Former FBI Director James Comey’s actions in leaking to the media his own memos about meetings with President Donald Trump were not in keeping with how the Department of Justice operates, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Wednesday.
During a Fox News interview, Rosenstein said he would not directly address Comey’s actions. However, he was forthright when asked by Martha MacCallum on The Story whether he would ever consider it proper for an FBI director to leak notes to the media regarding a meeting with a president.
“As a general proposition, you have to understand the Department of Justice. We take confidentiality seriously, so when we have memoranda about our ongoing matters, we have an obligation to keep that confidential,” Rosenstein said.
Rosenstein also said the principle of confidentiality is basic to the work of the Department of Justice.
“I think it is quite clear,” he said. “It’s what we were taught, all of us prosecutors and agents.”
During the interview, he also defended hiring special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, something Trump has denied for months.
“I’ve got to explain that I made the decision to appoint Director Mueller based upon his reputation. He had an excellent reputation. Really bipartisan support for his integrity. That’s why I made that decision,” Rosenstein said. “But I can assure you that if there were conflicts that arose because of Director Mueller or anybody employed by Director Mueller, we have a process within the department to take care of that.”
Rosenstein said Mueller’s probe should be judged once it completes its work.
“The Department of Justice, we judge by results, and so my view about that is, we’ll see if they do the right thing,” Rosenstein said.
Comey said he believed the memos he wrote were his to do with as he pleased, but the FBI has indicated it has a different view. Four of the seven memos Comey wrote contained classified information, the FBI has told Congress.
FBI policy forbids an agent from sharing classified information without prior written permission, and all records created during official duties are government property.
Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, a Comey friend who leaked part of one memo to The New York Times, has said no rules were broken.
“No memos were given to the press, and no memos were classified at the time I received them,” Richman said, adding that the physical memo was never shared, only its “substance.” (For more from the author of “Comey Went Outside FBI Protocol With Leaks” please click HERE)
“Chris Wray is extremely intelligent, very principled, very hardworking,” said a former colleague of President Donald Trump’s FBI director nominee in an interview with The Daily Signal.
John Malcom, The Heritage Foundation’s vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government and Wray’s former colleague, said Wray is a good fit for the job.
I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow.
Wray and Malcolm worked together in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division in the early 2000s.
“I have known Chris Wray for a very long time. … He was my boss … for about nine months in 2003 to early 2004. But I’ve known Chris Wray since the mid-nineties,” Malcolm told The Daily Signal.
Wray began working for the Department of Justice in 2001 and eventually served as an associate deputy attorney general, principal associate deputy attorney general, and assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division.
Malcom said Wray was a “protege” of Larry Thompson, the then-deputy attorney general, at the Department of Justice. When the then-head of the Criminal Division, Michael Chertoff, left in 2003, Wray became head of the Criminal Division where Malcolm was the deputy assistant attorney general. Malcolm said he remained one of Wray’s deputies until Malcolm left the DOJ in March 2004.
“I’m quite confident [Chris Wray] realizes that the FBI is the nation’s chief law enforcement office … I have no doubt he will approach this new job, once he is confirmed, in a thoroughly professional, nonpartisan manner,” Malcolm said.
Malcolm said he was confident in Wray’s abilities to head the FBI.
“He will be a dedicated, fair-minded FBI director,” Malcolm said.
Wray currently works at the law firm King & Spalding and chairs its special matters and government investigations practice group. This group “represents companies, audit and special committees, and individuals in a variety of white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters, parallel civil litigation, and internal corporate investigations,” according to the firm’s website.
The website also says that Wray was “integral” to the DOJ’s response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and received “the department’s highest award for public service and leadership.”
He previously clerked for former Judge J. Michael Luttig, who was “a prominent conservative on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,” according to Politico. He graduated from Yale in 1989 and from Yale Law School in 1992. (For more from the author of “What a Former Colleague Thinks About Chris Wray Becoming FBI Director” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/3416310475_3e0625b8e4_b-2.jpg7681024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-07-11 21:41:402017-07-11 21:41:40What a Former Colleague Thinks About Chris Wray Becoming FBI Director
Restoring Liberty Editor’s note: The story below is not particularly surprising. Just look at the feds’ use of informants in other cases.
