McCabe fired. There’s talk of criminal charges.
Heh.
MSNBC actually has an anchor on now (Brian Williams) who got fired for lying, doing a broadcast trying to convince people that McCabe, who just got fired for lying, didn’t really do anything wrong. #msnbcisfakenews #McCabefired
— MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) March 17, 2018
Newly discovered text messages reveal…
[T]wo key federal law enforcement officials conspired to meet with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge who presided over the federal case against Michael Flynn. The judge, Rudolph Contreras, was recused from handling the case just days after accepting the guilty plea of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser who was charged with making false statements to federal investigators.
The text messages about Contreras between controversial Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lawyer Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the senior FBI counterintelligence official who was kicked off Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, were deliberately hidden from Congress, multiple congressional investigators told The Federalist.
People have been speculating about Judge Contreras’ role in this for a while now.
Related.
FBI disciplinary office: Fire McCabe.
The FBI office that handles employee discipline has recommended firing the bureau’s former deputy director over allegations that he authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to a reporter and misled investigators when asked about it, leaving Attorney General Jeff Sessions to decide whether he should fire the veteran official just four days before his expected retirement date, people familiar with the matter said.
The recommendation from the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility is likely to add fuel to the political fire surrounding former deputy director Andrew McCabe, who abruptly stepped down from his post earlier this year but technically remained an FBI employee.
Update: Is it a trap?
House of Representatives Judiciary Committee;
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy today called for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate potential bias and potential conflicts of interest and decisions made or not made by the Department of Justice in 2016 and 2017.
The Justice Department’s inspector general is reportedly close to releasing a report on its investigation into the handling of the Clinton Foundation. FBI Director Christopher Wray reportedly asked deputy director Andrew McCabe to step down in light of some of the findings of the inspector general.
One aspect of the reported findings, however, stands out. According to these reports, investigators believed that McCabe misled them about his approval of a leak to the media on the Clinton investigation. An alleged false or misleading statement by McCabe could rekindle questions about how the Justice Department addresses alleged false statements within its own ranks. […]
Consider the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. He now faces a prison stint after pleading guilty to a single false statement about a meeting with Russian diplomats during the Trump presidential transition period. While Flynn did not deny the meeting, which was entirely legal, he denied discussing sanctions with the Russians. Mueller charged him with lying or misleading federal investigators under 18 U.S.C. 1001. He did so even though investigators working under former FBI Director James Comey reportedly had concluded that Flynn did not intend to lie and should not be charged criminally for the omission.
More: The Australian diplomat whose tip in 2016 prompted the Russia-Trump investigation previously arranged one of the largest foreign donations to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable efforts, documents show.
The top attorney in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s office was reported to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General by a lawyer representing whistleblowers for alleged “corrupt legal practices” more than a year before the 2016 presidential election and a decade before to the Senate Judiciary Committee , this reporter has learned.
Described by the New York Times as Mueller’s ‘pitbull,’ Andrew Weissmann, a former Eastern District of New York Assistant U.S. Attorney, rose through the ranks to eventually become Mueller’s general counsel at the F.B.I.
Related – FBI can’t identify a YouTuber whose username is literally his REAL name but the FBI could identify the DNC leak as ‘Russians’?
Why are the Comey Memos secret?
The memos are critically important. Portions of them have been leaked to the press, given to a Comey friend, discussed in congressional testimony, and read by a few Capitol Hill lawmakers and staff. Sometimes it seems the only people who have never had a chance to see the Comey memos are the millions of Americans who are trying to make sense of the daily firehose of Trump-Russia news.
They’re not likely to see the memos anytime soon. The FBI and the office of Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller have imposed tight restrictions on access to the memos, holding them even more closely than some documents that are classified at a far higher level. Now, with speculation about obstruction ever present in the media, some lawmakers are calling for the memos to be released. It’s time for Americans to know what’s going on, they say.
Better question — why isn’t Comey under indictment?
