Posted on 05/07/2019 8:40:13 AM PDT by Red Badger
James Comey’s planet is getting noticeably warmer. Attorney General William Barr’s emissions are the suspected cause.
Barr has made plain that he intends to examine carefully how and why Comey, as FBI director, decided that the bureau should investigate two presidential campaigns and if, in so doing, any rules or laws were broken.
In light of this, the fired former FBI director apparently has decided that photos of him on Twitter standing amid tall trees and in the middle of empty country roads, acting all metaphysical, is no longer a sufficient strategy.
No, Comey has realized, probably too late, that he has to try to counter, more directly, the narrative being set by the unsparing attorney general whose words in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week landed in the Trump-opposition world like holy water on Linda Blair. Shrieking heads haven’t stopped spinning since.
And so we’ve seen Comey get real busy lately. First he penned a curious op-ed in the New York Times. Then a Times reporter, with whom Comey has cooperated in the past, wrote a news article exposing an early, controversial investigative technique against the Trump campaign in an attempt to get out front and excuse it. Next, Comey is scheduled to be encouraged on a friendly cable news “town hall.”
In the op-ed, Comey trotted out his now-familiar St. James schtick, freely pronouncing on the morality of others. He sees himself as a kind of Pontiff-of-the-Potomac working his beads, but comes across more like an unraveling Captain Queeg working his ball bearings.
Comey adjudged the president as “amoral.” He declared the attorney general to be “formidable” but “lacking inner strength” unlike — the inference is clear — Comey himself. A strategy of insulting the executioner right before he swings his ax is an odd one but, then, Comey has a long record of odd decisions and questionable judgment.
“Amoral leaders (referring to the president) have a way of revealing the character of those around them,” wrote Comey without a hint of irony or self-awareness. Those whom the former FBI director assembled around him probably rue the day they ever met the man. Most are now fired or disgraced for appalling behaviors that Comey found easy to manipulate to advance his decisions.
Then, just to make sure his op-ed was odd-salted to the max, Comey mused that the president “eats your soul in small bites.” Okay, let’s step back for a moment: James Comey appears to be in trouble. His strange, desperate statements and behaviors betray his nervousness and apprehension. In a way, it’s hard to watch.
Comey will claim that everything he did in the FBI was by the book. But after the investigations by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber, along with AG Barr’s promised examination, are completed, Comey’s mishandling of the FBI and legal processes likely will be fully exposed.
Ideally, Barr’s examination will aggregate information that addresses three primary streams.
The first will be whether the investigations into both presidential nominees and the Trump campaign were adequately, in Barr’s words, “predicated.” This means he will examine whether there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place.
The Mueller report’s conclusions make this a fair question for the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. Comey’s own pronouncement, that the Clinton email case was unprosecutable, makes it a fair question for that investigation.
The second will be whether Comey’s team obeyed long-established investigative guidelines while conducting the investigations and, specifically, if there was sufficient, truthful justification to lawfully conduct electronic surveillance of an American citizen.
The third will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what’s causing the 360-degree head-spins.
There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director.
Without diving into the weeds, it’s important to understand that FBI counterintelligence investigations generally proceed sequentially from what is called a “preliminary investigation or inquiry” (PI) to a “full investigation” (FI). To move from a PI to an FI requires substantial information — predication — indicating investigative targets acted as agents of a foreign power.
This is problematic for Comey in light of Mueller’s findings. There are strict guidelines governing when the FBI can task a confidential source or a government undercover operative to collect against a U.S. citizen. Normally this is restricted to an FI, and normally restricted to the United States, not overseas.
There is a sense that Comey’s team was not checking the boxes, did not have adequate predication, and may have tasked sources before an investigation was even officially opened. Barr should pull case files and dig in on this.
In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources (“assets,” in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious “government investigator” posing as Halper’s assistant and cited in the New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case.
Some in the media have suggested that the Times article was an attempt by the FBI to justify its early confidential-source actions. But current FBI Director Christopher Wray has shown that he would like to excise the cancerous tumor that grew during Comey’s time and not just keep smoking. It’s hard to imagine current FBI executives trying to justify past malfeasance.
James Comey is right to be apprehensive. He himself ate away at the soul of the FBI, not in small bites but in dangerously large ones. It was a dinner for one, though: His actions are not indicative of the real FBI. The AG’s comprehensive examination is welcome and, if done honestly and dispassionately, it will protect future presidential candidates of both parties and redeem the valuable soul of the FBI.
Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions, which consults with private companies and public-safety agencies on strategic mission technologies.
“In the fwiw department, I want to see about 17 DOJ, FBI, CIA, NSA and State Department officials frog marched from their homes and booked into the nearest PD.”
This needs to be done by SWAT teams at 230 AM on or near Christmas Eve while their significant others stand in the cold and their homes are ripped apart looking for evidence. Then they need to be held in solitary confinement for a few months while they await trial. No bail—too much of a flight risk as well as more nefarious possibilities. Gag order for national security. No crowdfunding their legal expenses. Freeze all of their bank accounts.
I beg to differ. Not one whistleblower came forward during this entire fetid, stinking mess.
We don't know of any whistleblower, nor have we seen all the congressional testimony. If/when a criminal investigation is opened I'd expect that like any criminal conspiracy investigation they will get some smaller fish to roll on the bigger fish.
