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On What Grounds Can the FBI Investigate the President as a Counterintelligence Threat?
Lawfare ^ | January 13, 2019 | Jack Goldsmith

Posted on 01/14/2019 5:43:31 AM PST by Rumierules

The New York Times reported on Jan. 11 that the FBI “began investigating whether President Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests” soon after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. In other words, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on the president. *** If indeed the FBI took the unprecedented step of opening a counterintelligence investigation directed at the president premised on his threat to national security, I hope the bureau had much stronger evidence for doing so than the Times story provided—and I hope that something of investigative substance actually turned on it. Otherwise, the step strikes me as deeply imprudent.

(Excerpt) Read more at lawfareblog.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: counterintelligence; investigation; russia
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When Lawfare calls the FBI/DOJs conduct "deeply imprudent," the deep state has a problem.
1 posted on 01/14/2019 5:43:31 AM PST by Rumierules
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To: Rumierules

One only wonders whether the media would have reacted with a YAWN had Bush Jr. done the same investigation of Obama in the 2008 campaign, or in 2012, given the disaster of the Arab Spring (i.e., whether some foreign influence drove Obama to do that)?

Would the media have said something like: “No big deal, why is Obama so paranoid?”


2 posted on 01/14/2019 5:46:52 AM PST by BobL (I eat at McDonald's and shop at Walmart - I just don't tell anyone.)
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To: Rumierules
I believe the FBI and CIA did their dirty work (spying on Trump) long before President Trump was elected. Evidence of those early day "peek a boos" have surely been destroyed.

Mueller was appointed to establish a workable timeline that implicates no one at the FBI or CIA as "dirty".

3 posted on 01/14/2019 5:49:33 AM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: Rumierules

... whenever the FBI’s agents were involved in treason
transferring uranium to foreign gov’ts and entities
to frame the USA (a la Sum of all Fears),

OR when the FBI’s agents were involved in the coverup
of child traffiking and its accounting (Comey’s bro),

OR whenever-they-want because they (for the moment)
are above the duly-elected PRESIDENT.

.... like Hasan they still waste oxygen.


4 posted on 01/14/2019 5:49:38 AM PST by Diogenesis ( WWG1WGA)
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To: BobL

Except George W disliked McCain immensely. He would not have lifted a finger to help McCain get elected. Or that is my suspicion.


5 posted on 01/14/2019 5:50:27 AM PST by petitfour (APPEAL TO HEAVEN)
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To: Rumierules

They would need to be reporting to someone...WHO?


6 posted on 01/14/2019 5:51:02 AM PST by TalBlack (It's hard to shoot people when they are shooting back at you...)
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To: Rumierules
Otherwise, the step strikes me as deeply imprudent.

Treason is indeed "DEEPLY IMPRUDENT".

7 posted on 01/14/2019 5:52:47 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: Rumierules

Very little difference, apparently, between the FBI upper echelons and the NKVD under Stalin. Had a friend in Russia who was accused of some nonsense which she had nothing to do with; NKVD told her “just sign it, whatever it says, don’t waste our time and yours arguing your innocence”. Is this materially different from Comey, McCabe, Strzok and the others?


8 posted on 01/14/2019 5:56:07 AM PST by laconic
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To: Rumierules
"When Lawfare calls the FBI/DOJs conduct "deeply imprudent," the deep state has a problem."

Doesn't mean a damned thing until someone who is beyond the reach of never-Trumpers and anti-Trump activist judges decides to do something about it.

We are hosed.

9 posted on 01/14/2019 5:57:56 AM PST by DJ Frisat (Hey - what happened to my clever tag line?)
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To: petitfour

True on that, but George W, like any Republican would have considered it a CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS to use the FBI in that way.

Sadly, the Democrats can do that, since it’s part of ‘the Resistance’.


10 posted on 01/14/2019 5:59:27 AM PST by BobL (I eat at McDonald's and shop at Walmart - I just don't tell anyone.)
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To: Rumierules

Have to wonder who is leaking this and why now? Are they trying to get in front of some bad news?


11 posted on 01/14/2019 6:02:41 AM PST by IamConservative (I was nervous like the third chimp in line for the Ark after rain had started falling.)
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To: BobL

Clinton’s Filegate was the beginning of department weaponization. Obama took it to the max. Trump is finding elections don’t change a poisoned bureaucracy.


12 posted on 01/14/2019 6:03:02 AM PST by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: Rumierules

Does the FBI have the authority, without the appointment of a special prosecutor, to investigate the President? They report to him. This would seem like a massive conflict of interest at the very minimum.

Did the FBI investigate Nixon?


13 posted on 01/14/2019 6:04:17 AM PST by Delta 21
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To: Rumierules

So many false premises in this article.


14 posted on 01/14/2019 6:04:41 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: TalBlack

Clapper


15 posted on 01/14/2019 6:06:02 AM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: Rumierules

My take is probably not the usual one here.

I think the FBI should be able to initiate a counterintelligence investigation, but that it should also ‘fess up that it had done so, rather than redact and frantically cover it up.

Such an investigation might indeed have been warranted during the Obama years, but he was schooled in authoritarian ways and replaced just about everyone who might have or could have done so.


16 posted on 01/14/2019 6:06:40 AM PST by Pearls Before Swine ( "It's always a party when you're eating the seed corn.")
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To: IamConservative

Some speculate that the OIG’s draft report of FISA abuses is about to be circulated to those named in it for their responses.


17 posted on 01/14/2019 6:08:30 AM PST by Rumierules
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To: TalBlack

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/402521-clapper-brennans-rhetoric-is-becoming-an-issue-in-and-of-itself


18 posted on 01/14/2019 6:09:30 AM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: sparklite2

Good point about Filegate - and you’re right, when they got away with that, they knew they could get away with anything.


19 posted on 01/14/2019 6:11:26 AM PST by BobL (I eat at McDonald's and shop at Walmart - I just don't tell anyone.)
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To: Rumierules

When the Left under Obama consolidated control of the Federal agencies from 2010thru 2016, they paid special attention to the FBI, the CIA and to a lesser extent the NSA. They realized like the Soviet Communists before them that control of these state agencies was important to wield political power. In many ways it is a testament to the strength of American democracy that their plot to scuttle Trump and rig the election for Clinton failed. Trump dropped the ball when he appointed Sessions . Comey, Lynch, Brennan, Clapper, Clinton and Obama should have been arrested Day 1 of the Administration.


20 posted on 01/14/2019 6:13:52 AM PST by allendale (.)
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