Attempted Coup
President Trump just failed another test.
Yesterday, I watched him explain how the Justice Department’s Inspector General Report showed how unfairly he was treated in the Russia investigation. With high school students sitting around him in the White House, the President claimed that the IG report showed that the FBI had “concocted evidence and lied to the courts.” He further claimed that “…it was an attempted overthrow, and a lot of people were in on it, and got caught.” He then whined that no US President should ever have to go through this again.
The President then asked his new “communications staff” member, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, what she thought. “The American people should be terrified that this could happen to you,” was her statement.
This is all very serious. All these FBI officials caught, a biased “witch hunt” performed, an attempted coup of the President: somebody ought to be going to jail.
Inspector General Report
The problem is, it’s all a lie. The Inspector General’s report did come out. It stated that the investigation of the Trump Campaign was properly “predicated”. That means it was started for good reason. The Report goes onto say that the FBI officials who ran the investigation, including FBI Director James Comey, FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe, Counter Espionage Section Chief Peter Strzok, and even Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr, did NOT show political bias.
The Inspector General did find concerns with the Carter Page FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants, including finding that a lower level attorney falsified an email used as evidence. He also noted that there was what he called “issues with the reliability” in the Steele Dossier, used as a supporting document for the FISA warrant.
There was no coup, no attempted overthrow. There weren’t “…a lot of people” who got caught. Americans don’t need to be worried “…that this could happen to you,” that is unless, you are dealing with Russian intelligence, like Page, Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos.
The Inspector General found concerns with the FISA Program, concerns that he will continue to investigate. Chris Wray, the current FBI Director, thanked the IG for his information, and promised to work to correct the issues he raised.
For my “Trumpian” friends who counted on Horowitz revealing the “great plot” to overthrow Trump, the “insurance plan” of Peter Strzok, sorry. They were doing their job, investigating a campaign flirting with Russia while our elections were being attacked.
The Backup Plan
As James Comey predicted a couple of months ago, the IG Report clears the old FBI leadership of wrongdoing. But that isn’t stopping the President, or his “mouthpiece” Ms. Bondi, or Attorney General Bill Barr from claiming that Inspector General Horowitz’s Report is wrong. In fact, US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Barr with investigating these same issues, even broke investigatory silence to state that he doesn’t agree with Horowitz’s conclusions.
Why should they? Horowitz has done two investigations in this area, one looking at the Clinton email investigation and now this. he found mistakes were made in both, but still agreed that the investigations were legitimate and their conclusions reasonable.
Attorney General Bill Barr needed a backup plan. What if Horowitz does it again and misses out on the “witch hunt”? So he brought in another “responsible and respected” member of the Justice Department “family,” US Attorney for Connecticut John Durham, to find the “true” facts. This is the same John Durham who investigated the CIA torture program after 9-11, waterboarding and all, and found that no crimes were committed.
All the “old timers” from the Department talk about Durham as a “straight shooter” and an “honest investigator”. These are the same “old timers” who talked lovingly about Bill Barr as an “institutionalist” who would bring respect back to the Department. We’ve seen how that turned out. The Justice Department today is the Washington office of Mr. Trump’s personal attorney: Bill Barr. The scales are weighted, and lady Justice’s blindfold is completely off. Don’t hold your breath that Durham will be fair and balanced either.
Failing the Truth
Mr. Trump has failed another “truth” test. That’s not much of a surprise; he fails that exam all the time. But Mr. Horowitz has failed a different kind of test, a loyalty test. The President and his cronies needed “evidence” to attack his rivals. Horowitz was supposed to find that. He didn’t.
And maybe that’s the unifying theme of the Trump Administration. Find your enemies; then find a way to smear them. That way, whatever your enemies say, it can be played back on Fox News to the “true believers” willing to accept any “news” that fits with their beliefs. Barr and Durham are searching for some way to attack the FBI and the Obama Justice Department. Rudy Giuliani is in Ukraine trying to find a way to smear Joe Biden before the 2020 elections.
And you can count on the President to say whatever he has to say to make the mud stick. If there is a way to be “the best” at failing the truth test, then the President must be an honor student. It’s the one place he excels.
“The Report goes onto say that the FBI officials who ran the investigation, including… Peter Strzok … did NOT show political bias.”
That is NOT what the report says. I’ll send a $10 contribution to the campaign of your choice if you can show me where it says that Strzok did NOT show political bias. What is says, among other things, is that Strzok & Page had a text exchange as follows: The text message stated, in part, “And Trump should go f himself.” Strzok responded favorably to the article and added, “And F Trump.” The report acknowledges that the two shared ” statements of hostility toward then candidate.” While it DOES conclude that Strzok “was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to [the inititation of the investigation],” and that the actual decision makers were not motivated by bias, that’s a country mile from saying that Strzok “did NOT show political bias.” In fact, it demonstrates just the opposite.
So Strzok was part of the group that advised the Assitant Director (Priestap) to open the investigation. The Report states: “…and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision. We similarly found that, while the formal documentation opening each of the four individual investigations was approved by Strzok (as required by the DIOG),
decisions to do so were reached by a consensus among the Crossfire “Hurricane agents and analysts who identified individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had recently traveled to Russia or had other alleged ties to Russia. Priestap was involved in these decisions. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations.
So if Strzok is a significant part of this process – and they find “…no evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced…” then I would argue that in fact none was shown.
To step away from the legalities, counselor, Strzok and Page were foolish to hide their affair from their spouses by using government issued phones. For national security specialists, that sure weren’t very special. But to then argue that they showed bias in the professional decisions when there isn’t any evidence to show it, isn’t valid either.
http://www.peteforamerica.com
Marty: it nowhere says that Strzok was NOT biased. & if you can’t acknowledge that an exchange between people that goes like this ” “And Trump should go f himself.” Strzok responded favorably to the article and added, “And F Trump.” reflects bias, well, then, with all great respect (& you know that’s true, not just lip service), I think that reflects your bias. Let me put it this way. If someone said that about Obama, would you not think that person was biased against Obama? Of course you would. So would I.
The report says Strzok was not among the key decisionmakers to launch the investigation. I’ll take that at face value. So should you. I’ll even take the report on its face that the decision to launch the investigations wasn’t motivated by bias. Those folks have looked at a lot more original source documents than me. Though I remain skeptical, I’ll give them that, as should you. But you can’t add hypothesis 1 (Stzok wasn’t a key decision maker) to hypothesis 2 (the decision makers weren’t motivated by bias) to equal “the report said Strzok wasn’t motivated by bias.” That is NOT what the report “said”, nor can it be implied by the report, especially in view of the fact the report acknowledged their “hostility.”