Posted on 01/14/2019 10:00:16 PM PST by blueplum
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general sent White House lawyers a memo arguing that the president could not have obstructed justice by firing ex-FBI Director James Comey, describing a critical prong of the special counsel's Russia investigation as "fatally misconceived," he told the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter Monday.
The development, revealed the night before William Barr's confirmation hearing, raises questions about Barr's communications with Trump's attorneys ahead of his nomination and is likely to prompt questions ...
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The FBI and DOJ knew this would be controversial – the incumbent administration spying on the opposition campaign in the absence of corroborated evidence of a crime. So, they designed the investigation in a way that allowed them to focus on Trump without saying they were doing so. Before Trump was elected, they papered the files to indicate that they were focusing on the Trump campaign or people connected to it, like Page and Papadopoulos. This way, they could try to collect evidence about Trump without formally documenting that Trump was the target.
After Trump was elected, the FBI realized that Trump was soon going to have access to government intelligence files. If they honestly told the president-elect that they had been investigating his campaign in hope of making a case on him, they had to be concerned that he would shut the investigation down and clean house at the FBI and DOJ. So, they misleadingly told him the investigation was about Russia and a few stray people in his campaign, but they assured him he personally was not under investigation.
Because the FBI did not have solid evidence of a crime, they did it under counterintelligence authority rather than criminal authority – calculating that the cover of probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election would enable them to keep investigating while they tried to tighten up the obstruction case or find some other criminal offense.
This was not true. The investigation was always hoping to find something on Trump. That is why, for example, when director Comey briefed then-President-elect Trump about the Steele dossier, he told Trump only about the salacious allegation involving prostitutes in a Moscow hotel; he did not tell the president-elect either that the main thrust of the dossier was Trump’s purported espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin, nor that the FBI had gone to the FISC to get surveillance warrants based on the dossier. The FBI was telling the president-elect that the allegations were salacious and unverified, yet at that very moment they were presenting them to a federal court as information the judges could rely on to authorize spying.
Later, though Comey repeatedly told President Trump he was not a suspect, he gave House testimony patently geared to lead the public and the media to believe Trump was a suspect – which is exactly how the media reported it.
In so doing, the FBI (and the Obama holdovers in the Justice Department who authorized Comey’s testimony) violated DOJ rules about publicly confirming the existence of an investigation, and publicly identifying a subject of an investigation: the Trump campaign, which Comey publicly announced was suspected of “coordinating” in the Kremlin’s widely reported cyberespionage interference in the 2016 campaign.
Comey’s firing on May 9, 2017, was not the start of an investigation of Trump. It was the point when the FBI and Justice Department rashly determined that they finally had a crime to pin on Trump — obstruction.
In their haste and overconfidence, they rationalized that (a) Comey’s firing must have been intended to impede the Russia investigation, and that they could couple this with; (b) the claim that Trump may have impeded the Flynn investigation – based on a memo Comey leaked to the New York Times a few days after his firing.
Legally, none of this was obstruction. Yet, the FBI and Justice Department settled on this novel and flawed legal theory: Even though the president has constitutional authority to fire subordinates and weigh in on investigations, he may somehow still be prosecuted for obstruction if a prosecutor concludes that his motive was improper.
Of course, even though he could have, Trump never actually took any steps to interfere in the investigations of Russia (which is still continuing) or Flynn (who later was indicted and pled guilty). Yet the FBI, hot-headed over the director’s dismissal, concluded that this obstruction theory was a sound enough basis to go overt with the case on Trump they had actually been trying to make for many months.
On Friday night, the New York Times published what was clearly intended to be a blockbuster report that, following the firing of FBI director James Comey on May 9, 2017, the bureau formally opened an investigation of President Trump. But in truth, the only thing the story shows is that the FBI, after over a year of investigation, simply went overt about something that had been true from the first. The investigation commenced during the 2016 campaign by the Obama administration – the Justice Department and the FBI – was always about Donald Trump.