In Alaska, we have the 2011-2012 Schaeffer Cox case where Cox was constantly egged on to criminal acts – even threatened – by the exact same informant (Bill Fulton) who handcuffed a reporter at one of Joe Miller’s town halls in 2010. That was the incident that the national press suggested cost the election (in reality, it turned out to be massive voter fraud, as we discovered in subsequent ballot reviews). By the FBI’s own admission, that same informant was debriefed by the agency after the handcuffing incident.
Do you think this level of entrapment really accomplishes any legitimate public service? Should folk like Samy be locked up for decades after falling prey to such federal schemes? Why do you think feds are doing this?
It’s become a near-weekly occurrence. Somewhere in some state, the FBI will announce that they’ve foiled yet another terrorist plot and saved lives. However, as the data shows, the majority of these cases involve psychologically diminished patsies who’ve been entirely groomed, armed, and entrapped by FBI agents. Simply put, the FBI manufactures terror threats and then takes credit for stopping them.
But what happens when they take it too far? What happens if the FBI actually tells someone to conduct a mass shooting? Well, in Milwaukee, WI, we are seeing this unfold first hand.
A little over two years ago, Samy Mohamed Hamzeh, 25, found himself in the midst of an FBI sting. Little did he know that he was being groomed for terrorism by the same government who claims to fight terrorism.
Hamzeh was born in the U.S. but lived much of his childhood in Jordan before moving to Milwaukee when he was 19. For four years, Hamzeh lived an entirely normal life, until one day, he was contacted by people who wanted to radicalize him and give him weapons.
The group, entirely controlled by the FBI was plotting to shoot up the Humphrey Scottish Rite Masonic Center during an event.
In February of 2016, the FBI announced they had foiled a terror plot by a man who was planning to kill at least 30 people to “defend Islam.” Americans cheered, and everyone felt safer — the FBI had saved us from extremists once again.
For months, two corrupt FBI informants goaded Hamzeh into obtaining weapons. According to his attorneys, hundreds of hours of recorded conversations show the FBI pressed Hamzeh into getting these weapons and eventually began pushing him to carry out a mass shooting.
Despite the intense peer pressure from people pretending that they were mass murderers, Hamzeh resisted. He didn’t even want the guns. Now, his attorneys have filed a motion to get him released on bond because they say he’s been set up.
The informants, the motion states, “frequently lobbied Hamzeh to get a machine gun despite his repeated protests that all he wanted was a legal handgun to protect himself.”
In spite of the FBI claiming Hamzeh was going to carry out a mass shooting — they were attempting to force him to do — the recordings, according to his attorneys, show he resisted and adamantly refused to ever participate in violence.
Even after the FBI announced their foiled terror plot, they were unable to charge Hamzeh with anything other than possessing a machine gun and a silencer. And even these items had been essentially shoved into his lap by the FBI.
As the Journal-Sentinel reports, a psychiatrist who evaluated Hamzeh in jail concluded he does not fit a profile of someone who would kill strangers and “has a strong moral code with a very prominent conscience and empathy.”
“There is also no evidence that Hamzeh ever made any plans or was doing anything other than making empty boasts to express his resentment about Israel or to gain attention,” reads their brief in support of the bond motion.
Hamzeh has now been in jail for a year and a half because the FBI tried to make him carry out a mass shooting that he didn’t want to do. And, he could be there much longer as each of the charges for the weapons — that he also did not want — carry 10 years a piece.
If Hamzeh never had any intention of carrying out a terror attack and the weapons were forced on him by the FBI, why on Earth would this be on the news and touted as some foiled plot?
Well, the answer to that is simple.
Former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes actually reveals the answer as he defends the tactics used by the FBI to set up poverty-stricken men by offering them large sums of money and weapons to commit crimes.
After he defended the FBI’s role in bribing poor, mentally diminished people to get them to commit crimes, he let out a bombshell statement, confirming what many of us already know.
“If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that ‘We won the war on terror and everything’s great,’ cause the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half,” states Fuentes. “You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’—it’s ‘Keep Fear Alive.’ Keep it alive.”
There you have it. The FBI puts Americans in danger by grooming otherwise entirely innocent people into doing harm — so they can keep fear alive.
But what would’ve happened if Hamzeh would’ve actually carried out this shooting that the FBI was trying to force on him? Would the FBI still claim they had informants attempting to groom him? Would they admit to forcing him to accept weapons?
David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps intelligence officer, the second-highest-ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer, had this to say about these most unscrupulous operations:
Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.
Indeed, we’ve become a lunatic asylum.
