The presiding judge for the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ordered the FBI to review a batch of FISA applications after Inspector General Michael Horowitz conducted an internal audit and determined that 29 out of 29 applications contained errors, mistakes, or otherwise other problems with substantiation. 
Judge James Boasberg has requested the move in order to determine whether the mistakes and errors found by Horowitz “undermined the legal basis for placing those targets under surveillance,” reports <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/us/politics/fbi-fisa-court-surveillance-applications.html">The New York Times</a>. 
“It would be an understatement to note that such lack of confidence appears well founded,” wrote Judge Boasberg. “None of the 29 cases reviewed had a Woods file that did what it is supposed to do: Support each fact proffered to the court.”
As part of what the news agency describes as a “rare public order,” the FBI must also provide the surveillance court with the names of the individuals who were placed under investigation as a result of the reportedly inaccurate, or potentially legally dubious, FISA applications. The FBI has until June 15 to provide the new information to the court. 
The FBI maintains that they’re committed to keeping the trust of the court, saying in a statement to the Times that “we will continue to work closely with the FISC and the Department of Justice to ensure that our FISA authorities are exercised responsibly.” The intelligence agency also said that the applications preceded the Horowitz report last year — which helped prompt the internal review to begin with. 
Judge Boasberg’s order has become the next step in the investigation of FISA abuse at the nation’s chief domestic intelligence agency, and follows the inspector general’s December 2019 report, which determined that the FBI’s surveillance applications to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page contained <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">17 inaccuracies</a> or omissions. 
As <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-digest-judge-orders-fbi-and-justice-department-to-review-fisa-wiretap-applications/2020/04/03/a9283ebc-709f-11ea-a3ec-70d7479d83f0_story.html">The Washington Post</a> notes, the Horowitz report stopped short of determining whether the mistakes in the FISA application “would have influenced the government’s decision to apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to secretly wiretap a suspect.”
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/it-wasnt-just-trump-inspector-general-finds-fbi-routinely-violates-procedures-in-fisa-warrant-applications">The Daily Wire</a> reported earlier this week, Horowitz revealed in a memo Monday that the FBI seems to have routinely violated “The Woods Procedure,” a policy enacted in 2001 to “minimize factual inaccuracies in FISA applications and to ensure that statements contained in applications are ‘scrupulously accurate,’” according to the inspector general. 
The memo, the results of an internal review following the Horowitz report, looked at 29 FISA applications and found problems with each one, leading the inspector general to write that the deficiencies undermine “the FBI’s ability to achieve its ‘scrupulously accurate’ standard for FISA applications.”
<blockquote>Our lack of confidence that the Woods Procedures are working as intended stems primarily from the fact that: (1) we could not review original Woods Files for 4 of the 29 selected FISA applications because the FBI has not 3 been able to locate them and, in 3 of these instances, did not know if they ever existed; (2) our testing of FISA applications to the associated Woods Files identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications we reviewed, and interviews to date with available agents or supervisors in field offices generally have confirmed the issues we identified; (3) existing FBI and [National Security Division] oversight mechanisms have also identified deficiencies in documentary support and application accuracy that are similar to those that we have observed to date; and (4) FBI and NSD officials we interviewed indicated to us that there were no efforts by the FBI to use existing FBI and NSD oversight mechanisms to perform comprehensive, strategic assessments of the efficacy of the Woods Procedures or FISA accuracy, to include identifying the need for enhancements to training and improvements in the process, or increased accountability measures.</blockquote>

FBI Awaits Trump Decision On Release Of Nunes Memo On Russia Investigation

Surveillance Court Judge Orders FBI To Review Botched FISA Warrants After Horowitz Memo

FISA

The FBI routinely violates its own procedures when applying for warrants to spy on American citizens, a new <a href="https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2020/a20047.pdf">report</a> from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found.
In a memo dated March 30, Inspector General Michael Horowitz followed up on an earlier report from December 2019, which found the FBI violated its own procedures when obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Carter Page, a former adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The OIG found that the FBI violated what’s known as the Woods Procedures, which were implemented in 2001 “following errors in numerous FISA applications submitted to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] in FBI counterterrorism investigations.” The Woods Procedures are meant to “minimize factual inaccuracies in FISA applications and to ensure that statements contained in applications are ‘scrupulously accurate,’&#8221; Horowitz wrote.
After its massive report late last year, which found 17 “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">inaccuracies and omissions</a>” that led to Page getting spied on by his own government when he had done nothing wrong, Horowitz led a team to look into other FISA applications to see if violating the Woods Procedures was routine. It turns out, it was:
<blockquote>Our lack of confidence that the Woods Procedures are working as intended stems primarily from the fact that: (1) we could not review original Woods Files for 4 of the 29 selected FISA applications because the FBI has not 3 been able to locate them and, in 3 of these instances, did not know if they ever existed; (2) our testing of FISA applications to the associated Woods Files identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications we reviewed, and interviews to date with available agents or supervisors in field offices generally have confirmed the issues we identified; (3) existing FBI and [National Security Division] oversight mechanisms have also identified deficiencies in documentary support and application accuracy that are similar to those that we have observed to date; and (4) FBI and NSD officials we interviewed indicated to us that there were no efforts by the FBI to use existing FBI and NSD oversight mechanisms to perform comprehensive, strategic assessments of the efficacy of the Woods Procedures or FISA accuracy, to include identifying the need for enhancements to training and improvements in the process, or increased accountability measures.</blockquote>
Horowitz’s memo, however, did not make “judgments about whether the errors or concerns we identified were material” nor did it speculate as to whether the potential errors influenced the decision to approve the FBI’s FISA applications in those cases.
“Nevertheless, we believe that a deficiency in the FBI’s efforts to support the factual statements in FISA applications through its Woods Procedures undermines the FBI’s ability to achieve its ‘scrupulously accurate’ standard for FISA applications,” Horowitz wrote.
The memo also stated that FBI officials told OIG investigators that corrective actions or training may take place at field offices based on the results of its reviews, yet Horowitz noted no such training exists at the FBI headquarters.
The memo stated the OIG will conduct further investigations into the deficiencies of the FBI FISA applications and their renewals, as this investigation is just preliminary and took place over two months. The OIG recommended the FBI regularly review its past cases to determine if there were any violations of the Woods Procedures and conduct “a physical inventory to ensure that Woods Files exist for every FISA application submitted to the FISC in all pending investigations.”
In response to the memo, FBI Associate Deputy Director Paul Abbate accepted Horowitz’s findings and said the bureau is still implementing the corrective measures it announced after the December 2019 report. It also noted the OIG’s own deficiencies in its memos relating to examining complete files and whether evidence supported the allegations in the FISA applications.

FBI agent

It Wasn’t Just Trump, Inspector General Finds FBI Routinely Violates Procedures In FISA Warrant Applications

Michael Horowitz

United States intelligence officials have informed the family of Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who was last seen in Iran in 2007, they have concluded that he has died.
A family member of Levinson told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/us/politics/robert-levinson-cia-iran.html?action=click&amp;module=Alert&amp;pgtype=Homepage">The New York Times</a> that his close relatives were informed of the assessment during a meeting in the White House Situation Room sometime in the last few weeks. However, U.S. officials were unable to determine his death with absolute certainty.
U.S. intelligence officials have also not confirmed the timing of Levinson’s suspected death, but assured the family the assessment was made based on recent information, reports the news agency. Officials did determine, however, that the death probably occurred within the last several years.
The family has accepted the assessment from intelligence officials and announced Levinson’s death in a Facebook post Wednesday afternoon.
“We recently received information from U.S. officials that has led both them and us to conclude that our wonderful husband and father died while in Iranian custody,” said the family&#8217;s statement. “It is impossible to describe our pain. Our family will spend the rest of our lives without the most amazing man we have ever known, a new reality that is inconceivable to us.”
“If not for the cruel, heartless actions of the Iranian regime, Robert Levinson would be alive and home with us today,” said the statement. “How those responsible in Iran could do this to a human being, while repeatedly lying to the world all this time, is incomprehensible to us. They kidnapped a foreign citizen and denied him any basic human rights, and his blood is on their hands.”
“Those who are responsible for what happened to Bob Levinson, including those in the U.S. government who for many years repeatedly left him behind, will ultimately receive justice for what they have done. We will spend the rest of our lives making sure of this, and the Iranian regime must know we will not be going away,&#8221; said the family.
According to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-concludes-former-fbi-agent-robert-levinson-died-iran-n1169056">NBC News</a>, Iran has continued to deny they were involved in Levinson’s disappearance, and a spokesperson for Iran’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. claimed the country has “no knowledge of Mr. Levinson’s whereabouts.”
President Trump informed White House reporters Wednesday afternoon that he was not able to confirm Levinson’s death, reports the news agency.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not looking promising,&#8221; said the president, who maintained that while Iran didn’t explicitly confirm the death, “a lot of people are thinking that is the case.&#8221;
During a 2013 investigation, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/american-missing-nearly-7-years-in-iran-was-working-for-cia-on-unapproved-mission-2013-12">The Associated Press</a> revealed that the retired FBI agent was on an unauthorized CIA intelligence gathering mission, working on behalf of a group of U.S. intelligence analysts. 
Both the Bush and Obama administration had maintained that Levinson was visiting Iran on private business, and that the CIA was not involved in the matter, reports the news agency. 
AP explained that the decision to reveal Levinson’s CIA affiliation was only made after government officials had exhausted their leads, and after government officials had determined Iran was already aware of Levinson’s CIA status.

