and angry it wasn’t going anywhere,” said J. Christian Adams, who served as an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2005 through 2010.
“People in the FBI wanted to follow the facts and the law wherever it took them and this mysterious PADAG calls the number two man at the FBI and tells him to shut it down,” Mr. Adams said. “That’s amazing.”
The inspector general said Mr. McCabe was caught in “an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton foundation case,” and described the broader FBI-Main Justice relationship as “being under great stress.”
It didn’t help that Mr. McCabe’s boss, then-FBI Director James Comey, was viewed by field agents as an extension of the Justice Department. He had never served as an agent and came to bureau after a stint as Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush. He is the one who selected Mr. McCabe as his second in command.
Former agents said the relationship began to sour well before 2016, though, with much of the bad blood dating back to former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who led the department for President Obama from 2009 to 2015.
“I know from talking to some agents in the FBI at that time that there conflicts between the Holder DOJ and its priorities and how the FBI wanted to work cases,” said Danny Defenbaugh, a 33-year FBI agent, who retired in 2002.
“The FBI had always taken pride in following the evidence to where it would lead and never allowing politics into their investigation decisions,” Mr. Defenbaugh continued. “But then the DOJ at times would say, ‘we don’t want you to do this.’”
One major source of contention was Mr. Holder’s push to investigate local police agencies for civil rights violations.
The department opened more than 20 civil rights investigations into local police departments between 2009 and 2014, more than doubling the number of reviews from the previous five years.
Some in law enforcement, including the FBI, were demoralized by the probes, believing they were risking their lives without any support from Main Justice, said a former department lawyer.
“Eric Holder waged an anti-police campaign that he believed in,” Mr. Adams said. “He was so successful in merging his ideology with the Justice Department some people there didn’t even realize he was doing it.”
The battle intensified as the Justice Department and the FBI’s field office in New York battled over the 2014 death of Eric Garner in New York City. Garner died in July of that year…..
April 15th, 2018
Ex-FBI Director/Political Hitman James Comey Just Threw Obama and Loretta Lynch Under the Bus Claiming They "Jeopardized" Clinton Investigation
Published on April 15th, 2018 @ 08:24:00 pm , using 1005 words,
Lordy, Lordy!
~ Refocus Notes
With the country's attention focused on James Comey's book publicity gala interview with ABC at 10 pm ET, the former FBI Director has thrown former President Obama and his Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the bus, claiming they "jeopardized" the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Comey called out Obama and Lynch in his new book, A Higher Loyalty, set to come out on Tuesday. In it, he defends the FBI's top brass and counterintelligence investigators charged with probing Clinton's use of a private email server and mishandling of classified information, reports the Washington Examiner, which received an advanced copy.
“I never heard anyone on our team — not one — take a position that seemed driven by their personal political motivations. And more than that: I never heard an argument or observation I thought came from a political bias. Never ... Instead, we debated, argued, listened, reflected, agonized, played devil’s advocate, and even found opportunities to laugh as we hashed out major decisions.
("Guys, LMAO, we totally just exonerated Hillary! My sides! Hey Andy, how's Jill's Senate race going?")
Comey says that multiple public statements made by Obama about the investigation "jeopardized" the credibility of the FBI investigation - seemingly absolving Clinton of any crime before FBI investigators were able to complete their work.
“Contributing to this problem, regrettably, was President Obama. He had jeopardized the Department of Justice’s credibility in the investigation by saying in a 60 Minutes interview on Oct. 11, 2015, that Clinton’s email use was “a mistake” that had not endangered national security,” Comey writes. “Then on Fox News on April 10, 2016, he said that Clinton may have been careless but did not do anything to intentionally harm national security, suggesting that the case involved overclassification of material in the government.”
“President Obama is a very smart man who understands the law very well. To this day, I don’t know why he spoke about the case publicly and seemed to absolve her before a final determination was made. If the president had already decided the matter, an outside observer could reasonably wonder, how on earth could his Department of Justice do anything other than follow his lead.” -Washington Examiner
Of course, Comey had already begun drafting Clinton's exoneration before even interviewing her, something which appears to have been "forgotten" in his book.
“The truth was that the president — as far as I knew, anyway — he had only as much information as anyone following it in the media. He had not been briefed on our work at all. And if he was following the media, he knew nothing, because there had been no leaks at all up until that point. But, his comments still set all of us up for corrosive attacks if the case were completed with no charges brought.”
"Matter" not "Investigation"
Comey also describes a September 2015 meeting with AG Lynch in which she asked him to describe the Clinton email investigation as a "matter" instead of an investigation.
“It occurred to me at the moment that this issue of semantics was strikingly similar to the fight the Clinton campaign had waged against The New York Times in July. Ever since then, the Clinton team had been employing a variety of euphemisms to avoid using the word ‘investigation,’” Comey writes.
“The attorney general seemed to be directing me to align with the Clinton campaign strategy. Her “just do it” response to my question indicated that she had no legal or procedural justification for her request, at least not one grounded in our practices or traditions. Otherwise, I assume, she would have said so.
