[rad-green] Barr Blasts Inspector General For Whitewashing FBI

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/10/ray-mcgovern-barr-blasts-inspector-general-for-whitewashing-fbi/

*Consortium News          December 10, 2019 *

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 <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ray-mcgovern/>*
*Special to Consortium News*

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
<https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/23/moon-strzok-no-more-lisa-page-spills-the-beans/>
 of one senior FBI official, Peter Strzok, there was “no there there.”
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Michael_E._Horowitz_official_photo.jpg>

Horowitz

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
<https://www.c-span.org/video/?467247-1/senator-graham-fbi-russia-probe-didnt-end-okay>
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.

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
<https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/23/politics/john-brennan-trump-russia/index.html>
of
Brennan’s testimony is even more revealing (of CNN’s bias) in retrospect.
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/durham.jpeg>

Durham

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*
<https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/23/gowdy_grills_john_brennan_do_you_have_evidence_of_trump-russia_collusion_or_not_brennan_i_dont_do_evidence.html>:
“I don’t do evidence.”

The best Brennan could do
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/15/russia-gate-evidence-please/> 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
<https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/473709-horowitz-report-is-damning-for-the-fbi-and-unsettling-for-the-rest-of-us>
:

“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
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report-russia-investigation.html>
this
morning read, “Report on F.B.I. Russia Inquiry Finds Serious Errors but
Debunks Anti-Trump Plot.” And an “analysis” article
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/trump-ig-report.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_191210?campaign_id=2&instance_id=14319&segment_id=19468&user_id=e69a6cb2bbba5cd47ffe27ec9fb45fbe&regi_id=695407011210>
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).*

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppczv4XHfPmw1JJzubBHbBS1GvN4XhPh3%3DzNQTQw4r11hMg%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>