And FBI Attorney 2 said “Hell no” and “Viva le resistance.”
If that's supposed to be French, the word is "vive" not "viva," and "resistance" should have the feminine article, "la," not "le." If it's Spanish, "viva" is fine, there's no "le" in Spanish, "resistance" is not the Spanish word, and it's still feminine, so "la" would be the proper article. I'm seeing "Viva le resistance" repeated a lot — like here, at Instapundit — and I'm getting tired of looking at something so formally ignorant.
But as long as I'm moved to make that formal critique, I'll look at the substance (pages 415 to 424).
FBI Attorney 2 was asked what he meant by that "Viva le resistance," and he said:
So, this is in reference to an ongoing subject. And then following that, like I interpreted [FBI Attorney 1’s] comment to me as being, you know, just her and I [sic] socially and as friends discussing our particular political views, to which I see that as more of a joking inquiry from her. It’s not something along the lines of where I’m not committed to the U.S. Government. I obviously am and, you know, work to do my job very well and to continue to, to work in that capacity. It’s just the, the lines bled through here just in terms of, of my personal, political view in terms of, of what particular preference I have. But, but that doesn’t have any, any leaning on the way that I, I maintain myself as a professional in the FBI.Obviously, he's just asserting what he must (and what the Executive Summary will also assert) that he has political opinions but they don't bleed into his work because he is a professional.
The IG "asked FBI Attorney 2 if 'Viva le resistance' signaled he was going to fight back against President Trump" and he said:
That’s not what I was doing.... I just, again, like that, that’s just like the entire, it’s just my political view in terms of, of my preference. It wasn’t something along the lines of, you know, we’re taking certain actions in order to, you know, combat that or, or do anything like that. Like that, that was not the intent of that. That was more or less just like, you know, commentary between me and [FBI Attorney 1] in a personal friendship capacity where she is just making a joke, and I’m responding. Like, it’s not something that, that I personally believe in that instance.That's a repetition of the same idea. Personal opinions and professional work are kept separate. It really is a convention to believe that people can do that. You can be cynical or skeptical or just plain realistic and think that's not how human minds function, but it's a fiction we actually do need to believe in (at least up to a point) if we are going to put human beings in a position of trust.
The IG said that it showed "extremely poor judgment and a gross lack of professionalism" to use the FBI's systems and devices to send these messages, because "It is essential that the public have confidence that the work of the FBI is done without bias or appearance of partiality, and that those engaged in it follow the facts and law wherever they may lead and without any agenda or desired result other than to see that justice is done."
Perhaps in the interest in maintaining what is "essential," the IG "found no documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific Midyear investigative decisions." I notice the words "directly" and "no documentary or testimonial evidence." You can read the report yourself and see the basis for inference and suspicion, but you're on your own. There's plenty of evidence that does shake our confidence that the FBI does its work without bias and without any agenda or desired result. But — the IG encourages us to think — it's also possible to maintain your confidence, so why don't you do that? Because your confidence is essential!
पोस्ट्स
१८९ टिप्पण्या:
I infer from the evidence that the FBI is essentially running a confidence game.
"Viva le resistance"
Not only are we being patronized, we are also being screwed by our inferiors.
"Perhaps in the interest in maintaining what is "essential," the IG "found no documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific Midyear investigative decisions." I notice the words "directly" and "no documentary or testimonial evidence.""
Yes, thanks for noticing that the report is half-baked.
"You can read the report yourself and see the basis for inference and suspicion, but you're on your own."
Better on my own than being in the hands of swamp creatures or an IG whitewasher who asserts there are no connections between the dots.
"There's plenty of evidence that does shake our confidence that the FBI does its work without bias and without any agenda or desired result. But — the IG encourages us to think — it's also possible to maintain your confidence, so why don't you do that? Because your confidence is essential!"
I appreciate the one, but my confidence was not shaken since I had none. Nor is my confidence essential: my contempt is. And my vote for the one person with a fighting chance to clean up the swamp.
There's an interesting paradox here. On one hand, if you do your investigation, then you might be targeted by the next President. If you don't do your job, then you get to keep your highly paid investigative job.
FAT CHANCE! Of course their personal opinions colored, controlled and dominated their professional actions. What Hogwash! Fire them all. Take their pensions.
No decent human being thinks the upper ranks of the FBI are anything but democrat partisans.
Caesar's Wife doesn't work here anymore.
just her and I [sic] socially and as friends discussing our particular political views
It sounds wrong, but how many can say why it sounds wrong.
The hidden rule is that subjects of nonfinite verbs (verbs not carrying tense) are in the objective case. The rule came from Latin.
I'm still waiting for that 1, just 1, accidental tweet or comment that showed any agent supported Trump.
Just like the Mueller hack team.
But no, as with the entire leadership empire built by Barack (hey, you DID build that!), it was just a bunch of guys and gals who just happened to turn out to be 100% dem partisans, in an agency that is reported to be 50%+ right of center.
What are the odds of that? Why, that's almost as coincidental as the former President of the United States just happening upon the current Attorney General of the United States and having a wonderful and very very very private discussion aboard a private plane where no one can hear what is discussed what all the while the former Presidents wife is under, literally, a criminal investigation....
...although the feds inexplicably "forgot" to make Hillary a subject of the investigation....er....ah...."matter".
Completely on the up and up, and if you don't agree, you are a conspiracy theorist.
Such is the level of confidence of these people that they knew they could get away with all this and still rub it in our faces.
They may try to convince a skeptical public (not of course the lefty fools here) of their fairness but :
We found that Strzok used his personal email accounts for official government business on several occasions, including forwarding an email from his FBI account to his personal email account about the proposed search warrant the Midyear team was seeking on the Weiner laptop.
==> This email included a draft of the search warrant affidavit, which contained information from the Weiner investigation that appears to have been under seal at the time in the Southern District of New York and information obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena issued in the Eastern District of Virginia in the Midyear investigation. <==
That's a felony.
any agent supported Trump.
That's why I thought it so significant that my daughter, pretty much a lefty, told me in September 2016 that she would NOT vote for Hillary.
She has been an FBI agent for almost 20 years. They knew the top was dirty.
These people are tasked with responsibility to enforce the rule of law. They clearly do not believe in the rule of law.
The mask is off the democrat party. It is impossible to be a member of that party and pretend you believe in anything with a straight face.
Over 70% of democrats do not want peace with North Korea because they would have to give Trump credit.
I think that is closer to 99%. There are just 25% or so that are lying to themselves.
I have no objections as long as the same level of credulity is shown with regard to even the most ill-thought actions or words of the Trump people. Otherwise, it will be clear we have two standards of justice: One for the State and one for everyone else.
People are seeing two different porn videos on the same screen.
That happens with feminism too.
It's clear that the dominant culture at the FBI is so corrupt that agents aren't reluctant to share the most partisan positions back and forth in official channels.
I'm reminded, not only of the Comey report ("her actions met every element of the crime, but she didn't commit the crime"), but of 12 Angry Men, where the concept of reasonable doubt was perverted by a slick huckster into unreasonable doubt. They let a guilty man go free by focussing on each piece of evidence on its own and ignoring the pattern and totality of the evidence.
Vive l'impédance.
Allow for complex values, time delays, phases.
Anybody who's been audited by the IRS, or been part of an investigation or audit themselves, knows there's a lot of room for judgement in the regulations.
Your auditor/investigator will "go by rules" - but you can go "Hard" and you can go "Soft".
If the IRS auditor doesn't like you, he'll make you support every deduction, demand documentation up the wazoo, and if you haven't "crossed your i's and dotted your t's" will question it. He'll also spend lots of time looking into anything that's even slightly odd or fishy. He'll convince his boss, there's risk there and needs a lot of investigation.
If he likes you, he'll write-off all those grey areas in your favor, and may not even ask for documentation to support a deduction. He'll convince his boss, that going any deeper into your return is a "Waste of time" and move on to bigger things.
The whole, "I hate Trump, but I'm objective" is bunk.
IRS auditor, Stranger than Fiction (2006)
Like, you know, I'm a professional. There's no way, you know, that I would ever deliberately and intentionally like point shave a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, the historic first female president. You know?
That's what happened with Hillary's Email and Trump-Russia.
Everyone from Lynch on down to Strzork (sic) wanted to write off the Hillary investigation before they even started. They liked her.
OTOH, they wanted to hated Trump and wanted to nail him -and were willing to look under every rock and in every nook and cranny.
They started in June 2016 and two years later they're still looking.
Trump's fresh rhetorical breeze dismisses the pose of seriousness as indicating there's no agent problem. Quite the opposite. It suggests there's a problem.
The "agent problem" is that the agent you hired to represent you starts working in his own interest even when it's against you.
All these reports ought to keep that in mind.
I suspect if the politics were reversed and an FBI agent sent a private message to another agent joking about resisting Obama's lawlessness, your comments would be filled with defense attorney–level arguments pleading the agent's right to have political thoughts.
Earnest Prole said...
I suspect if the politics were reversed and an FBI agent sent a private message to another agent joking about resisting Obama's lawlessness, your comments would be filled with defense attorney–level arguments defending the agent's right to have political thoughts.
Given that Obama was caught spying on political opponents we would all be happy the FBI was finally doing it's job.
Unfortunately the problem here is the FBI was part of the conspiracy to spy on the said political opponent.
There in lies the problem we all have.
I have a great deal of confidence in the difference between what exists in the Washington, D.C. FBI and those that work from Field Offices. As a political matter what we see in the IG report makes the "Deep State" a very easy thing to believe, if nothing else Newton's First Law.
