The FBI is in a shambles, but the DOJ is a complete train wreck

A 63-page report released last month found "numerous issues" with the FBI's use of confidential sources during a period that included the 2016 election. That report revealed that the FBI lacked appropriate procedures to vet and maintain oversight of sources like the ones used against the Trump campaign. This created a security risk for the United States. Yet no prosecutions have been announced.

Last August, an even more serious finding was released when the IG determined that the FBI director himself [James Comey] had violated FBI policy and the terms of his own employment agreement in disseminating classified information for release to the media. Though the DOJ could have prosecuted based on the report's findings, it declined to do so.

A May 2019 IG report implicated the FBI deputy assistant director for unauthorized contacts with the media, illegally disclosing sealed court documents and other sensitive information to the media, and accepting gifts from the media. The DOJ declined to prosecute. But why? The IG recommended prosecution.

The IG's June 2018 probe into the Hillary Clinton email investigation implicated the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, of repeatedly articulating a strong political bias even as he headed up the investigation of Clinton's exposure of classified information. The 500-page report, which reviewed 1.2 million documents and included interviews with more than 100 witnesses, documented numerous questionable decisions that benefited Clinton or damaged Trump, though the IG acknowledged the parties denied their political bias impacted their decisions.

Finally, an April 2018 report implicated FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe of inappropriately authorizing the disclosure of sensitive information to a reporter and repeatedly lying to investigators about it. The report found McCabe lied four times, three under oath, and that it was done "in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership." Though McCabe was fired, he wasn't prosecuted.

The story is here.

First Katie Hill, now FBI's Lisa Page: Rumored to be doing both Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe

Thread.

Washington DC, Cougars' playground.

New text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok show that they altered the FBI 302 on Flynn

Sidney Powell: Special Counsel Robert Mueller committed crimes by wiping Peter Strzok's and Lisa Page's cell phones

Comey and the FBI committed similar crimes in the Hillary investigation to protect her and her associates.

POWELL: NEW FACTS INDICATE MUELLER DESTROYED EVIDENCE, OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE:

The Inspector General of the Department of Justice reported late last week that Mueller wiped Peter Strzok’s cell phone of all messages during the crucial time he was working for special counsel. The IG was unable to recover any text messages from it.

This was after the inspector general informed Mueller of the extreme bias of Strzok and Page evidenced by thousands of text messages on their phones. These messages were so egregious they required their termination from Mueller’s squad. Not only did Mueller hide this development from Congress, but he destroyed evidence on Strzok’s phone and allowed DOJ to do the same for Page’s phone. That’s a crime. Mueller put Paul Manafort in solitary confinement for simply trying to contact a witness.

Any ethical law Department of Justice official would have taken custody of all electronic devices of Strzok and Page immediately upon discovery of their extreme bias and blatant misconduct — or certainly upon their termination — and preserved all the evidence. For Mueller to destroy this evidence is blatant obstruction of justice that warrants his immediate termination. The same is true for Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who was “overseeing” it at the time.

FBI and Mueller framed Flynn, 302 evidence against Flynn is seven months old, isn't contemporaneous with the January 2017 informal interview

Missing Flynn document in Mueller file could rile judge at sentencing hearing :

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan had ordered the special counsel to turn over all government documents and “memoranda” related to the questioning of Flynn, after his attorneys claimed the FBI had discouraged him from bringing a lawyer to his fateful Jan. 24, 2017 interview with agents at the White House. ...

Mueller met Sullivan’s Friday afternoon deadline and provided documents, some of which were heavily redacted.

Apart from a new memo from Mueller's team defending the FBI's handling of the interview -- and saying nothing about the way it was conducted “caused the defendant to make false statements to the FBI” -- the filing included a January 2017 memo on Flynn from then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and a "302" (a document memorializing interviews) detailing a July 19, 2017 interview with then-FBI agent Peter Strzok. Strzok, one of two agents who interviewed Flynn, described that meeting in the document, filed Aug. 22 of that year.

But not included in the filing was an original 302 from the period of the January 2017 Flynn interview.

It's unclear whether the document exists. However, the Strzok interview file appeared to repeatedly refer to a 302 drafted after the Flynn interview. "Strzok conducted the interview and [REDACTED] was primarily responsible for taking notes and writing the FD-302," one section said. Another said that throughout the interview, Flynn did not give any indication of deception and only hedged once, "which they documented in the 302."

James Trusty, a former senior Justice Department official who now works as a criminal defense attorney at Ifrah Law, predicted Sullivan would notice that the 302 submitted Friday is dated seven months after the Flynn interview took place.

“Judge Sullivan has a well-established history of taking on discovery issues head-on,” Trusty said. “So providing a seven-month-old FBI 302 is absolutely going to be a red flag for the judge, and I can’t imagine there are not going to be questions tomorrow about whether there are contemporaneous notes, or a contemporaneous report, that is in the FBI’s possession.” ...

