“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the F.B.I. launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Mr. Barr said in a statement.Exonerated? I remember when "exonerated" had a strong meaning — back when the Mueller report was said not to have exonerated Trump because it did not prove Trump's innocence but only failed to prove guilt. Now, to fail to prove guilt is to exonerate? Ah, yes, it was in the text of the Mueller report: "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
John H. Durham, a federal prosecutor whom Mr. Barr appointed to run a separate criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, backed Mr. Barr’s findings in his own highly unusual statement. “Last month, we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the F.B.I. case was opened,” Mr. Durham said....
The statements from the Justice Department’s top official and one of his key investigators gave Mr. Trump’s supporters ammunition to dispute one of the key findings in the long-awaited report by Mr. Horowitz that excoriated the F.B.I.’s handling of a wiretap application used in the early stages of its Russia investigation... [and] exonerated former bureau leaders of accusations by the president and his allies that Mr. Trump was the victim of a politicized conspiracy to sabotage his campaign and his presidency.
Given the importance of the word "exonerate" in the Mueller report and its narrow meaning there, the press should refrain from using the word "exonerate" in the broad sense to mean that the inspector general merely could not find the evidence that FBI officials acted out of political bias. To be consistent with Mueller-talk, one ought to say that while the IG's report does not conclude that the FBI officials acted out of bias, it also does not exonerate them.
I just looked up "exonerate" in the OED. The relevant meaning it "To free from blame; to exculpate." But I was amused by this other (and obsolete) meaning: "To discharge the contents of (the body, an organ), esp. by evacuation. to exonerate nature, to exonerate oneself: to relieve the bowels."
1829 Health & Longevity 269 The bowels..ought to be exonerated at least once in two days.And flush the toilet 10 times while you're at it.
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Horowitz will testify to Congress on Wednesday, December 11, before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Lindsay Graham.
"Horowitz will testify to Congress on Wednesday, December 11, before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Lindsay Graham."
Someone should tell Google. {/sarc}
Bruce Hayden,
Trenchant analysis and a numbers hog.
Well played, sir.
“ In this present IG report, every single error in investigative procedure- almost 20 detailed- were unfavorable to people being investigated. Now here is the kicker- the teams in Mid Year Exam and Crossfire Hurricane were essentially the same people, and were the same people at the top. And Horowitz, again, throws up his hands and says he can't prove bias was at work. However, the same group of people behaving in opposite ways in two different investigations is the proof that political bias was at the heart of all of iT”
The funny part of that is that the MYE crew (run by Strzok) effectively allowed Crooked Hillary and her lawyers to delete the very same >30k emails that the Russians were supposedly offering to Papadopoulos through Mifsud, that formed the legal predicate for the CF investigation (also run by Strzok).
"pacwest said...
"This report is devastating. Whether you want to attribute it to evil intentions, or purely to incompetence/inability to understand the rules, how can the FBI/government possibly be trusted with this type of thing in the future?"
That's the bottom line isn't it?
Door #1: The FBI is incompetent.
Door #2: The FBI is corrupt.
Barr/Durham: I'll take door #2"
I think I go with the above analysis.
IG has said - FBI was incompetent on major, sensitive investigations centering on Trump. Made mistakes
Barr / Durham expected to say - FBI was corrupt, those weren't mistakes, they were part of a plan.
But even saying that the FBI was incompetent at all levels in its investigations of Trump and did not follow procedure, and has not been able to explain all its errors, is damning.
"h said...
The inspector general found that “so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI,” that he concluded there was a failure of “not only the operational team, but also of the managers and supervisors, including senior officials, in the chain of command.”
And Michael K found this:
"We also found the quantity of omissions and inaccuracies in the applications and the obvious errors in the Woods Procedures deeply concerning. Although we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the part of the case agents who assisted in preparing the applications, or the agents and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures, we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or missing information...."
Thank you, Ann. Cracked me up.
The IG is saying that whatever happened - incompetence or malevolence - it went right to the top. there was a failure of “not only the operational team, but also of the managers and supervisors, including senior officials, in the chain of command.”
This has gone on for so long. Wasn't there a time when we were supposed to believe that the Steele Dossier was not used to get the FISA warrants?
For all of you conspiracy theorists, there is a link at the bottom of the report that appears to link to “oig.justice.gov/hotline” but actually links to “oiq.justice.qov/hotline”. Notice the two substitutions of “g” for “q”. Wonder how long that is going to survive.
The Swamp investigates itself: "Mistakes were made, but no harm intended, indeed no harm done."