USA &#8211; Politics &#8211; White House &#8211; Renovated Situation Room

Retired FBI Agent Missing In Iran For 13 Years Has Reportedly Died, Reveals Family

Iran

A <a href="https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/03/25/in_dojs_upper_echelon_you_are_innocent_until_you_get_off_scot-free_122897.html">new report</a> highlights how the Department of Justice routinely fails to prosecute high-ranking department officials despite criminal referrals from the department’s inspector general.
RealClearInvestigations (my former employer) examined several instances of DOJ employees committing crimes but not getting prosecuted. For example, an FBI attorney shoplifted from the Marine Corps Base Quantico Exchange multiple times before getting caught with $257.99 worth of stolen cosmetics. She admitted to also stealing from other stores but wasn’t prosecuted.
“Not that it was a surprise. The Justice Department regularly declines to prosecute high-ranking current and former department officials, even when its Office of Inspector General provides the grounds for it,” the outlet reported. “The Department of Justice OIG does not keep complete public records on the number of prosecutions that result from its investigations. But the office does keep track of certain cases – those involving wrongdoing by senior DoJ managers and officials that Justice declines to prosecute.”
In 2019 alone, the OIG “issued 27 such reports of alleged wrongdoing by senior Justice Department officials and employees that went unprosecuted – everything from nepotism in hiring, to making false claims on mortgage documents, to ‘lack of candor’ with federal investigators, to sexual assault.” You might recall the “lack of candor” crime, as it related to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lying to federal prosecutors regarding his role into the false claims that President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election.
Former FBI Director James Comey was also referred for prosecution by the OIG.
“By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment,” the OIG wrote in its report on the lack of prosecution, “Comey set a dangerous example.” The OIG sent its findings to the DOJ, but “After reviewing the matter, the Department declined prosecution.”
As RCI reported, it’s “much harder to find cases of senior officials who are found by the OIG to have committed wrongdoing and are subsequently prosecuted.” One person who was actually prosecuted was Barbara Zoccola, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Memphis who was caught “falsifying her time and attendance records.”
RCI suggested it was “rare” for the DOJ to prosecute criminals referred to it by its own OIG:
<blockquote>For example, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia – who would have jurisdiction over misconduct committed in Washington – puts out press releases announcing indictments and convictions. In 2019 there were press releases regarding any number of murders, robberies, and molestations – the all too common crimes of any big city. But Washington being the seat of government, there were announcements of indictments and convictions of government employees, including cases of bribery at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and at Veterans Affairs, as well as espionage at the departments of State and Defense. But none of the 2019 releases involved wrongdoing by senior DOJ officials.</blockquote>
In addition to not getting prosecuted, it also appears top DOJ officials don’t usually get publicly named for their crimes.
The difference was most start with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the allegations of Russian collusion. Mueller “repeatedly used the full force of the law to convict associates of President Trump of process crimes, especially the crime of making false statements to government investigators,” RCI reported, while DOJ officials who did the same received no punishment.
Further, former high-ranking officials get off scot free for crimes such as impersonating a government official or using one’s position for special treatment:
<blockquote>A former deputy assistant attorney general was not happy that his brother was sharing a hospital room with another patient. A January 2019 OIG report states that he called the hospital claiming he was “the No. 4 person with the Department of Justice.” Leveraging that falsehood, the former Justice official demanded his brother be moved to a private room. The hospital complied.
When questioned by agents of the Department of Justice Inspector General, the former high-ranking attorney readily admitted he had committed “an ethical violation.” He “also agreed that his conduct amounted to the impersonation of a government official.”</blockquote>
Still, he was not prosecuted. DOJ spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle told RCI that high-ranking department officials get no special treatment.
“The Department of Justice expects all employees to hold themselves to the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct,” he told the outlet. “The department takes allegations of employee misconduct seriously, including claims that employees lacked candor when dealing with investigators, and has a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment in the workplace.” The evidence suggests otherwise.

James Comey

Report: DOJ Routinely Lets High-Ranking Officials Get Away With Crimes, Policy Violations

Andrew McCabe

Department of Justice

According to an inspector general <a href="https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2020/a20030.pdf#page=2">report</a> released Wednesday, the FBI missed opportunities to stop at least five domestic terrorists who, in total, killed 70 Americans.
&#8220;[Inspector General] report finds HVEs (Homegrown Violent Extremists) carried out 20+ attacks (since 9/11) in US, &#8216;some of which occurred after the FBI closed a counterterrorism investigation..FBI has not taken sufficient action to address weaknesses,&#8221; CBS News&#8217; Catherine Herridge reported Wednesday.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: IG report finds HVEs (Homegrown Violent Extremists) carried out 20+ attacks (since 9/11) in US, “some of which occurred after the FBI closed a counterterrorism investigation..FBI has not taken sufficient action to address weaknesses” <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSNews?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CBSNews</a> <a href="https://t.co/0zNzEHTZSm">https://t.co/0zNzEHTZSm</a>
&mdash; Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) <a href="https://twitter.com/CBS_Herridge/status/1235224538272665600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
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In a follow-up tweet, Herridge added: &#8220;New IG report &#8216;&#8230;we found at least six attacks committed in the United States by individuals who the FBI had previously assessed or investigated&#8230;&#8217; including 2009 Fort Hood, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 2016 Pulse Nightclub.&#8221;
“The FBI has acknowledged that various weaknesses related to its assessment process may have impacted its ability to fully investigate certain counterterrorism assessment subjects, who later committed terrorist acts in the United States,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in the report, as reported by <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/4/fbi-missed-chances-stop-domestic-terror-attacks-be/">The Washington Times</a>.
The FBI &#8220;failed to conduct follow-up investigations of people identified as violent extremists,&#8221; the report outlined, the Times notes.
The murderous terrorist action that followed the apparent FBI slips include the 2016 attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, and an attack at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in 2017.
Following the release of the report, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) ripped former FBI Director James Comey on social media Thursday.
&#8220;When I asked James comey after the Pulse mass shooting if in retrospect the FBI concluded too soon that [redacted] was not a threat. The arrogant Comey refused to admit any mistake &amp; maintained the opinion that [redacted] was not a threat. Comey: tell that to the 49 people who died,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1235732012134096897">Paul</a> wrote on Twitter. (As a matter of policy, The Daily Wire does not print names of mass killers.)
According to former FBI head of the agency&#8217;s New York office, Lewis Schiliro, the blame of the mishaps largely falls on the &#8220;bureaucracy, not the agents, who are hamstrung with limited resources and 90-day time constraints on preliminary investigations if no immediate threat is found,&#8221; the Times reports.
“It’s going to be a judgment call,” Schiliro explained about cases being closed or receiving follow-ups. “Agents get hundreds of cases a day, and you are limited where you can apply your resources.”
“Anytime there is criticism, of course, it undermines the public faith in the bureau, and that can never be good because the FBI depends on the public trust,” he added.
According to the Times, recommendations for the FBI &#8220;include implementing guidelines from a 2017 internal bureau review of its Guardian threat assessment system, providing clear guidance to field offices on investigative steps, and establishing a plan to assess threats with mental health concerns.&#8221;
“We agree it is important to continue to improve the assessment process, provide adequate guidance, training and program management for all Guardians and those specifically addressing homegrown violent extremists,” responded the FBI&#8217;s Suzanne Turner.
The full IG report can be viewed <a href="https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2020/a20030.pdf#page=2">here</a>.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-feds-investigating-comey-over-leak-tied-to-hillary-investigation-report-says">Feds Investigating Comey Over Leak Tied To Hillary Investigation, Report Says</a>

James Comey Testifies At Senate Hearing On Russian Interference In US Election

REPORT: FBI Dropped Ball On Domestic Terrorists Who Killed 70 People. Rand Paul Hits Comey.

Rand Paul

The FBI not only gave ex-British Intelligence officer Christopher Steele classified information, they paid him to show up to accept the information, according to the Inspector General report released late last year.
The information about Steele received little media attention, but Eric Felten at RealClearInvestigations (my former employer) has now brought that information into the light. Remember, Steele is the one who compiled the infamous Steele Dossier filled with salacious information about President Donald Trump. He was paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.
“The report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz details how a team of FBI agents in early October 2016 shared with Steele extensive classified materials, just weeks before the bureau cut off ties with him for leaking his own research to the media. The secrets included foreign intelligence information still considered so sensitive that the IG’s report refers to it even now only as coming from a &#8216;Friendly Foreign Government.&#8217; In fact, this is a reference to Australia. That country’s ambassador to Britain sent the United States a tip about loose talk by junior Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. The FBI has <a href="http://archive.is/xbIUi">described that as the predicate</a> for its Trump-Russia investigation,” Felten wrote.
Further, the FBI, according to the IG report, promised Steele $15,000 to attend the meeting where they provided him the classified information.
“The IG report also discloses that FBI agents knew Steele worked for Glenn Simpson, whose opposition research firm Fusion GPS was paying Steele to dig up dirt on Trump for the Clinton campaign, and that Steele informed the FBI that the ‘candidate’ – Clinton herself – knew about Steele’s work. Steele did not keep to himself the classified material he had learned from the FBI. Shortly after the Rome meeting, Steele briefed Simpson on what the FBI had disclosed to him,” Felten wrote.
Felten reported that the FBI’s disclosures to Steele, a partisan operative and private foreign citizen being paid by a presidential candidate’s campaign, violated laws relating to the handling of classified information.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">reported</a>, Steele’s information consisted of rumors and gossip, yet was used by Democrats and the media to suggest Trump was a puppet of Russia. The IG report on FBI surveillance abuses. Among the 17 errors and omissions included in the four FISA warrant applications against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page were numerous references to Steele. The FBI insisted Steele’s prior work with the bureau had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.” This greatly exaggerated Steele’s past work. In another instance, the FBI included information from one of Steele’s sub-sources whom Steele himself called a “boaster,” an “egoist,” and who “may engage in some embellishment.” The FBI did not include the information that the source was not credible. Further, the FBI lied when it claimed Steele had not provided information to Yahoo News for an article about Trump and Russia, which the FBI then used to “corroborate” the Steele Dossier. In fact, Steele was the source for the Yahoo article, meaning it didn’t corroborate anything and was instead simply circular reporting.
For added measure, the FBI also omitted information about Steele’s poor work performance, including information that he demonstrated “poor judgment,” “pursued people with political risk but no intelligence value,” “didn’t always exercise great judgment,” and it was “not clear what he would have done to validate” his reporting.