(For more from the author of “Recordings Reveal FBI Gave Man a Rifle, Urged Him to Carry out Mass Shooting to ‘Defend Islam'” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Flag_of_the_Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation-1-1.png12002000Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-07-07 00:10:392017-07-08 21:12:51Recordings Reveal FBI Gave Man a Rifle, Urged Him to Carry out Mass Shooting to ‘Defend Islam’
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley fired off a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Wednesday questioning numerous probes into acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and asking whether investigators have found any political conflicts from these inquiries.
In his letter to Rosenstein, Grassley reminded him that he already asked about McCabe’s apparent conflict of interests due to his close relationship with Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, among other issues, and then pointed out that McCabe appears to be the focus of three separate pending investigations.
“First, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General is examining his failure to recuse himself from the Clinton investigation due to his political relationship with McAuliffe. Second, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is investigating allegations that he violated the Hatch Act by engaging in political campaign activities,” Grassley wrote.
“Third, he is also reportedly the subject of a pending Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint by a female FBI agent for sex discrimination, who alleges she was targeted for retaliation because of her complaint,” he added.
Chairman Grassley cited a new report by Circa News that says former Trump National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was the subject of retaliation from the FBI for supporting the female FBI agent through an official letter during the case. (Read more from “Grassley Demands Answers on Acting FBI Director’s ‘Apparent’ Conflicts of Interest” HERE)
While the general public is still in the dark about the arrival of biometric identification that is taking place in nearly every walk of life, even privacy defenders who have been closely following these developments don’t have sufficient information.
A shocking report came to light early this year about a massive FBI database that has been collecting millions of faceprints of American citizens – for years.
Known as the Next Generation Identification system, since 2014 the FBI has amassed more than 50 million images scoured from facial recognition alone; and, as reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the images have merged into the FBI’s legacy database of fingerprints and other identifiers to create a centralized hub of surveillance:
NGI builds on the FBI’s legacy fingerprint database—which already contains well over 100 million individual records—and has been designed to include multiple forms of biometric data, including palm prints and iris scans in addition to fingerprints and face recognition data. NGI combines all these forms of data in each individual’s file, linking them to personal and biographic data like name, home address, ID number, immigration status, age, race, etc. This immense database is shared with other federal agencies and with the approximately 18,000 tribal, state and local law enforcement agencies across the United States.
Despite what is clearly a sweeping program of surveillance and a violation of numerous Amendments to the Constitution, the FBI has resisted all inquiries made by privacy organizations and even the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Now one of the most respected privacy defenders, EPIC, is urging Congress to do its job and fully examine the secret FBI program. EPIC summarized the scope of the program, as well as measures taken by the FBI to exempt itself from privacy protections:
EPIC has sent a statement to the House Appropriations Committee in advance of a hearing on the FBI’s budget. EPIC urged the Committee to examine the FBI’s Next Generation Identification program. EPIC explained that the program “raises far-reaching privacy issues that implicate the rights of Americans all across the country.” The FBI biometric database is one of the largest in the world, but the Bureau proposed to exempt the database from Privacy Act protections. EPIC and others supported strong safeguards for the program. In an early FOIA case against the FBI, EPIC obtained documents which revealed high error levels in the biometric database. EPIC has recently filed a FOIA lawsuit against the FBI for information about the agency’s plans to transfer biometric data to the Department of Defense.
The full statement from EPIC is posted below. As the use of biometrics is increasing by the day, it is essential that we help uncover the true scope of how this information is going to be used. Spread the word now and raise awareness so that we can ensure the best chance possible at resisting what appears to be the construction of a digital tyranny.
(For more from the author of “Privacy Organization Urges Congress to Examine FBI’s Secret Biometric ID Program” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/FaceMachine_screenshots_collage.jpg600600Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-06-21 22:42:512017-06-21 22:42:51Privacy Organization Urges Congress to Examine FBI’s Secret Biometric ID Program
The FBI is holding a press conference Wednesday morning to announce the results of its investigation into last week’s attempted mass assassination of Republican lawmakers and staffers, the agency announced on Tuesday.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge Andrew Vale and Special Agent in Charge Timothy Slater will be joined by Alexandria Police Chief Michael Brown, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent in Charge Michael Boxler.
The Daily Caller was the first to report last week that FBI officials discovered a list of Republican lawmakers in James T. Hodgkinson’s possession when he opened fire at a congressional baseball practice, wounding four people including Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise. All six lawmakers on the list were members of the House Freedom Caucus — the most conservative members in the lower chamber.
