Posted on 12/11/2019 7:11:55 AM PST by karpov
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, as he explains, is bound to assume good faith unless given “documentary or testimonial evidence” otherwise. Yet he has compiled a factually damning report that even a thick-headed and biased press will have to take account of.
A shorthand version of his report: Here are 50 facts that can be explained only by FBI incompetence or political bias. We find no documentary or testimonial evidence of bias.
The mystique of Christopher Steele has gone poof, along with the reputations of many pundits. The FBI saw that he was being paid to sell claims to the press even as his third-hand sources were contradicting his claims to the FBI. He was the kind of reporter (we’ve known a few) prone to “follow the shiny object.” The CIA considered his reporting “internet rumor.”
On the surveillance warrant on the peripheral and unimportant Carter Page, we learn that a host of mistakes, omissions and outright fabrications “made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.” Exculpatory evidence was ignored. Mr. Page conveyed persuasively that he had never spoken to or communicated with Paul Manafort whose intermediary with Russian co-conspirators Mr. Page was supposed to be. Mr. Steele’s implausible claim of a giant dangled Rosneft bribe was denied even by Mr. Steele’s own source as the inspector general was able to confirm by looking at the source’s text messages. Still unexplained, and inexplicable, is why the FBI was in a panic to eavesdrop on Mr. Page at all. Nobody could have believed Mr. Steele’s story about him. More than ever it seems FBI headquarters, from which the demand originated, was under some unidentified outside pressure to spy on the Trump campaign.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
No thank you, PAYWALL STREET JOURNAL.
Horowitz spent more time learning how to write a politically correct cover up than he did investigating.
Because the WSJ is paywalled, I do try to excerpt close to the 300 word limit imposed by Free Republic, and I think such excerpts can be informative. People have discussed workarounds of the WSJ paywall.
I don’t believe HE wrote any of it.
BFOTO (blinding flash of the obvious)
“More than ever it seems FBI headquarters, from which the demand originated, was under some unidentified outside pressure to spy on the Trump campaign.”
NO!!! Seriously???
Obama, obviously. And -- as the Democrats will tell you -- no one is above the law.
By putting what happened under a microscope, you get 500 pages of malfeasance and abuse of the system in such excruciating detail that most people’s eyes just glaze over. And no one is connecting it to the wider plot.
Most people don’t understand the significance of Carter Page, so 500 pages discussing his FISA warrant seem like “inside baseball”. But the Carter Page warrant was their warrant to surveil the president and his entire team, but with no obvious paper trail. It’s as if they want to surveil you, so they get a warrant on your neighbor’s brother-in-law. Crooked, but it’s what they did.
Linda is kicking their asses today. He sounds like a mean ol Prosecutor in his opening statment, and not holding anything back...
The Horowitz report was carefully crafted so those pouring over it can take away from it whatever proclivities they may harbor. An accurate assessment of it (not mine) is the report is the Rorschach (test) ... it is open to interpretation and can be whatever you want to read into it.
Should have tuned in to Linda on C-SPAN he ripped Horowitz. Dianne is now trying to alabi the atrocious behavior.
Now..DiFi is saying the report said NO BIAS...lol
Do we believe her or what we just heard??
The FBI targeted citizens, thugged by SWAT team break-ins, spying, sting entrapments and other soviet style tactics knowingly with bogus evidence.
At the least those “professionals” should be treated the same.
Lives were destroyed for Hillary’s benefit then for the sake of these outright thugs who then tried to cover their tracks .
Those agents and their managers should have their families and friends subjected to the same tactics they used on others at a Minimum. Who knows what dirt could be found on these sickos
Yep, boil it down and make it understandable. I’ve always felt the big challenge was going to be getting the framing right. Unfortunately the complexity of this thing makes pretty good camouflage, especially when the media isn’t using its storytelling powers to help people understand.
Tens of thousands of hand-wringing text messages between Strzok and Page to the effect of “he (Trump) won’t win, right?” and “we have an insurance policy if he does” isn’t documentary evidence of political bias???
When I was in the military and working on the occasional accident (or other) investigation - I saw this same scenario unfold: throw some middle management under the bus and let the higher ranks go free. Field grade officers were expendable. Flag officers were not.
One might make allowances at the very beginning that the initial concealment by the guy who altered the record that the FBI investigators might not know of Carter Pages previous work as an anti-Russian informant for the CIA - but if they’d actually been investigating him, they’d have come across it relatively early in the process. The court filings which identify him as a CI have been out there for years, and the references correlating that record to him have been widely available for quite some time.
Did he even look into the origins?
It is widely reported that the IG found there was no evidence of political bias - but it is also not what he said, in either report, though his HR-specific phrasing lends itself to be mischaracterized that way.
In the previous report, he said he found no *direct* evidence of bias, which is explained a *bit* more clearly in the FISA report: He found no *documentary* or *testimonial* evidence of political bias. All that means is the no one wrote about their bias and asserted it was due to political cause, nor confessed to such. The IG does not at all assert there was not political bias, and simply does not speculate on the cause or source of the clearly biased actions which he documents all over the place.
One really shouldn’t expect for there to be those things regardless of whether or not there was political bias.
As a longtime denizen of The Deep State, Horowitz's main objective was to protect, as best he could, the FBI and DC establishment, and apparently this went as far as overlooking the obvious.
It's also apparent that Wray is definitely NOT the one to clean up the FBI. I suspect the FBI will continue to be a cesspool for The Deep State until the Courts begin to reverse convictions.
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