Posted on 12/09/2019 6:08:59 AM PST by janetjanet998
“The FISA Judges, the FBI leadership and everyone along the line never questioned anything and just accepted what was fed to them.”
There does appear to be one single solitary voice of reason that was involved in the whole process:
‘FBI leadership supported relying on Steele’s reporting to
seek a FISA order on Page after being advised of, and
giving consideration to, concerns expressed by Stuart
Evans, then NSD’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General
with oversight responsibility over OI, that Steele may
have been hired by someone associated with
presidential candidate Clinton or the DNC, and that the
foreign intelligence to be collected through the FISA
order would probably not be worth the “risk” of being
criticized later for collecting communications of
someone (Carter Page) who was “politically sensitive.”’
Evans was the person at the DOJ who was supposed to be in charge of the FISA process. Apparently, according to Lisa Page’s testimony to Congress, the FBI chose NOT to tell Evans when they started a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, because they were “concerned about leaks”. The only person they told at the DOJ was another Deputy Assistant Attorney General, George Toscas, who soon went and told Evans about it.
Even though other people in the DOJ allowed the FBI to go ahead with the FISA application, apparently Evans pestered them until they gave him a concession:
‘Due to Evans’s persistent inquiries, the FISA
application also included a footnote, developed by OI
based on information provided by the Crossfire
Hurricane team, to address Evans’s concern about the
potential political bias of Steele’s research.’
““did not accurately describe to 01” = Hmmm. This one has me stumped. Could either be that they lied to 01 OR that they are protecting 01 and trying to deflect any blame from 01. Based on my guesss that 01= 0vomit, I’d go with the latter.”
I think that you are talking about references to OI, not O1. That is referring to the Department of Justice Office of Intelligence(https://www.justice.gov/nsd/office-intelligence). The FBI could not even submit the application for the FISA warrant without getting approval from them, because the OI has oversight over all the FBI FISA activities.
He never said there was no political bias. From page iii of the report:
“We concluded that Priestap’s exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision.”
So, Horowitz is not saying there was no evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced Priestap’s decision to open the investigation. He’s saying that he found no DOCUMENTARY or TESTIMONIAL evidence of that being the case. Sure, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence, and it would have been nice if Horowitz had pointed that out, but he punted and stuck to what could be proven through direct evidence (i.e. texts, phone conversations, direct testimony). Based on that type of evidence, he was unable to draw conclusions. That’s probably because Priestap was probably a lot smarter and more discreet than Strozk and Page. To find the documentary evidence will likely require authority that Horowitz doesn’t possess - which Durham does.
That's incorrect. "We concluded that the FBI's decision to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four related individual investigations was, under Department and FBI policy, a discretionary judgment call and that the FBI's exercise of discretion was in compliance with those policies.
"We concluded that AD Priestap's exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision."
They have concluded that it was proper and done correctly. They CONCLUDED he followed procedures.
Absolutely yes. He has no authority to investigate anyone who is not a current employee of DOJ (which includes the FBI).
If he has no evidence after all this time and energy - it is because he didn't look for it...or he allowed people to lie to him and didn't use all the tools to get to the truth. I call that a whitewash.
You can call it whatever you want. Have a good day.
Well phishing is a form of hacking, just not a very sophisticated one. Even social engineering, which might not even involve touching a computer, is technically still “hacking”.
Yes, I know about “social” or “soft” hacking, but c’mon, they are trying to mislead the public into thinking the Russians employed a crack team of cyber spies who put great time and effort into bypassing our digital defenses to get into Podesta’s creepy emails. In reality he was so stupid he basically just said “duurrrrrr here you go comrades!”
"James Comey: The truth is finally out. The FBI fulfilled its mission."
See - this will become the story - not all the "little stuff" that people here think is the big stuff. That stuff will get lost in the shuffle. It will get lost in the noise.
Hang in there. Again, there’s several posters that have not read the report in any detail, who are offering broad sweeping conclusions. I’d suggest for the time being to keep reading and ignore them.
Excellent work there.
Thanks!
Yes, that much is true, the whole “Fancy Bear” angle is pretty much baloney invented by Crowdstrike and swallowed uncritically by the government.
In fact, there was an old investigation done on reddit that pretty much conclusively showed that the whole “Guccifer 2.0” thing was an invention of the DNC or someone working on their behalf to set up the “Russian hacker” narrative. I think those threads have disappeared down the memory hole now.
I expect ZERO indictments from this.
Now we can all wait for Durham, I guess. Tick-tock.
Durham is unlikely to ever write a report. That's not what U.S. Attorney's do. They prosecute crimes, they don't write reports.
The output of a U.S. Attorney investigation is typically an indictment, which lays out the facts that the State is asserting and believes that they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and specifies how these fact violate specific laws (U.S. Code in the case of Federal Prosecutors like Durham).
In the event that a U.S. Attorney conducts an investigation and chooses not to prosecute they usually write a memo to the A.G. explaining why they chose not to indict. These are typically not made public, because usually in the USA if you don't get charged with a crime the FedGov doesn't air a bunch of inconclusive or salacious information about you, or what you were accused of.
So, with Durham, I expect either indictments, or nothing. If it's "nothing" there will probably be some sort of short statement, possibly by A.G. Barr, saying the matter has been concluded and the U.S. Dept of Justice will not be filing any charges in the matter.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you did not read the Mueller team's indictment of 12 Russian GRU agents for the hacking of the DNC. There is a lot of information in there, and Crowdstrike's suppositions are not the only evidence.
I suggest, if you are interested in "who hacked the DNC" you need to read the Mueller indictment.
Here it is:
Thanks. Much appreciated.
No it's not. It is a Brady or Giglio violation. Those are judge imposed rules, failure of which is not a felony. Worst case in failing these is case dismissed, but the usual outcome is "no harm, no foul."
Even with Strzok, Horowitz found no direct evidence of bias affecting his treatment of any case he handled. That was in the HIllary exoneration report that caused the FBI to be subjected to glowing praise and retraining.
“the Mueller team’s indictment of 12 Russian GRU agents”
An indictment for a case that will never see the inside of a courtroom, of course. It’s very easy to make assertions in an indictment when you know you will never have to prove any of those assertions in court. This was purely political grandstanding by Mueller. You don’t publicly file criminal indictments against foreign spies that you haven’t even apprehended; that’s ludicrous on its face.
“There is a lot of information in there...”
“Information” is not the same thing as “evidence”. I could say that I had a dream that Ronald McDonald hacked the DNC. That’s “information”, but it’s not any kind of “evidence”.
“...Crowdstrike’s suppositions are not the only evidence.”
Frankly, we have no idea what the “evidence” for that indictment is, because there is no evidence actually mentioned in the indictment. Knowing Mueller, who filed another indictment against a bunch of Russians that was based entirely on a magazine article, I really am not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he actually has any real evidence to back his assertions.
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