The FBI also recovered a cell phone and computer from Hodgkinson’s van at the scene, the agency announced last Thursday. (Read more from “FBI Making Big Announcement in GOP Baseball Shooting Investigation” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/FBI-HQ-Sign.jpg739631Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-06-20 22:24:202017-06-20 22:24:20FBI Making Big Announcement in GOP Baseball Shooting Investigation
Former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee [today] at 10 a.m. EST — but his just-released prepared testimony suggests what he will tell them. Democrats intend to ask him why President Trump fired him. They assert Trump fired him in order to shut down the FBI’s investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russians to influence the presidential election.
They are also expected to ask about Trump requesting that he shut down the FBI’s probe of former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. Flynn resigned after it came out that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about a conversation he’d had with the Russian ambassador. Democrats want to show that Trump engaged in obstruction of justice.
Trump’s Firing of Comey
Trump himself has contributed to the controversy. He has stated the reason he fired Comey was because he mishandled the probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server while she was secretary of state. He said that he based his decision to fire Comey on the recommendations of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein. He later said he had decided to fire Comey even before receiving their memo.
Comey announced on July 5 last year that he was recommending no prosecution of Clinton. Trump expressed his disappointment over Twitter.
FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem
A few days before the election, when Comey announced the FBI was re-opening the probe into Clinton’s server, Trump responded that it “took guts.” In early May, before he was fired, Comey testified that it made him “mildly nauseous” to re-open the Clinton probe.
Comey’s Testimony is Already Out
The Senate Intelligence Committee released Comey’s prepared statement today. He allegedly asked for it to be released, according to NBC News.
In it, he describes how he met with Trump to provide him with information about Russian efforts to influence the election. He describes the material in the so-called Trump dossier as “salacious and unverified.” Critically, Comey confirms that he said several times his investigation did not target Trump himself.
Comey describes a conversation with Trump where he told Trump he was “not reliable” in the traditional political sense. He kept quiet after Trump said he needed loyalty, but later conceded he could provide “honest loyalty.”
The FBI is “an independent investigative agency,” he said, even though the president has full authority to appoint and fire its director.
During another private conversation with the president, Comey says the president urged him to drop the investigation into Flynn. Comey said he agreed with Trump that Flynn is “a good guy,” but did not respond to the request.
Comey says he did not think the president was asking him to drop the broader investigation of whether the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians. He admits that he decided not to pass along Trump’s request to the team investigating Flynn. Instead, the investigation “moved ahead at full speed.”
After those conversations, Comey said he implored Sessions to stop the president from directly communicating with him. Sessions did not respond, and the communications continued. Comey, who is 6’8, once tried to blend in with dark blue curtains in the Blue Room during an event in order to avoid the president.
Comey has made provocative — or even reckless — statements while testifying in Congress. In March, he took the extraordinary step of publicly disclosing for the first time that the FBI was investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. He admitted the FBI only discloses its investigations in rare circumstances. There was a rumor that Trump was going to claim executive privilege to prohibit Comey from testifying, but that turned out to be false.
Senators to Watch Tomorrow
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He has run the committee in a collegial, bipartisan manner with the ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). However, hinting at how valid he believes the accusations are of Russian interference with the election, Warner said that his work on the committee’s investigation is “probably the most important thing I’ve done in public life.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is the second-ranking Republican in the Senate and known for not holding back with grilling questions. Senators James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Roy Blount (R-Mo.) can also be expected to ask some piercing questions. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), as the most well-known senator on the committee, will probably steal much of the show.
The testimony will be aired on C-SPAN 3, which can be viewed online. Other cable outlets are also expected to broadcast the testimony with all the pomp and enthusiasm reserved for the Oscars.
(For more from the author of “What to Expect During Comey’s Congressional Testimony” please click HERE)
President Donald Trump has begun to move on naming federal judges and will eventually be naming a new FBI director, but more broadly, he remains slow in filling political appointments compared to his predecessors.
Trump has made 85 nominations to the Senate at this point in his presidency as of Friday, according to the Center for Presidential Transition, which tracks presidential appointees. In that same period of his first term, President Barack Obama made 212 nominations, President George W. Bush made 161 nominations, President Bill Clinton made 182 nominations, and President George H. W. Bush made 135 nominees by this point.
Trump, so far, is leaving key management positions unfilled, said Mallory Barg Bulman, vice president of research and evaluation at the Partnership for Public Service, the parent organization to the Center for Presidential Transition.