Earnest Prole: "I suspect if the politics were reversed and an FBI agent sent a private message to another agent joking about resisting Obama's lawlessness, your comments would be filled with defense attorney–level arguments pleading the agent's right to have political thoughts"
Tell us more of this "lawlessness".
Derrida on why he takes the Western side against terrorism:
"That is why, in this unleashing of violence without name, if I had to take one of the two sides and choose in a binary situation, well I would. Despite my very strong reservations about the American, indeed European, political posture, about the ``international terrorist'' coalition, despite all the de facto betrayals, all the failures to live up to democracy, international law, and the very international institutions that the states of this ``coalition'' themselves founded and supported up to a certain point, I would take the side of the camp that, in principle, by right of law, leaves a perspective open to perfectibility in the name of the ``political,'' democracy, international law, international institutions, and so forth. Even if this ``in the name of'' is still merely an assertion and a purely verbal committment. Even in its most cynical mode, such an assertion still lets resonate within it an invincible promise. I don't hear any such promise coming from ``bin Laden,'' at least not one in this world."
So actual failures are not determinative; remember the promise.
I'm reading the Lynch/Comey/McCabe/Page/Etc. responses to the IG. The IG has big blocks of quotes.
I'm shocked at how rambling and often incoherent they are. I thought these people with Hot shit lawyers. I know they're often lying and trying obfuscate - but damn, trying to figure out their point is almost impossible.
Speaking of lawlessness, we now know obama had been using Hillary's homebrew pay for play server/email system, which was illegal.
But only illegal.
It's not like it was illegal illegal.
Its particularly true of Lynch. Read some of her responses and recollections of past conversations. For example, when I read her recollection of the Comey-Lynch conversation after Comey's Oct 28th letter to Congress, I could barely understand it. Ramble, ramble, ramble.
Vive la compagnie.
If the DoJ likes you then "The Logan Act" is just an obscure law that's never been enforced. Who cares if you break it?
If the DoJ hates you, then "The Logan Act" is super-important, and they'll prosecute.
Earnest Prole said...I suspect if the politics were reversed...
The beauty of statements like this is, it will never move beyond "'what you suspect." You can suspect anything you want because you know it will never be put up or shut up time.
So suspect away.
A little off topic,but I am working through chapter by chapter. It becomes very clear in Chapter Five that MidYear Exam was never a serious investigation. If something could be excused or ignored it was. If a little hardball might have produced better results in terms of access to servers, laptops, interviews it was never taken.
Here are a few excerpts that make it clear that there was a lot of "there" there, but the events/facts were excused, ignored or never followed up.
"Based on a review of these emails and other evidence, the investigators determined that, in addition to their official State email accounts, Sullivan and Mills used personal Gmail accounts and Abedin used a personal Yahoo! account and her clintonemail.com account to conduct government business." Horowitz hangs Strzok out to dry for doing this, but these guys, meh.
The investigators further determined that all three of these senior aides either sent or received classified information on their private email accounts and forwarded emails containing classified information to Clinton, These instances are excused because the the information was not correctly marked. Baloney!
Similarly, on May 31, 2016, the FBI sought and obtained a 2703(d) order for Mills’s personal Gmail account. According to the government’s application for the 2703(d) order, the FBI discovered that Mills sent or received at least 911 work- related emails to or from her Gmail account during the time she was employed at the State Department. The application stated that the FBI identified seven emails containing confirmed classified information and an additional 208 emails containing suspected classified information that had not yet undergone formal classification review. The application provided as an example one email that was determined to be classified at the level of SECRET//NOFORN at the time the email was sent. None of the emails contained classification markings. These people are supposed to be pros. Shouldn't they know when they are dealing with classified material regardless of markings. I am more inclined to think someone removed the classification markings. It would be easy enough on an e mail.
Strzok stated that Abedin’s attorneys told the Midyear team that they erred on the side of overproducing Abedin’s emails to the State Department and that, unlike the sort process for Clinton’s emails by Mills and Samuelson, there was no reason to believe Abedin’s attorneys’ sort process was flawed. A really keen investigator! Sure let's take the defendants word that he has produced everything.
If you get the impression that reading chapter five has raised my blood pressure significantly you are very astute!
"FBI Attorney 2 acknowledged that both he and FBI Attorney 1 were assigned to the
Russia investigation at this point in time and he “can understand the, the
perception issues that come from” this exchange."
Yeah, ya think?
That's a repetition of the same idea. Personal opinions and professional work are kept separate. It really is a convention to believe that people can do that. You can be cynical or skeptical or just plain realistic and think that's not how human minds function, but it's a fiction we actually do need to believe in (at least up to a point) if we are going to put human beings in a position of trust.
But at a certain point one has gone so far over the line, the fiction that you are keeping your professional work separate from your personal and political views cannot be sustained. I am not going to debate precisely where that line is, because it is absolutely beyond debate that “Viva le Resistance” is way beyond it.
An FBI agent should be keenly aware that an electronic message is a legal document, which must be archived and available for discovery in the event of legal actions. That is drilled into those of us who work in the corporate world. I get that Hillary Clinton and her minions are almost uniquely technologically illiterate, but there is no excuse for an FBI agent not to be aware.
I am quite convinced that if, in an earlier day, the plans for Operation Overlord had appeared on one of Clinton's many servers the FBI would have found a way to dismiss them as improperly marked. Jesus Christ this chapter five makes me angry.
"There's plenty of evidence that does shake our confidence that the FBI does its work without bias and without any agenda or desired result. But — the IG encourages us to think — it's also possible to maintain your confidence, so why don't you do that? Because your confidence is essential!"
Your confidence is essential, except if you are a deplorable.
Further, the FBI/DOJ would have your confidence were it not for that awful Trump person and that horrible election.
No one I know voted for Trump.
For clarity: Portions of this comment may include sarcasm.
I don't mind agents who are skeptical or even hostile to Trump investigating him. Increases their motivation. I just wish that there had been a similar mindset in the agents investigating Hillary. As Drago points out, how is it possible to gather an assemblage of agents and none of them are suspicious of Hillary?.......Does anyone think that if an agent had demonstrated a similar bias against Hillary that they would still have their job, their pension, or even a life worth living. Look at the flack those people involved in the Lewinsky scandal took on.
You can not separate the personal from the professional once you have verbalized your personal feelings in that professional setting. Impossible. Certainly any of these commenting people who migrated over to the Trump/Russia fantasy should have had the professionalism to remove themselves from the investigation. They, like Jimmy Carter, knew in their hearts that they were tainted.
The beauty of hypotheticals is that they can help us clarify our positions. I am told there are many FBI agents who are conservative. Is it acceptable for them to have political thoughts? Is it reasonable to expect they will never express those thoughts to other like-minded agents?
The IG said that it showed "extremely poor judgment and a gross lack of professionalism"
Why should taxpayers tolerate an FBI operated by stupid amateurs? Just imagine Putin's SVR can do to this nation with such incompetents at the helm of our supposedly professional counter-intelligence agency.
Thanks to the Merit Systems Protection Board it's a Sisyphean labor to fire anybody in the federal government for extremely poor judgment and a gross lack of professionalism. You have to convict them of a felony first. Firing somebody like the "viva le resistance" moron (how did he even pass the entrance exams with such shitty grammar?) will require an indictment for something heinous, at least, else he'll be right back at his mahogany desk with back pay in his pocket thanks to the enablers on the MSPB, which exists to make sure the worse people imaginable can live high on the hog at taxpayer expense (check out the menus at any DC restaurant and wonder how they stay in business — but don't wonder very long) and continue to pork it in on their generous (as in obcene) pensions until they croak. You must nuke the site from orbit because it's the only way to be sure.
One thing Trump can do that the MSPB cannot undo is work assignments. The President can assign any lawful duty to any federal employee. Said employee must perform as instructed, or be dismissed for insubordination. Trump can't dock their pay, but he can fuck with them. Would it not be grand — Agent 5 reports for work one morning and finds his desk replaced with a card table containing an orange safety vest, a roll of trash bags, and a stick with a nail in it? I-95 and the Beltway cleared of litter by GS-15s beavering away in the heat and rain and snow. GLORIOUS!
Is it reasonable to expect they will never express those thoughts to other like-minded agents?
At work? Hell yes. I'm expected to, and I'm a government employee.
As others have mentioned above, what's scary here is the dog that doesn't bark: there were no agents involved in the report that expressed either pro-Trump or even profound suspicion of HRC or the Obama administration?
Combine how common among the general population any one of the three above opinions were at the time with the fact that many of the same agents showed up in both the HRC server & Trump collusion cases and the conclusion becomes inescapable that the DoJ/FBI vetted their agents for ideological purity before assigning them to the two cases.
Love all those "you knows" which should always be interrupted with " no, I don't know " to slow down the bullshit. Is this guy a high school student or a professional. You know. You know. No, I don't fucking know and that is why I am asking you these questions you moron.
@Earnest Prole: why weren't those agents involved in the investigation of Hillary? If agents had been found to be exchanging such messages about Hillary or, God forbid, Obama would they still have. Job.
A professional does not "demand" the confidence of his client. He or she may command that confidence by demonstrated competence and integrity.
I don't doubt that a good portion of the working FBI force out in the hinterlands is right of center. But I think that most, if not all, of the FBI leadership working in the District of Columbia is either (a) rotten to the core; (b) composed entirely of Democrat partisans; or (c) crooked as a dog's hind leg. Until there's demonstrable proof to the contrary, I'll vote for "all of the above".