Christopher Steele

FBI Reportedly Gave Classified Information To Anti-Trump Spy Christopher Steele

Donald Trump

On Friday, the Department of Justice announced that it was dropping the criminal investigation in ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
McCabe had been criminally referred for investigation by the DOJ’s Inspector General (IG) after he lied to the FBI regarding leaks to the Wall Street Journal about the ongoing investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election. A special counsel determined that no member of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election.
In response to the DOJ dropping the investigation and charges against McCabe, the former FBI official turned to his new employer, CNN, to give a tone-deaf victory lap.
“As glad as I am that the DOJ and the D.C. attorney’s office finally decided to do the right thing today, it’s an absolute disgrace that they took two years and put my family through this experience for two years before they finally drew the obvious conclusion,&#8221; McCabe said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Andrew McCabe: “As glad as I am that the DoJ and the DC attorney’s office finally decided to do the right thing today, it’s an absolute disgrace that they took 2 years and put my family through this experience for two years before they finally drew the obvious conclusion.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/T8x7drbukU">pic.twitter.com/T8x7drbukU</a>
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1228381456830996485?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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McCabe, of course, missed the irony of his statement, given the fact that while he was at the FBI, he helped lead a two-year investigation into President Donald Trump and his family before the special counsel drew the obvious conclusion.
In a letter announcing the DOJ was dropping the investigation, J.P. Cooney, head of the DOJ’s Fraud &amp; Public Corruption Section and Molly Gaston, assistant U.S. attorney, the department declared the matter “closed”:
<blockquote>We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe, arising from the referral by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to our Office of conduct described in OIG’s April 13, 2018, report entitled, “A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.” Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the Government at this time, we consider the matter closed. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.</blockquote>
McCabe was demoted in January 2018. One month later, the IG <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4437277/DOJ-OIG-McCabe-Report.pdf">determined</a> that McCabe “lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions in connection with describing his role in connection with a disclosure to the [Wall Street Journal].” He also violated FBI and DOJ policy by disclosing “the existence of an ongoing investigation in the manner described in this report.”
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-justice-department-drops-criminal-investigation-into-fired-fbi-official-andrew-mccabe">reported</a>, McCabe filed a lawsuit in August 2019 against the DOJ, claiming his firing was a “politically motivated and retaliatory demotion.” He also claimed that Trump “purposefully and intentionally” pressured the DOJ to fire McCabe in an attempt to discredit the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
Having the charges dropped against McCabe angered Trump supporters who have seen time and time again the people who targeted Trump from before he was even president get away scot free with lying to the FBI while people associated with Trump get sentenced to prison. While McCabe was let off the hook for documented lies, Gen. Michael Flynn and Roger Stone were convicted in part for allegedly lying to FBI officials.

Andrew McCabe Responds To DOJ Dropping Criminal Investigation Into His Lying

In a turn of events that will only shock those unfamiliar with the Washington, D.C. swamp, the Department of Justice announced Friday that it would drop its criminal investigation into ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
In a letter sent from J.P. Cooney, head of the DOJ’s Fraud &amp; Public Corruption Section and Molly Gaston, assistant U.S. attorney, the department said that the government has decided to drop the investigation and charges”
<blockquote>We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe, arising from the referral by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to our Office of conduct described in OIG’s April 13, 2018, report entitled, “A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.” Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the Government at this time, we consider the matter closed. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.</blockquote>
McCabe was fired in 2018. One month before, the OIG released the aforementioned <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4437277/DOJ-OIG-McCabe-Report.pdf">report</a>, which found that McCabe “lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions in connection with describing his role in connection with a disclosure to the [Wall Street Journal]”
As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ex-fbi-deputy-director-sues-bureau-doj-over-ashe-schow?fbclid=IwAR1W8CAW-H-rSTJwb3Tfym4P9Oio1igkLGQLNx5j4HdX088i0wyPTNaGQlA">wrote</a> last year, such dishonesty is a violation of FBI policy. The OIG also determined that McCabe violated FBI and DOJ policy by disclosing “the existence of an ongoing investigation in the manner described in this report.”
In August 2019, McCabe filed a lawsuit against the DOJ claiming his firing was a “politically motivated and retaliatory demotion.” He was demoted in January 2018 and fired in March after the OIG report. McCabe claimed in his lawsuit that President Donald Trump “purposefully and intentionally” pressured the DOJ to fire McCabe in order to discredit the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
An investigation from Special Counsel Robert Mueller determined no one from the Trump campaign worked with Russia to steal the election.
In February 2019, McCabe appeared on “60 Minutes” and claimed members of the Trump cabinet were considering using the 25th Amendment to oust Trump from office, according to host Scott Pelley.
“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” Pelley said. “These were the eight days from [Fired FBI Director James] Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what do with the president.”
McCabe also said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein repeatedly discussed wearing a wire to record his conversations with Trump. Rosenstein dismissed the claim previously as a joke.
The DOJ released a statement denying McCabe’s claims.
“The Deputy Attorney General never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references,” the statement said. “As the Deputy Attorney General previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.”
It should be noted that members of Trump’s orbit who have lied to the FBI have been criminally charged, including Gen. Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.

Justice Department Drops Criminal Investigation Into FBI Official Andrew McCabe, Who Was Fired For Lying Under Oath

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced federal charges against four Chinese military/intelligence officials for their role in the infamous Equifax data breach scandal of 2017. In one of the greatest data theft operations in global history, hackers in 2017 pilfered from Equifax trade secrets and personal data belonging to up to 150 million Americans.
&#8220;A federal grand jury in Atlanta returned a nine-count indictment last week that accused members of China’s People’s Liberation Army of conspiring to steal reams of data as part of a sophisticated hacking operation that exploited a major vulnerability in the software used by Equifax’s online dispute portal,&#8221; The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/four-members-of-china-s-military-indicted-for-massive-equifax-breach-11581346824">reported</a>. &#8220;The breach into Equifax, disclosed in 2017, compromised data belonging to about 145 million Americans and has been viewed as one of the largest hacks on record. It prompted prolonged public outrage and led to a series of hearings in Congress that led to the resignation of the company’s former chief executive, Richard Smith.&#8221;
Attorney General William Barr was unequivocal in his denunciation of the malign activities: &#8220;This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,&#8221; Barr said earlier today.
&#8220;The hack was viewed as alarming both because of its size and the richness of the data that was stolen, which included Social Security and driver’s license numbers, addresses, birthdays and other information. The breach began in May 2017 at the latest and continued through July 2017,&#8221; the Journal continued. &#8220;The indictment alleges that the defendants used 34 servers located in nearly 20 countries to infiltrate the company’s network.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/10/us-charges-chinese-spies-with-massive-equifax-hack-113129">Politico</a>, the formal charging instrument was a nine-count that charged the Chinese officials with &#8220;wire fraud, economic espionage, conspiracy to commit computer fraud and other offenses.&#8221;
“At the FBI we’ve been saying for years that China will do anything it can to replace the United States as the world’s leading superpower,” FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said in connection with the formal indictments, as Politico reported. “This indictment is about more than targeting just an American business. It’s about the brazen theft of sensitive personal information of nearly 150 million Americans.”
The revelations of the alleged origins of the Equifax breach come at a time of increasingly escalating tensions between the U.S. and China. In a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-china-americas-greatest-21st-century-threat-josh-hammer">Daily Wire op-ed</a> last May, I described China as America&#8217;s &#8220;greatest 21st century threat&#8221;:
<blockquote>Calling China the number one 21st century geopolitical threat to the United States ought to not be a particularly controversial claim. As far back as 2011, The Economist <a href="https://www.economist.com/node/21527010/all-comments?page=10">noted</a> that, “[w]ith its rapidly improving military capability … China has the wherewithal to challenge the security status quo in the Pacific as well as potential motives to do so.” That trend has only exacerbated in recent years. In January, for instance, the Pentagon expressly <a href="https://wtkr.com/2019/01/16/pentagon-warns-about-rise-in-chinas-military-power/">warned</a> about China’s recent “series of ambitious military reforms and acquired new technology.” In March, the Chinese government assertively <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/asia/china-military-xi-jinping-intl/index.html">pronounced</a> an astonishing 7.5% annual rise in military spending — which was actually a mild decrease from the previous year’s military spending increase. Over just the past couple months, China has <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-06/djibouti-needed-help-china-had-money-and-now-the-u-s-and-france-are-worried">fortified</a> its military presence in the highly strategic Horn of Africa, and has even made <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/06/pompeo-arctic-china-russia-1302649">expansionist overtures</a> in the Arctic. &#8230;
The upshot is that everywhere from <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/power-problems-china-wants-control-north-korea-conundrum-54057">North Korean denuclearization</a> to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/04/17/why-japan-is-making-a-big-fuss-over-tiny-islands-4-things-to-know/">Senkaku Islands</a> territorial sovereignty dispute in the East China Sea to the deeply combative <a href="https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/301Investigations/301%20Report%20Update.pdf">forced technology transfer</a> and <a href="http://ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_Update_2017.pdf">intellectual property theft</a> that the Chinese Communist Party claims as an allegedly necessary “cost” of doing business in China, China is a deeply adversarial geopolitical actor. This is a nation with rapidly escalating hard military power, the world’s second largest GDP, a huge landmass, the world’s largest population, ownership of a massive <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-2121-trillion-of-us-debt-2018-08-21">reserve</a> of U.S. sovereign debt, a grossly <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/charleswallace1/2018/07/21/chinas-currency-manipulation-is-a-response-to-trumps-tariffs/">manipulated currency</a>, an aggressive regional foreign policy that seeks to undermine key U.S. allies, a desire to dictate the rules of trade from a hostile, communist perspective, a reflexive urge to publicly shame and embarrass Western corporations into toeing the Chinese Communist Party line on geographical disputes, and an unhinged zealotry in committing acts of cyberwarfare upon and pilfering the intellectual property of sundry Western corporations.</blockquote>
Read the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/chinese-hackers-charged-in-equifax-breach-021020">FBI&#8217;s full press release from earlier today here</a>.

