Barr Blasts Inspector General
For Whitewashing FBI
Barr took unusually strong public issue with
Horowitz’s conclusion that there was
adequate reason to mount an FBI
investigation of the Trump campaign and
suspected ties to Russia.
By Ray McGovern
December 11, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- Attorney
General William Barr on Monday disparaged
the long-awaited findings of the Justice
Department Inspector General Michael
Horowitz into FBI conduct in the
investigation of alleged Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential
campaign. Barr, in effect, accused Horowitz
of whitewashing a litany of proven
misfeasance and malfeasance that created the
“predicate,” or legal justification, for
investigating candidate-and-then-president
Donald Trump on suspicion of being in
cahoots with the Russians.
In
grammatical terms, there can be no sentence,
so to speak, without a predicate. Trump was
clearly the object of the sentence, and the
sleuths led by then-FBI Director James Comey
were the subjects in desperate search of a
predicate. Horowitz candidly depicted the
predicate the FBI requires for a
counter-intelligence investigation as having
to meet a very low bar. The public criticism
from his boss was unusual. For the tenacious
attorney general, doing a serious
investigation of how the FBI handled the
Trump-Russia inquiry has become a case of
no-holds-Barr-ed, one might say.
Lindsey Smacking His Lips
Particularly
damning in Horowitz’s report was the
revelation that the FBI kept the “Russia
investigation” going well after
countervailing and exculpatory evidence
clearly showed that, in the
unforgettable
words
of one senior
FBI official, Peter Strzok, there was “no
there there.”
As Sen. Lindsey
Graham put it yesterday, FBI investigators
kept running through STOP signs in hot
pursuit of a needed, but ever elusive,
credible predicate. At a press conference,
Graham
pointed
to page 186 of the Horowitz report to call
attention to one of the most obvious STOP
signs FBI sleuths should have heeded;
namely, the fact that the FBI learned in
January 2017 that the primary sub-source for
Christopher Steele’s “dossier” disavowed it
as misstated and exaggerated — basically
rumor and speculation. No problem: the FBI
investigation continued.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
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Mincing no words, Graham called the FBI
investigation into alleged Trump campaign
ties with Russia a “criminal enterprise”
that got off the rails. (Special Counsel
Robert Mueller found no evidence of such a
conspiracy.) Sparks will fly on Wednesday as
Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, pursues the matter in more depth
when Horowitz testifies before the
committee. Graham emphasized yesterday that
the general goal is to ensure that such a
“criminal enterprise” does not happen again.
He
added that one of the ways to prevent a
recurrence is to make sure “those who took
the law into their own hands need to pay a
price.” Uh-oh. I cannot remember the last
time leaders of the “national-security
state” had to pay a price.
Barr:
‘Thinnest of Suspicions’
Barr
took unusually strong public issue with
Horowitz’s conclusion that there was
adequate reason to mount an FBI
investigation of the Trump campaign and
suspected ties to Russia. Barr issued a
formal statement asserting that the Horowitz
report “now makes it clear that the FBI
launched an intrusive investigation of a
U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest
of suspicions that, in my view, were
insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
U.S.
Attorney John Durham, whom Barr picked to
lead what has now become a criminal
investigation regarding how that FBI’s
“intrusive investigation” was launched,
issued his own formal statement of
criticism, expressing disagreement with the
IG’s findings as to the predication of the
investigation and “how the FBI case opened.”
Durham added that he had told the IG last
month of this disagreement. In his statement
yesterday, Durham spoke not of suspicions,
but of evidence his ongoing investigation
has already gathered “from other persons and
entities both in the U.S. and outside of the
U.S.”
Evidence, Not Just Suspicions
Both
Barr and Durham chose their words carefully,
and so did former CIA Director John Brennan
in his May 2017 congressional testimony
about his suspicions that Trump’s campaign
might have been colluding with the Russians.
Soon the spotlight is likely to turn onto
Brennan and his carefully parsed testimony,
which fell considerably short of qualifying
as a predicate for investigation (but played
a key role anyway).
On May
23, 2017, Brennan told Congress:
“I
encountered and am aware of information
and intelligence that revealed contacts
and interactions between Russian
officials and US persons involved in the
Trump campaign that I was concerned
about because of known Russian efforts
to suborn such individuals. It raised
questions in my mind about whether
Russia was able to gain the cooperation
of those individuals.”
CNN’s
coverage
of Brennan’s testimony is even more
revealing (of CNN’s bias) in retrospect.
Moreover, Brennan famously told Congress, he
doesn’t deal with evidence. That was what
Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy was wondering
about, when he grilled the former CIA
director, also on May 23, 2017, on what
evidence he had provided to the FBI to
catalyze its investigation of the alleged
Trump-Russia collusion.
Brennan
replied:
“I don’t do evidence.”
The best
Brennan
could do
was start out by repeating his
well-rehearsed statement, later contradicted
by Mueller’s report: “I encountered and am
aware of information and intelligence that
revealed contacts and interactions between
Russian officials and U.S. persons involved
in the Trump campaign,” adding that “that
required further investigation by the Bureau
to determine whether or not U.S. persons
were actively conspiring, colluding with
Russian officials.”
Media
Treatment
Referring to
the Horowitz report yesterday, Law Professor
John Turley
noted:
“Despite this shockingly damning report,
much of the media is reporting only that
Horowitz did not find it unreasonable to
start the investigation, and ignoring a
litany of false representations and
falsifications of evidence to keep the
secret investigation going. Nothing was
found to support any of those
allegations, and special counsel Robert
Mueller also confirmed there was no
support for collusion and conspiracy
allegations repeated continuously for
two years by many experts and members of
Congress.”
And yet
“debunking” is the name of the game. A
New York Times
headline
this morning read, “Report on F.B.I. Russia
Inquiry Finds Serious Errors but Debunks
Anti-Trump Plot.” And an “analysis”
article
by Mark Mazzetti was titled: “Another
Inquiry Doesn’t Back Up Trump’s Charges. So,
on to the Next.”
Mazzetti writes:
“Engage in a choreographed campaign of
presidential tweets, Fox News
appearances and fiery congressional
testimony to create expectations about
finding proof of a “deep state” campaign
against Mr. Trump. And then, when the
proof does not emerge, skew the results
and prepare for the next opportunity to
execute the playbook.
“That opportunity has arrived in the
form of an investigation by a
Connecticut prosecutor [Durham] ordered
this year by Attorney General William P.
Barr — and the president and his allies
are now predicting it will be the one to
deliver damning evidence that the F.B.I.,
C.I.A. and even close American allies
conspired against Mr. Trump in the 2016
election.”
Horowitz Report an ‘Appetizer?’
Mazzetti goes on to express doubt “that Mr.
Durham will exhume any information that will
fundamentally change the understanding of
what happened in 2016.” Maybe, maybe not. It
is a safe bet, though, that President Trump
has better insight into this. According to
Mazzetti, Trump recently had been playing
down expectations about the Horowitz inquiry
— indicating it was only an appetizer for
what’s to come. “I do think the big report
to wait for is going to be the Durham
report,” he said. “That’s the one that
people are really waiting for.”
The
president may be expecting
Mueller-inquiry-type vindication once
Durham’s investigation is complete. It that
proves to be the case and Trump receives
post-impeachment acquittal from the Senate,
as expected, he may be able to parlay that
into four more years, a sobering thought.
Ray
McGovern works with Tell the Word, a
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of
the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was
an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer, then
a CIA analyst for 27 years. He prepared and
briefed the President’s Daily Brief for
Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and in
retirement co-founded Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
This article was originally published by
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Consortium News
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