This is the whole point of being a Democrat insider. No negative consequences, as long as you're helping the good guys. You don't even have to spend money on lawyers, unlike those losers Libby, Roger Stone or General Flynn.
Like any bully, the real question is, "what are you gonna do about it?" (Pissing and moaning is just music to thier ears.)
Hillary's corrupt bureaucratic deep state still runs the show.
The Washington Post Opinion page: If you don't agree with us, you must be a Russian asset
Four informants run at the Trump campaign? Do we know who they are?
I think today was glorious and no amount of conservative naysaying will bring me down. The Horowitz Report was VERY, VERY BAD for the corrupt parts of the FBI and the corrupt Obama DOJ. Even the MSM is half-assed. They're doing their best but the facts belie the narratives the MSM is spinning.
The online webzine "The Hill" is reporting that the Horowitz Report is bad for Democratics.
The polling out of swing states is terrific for Trump.
The polling against impeachment is thorough.
Blacks support Trump, a Republican, in the 30-35% range.
Hispanics support Trump in the 45-50% range.
Durham and Barr day the Deep State's horrible, no good day is not horrible enough.
They seem to promise future days will be worse.
The impeachment hearings were not positives for Democratics.
Republican questioners once again dominated with facts.
All you sayers of nay, quit it.
Take the night off.
Come back tomorrow to say nay.
I like Birkel's optimism!
I would like to state for the record that: (1) Christopher Steele sucks, (2) his dossier was a piece of shit and (3) any FBI agent who failed to understand 1 & 2 is an idiot.
New discovery: On my MacBook, I just highlighted text on here to message to someone. I used the little box with an arrow in Safari. And my message was automatically formatted to a link to this blog, this comment section, and then a little screenshot of the comment.
This is how an unbiased FBI works: Any theory, no matter how tenuous, by which Hillary can be found not guilty will be the finding, and any theory, no matter how tenuous or poorly sourced, by which Trump can be found guilty will be the finding.
Unbiased!
Original Mike,
I just ran several Google searches. You're right. Lots of FBI 'exonerated, but' stories. Big brother doesn't want you watching. They watch you.
The report itself sounds pretty juicy even if the conclusions are disappointingly mild. I hope some enterprising troupe re-enacts some of the scenes, like recreating the Steele interview and then cutting to the Handling Agent 1 interview. A dramatization would speak for itself.
You could make it a screwball comedy, like Keystone Cops.
Except with more scheming.
“ The Horowitz Report was VERY, VERY BAD for the corrupt parts of the FBI and the corrupt Obama DOJ.”
Apparently Obama and Clinton were briefed on the investigation but it Trump. Curious.
"Curious." -Albus Perceval Wolfric Brian Dumbledore
"It is a CURIOUS thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.” —Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
"Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one that rises against them and strikes back!” —Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Bruce Hayden: Curious.
Me: Dumbledore.
Oh, 4 people were spied upon.
No, Original Mike.
Four people were deprived of their God-given and Constitutionally recognized civil rights.
FBI behavior violated the Civil Rights Acts, also.
We must say the truth.
The truth is the FBI deprived American citizens of their civil rights.
The FBI investigation into Hillary's illegal use of a Private Server was ... white glove treatment of the queen.
5)Last point. When IG says he found no "documentary" evidence of bias, he means just that: He didn't find smoking gun email that says "let's take out Trump." And it isn't his job to guess at the motivations of FBI employees. Instead...
https://twitter.com/KimStrassel/status/1204205839147421696
Sounds a LOT like Mueller to me.
"The truth is the FBI deprived American citizens of their civil rights."
Agreed. Are the perpetrators personally liable?
Why didn't Mueller discover any of this?
"he means just that: He didn't find smoking gun email that says "let's take out Trump."
And if such an email were among those 30,000 the FBI allowed Hillary to delete, well, whatcha gonna do?
So this is the reason the FBI started the investigation (according to the IG report):
"As we describe in Chapter Three, the FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, just days after its receipt of information from a Friendly Foreign Government (FFG) reporting that, in May 2016, during a meeting with the FFG, then Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos "suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama)."
and
"We did not find information in FBI or Department ECs, emails, or other documents, or through witness testimony, indicating that any information other than the FFG information was relied upon to predicate the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."
So let me get this straight...
Someone in a friendly foreign government (FFG)
told someone in the US Government (later it says its someone in the state dept)
that George P stated that Russia agreed to help with him with intel on Hillary.
Wait no. George P didn't state that. he "suggested" it. And Russian didn't agree to help, there was a "suggestion" to someone in the trump team that Russia could help. So...
George P "suggested" that the trump team "received some kind of a suggestion from Russia" that Russia could assist with intel....