Comey said others present at the meeting with Lynch thought her request was odd and political as well - including one of the DOJ's senior leaders.
“I know the FBI attendees at our meeting saw her request as overtly political when we talked about it afterward. So did at least one of Lynch’s senior leaders. George Toscas, then the number-three person in the department’s National Security Division and someone I liked, smiled at the FBI team as we filed out, saying sarcastically, ‘Well you are the Federal Bureau of Matters,’” Comey recalled.
That said, Comey "didn't see any instance when Attorney General Lynch interfered with the conduct of the investigation," writing "Though I had been concerned about her direction to me at that point, I saw no indication afterward that she had any contact with the investigators or prosecutors on the case."
In response, Loretta Lynch promptly issued a statement in which she said that if James Comey "had any concerns regarding the email investigation, classified or not, he had ample opportunities to raise them with me both privately and in meetings. He never did."
April 15th, 2018
Newt Gingrich Rips Into FBI's Raid on Cohen as a Nazi Germany-Style Gestapo Tactic: "Cohen Today You Tomorrow" (Youtube)
Published on April 15th, 2018 @ 07:48:00 pm , using 363 words,
What our "friends' on the left would never dare to admit is the simple fact that if the Trump administration had approved an unlawful raid on a private attorney for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the howls for the impeachment of Trump would be absolutely deafening, especially from the media, Democrat party officials, and of course, from the Progressive Democrat base, itself...
~Refocus Notes
Washington Times
Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House, ripped into the FBI for its raid on President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, comparing the federal action to the Nazi regime.
And insofar as the rather ridiculous raids on Cohen’s files go — he’s got a bit of a point. These are moves that ring more of Gestapo, less of constitutional America — more of a police state, less of a republic, land of the law.
On Fox News, Gingrich said: “This whole thing is an absurdity. We’ve now had Paul Manafort and his wife in their pajamas at three in the morning, having the FBI break down the door. … [Now], Cohen, the lawyer, had the door taken off of the hinges at 6 in the morning.”
What happened to the rule of law?
Oh yeah — about that.
“It ain’t the rule of law when they kick in your door at three in the morning and you’re faced with armed men,” Gingrich said, The Hill reported. “And you have had no reason to be told you’re going to have that kind of treatment. That’s Stalin. That’s the Gestapo in Germany. That shouldn’t be the American FBI.”
No, it shouldn’t. And the fact that it is should have all Americans, regardless of political party affiliation, worried.
Cohen today — you tomorrow. That’s the warning, pure and simple. The document that used to restrict the powers of the government, the powers of the police, is apparently no longer in effect.
It’s time to reel in the FBI and the federal authorities — restrict to desk duty, suspend or even fire the over-the-top aggressors. If not now, then it’ll never be done. In the name of the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment and all that’s common sense and just, the wings of the feds, the FBI, must be clipped.
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• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
April 13th, 2018
Inspector General Releases Explosive Report Detailing Ex-FBI Director Andrew McCabe's Pattern of Lies While Casting Doubt on James Comey
Published on April 13th, 2018 @ 08:28:00 pm , using 967 words,
Once again we find that President Trump has been telling the truth and the FBI has once again been caught in a pattern of lies
~ Refocus Notes
Fox News
Andrew McCabe, onetime acting FBI director, leaked a self-serving story to the press and later lied about it to his boss and federal investigators, prompting a stunning fall from grace that ended in his firing last month, says a bombshell report released Friday by the Justice Department's internal watchdog.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz, appointed by President Barack Obama, had been reviewing FBI and DOJ actions leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
The report, handed over to Congress on Friday and obtained by Fox News, looked at a leak to The Wall Street Journal about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation.
The report says that McCabe authorized the leak and then misled investigators about it, leaking in a way that did not fall under a "public interest" exception.
DOJ IG releases an explosive report that led to the firing of ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by Fox News
"[W]e concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the CF investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of department leadership, was clearly not within the public interest exception," the report says.
McCabe was fired last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just days before he would have been eligible for a lifetime pension after it was determined that he misled investigators reviewing the bureau’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server.
Sessions said that McCabe “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions.”
President Trump reacted to the report Friday in a highly charged tweet saying McCabe "LIED! LIED! LIED!" and used the social media platform to describe allegations of collusion between his campaign and Moscow as "all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!"
The report faults McCabe for leaking information to Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett for an Oct. 30, 2016, story titled “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.” The story -- written just days before the presidential election – focused on the FBI announcing the reopening of the Clinton investigation after finding thousands of her emails on a laptop belonging to former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
"Among the purposes of the disclosure was to rebut a narrative that had been developing following a story in The WSJ on Oct. 23, 2016, that questioned McCabe’s impartiality in overseeing FBI investigations involving [Clinton], and claimed that McCabe had ordered the termination of the [FBI's Clinton Foundation investigation] due to Department of Justice pressure," the report says.