Why Susan Rice wrote an email to herself;
Susan Rice is far from the brightest bulb on the tree, but she was well aware that by concealing facts ostensibly relating to national security from her counterpart in the new administration-General Michael Flynn-she was, at a minimum, violating longstanding civic norms. If she actually lied to Flynn, she could have been accused of much worse. So Rice wanted to be able to retrieve her email, if she found herself in a sticky situation, and tell the world that she hid relevant facts about Russia from the new administration on Barack Obama’s orders.
What were the secrets that Obama wanted to keep from the new administration? We can easily surmise that the fact that the Steele memo was paid for by the Democratic Party; that the FBI had to some degree collaborated with Steele; that the Clinton campaign had fed some of the fake news in the dossier to Steele; and that Comey’s FBI had used Steele’s fabrications as the basis for FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign were among the facts that Obama and his minions didn’t want Michael Flynn and Donald Trump to know. Susan Rice, we can infer, was told to keep these secrets, and if anyone ever asked why she had failed to disclose them to Michael Flynn and others on Trump’s team, or even lied to those people, she would have the defense that President Obama ordered her to do it.
Related — The bodies are piling up
I spent many months assuring people that nothing like this could ever happen — that the FBI and Justice Department would not countenance the provision to the FISA court of uncorroborated allegations of heinous misconduct. When Trump enthusiasts accused them of rigging the process, I countered that they probably had not even used the Steele dossier. If the Justice Department had used it in writing a FISA warrant application, I insisted that the FBI would independently verify any important facts presented to the court, make any disclosures that ought in fairness be made so the judge could evaluate the credibility of the sources, and compellingly demonstrate probable cause before alleging that an American was a foreign agent.
I was wrong.
Two months before the presidential election, Lisa Page wrote to fellow FBI official Peter Strzok that she was working on a memo for then-FBI director James Comey because Obama ‘wants to know everything we’re doing.’
Obama had said five months earlier during a Fox News Channel interview that he could ‘guarantee’ he wouldn’t interfere with that investigation.
‘I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line,’ he said on April 10, 2016.
‘I guarantee it. I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case but in any case. Full stop. Period,’ he said.’
More…
.@SenRonJohnson on @FBI and @TheJusticeDept: "I have questions about some top level managers in those departments, carryovers probably from the previous administration." pic.twitter.com/S2kxY6UT4s
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 7, 2018
Lest we forget: “Incredibly, both [Page and Strzok] were part of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation against Trump until it was revealed that they has exchanged texts that not only trashed the president but talked of an ‘insurance policy’ should he win the election.”
The Carter Page plot line thickens…
In October of 2016, immediately after making the FISA Court filing, claiming Page was working for a foreign government and successfully gaining the surveillance warrant, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin resigns as head of the DOJ-NSD
Read the whole thing.
They had to go Title I in order to get to Trump. The application was denied 3 times prior to the final approval on October 21st. Page left the campaign on September 23rd. By going Title I, they were able to monitor anyone he may have had contact with (ie Trump Tower).
— Andrew NOT McCabe McWhortor #Deplorable (@AMcwhortor) February 5, 2018
But start here.
(Not certain the “denied 3 times” portion is accurate, all the info I’ve been following says once.)
Related: “There has been almost 100 leaks that we believe have come from the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee,”
Chris Buskirk provides an overview;
The FISA Abuse Memo is out and now we know why the Democrats were desperate to keep its contents hidden from the public: it confirms the worst fears not just of President Trump’s supporters but of everyone concerned about the abuse of police power, government corruption, and the sanctity of our elections.
The memo shows interference in the 2016 presidential election by hostile elements within a United States intelligence agency. It wasn’t the Russians we had to worry about–it was rogue actors at the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice. Left unanswered is to what extent the West Wing knew about or was complicit in this gross abuse of power.
Oh, they knew.
More — new information emerging that Rod Rosenstein threatened congressional members.
(Via)
Washington Post (if you get the paywall, hit ESC as it loads);
The matter of the Weiner laptop emails has been debated publicly for more than a year, in part because many Clinton supporters say the FBI tilted the 2016 race toward Donald Trump when it announced in late October that it was reopening its probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state.