And that was the only thing relied upon to start the investigation.
Um, fuck you. Fuck all of you.
If anyone, on this blog, or in this country, is OK with the FBI starting a secret investigation into their own activities based on nothing but that kind of flimsy BS allegation from a "Friendly" Foreign government, please please admit to it now. because I don't think there's a single person who'd be ok with that. Much less, be ok with the government investigating their favored political candidate's campaign.
This is fucking infuriating and all these fuckers should be in jail.
“No, Original Mike.
Four people were deprived of their God-given and Constitutionally recognized civil rights.
FBI behavior violated the Civil Rights Acts, also.”
Actually, four is the floor, not the ceiling. Why get a FISA warrant (and three extensions) on Carter Page, who had left the campaign before they applied for the original FISA warrant? The answer is a combination of the two hop rule and being able to go forward and back in time. They could go back to when Page worked for the Trump campaign, and then go two steps away, which probably means that that the communications of Trump and his inner circle we’re probably swept up.
Original Mike:
Yes, there is a private tort action against public officials who operate to deprive US citizens of civil liberties.
Those rules and causes of action were written into the CIvil Rights Acts by Republicans to stop Democratics in the Deep South from terrorizing black Americans.
Immunity will not hold in light of a criminal conspiracy.
Drago said...
Good news! the cursory and incomplete IG effort uncovered a "mere" 51 Woods violations and 9 False Statements as well as manufacturing evidence to gain the FISA warrants!
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Isn't the relevant Q here : if these violations and lies had not been committed would judges have approved warrants?
So have judges been asked?
If Trump was really smart, he’d run on a platform of tightening up nepotism rules and adopt Insty’s revolving door surtax on people who work for the gov’t then go to consulting for the gov’t.
Also to we deplorable: you voted for me to clean them out. I’ve barely started.
Bruce Hayden:
An excellent reminder, as those four were then used to spy "two hops" over. So the real deprivation of civil liberties is likely thousands of people.
1). January 2017 the FBI contacted the Steele Dossier sub-source and was informed the dossier was remarkably unreliable, out of context, and full of “bar talk”.
2). January 2017 the FBI lied. Telling the FISA Court the sub-source validated the dossier as evidence in order to get a renewal; a claim they repeated in April.
3). June 2017 the CIA told FBI Lawyer Kevin Clinesmith that Carter Page was working for them; and then Clinesmith changed that notification so he could submit the last renewal.
Yup. No improper motivation to be seen here.
If anyone, on this blog, or in this country, is OK with the FBI starting a secret investigation into their own activities based on nothing but that kind of flimsy BS allegation from a "Friendly" Foreign government, please please admit to it now. because I don't think there's a single person who'd be ok with that. Much less, be ok with the government investigating their favored political candidate's campaign.
This is fucking infuriating and all these fuckers should be in jail.
Or being a pissant because one got passed over for promotion.
Seeing Red:
Do you have evidence Trump is not a political genius?
*wink*
So they’re going with the Downer to Papadopoulos story. That’s going to leave certain activities prior to that incident difficult to account for—if you’re the CIA. The FBI guys, they were just following up on FFG and CIA intelligence. Just doing their job. Maybe not too well, with respect to respecting people’s rights and actually getting to the bottom of things. But it’s that doggine friendly govt and, unmentioned, the CIA that got this all rolling. That’s a sensibly corrupt spin from the DOJ IG.
Narayanan: "Isn't the relevant Q here : if these violations and lies had not been committed would judges have approved warrants?
So have judges been asked?"
Chief Justice Roberts should be answering questions about this but something tells me he would just declare FISA abuse a tax and its all cool.
“ Why didn't Mueller discover any of this?”
Because his rabidly partisan prosecutors had no interest in pursuing anything that hurt Clinton or helped Trump. Notice that Mueller’s lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissman, was repeatedly named in today’s Horowitz report. He essentially worked for Bruce Ohr, and was involved from Day One with Ohr acting as a conduit between Steele and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, after the FBI essentially terminated Steele as an official source.
Via Insty:
STILL MORE: Honestly, The Onion kind of nailed it: Comey: ‘What Can I Say, I’m Just A Catty Bitch From New Jersey And I Live For Drama.’ (Bumped).
"the entire Russian collusion narrative collapses into what very much looks like a CIA operation, run primarily through our Five Eyes allies."
And the FFG trigger of the suggestion about the suggestion is right there in the report.
