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Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next month to testify on a forthcoming report on alleged surveillance abuse during the 2016 campaign. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who oversees the panel, announced on Monday that Horowitz will appear publicly on Dec. 11. Graham’s decision to schedule the hearing is the latest sign that Horowitz’s report is nearing its release. The GOP senator said earlier this month that he expected it within weeks. “I appreciate all the hard work by Mr. Horowitz and his team regarding the Carter Page FISA warrant application and the counterintelligence...

More than a few exasperated pro-Trump folks have been asking, “What’s taking the Justice Department’s Inspector General so long to release his findings?” The answer? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter when it’s released and it won’t matter what’s in it. Listen, I hate to be Debbie Downer here but the anticipation surrounding this report is rooted in the hope and sincere belief that its pages contain such shocking detail of government abuses and corruption within our intelligence agencies the nation will roil as one with cries for justice and vindication for Donald Trump! Sorry. It’s not going to happen....

Deep State has been after President Trump from the before his presidency, and its latest trick has been in orchestrating a rules change to ensure that any deep-stater can come forward with secondhand information, as a "whistleblower.It's supposedly to ensure that wrongdoing bruited about at the spy agency water coolers gets into the hands of authorities. Problem one: Spy agencies don't do water cooler talk. But politics is always a topic, so now we have one or two leakers from the ranks of the still-embittered Deep State, taking the cover of 'whistleblower' as a result of that rules change, with a...

What’s the rush? Last night, Inspector General Steve Linick requested an “urgent” meeting with the chairs of several House committees regarding issues related to Ukraine. The State Department watchdog’s request appears related to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s rebuke to House demands for testimony and threats of legal action without following formal subpoena processes. It might also involve allegations of a conflict of interest.The Washington Post reported it last night in a passive voice: The State Department inspector general and two former state officials agreed to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told...

Republican lawmakers in both the Senate and House on Monday demanded answers from the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) about secret revisions to the office’s guidance on “urgent concern” whistleblower complaints. The Federalist first reported last week that between May 2018 and August 2019, the ICIG secretly eliminated its requirement that potential whistleblowers provide only first-hand evidence of alleged wrongdoing.In their letter to Michael Atkinson, the ICIG, Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) noted that the anti-Trump complainant offered no direct, first-hand evidence of alleged wrongdoing against President Donald Trump. Instead, the complaint is littered...

"Other kids' games are such a bore! They gotta have rules and they gotta keep score! Calvinball is better by far! It's never the same! It's always bizarre!  — Calvin and Hobbes What can you do if you can’t win in the arena of ideas? Well, if you’re on the Dems’ team you… Change the Senate filibuster rules, pack the Supreme Court, allow propagandized children to vote, get rid of the Electoral College and, most recently, change the requirement that whistleblowers have firsthand knowledge of an event they blow the whistle on. It’s like political Calvinball, named after Calvin...

Former FBI Director James Comey may have escaped charges for leaking classified information to the public, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be torched by the pending inspector general report from the Department of Justice. It once again shoots a hole right through the Democrats’ ongoing Trump impeachment narrative that is rapidly falling apart. Russian collusion was outright killed by the report filed by ex-Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as it debunked the already unverified Trump dossier compiled by ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele. Fusion GPS hired him. And they were contracted by the Hillary Clinton campaign to get dirt of Trump....

The Department of Justice Inspector General revealed this week that an unnamed former FBI Deputy Assistant Director [DAD] illegally disclosed sealed court information to the media in addition to a number of other violations. "The OIG investigation concluded that the DAD engaged in misconduct when the DAD: (1) disclosed to the media the existence of information that had been filed under seal in federal court, in violation of 18 USC § 401, Contempt of Court; (2) provided without authorization FBI law enforcement sensitive information to reporters on multiple occasions; and (3) had dozens of official contacts with the media...

Rep. Adam Schiff — a man whose love affair with the TV camera is legendary — is now utilizing his cherie amour and his new position as chair of the House Intelligence Committee to demand that, upon completion, the Mueller/Russia investigation report be published in its entirety — that is, with no redactions, emendations, or edits, for whatever purpose by the attorney general. He's even threatening to subpoena Mueller or sue the Justice Department if the full report is not released. Notwithstanding his risible and tedious grandstanding, the congressman has a point, if only by attrition. Based on past performance,...

