“Our government, the most powerful law enforcement agency in the nation, the FBI, effectively meddled in an ongoing presidential campaign… When our own government does it, how can the American people have confidence and what do we do?” –@HawleyMOpic.twitter.com/hfFGiSLr1d
It wasn’t the commies in Russia we needed to worry about, but our own home grown ones.
"Which is worse, is it worse to have a foreign government trying to meddle in our elections or is it worse to have our own government meddling in the election?
Not only is Comey a fraud, liar, and a criminal, but he’s also hindered holding folks like him accountable for it.
AG Bill Bar takes issue with the IG finding that political bias didn't play a role in the FBI investigation. He takes particular issue with how the IG determined whether or not there was improper motive. Barr is waiting for a full investigation, which can compel testimony. pic.twitter.com/s1RUMIPwsF
“Barr: Comey refusal to reinstate security clearance a ‘problem’ in FISA investigation”
“Attorney General William Barr said a “problem” in the Justice Department watchdog report on the Russia investigation stems from fired FBI Director James Comey’s refusal to have his security clearance temporarily reinstated.
The former FBI chief, who claimed Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s assessment provided him vindication, was brought up by Barr during an interview Tuesday with NBC News’ Pete Williams.
Brushing off Horowitz’s determination that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign was properly predicated, Barr said U.S. Attorney John Durham would need to finish his investigation before any final conclusions are made about the motivations behind the inquiry.
Noting the limits inherent in an inspector general review, including jurisdiction and inability to compel testimony, Barr pointed to Comey as an example where Horowitz’s report fell short.
“Durham is not limited to the FBI. He can talk to other agencies. He can compel people to testify,” Barr said. “One of the problems in the IG’s investigation, I think he would agree, is that Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance and therefore couldn’t be questioned about classified matters. So, someone like Durham can compel testimony, he can talk to a whole range of people, private parties, foreign governments, and so forth.”
In his report, Horowitz said Comey was one of a number of former FBI employees who “chose not to request that their security clearances be reinstated for their [inspector general] interviews” and “therefore, we were unable to provide classified information or documents to them during their interviews to develop their testimony, or to assist their recollections of relevant events.””
“Carter Page served as a pretext for Obama’s FBI to surveil the Trump campaign. Having taken out four FISA warrants on him on the basis of the Democrats’ fraudulent Steele Dossier, the FBI found nothing on him. On the contrary, the FBI suppressed exculpatory evidence to maintain its surveillance on him and his associates. Page has been wronged in secret and in public over and over again by the FBI. He was, as Bob Dylan put it in one of his protest songs, only a pawn in their game.
Having been under surveillance for a year with no charges forthcoming, Page must be the cleanest man in the USA. He ought to be writing books about how to lead an ethical life and do whatever is necessary to secure the right to the royalties and fees James Comey has collected holding himself out as a model of the good life.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried Page’s column “FBI spying ruined my life.” It doesn’t quite express the indignation he has every right to proclaim.”
FISA has failed to protect American citizens from abusive surveillance.”
“My name is Carter Page, and I wish you were hearing it for the first time. If you were, I could introduce myself—a former naval officer who has worked for political figures from both parties. But my identity has been reduced to a series of false accusations. If something isn’t done to prevent future abuses of power by intelligence agencies, I won’t be the last to lose his good name this way.”
“The falsified documents and the many errors all disadvantaged one side. That’s not bias?
White-collar criminals should hope for one thing this Christmas: that they get to live under the Horowitz rules.
Michael Horowitz has testified that he found no evidence of political bias on the part of the decision makers who, under the Obama administration, relied on hilariously implausible “evidence” and falsified evidence of their own in order to launch a federal investigation of the Trump campaign. Rather than political bias, Horowitz says, the investigation uncovered a series of “basic and fundamental” errors. Democrats are cheering that aspect of the report, because they believe that Horowitz’s words can be used to silence charges that the investigation of the Trump campaign was, as the president charges, part of a politically inspired “witch hunt.”
Here’s Horowitz in his own words:
Errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.
No bias, just honest incompetence. Or so we are expected to believe.
Imagine an investigation of racial bias in a bank, with investigators discovering a long series of serious errors and departures from ordinary standards and practices, violations of business norms, etc., not by a single loan officer but by three separate business units overseen by the highest levels of management — with all of those errors disadvantaging African-American mortgage borrowers. Would we need texts and emails documenting active racial bias on the part of the bankers to conclude that there was racial bias at play? If we found that a police department had violated its own standards on a regular basis in its treatment of African-American suspects but uncovered no texts or emails documenting racial intent, would we be satisfied that no racial bias existed?