Strzok was removed from the Russia probe in late July 2017 -- just days after he apparently gave the interview that formed the basis for the 302 in Mueller's filing -- for his apparent anti-Trump bias. No audio recording or other documentation of Flynn's comments to the FBI have been produced. ...

Last week, Comey was asked how the FBI agents ended up at the White House to interview Flynn in the first place. Comey’s response provided new details about the circumstances that fueled criticism of the bureau’s conduct:

“I sent them,” Comey said in a panel discussion with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, and added that it was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more…organized administration.”

The interview was arranged directly with Flynn, he explained, acknowledging this was not standard procedure.

Agent admits FBI leaks info to get it into the news, reports about which are then used by FBI to get FISA warrants

The practice is similar to the FBI's common practice of identifying potential "terrorists" whom FBI agents then suborn to commit criminal acts by posing as terrorists themselves.

From the story here:

A top FBI special agent admitted to House committees last week that bureau officials were known to leak information to the press and then use the resulting articles to help obtain surveillance warrants. 

Special Agent Jonathan Moffa, who worked with controversial former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, testified last Friday behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee. 

A source with knowledge of his testimony confirmed to Fox News that Moffa said FBI personnel would use media reports based on information they leaked to justify applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.

FBI soft-pedaled first Hillary e-mail probe, Loretta Lynch, James Comey and Peter Strzok out-and-out suppressed the second probe of Weiner laptop e-mails

So says a special investigation by Paul Sperry for Real Clear, here, which suggests the 30,000 missing e-mails which Hillary originally deleted are still on it:

Although the FBI’s New York office first pointed headquarters to the large new volume of evidence on Sept. 28, 2016, supervising agent Peter Strzok, who was fired on Aug. 10 for sending anti-Trump texts and other misconduct, did not try to obtain a warrant to search the huge cache of emails until Oct. 30, 2016. Violating department policy, he edited the warrant affidavit on his home email account, bypassing the FBI system for recording such government business. He also began drafting a second exoneration statement before conducting the search.

The search warrant was so limited in scope that it excluded more than half the emails New York agents considered relevant to the case. The cache of Clinton-Abedin communications dated back to 2007. But the warrant to search the laptop excluded any messages exchanged before or after Clinton’s 2009-2013 tenure as secretary of state, key early periods when Clinton initially set up her unauthorized private server and later periods when she deleted thousands of emails sought by investigators.

Far from investigating and clearing Abedin and Weiner, the FBI did not interview them, according to other FBI sources who say Comey closed the case prematurely. The machine was not authorized for classified material, and Weiner did not have classified security clearance to receive such information, which he did on at least two occasions through his Yahoo! email account – which he also used to email snapshots of his penis.

Many Clinton supporters believe Comey’s 11th hour reopening of a case that had shadowed her campaign was a form of sabotage that cost her the election. But the evidence shows Comey and his inner circle acted only after worried agents and prosecutors in New York forced their hand. At the prodding of Attorney General Lynch, they then worked to reduce and rush through, rather than carefully examine, potentially damaging new evidence. ...

[C]onducting a broader and more thorough search of the Weiner laptop may still have prosecutorial justification. Other questions linger, including whether subpoenaed evidence was destroyed or false statements were made to congressional and FBI investigators from 2014 to 2016, a time frame that is within the statute of limitations. The laptop was not searched for evidence pertaining to such crimes. Investigators instead focused their search, limited as it was, on classified information.

Peter Strzok, who led the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, was fired on Friday

From the story here:

Strzok has been a target of withering criticism since text messages he exchanged with FBI lawyer Lisa Page became public. In thousands of messages, Strzok and Page disparage the president and other political figures.

In one exchange, Page asked Strzok: "Trump's not ever going to be president, right? Right?!"

In response, Strzok wrote, "No. No he won't. We'll stop it."

That text exchange was one of 40,000 reviewed by the Justice Department's inspector general in the course of its review of the investigation into former Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton's private email server. Strzok played a senior role on the Clinton email investigation.

The inspector general's report, made public in June, found that there was no evidence that Strzok took any action in that inquiry as a result of political bias. The text messages, however, "cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation," the inspector general concluded.

John Solomon: Lisa Page testimony leads to conclusion that Strzok's bias led him to press an investigation to achieve the political outcome of impeachment of Trump

From the story here:

The only logical conclusion, then, that congressional investigators can make is that political bias led these agents to press an investigation forward to achieve the political outcome of impeachment, even though their professional training told them it had “no big there there.”

Strzok testimony confirms partisan channel for accusations against Trump was through Ohr at DOJ, whose Russia expert wife worked for Fusion GPS, Democrat bankrollers of the dossier

From the story here:

The first-time disclosure is significant because it confirms an unusual and continuing channel for collusion accusations that started outside the government with anti-Trump people and reached Mr. Ohr at the Justice Department and then the FBI. Around that time, Mr. Ohr was communicating with dossier writer Christopher Steele. Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, a Russia researcher, worked for Mr. Steele’s paymaster, investigative firm Fusion GPS, which was trying to damage Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Mr. Ohr met with Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson after the November 2016 election. ...