Mueller's early track record of screwing investigations up was no day at the beach. It's preposterous that St. James Comey presumes to lecture us on morality and loyalty. I guess he's been taking condescending to the rubes at the Obama Academy. And as for McCabe--he's a liar and will soon be fitted for an orange jumpsuit.
We used to have a great deal of respect for and trust in the FBI. Maybe it was because of Efrem Zimbalist Jr. We even continued to have respect for and trust in the agents, etc. after we found out about Hoover. Can we continue to have such respect and trust after learning that FBI agents and lawyers have said in texts and emails what we've now learned they've said, if they aren't at least fired? I don't really care if it was a joke. The WH staffer who said McCain's statement didn't matter because he was dying no longer has her job. ALL of these people should be fired. "For the good of the Agency".
Earnest Prole said...
The beauty of hypotheticals is that they can help us clarify our positions. I am told there are many FBI agents who are conservative. Is it acceptable for them to have political thoughts? Is it reasonable to expect they will never express those thoughts to other like-minded agents?
This is quite illuminating.
You believe it is OK for these agents to be partisan hacks because of some hypothetical that will never and has never happened.
Hillary was clearly whitewashed for thousands of crimes this same FBI has imprisoned numerous service members for.
You want to make this OK because of some hypothetical.
Got it.
I suspect the ones transferred to the DC office are transferred precisely BECAUSE they are reliable liberals/statists. They look out for each other and promote one another.
One ray of hope: the guy from the New York office who said that he wasn't political and didn't care who won the presidency, but why the heck wasn't anyone in Washington calling him about Weiner's laptop that had 300,000 emails from Hillary when Comey had said that DC had 33,000 from her.
That's the guy I want promoted at the FBI.
This is the same BS line the media has been feeding us for decades. "Sure, we're liberal/Democrat, but it doesn't affect our work."
See also: "Republicans pounce."
This is not complicated.
Hillary is a criminal.
The FBI on the 7th floor is a criminal organization.
Obama purposely weaponized it and used it to spy on and suppress political opponents.
If you want complicated here is a video introducing dynamic programming
rhhardin said...
Vive l'impédance.
I like it a lot - though you have to explain too much electricity to most people.
The IG Report - which I'll completely read starting tomorrow, I promise - The IG is who he is, not a prosecutor, not the FBI. An internal investigator of how the agency is doing its job. He's talking about HOW the FBI investigated and saying that the way the FBI allowed itself to work on these crucial investigations, its work looked just like a conspiracy because The FBI broke all its own rules. Hence the FBI needs reform. And why did the FBI break all its own rules? The deplorables have always known it was happening and why. The brilliant others do not. The brilliant brilliants have their own brilliance shining too brightly in their own eyes to see anything beyond the (brilliant, brilliant) shining. At least so far. The tipping point must be close.
Those people in Washington need to be transferred to the South Dakota field offices where they can pursue property theft cases on Indian reservations.
Amadeus 48 said...
One ray of hope: the guy from the New York office who said that he wasn't political and didn't care who won the presidency, but why the heck wasn't anyone in Washington calling him about Weiner's laptop that had 300,000 emails from Hillary when Comey had said that DC had 33,000 from her.
That's the guy I want promoted at the FBI.
If he was honest he will be reassigned to the Alaska field office.
I am betting the New York field office is nearly as "dependable" as the DC federal office.
The beauty of hypotheticals is that they can help us clarify our positions.
@Ernie, here’s a hypothetical for you. You have been tapped for jury duty on a federal case. The FBI says that according to his summarized notes the defendant said this, this, and that. The defendant claims to have said no such thing. The FBI presents evidence, but all of the evidence is easily forged. Question. Do you still trust the FBI after reading the OIG report. Answering my own questions, I would vote to acquit.
The missed the Atlanta bomber. They missed the Sund-Peloso Yosemite killer, they missed the 9-11 hijackers, they missed the Boston Marathon bomber, they missed the Orlando Night club shooter but boy are they good at getting the coach who busted Barry’s final four picks.
Yep. This is why I hope Flynn withdraws his guilty plea and demands a public jury trial.
Complete with the statements of the agents who interviewed him that were illegally withheld from him, in which they and former director Comey state that they themselves do not believe he lied.
These FBI professionals were all played by Clinton and Obama, who ruined their lives and their livelihoods. Do not ever forget that the basis for all of this is the Benghazi lie. Clinton and Obama lying about that horrible night brought about the Gowdy panel, which found the illegal emails. Hillary is the reason this whole thing is in play. She not only could not let go of her presidential aspirations with this going on, knowing it would cause people to lie on her behalf, she fomented the deceit. She needs and has to be at the center of the judicial response.
Looking at the edges for lack of professionalism or political bias means nothing. We accepted a person under FBI -- Federal Bureau of investigation -- not Matter -- review to become a nominee for president. It can never happen again. It has to be disqualifying.
One more thing - when we look at the arc of history or the arc of justice or whatever, we have to marvel at this particular arc, whether we believe in these pre-determined arcs or not. With all of the forces on Clinton's side combining to bring her victory, including the frigging FBI and DOJ, the arc resisted, stood course, and fashioned the just result - Hillary's loss. The American people have common sense, are intuitive and fair, and I thank my lucky stars I was born and raised here.
Oh, the phrase? Just another dumb guy/gal trying to sound oh so smart and sophisticated.
Earnest Troll says: "I suspect if the politics were reversed and an FBI agent sent a private message to another agent joking about resisting Obama's lawlessness, your comments would be filled with defense attorney–level arguments pleading the agent's right to have political thoughts."
Turn that around, ET. If in some fictional universe the FBI was caught with its pants down, revealing that its hierarchy was blatantly political and completely one-sided to the right, openly expressing to one another their support for Rs and contempt for Ds, all while in the course of carrying out investigations critical to both sides' fates -- why, I'm sure you'd be just fine with that.
I'm sure you'd be equally fine with things if we had a press corps that was 85-90% conservatives. But of course, they'd insist they don't put any spin on their coverage. You'd be all peachy about that, wouldn't you?
“I don't mind agents who are skeptical or even hostile to Trump investigating him. Increases their motivation. I just wish that there had been a similar mindset in the agents investigating Hillary. As Drago points out, how is it possible to gather an assemblage of agents and none of them are suspicious of Hillary?.......Does anyone think that if an agent had demonstrated a similar bias against Hillary that they would still have their job, their pension, or even a life worth living.”
One problem was that the very same people were working both investigations (as well as initially for Mueller), which is the reason given by Peter Strzok for sitting on knowledge of the Weiner laptop in police/FBI custody in NYC. Which some have suggested cost Crooked Hillary the election because once Comey found out (from the NYC FBI agents and SDNY office) that they had been sitting on it for a month, he believed that the only way to not delegitimize the impending Clinton election was to notify Congress. If Strzok had promptly acquired the Weiner laptop, they likely could have completed its investigation, with plenty of time to spare before the election.
Of course, that presupposes that the Weiner laptop was actually investigated by the MYE team, after they got their hands on it. Apparently no mention of that whatsoever in the OIG report. Comey claimed that his technical wizards had sifted through roughly 3/4 million emails in a couple days, and found nothing. Note that they very likely couldn’t have even determined whether there were more work related Clinton on that laptop than were supplied by Clinton, since those emails had been printed out and provided on paper, instead of electronically, without, of course, the metadata, that could have been used to match and eliminate reviewing previously reviewed emails. Rep Jim Jordan, and maybe others are being requested to ask IG Horowitz this week whether he saw any evidence that they had actually reviewed all the emails that Comey claimed his people had claimed to have done.
We accepted a person under FBI -- Federal Bureau of investigation -- not Matter -- review to become a nominee for president. It can never happen again. It has to be disqualifying.
No.
That just gives the Administration veto power over who gets to run for president. All they have to do is initiate a bogus investigation on someone.
Voters should drive elections, in accordance with the Constitution.
Nobody else.
@Jason - ya - that is a good point - and I agree with the sentiment. Perhaps this is the lesson that nominating parties will learn, and that may be all I can hope for ....
Earnest Prole suffers John Wayne disease and it is terminal.
For all of those people in America who work in rabid Leftist environments who hold their respective tongues each day because they know the cost of doing otherwise is a loss of employment and reputation (e.g. James Damore or the cake baker) I recommend you pull your head out of your own ass. How many Democrats walk around in fear of losing their jobs for WrongThink?
Let's compare, shall we?
In reviewing a 500 page report, Anne has now spent a dozen or so paragraphs to tell us that a foreign phrase (French) was misspelled using Spanish words where feminine-gender French is required. On the other hand, with the exception of making fun of Trump's poor spelling as in "Despite the constant negative press covfefe," our Smartest President gets a pass.
Democrats believe they can win the hypothetical and legal arguments - especially with the press on their side.
A brilliant salesperson can sell something a person sorta wants or can sorta afford. The Democrat salespeople (e.g. Pelosi and Schumer) are poor at their jobs. They're selling an overpriced, bad product to a discriminating group of buyers with a limited appetite for bull shit. And the product they are selling is dangerous to its consumers.
The Democrats are so caught up with chasing Trump that they cannot see the cliff's edge. The big money people are yelling to run just a little bit faster in the same direction to overtake him. The Wile E. Democrats cannot see how poorly their plan is going.
The "no direct testimonial evidence" part is just too rich.
Oh, you mean no one said "yeah, I totally let my personal bias (for which you have copious evidence) influence the exercise of my official duties in an illegal way?"
Well gee, I guess there's no real problem then; case closed!
Ridiculous.