A federal watchdog has found no “discernible patterns” regarding the content of text messages exchanged between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that were not collected and maintained by the bureau's systems, according to a new report.The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Inspector General released a partially redacted report Thursday detailing how the office was able to recover previously lost text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page. The inspector general (IG) report states that the messages later found to be maintained in different sources "included some political content, some work-related content, and some personal content." Republicans were...

It was mid-May, about six weeks after Trump appointee Mari Stull began her new job as senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. As senior adviser at the bureau, Stull was in charge of making sure President Trump’s agenda was represented at the many international organizations the U.S. participates in and mostly funds, such as the United Nations and its various agencies. Stull and her boss, Amb. Kevin Moley, had just left for a trip to Geneva for the World Health Assembly. Back at the State Department, Erin Barclay, a senior career diplomat at the IO...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice’s woes are not over. Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a damning report that justified President Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, whose actions during the 2016 election were labeled as extraordinary and insubordinate, and outlined various issues with the FBI, which has a huge problem with leaks. The report was on the activities of the DOJ, FBI, and its principles during the Hillary Clinton email investigation. It was a criminal investigation into whether she mishandled classified information through her unauthorized and unsecure email server while serving as our...

Imagine what defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, would have done with notes to and from LAPD lead detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter in which they demeaned Simpson's fans. Imagine a written exchange in which one detective said, "We'll stop him!" Imagine Cochran's opening and closing arguments, to say nothing of his cross-examination, if he'd had evidence similar to the kind of bias found in the Department of Justice inspector general's report on the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The DOJ IG report included several messages between FBI attorneys and employees who...

Imagine what defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, would have done with notes to and from LAPD lead detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter in which they demeaned Simpson's fans. Imagine a written exchange in which one detective said, "We'll stop him!" Imagine Cochran's opening and closing arguments, to say nothing of his cross-examination, if he'd had evidence similar to the kind of bias found in the Department of Justice inspector general's report on the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The DOJ IG report included several messages between FBI attorneys and employees who...

The IG report is really Comey 2.0. Comey spent a long time describing how Hillary had broken the law but then concluded that it was okay. Similarly, the IG report lists example after example of political bias but declares that it had no impact on the Hillary email whitewash. The IG report on the Clinton email investigation is proof positive that the entire DC justice establishment is corrupt; that they view themselves as rulers not public servants. First we were told that Comey was a straight shooter whom we could trust. Then we were told the same about Mueller, Rosenstein,...

The FBI is determined to not repeat any of the mistakes identified in a harshly critical watchdog report on the handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, Director Chris Wray said Monday at a congressional hearing at which he repeatedly sought to distance himself from his predecessor. Wray told lawmakers that the FBI accepted the findings of the inspector general’s report and has begun making changes, including about how it handles especially sensitive investigations. The FBI is also reinforcing through employee training the need to avoid the appearance of political bias, a key point of criticism in last week’s report,...

In a sane world, if the Justice Department’s internal watchdog discovered that the FBI official who began a counterintelligence investigation into an opposition party’s presidential candidate texted his lover a few days later that “we’ll stop” the candidate’s election, it would cause immediate action. At a minimum, the counterintelligence investigation – now in the hands of a special prosecutor – would be suspended pending further review of its reasons and sources, the entire sordid enterprise suddenly appearing to be the fruit of a very poisonous tree. Washington, unfortunately, is not a sane world.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz has released his 500 plus-page report, which purports to shine a light on the mishandling at top levels of the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation of the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while she served as Secretary of State under former President Obama. Such mishandling included violations of Department of Justice standards and FBI protocols. The report from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) criticized certain actions and decisions of former FBI Director James Comey, together with those of...

Drudge Headlines: WATCHDOG SLAPS COMEY...Broke From FBI Procedures in Clinton Probe...'NO POLITICAL BIAS'...FBI agent texted 'We'll stop' Trump from becoming president... Bloomberg is first out of the gate, but many more are coming soon. (Bloomberg can't be posted on FR, so you'll have to click through to it).

Following the traditional process for releasing high-profile reports the Department of Justice – Office of Inspector General (DOJ-OIG) report will be released tomorrow with a briefing to congress and the president happening around Noon, and a public release at 3:00pm. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will brief the President while senior officials from the DOJ will brief congress and their staff. The 500-page report will cover the DOJ and FBI conduct surrounding the Clinton classified email investigation, and was originally commissioned during the Obama administration to review whether the FBI and DOJ politicized the Clinton investigation and subsequent outcome.