Attorney General William Barr Makes Announcement On Cyber-Related Law Enforcement Action

DOJ Charges Chinese Military Officials In Connection With Infamous Equifax Data Breach

China

cybersecurity

National Security

William Barr

In a pair of social media posts on Sunday, President Trump pointed to reports that FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week that the FBI engaged in &#8220;illegal surveillance with respect to at least several of these FISA applications [for Trump adviser Carter Page] because there was no probable cause or proper predication.&#8221;
&#8220;FBI Director Christopher Wray just admitted that the FISA Warrants and [Surveillance] of my campaign were illegal,&#8221; Trump wrote in a two-tweet thread Sunday. &#8220;So was the Fake Dossier.&#8221;
Trump then hit the caps lock for an incensed declaration about the &#8220;scam investigation&#8221; into &#8220;collusion&#8221; between the Trump campaign and Russia, for which Special Counsel Robert Mueller ultimately found no evidence after his two-year, wide-ranging probe:
<blockquote>THEREFORE, THE WHOLE SCAM INVESTIGATION, THE MUELLER REPORT AND EVERYTHING ELSE FOR THREE YEARS, WAS A FIXED HOAX. WHO PAYS THE PRICE? This is the biggest political crime in American History, by far. SIMPLY PUT, THE PARTY IN POWER ILLEGALLY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER THE ELECTION, IN ORDER TO CHANGE OR NULLIFY THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTION. IT CONTINUED ON WITH THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX. Terrible!</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&#8230;.This is the biggest political crime in American History, by far. SIMPLY PUT, THE PARTY IN POWER ILLEGALLY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER THE ELECTION, IN ORDER TO CHANGE OR NULLIFY THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTION. IT CONTINUED ON WITH THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX. Terrible!
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1226594759436881921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 9, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Wray&#8217;s acknowledgment of the FBI&#8217;s wrongdoing reportedly came during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week. CBS News’ <a href="https://twitter.com/CBS_Herridge/status/1225481249155928066?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1225481249155928066&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Feditorial.dailywire.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D85846%26action%3Dedit">Catherine Herridge</a> reported that Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe, citing the inspector general and DOJ report on the FBI abuse of the FISA court, asked Wray if he would “acknowledge that this was illegal surveillance with respect to at least several of these FISA applications because there was no probable cause or proper predication. Correct?”
“Right,” Wray responded, Herridge reported.
Recently declassified <a href="https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/FISC%20Declassifed%20Order%2016-1182%2017-52%2017-375%2017-679%20%20200123.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruling</a> in January determined that the FBI should have discontinued its secret surveillance of Page because it had “insufficient predication to establish probable cause.” At least two of the four FISA applications for Page, ruled FISA Judge James Boasberg on January 7, were “not valid.”
“DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679, ‘if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power,&#8217;” ruled Boasberg, as reported by The Federalist’s <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/23/breaking-spy-court-admits-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page-were-not-valid/">Sean Davis</a>.  “The Court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the Court’s authorizations in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679 were not valid.”
In an interview with <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-director-chris-wray-reacts-doj-watchdog-report/story?id=67605418">ABC News</a> in December following the release of the IG report, Wray defended the bureau and denied that there was any evidence that the FBI unfairly targeted Trump’s campaign. “[T]he Inspector General did not find political bias or improper motivations impacting the opening of the investigation or the decision to use certain investigative tools during the investigation, including FISA,” said Wray. “But that the Inspector general did find a number of instances where employees either failed to follow our policies, neglected to exercise appropriate diligence, or in some other way fell short of the standard of conduct and performance that we, and that I, as Director, expect of all our employees.”
Trump responded by declaring that Wray would &#8220;never be able to fix the FBI&#8221; with that kind of attitude. “I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump tweeted. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men &amp; women working there!”
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">Read the full list of 17 &#8220;inaccuracies and omissions&#8221; in the Trump campaign-targeting FISA applications found by the inspector general here</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men &amp; women working there!
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1204374382715506690?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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President Trump

