> “I’m very skeptical about Horowitz who seems to be more of a guard dog than a watch dog.”
I grew up in DC, father worked as an attorney for DOJ and clerked before that with Court of Appeals. He was a Korean War Vet and a weekend warrior naval aviator. He gave his life for the country while on reserve duty. He’s buried at Arlington.
So I know DC well and have followed how the corruption set in hard with the Clintons coming to town. It has only got worse since.
Horowitz is a ‘survivor’ creature. He’s made his career starting in 1991 (just before Clinton era) in federal bureaucracy and knows ‘how to be’ to get those cushy retirements the federal unions (now known as the AFGE) carved out for themselves over decades.
Whereas federal service during and after the WWII generation was once a place for some of the best and most devoted Americans to give their all at salaries that were BELOW PAR with the private sector, the workforce there today has become prevalent as a swamp of people making 35% to 50% more on average than the private sector with their main focus on reaching those cushy federal retirements as the be-all and end-all of why they exist. Not all are this way, some are still pulling duty taking pride in conducting themselves and their offices with integrity. But the overall trend has been in the wrong direction.
Let’s look at a couple of snippet examples from Horowitz’s last report to get a first-hand assessment of how he operates:
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=6359881-OIG-Report-Comey
Page 2
EXAMPLE 1
“We found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the Memos to members of the media.”
HOROWITZ FOUND NOTHING WRONG. This is throwing a bone to Democrats who he is very tight with and who his wife donates $$$ and supports candidates that hate Trump. (see http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3782678/posts)
Page 2
EXAMPLE 2
“Upon completing our investigation, pursuant to Section 4(d) of the Inspector General Act of 1978, the OIG provided a copy of its factual findings to the Department for a prosecutorial decision regarding Comey’s conduct. See 5 U.S.C.A. App. 3 § 4(d) (2016). After reviewing the matter, the Department
declined prosecution.”
HOROWITZ CAN SAY HE REFERRED COMEY FOR PROSECUTION REVIEW. He tells his Democrat buds he HAD TO DO IT pursuant to regulations’ “You see? I just had to do this but notice I reported nothing wrong happened!”
To survive in the Swamp. Horowitz has learned to be two-faced.
Horowitz is just one example of what’s wrong with DC. Senior federal positions have gone to lifers lacking genuine integrity (they have evolved a perverted sense of integrity). At core, their federal career comes before country. They dare not blow the whistle themselves, they might get a nobody underling to do that and take the fall for it. They think if they get canned they have nowhere else to go and their cushy retirement is wasted. Overall, they are egotistical cowards but they sure know how to decorate a resumé. You can’t blame them for that but don’t ever think they will trade their beautiful resumé for acting with genuine integrity. As stated, they will throw someone else under the bus first. They will bond with other lifer weasels and promote each other on the way up forming a cabal.
Look at the McCabe example. This one is really bad, much worse than reported in state media or even conservative leaning outlets. He got fired minutes before reaching that federal retirement nirvana. He becomes aware he is in serious trouble. He puts out that “If I go down, I will take everyone else down with me” signaling the Swamp and the Deep State that he will tell all unless he’s taken care of. Soon after he’s linked to a free of charge super law firm, he gets a gofundme account with upwards towards a million dollars, he gets a gig with CNN, and a book deal with a ghostwriter. And then his lawyers sue the Trump Administration for ‘violating his Constitutional rights’.
Here are some counterintuitive developments that are frustrating and discouraging but are actually good moves:
1. Barr and Durham are NOT after all the lies that were told in the spying and coup as those are likely not winnable prosecutions. To understand this means to understand what a “counter-intel investigation” is and why Susan Rice’s last minute memo covered all their behinds. It’s called the OUTRAGE TRAP. Here is a must-read to understand why things are playing out as they are:
Beware of Obama’s Outrage Trap – Susan Rice’s “By The Book” Memo…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/03/31/beware-of-obamas-outrage-trap-susan-rices-by-the-book-memo
Sundance followed up with some pieces on this but this one sets the stage for people to get an inside baseball view of what’s going on.
It goes like this:
Senate Committee Member: “You said in your report here on page such and such that stuff happened and that so-and-so did stuff all of which are provably untrue! This is outrageous!”
Swamp Response: “Yeah? So what Senator? We’re allowed to create disinformation under a counter-intel investigation.”
The Outrage Trap gives them all a stay-out-of-jail free card.
2. The above is why Senator Graham has been delaying holding hearings on all the lies, corruption, and coup plotting. The miscreants have an out. Graham and his staff are not stupid, they see the Outrage Trap and are sidestepping it. And they’ve taken a shellacking for dragging their feet to get geared up and in the game.
3. The Outrage Trap is also one of the factors the OIG Report was delayed indefinitely. The reason for this delay is presumably that Wray is still conducting his classification review. My take is Wray was told to sit on it. Wray. like Horowitz is a DC trough feeder. He’s neither White Hat nor Black Hat. He’s all things to all views signifying a whole lot of nothing. Careers and retirement are paramount at this stage. And that Trump fellow just might be impeached or the Fed will crash the economy and state media will go full nelson to make Trump accountable for it, hence losing in 2020. Then all the Wray’s and Horowitz’s in DC will need to face the hard left. This is the game they’ve learned to play.