“Leadership matters a lot, as does having the right people in place,” Bulman told The Daily Signal. “You can’t start the game until the whole team is on the field.”
Trump has no nominee for 460 of the 557 key leadership positions, as of Friday, according to Partnership for Public Service. Trump has nominated 49, announced the nomination of 19, and 29 people have been confirmed.
Earlier this week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration is taking time to vet employees.
“We’re actually going through the Office of Government Ethics and FBI clearances before announcing most of these individuals,” Spicer said at the Monday press briefing. “And so, there’s a little bit of a difference in how we’re doing this. But we are well on pace with respect to many of these [appointments] to get the government up and running.”
Trump has not yet even named a director to run the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, noted Robert Moffit, a former assistant OPM director under President Ronald Reagan.
“The bottom line is that the president can’t run the federal government out of the White House and secretaries can’t run giant agencies huddled in an executive suite,” Moffit, now a senior fellow for health policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “Unilateral disarmament is a victory for the swamp. The swamp creatures have won the fight. Unless you control the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy controls you.”
Moffit, who also worked in the Reagan administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, said Reagan took control of the federal bureaucracy shortly into his presidency.
He said congressional relations is a key area where political appointees should be working, instead of leaving it to career civil service employees in some cases. That’s because, Moffit stressed, it’s the job of the career civil service employees to execute administration policy but the job of political appointees to advocate and explain those policies to Congress.
The president can name about 4,000 political appointees.
Out of that, 1,242 are key leadership positions that need Senate confirmation, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Another 472 political appointees—largely White House staff—don’t require Senate confirmation, according to the partnership. Further, 761 non-career senior executive positions can be filled throughout the executive branch—though not all are presidential appointees. Finally, 1,538 non-career federal employees report directly to a presidential appointee.
The partnership did not have a final number on how many of these positions are filled or unfilled, because it only tracks key leadership positions—most of which require Senate confirmation.
The White House Transition Project measures a different metric, but still finds Trump well behind other presidents going back through Reagan. Trump officially fell behind in March, said Terry Sullivan, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the executive director of the project.
Rather than measuring 4,000 jobs, which includes all U.S. marshals, U.S. attorneys, and every inconsequential U.S. ambassador, the White House Transition Project looks primarily at 221 government appointments that are required for the essential function of government, have policy roles, and have the potential to be controversial, Sullivan said.
“This is not a result of a policy predisposition to shrinking government,” Sullivan told The Daily Signal. “He wants a tax cut but he isn’t staffing up the Treasury Department. He doesn’t want more EPA regulations, but he isn’t moving slower or faster with that agency than Veterans Affairs or Health and Human Services, things he cares about.” (For more from the author of “Here’s How Far Behind Trump Is on Political Appointments Compared to Obama, Bush” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Donald_Trump_Signs_The_Pledge_14-1.jpg8531280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-05-14 23:45:332017-05-14 23:45:33Here’s How Far Behind Trump Is on Political Appointments Compared to Obama, Bush
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s letter detailing the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) rationale for calling for the dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey is heavy on professional grievance.
The memo, submitted to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, strongly suggests that officials at the Justice Department felt Comey improperly assumed prerogatives that rightly belong to career prosecutors at DOJ, instigating a bureaucratic turf war that left department officials displeased.
The memo opens with Rosenstein’s conclusion that Comey’s press conference on July 5, 2016, where he announced he would not recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, “usurped” the authority of his superiors at the Justice Department.
The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors. The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed Attorney General Loretta Lynch had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department.
The use of terms like “usurp” and “supplant” are both arresting and telling, as is Rosenstein’s assertion that Comey effectively “assumed command” of DOJ. This section of the memo argues Comey’s public statements stripped DOJ officials of prosecutorial discretion. In disclosing legal conclusions to the public, the former director foreclosed a number of options for department officials, leaving them little choice but to decline to pursue a case against Clinton. What’s more, the memo also states it was improper for Comey, whose role is restricted to finding facts, to reach any legal conclusions in the first place. (Read more from “Comey Dismissal Memo Suggests Turf War Between DOJ, FBI” HERE)
Two weekend stories are raising further questions of the role politics played in both the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email abuses and the investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged Russian ties. If J. Edgar Hoover could see these stories he would roll over in his gown.