Question: if we don't care about people's personal beliefs and/or believe that we should evaluate how people do their jobs apart from their own personal beliefs then why do celebrities who offend the Woke Police have to be fired?
I mean, Roseanne, right? No one's arguing that her SHOW is racist or said/did racist things, are they? Just that she herself said something racist and/or believes racist things.
Hey man, that's just her personal opinion! She can still do her job just fine and those personal opinions should have no bearing on our willingness to support or accept her professional work product. Right?
When an FBI honcho calls Trump supporters retards (using the official FBI communication system no less) why shouldn't we call for that person's firing?
Comey claimed that his technical wizards had sifted through roughly 3/4 million emails in a couple days, and found nothing. Note that they very likely couldn’t have even determined whether there were more work related Clinton on that laptop than were supplied by Clinton, since those emails had been printed out and provided on paper, instead of electronically, without, of course, the metadata, that could have been used to match and eliminate reviewing previously reviewed emails.
Just imagine the people who ran the 4 AM raid on Manafort being in charge of the Hillary laptops.
Oh, that's right. They were,.
Achilles said...
No decent human being thinks the upper ranks of the FBI are anything but democrat partisans.
No sentient person paying attention, anyway.
But consider: it's probable that the FBI is one of the LEAST strongly Leftist of the Federal gov. departments!
Spooky.
why, I'm sure you'd be just fine with that
I've made it clear in comments here that I believe the entire investigation was corrupt. I'm taking issue with the idea that FBI agents should not have private political opinions. Since a majority of FBI agents lean conservative, I would hope you could grasp that principle without too much trouble.
I'm finding my own little entry points into the IG report, and what's calling to me now is that damned phrase "Viva le resistance."
The IG report describes an instant message exchange on November 22, 2016. FBI Attorney 1 — referring to how much some subject of the FBI investigation got paid working for the Trump campaign — said "Is it making you rethink your commitment to the Trump administration?"
And FBI Attorney 2 said “Hell no” and “Viva le resistance.”
If that's supposed to be French, the word is "vive" not "viva," and "resistance" should have the feminine article, "la," not "le." If it's Spanish, "viva" is fine, there's no "le" in Spanish, "resistance" is not the Spanish word, and it's still feminine, so "la" would be the proper article. I'm seeing "Viva le resistance" repeated a lot — like here, at Instapundit — and I'm getting tired of looking at something so formally ignorant.
Not that you're wrong on the facts, nor even in your dismay at the way purportedly educated people speak, but I can't pay $500/hr to enable your ADD.
"There's plenty of evidence that does shake our confidence that the FBI does its work without bias and without any agenda or desired result."
You mean, like the fact that the director of the FBI went on national television, presented the incontrovertible and uncontested evidence of Hillary Clinton's felonious misconduct, and then opined that "no reasonable prosecutor" would charge her because she lacked the harmful intent that was not an element of the crime? After granting immunity from prosecution to all her aides, in return for exactly nothing?
It's called a "confidence game" for a reason.
Earnest Prole: "Since a majority of FBI agents lean conservative..."
Prove it. And if you cannot prove it, then quit using that talking point, please.
I can prove the FBI and DOJ in Washington, D.C. are horribly, uniformly biased. Put up or excuse yourself.
Jupiter proves my 5:35PM comment correct.
James Comey tried to sell the American people on the idea that "no reasonable prosecutor" would subject Hillary Clinton to an indictment. Her guilt was obvious. Others are convicted for much less.
James Comey is not a brilliant salesman. And even if he were nobody would buy that product.
"When every cop is a criminal..."
Birkel said...
Prove it.
From the IG report:
Page said that this concern related to the suspicion that NYO personnel had been leaking negative Clinton Foundation stories.
Baker told us that “the discussion was somebody in New York will leak this.” Baker continued, “[W]hat we discussed was the possibility that if we go forward with the search warrant and take that step, that’s a step being taken in the Hillary Clinton investigation. And that’s what will leak.”
And he said, and he said to me that it had become clear to him, he didn’t say over the course of what investigation or whatever, he said it’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton. And he said it is, it is deep. It’s, and he said, he said it was surprising to him or stunning to him.
You know, I didn’t get the impression he was agreeing with it at all, by the way. But he was saying it did exist, and it was hard to manage because these were agents that were very, very senior, or had even had timed out and were staying on, and therefore did not really feel under pressure from headquarters or anything to that effect. And I said, you know, I’m aware of that…. I said, I wasn’t aware it was to this level and this depth that you’re talking about, but I said I’m sad to say that that does not surprise me.
EP: "I'm taking issue with the idea that FBI agents should not have private political opinions."
Ah yes, the old lefty switcheroo.
I cant blame EP and others for trying to frame the issue at hand as something other than what it is.
Frankly I'm a bit surprised EP and ARM and LLR Chuck havent pivoted to The Chewbacca Defense.
If Hillary had won, none of this woulda emerged. Horowitz woulda been fired like Obama did to several IGs. Comey mighta been moved to a judgeship (for trashing Hillary at the press conference) and McCabe would now be Director of the FBI as we speak.
Our country would be screwed.
That's why I'm not too worried about the weak executive summary and watered down conclusions of this IG Report.
It coulda been MUCH worse.
I am interested to see the IGs take on the bullshit Russian-Hoax frame up.
I get that Hillary Clinton and her minions are almost uniquely technologically illiterate, but there is no excuse for an FBI agent not to be aware.
FBI is on the lamer end of the IT-savvy spectrum. They've had a hard time getting with digital.
Prove it.
It's not like statistics exist on party affiliation in the FBI. I've been told it resembles other law enforcement agencies: liberal at the top of the pyramid and conservative at the base. My point was that commenters here would be perfectly fine with private political communication among agents if Obama were the target, as they should be. My larger point is that private political communication among agents is not the actual problem.
@BCARM,
And he said, and he said to me that it had become clear to him, he didn’t say over the course of what investigation or whatever, he said it’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.
So it was alleged. But if it's true, where are the first person voices of these "haters" in the testimony. Did all of the "haters", busily leaking away in NYC, just clear their tracks better? Or, did a coalition of the "Haters" within the FBI manage to bury their misdeeds from the IG?
The lack of pro-Trump/anti-Hillary voices in the report just becomes weirder after a claim that the NYC office was "full of them". My take: the NYC office wasn't "full of them" There were two or three agents who leaked a few times to the right-wing press & the powers in DC at DoJ/FBI were so upset that they magnified the scope of the problem.
“The "no direct testimonial evidence" part is just too rich.
Oh, you mean no one said "yeah, I totally let my personal bias (for which you have copious evidence) influence the exercise of my official duties in an illegal way?" ”
Problem, of course, is that admitting to letting their personal bias affect their official duties would essentially be admission of violating the Hatch Act, a federal felony. These FBI agents and attys are not stupid enough to actually admit such. I actually think, with what we know already, that a decent case could be made against several of the FBI agents, starting with Strzok, proving HAct violations, beyond a reasonable doubt.
YH, you are acknowledging that the NY office was leaking in a partisan way and that there must have been some intensely partisan anti-Clinton high ups in that office. This is the point.
They obviously felt perfectly comfortable with expressing these feelings to their fellow agents.
"It’s not something along the lines of where I’m not committed to the U.S. Government ."
This is what is wrong with these people...government employees. Their oath is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Not the U.S.Government.
Manafort's in jail. That torpedo is in the water. That tactic is now in use and will come back to haunt those who cheered its use.
"Page said that this concern related to the suspicion that NYO personnel had been leaking negative Clinton Foundation stories."
ARM references third-person supposition as proof.
"It's not like statistics exist on party affiliation in the FBI."
EP cites alleged statistics as proof.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
And he said, and he said to me that it had become clear to him, he didn’t say over the course of what investigation or whatever, he said it’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton. And he said it is, it is deep. It’s, and he said, he said it was surprising to him or stunning to him.
Any person with a soul who knew Hillary Clinton would have a visceral hatred for her.
She was a criminal and a sociopath.
She was happy to watch US servicemen go to jail for a crime she committed repeatedly a thousand times over.
She participated in a conspiracy to spy on and frame a political opponent for "collusion" with Russia.
She paid for the Steele dossier and sent it to the FBI who used it to spy on the Trump campaign.
The DC leftists were afraid the NYO would leak that they were sitting on evidence while they were whitewashing Hillary.
It is instructive to watch leftists argue against the rule of law and pretend it is reasonable.
"YH, you are acknowledging that the NY office was leaking in a partisan way and that there must have been some intensely partisan anti-Clinton high ups in that office. This is the point."
Bullshit. There's no proof of who was leaking or why.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
YH, you are acknowledging that the NY office was leaking in a partisan way and that there must have been some intensely partisan anti-Clinton high ups in that office. This is the point.
And you are admitting that the DC office was sitting on evidence and clearly whitewashing the entire Hillary email investigation.
Under the circumstances the NYO was dealing with obvious corrupt and partisan hacks in the DC FBI office who have been proven to be ignoring protocol and running a sham investigation.
gadfly wrote: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe," our Smartest President gets a pass.
As he should since the former and hailed by all Smartest President Evah thinks that:
1) Respect is spelt with one e
2) the Jedi include Vulcans
3) Hawaii is part of Asia
4) Abe Lincoln built the "Intercontinental Railroad"
5) the Navy equivalent of a medic is a zombie
6) the Middle East is a plague on itself
7) the Post Office is a good model of healthcare
8) Cambridge MA police officers must all recognize Henry Louis Gates Jr. on sight.
9) Austrians don't speak German
10) there are 58 states in the Union
11) Muslim faith and Christian faith are one in the same
12) Kansas City and St. Louis are the same place.