I know we have gone over this before, and if I remember correctly Bruce H thought the operation initially was partly intended to cover up prior domestic political spying, but apart from being an utter scandal, this was also remarkably brazen: the fabrication of a pretext to launch such an unprecedented deep-state operation against a major party candidate and then the president--based on less than nothing.
They must have been very confident that they could defeat Trump. Of course, Mueller was a continuation of the operation by other means--but I now view that as a panicky maneuver. They tried to save it with the obstruction shenanigan, but they could not conjure something out of nothing.
The Barr and Durham response are encouraging, suggesting that the IG won't have the last word and some of the swamp creatures might still pay a price at long last. From the very beginning I thought John Brennan was the mastermind. It would be sweet justice to see him do a perp walk.
The interconnectedness of these people is almost too much to believe. The Clinton Mafia. I know it’s not just them and they were just keeping the seat warm for a while but damn. From a graph analysis perspective, it’s hairy ball connected to hairy ball. It’s hairy balls all the way down. So damned in our faces at this point, like the Epstein suicide it’s almost too much to believe. These people will need to update their MO for this era, get slicker or just better. It will eventually get expensive and excessively dangerous to have to co-opt or kill so many people.
Blogger Drago said
Chief Justice Roberts should be answering questions about this but something tells me he would just declare FISA abuse a tax and its all cool.
_____&&&&&------
For months I've been reading that IG report is in comment process.
Isn't The duped judiciary have stake in comment process?
USA is rule of law society!!??
Althouse picks up on the new looser meaning of exonerated. Think of the contortions these reporters will have to undergo to ignore the juicy, spy novel quality stuff that’s just sitting there. Imagine if you could just be a reporter and you’ve got a John Grisham novel amount of intrigue, but you need to talk about how this is so super duper exonerating instead. I bet a lot of these journalists actually loved a good story before they were co-opted to the point they’d bury one. Drama.
I hope Althouse blogs Glenn Greenwald’s take. He’ll probably have 30,000 words on it
"They must have been very confident that they could defeat Trump."
I would bet that when we get down to bottom, we'll find that the Clintons were egging on Trump to run for years before 2015.
PhysicistDave said
I just saw Mara Liasson predict that the Dems will lose seats in both the Senate and the House because of impeachment.
_____&&&&&-----
What would be Geologically more significant - CA fault give way or CA flipping in 2020?
IG So when you made 50 errors and faked a document, where you lying to the court or just stupid.
FBI We were stupid.
IG OK.
Can’t get spellcheck to say were instead of where.
Wonder why the DOJ is still redacting the filing dates for the 4 FISA warrants? CTH has a good explanation. James Wolf, former SSCI security director, was caught disclosing classified documents (one of the Carter Page FISA warrants) to a reporter (girlfriend Ali Watkins) through a copy signed out to SSCI Vice Chair Warner, that had the filing dated fudged by the FBI in order to catch the leaker. Disclosing the actual filing dates would make this obvious, as well as that the chair and vice chair of the SSCI (both in the Gang of Eight) were dirty. This became obvious after Wolf indicated that he would call a number of SSCI members at trial, and within a day or so was offered a plea deal that dropped the Espionage Act felony to a single count of lying to the FBI.
Fun and games.
I turned spellcheck off a long time ago. It screwed up more often than it helped.
Let me add to the last that this corruption at the top of the SSCI (including former Vice Chair Feinstein, as well as the current Chair and Vice Chair) is a big part of why that committee has sat on the sidelines during the entire time since the Russian collusion hoax and FISAgate became known. They have Senate oversight over FISA, as well as the DOJ NSD and FBI NSB (the DOJ organizations that utilize FISA), and did nothing. Instead, it was the Senate Judiciary and both House intelligence HSCI) and Judiciary committees that investigated (until the Republicans lost control of the House, at which time their emphasis switched to impeachment).
I still think it's hilarious that "documentary" evidence of wrongdoing is the only acceptable evidence in a case in which we know for a fact that, at minimum, 30,000 email documents were destroyed with the FBI's approval.
George Papadopoulos
@GeorgePapa19
6h6 hours ago
Remember: the Durham probe became a CRIMINAL investigation as soon as he left Rome with information on Mifsud. IG said he wasn’t working for the FBI. Leaves only one other option: CIA, and why Brennan and his team have all lawyered up. Bye bye, Brennan.
George Papadopoulos
@GeorgePapa19
10h10 hours ago
George Papadopoulos Retweeted Tracy Beanz
What the hell?
