On December 9, 2019, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz, will be releasing his long awaited report regarding the FBI/DOJ potential abuses of the FISA process involving a U.S. citizen, Carter Page.
The importance of this report cannot be stressed enough. If Horowitz does not completely whitewash the wrongdoings that have been documented over the last two years, it will reveal a substantial abuse of power by the law enforcement arm of the Federal government by people who worked for the prior administration.
It should be noted that, over the last two years, the following people have either been fired, or have resigned, due in part to their participation in the alleged FISA abuse…
- FBI Director James Comey
- Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe
- James Baker – FBI Chief Counsel
- James Rybicki – Comey’s chief of staff
- Peter Strzok – lead FBI agent in the Hillary Clinton email case, the General Michael Flynn case, and Trump-Russia investigation
- Lisa Page – FBI attorney, who worked for Andrew McCabe, and who was having affair with Peter Strzok
- Michael Kortan – FBI director of public relations
- John Carlin – Assistant Attorney General and head of DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD)
- Sally Yates – Deputy Attorney General
- Mary McCord – Acting Assistant Attorney General, Acting head of NSD
- David Laufman – Deputy Assistant Attorney General, counterintelligence division, NSD
- Kevin Clinesmith – FBI Attorney, worked for Peter Strzok
And the list goes on…I could add another ten names to this list. Bottom line is that virtually the entire leadership at the FBI and the DOJ NSD were fired or resigned as a result of the IG’s investigation into FISA abuse and the previous investigation into the Hillary Clinton email server mess.
What is the FISA Abuse Investigation?
At this point, the vast majority of Americans really have no clue about what is to transpire. So, I thought I’d provide a brief recap about the IG’s investigation.
In late October 2016, just weeks before the election, the FBI/DOJ obtained a FISA warrant to spy on former Trump campain advisor, Carter Page, claiming he was a Russian asset.
This warrant allowed the FBI to obtain all of Page’s previous emails, text messages and phone records, and monitor all of his communications for the ensuing three months.
A FISA warrant then allows the FBI to review the text messages, emails and phone records of anyone contacted by Page, and anyone in contact with people contacted with Page. This is known as two-hop surveillance. It is extremely intrusive.
The warrant was then renewed three more times, so the FBI had Page under surveillance for a year. The initial application was signed by James Comey and Sally Yates, and others were signed by Andrew McCabe and then Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein.
In February 2018, the GOP still controlled the House of Representatives. Devin Nunes was the chairman of the House Intelligence committee. After the applications to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on former Trump campaign aid Carter Page were declassified, Nunes determined that there were significant issues with the applications.
He and other GOP members of the committee concluded that the FBI and DOJ-NSD relied heavily upon the Steele Dossier to obtain the warrant. To this day, much of the information in the dossier remains unverified, and most has been debunked as garbage.
Nunes also hinted that the FBI withheld potentially exculpatory information about Page in the warrant. Nunes and his committee then wrote a memo that was subsequently released for public consumption.
Why is this important? First of all, FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is meant to be used to spy on FOREIGN agents and terrorists, not American citizens.
A FISA warrant can be obtained to spy on an American citizen if it is demonstrated that the citizen is working with a foreign country in a nefarious way.
When an application is submitted to obtain a warrant to spy on anyone, they are not represented in the FISA court. Therefore, it must be virtually certain that the individual is working as a foreign spy.
By submitting the application, those that sign it are verifying the integrity of the information in the application. The application must contain all relevant information to the party, including potentially exculpatory information. It is then up to the judge to determine whether to sign off on the warrant or not.
In the case of Carter Page, the FBI submitted that the information in the Steele Dossier was sound and verified, and it withheld the fact that Page had been a cooperating witness in a case against two Russian spies who were allegedly trying to recruit him.
The tradition of a peaceful transition of power throw aside.
As most of us know, the United States is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. There are three separate, but co-equal branches of the U.S. government… the Executive Branch in which the President is the Chief Executive, the legislative branch consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the Judiciary branch consisting of the U.S. court system and the Supreme Court.
Every four years, we hold a new presidential election to determine a new chief executive. The president may serve a total of two terms consisting of four years.
Because of this system, we rely upon a tradition of a peaceful transition of power. When a new administration is elected to take office, the previous administration is to assist in making the transition go as smoothly as possible.
In the case of Donald Trump, this was not made possible due to the cloud hanging over his administration resulting from investigations into members of his campaign.
As the months have gone on, and more information has been released, it’s been clear that members of the Obama administration sought to undermine the incoming administration.
Just days after the election, Admiral Michael Rogers, the head of the NSA, traveled to Trump Tower to meet with the president-elect. The very next day, Trump moved his entire campaign staff to his golf resort in New Jersey. Shortly after this meeting, James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter suggested to President Obama that Rogers should be fired.
On January 5, 2017, members of the Obama team, including James Comey, James Clapper, Joe Biden and Susan Rice, met with President Obama to discuss the ongoing investigations into the Trump campaign and members of his incoming team.
We know this because Susan Rice, on Inauguration day two weeks later, sent a memo to herself memorializing the meeting and suggesting that Obama said to be sure everything was being done “by the book.”
On January 6, 2017, Comey, Clapper and others met with President-elect Trump at Trump Tower to present to him a Joint Assessment suggesting that the Russians had tried to hack the election.
After the meeting, Comey stayed behind to relay to Trump the most salacious information about him contained in the Steele Dossier, including the alleged encounter with prostitutes at a hotel in Moscow and peeing on a bed once occupied by Obama.
Only a few days after the Inauguration, FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka meet with Trump’s National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn. Just a couple weeks later, Flynn resigns because he allegedly lied to Vice President Pence about a phone call he had with Russian Ambassador Kislyak.