50 Gs for the Trump Dossier?
The New York Times reported Saturday that the FBI was willing to pay $50,000 to the source of a dossier on Donald Trump containing information gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele. This dossier, which has since been discredited, includes allegations of sexual antics by Trump in Moscow and talk of ties to Putin.
As the Daily Caller reports in a story dated April 22,
A July 19 memo from Steele’s dossier alleges that the Trump campaign used (advisor Carter) Page as an intermediary in a “well-developed conspiracy” [with Russians] to help Trump during the election. The source of that claim has since been identified as Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman who has a history of exaggerating his business ties.
The Bureau wanted corroboration. If Steele delivered, he’d get the 50 G’s. (Talk about G-men!) However the ex-MI6 agent was never paid, the Times says.
Never paid by the FBI would be more accurate. As reported by The Stream, Steele is an “opposition researcher.” After a stint collecting dirt for Trump’s GOP opponents, Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm aiding Hillary Clinton.
So not only was the FBI willing to lap up allegations from an opposition researcher tied to Hillary Clinton, they were willing to shell out $50,000 tax dollars if he could confirm the allegations. Since the Feds didn’t pay Steele, the Daily Caller speculates that perhaps he could not confirm the information.
End of story, right? Wrong.
The FBI reportedly relied on Steele’s dossier last September when seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Page. That gets us into the whole gathering of intel on Trump associates. This leads to the dubious unmasking of names, the definitely illegal leaking and all the rest. A scandal that curiously has vanished from the airwaves quicker than Bill O’Reilly.
What’s more, The Washington Post reports the relationship between Steele and the FBI ended because the dossier “became the subject of news stories, congressional investigations and presidential denials.” For those not fluent in translating liberal media-speak, let me help: “They got caught.
The Stream has laid out how the dossier’s arrival at the FBI curiously lines up with Bill Clinton’s not-so-secret rendezvous with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. To refresh:
Steele crafts an anti-Trump dossier for his client, the Clinton-backing Fusion GPS.
Seems logical Fusion GPS would share it with their client.
June 27: The client’s husband secretly huddles with Loretta Lynch at the Phoenix airport.
July 5: Steele brings the dossier to the FBI.
July 5: James Comey says he’s going to let Hillary skate for the ” extremely careless” mishandling of highly classified documents.
By month’s end, the FBI is instead investigating Trump and his associates.
Why bring up Lynch? Because somebody was playing politics with FBI investigations last year. But don’t believe me. Ask FBI Director James Comey.
Comey Worried Lynch was Playing Politics with His Clinton Investigation
James Comey didn’t trust Lynch when it came to the Clinton investigation so he kept her out of the loop. According to The New York Times:
… this go-it-alone strategy was shaped by his distrust of senior officials at the Justice Department, who he and other F.B.I. officials felt had provided Mrs. Clinton with political cover. The distrust extended to his boss, Loretta E. Lynch, the attorney general, who Mr. Comey believed had subtly helped play down the Clinton investigation.
What does “subtly helped play down” mean?
How to “Subtly Play Down”
On July 10, 2015, the FBI launched a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email activities. However, the next morning Lynch’s Justice Dept. insisted “it is not a criminal referral.” Hillary would use the distinction without a difference to falsely declare she was not under criminal investigation. “It’s a security review,” she would say.
In September, Comey met with Lynch before testifying on Capitol Hill. He would not reveal details of the investigation, of course. But Lynch went further. She pushed him to refer to the case as a “matter,” not an “investigation.” Comey felt Lynch was “asking him to be misleading and line up his talking points with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.” One prosecutor ribbed Comey, “I guess you’re the Federal Bureau of Matters now.”
Fast forward to the weeks before the election. Agents find tens of thousands of Hillary emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer. Comey felt it was his duty to tell Congress. He knew failing to do so would lead to accusations he had been withholding information before the election. Lynch was dead set against telling Congress about the emails. However, in the end, she decided against ordering him not to send the letter.
That’s the Times‘ idea of subtly playing down.
Apparent confirmation of Comey’s suspicions came from a document seized from a Russian hacker. It was written by a Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Lynch would stop the Clinton investigation from going too far.
Meanwhile …
Hillary Clinton made a surprise appearance at the Tribeka Film Festival Saturday night. She talked about elephant poaching.
Which gets to our final point: Even the talented filmmakers at Tribeka could not make any of these characters and intrigue up. (For more from the author of “FBI Stories: Comey Didn’t Trust Lynch, FBI Willing to Pay $50,000 for Trump Dossier” please click HERE)