13) while in his stint in the Senate he was a member of the Banking Committee (understandable, that one)
and more, but I grow bored with this and with the stingless gadfly
Earnest Prole said...
Prove it.
It's not like statistics exist on party affiliation in the FBI. I've been told it resembles other law enforcement agencies: liberal at the top of the pyramid and conservative at the base. My point was that commenters here would be perfectly fine with private political communication among agents if Obama were the target, as they should be. My larger point is that private political communication among agents is not the actual problem.
When all of the communication goes in one direction it is a problem.
It demonstrates a systemic bias.
I am waiting for just one communication from any of the people involved in the Hillary email investigation to be positive towards Trump.
One.
Breezy @5:11 — outstanding!
I grow bored with this and with the stingless gadfly
I think you aimed too high. Do you really think gadfly is going to understand the relationship between zombie, and corpseman?....or the nuance of Intercontinental Railroad?
madAsHell said...
I grow bored with this and with the stingless gadfly
I think you aimed too high. Do you really think gadfly is going to understand the relationship between zombie, and corpseman?....or the nuance of Intercontinental Railroad?
Or understanding how to properly inflate your tires to save the planet.
Fabi: "Bullshit. There's no proof of who was leaking or why."
The NY office was pursuing Weiner for child porn (amongst other things) and they knew the 7th floor Hillary fanboys and fangirls would (in a normal world) want to see the hundreds of thousands of emails and classified info from the illegal server Hillary had set up.
The NY Field Office personnel were confused about what was taking so long so they contacted the DOJ to try and get the subpeonas moving.
Little did they know that Comey and McCabe were trying to protect hillary by sitting on the emails until after the election.
The call from DOJ re: the new york contacts spooked Comey because Comey had already assured everyone that everything was okey dokey with Hillary.
Can you imagine the uproar if after Comey asserts a thorough investigation cleared hillary (which he lyingly did) new emails on Weiners laptop showed up? Some thorough investigation, right?
The NY Office wanted its Weiner scalp in a public way and Comey and McCabe were messing that up!
LOL
By trying to shield hillary (again!) they screwed up!
The Gang That Couldnt Shoot Straight...but they were able to work with Dems/DOJ/CIA/NSA hacks to conjure up a hoax collusion story to cover their little corrupt tracks.
deep and visceral hatred of Clinton =/= Republican
Hell, I have it on good information that Bill Clinton is a Democrat.
Drago -- I skimmed the report while watching golf this afternoon and am positive that the person who wrote the recommendations is an excellent gymnast.
Earnest Prole:
Since you have no proof of your statement, and knew as much when you made it, I accept your apology for lying, you fucking liar, you.
My stance is that FBI agents CAN have private political beliefs. But they must keep those beliefs private and NOT share with anyone outside spouse and family lest they be viewed as a conflict of interest in any case with political leanings. And certainly NOT showing demonstrable bias, in communications with another agent, on a case where the subject of a pro-bias is being investigated. So no Liberal or Conservative argument. You join the FBI you keep your political beliefs in your mind.
Birkel -- even more damning is the commenter and the agent didn't consider the leaker could be a democrat who happened to be honest, putting country and integrity -- they took an oath! -- before their political party. Think about that.
The call from DOJ re: the new york contacts spooked Comey because Comey had already assured everyone that everything was okey dokey with Hillary.
Exactly right. From Charlie Martin:
Trump's unexpected election was like a wound. It was a danger to the organism, and the organism responded using its immune system -- which is composed of "incompetence, idiocy, bureaucratic self-aggrandizement, and partisan hackery." The organism responded, and individuals in the Administrative State saw it as their duty to #Resist. While there may have been conspiracies going on, there needn't be a grand conspiracy at all -- just a bunch of individuals rushing to defend their political power, their rice bowls, their phony baloney jobs.
Best analogy I've seen. The Deep State is an organism.
I've made it clear in comments here that I believe the entire investigation was corrupt. I'm taking issue with the idea that FBI agents should not have private political opinions. Since a majority of FBI agents lean conservative, I would hope you could grasp that principle without too much trouble.
You also report water is wet, the sky is high, and sand is rough. You make it clear because there is no way to CREDIBLY assert that this was not a corrupt investigation...not anymore.
You wish you could though.
And now you are doing something almost as nefarious. They did wrong. They ran a willfully corrupt and incompetent investigation against Hillary, and you are carving out as much of a soft landing and rationalization for them as you can.
Even though you know they were wrong.
This had IMMEDIATE and REAL world effects today. This is not a Roy Moore, with some guy asserting something 40 years ago. This was yesterday. An agent asserted to another agent 'we hate Trump but -wink wink- we are professionals'.
You are correct. They are, compared to Strzok and Page and Comey and McCabe and Mueller, small fish.
But this is the MeToo movement for the Dems and even small fish can and should be fried. Because if you don't you are winking at corruption. Sucks for them but those discussions are for the bar, not WRITTEN DOWN.
liberal at the top of the pyramid and conservative at the base.
No, I think FBI agents these days behave much as other government employees do.
I've used my daughter as an example. She is a natural Hillary voter. When she graduated from law school, as i was picking up the check for everybody at the celebration dinner, she told me, "Daddy, You are a white male. Your day is over. "
I laughed and paid the bill. That was about 1993. Bill Clinton years.
Still, she is an honest FBI agent and told me she would not vote for Hillary in 2016.
I thought that highly significant given her natural proclivities.
Michael K,
That is why I use the term Leviathan. I relate that concept to the political cartoons drawn to take a stand against Standard Oil.
That is how I view the Leviathan State.
This exercise has made me nauseous and profoundly grateful. Remember the shitstorm that engulfed Jackie Chan when he said America was as the most corrupt country in the world? Under Obama, every department of government went rogue AGAINST the people, and many of his "people" were/are holdovers from the Clintons. Everything the Clintons touch has turned to shit.
I'm so grateful for Trump, as none, NONE of this would have seen the light of day. I hope Trump declassifies everything AND orders the release of Martin Luther King's FBI files. BTW think Holder still mulling a run in 2020?
Here is the thing- these people were apparently sharing all of these Clinton supporting/Trump hating political views with each other while working on, first the Clinton e-mail investigation, and then on the Russian/Trump investigation. There is documentary evidence that, in the case of Strzok and Page, that they were carefully routing actual investigatory work around other people- in particular Bill Priestap, Strzok's actual supervisor.
This tells me that the people selected for these probes had well known political biases and that these political biases are why they were selected in the first place. When you look at the two investigations side by side, it becomes abundantly clear to me that not a single right leaning partisan participated in either investigation- not a single one. It goes a long way to explaining why the teams on both cases were largely the same, and it explains how Mueller ended up with basically nothing but Democrats on his own team- they chose him, not the other way around. The only way you get kicked off Mueller's team is if your leftist bias becomes a public issue. I guess we can be thankful that these people can't keep their biases to themselves better.
The one thing that comes to me so very clearly from the IG report is that the investigation of the CLinton emails was "weak" or "pro-Hillary".
The IG conclusion that "we found no written nor oral evidence that the investigation was influenced by political prejudice of investigators" does not disprove or even dispute the point of view of my first sentence.
I won't try to list all the ways that the investigation was biased in a pro-Hillary way, unless challenged.
That doesn't necessarily mean that an "objective" investigation would have come to a different conclusion.
But it is (to me) a very disturbing conclusion -- that the FBI in the Obama administration undertook an investigation of a political leader (THE political leader of Obama's party, other than Obama) that was in many ways designed and distorted to ensure that the investigation would come to a conclusion that was friendly to the Obama (Democratic) party.
I admit (agree) that there is no clear evidence that this FBI bias came at the direction of Obama himself, of the Obama whitehouse, or of Lynch as Obama's appointee at DoJ. (THough I think we have enough evidence to wonder about Lynch, and I think if we looked we might evidence to make us wonder about Valerie Jarret, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and perhaps others.
But I think there is enough suspicion to make me believe that this activity was worse than anything Nixon was accused of during Watergate.
I continue to believe that this is worse
Yancey Ward,
Sundance at TCH wrote convincingly that Mueller did not select the Mueller Team. Rather, they selected him.
Putting your thoughts and his together, I believe that once they were selected they could not be deselected. As members of an actual conspiracy they were stuck.
I want to highlight Marcus' a few comments above:
"My stance is that FBI agents CAN have private political beliefs. But they must keep those beliefs private and NOT share with anyone outside spouse and family lest they be viewed as a conflict of interest in any case with political leanings. And certainly NOT showing demonstrable bias, in communications with another agent, on a case where the subject of a pro-bias is being investigated. So no Liberal or Conservative argument. You join the FBI you keep your political beliefs in your mind."
I more or less agree with this, but I want to emphasize why it is important to keep them to yourself. I am all but certain that the people selected for the Clinton investigation and the Trump investigation were selected because the people doing the selecting literally knew they could be depended on to carry the cases in the desired political directions- kid's gloves fake-investigation followed by exoneration for Clinton, hard-nosed take-no-prisoners approach with Trump. If you select 100 people to work an investigation and you don't know who are the Democrats and who are the Republicans, then you can't run the risk of hamstringing an investigation into Clinton or Trump. But if you already know the politics of the investigators, you can stack the deck the way you want.
The IG report about the FISA abuses will be even more interesting.
Will there be an IG report about the 702 searches?
Still, she is an honest FBI agent and told me she would not vote for Hillary in 2016.