Trump: FBI Director Just Admitted Surveillance Of My Campaign Was Illegal

Carter Page

Christopher Wray

On the same day that the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Trump over the allegations leveled by Democrats in their two impeachment articles, the director of the FBI reportedly made a significant admission during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. After publicly insisting that the FBI had not unfairly targeted the Trump campaign in its surveilling of Trump adviser Carter Page — prompting a sharp rebuke from President Trump — Wray reportedly acknowledged Wednesday that the FBI engaged in &#8220;illegal surveillance with respect to at least several of these FISA applications because there was no probable cause or proper predication.&#8221;
As reported by CBS News&#8217; <a href="https://twitter.com/CBS_Herridge/status/1225481249155928066?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1225481249155928066&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Feditorial.dailywire.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D85846%26action%3Dedit">Catherine Herridge</a>, Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe, citing the inspector general and DOJ report on the FBI abuse of the FISA court (see below), asked Wray in the hearing Wednesday if he would &#8220;acknowledge that this was illegal surveillance with respect to at least several of these FISA applications because there was no probable cause or proper predication. Correct?&#8221;
&#8220;Right,&#8221; Wray responded. Herridge reported the exchange in a tweet Thursday (h/t <a href="https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/02/06/fbi-director-christopher-wray-acknowledges-illegal-fisa-surveillance-with-no-probable-cause/">Twitchy</a>):
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
READ: Key section judiciary hearing <a href="https://twitter.com/RepRatcliffe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepRatcliffe</a> that IG Report/DOJ/FISA court “..acknowledge that this was illegal surveillance with respect to at least several of these FISA applications because there was no probable cause or proper predication. Correct? “ Wray “Right” <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Durham?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Durham</a>
&mdash; Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) <a href="https://twitter.com/CBS_Herridge/status/1225481249155928066?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Wray&#8217;s admission follows his much-cited interview with <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-director-chris-wray-reacts-doj-watchdog-report/story?id=67605418">ABC News</a> in December and a much-quoted blistering Trump tweet issued in response. In the interview, Wray denied that there was any evidence that the FBI unfairly targeted Trump&#8217;s campaign.
&#8220;I think it’s important for the American people to know that when the FBI opens an investigation it does so with proper predication, with proper authorization, based on the facts and nothing else,&#8221; said the FBI director. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s important that the inspector general found that in this particular instance the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.&#8221;
&#8220;[T]he Inspector General did not find political bias or improper motivations impacting the opening of the investigation or the decision to use certain investigative tools during the investigation, including FISA,&#8221; said Wray. &#8220;But that the Inspector general did find a number of instances where employees either failed to follow our policies, neglected to exercise appropriate diligence, or in some other way fell short of the standard of conduct and performance that we, and that I, as Director, expect of all our employees.&#8221;
Trump responded to Wray&#8217;s statement by declaring that &#8220;he will never be able to fix the FBI&#8221; with &#8220;that kind of attitude.&#8221;
&#8220;I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,&#8221; said Trump. &#8220;With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men &amp; women working there!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men &amp; women working there!
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1204374382715506690?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Wray&#8217;s testimony Wednesday follows the declassification of a <a href="https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/FISC%20Declassifed%20Order%2016-1182%2017-52%2017-375%2017-679%20%20200123.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruling</a> in January determining that the FBI should have discontinued its secret surveillance of Trump adviser Carter Page because it had &#8220;insufficient predication to establish probable cause.&#8221; At least two of the four FISA applications for Page, ruled FISA Judge James Boasberg on January 7, were &#8220;not valid.&#8221;
&#8220;DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679, ‘if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power,'&#8221; wrote Boasberg, as reported by The Federalist&#8217;s <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/23/breaking-spy-court-admits-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page-were-not-valid/">Sean Davis</a>.  &#8220;The Court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the Court’s authorizations in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679 were not valid.&#8221;
As The Daily Wire noted at the time, the IG report released in December <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">highlighted</a> the following 17 &#8220;inaccuracies and omissions&#8221; made by the FBI in applying for FISA applications to surveil Carter, including seven from the first application:
<ol>
<li>Omitted information from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an operational contact for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application;</li>
<li>Included a source characterization statement asserting that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings,” which overstated the significance of Steele’s past reporting and was not approved by Steele’s FBI handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures;</li>
<li>Omitted information relevant to the reliability of Person 1, a key Steele sub-source (who, as previously noted, was attributed with providing the information in Report 95 and some of the information in Reports 80 and 102 relied upon in the application), namely that (1) Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that Person 1 was a “boaster” and an “egoist” and “may engage in some embellishment” and (2) [redacted]</li>
<li>Asserted that the FBI had assessed that Steele did not directly provide to the press information in the September 23 Yahoo News article, based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI that he only shared his election-related research with the FBI and [Fusion GPS Founder Glenn] Simpson; this premise was factually incorrect (Steele had provided direct information to Yahoo News) and also contradicted by documentation in the Woods File-Steele had told the FBI that he also gave his information to the State Department;</li>
<li>Omitted Papadopoulos’s statements to an FBI CHS in September 2016 denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like WikiLeaks in the release of emails;</li>
<li>Omitted Page’s statements to an FBI CHS [Confidential Human Source] in August 2016 that Page had “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort and that Manafort had not responded to any of Page’s emails; if true, those statements were in tension with claims in Steele’s Report 95 that Page was participating in a “conspiracy” with Russia by acting as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign; and</li>
<li>Selectively included Page’s statements to an FBI CHS in October 2016 that the FBI believed supported its theory that Page was an agent of Russia but omitted other statements Page made, including denying having met with Sechin and Divyekin, or even knowing who Divyekin was; if true, those statements contradicted the claims in Steele’s Report 94 that Page had met secretly with Sechin and Divyekin about future cooperation with Russia and shared derogatory information about candidate Clinton.</li>
</ol>
The IG found the following 10 inaccuracies and omissions in the second FISA application:
<ol>
<li>Omitted the fact that Steele’s Primary Sub-source, who the FBI found credible, had made statements in January 2017 raising significant questions about the reliability of allegations included in the FISA applications, including, for example, that he/she had no discussion with Person 1 concerning WikiLeaks and there was “nothing bad” about the communications between the Kremlin and the Trump team, and that he/she did not report to Steele in July 2016 that Page had met with Sechin;</li>
<li>Omitted Page’s prior relationship with another U.S. government agency, despite being reminded by the other agency in June 2017, prior to the filing of the final renewal application, about Page’s past status with that other agency; instead of including this information in the final renewal application, the FBI OGC [Office of the General Counsel] Attorney altered an email from the other agency so that the email stated that Page was “not a source” for the other agency, which the FBI affiant relied upon in signing the final renewal application;</li>
<li>Omitted information provided by persons with direct knowledge of Steele’s work-related performance in a prior position about Steele’s professional judgment, including statements that Steele had held a “moderately senior” position (not “high-ranking” as noted in the applications), had no history of reporting in bad faith but demonstrated “poor judgment,” “pursued people with political risk but no intelligence value,” “didn’t always exercise great judgment,” and it was “not clear what he would have done to validate” his reporting;</li>
<li>Omitted information from Department attorney Bruce Ohr about Steele and his election reporting, including that (1) Steele’s reporting was going to Clinton’s presidential campaign and others, (2) Simpson was paying Steele to discuss his reporting with the media, and (3) Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President”;</li>
<li>Failed to update the description of Steele after information became known to the Crossfire Hurricane team, not only from Ohr but from others, that provided greater clarity on the political origins and connections of Steele’s reporting, including that Simpson was hired by someone associated with the Democratic Party and/or the DNC;</li>
<li>Failed to correct the assertion in the first FISA application that the FBI did not believe that Steele directly provided information to the reporter who wrote the September 23 Yahoo News article, even though there was no information in the Woods File to support this claim and even after certain FBI officials involved in Crossfire Hurricane learned in 2017, before the third renewal application, of an admission that Steele made in a court filing about his interactions with the news media in the late summer and early fall of 2016;</li>
<li>Omitted the finding from a formal FBI source validation report that Steele was suitable for continued operation but that his past contributions to the FBI’s criminal program had been “minimally corroborated,” and instead continued to assert in the source characterization statement that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings”;</li>
<li>Omitted Papadopoulos’s statements to an FBI CHS in late October 2016 (after the first application was filed) denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the circumstances of the DNC email hack;</li>
<li>Omitted Joseph Mifsud’s denials to the FBI that he supplied Papadopoulos with the information Papadopoulos shared with the FFG (suggesting that the campaign received an offer or suggestion of assistance from Russia); and</li>
<li>Omitted evidence indicating that Page played no role in the Republican platform change on Russia’s annexation of Ukraine as alleged in Steele Report 95, which was inconsistent with a factual assertion relied upon to support probable cause in all four FISA application</li>
</ol>
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FBI Director Christopher Wray

FBI Director Blasted By Trump Admits ‘Illegal Surveillance’ Of Trump Adviser: Report

The man who was appointed to assess the FBI’s response to a federal court order demanding the bureau explain how it would fix the errors and misleading statements that led to the illegal surveillance of Carter Page, a former adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, has previously and fervently defended the bureau in the past, leading some to question whether he is the man for job.
David Kris, a former senior Obama Justice Department official, was appointed on January 10 to serve as amicus curiae to “assist the Court in assessing the government’s response” to a court order from then-Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) presiding judge Rosemary Collyer that required the government the government to provide a sworn written statement about how it would take steps to make sure it would never mislead the FISC when applying for electronic surveillance warrants.
As Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) explained in a letter to James E. Boasberg, the current presiding judge for FISC, Kris “does not appear to be an objective – or likely effective – amicus curiae for several reasons.”
“At minimum, the selection of Mr. Kris creates a perception that he is too personally invested on the side of the FBI to ensure it effectuates meaningful reform,” the congressmen continued.
They then point to several examples where Kris has previously defended the FBI against accusations that it had mislead the FISC while obtaining warrants against Page. Kris in 2018 claimed – along with every other left-leaning media outlet – that a memo released by the House Intelligence Committee (then under Republican control) that detailed the abuse of the FISA warrant process was itself wrong.
“Based on my familiarity with the FISA process and the people who run it, I have high confidence that they would have provided the court with enough information to meaningfully assess [ex-British intelligence officer Christopher] Steele’s credibility and the provenance of the other information on which they relied,” Kris said at the time.
He was wrong, as the Inspector General’s (IG) December 9 report validate what the House Intelligence committee found in 2018.
Kris also claimed that the applications (which were later determined to contain <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">serious errors and omissions</a>) “already substantially undermine the President’s narrative and that of his proxies, and it seems to me very likely that if we get below the tip of the iceberg into the submerged parts and more is revealed it’s going to get worse, not better” for Page.
Again, as the IG determined, the FBI never had any basis to conclude Page was a foreign agent yet still went forward with obtaining surveillance warrants against him.
Even after the IG found the FBI had mislead the FISC in its warrant applications, Kris downplayed the role of the FBI, saying that the conduct was not political and was merely sloppy. In testimony, IG Michael Horowitz stated that the FBI did not rule out political bias, even though the report concluded it had found none.
Based on these statements, Jordan and Meadows requested answers to nine questions regarding Kris’ appointment and role:
<ol>
<li>Please identify with specificity all the candidates you considered to serve as amicus curiae to assess the government&#8217;s response to Judge Collyer&#8217;s order dated December 17, 2019.</li>
<li>Please explain whether the FISC reviewed and considered Mr. Kris&#8217;s writings and statements about Carter Page and the FBI&#8217;s electronic surveillance of Mr. Page prior to appointing Mr. Kris as amicus curiae. If not, please explain why not.</li>
<li>Please explain whether the FISC reviewed and considered Mr. Kris&#8217;s writings and statements about the memorandum issued by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence dated January 18, 2018, prior to appointing Mr. Kris as amicus curiae. If not, please explain why not,</li>
<li>Please explain what specific steps the FISC will take to better protect the civil liberties of American citizens who are not represented in ex parte proceedings for electronic surveillance.</li>
<li>Please explain whether the FISC intends to review FBI filings in other matters to determine whether, as Judge Collyer wrote, “the government &#8230; provide[s] complete and accurate information in every filing with the Court.&#8221; If not, please explain why not.</li>
<li>Please explain whether you believe that the FISC bears any responsibility for the FBI&#8217;s illegal surveillance of Carter Page.</li>
<li>Please explain with detail when the FISC first received any indication that information contained in the FBI&#8217;s surveillance applications for Carter Page was misleading or false. Please explain what actions, if any, the FISC took at that time to address the FBI&#8217;s misconduct.</li>
<li>Please explain whether the FISC conducted any internal review to examine the accuracy or validity of information contained in the FBI&#8217;s surveillance applications for Carter Page prior to the release of the Justice Department OIG&#8217;s report. If so, please explain the scope and process of the FISC review and any findings or information it generated.</li>
<li>Please explain with specificity what disciplinary action, if any, the FISC intends to pursue for attorneys who knowingly filed false or misleading information with the FISC with respect to applications to surveil Carter Page.</li>
</ol>

Jordan and Meadows

House Republicans Raise Serious Questions About The Man Selected To Fix The FBI’s FISA Warrant Applications