Of course not.
And, in the case of the Obama administration, using investigative agencies as political weapons fits a well-established pattern of behavior. Under the Obama administration, the IRS abused its powers for political purposes: Conservative nonprofits were targeted for investigation and harassment. So was the National Labor Relations Board. So was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. In fact, this is part of a pattern of behavior among Democrats both inside and outside of the federal government: New York State has just been forced to abandon a political jihad against Exxon, which Democrats attempted to prosecute for indulging wrongthink on global warming, using securities law as a pretext. Democratic prosecutors have abused their powers to harass and intimidate climate-policy critics including policy nonprofits such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute. That isn’t a conspiracy theory — New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (later driven from office) organized the campaign and announced his intentions in the New York Times.”
—————
And again, the media was gleefully complicit in this conspiracy to overthrow the president by traitors.
“James Comey’s investigation into the Trump campaign didn’t just taint candidate Donald Trump right before the 2016 election.
Comey’s exploitation of powerful surveillance tools to entrap Trump campaign aides didn’t just violate U.S. law or agency protocol. Nor did Comey just almost destroy the lives of Carter Page, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and George Papadopoulos among others.
Comey’s presentation of the most outlandish claim in the phony dossier—that the Kremlin had a recording of Trump peeing on Russian prostitutes—to the incoming president of the United States days before he took office didn’t just rattle Trump.
Comey did not just sabotage a presidential candidate, his transition team, and his new administration to remind Donald Trump who’s boss. Comey did not just try to oust a duly-elected president from the Oval Office based on made-up “memos” he wrote to document the president’s alleged criminality.
James Comey didn’t just help launch his pal Robert Mueller’s destructive two-year probe into the imaginary crime of Russian “collusion.”\
No, James Comey, in fact, declared war on America.
That is not hyperbole. Through his deeds and words, the highest lawman in the country single-handedly desecrated every essential rule of American jurisprudence, every individual protection provided by the Constitution—including the right of the people to choose their president—and every governmental boundary set by the Constitution, not to mention the courtesies of human decency.
Comey took some sort of sick pleasure in gaslighting an already dangerously divided electorate after the shocking victory of a man who not only is despised by his former boss, Barack Obama, but by Comey himself, his top deputies in the FBI, and his cronies in the Justice Department, State Department, and CIA.
Comey betrayed the long-standing trust the American people have in our nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to feed his insatiable ego. He disguised his megalomania as patriotism.”
“Budget Office Releases New Legal Memo Indicating Delay In Ukraine Aid Was Routine”
“The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a new legal memo on Wednesday indicating that the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily hold military assistance to Ukraine was a “routine” practice and that the administration was reviewing whether Ukraine complied with U.S. policy.
The memo indicated that the decision to withhold the aid was not a political action to block Congress’ spending decisions.
“The office first began discussing the aid on June 19, the day President Trump learned of the aid from an article in the Washington Examiner and questioned the wisdom of the spending,” The Washington Post reported. “That move sent aides scrambling, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal conversations.”
“The Office of Management and Budget extended the temporary hold on the aid eight times in August and September, the last time being Sept. 10,” the Post added. “Almost immediately after that hold, the money was released, according to the new memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Post.”
OMB general counsel Mark Paoletta issued the memo as a response to a request for information on why the aid was withheld, a request that came from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
In the memo, Paoletta wrote: “For decades, OMB has routinely used its apportionment authority to prevent funds from being used. Often, in managing appropriations, OMB must briefly pause an agency’s legal ability to spend those funds for a number of reasons, including to ensure that the funds are being spent efficiently, that they are being spent in accordance with statutory directives, or to assess how or whether funds should be used for a particular activity.””
Wandering Views 
Yes. Yes they did.
“Cruz To Horowitz: Did An FBI Attorney Defraud The FISA Court? Horowitz: Yup”
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/12/11/cruz-horowitz-fbi-attorney-defraud-fisa-court-horowitz-yup/
————–
https://twitter.com/jason_howerton/status/1204841627006754819
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Horowitz: DNC Funded Dossier Used To Justify Sending “Confidential Human Sources” To Trump Campaign”
—————-
Weaponized law enforcement.
https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1204817072951349249
LikeLiked by 1 person
Every. Single. One.