@Michael K., we all love our children, but the chances that any FBI agent is honest these days is somewhat below the odds that I'll win the lottery. And I don't even buy tickets.
What was probably intended as a term of endearment,
calling Lisa Page "Gummy Bear" was more likely a Freudian Slip
Yancey Ward at 7:32: Exactly right.
Earnest Prole said...
Prove it.
It's not like statistics exist on party affiliation in the FBI. I've been told it resembles other law enforcement agencies: liberal at the top of the pyramid and conservative at the base. My point was that commenters here would be perfectly fine with private political communication among agents if Obama were the target, as they should be. My larger point is that private political communication among agents is not the actual problem.
I would be perfectly fine with private political talk among agents. This was not private political talk among agents. It was official political talk among agents since it was conducted on government owned devices, on government emails, and in many cases, on government time. I have an official government email address. It goes along with my government job. I don't identify who I work for on my Facebook page to avoid violating the Hatch Act. All government employees are reminded every election season what is and isn't allowable under the Hatch Act. Much of what these investigators and agents were doing is in clear violation of the Hatch Act.
During the entire pre and post election drama, not a single email to or from my government email address addressed politics in any way, shape, or form. I've also never seen a government email that disparaged another employee or supervisor. One rule of government email use- it's used for government business only! Same applies to government owned devices.
Viva is a brand of paper kitchen towels. Suitable for Democrats if they knew how to clean up after themselves or their childish identify groups,
http://goodsensepolitics.blogspot.com/2009/09/compare-garbage-after-tea-party-vs.html
“Here is the thing- these people were apparently sharing all of these Clinton supporting/Trump hating political views with each other while working on, first the Clinton e-mail investigation, and then on the Russian/Trump investigation. There is documentary evidence that, in the case of Strzok and Page, that they were carefully routing actual investigatory work around other people- in particular Bill Priestap, Strzok's actual supervisor.”
The probem is not the sharing, per se, but the combination of the sharing of their views on Clinton and Trump, and that every time there was a choice to be made., discretion to be utilized, they sided with her, and against him. Time after time. Always, from how they ranher email investigation to the bogus Russian collaboration investigation. The email investigation was pretty egregious, with no subpoenas issued, instead trading immunity for evidence, in the case of co-conspirators, who then turned around and acted as her attorneys. Each separate decision by the investigators may be individually defendable, but dozens of decisions went one way. Maybe the most memorable (and egregious) was Strzok’s decision to not get the Weiner/Abdelin laptop from the authorities in NYC, because he believed that the Trump/Russia investigation was higher priority (he was running both of them), despite having essentially told Page earlier that he didn’t believe there was anything there.
I'm old enough to remember when an "appearance of impropriety" was disqualifying.
There is legitimate case here to investigate these people described in the IG report for obstruction of justice, but to do so requires a US Attorney with a grand jury. Someone/s selected all of these people for both investigations, someone/s made the decisions to not assemble a grand jury, and someone/s made the decisions issue immunity deals like hall passes to the bathroom. It is quite likely that these people making the decisions did so as part of a conspiracy with one another, and it will take subpoenas and warrants to unravel the connections.
But to do this right, someone in the DoJ has to do their fucking job.
They could do that, Bruce, because none of them feared that they were working with anyone who might not be a Clinton partisan, or who might even be deplorable.
And for the four-millionth time, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
And when did any of these people do anything that wasn't calculated to advance their careers? They had big jobs under Obama and expected bigger jobs under Clinton. I think that, along with a general lack of integrity, explains pretty much everything.
“Little did they know that Comey and McCabe were trying to protect hillary by sitting on the emails until after the election.”
Not really how I see it with Comey. I think it more likely that McCabe, in charge of day to day operation of the FBI, included mention of the Weiner laptop in a long list of items to Comey in probably was a daily briefing. McCabe claims he told Comey. Comey said that it didn’t register. Which makes sense if McCabe was running it around Comey, and figured out a way of telling Comey, without actually bringing it to his attention. McCabe’s Office appears to have been the center of the Resistance, and where the Insurance Policy was thought out and implemented.
“The call from DOJ re: the new york contacts spooked Comey because Comey had already assured everyone that everything was okey dokey with Hillary.”
“Can you imagine the uproar if after Comey asserts a thorough investigation cleared hillary (which he lyingly did) new emails on Weiners laptop showed up? Some thorough investigation, right?”
This is why I found Comey credible. He essentially said that if he had known of the Weiner laptop in Sept, instead of in late October, they could have looked at those emails, found nothing, as they claim to have, and never have had to tell Congress. But in this case, with the expected Clinton win, he was worried that the public would figure that the FBI had intentionally delayed investigating the laptop until after the election, running out the clock (which is very, very, likely precisely what Strzok was doing) to throw the election to Crooked Hillary. That would have delegitimized both Clinton’s election and the FBI. I don’t think that he worried that much about the former, but was extremely concerned, and rightly so, about the latter.
Basically in this case, we're supposed understand:
1) Everyone involved at high-level DOJ/FBI hated Trump and liked Hillary (or at least feared her)
2) They went easy on Hillary - found her innocent - and thought the Email investigation a waste of time.
3) They sat on the Weiner-Hillary emails for a month in Oct 2016.
4) They couldn't wait to start an investigation of Trump-Russia. And went after Trump hard.
AND reach the following conclusion:
5) Political Bias had NOTHING to do with it.
“There is legitimate case here to investigate these people described in the IG report for obstruction of justice, but to do so requires a US Attorney with a grand jury. Someone/s selected all of these people for both investigations, someone/s made the decisions to not assemble a grand jury, and someone/s made the decisions issue immunity deals like hall passes to the bathroom. It is quite likely that these people making the decisions did so as part of a conspiracy with one another, and it will take subpoenas and warrants to unravel the connections.”
If you read enough Strzok/Page emails, you get a strong impression that they, along with McCabe, were the central players in that. The two of them wanted badly to have Strzok running those investigations, and schemed to get it done. Part of it was Page utilizing her access to McCabe, who essentially made the final calls. And, Priestap frequently complaining that Strzok was always going around him.
I suggest anyone who has any respect for Comey and McCabe read the IG Report on the Weiner Computer - Hillary Email scandal.
FBI HQ knew about thousands of Hillary Sec-of-State Emails on Weiner computer on Sept 28, 2016. FBI HQ sat on it, and did nothing. The New York FBI was incredulous. The finally went to their Federal Attorney, who contacted Dept of Justice.
That was October 25, 2016! At that point, Comey finally informed Congress. But - if you read between the lines - it was only because Comey KNEW it would leak if he didn't act.
Why did they sit on the scandal for almost a month? Easy, they didn't want to hurt Hillary. Of course, that's not what they told the IG. They gave a lot of BS reasons which the IG shoots down.
Several here are fine with rcocean's progression.
Instead of wrangling over then politics the question should be are they even trained to be professional. In corporate world there is frequent ethics training. Has anyone seen FBI material on this ... Should be available for the public to view.
Agents should be inspected at random by citizen panels.
@rcocean - not everyone. Bill Priestap appears to have been playing straight, which is probably why he is one of the few involved who still has his job. Most of the players are, of course gone. They two were not straight, who are still employed, are Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr, who both have been demoted and reassigned - twice. And are very likely still employed there to keep them available for the next phase of the IG’s investigation (Ohr was the DoJ ADAG who personally knew Glen Simpson, and whose wife was the Russian expert at Fusion GPS).
@rcocean - I think that it was still McCabe who was trying to run out the clock with the laptop, and not Comey. To me, Comey honestly looks like someone who was blindsided by his headquarters people sitting on the laptop.
How does the FBI recover its credibility after all the details are known? Do they really think it's fine to only have the confidence of only half the country going forward? Ask the IRS if they thought it was worth it to let Lois Lerner retire with a wrist slap and her pension in full with only a few scapegoats getting the axe. I don't think the IRS has ever recovered its credibility and is still being punished by having its budget trimmed every year. It already looks like this Wray guy is not going to cut it. He looks more and more like an interim director while Trump is searching for a replacement.
Bruce Hayden, on the subject of when Comey learned of the Weiner laptop and the contents:
From the IG report-
"Comey told the OIG that he recalled first learning of the presence of the
additional emails on the Weiner laptop at some point in early October 2016,
although Comey said it was possible this could have occurred in late September(emphasis added by Y.W)."
"Comey explained:"
'I was aware sometime in the first week or two of October that there
was a laptop that a criminal squad had seized from Anthony Weiner in
New York and someone said to me that—and I’m thinking it might
have been Andrew McCabe, but someone said to me kind of in
passing, they’re trying to figure out whether it has any connection to
the Midyear investigation. And the reason that’s so vague in my head
is I think—I never imagined that there might be something on a guy
named Anthony Weiner’s computer that might connect to the Hillary
Clinton email investigation, so I kind of just put it out of my mind.'"
Me again:
If you read the sections on about the discovery of the laptop and the contents, it is pretty clear that McCabe and Comey have basically lied about their knowledge of when they learned about it, and their reactions to learning this. I write this because of the contemporaneous text messages from Strzok who we know for a fact in late September was told by McCabe to send a team up there the next day to look at them, and Strzok even texted that he had to wait for this assignment at McCabe's door because he was down with the director in the minutes proceeding this. If I have to believe later accounts of this event, or the texts with timestamps, then the decision is easy- McCabe and Comey are both lying.
Priestap is a mystery. Some actions make me believe he is dirty; some the opposite. I've seen speculation that he remains because he's cooperating, but I don't have anything solid to support that. He has deep ties to powerful democrats via his wife's family.