We have to remember: The FBI believed the Steele dossier – the collection of faux intelligence reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was ultimately working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Justice Department on four occasions brought surveillance applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), in which the FBI swore that it believed the dossier allegations.
Ostensibly, the surveillance application targeted Carter Page. But Page was just a side issue. The dossier was principally about Trump – not Page, not Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or other Trump associates referred to by Steele. The dossier’s main allegation was that Trump was in an espionage conspiracy with Russia to swing the election to Trump, after which Trump would do Putin’s bidding from the White House. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department could not verify the dossier, but they undeniably believed it.
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REST AT www.citizenfreepress.com/column-1/drip-by-drip-here-comes-the-truth/
A lawyer offers opinions.
“A lawyer offers opinions”
Right. We are told who he sent it to and his conclusion. How does he support his conclusion? We need to see the entire memo.
The President has complete authority over DOJ and the FBI, including hiring and firing (a few positions require Senate confirmation).
The President can order investigations to be started, he can order them to be ended. He can command prosecution of individuals, he can convene Grand Juries. He can order indictments to be presented to Grand Juries.
He is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.
Sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders.
Sessions, Rosenweasel, Wray and Barr! Trump fishes them out of the swamp and straight to the DOJ live tank. The only keeper has been Whitaker who is bound and gagged in a closet somewhere.
Wonderful analysis. Thanks for posting.
The FBI and DOJ will not regain credibility until those responsible
go to jail.
This is good.
In 1991, Barr stated that he believed the framers of the Constitution did not originally intend to create a right to abortion; that Roe v. Wade was thus wrongly decided; and that abortion should be a “legitimate issue for state legislators.”[14] Barr also said during his confirmation hearings that Roe was “the law of the land” and that he did not have “fixed or settled views” on the subject.[15]
In a 1995 scholarly article for The Catholic Lawyer, Barr states that American government is “predicated precisely” on the Judeo-Christian system.[39][39]:3 Barr grapples with the challenge of representing Catholicism “in an increasingly militant, secular age.”[39]:1 Barr asserts that there are three ways secularists use “law as a legal weapon.”[39]:8 The first method is through elimination of traditional moral norms through legislation and litigation; Barr cites the elimination of the barriers to divorce and the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade as examples of this method.[39]:8 The second is the promotion of moral relativism through the passage of laws that dissolve moral consensus and enforce neutrality.[39]:8 Barr draws attention to a 1987 case, Gay Rights Coalition v. Georgetown University, which “compel[s] Georgetown University to treat homosexual activist groups like any other student group.”[39]:9 The third method is the use of law directly against religion; as an example of this method, Barr cites efforts to use the Establishment Clause to exclude religiously motivated citizens from the public square.[39]:9 Concluding, Barr states the need to “restructure education and take advantage of existing tax deductions for charitable institutions to promote Catholic education.”[39]:12
A better question would be why isn’t the DOJ investigating Comey for releasing his memos he wrote while working for the FBI against the law since one or more of them had classified information.
Side note: Very well written.
Congress never got the scope memo for Mueller’s SC. Rosenstein like Sessions, Horowitz, Huber have not protected data, emails. Now Barr is a personal friend of Mueller, will he let his boss DJT decide on release of Mueller’s report, will Barr clean out deep state in
the DOJ and FBI? Is he strong enough to set up a SC to go after the HRC collusion with Russia, Mueller’s Uranium one sign off.
Will Barr go after spying on Trump, Flynn, Page, phones done against the law by Susan Rice, Sam Powers?
Will Barr set up a grand Jury to indict Peter S. lisa P.
Bruce O. the lawyers for HRC, at Perkins.
What about firing Huber for doing nothing for one year in Utah. He didn’t even interview Victoria Toensing’s client.
I want to see equal justice. I have no faith in DOJ and FBI
to be honest and non partisan
Memo was bait to make Trump think Barr was not a swamper. He’s as deep swamp as Mueller and his answers today in the hearing tells me that he’s as big a waste of flesh as Sessions.
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