Jim Jordan

Mark Meadows

Ahead of planned protests against Virginia Democrats&#8217; four new gun control bills, the FBI has arrested three people who are allegedly members of a racist and anti-Semitic group &#8220;preparing for a race war.&#8221;
The charges against the alleged members of the white ethno-nationalist group include federal gun charges as well as alien-harboring charges related to helping one of the suspects, a Canadian citizen, get into the country illegally.
&#8220;The charges announced Thursday grew from an investigation of a collection of online extremists who refer to themselves as &#8216;the Base,&#8217; which is the English translation of al-Qaeda,&#8221; <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fbi-arrests-alleged-members-of-white-supremacist-group-the-base/ar-BBZ1t9m">The Washington Post</a> reports. &#8220;According to experts who track hate groups, its members promote racist views and seek to unite different hate groups in preparation for a race war.&#8221;
&#8220;Officials said Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, and William Bilbrough IV, 19, both of Maryland, were charged with transporting an alien and conspiring to harbor an alien,&#8221; the Post reports. &#8220;Lemley is also charged with transporting a machine gun. Also charged is Patrik Mathews, 27, who has been living in Newark, Del. He is accused of transporting a firearm and ammunition with the intent to commit a felony.&#8221;
The Post reports that Mathews is a former member of the Canadian army reserve who went missing in August, having allegedly crossed illegally into the U.S., meeting Lemley and Bilbrough in Michigan before they traveled back to Maryland and Delaware. Lemley also served in the military, as a U.S. Army scout.
&#8220;Lemley, Mathews, and Bilbrough are members of a white supremacist organization named &#8216;The Base,'&#8221; the complaint against the suspects reads. &#8220;Within The Base’s encrypted chat rooms, members have discussed, among other things, recruitment, creating a white ethno-state, committing acts of violence against minority communities (including African-Americans and Jewish-Americans), the organization’s military-style training camps, and ways to make improvised explosive devices.&#8221;
The complaint states that an FBI agent witnessed Lemley firing a &#8220;machine gun&#8221; he and Mathews constructed at a gun range in Maryland on Jan. 2.
The arrests come ahead of protests planned to begin Monday at the state&#8217;s capital, protests which will reportedly include pro-Second Amendment protesters from both the left and the right.
While Second Amendment protesters are frequently assumed to be from the right, as <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akwv4k/why-antifa-is-siding-with-thousands-of-pro-gun-conservatives-in-virginia">Vice</a> reports, members of the far-left Antifa say they also are planning to attend the rally next week in Richmond — but not because they intend to harass the &#8220;right-wingers.&#8221;
&#8220;Antifa Seven Hills, based in Richmond, are opposing the slew of gun bills introduced by the newly Democratic Legislature since November, because they say those types of laws are used primarily to criminalize poor people, minorities, and leftists — and to bolster law enforcement’s power,&#8221; Vice reports.
A spokesperson for the group, who requested anonymity, told Vice, &#8220;I think it’s been pretty important for us to focus on the fact that gun control in America has a legacy of racist enforcement. Like taking guns away from black people, because black people were perceived as a threat to property and the sanctity of the state.&#8221;
&#8220;The local antifa chapter’s engagement in this issue is another example of the resurgence of pro-gun leftists in America and yet more evidence that the gun-rights debate is growing increasingly politically diffuse and nuanced beyond simply being a GOP issue,&#8221; Vice notes.

FBI Seal

FBI Arrests Alleged Members Of Group ‘Preparing For Race War’ Ahead Of Virginia Gun Rally

Gun Control

Second Amendment

Virginia

White Supremacy

Investigators with multiple federal agencies are reportedly reviewing evidence of alleged crimes committed by far-left Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that center around her marital history.
The Blaze reported that toward the end of last year, &#8220;the Department of Justice had assigned an FBI Special Agent in Charge, or SAC, to review <a href="https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/07/david-steinberg-tying-up-loose-threads-in-the-curious-case.php">Rep. Ilhan Omar&#8217;s apparent, astonishing spree of felonies</a> from 2009 to 2017.&#8221;
The Blaze noted that the &#8220;FBI SAC stated that the wide range of criminal activity suggested by the evidence against Rep. Omar may lead the FBI to expand the review to other federal departments&#8221; and that in recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Education inspector general have reportedly joined the investigation.
The Blaze&#8217;s report was authored by David Steinberg, who has extensively covered the criminal allegations against Omar for many months while at PJ Media.
The Blaze reported that ICE&#8217;s involvement in the investigation pertains to &#8220;questions about [Rep. Omar&#8217;s 2009 marriage],&#8221; which allegedly includes &#8220;eight instances of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, up to eight years of state and federal tax fraud, two years of federal student loan fraud, and even bigamy.&#8221;
The Department of Education inspector general is reportedly looking into whether Omar&#8217;s 2009 marriage to a British citizen was &#8220;an attempt to facilitate federal student loan fraud, or other fraud involving higher education.&#8221;
The Minnesota Star Tribune has <a href="http://www.startribune.com/new-documents-revisit-questions-about-rep-ilhan-omar-s-marriage/511681362/">reported</a> the following timeline of Omar&#8217;s marital history:
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<blockquote>1982: Ilhan Omar is born in Somalia, the youngest of seven children.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>1997: Omar, still a teenager, settles in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis after fleeing Somalia&#8217;s civil war with her family and spending four years in a refugee camp in Kenya.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2002: Omar, now 19, marries Ahmed Hirsi, 22, in their “faith tradition” in Minnesota, but they don&#8217;t legally marry.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2008: Omar and Hirsi, now the parents of two children, reach an “impasse in our life together” and divorce in their faith tradition.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2009: Omar, at 26, marries Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, 23, whom she identifies only as a “British citizen.” School records show he attended high school in St. Paul and studied art at North Dakota State University.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2011: Omar and Elmi end their relationship and divorce in their faith tradition, but do not legally divorce until 2017.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2012: Omar and Hirsi reconcile and have a third child together.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2014–15: Omar files joint tax returns with Hirsi, though they are not yet legally married; she remains legally married to Elmi.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2016: Omar, endorsed by the DFL over longtime incumbent Phyllis Kahn, is elected to the Minnesota House, becoming the first Somali-American, Muslim legislator in the United States. But her campaign is rocked by allegations in a Somali news forum and the conservative Power Line blog suggesting that Elmi is her brother and they married for unspecified immigration benefits.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2017: Omar is granted a legal divorce from Elmi.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>2018: Omar legally marries Hirsi and is elected to Congress.</blockquote>
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The Star Tribune&#8217;s report from last June stated that newly released &#8220;investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.&#8221;
Omar, who has repeatedly claimed that the allegations are baseless conspiracy theories, has refused to answer questions or turn over any documents to the <a href="https://apnews.com/cc2ccd70de56405098d2f259bf0e46c5">Associated Press</a> or the Star Tribune that could debunk what she claims is a conspiracy theory.

Ilhan Omar

Investigators With ICE, FBI Reviewing Criminal Allegations Against Ilhan Omar, Report Says

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

The FBI made numerous errors and omissions in its warrant applications targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). FBI Director Christopher Wray “deeply regrets” those errors, at least in how they relate to the court’s trust in the FBI.
In <a href="https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/Misc%2019%2002%20Response%20to%20the%20Court%27s%20Order%20Dated%20December%2017%202019%20200110.pdf">a letter</a> released Friday, Wray concludes that the “FBI has the utmost respect for this Court, and deeply regrets the errors and omissions identified by the [Office of the Inspector General] OIG.” The letter was directed to the FISC.
Page confirmed to The Daily Wire that he has received no similar apology even though he was the target of the deeply flawed warrants.
An Inspector General <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">report</a> released in early December found 17 specific “inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s warrant applications against Page. Among the errors contained within the applications was the FBI’s claim that Christopher Steele (an ex-British Intelligence officer who authored a dubious dossier that formed the basis of the warrants against Page) previously had worked with the FBI and that his prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.” This was a gross exaggeration, as Steele’s past reporting “was not approved by Steele’s FBI handling agent” and hadn’t been used in criminal proceedings. One major omission in the Page FISA warrant applications was the fact that Page had a prior working relationship with multiple U.S. intelligence agencies and had provided information regarding contact “with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application.”
Those were from the initial warrant application. Additional errors and omissions were made in the warrant renewals, including the fact that the FBI was informed of Page’s prior relationship with intelligence agencies before the final renewal application. This fact was still left out of the renewal.
Wray’s letter to the FISC included a 12-point list of corrective measures the FBI would be taking to address the issues with the Page warrants. Wray then gave a detailed explanation of how close to achieving those measures the FBI has come so far, claiming they have already implemented some of the changes. As for training agents in proper FISC application conduct (i.e., not lying to the court to spy on American citizens), Wray gave the bureau a deadline of April 30.
In addition to the IG report released in December, the special counsel report from Robert Mueller in March found that – despite years of media reporting otherwise – no one from the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton.
In an <a href="./">exclusive interview</a> with The Daily Wire last month, Page said it wasn’t just political bias that led to him being targeted by the FBI, but policy bias as well.
“The fundamental drivers of the impeachment process have an overlap with factors inherent in the IG report,” Page said. “In each instance, I would say that the primary issue wasn’t political bias per se, such as Democrat versus Republican. The defining aspect of this was instead policy bias.”
<a href="https://dailycaller.com/2020/01/10/christopher-wray-regrets-fisa-carter-page/">H/t Chuck Ross</a>

FBI Director Apologizes To FISA Court – Not Carter Page – For Warrant Application Abuses