George Papadopoulos added,
Tracy Beanz
@tracybeanz
And, not for nothing, but the IG states that Pdop was CONSENSUALLY recorded by a confidential human source. CONSENSUALLY- meaning he knew he was being recorded in September of 2016. By who? @GeorgePapa19 comments appreciated.
https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1
Somebody who deserves great praise, and many apologies from others, is Devin Nunes. Remember, there were two House Select Committee memos released in February of 2018 describing the errors in FISA warrants. Now, we did learn which of memos was the truthful one when the redacted FISA warrants were leaked out, but Horowitz's report finalized the judgment- Nunes memo was correct on all matters while Schiff's was literally a pack of lies and exaggerations.
Guys, Schiff has a really hard job. Yes, he’s shameless and a disgrace. But someone has to carry the water. Spare a thought for the waterboy.
Yes, hats off to farm boy Devin. And before him Admiral Rogers. Two mostly unsung heroes.
Yancey Ward:
Also deserving of praise:
1. General Flynn,
2. Admiral Rogers,
3. Attorney General Barr, and
4. President Trump.
Deserving of discredit:
1. Senators Burr, Warner, and Feinstein,
2. Every Democratic House member, and
3. The MSM.
Birkel, that crew should clean up after Brennan/Clapper/Comey/McCabe get punished. I hope it’s messy. Obama probably was a lot like they said Reagan was, let’s say hands off. These people are pros and have been at it their whole life. Guys like Obama are useful as hell, but I find it ever harder to imagine he was running things surrounded as he was by administrative state minders. He played his part beautifully. After all, Althouse has emphasized he was such a beautiful man.
I think she said lovely usually.
Too early to praise Barr. He’s showing promise but not yet results. Nunes and Rogers have results. Flynn was a pain in the ass to these folks for a long time and managed to do good things in the previous administration but they took him out early.
Just because Flynn was an early casualty does not mean his part of the Deep State War was unimportant.
And he should be exonerated in short order.
walter wrote:
"And, not for nothing, but the IG states that Pdop was CONSENSUALLY recorded by a confidential human source. CONSENSUALLY- meaning he knew he was being recorded in September of 2016. By who? @GeorgePapa19 comments appreciated."
I read that section just a little while back. I think "consensually" means that Halper agreed to have the FBI record the conversation, not that Papadopoulos did.
I just now scanned Tracy Beanz twitter feed- hers is a really good running commentary on the report. She started at the beginning and is reading all the chapters in order. I started on Chapter 11, but then went back to the beginning a couple of hours ago. I might now just stop and let Beanz do the hard work for me.
Also runs https://uncoverdc.com/
Ah, slept in, and up with Nescafe. If you dont think thats a luxury you have not had Spanish coffee.
Anyway, yes of course it all piles and piles of "furry balls". These things and these people, and many thousands not in the spotlight. Its a system that self-organized within a caste. And there are many, diverse ways of making money to feed the system, and their resources in money and people are enormous.
You cannot "investigate" this into reform. There is simply too much complication and too many players for any earthly resources to work within the convoluted system. That, of course, will actively and bitterly resist reform. Your investigators will be flailing through never ending thorn bushes, trying to prune them with nail clippers.
Codevilla's take feels accurate. Not hopeful, but correct.
Yeah, I agree.
"' Specifically, Comey and Baker refused to get recertified for a classification clearance, thus blocking the IG’s efforts to ‘refresh their recollection’ with classified documents.” Making it easier to say “I don’t recall” in response to every hard question."
Regards,
Porter & Malouf P.A.
Yeah, but it's the NYT, which has exonerated itself of any semblance of balance.
daskol said...
"Guys, Schiff has a really hard job. Yes, he’s shameless and a disgrace. But someone has to carry the water. Spare a thought for the waterboy."
I'm still of the opinion that the impeachment started in the intelligence committee because people in that committee, including Shiff , benefitted from the Ukraine kickback scheme.
Barring murder, things are about to get interesting.
I don;t think the FBI made honest mistakes but the "mistakes" sere not done to sabotage Trump's campaign, but were, partially to justify what they had done till then (in other words always maintaining the warrant even though it didn't pan out) and partially in an attempt to be "neutral" which is not the same as impartial. hey wanted to respond to Harry Reid.
Note: Seen on Patterico:
I don’t know if he is still reading, but I just unmoderated Haiku and narciso. Haiku asked a while back where I would be when the IG report came out. I’m right here, and you can be too. I made some correct predictions but so did he. We both got some things wrong too. If Comey and Trump can’t show humility, or even basic honesty, let’s show them we can do better here.
Patterico (115b1f) — 12/9/2019 @ 9:13 pm
If you are betting on coin flips, you call tails and the guy flipping the coin hits "heads" seventeen times in a row, he is cheating.
Ummm, JAORE...
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