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Justice Department Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz releases his report essentially clearing former FBI officials James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and others, of political motives in launching an investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia. They were authorized to spy on the future president’s team. However, the IG report points out “serious performance failures” in the FISA court application to spy on Trump foreign-policy adviser Carter Page — failures that make little sense without a political motive. President Trump says the report shows an attempt to overthrow the government.
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17 replies on “IG Report: FBI Authorized to Spy on Trump Campaign, Plagued by “Serious Failures””
It seems clear that the mistakes, errors and omissions of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign had a disparate impact — and we all know what that means.
Those that have been doing the research, and braving the conspiracy theory label proudly, have found tons of evidence in the report to confirm the crimes. The summary is a bit soft but, as I noted in another comment there, may be good reason to take political motivation out of the picture.
Bills pretending to not know that there are four special investigators set up by Sessions while he was “recused” from anything significant with teams based out side Washington DC in red states. We know two of the names US Attorney John W Huber and US Attorney John Durhum but we only know that because lawyers for Clapper and others have named them in congressional committees when congressmen pressed them on questions they could not answer because they are already under charges. We do not know the names of the other two investigators. We do know that one of these two is doing the Clinton foundation funds and activities.
There are 30000 sealed indictments nation wide. Normally there is only 2000. Investigations are not beginning their almost all done but are being held until the time is right. The left has a giant sword dangling over their head. Trump is not in a rush. There are no statutes of limitations.
There is a probability that while political motivations is easy to see its hard to prove in a court, does not add to the penalty if proven, and may even serve as a kind of plea in the same manner as an insanity plea. Remember Most of these cases if they get to court will be tried in Washington DC or Virginia both very left-wing states where most juries favour the Democrat party. So it needs to be about crimes independent of politics not the political motivation.
If political motivation is in play here with the left it could set a nasty precedent. If years from now it could be a conservative in the dock facing charges brought by the left with political motivation as part of the charge. Never set a precedent that could hang you.
DOJ IG report seems to say that because Mueller found no collusion, the documented bias of the upper echelon FBI investigating him did not affect the outcome. But AG Barr’s and USAtty Durham’s statements demonstrate the IG report’s limited scope and establish there is more to the story, hopefully criminal liability for those who conspired to use a “counterintelligence investigation” to prevent a president’s election and then unseat him.
Government Beaurocrat theme song: https://youtu.be/RXu0wuz9Ino
As someone who has started, owned and sold several businesses, but also held an elected position for 8 years as a county official, I can say with great confidence that the auditing world in government is one of the most swampy of disciplines in the known world. The language used is tantamount to an alien from another planet. It not only does not find fault (even though they commonly use the word “findings”), they routinely couch the report in terms of mistakes or errors which can and should be corrected in the future. It’s no different than telling a 6 year old to not take cookies out of the cookie jar without asking, but if you do it again, we’ll tell you more strongly next time.
Horowitz is Swamp, knows Swamp, lives Swamp, and will die Swamp. His tenure throughout his time in government is following Swamp rules and culture. No one can be fired; they can be arrested by law enforcement and removed if they kill somebody at work, but they are never fired for poor performance, nor are departments ever disbanded due to inability to perform. They can only be unfunded. No matter what, if a person or department continues to be active in government, the auditors or inspectors general will never issue a report that condemns the person or organization for failure. Failure is not known to IGs or government auditors because failure is not in their lexicon. Mistakes, errors, lack of candor, and the list goes on, substitute for failure to perform or for lies.
As I’ve said for four decades, government bureaucracy is an entity that ultimately becomes a perpetual motion machine that feeds itself, operates independent of the real world, and audits itself in order to prove its efficacy and truthfulness to the outside world. It can only be harnessed by reducing the funds that feed it. No amount of oversight can fix it because oversight is rigged in their favor and in fact provides false but greater power to it.
There is hope for the Attorney General to actually enforce the laws and prosecute the perpretrators, but the pressures being brought against them, against Trump and any disrupter of government largesse is meteoric.
Bill, everyone knows it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. Those involved knew exactly what they were doing and knew that nothing would come of it. A slap on the wrist, maybe. Hillary is excused for keeping an unsecured mail server because she had no criminal “intent”? Mistakes were made? They should all be fired, if not for incompetence then for ignorance. And any changes to policy so this doesn’t happen in the future is laughable.
The probability of 5 out of 5 mistakes happening in the same direction purely by chance is the same as that of 5 tossed coins all showing heads. That is 1/(2^5) = 1/32 (~3%).
The probability of 10 mistakes happening the same way is 1/(2^10) = 1/1,024 (~0.1%).
IG Horowitz is trying to convince us that 17 mistakes all went in the same direction by sheer random chance. The probability of that is 1/(2^17) = 1/131,072 (~0.0008%).
“Who do you take me for,” indeed.
From what I’ve read, in criminal trials “beyond a reasonable doubt” means 98-99% certainty that the defendant did it.
What we have here is a 99.9992% certainty.
They did it.
I don’t think the IG Report was ever meant to explain motives of the why actions were taken; it was to point out the errors that occurred during the process. It has done now that. The motives and whys, and evidence for any crimes committed, are more likely in Durham’s investigation, which we already know is a criminal investigation. I find it interesting that the House decided to press for impeachment (without any apparent evidence) on the very day after the IG report came out. Now they are scrambling to paint Trump as a criminal in order to control the media narrative, because they know more damning reports are coming. Especially since they foolishly advanced a full impeachment to the Senate without real evidence. The only reasons I can think of for why they would do that is they fear greatly Trump winning the 2020 election (since they’ve put forward no powerful candidate themselves) and/or they fear Trump is about to expose their malfeasance to the world through criminal investigations. Either way, the trial in the Senate should be interesting, now that the Senate will be in control and can subpoena anyone they want and put them under oath (including Obama and Hillary). I suspect Durham’s criminal investigation report will not be as vague, as the IG report and will probably end up being bad news for Brennan, and possibly Strozk and Page. Their emails provided solid evidence of a coup attempt (the “”insurance plan”), just not who was running it. Get your popcorn. The trial will now become most entertaining, and more investigation reports are coming.
I don’t think Durham will issue an investigation report. He’s a prosecutor. If he takes action, he will be issuing indictments.
There are already 13000 sealed indictments on the books and Durham and the other three have been at it since mid 2017. Normally there are only 2000 sealed indictments in the USA at any given time. Some, I believe, may be unrelated; moslem brotherhood indictments and some may be in relation to a paedophile ring that’s still active, in both cases they will be working their way up the leadership of those things before acting. Still 13000 is a lot. It was higher but a large number died with Epstein.
Who did not kill himself.
No consequences, no changes.
The IG did’t find any evidence? Did he look? If he looked, did he see? If he saw, did he care? Another member of the deep state says “we are innocent”. I have a hard time believing him or any of the deep state cohort.
In face of the fact that an accusation is by itself treated as evidence and proof of guilt without any due process of testing of the so called evidence. Further by the fact of mounting a defense is treated as obstruction of justice. Finally by actually doing what is part of the constitutional mandate for doing the job is called contempt of congress. It stinks of willful malicious corruption from the highest levels down deeply into our out of control administrative state that has no constitutional bases for existence.
Our constitutional republic is about dead. Can it be saved? Maybe. Maybe not. What I do know is that it is going to get very ugly before the issues get settled.
So much for the Horowitz report. I’m just pleased to have helped pay for the Inspector General’s bureaucracy.
Based upon indirect experience with the FBI’s investigation process at my place of employment, I have very little confidence in the institution’s competence. It is a political machine that too often bends to the whims of those in powerful positions.