Key parts of what went into that decision have remained murky and are a major focus of the inspector general’s probe, according to people familiar with the matter.
In late September 2016, FBI agents in New York were investigating Weiner for possible Internet crimes involving a teenage girl. In the course of that probe, they discovered that his laptop contained thousands of work emails belonging to Weiner’s then-wife, Huma Abedin. Abedin was a longtime aide to Clinton, and agents wanted to know whether the emails in question might shed new light on the Clinton investigation, which had been closed in July without any charges.
The New York FBI office alerted FBI headquarters to the new email issue within days — accounts differ as to when precisely, but McCabe was aware of the matter by late September or early October at the latest, according to the people familiar with the matter. The agents on the Weiner case wanted to talk to the Clinton email investigators and see whether the messages were potentially important. Some people familiar with the matter said officials at FBI headquarters asked the New York agents to analyze the emails’ metadata — the sender, recipient and times of the messages — to see whether they seemed relevant to the closed probe.
McCabe was involved in those discussions, but there are differing accounts about how much then-FBI Director James B. Comey understood about the matter in the early days of October.
An attorney for Comey could not immediately be reached for comment.
So, I think we know why Comey “reopened” the Clinton investigation just days before the election — self-preservation.
“It’s about what the best outcome is”.
source (pdf)
For background:
1. Get to know this name: Bill Priestap pic.twitter.com/cu0e1ji295
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) December 15, 2017
Full pdf here.
Bob Goodlatte on #Hannity: Says Strzok withheld 302s from Congress because it might inflame Congress. Stunning. Remember Comey saying some things were too sensitive to reveal to Congress in his testimony.
— Dana French (@DanaBordeaux) January 26, 2018
I think he had them all along: Inspector General has located the missing FBI Strzok and Page Texts
This is as good an explanation of what’s likely contained/explained in the FISA memos as I’ve found to date.
The FBI “failed to preserve” five months worth of text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI employees who made pro-Clinton and anti-Trump comments while working on the Clinton email and the Russia collusion investigations.
The disclosure was made Friday in a letter sent by the Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).
“The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page,” Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, wrote to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of HSGAC. (RELATED: FBI Agents Discussed ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump Win)
He said that texts are missing for the period between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.
[…] The end date of the missing Strzok-Page texts is also significant. That’s because May 17 is the day when Mueller was appointed to take over the FBI’s probe of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.
Related read: Why would the FBI utilize contractors?
Update:
Newly turned over text messages suggest AG Lynch somehow already knew FBI would recommend no charges vs. Hillary Clinton when Lynch announced she would accept any FBI recommendation.
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 21, 2018
.@mattgaetz: "The allegations contained in this important intelligence document go to the very foundations of our democracy and they require an immediate release to the public in my opinion." pic.twitter.com/kqjxp21GcA
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) January 18, 2018
A four-page memo circulating in Congress that reveals alleged United States government surveillance abuses is being described by lawmakers as “shocking,” “troubling” and “alarming,” with one congressman likening the details to KGB activity in Russia.
Speaking with Fox News, the lawmakers said they could not yet discuss the contents of the memo they reviewed on Thursday after it was released to members by the House Intelligence Committee. But they say the memo should be immediately made public.
“It is so alarming the American people have to see this,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said.
“It’s troubling. It is shocking,” North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said. “Part of me wishes that I didn’t read it because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much.”
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said he believed people could lose their jobs after the memo is released.
“I believe the consequence of its release will be major changes in people currently working at the FBI and the Department of Justice,” he said, referencing DOJ officials Rod Rosenstein and Bruce Ohr.
“You think about, ‘is this happening in America or is this the KGB?’ That’s how alarming it is,” Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry said.
The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday approved a motion by New York Rep. Pete King to release the memo on abuses of FISA, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to all House members.
[…]
The vote Thursday morning on releasing the memo to lawmakers was along party lines, with Democrats voting against making it available for all members.