Disgraceful and un-American.
———
LikeLiked by 1 person
It wasn’t the commies in Russia we needed to worry about, but our own home grown ones.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not only is Comey a fraud, liar, and a criminal, but he’s also hindered holding folks like him accountable for it.
————
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/barr-comey-refusal-to-reinstate-security-clearance-a-problem-in-fisa-investigation
“Barr: Comey refusal to reinstate security clearance a ‘problem’ in FISA investigation”
“Attorney General William Barr said a “problem” in the Justice Department watchdog report on the Russia investigation stems from fired FBI Director James Comey’s refusal to have his security clearance temporarily reinstated.
The former FBI chief, who claimed Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s assessment provided him vindication, was brought up by Barr during an interview Tuesday with NBC News’ Pete Williams.
Brushing off Horowitz’s determination that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign was properly predicated, Barr said U.S. Attorney John Durham would need to finish his investigation before any final conclusions are made about the motivations behind the inquiry.
Noting the limits inherent in an inspector general review, including jurisdiction and inability to compel testimony, Barr pointed to Comey as an example where Horowitz’s report fell short.
“Durham is not limited to the FBI. He can talk to other agencies. He can compel people to testify,” Barr said. “One of the problems in the IG’s investigation, I think he would agree, is that Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance and therefore couldn’t be questioned about classified matters. So, someone like Durham can compel testimony, he can talk to a whole range of people, private parties, foreign governments, and so forth.”
In his report, Horowitz said Comey was one of a number of former FBI employees who “chose not to request that their security clearances be reinstated for their [inspector general] interviews” and “therefore, we were unable to provide classified information or documents to them during their interviews to develop their testimony, or to assist their recollections of relevant events.””
———-
Add coward to the list. Time to own it Jim.
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://twitter.com/M2Madness/status/1204934731596533760
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So where does one wrongly slandered by their govt go for recourse? And what about the complicit media?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/12/only-a-pawn-in-their-game.php
“Carter Page served as a pretext for Obama’s FBI to surveil the Trump campaign. Having taken out four FISA warrants on him on the basis of the Democrats’ fraudulent Steele Dossier, the FBI found nothing on him. On the contrary, the FBI suppressed exculpatory evidence to maintain its surveillance on him and his associates. Page has been wronged in secret and in public over and over again by the FBI. He was, as Bob Dylan put it in one of his protest songs, only a pawn in their game.
Having been under surveillance for a year with no charges forthcoming, Page must be the cleanest man in the USA. He ought to be writing books about how to lead an ethical life and do whatever is necessary to secure the right to the royalties and fees James Comey has collected holding himself out as a model of the good life.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried Page’s column “FBI spying ruined my life.” It doesn’t quite express the indignation he has every right to proclaim.”
————-
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-spying-ruined-my-good-name-11576022322
“FBI Spying Ruined My Good Name
FISA has failed to protect American citizens from abusive surveillance.”
“My name is Carter Page, and I wish you were hearing it for the first time. If you were, I could introduce myself—a former naval officer who has worked for political figures from both parties. But my identity has been reduced to a series of false accusations. If something isn’t done to prevent future abuses of power by intelligence agencies, I won’t be the last to lose his good name this way.”
LikeLike
They were never heroes. They’ve been traitors for a long time now.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/fbi-corruption-how-dirty-cops-spied-on-trump-campaign/
“The FBI’s Corrupt Cops”
“The falsified documents and the many errors all disadvantaged one side. That’s not bias?
White-collar criminals should hope for one thing this Christmas: that they get to live under the Horowitz rules.
Michael Horowitz has testified that he found no evidence of political bias on the part of the decision makers who, under the Obama administration, relied on hilariously implausible “evidence” and falsified evidence of their own in order to launch a federal investigation of the Trump campaign. Rather than political bias, Horowitz says, the investigation uncovered a series of “basic and fundamental” errors. Democrats are cheering that aspect of the report, because they believe that Horowitz’s words can be used to silence charges that the investigation of the Trump campaign was, as the president charges, part of a politically inspired “witch hunt.”
Here’s Horowitz in his own words:
Errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.
No bias, just honest incompetence. Or so we are expected to believe.