Republicans now know that the dossier trail started with Mr. Steele, Mr. Ohr, Fusion GPS and Mr. Simpson and a journalist. Mr. Corn has denied he worked with the FBI. ...

“Bruce Ohr, the fourth-ranking official at the Department of Justice, his wife works for Fusion GPS in the summer. He gets information and passed it to the FBI. That becomes the basis to spy on the Trump campaign, plain and simple,” Mr. Jordan said. “This is the first time to my knowledge the FBI has admitted that . . .."

Mark Fuhrman's use of the n-word damaged the prosecution's credibility in the OJ case, but Democrats expect us to believe in Strzok's credibility even though he hates Trump's guts

A point made by a black caller to The Chris Plante Show in the last half hour.

"Democratic lawmaker says Peter Strzok deserves Purple Heart for enduring hearing"

Ann Coulter: The point isn't being made enough that the Russia investigation began because of Peter Strzok

Here.

It was the hubris and political animus of a single high-level FBI functionary, Peter Strzok, which sought to stymie the political will of the American people who elected Trump by presenting a phony dossier as credible evidence to a FISA court in order to surveil a presidential candidate.

The whole thing is reminiscent of nothing so much as the Lois Lerner affair, when one person in The Swamp used her position to curtail the free-speech rights of The Tea Party during the 2010 revolt against Obamacare and government bailouts of all and sundry except the taxpayers.

"If a nuclear device leveled DC I don't know if I would shed a tear, unless I heard this pile was out of town at the time."

   

Looks like NeverTrumpers went fishing with multiple dossiers at the FBI until NeverTrumper Peter Strzok bit

Hey, we got a live one here!

John Solomon reports in "Did FBI get bamboozled by multiple versions of Trump dossier?":

Now, memos the FBI is turning over to Congress show the bureau possessed at least three versions of the dossier and its mostly unverified allegations of collusion.

Each arrived from a different messenger: McCain, Mother Jones reporter David Corn, Fusion GPS founder (and Steele boss) Glenn Simpson. ...

[T]he generally same information kept walking through the FBI’s door for months — recycled each time by a new character with ties to Hillary Clinton or hatred for Trump — until someone decided they had to act.

That someone was Strzok, whose own anti-Trump bias was laid bare by his personal text messages. 

Maybe more to the point, when did Strzok and Page have any time to do any actual work for the FBI?

If there are 16 waking hours in the day, they were texting each other during them every 6.6 minutes for 17 months straight!

The FBI should ask for its money back.

FBI's Page and Strzok never had time for sex: Texted each other 144.9 times every 24 hours for 17 months

Inspector General's report reveals several FBI agents politically motivated to act vs. Trump in their official capacity

You can bet any documentary evidence was destroyed long ago by these foxes put in charge of guarding the hen house. The FBI rogues are laughing at this report.

From the story here:

The Justice Department inspector general has referred five FBI employees for investigation in connection with politically charged texts, revealing in its report on the Hillary Clinton email case that more bureau officials than previously thought were exchanging anti-Trump messages. ...

The report noted that it was specifically concerned about text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.” ...

[T]he IG report revealed a new one in which Strzok vowed to "stop" Trump from becoming president -- and made clear that as many as five total FBI employees exchanged politically charged messages. "The text messages and instant messages sent by these employees included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for candidate Clinton," the report said. ...

The report did not, however, find ... "documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions" ... “Nonetheless, these messages cast a cloud over the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation [MYE = FBI code for Midyear Exam, aka Hillary Clinton server investigation] and the investigation’s credibility.”

Under Trump the FBI is still corrupt, won't investigate personal messages of pro-Hillary agents Lisa Page and her lover Peter Strzok

Peter Strzok also reportedly responsible for change which said Hillary was "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent"

The story is here.

Peter Strzok, doing the work of a Hillary partisan, on the public's dime.

Peter Strzok, removed by Mueller for anti-Trump bias, interviewed Hillary in July 2016 in the e-mail investigation

Now you know how Hillary wasn't prosecuted. The interview, conducted by a friendly, wasn't recorded, and Hillary wasn't reinterviewed multiple times thereafter the way Flynn was to document her in a misstatement the way Flynn was (Comey notably declined to prosecute Flynn, saying that Flynn didn't intend to lie). Days after the interview, Comey spelled out Hillary's misdeeds but declined to prosecute because she didn't intend to mislead when testifying contrary to the physical evidence.

Had both been prosecuted were Special Prosecutor Mueller still in charge of the FBI?

Reported here:

[Strzok] participated in the FBI's fateful interview with Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016 – just days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he was declining to recommend prosecution of Mrs. Clinton in connection with her use, as secretary of state, of a private email server. 

As deputy FBI director for counterintelligence, Strzok also enjoyed liaison with various agencies in the intelligence community, including the CIA, then led by Director John Brennan.