I think Comey was playing dumb, dumb, dumb, with the OIG questions. Indeed, if you read the sections proceeding this (starting at page 273 in the PDF version at the DoJ website), it is clear to me that any effort on the parts of McCabe to downplay his reaction to learning this is simple horseshit- the people who informed the leadership of the FBI at a teleconference made it clear to the OIG that they imparted their shock at the new evidence to the attendees at that teleconference in D.C. Indeed, there is section where one of the NY office people testified that as soon as the dropped this "bombshell", McCabe jumped up and said he would phone the guy while in route to somewhere else. All of the evidence suggests McCabe thought this was a very serious discovery in late September, and given that there were likely 30+ people at the D.C. end of the teleconference, it was surely something he would have had to tell Comey about immediately, even if he, McCabe were wanting to bury it.
In summary, what it looks like to me is that McCabe and Comey both conspired to look very, very busy in taking this seriously, but then doing nothing with it in reality- i.e. send Strzok up the next day to make the NY office think things are moving, but then doing nothing else. Eventually the NY office started asking questions to people outside the the McCabe/Comey circuit, and at that point sitting on it and doing nothing becomes a personal risk that Comey was no longer willing to take.
In short, all my theorizing about this event also excused Comey, but that theorizing is no tenable.
I think prietap resigned but it certainly does seem that McCabe was trying to by pass him in his connection with strzok.
And I just again want to point to Comey's story to the OIG- for the longest time Comey let people believe he learned about the laptop and the contents just a few days before he notified Congress- this is why I was sympathetic to his plight initially. However, you can tell from his story to the OIG that he clearly wasn't certain that there wasn't documentary and testimonial evidence that McCabe told him about it in September. This is why get this statement when the chips are down:
"Comey told the OIG that he recalled first learning of the presence of the
additional emails on the Weiner laptop at some point in early October 2016,
although Comey said it was possible this could have occurred in late September"
Comey is giving himself an out from perjury with that testimony.
If he were Obama, he would have stated he found out on the news along with everyone else.
This was not private political talk among agents. It was official political talk among agents since it was conducted on government owned devices.
It was private political talk conducted on government-owned devices. If the same discussions were conducted on the agents' private devices and somehow revealed, you'd have the same opinion of the agents.
Agreed. Breezy AT 5:11 nails it.
rcocean at 8:27 PM has it exactly right.
Yancy has answered about Comey's knowledge.
But I just wanted to add - if you've been in a large organization: corporate, government, or military, you know that the head man depends on his deputy or XO to "Handle the details".
But that doesn't rid him of responsibility. The Captain or the head of the Department is responsible for what goes on. After all, he's the man who *Chose* his 2nd-in-command and decided what to delegate and what not to.
So, if the Deputy, McCabe knew, Comey knew. And if Comey didn't know and was "blindsided" - why did he keep McCabe on as his Deputy? Why wasn't he mad as hell that he was kept out of the loop?
Imagine if Trump was to say "Oh, I trusted General Kelly to take care of that. Blame him, not me" Would anyone buy that?
you fucking liar, you.
Why does spittle always speck your beard?
Or imagine if during WW2, Ike was to say:
"Hey, I didn't know about this Battle of the Bulge thing. Beddell Smith didn't inform me. If I'd known, why I would've done something"
EP - thanks.
When did Priestap leave? I thought he was still on duty as recently as two months ago. I could be mistaken --
Priestap is still in his position.
Earnest Prole:
"It was private political talk conducted on government-owned devices. If the same discussions were conducted on the agents' private devices and somehow revealed, you'd have the same opinion of the agents."
We know about it because of the electronic communications, but you can be certain that these people behind closed doors working the cases were verbally communicating these biases, too. That is how it was known to select them in the first place- they let their political bosses know where they stood- it was probably a good career move all in all....at least until Trump showed up at the White House.
Thanks Yancey.
Earnest Prole,
You're a liar and that's ok by me. No spittle on this end. But I'm not going to refrain from calling you what you are. You're a poser and a liar.
How sad is it that the FBI office in NY's hatred of crime is now characterized as 'Hillary hatred' instead of 'objective professionalism'.
One can support Democrat ideals and still be offended by what Hillary so egregiously did, if for no other reason than avoiding having one's personal integrity tarnished badly by association (Cou-Inga, ARM, Ernest-gh)
Of course, the only way to do that is to let them be punished.
So I think the most important thing that Trump needs to do is use every ounce of his political muscle to absolutely destroy McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, and whomever else showed bias AND acted on it so egregiously.
I want them to reopen the investigations on Huma and Weiner. I want them destroyed as well.
Divorced, shamed, jailed.
I want FBI agents to have nightmares about being mistaken for having political bias.
Because the most important lesson to remove so much of this corruption is simply this: The Clintons cannot protect you anymore
That is the tripod of their power: destroying their enemies, paying off their friends, and protecting their allies.
Not a dime for them or their families. Audits. No golden parachute. No soft gig working for HP.
Suddenly, when one actually might face the music, putting a thumb on the scales of justice looks a lot less rosy when someone might chop it off.
Remember when Comey and Mueller were working for Eric Holder, who gave them their big breaks?
Yeah, that Eric Holder was constantly promoting Republicans, I tells ya.
The MSM lies. People like Earnest Prole uncritically believe the lies. And then they reveal themselves to be liars.
Circle of life, Simba.
I understand the Lynch DOJ tried to create bad blood between EDNY and SDNY
Do US attorneys get to meet the President who chooses them before they start work?
Lynch was appointed by Bill Clinton.
FIDO wrote: "The Clintons cannot protect you anymore."
This is crucial. The return to political normalcy can only start when Democrats figure out how electing a slippery Southern governor morphed into a cult. That sounds like a pretty cheap lesson, but each revelation will destroy positions of privilege, and those privileges will be protected at all costs.
Six comments in and tcrosse wins the thread.
Michael K said...
The call from DOJ re: the new york contacts spooked Comey because Comey had already assured everyone that everything was okey dokey with Hillary.
Exactly right. From Charlie Martin:
Trump's unexpected election was like a wound. It was a danger to the organism, and the organism responded using its immune system -- which is composed of "incompetence, idiocy, bureaucratic self-aggrandizement, and partisan hackery." The organism responded, and individuals in the Administrative State saw it as their duty to #Resist. While there may have been conspiracies going on, there needn't be a grand conspiracy at all -- just a bunch of individuals rushing to defend their political power, their rice bowls, their phony baloney jobs.
Best analogy I've seen. The Deep State is an organism.
No, it's cancer in an organism. Can we excise it in time?
Earnest Prole said...
It was private political talk conducted on government-owned devices. If the same discussions were conducted on the agents' private devices and somehow revealed, you'd have the same opinion of the agents
Government owned devices are for official use only. Therefore, by definition, any discussion on them is official, not private. That they felt free to have political discussions at all on their government devices indicates that there was something very seriously wrong in their command and control structure. Their jobs are officially apolitical, concerned with crime and criminals, not policy and politicians.
The Deep State denizens must protect their phoney baloney jobs Trump? Harumph!
BTW, Le Pétomane was the stage name of a Frenchman whose performance consisted mainly of passing farts. No kidding. Among our 228,132 words entries in the OED there's a word for someone who farts for a living, flatulist. No kidding. I suspect more than a few flatulists comment here regularly, which would make Althouse the Web's first fart artiste hangout, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
Agree with gospace. As a one time government worker everything is assumed to be a public record unless it has an exception by law. Social media is a grey area. Phones and email are not. The work phone was for work only and work was to be conducted over it and not over a private phone. All us government entities are associated with the sunlight foundation in some manner. And all have public records and data retention policies. There is a whole movement called open government. Elected officials though do indeed assume since they are elected that they are above this process. What Hilary was doing was not legal and not uncommon. She thought the risk was worth the reward and thought herself above government requirements. You can audit almost any US mayor and find them conflicted and mixing data poorly.
"I'm taking issue with the idea that FBI agents should not have private political opinions."
-- Has... has anyone actually said that?
Well Jual, you harassing son of a bitch. I hope Althouse tracks you down to Bangalore and roasts your ass a deeper shade of brown.
The description of Strxok’s career sure makes it seem like he was the same guy who gave Hillary a clean bill of health on Uranium One.
tim in vermont said...
The description of Strxok’s career sure makes it seem like he was the same guy who gave Hillary a clean bill of health on Uranium One.
That's an excellent question. Someone needs to go through Strzok's work history to find what other investigations he may have tainted.
The paragraph, the report said, “referenced Clinton’s use of her private email for an exchange with then President Obama while in the territory of a foreign adversary. This reference was later changed to ‘another senior government official,’ and ultimately was omitted.”
My my my. She may as well have written her communications with Obama on postcards and used the local mail service. She would have gotten the same level of security.
Fritz,
Peter Strzok, a former Army officer who had worked on some of the most secretive investigations in recent years involving Russian and Chinese espionage.. - New York Times
Then look at the investigation into the Russian spies were involved in the North American uranium:
Campbell wrote that Russian nuclear executives “boasted” during vodka-fueled meetings monitored by the FBI about “how weak the U.S. government was in giving away uranium business and were confident that Russia would secure the strategic advantage it was seeking in the U.S. uranium market.”
He also said he asked his FBI handlers why the U.S. was not more aggressive.
“I expressed these concerns repeatedly to my FBI handlers. The response I got was that politics was somehow involved,” he stated.
Does that sound like our boy Pete, or what?