According to The Washington Post&#8217;s unnamed sources, the Justice Department investigation into alleged Clinton-involved corruption launched over two years ago by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions is winding down — and likely to disappoint Donald Trump and everyone else hoping to see &#8220;Lock Her Up!&#8221; come to fruition.
In yet another report that tips the establishment media&#8217;s partisan hand, the U.S. Attorney John Huber-led investigation, launched &#8220;to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton,&#8221; as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/justice-dept-winds-down-clinton-related-inquiry-once-championed-by-trump-it-found-nothing-of-consequence/2020/01/09/ca83932e-32f9-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html">the Post</a> puts it, &#8220;has effectively ended with no tangible results.&#8221; The Post provides some background on the investigation:
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John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into concerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.
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As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing — though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers, these people said.
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In the end, the Post&#8217;s sources say, Huber is likely going to recommend &#8220;no criminal charges&#8221; and the investigation will result in &#8220;no other known impacts,&#8221; a conclusion that the Post predicts will likely &#8220;roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival.&#8221;
Current and former unnamed law enforcement officials told the left-leaning outlet that they &#8220;never expected the effort to produce much of anything,&#8221; the Post notes. In other words, officials felt much the same way about the Huber investigation as Republicans felt about the Robert Mueller &#8220;Russia collusion&#8221; investigation, which likewise took two years and ended up burning up $30 million taxpayer dollars to look into a claim largely based on a DNC and Clinton campaign-funded opposition research document that including on-their-face absurd accusations from foreign sources.
The reality is that the investigation has largely fallen off Trump and Republicans&#8217; radars. The real focus on the right now is on the damning results of the Michael Horowitz investigation into the origins of the FBI probe of the Trump campaign for the Mueller-debunked &#8220;collusion&#8221; conspiracy theory and the bureau&#8217;s handling of the Clinton email probe, as well as the upcoming report by John Durham, which has turned into a &#8220;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-durham-investigation-fbi-misconduct-criminal-probe">full-fledged criminal investigation</a>&#8221; and, as the Post acknowledges, Justice Department officials believe will be &#8220;far more consequential.&#8221;
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In his lengthy report on the origins of the FBI&#8217;s surveillance of the Trump campaign, Intelligence Community Inspector General Horowitz identified &#8220;at least 17 significant errors or omissions&#8221; by the FBI in its FISA surveillance applications into Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and &#8220;many additional errors in the Woods Procedures.&#8221; The report also found that the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, funded by Democrats and the Clinton campaign, &#8220;played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order&#8221; to surveil Page.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fact-check-republicans-famous-memo-on-fisa-abuse-blasted-by-democrats-ended-up-getting-it-mostly-right">WaPo Admits: Republicans’ Famous Memo On FISA Abuse Blasted By Dems Ended Up Getting It Mostly Right</a>
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Hillary Clinton

Report: Justice Department Closing Out Clinton Corruption Probe, Will Disappoint Trump

John Durham

Washington Post

Despite mounting evidence of his failure to keep politics out of the bureau&#8217;s official business, former FBI Director James Comey continues to insist that he was wrongly faulted for his handling of his position — particularly the Hillary Clinton investigation, for which he has received strong criticism from both sides of the aisle — and that, in the end, he is simply a victim of Trump&#8217;s vindictiveness. In an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/james-comey-the-four-stages-of-being-attacked-by-donald-trump/2019/12/30/5542c40a-2b0f-11ea-9b60-817cc18cf173_story.html?arc404=true">op-ed</a> published by The Washington Post on Monday, Comey, who was unceremoniously fired by Trump in spring 2017, adds another few hundred words to his ongoing complaint about Trump&#8217;s treatment of him, offering a first-hand description of the four stages of being &#8220;personally and publicly&#8221; attacked by the president.
Comey has come under renewed fire in recent weeks amid revelations from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fact-check-republicans-famous-memo-on-fisa-abuse-blasted-by-democrats-ended-up-getting-it-mostly-right">final report</a> by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who identified &#8220;at least 17 significant errors or omissions&#8221; in FISA applications submitted by FBI officials for surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, resulting in &#8220;wrong or incomplete information&#8221; being provided to the Justice Department by Comey&#8217;s bureau. Horowitz also determined that the Democrat-funded Steele dossier &#8220;played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order&#8221; that ultimately sparked the years-long &#8220;Russia collusion&#8221; investigation. Though Comey has continued to defend the bureau, the findings were egregious enough to force him to admit that he had been &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/too-damn-late-trey-gowdy-scolds-james-comey-after-comey-admits-he-was-wrong-about-fisa-misconduct">overconfident</a>&#8221; about the FISA process.
With more heat being directed his way amid the damaging details provided in the lengthy report, Comey portrays himself in his new op-ed as a victim of political and personal bias and attempts to align himself with other targets of the president. Being &#8220;attacked by the president,&#8221; Comey explains in the piece, consists of &#8220;four stages.&#8221;
Stage One: Having your world rocked.
&#8220;At first, the attack is stunning and rocks your world,&#8221; Comey writes. &#8220;Waking up to find the president has tweeted that you are guilty of treason or committed assorted other crimes and are a [insert any one of this president’s epithets here] is jarring and disorienting. That’s the first stage, but it doesn’t last.&#8221;
Stage Two: Settling into &#8220;a kind of numbness.&#8221;
&#8220;The second stage is a kind of numbness, where it doesn’t seem quite real that the so-called Leader of the Free World is assailing you by tweet and voice,&#8221; Comey explains. &#8220;It is still unsettling, but it is harder to recapture the vertigo of the first assault.&#8221; This stage, he explains, offers one consolation: &#8220;the longer it goes on, the less it means.&#8221;
Stage Three: The strange and sad old guy (and his sad supporters&#8217;) stage.
&#8220;In the third stage, the impact diminishes, the power of it shrinks,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;It no longer feels as though the most powerful human on the planet is after you. It feels as though a strange and slightly sad old guy is yelling at you to get off his lawn, echoed by younger but no less sad people in red hats shouting, &#8216;Yeah, get off his lawn!'&#8221;
Stage Four: Time to go full Alexander Hamilton.
This final stage drives Comey to waxing eloquent and invoking founding fathers. It&#8217;s in this stage that &#8220;we&#8221; (all Trump&#8217;s victims, presumably) must &#8220;fight through our fatigue and contempt for this shrunken, withered figure,&#8221; Comey declares.
&#8220;Spurred by the danger he poses to our nation and its values, we have to overcome the shock and numbness of earlier stages,&#8221; says Comey, sounding an awful lot like the Democrats leading the impeachment charge. &#8220;We must not look away. We must summon the effort necessary to protect this republic from Alexander Hamilton’s great fear, that when an <a title="founders.archives.gov" href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-12-02-0184-0002">unprincipled person</a> &#8216;is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government &amp; bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’&#8221;
After the release of the Horowitz report, Comey appeared on Fox News to discuss its findings and was forced to admit he&#8217;d been wrong about his FBI and the FISA process.
&#8220;I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and Justice had built over 20 years,&#8221; said Comey after being confronted with past assertions of &#8220;total confidence that the FISA process was followed and that the entire case was handled in a thoughtful, responsible way by DOJ and the FBI.&#8221;
&#8220;I thought they were robust enough,&#8221; Comey continued. &#8220;It’s incredibly hard to get a FISA. I was overconfident in those. Because he’s right. There was real sloppiness, 17 things that either should’ve been in the applications or at least discussed and characterized differently. It was not acceptable and so he’s right.  I was wrong.&#8221;

Comey Details The ‘Four Stages’ Of Being Attacked By President Trump

On Thursday, Washington Post Media Critic Erik Wemple <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/26/rachel-maddow-rooted-steele-dossier-be-true-then-it-fell-apart/">slammed</a> far-left MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, claiming that she &#8220;seemed to be rooting&#8221; for the veracity of the now-infamous Steele Dossier before the document&#8217;s credibility ultimately &#8220;fell apart.&#8221;
&#8220;Name a host on cable news who has dug more deeply into Trump-Russia than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow,&#8221; Wemple wrote. &#8220;She’s read hundreds, maybe thousands, of court filings; she’s read the plume of literature on Russia-Trump; and she’s out with a new book on the bane of petro-states: &#8216;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525575472/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=0525575472&amp;linkId=2a858da9155bc9edba3471d6ec9df3bb" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="36">Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth</a>.'&#8221;
Wemple, entering the realm of full-on snark, then excoriated Maddow&#8217;s self-obsessed &#8220;Russianist phase.&#8221;
&#8220;As part of her Russianist phase, Maddow became a clearinghouse for news increments regarding the dossier,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Just days after BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety, she reported on the frustration of congressional Democrats with then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who was declining to divulge whether his people had opened an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.&#8221;
Wemple systematically walked the reader through a timeline of Maddow&#8217;s on-air reporting from 2017–2018, during which Maddow repeatedly glommed onto snippets of left-leaning reporting to tendentiously give off the impression to MSNBC viewers that the dossier was something other than the salacious rumormongering that Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General has since confirmed it indeed was.
Wemple continued to describe the release of former DOJ Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s eponymous report on 2016 Russian electoral interference as a &#8220;kick in the derrière&#8221; for those who were invested in the Steeler dossier&#8217;s overarching narrative of nefarious Trump-Russia collusion.
&#8220;The release of the Mueller report in April provided a kick in the derriere for backers of the dossier. 
Wemple wrote. &#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/24/what-steele-dossier-said-vs-what-mueller-report-said/?tid=lk_inline_manual_40" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="116">As Glenn Kessler pointed out in The Post</a>, the central allegation of the dossier — an &#8216;extensive conspiracy between campaign team and Kremlin, sanctioned at highest levels and involving Russian diplomatic staff based in the U.S.&#8217; as well as an &#8216;agreed exchange of information established in both directions&#8217; — found no corroboration from Mueller’s investigation, even though the special counsel’s team was charged with probing just this matter.&#8221;
But Maddow didn&#8217;t seem to care for the Mueller&#8217;s report dismissal of the dossier, Wemple opined.
&#8220;Several days after the Mueller report emerged, Maddow addressed not the dissonance between Mueller and the dossier, but a point of possible corroboration,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;In perhaps its most famous allegation, the dossier claimed that Trump had rented a suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow and &#8217;employed&#8217; prostitutes to perform a perverted ritual for him. It suggested that there were tapes of the show, the better to amass kompromat against Trump. A <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Muelller-Report-Redacted-Vol-II-Released-04.18.2019-Word-Searchable.-Reduced-Size.pdf#page=32" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="130">footnote</a> in the Mueller report, noted Maddow, bore a possible connection to this part of the dossier.&#8221;
Wemple concluded by comparing the relative merits of the &#8220;case for Maddow&#8221; and the &#8220;case against Maddow,&#8221; and concluding that the latter is &#8220;far stronger.&#8221;
&#8220;The case against Maddow is far stronger,&#8221; Wemple stated. &#8220;When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document.&#8221;
Ouch.