That leak confirmed the existence of the probe, which then-FBI Director James Comey had up to that point refused to do. The report says that McCabe "lacked candor"[ Lied] in a conversation with Comey when he said that he had not authorized the disclosure and didn't know who had done so.
The IG also found that he also lacked candor [Lied] when questioned by FBI agents on multiple occasions since that conversation, where he told agents that he did authorize the disclosure and did not know who was responsible.
McCabe has denied doing anything wrong. "This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement and intelligence professionals more generally," McCabe said in a statement after his firing.
In a letter submitted by McCabe’s counsel after reviewing a draft of the report, McCabe argues that “the OIG should credit Mr. McCabe’s account over Director Comey’s” and complains that the report “paints Director Comey as a white knight carefully guarding FBI information, while overlooking that Mr. McCabe’s account is more credible for at least three key reasons ...”
McCabe's counsel, Michael Bromwich, in a statement to Fox News, slammed the OIG report. "The core weakness of the OIG report is the lack of any understandable motive for his alleged wrongdoing. It is undisputed that Mr. McCabe was one of three senior FBI officials authorized to share information with the media, including on sensitive investigative matters," he said.
"He chose to exercise that authority in October 2016, during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the bureau, with the knowledge of Director Comey and other senior members of FBI management. His purpose was to protect the institutional reputation of the FBI against false claims, including that a sensitive investigation was being shut down for political reasons."
McCabe and Bromwich seemingly sought to diminish the credibility of Comey, blasting his "recollection" as "not at all clear."
"Mr. McCabe’s recollection of discussions he had with Director Comey about this issue is extremely clear; Director Comey’s recollection is, by his own acknowledgment, not at all clear. And yet two of the lack of candor allegations are based on Director Comey’s admittedly vague and uncertain recollection of those discussions. "
McCabe has been in the news since his firing, particularly over a GoFundMe campaign which raised more than $500,000 for a legal defense fund.
McCabe also wrote a dramatic op-ed for The Washington Post in which he again denied lying to or misleading investigators, and talked of the humiliation he had undergone over the probe and the way in which he was fired.
“Not in my worst nightmares did I ever dream my FBI career would end this way,” he wrote.
Fox News’ Chad Pergram, Jake Gibson and Alex Pappas contributed
to this report.
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April 10th, 2018
DOJ & Mueller Violated Trump Attorney's Constitutional Rights In Records Seizure Says Famed Legal Scholar Alan Dershowitz
Published on April 10th, 2018 @ 08:44:00 pm , using 440 words,
If the DOJ violated Trump Atty Cohen's constitutional rights, as Dershowitz, a liberal law scholar asserts, this could easily mean that any records seized would be inadmissible in any future legal proceeding, at a minimum.
On the other side of the coin is the fact that this could also mean that Mueller, Rosenstein, and his culpable FBI Lackies could all be in some form of legal jeopardy, with regard to their positions as civil servants.
~ Refocus Notes
A famed Harvard legal scholar is raising concerns about the Justice Department's ability to responsibly handle some documents seized Monday from Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's offices.
Among the scooped-up papers, and lurking on phones and hard drives, is likely to be a cache of material that's covered by attorney-client privilege.
Prosecutors are not permitted access to those files, and the DOJ's standard practice is to set up a 'taint team' – a group of agents and lawyers not connected to the Cohen case or the special counsel probe into all things Russia – to decide what they can see.
But 'taint teams don't work,' Alan Dershowitz told DailyMail.com on Tuesday because seizing the material in the first place was a violation of Cohen's constitutional rights – even if it's never used in court.
Michael Cohen
Dershowitz was at the White House on Tuesday afternoon in advance of a dinner appointment with the president, according to two officials.
He said it's 'rare' for federal law enforcement to serve a no-knock search warrant on an attorney in a case as high-profile as the one now swirling around the White House.
But the investigative firewalls between FBI strike teams and prosecutors are 'not so uncommon,' UCLA Law School professor Harry Litman told DailyMail.com.
He said such teams are assembled 'several times a year' at the federal level, citing the 1993 civil rights trial of four Los Angeles police officers who were caught on camera physically attacking Rodney King, an African-American taxi driver.
Although the officers were acquitted in a California courtroom, the federal government won civil rights convictions against two of them.
But the Justice Department prosecutors in the second case weren't permitted to see anything related to the earlier criminal trial, Litman explained.
As a practical matter, he insisted, taint teams do their jobs well.
'I've experienced it,' he said 'There's absolutely no cheating, certainly at the federal level. The consequences are too severe.'
Litman called the Justice Department 'ultra-hyper-vigilant, even paranoid, about this precise issue.'
But for Dershowitz, who helped win a murder acquittal for O.J. Simpson and succeeded in overturning the attempted murder conviction of Claus von Bülow, the constitutional issues are more important than the DOJ's trustworthiness – and bigger than the presidency.
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