Free Republic

The DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz finally released his report on FISA abuses on Monday. The report revealed what we knew to be true all along — the FBI defrauded the FISA court and purposely omitted exculpatory information from the FISA judges in order to obtain FOUR FISA warrants on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. Horowitz, however concluded that the FBI investigation into Trump was not politically motivated — and John Durham hit back. Read more US Attorney from Connecticut John Durham immediately released a statement following the release of the FISA report and disputed Horowitz’s findings and conclusions. “I...

Statements just hit the wires in the past 15 minutes… Attorney General Bill Barr released a statement on Monday that undermined the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report that the FBI had sufficient evidence to investigate the Trump campaign. “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” “It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.” U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr had appointed to...

U.S. attorney John Durham issues a response to the DOJ IG report, saying his office does "not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

The Justice DepartmentÂ’s internal watchdog will release a highly anticipated report Monday that is expected to reject President Donald TrumpÂ’s claims that the Russia investigation was illegitimate and tainted by political bias from FBI leaders. But it is also expected to document errors during the investigation that may animate Trump supporters. The report, as described by people familiar with its findings, is expected to conclude there was an adequate basis for opening one of the most politically sensitive investigations in FBI history and one that Trump has denounced as a witch hunt. It began in secret during TrumpÂ’s 2016 presidential...

The alternative to a purely domestic intelligence operation targeting a major political party's candidate for the presidency (and later, president) was to manufacture a foreign counterintelligence (FCI) "threat" that could then be "imported" back into the United States. Plausible deniability, the Holy Grail of covert activities, was in reach for the plotters if they could develop an FCI operation outside the continental United States (OCONUS) involving FBI confidential human sources (Halper, Mifsud, others?) that would act as "lures" (intelligence jargon associated with double agent operations) to ensnare Trump associates. We have evidence of these machinations from December 2015 when FBI...

Washington -- Last week, toward the end of the week, there appeared in our finest newspapers -- The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal -- a spate of news stories that set official Washington's mind at ease. As one of the great gazettes, The Washington Post, put it, "The Justice Department's internal watchdog (that would be Inspector General Michael Horowitz) is expected to find in a forthcoming report that political bias did not taint top officials running the FBI investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016." Nonetheless, the report will...

The Obama holdover heading the Pentagon office reportedly under investigation by the U.S. attorney who is conducting the criminal probe of the Trump–Russia investigation was accused of leaking a classified document, in a recent court filing for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The connection hasn’t been previously reported. According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying...

Justice Department prosecutor U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel connected to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, which awarded multiple contracts to FBI informant Stephan Halper. Halper, who was informing the bureau on Trump campaign advisors, is a central figure in the FBI’s original investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, SaraACarter.com has learned. These latest developments reveal the expansive nature of what is now a Justice Department criminal probe into the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign. The revelation also comes on the heels of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report regarding the bureau’s investigation into the Trump...

US Attorney John Durham is running an investigation into the Russia hoax that has been almost airtight. A fragment of information on his activities, however, comes our way via Australian media.Alexander Downer’s meeting with George Papadopoulos at the Kensington Wine Rooms in 2016 played a key role in providing a rationale for an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, including FISA warrants allowing wiretapping.  At the time, Downer was the Australian High Commissioner (ambassador) to the UK, and had been Australia’s foreign minister earlier, a very senior diplomat to be entertaining a young Trump campaign volunteer. The meeting, also...

For months there were rumblings that Inspector General Horowitz was going to release his report anytime on his investigation of FISA Court abuse during the 2016 election and into 2017. And for months that news was delayed. In May Attorney General Bill Barr appointed John Durham to review the origins of the Russia inquiry and the FBI’s surveillance activities.

Democrats and their media propaganda arm have been telling us since President Trump took office that “The walls are closing in.� First it was the Mueller investigation, then every fake news story from the media, from Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen being in Prague to Don Jr. calling his father about the Trump Tower entrapment meeting with some Russians.Every “bombshell� revelation about Stormy Daniels or Omarosa meant that “the walls are closing in.� Mueller’s report, despite the best efforts of Andrew Weissman and his merry band of partisans, was a dud. As was the Ukraine phone call, with whistleblowers and Rep....

JAMES COMEY: I’ve seen no indication that he’s been able to let go of this notion that he sees the intelligence community’s findings as some sort of attack on his legitimacy as president. -snip- I was deeply concerned with some things he said early on about using the word “spying” and saying “their things just don’t make sense.” At the time I said, “that’s not how the pros operate.” If there’s a reason to investigate something, you shut up and try to gather the facts .... I still feel that way. I don’t know what they’re looking at. I’m not...

Andrew McCabe was offered a pre-indictment plea agreement and turned it down. So US attorney Durham has impaneled a grand jury.

Faced with a barrage of damaging headlines for President Donald Trump stemming from impeachment inquiry testimony, congressional Republicans are beginning to coalesce around a strategy aimed at discrediting key witnesses and taking a more confrontational stance against the Democratic-led impeachment process. Republicans on Thursday ramped up their skepticism of the testimony delivered by US diplomat Bill Taylor — which undercut White House claims Ukraine aid wasn't tied to an investigation that could help him politically — and the Senate's No. 2 Republican Sen. John Thune walked back earlier concerns he expressed about Taylor's opening statement. Republicans in the Senate have...

(CNN)Attorney General William Barr's probe into the intelligence and origins of the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation is now a criminal investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter. The so-called investigation of the investigators is led by John Durham, a Connecticut-based federal prosecutor, who so far has conducted some interviews but also has run into some obstacles from witnesses who have declined voluntary interviews, CNN reported last week. The move to make it a criminal inquiry was always anticipated, and it allows Durham to use subpoenas to compel testimony and comes as President Donald Trump faces an onslaught of negative...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is planning to introduce a resolution condemning the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry process, and argued that any articles should be dismissed in the Senate without a trial. "This resolution puts the Senate on record condemning the House. ...Here's the point of the resolution: Any impeachment vote based on this process, to me, is illegitimate, is unconstitutional, and should be dismissed in the Senate without a trial," Graham told Fox News's Sean Hannity.

Oct 24, 2019 Citing string of classified leaks, Grassley & Johnson call for public accountability WASHINGTON - The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is again refusing to provide any assurances that a steady stream of sensitive and classified leaks from the nation's intelligence personnel are being investigated. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are voicing concern that the ICIG's failure to assure the public of any efforts to investigate the leaks will further erode public trust in critical intelligence agencies. In a letter to ICIG Michael Atkinson,...

Top Republicans on Wednesday demanded that Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson explain why the watchdog hasn't said if it's investigating "a number of leaks of highly sensitive information" in recent years -- and released several previously unpublished texts and emails from since-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok. The Republicans' letter came as reports emerged that U.S. Attorney John Durham's comprehensive, ongoing probe into potential FBI and DOJ misconduct has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal investigation, enabling Durham to subpoena witnesses and file charges. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz also announced on Thursday that his separate comprehensive review...

U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia probe has expanded based on new evidence uncovered during a recent trip to Rome with Attorney General Bill Barr, sources told Fox News on Tuesday. The sources said Durham was "very interested" to question former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, an anti-Trump critic who recently dismissed the idea. The two Obama administration officials were at the helm when the unverified and largely discredited Steele dossier, written by British ex-spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic...

WASHINGTON — For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began. Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to impanel a...