Rachel Maddow

Washington Post Media Critic Blasts Rachel Maddow Over Steele Dossier

2016 election

Leftism

Media

Media Bias

Progressivism

Russia

Carter Page, the man at the center of the recent Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) report about how the FBI handled FISA warrants to surveil the 2016 Trump campaign, says he understands how the government watchdog didn’t arrive at its conclusion that political bias did not play a role in the FBI’s investigation.
Page, in an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire, said that political bias as most Americans understand it – that is, Democrat vs. Republican – is not what led to the FBI’s focus on him; it was policy bias.
Asked about his reaction to the IG report – which found <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">significant errors</a> in the form of “inaccuracies and omissions” when it came to the FBI’s FISA warrant applications against Page – the former Trump campaign aide echoed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) by saying the report was “a first step.” One of the limits of IG Michael Horowitz’s report, Page said, was that it relied on many of the same people who had been described in previous reports as having a “lack of candor.”
“I would say one of the biggest constraints is that many of the people he talked to have a track record of being less than forthcoming, as seen in some of their interviews before and after the release of the report,” Page said. “The IG report marked a positive development, but there&#8217;s a lot more to do. So, we&#8217;ll have to wait and see what happens next.”
As to the IG’s conclusion – repeated ad nauseum by the mainstream media – that he did not find political bias is what caused the FBI’s malfeasance, Page said he believes that Horowitz was “being careful” and that it was policy bias, not party bias, that drove the FBI.
It’s not that Horowitz found no political bias or that it didn’t happen, Page said, it’s “just that he couldn&#8217;t firmly establish political bias.”
“The fundamental drivers of the impeachment process have an overlap with factors inherent in the IG report,” Page said. “In each instance, I would say that the primary issue wasn&#8217;t political bias per se, such as Democrat versus Republican. The defining aspect of this was instead policy bias.”
During his testimony before the Senate regarding the IG report, Horowitz <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jtj2DDaLXs&amp;feature=youtu.be">told</a> Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that they simply “could not prove” the bias, so the report laid out “what we can prove.”
Page told The Daily Wire that he had received numerous death threats throughout the media and Democrats’ portrayal of him as an enemy of the U.S. In a February 4, 2019 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Page explained that the most death threats he received came on March 20, 2017 – the same day former FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence committee. On that day, in addition to other threats, Page received a voicemail from an unknown caller, who referred to something Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said during Comey’s testimony.
“We know what the f*** you’ve been doing, you piece of s*** mother f***er,” the caller said. “You think you’re not, you know you’re not in f***ing in cahoots with f***ing [Russian energy company] Rosneft and every f***ing Russian oligarch over there? You f***ing half-wit, f***ing piece of s***. You deserve everthing you f***ing get. Every f***ing thing you get. If it was up to me, after we f***ing tried you for treason, we’d take you out in the street and beat the f***ing piss out of you with baseball bats, you cock sucking mother f***er. Next time you turn your back on your f***ing country, you’ll f***ing regret it.”
Remember, the IG report showed that the coverage of Page was unwarranted, as he had a previous working relationship with the FBI and CIA, who were aware of his Russian contacts. In sum, the IG report showed that Page was an asset to America, not Russia, in contradiction to how he had been portrayed since 2016.
Page called Schiff “completely dishonest” for the California Democrat’s repeated claims, including one recently made on “Firing Line” in which Schiff said: “It&#8217;s hard to be sympathetic to someone who isn&#8217;t honest with you when he comes and testifies under oath.”
Page said Schiff is the one who is being dishonest, as Schiff repeatedly claims Page met with a Russian while Page said the extent of that “meeting” was a few words spoken during a receiving line after the man spoke at a conference.
In the wake of the IG report, the FBI promised to review its processes and fix them. When asked if there were any proposed fixes he thought the FBI should make, Page said it was “not so much a question of just making new rules,” but: “ensuring that people to actually follow the existing rules. This must include doing the right thing, and acting ethically as attorneys.”
As for what’s next for Page, he said he would be able to give more information “in the new year.”
“There&#8217;s a lot of follow-up I need to do,” Page said, referring to what kind of recourse he has in the wake of the IG report. “This has been a pretty historic, massive development, and it takes work to resolve some of these crimes. It&#8217;s a step-by-step rehabilitation process for our country.”
But Page wouldn’t opine about his own situation, instead reflecting on how the FBI’s actions toward him hurt the country as a whole.
“My primary concern is the damage that&#8217;s been done to the country,” Page said. “Like most people who are military veterans, we make sacrifices and there&#8217;s a bigger purpose beyond the personal impact that it&#8217;s had on just yourself.”
While the IG report laid out the corruption in the FBI’s warrant application process, another, bigger, investigation is taking place into the origins of the narrative that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election. This investigation, led by prosecutor John Durham, was ordered by Attorney General William Barr and is still ongoing. Those who opposed the Russia-collusion narrative expect accountability from the Durham investigation.

EXCLUSIVE: Carter Page: It Was Not Just Political Bias That Led To FBI Spying On Me, But Policy Bias, Too

A recently released Department of Justice Inspector General report, examining the role of the FBI in efforts to wiretap and investigate the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Trump 2016 transition team, and whether the FBI acted improperly when petitioning the FISA courts to spy on the effort without a warrant, revealed that the FBI had informants within the Trump campaign itself.
<a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/20/fbi-had-spies-inside-trump-campaign-ig/">The Washington Times reports</a> that the FBI informants, who tried to get close to Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopolous, came up empty despite repeated attempts to bait both Page and Papadopolous into connecting with Russian operatives who, the informants told the pair, could provide &#8220;incriminating&#8221; Hillary Clinton emails.
&#8220;The report discloses that the FBI dispatched against Trump allies multiple unnamed FBI informants known as confidential human sources (CHS). The most publicized was Stefan Halper, a longtime Washington national security figure and Cambridge University professor,&#8221; the outlet reported. &#8220;He ingratiated himself to George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, while also attempting to engage with a senior Trump campaign official in New York.&#8221;
The Inspector General reports that the FBI informants recorded entire conversations with both Papadopolous and Page, but that the content of these recordings could be considered evidence that neither aide engaged with Russian operatives: &#8220;Mr. Halper recorded conversations that could be seen as exculpatory.&#8221;
The Inspector General also &#8220;rapped&#8221; the FBI, the Times reports, for failing to include the recorded conversations in petitions sent to the FISA courts requesting the warrantless wiretaps. Such an error makes the petitions incomplete, he said, and biased the court towards granting the FBI permission to spy on Trump operatives.
Both Papadopolous and Page had contact with Halper, who introduced them into networks that featured Russian operatives, including a one Joseph Mifsud, who tipped off Papadopolous that the Russians might be in possession of &#8220;incriminating&#8221; Clinton emails that could ultimately help Trump win the election. Papadopolous spoke about the tip to an Australian ambassador, who eventually told the FBI, but, apparently, Papadopolous didn&#8217;t follow up on the tip personally, never asking the Kremlin &#8212; or directing the Trump campaign to place a call to the Russian government &#8212; to get a look at the emails in question.
&#8220;According to special counsel Robert Mueller,&#8221; the Times reports, &#8220;no evidence ever surfaced that Papadopoulos acted on the Mifsud tip: He didn’t try to obtain emails and never told the campaign. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about when he began talking to Mr. Mifsud. A judge sentenced him to 14 days in jail. He now is running for Congress in California.&#8221;
The IG report ultimately determined that, while the warrantless wiretaps were probably justified &#8212; at least in the case of Carter Page &#8212; the FBI&#8217;s shoddy FISA applications greatly tarnished the FISA process and the entire investigation.
The initial FBI actions eventually gave rise to the program now known as &#8220;Crossfire Hurricane&#8221; &#8212; a full effort, on the part of the Obama Administration&#8217;s DOJ, to determine whether the Trump campaign and Trump transition team had colluded with Russian officials to impact the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. That investigation came up empty. A subsequent Special Counsel investigation, led by Robert Mueller, also came up empty.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a second Inspector General investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane. That report is in progress but could be released early next year.

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