I am of the mind that Trump, Barr et al already know 80% of what went down. They have access to everything, the unmaskings, the transcripts, the 302s, the inside informants, etc. They have to go through the process of meticulously arranging it, verifying what needs to be verified, and then releasing it in a logical sequence that spells it all out for the public.
We've already seen a small bit of backtracking by some media - not a lot, not enough considering how quickly and ferociously they unleashed the onslaught of fake news, leaks, and vitriol. People like Brennan who swore he had evidence and called POTUS a traitor should be called to account and provide that evidence... But I suspect it is all bluster, the evidence was the fake Dossier stuff and he knew it was fake; as well as being involved in various attempts to set-up Trump campaign advisers.
We are also witnessing the Dems behaving like cornered rats. You don't need a degree in psychology to see that their ever more crazed public comments like having the AG arrested, violating Trump's 4th Amendment rights to fish for crimes through his private and privileged documents without Probable Cause are desperation.
We are also witnessing the Dems behaving like cornered rats.
There is the big clue.
If they knew that they would all walk, they would be acting much more calm.
What really amazes me is that, even when faced with people on their side who were caught trying to overthrow the government, the Democrats would rather still put party above country instead of disassociating themselves with the seditious elements and moving forward with a clean conscious and a clean slate.
They would score so many more points by making it their priority to root out the harmful elements of their party, but it's not in their DNA ever since deny deny deny delay delay delay.
The Democrat Party will have to wander the desert for forty years before they are cleansed of the elements that tried to destroy the country.
-PJ
I have a few thoughts on it:
1) The Dems in the House and Senate might figure they are immune from the blowback. If the SHTF for top people in the DOJ, Obama WH and Intel community, they can always then claim to be shocked - but they would still be ridiculed for being so quick to jump and so easily duped
2) They can’t backtrack because they are too far into it, and to do so would demoralize their base. So they calculate that they will just keep attacking at whatever targets they can find to keep their base riled up.
3) Remember what Schumer said around the time of the election, that these intel agencies have many ways to exact revenge on opponents. I think it is no coincidence that you can draw a straight line from the FBI abuse of HRC having those 1000 FBI files back in the 1990s, and the FBI abuse to undermine Trump and rig the election in her favor. I also wouldn’t discount the effect of the billions she has control of in her foundation.
My personal opinion is that things in DC are far more corrupt than anyone really wants to know. So perhaps in a way focusing on all this nonsense is the least worst option for everyone.
*FINGERS CROSSED*
What a breath of fresh air AG Barr is! :)
Please, PLEASE make each and every ONE of these awful, self-serving, anti-American, Socialist grifters PAY! And pay DEARLY!
MAGA! :)
The FBI is as corrupt as the Mexican Federal Police.
Sadly I agree.
The US is dead and gone forever.
Comey, Hillary Mifsud hey are fine and not one thing will ever happen to them.
P
I get so tired of Hannity and his constant refrain
/’/’/’/’/’/’/’/’/’/’/’/
Yeah Hannity is something of an @$$hatKlown. I mean, how can a guy take his own self so seriously as to just keep spouting the exact same BS over and over?
I guess what he does is so much easier than real work - “Buy your own MyPillow; hire this particular realtor; blah, blah”
He has found a great way to make money off the Democrats bull-k-r-a-p.
Domestic enemies of the worst kind in the history of this republic. Checks and balances to deal with them? Where? Justice? Where?
How Attorney General Barr could change the federal culture of corruption in 60 days
I'm in my 30th year of covering national news and I've learned a hard truth about the federal government under numerous administrations. It's a culture where truth-telling is frowned upon; coverup is rewarded and encouraged.
That helps answer a question many have recently asked about the FBI and our intelligence community: Why haven't more whistleblowers come forward?
Several months ago, an FBI source told me that numerous whistleblowers had gone to members of Congress with information about the FBI and the Trump-Russia scandal, only to have congressional leaders turn their names over to the Department of Justice. True or not, this was the word on the street, and it had a chilling impact on other would-be whistleblowers.
The fact is, insiders know that things rarely turn out well for the whistleblowers. They and their families are targeted, attacked and smeared. They lose their jobs or chance to advance. Their health suffers. Their personal lives fall apart...
...There's a simple yet dramatic way to change this longstanding culture, one that everyone should be able to get behind: A new whistleblower amnesty program... Establish a 60-day amnesty period of time for anyone in the intel community to come forward and admit their own wrongdoing or blow the whistle on others... Offer anonymity, legal representation and job security for the whistleblowers...
...Those who do not come forward during the amnesty period, but who are implicated in wrongdoing, would face the full force of administrative action or prosecution.
Offer that man a cigarette and a blindfold.
Yes and their homes raided at 5:00 a.m. by heavily armed LEOs.
Omg. “...like holy water on Linda Blair”
I’m dying over here!
The savagery of this third degree burn of an article is off the charts!
This from the guy who uttered these words.
...we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
***********************
I beg to differ.
Not one whistleblower came forward during this entire fetid, stinking mess. Truly they love their pensions more than their country.
Time to defund and shut it down.
Xxxxx xxxx
Speaking of career characters in the fibbers, what is lon houruchi up to these days?
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