We’ve since learned that Flynn had been under investigation for months. He subsequently pleaded guilty to providing false statements to the FBI about his call with Kislyak.
This case has yet to be concluded, and it appears the FBI investigation, and subsequent Mueller prosecution of General Flynn has significant flaws, including potentially altered evidence and prosecutorial misconduct.
We all basically know what happened since… James Comey was fired as FBI Director. Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from anything to do with the Trump-Russia investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein names Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump-Russia. The investigation ends in March 2019…Mueller finds no conspiracy with Russia to steal the election, but tries to open Trump up for obstruction. New Attorney General William Barr shoots that down in his summary of the Mueller Report, also signed off on by Rosenstein.
Along the way, Andrew McCabe was fired by the FBI for lying to Inspector General investigators looking into leaks to the media. FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired for a multitude of reasons. Etc, etc.
The importance of the upcoming IG report on FISA abuse.
As I mentioned, the IG report is set for release on December 9th. Horowitz will then testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about his findings. The report is allegedly about 1,000 pages long.
In the last week, we’ve seen two separate articles by the New York Times about the IG’s alleged findings. These articles are clearly leaks to the Times by people named in the report, who were allowed to review sections in the report dealing with them specifically. They are allowed to provide the IG a response to the allegations in the report. The IG may then include a rebuttal.
The Times articles have both tried to spin the report as positively as possible for the FBI/DOJ and the investigation into the Trump campaign. As a result, some Trump supporters are afraid the report will not result in anyone being held accountable for the obvious shenanigans to undermine Trump.
However, the first article indicated that FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who resigned in September, was referred to the DOJ for criminal charges relating to the altering of evidence in the Carter Page FISA application file.
The spin of that article was that a low level attorney was being investigate, but no one at the top, such as Comey or McCabe.
The second article tries to undermine the Trump claim that his campaign was spied on, but then it actually referred to the alleged spies who reached out to Trump campaign staff and advisors as “informants.”
We’ll see if new articles come out this coming week ahead of the report release. However, it’s clear by these two articles that there is significant apprehension on the left about what the report will reveal.
My guess is that, given the report is supposed to be quite lengthy, it will not contain good news for the likes of Comey, McCabe, Strzok and others.
As a result, I believe this report will have historic significance. Whether anyone is ever held significantly accountable or not, I believe it will make clear that members of the Obama administration abused their power in an effort to undermine the President-Elect and then President Trump.
I say this with a certain degree of confidence, because of this one significant fact… U.S. Attorney John Durham has opened a CRIMINAL investigation into the FBI/DOJ actions that occurred between late 2015 and at least May 2017.
Durham has powers that IG Horowitz does not. He has impaneled a grand jury, and he can subpoena anyone he wants. Horowitz, on the other hand, is restricted to only having the ability to interview FBI and DOJ employees while they still work for the government. Once they leave, he no longer has that ability.
Durham was assigned to review the beginnings of the Trump-Russia investigation this past Spring by AG Barr. Barr had indicated that, upon taking office, he was unsatisfied with the answers he was receiving to the questions he was asking about how the investigation began.
Durham was brought in to conduct a review. Apparently, as he dug into the case, he found potential criminal wrongdoing, and his review became an official criminal investigation back in September.
This change in status appears to be as a result of two trips Durham made to Italy to speak with intelligence officials there. It has been speculated that the original “spy” involved in the Trump Russia case was Joseph Mifsud.
Mifsud reached out to Trump campaign advisor George Papadopolous in Spring 2016 and planted the seed that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Papadopolous subsequently relayed this information during a meeting at a London pub to Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer. Downer then relayed this info to the FBI a couple months later. Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI name for the Trump-Russia investigation, opened July 31, 2016.
Apparently, Mifsud at some point recorded a deposition as a sort of insurance policy to reveal who directed him to reach out to Papadopolous. AG Barr and Durham have both apparently heard this deposition.
In recent weeks, Durham has also apparently been contacting people at CIA and at the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA is apparently who hired and paid Professor Stefan Halper, a known FBI asset, to conduct some work.
The files for that work apparently are virtually empty, but Halper reached out to Papadopolous, Carter Page, and General Flynn at points during and previous to the campaign. Halper was apparently paid about $1 million for his “work.”
It is also noted that an ONA whistleblower by the name of Adam Lovinger, who questioned these payments to Halper, was actually fired for this revelation. He has since filed a whistleblower reprisal complaint.
Given these facts, I do believe the upcoming IG report is going to have historic significance.
Attorney General Barr appears to believe that there was no specific predicate to the Trump-Russia investigation, and that it was all started as a result of people like Stefan Halper and Joseph Mifsud reaching out to Trump campaign advisors, to dirty them up so to speak.
This would then allow the FBI/DOJ to start an investigation into the campaign that has had dire consequences since.
If it there is evidence that Mifsud and Halper were directed in any way by members of the Obama administration to effectively spy on the Trump campaign in an effort to be sure that he would not be elected, then we have a serious abuse of power, and a political scandal for the ages.
Furthermore, if the Mueller Special Counsel knew of this evidence, or ignored it, and deliberatly produced a misleading report, then that is a further abuse of power.
At this point, it sure seems to be that this is the case. One particular person of interest is former CIA director John Brennan. He has been extremely vocal in his criticisms of Trump and is known to be a person that Durham would like to interview.
If Brennan had anything to do with Mifsud reaching out to Papadopolous, then it is likely Obama and Joe Biden knew as well. Every bit of information revealed by Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation that originated with Papadopolous, would be summarized in the President’s Daily Briefings.
We know from a text message between Strzok and Page, that “the White House wants to know everything we are doing,” or something to that effect. That text was from late Summer 2016.
The Susan Rice memo to herself on January 20, 2017 may actually come back to haunt them all.
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