Imagine an investigation of racial bias in a bank, with investigators discovering a long series of serious errors and departures from ordinary standards and practices, violations of business norms, etc., not by a single loan officer but by three separate business units overseen by the highest levels of management — with all of those errors disadvantaging African-American mortgage borrowers. Would we need texts and emails documenting active racial bias on the part of the bankers to conclude that there was racial bias at play? If we found that a police department had violated its own standards on a regular basis in its treatment of African-American suspects but uncovered no texts or emails documenting racial intent, would we be satisfied that no racial bias existed?
Of course not.
And, in the case of the Obama administration, using investigative agencies as political weapons fits a well-established pattern of behavior. Under the Obama administration, the IRS abused its powers for political purposes: Conservative nonprofits were targeted for investigation and harassment. So was the National Labor Relations Board. So was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. In fact, this is part of a pattern of behavior among Democrats both inside and outside of the federal government: New York State has just been forced to abandon a political jihad against Exxon, which Democrats attempted to prosecute for indulging wrongthink on global warming, using securities law as a pretext. Democratic prosecutors have abused their powers to harass and intimidate climate-policy critics including policy nonprofits such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute. That isn’t a conspiracy theory — New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (later driven from office) organized the campaign and announced his intentions in the New York Times.”
—————
And again, the media was gleefully complicit in this conspiracy to overthrow the president by traitors.
LikeLike
Traitor Comey’s war on America.
“James Comey’s investigation into the Trump campaign didn’t just taint candidate Donald Trump right before the 2016 election.
Comey’s exploitation of powerful surveillance tools to entrap Trump campaign aides didn’t just violate U.S. law or agency protocol. Nor did Comey just almost destroy the lives of Carter Page, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and George Papadopoulos among others.
Comey’s presentation of the most outlandish claim in the phony dossier—that the Kremlin had a recording of Trump peeing on Russian prostitutes—to the incoming president of the United States days before he took office didn’t just rattle Trump.
Comey did not just sabotage a presidential candidate, his transition team, and his new administration to remind Donald Trump who’s boss. Comey did not just try to oust a duly-elected president from the Oval Office based on made-up “memos” he wrote to document the president’s alleged criminality.
James Comey didn’t just help launch his pal Robert Mueller’s destructive two-year probe into the imaginary crime of Russian “collusion.”\
No, James Comey, in fact, declared war on America.
That is not hyperbole. Through his deeds and words, the highest lawman in the country single-handedly desecrated every essential rule of American jurisprudence, every individual protection provided by the Constitution—including the right of the people to choose their president—and every governmental boundary set by the Constitution, not to mention the courtesies of human decency.
Comey took some sort of sick pleasure in gaslighting an already dangerously divided electorate after the shocking victory of a man who not only is despised by his former boss, Barack Obama, but by Comey himself, his top deputies in the FBI, and his cronies in the Justice Department, State Department, and CIA.
Comey betrayed the long-standing trust the American people have in our nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to feed his insatiable ego. He disguised his megalomania as patriotism.”
LikeLike
The charade continues to crumble, as does the media narratives.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-budget-office-releases-new-legal-memo-indicating-delay-in-ukraine-aid-was-routine
“Budget Office Releases New Legal Memo Indicating Delay In Ukraine Aid Was Routine”
“The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a new legal memo on Wednesday indicating that the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily hold military assistance to Ukraine was a “routine” practice and that the administration was reviewing whether Ukraine complied with U.S. policy.
The memo indicated that the decision to withhold the aid was not a political action to block Congress’ spending decisions.
“The office first began discussing the aid on June 19, the day President Trump learned of the aid from an article in the Washington Examiner and questioned the wisdom of the spending,” The Washington Post reported. “That move sent aides scrambling, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal conversations.”
“The Office of Management and Budget extended the temporary hold on the aid eight times in August and September, the last time being Sept. 10,” the Post added. “Almost immediately after that hold, the money was released, according to the new memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Post.”
OMB general counsel Mark Paoletta issued the memo as a response to a request for information on why the aid was withheld, a request that came from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
In the memo, Paoletta wrote: “For decades, OMB has routinely used its apportionment authority to prevent funds from being used. Often, in managing appropriations, OMB must briefly pause an agency’s legal ability to spend those funds for a number of reasons, including to ensure that the funds are being spent efficiently, that they are being spent in accordance with statutory directives, or to assess how or whether funds should be used for a particular activity.””
LikeLike