There are more factors in the OIG Report delay. Horowitz in all likelihood wrote the telephone book sized report so that it threw red meat to conservatives while providing an out to Deep State Traitors. The report would drag on and on die to its sheer size and cause hearings to be held well into Summer 2020 with the Outrage Trap used as the universal get-out-of-jail pass.
Another factor in the OIG Report delay is that an ‘October Event’ was in works. A shooting, a whistleblower, a Russian prostitute, a war, a new BS Adam Schiff parody, an attempted assassination on the Trump family and children, etc. The Deep State and their Democrats have known for a long time that the FISA report was coming and of course they planned an event so sensational that their state media would be able to JAM the information signal channel of the OIG Report to the public.
4. Senator Graham’s feigned outrage at Trump’s Syria leave-the-Kurds-behind pullout was a good development. It confuses the state media. It makes him seem independent and at odds with the President so that when he does hold the hearings which will be delayed until further, he will appear IMPARTIAL. He’s taken a beating for this but he and his staff know what they are doing.
5. That leaves Barr and Durham at the fulcrim of saving the Republic. A couple of things on this.
a. Barr is well into his 70s and has stated that he has no need to ‘build or preserve political capital’. When people get to that age, they see life differently, they start to think of what they will leave behind. Most of the people they were close to on the way up are either retired or passed on. Barr’s character is what will determine which road he takes.
b. Nancy Pelosu remarked the week before last that Barr had “gone rogue”.
These two items a. and b. give confidence that Barr is going to do the right thing, what’s right for the country, not what’s right for the DC social strata.
6. Barr and Durham are not looking at FISA abuses as much as they are investigating the ORIGINS of the Russian-Collusion scheme. The ORIGINS will demolish the Outrage Trap and lead to winnable prosecutions against the Deep State. Getting the evidence and proof of the ORIGINS is game-set-match, it bypasses the Outrage Trap and beats the Deep State hands down.
As for bureaucratic BS findings and solutions coming from Barr’s office for a need to ‘improve accountability’ and such, I don’t think POTUS will let that happen, neither will POTUS enter the arena and slay the scumbags himself. He will stay in the stands as the crowd roars and shows thumbs down. Scalise, Gaetz, Meadows, Jordan, Collins, many others, even Graham will be calling for heads to roll. The American public will want to see people hang. The GOP will take the House, the President will be elected in a landslide, and Congress will call for the DOJ to prosecute the miscreants to the fullest extent of the law because the American public will not allow it any other way. That’s the way I see the script playing. Sure there will be last attempts by Democrat at ‘resistance’ and disinformation, but the ORIGINS will prevail over them. As CNN goes down, the ORIGINS will be picked up by other outlets that Americans will turn to. Our liberal neighbors will duck and hide, confused, still angry, cursing at whatever, blaming Trump but more muted in expression.
Thanks for another well thought out reply. I think your understanding of the self-serving nature of federal bureaucrats (i.e., trough feeders) and their obsession with protecting their careers (and dodging their ethical responsibilities) is spot on.
It wasn’t always that way with federal service, but DC has become intensely political in recent decades and bureaucratic power has expanded with the increasing size of government. The army of bureaucrats now wield disproportionate power; they have become a shadow government and have solidified their political clout to benefit themselves.
I am still skeptical about justice being applied in the case of Spygate. First off, it will take a herculean effort to defeat the Deep State which is no doubt preparing a vigorous defense to counter attack whatever findings the reports come out with. I suspect they have a lot more up their sleeve than just Outrage Traps. Second, I’m not convinced the American people, who seem to be gullible and easily distracted with their bread and circuses, will demand real justice. Consider that that nothing happened to Lois Lerner; no outrage from taxpayers about outrageous IRS abuses. She’s enjoying every day of her generous retirement. Even worse, nothing has, or will, happen to Hillary. Third, I have little faith in the GOP. They are weak, feckless and unprincipled. If Reagan and Trump couldn’t instill some political courage in them, nobody can. Our voters seem to have a penchant for sending scoundrels to congress and keeping them there despite being repeatedly deceived and ill served by them.
I think we can write off the Horowitz report as an exercise in deflection and obfuscation. He’ll whitewash the entire thing so he can ride off into the sunset and enjoy his cushy retirement. So it’s all up to Barr to restore some semblance of integrity back into the DOJ, FBI and IC. If he fails in this historic calling, we’re in serious trouble as a nation. (note: I do think you’re right about him having legacy issues at the forefront of his mind at this point in his life. He will become a truly historic figure is he stands tall at his crucial moment.)
I hope I’m underestimating Barr and will be proven wrong, but I think you’ll admit that my cynicism about the current state of affairs in DC is well founded. The one bright spot is our courageous president who it seems is taking on all of Washington, not to mention the devious forces beyond our borders.
How long he can continue to do this in the face of such persistent resistance is questionable. I do what I can to support him, including making periodic donations (only to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc as I don’t like the way RNC leaches money off of him through the MAGA fund raising campaign).
The next few months will be a pivotal time for the country and will determine the direction we take as a self-governing people for a long time to come. The moment of truth is right around the corner.