Forgot to link the above http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/372861-uranium-one-informant-makes-clinton-allegations-in-testimony
I don't expect government employees not to have political views. When those views include contempt for a specific segment of honest citizens, those views become problematic. The citizens are the bosses, and if law enforcement officers come to have contempt for them, then the officers should be discharged. I can understand an officer forming contempt for the target of an investigation but, again, in an electoral situation they have an affirmative duty to be open to the possibility that they're mistaken and the people are know more than they do.
Because Queastor. Trump has interupted the smooth flow of graft.
I’d like to focus on “inference and suspicion” for a minute. Also on “sauce and goose.” The Russia collusion charges against Donald Trump rest entirely on “inference and suspicion.” There is no direct forensic or eye-witness testimony. It’s curious how the evidence people think is sufficient turns on their preferred political outcomes, no?
"No, it's cancer in an organism. Can we excise it in time?"
Actually, I think it is a parasite, which of course includes cancer. Cancer usually kills itself along with the host.
Some parasites kill the host but survive, like parasitic wasps that eat the host while leaving it alive until the end.
The intelligence agencies and their patrons seem more like parasitic wasps to me.
Because the most important lesson to remove so much of this corruption is simply this: The Clintons cannot protect you anymore
That is the tripod of their power: destroying their enemies, paying off their friends, and protecting their allies.
Not a dime for them or their families. Audits. No golden parachute. No soft gig working for HP.
Suddenly, when one actually might face the music, putting a thumb on the scales of justice looks a lot less rosy when someone might chop it off.
FIDO, you are correct but I doubt we live in that perfect world.
We live in Mueller's World.
"Priestap is still in his position."
Checked the FBI web pages just now, and Bill Priestap is still listed as the AD of the Counterintelligence Division, from January, 2016 to the present. He reports to the Executive Assistant Director (EAD) of the National Security Branch (NSB), who reports to the Deputy Director (DD), who was Andrew McCabe, until fired for, essentially, lying. The NSB EAD during the relevant timeframe was Michael Steinbach, who left in February, 2017. Up until just recently, all of the org charts at CTH had Priestap reporting directly to McCabe, but in a post 6/15/18 about FBI attorney Tashina Gauhar, a more detailed org chart is shown with the NSB EAD between Priestap and the DD. What I need to go do is check to see which position (NSB EAD (Steinbach) or CID AD(Priestap)) Comey used as the person justifying not reporting the four FISA warrants to the Gang of Eight. Sundance, at the CTH, assumed it to have been Priestap. Maybe not. His theory is that Priestap began voluntary cooperating with the OIG soon after they were freed to investigate the DoJ NSD and FBI NSB, shortly after DAG Yates had been fired by Trump (and her memo putting those organizations off limits to the OIG was rescinded).
BTW, Tashina Gauhar is an interesting addition to the cast of characters. She apparently was on the conference call Sept 29 with the NYC FBI and DoJ about the Weiner laptop, and was one of three people (along, of course, with Peter Strzok) who actually searched that laptop for Clinton emails, after Comey reopened the MYE exam in late October.
Whoops, Blogger seems to have eaten the link to that CTH article on Tashina Gauhar. Here is the URL:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/06/15/ig-report-fbi-lawyer-1-tashina-gauhar-and-the-huma-weiner-laptop-issues/
Also in Bill Priestap's defense, a number of the Strzok/Page text messages show Strzok, with help from Page, routinely maneuvering around Priestap. They always seemed to be trying to work around him, and to the extent possible, directly with McCabe. They were trying to keep Priestap out of meetings, etc. And, by late summer, Priestap seems to have caught on to it. There was an interesting text message exchange about who Strzok was going to brief first, his boss Priestap, or DD McCabe, after returning from London, in, I believe, August, where the "spy" part (Misfyp, Downer, Halper) of the Insurance Plan had been passed off from the CIA to the FBI (Not clear who he met in London, but assume it was Halper, since he appeared, by the text messages, to have returned in triumph).
We kinda answered above why Bill Priestap is still at the FBI in his original position. But what about Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr. And, I think that the answer very clearly is that they are key to the IG's next phase of the investigation - FISA abuse. Strzok had his fingers in pretty much everything that the FBI's Counterintelligence Division was involved in that had political ramifications, during the election campaigns of 2016, and, thence onto Mueller's team. And it wasn't just by chance - he pushed his way onto some of those investigations. This is how the same guy interviewed both Clinton and Flynn, and was at the center of acquiring the FISA applications on Carter Page (and could use the excuse of the Trump/Russia investigation as having a higher priority than MYE, when the FBI sat on the Weiner laptop for that month). Ohr, of course, was the top DoJ official who was a personal friend of, and liasoned with, Glen Simpson, who owned Fusion GPS, and whose wife was Fusion's Russian expert who worked closely with Steele.
Which is why those two are still employed, but in harmless positions. As DoJ employees, they can be ordered to meet with OIG investigators or federal prosecutors at any time, and to cooperate with them. Outside, they can't. And likely wouldn't, knowing the tricks that the FBI Plays on suspects in interviews on a routine basis, likely having engaged in them themselves. Why not just retire? Very, very, likely, because the OIG has them by the balls. Of anyone a Hatch Act case could be built, it would be Strzok. At a minimum, you have him promising Page that they would make sure that Trump wouldn't get elected, after conducting Clinton's non-interview interview, and not long before he sat on the Weiner laptop for that month, because he prioritized nailing Trump over possibly nailing Clinton (by reactivating his MYE investigation to search the laptop). Also, we now know that the warrant for the Weiner laptop, that contained material under seal by the SDNY, was sent home to his private email account, accessible by others (even non family members). He also, very likely, used private email to discuss FBI issues with Page. What was explained to Sundance at the CTH, is that you are essentially issued into a room, given a piece of paper that, among other things tells you that you really, really, need a lawyer, and then, when represented, you are told how fucked you are. What charges they have probable cause to bring against you. And then given a choice of full cooperation, in trade for greatly reduced punishment, or trial on all those charges. The fact that Strzok and Ohr are still employed, when many a player with less culpability has been forced out very, very, likely means that they are cooperating, and their cooperation is still needed. Notably, we had three notable resignations right after this last phase of the OIG investigation was wrapped up, including Lisa Page. Best explanation for that is that the OIG (and the UT USA) had released them, as no longer being necessary for the next phase.
Lefties ARE their political biases. The IG's "no direct evidence" that bias affected their decisions bullshit is ridiculous. Such evidence could never be found. Their bent was evidenced by the shabbiness of their investigations.
The point ought to be that FBI agents at all levels who unabashedly share their political biases for and against the subjects of their investigations in strident terms should not have been allowed to make decisions at all. The other point is that the bias was all in one direction.
These Obots are a disgrace to law eforcement.
Earnest Prole said...
"I suspect if the politics were reversed and an FBI agent sent a private message to another agent joking about resisting Obama's lawlessness, your comments would be filled with defense attorney–level arguments pleading the agent's right to have political thoughts."
Um. No.Because the operative word here isn't Obama or even Trump The operative word here is "lawlessness".
The law either falls on eveyone equally or not at all.
Dems never really liked the republic anyway. We knew that.
I note "Viva le" is correct Interlingua, though the whole phrase would be "Viva le resistentia!"
I'd believe that politics played no part in decisions if Hillary was treated a little like an ordinary citizen, and not given a pass on illegally having a server, refusing to turn over evidence, destroying devices with bleach bit and a hammer, emailing classified documents to Huma and her maid, giving classified documents to her lawyers, having witnesses not only granted immunity, but allowed to be present, not have to testify under oath, etc, etc.
On the other hand for Trump, they sent a spy into Trump's campaign, got warrants based on a phony dossier, pocked leaked the dossier to the media, raided his lawyer's office and are prosecuting unrelated crimes to break his team.
It is obvious there is a double standard. There is no other conclusion a reasonable person could believe than that the FBI didn't want to fully investigate Hillary and they wanted Trump impeached.
Actually, I think it is a parasite, which of course includes cancer. Cancer usually kills itself along with the host. Some parasites kill the host but survive, like parasitic wasps that eat the host while leaving it alive until the end. The intelligence agencies and their patrons seem more like parasitic wasps to me.
I don't think I agree with your distinction in this case, Michael. Parasitic wasps, e.g., have evolved to carry their ability as independent organisms to attack and (their offspring to) subsequently survive the death of hosts/victims that they strike and infect (infect with developing embryos, also evolved to that ability). Compared to that, what is essentially, advanced and tested weapons design, what evolutionary honing have American bureaucratic “intelligence agencies and their patrons” had which would lead one to (remotely!) suppose that they could or would survive the death of the host — the United States of America in this case? Or even just the death of the U.S. Constitution!
No, I think the “cancer” analogy is actually a pretty good one.
One might note though that even in the case of cancer (which is also a product of evolution — acting at the microscopic level in microenvironments within the individual human body), it is possible and has been known to happen that a cancer does survive the eventual extinguishment of its host. (I noticed that you said “cancer usually kills itself along with the host” up above as well. So yes.)
For instance, there exists an infectious cancer of dogs known as “canine transmissible venereal tumors” (CTVTs), which is passed from dog to dog. CTVT has been found to ultimately descend from a cancer which originally developed in (and hence evolved from the cells of) one particular dog, who lived perhaps 10,000 years ago — and has survived since then (greatly outliving its original host and progenitor animal) by surviving out in the world (albeit solely within dog bodies) as an infectious cancer.
I very much doubt that our “intelligence” agencies, however, can or will be able to do likewise.
Thanks for this entry about the IG report; here is a short video when Rep. Matt Gaetz uses the same phrase in questioning Robert Meuller:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHasBjRJAbc
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