What is in Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s report, Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane
Investigation. All of us at least need to read the Executive Summary. Why? Horowitz’s report is not a scrumptious baked potato with butter. It is a hot potato, one that burns the hands of whoever is holding it. With his report, Horowitz got rid of that potato. Now it is our problem.
Horowitz’s report clearly suggests that powerful people within our government abused their power. Because of his limited investigative powers, and perhaps because he was justifiably afraid, Horowitz did not pursue those leads. Instead, he just published his findings and left the problem of going after those powerful people to others. Fortunately, Attorney General William P. Barr and his handpicked prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John H. Durham, have picked up that hot potato, and they are pursuing those powerful people (see here and here).
What should we do? We should compare what is in Horowitz’s report with what is being said about it in the news media. We need to know who is telling us the truth. We need to decide whether we are going to support our president, attorney general, and the man they have chosen to prosecute a very special case. Without our support, those powerful unscrupulous people will succeed in taking them down.
This is not just a game. It is about the future of our republic. You don’t think so? Then compare FBI Director Christopher Wray’s boilerplate BS with what Barr and Durham wrote (see here). Horowitz findings point to willful corruption at the highest levels, not just the need for training and procedural changes.
Citizen Tom 
Just saw this.
The FBI gets taken to the woodshed and is given a demand to submit reforms in an extraordinarily rare public order by the FISA Court itself.
https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MIsc%2019%2002%20191217.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1FEj3vlfOw4UvFPdDik5XnPRjIA3umJybnGu2mmwId3aSMjfBrxSaB2Tw
This order responds to reports that personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI’s case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page.1 When FBI personnel mislead NSD in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC.
(snip)
The FBI’s handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above. The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable. The FISC expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing with the Court. Without it, the FISC cannot properly ensure that the government conducts electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes only when there is a sufficient factual basis.
@Liz
Thanks for the link.
The impeachment sham is providing cover for a lot of stuff that is not being reported.
Outrage increase right on que.😊
Don’t confuse yourself with those inconvenient facts:
1. The so called Dossier is a dead letter to the main investigation, the ultimate convictions and the Mueller Report.
2. The Mueller investigation was launched by the Trump administration, carried out by a life long Republican who was appointed by a life long Republican. (But then again Trump isn’t really a Republican, now is he?).
3. No President has ever claimed “absolute immunity”. What you are saying is that any ridiculously unconstitutional power grab by the President is ok, as long as we are willing to wait a year with him doing it while the courts decide. I’d be disbarred if I ever tried such a thing. Funny how you never held Obama by that selective standard.
4. If the investigation was just a Deep State hoax apparently started by what used to be Republicans, about all those inconvenient Trump associates now convicted or awaiting sentencing for their Putin connections or for lying about those connections? This is fundamental, but it just does not fit your conspiracy theory narratives about evil plotting Democrats dressed as Republicans. (My experience with Democrats is that they could not plot their way out of a paper bag).
I don’t hate Trump. Hate gives other sinners, rather than Christ, too much control over your soul. You might learn that if you ever come down from your outrage high horse and stop idolizing your hatred of those dastardly Democrats, and now apparently me. Isn’t all this hatred and conspiracy theorizing exhausting? 😏
We can debate impeachment later when you calm down. For now, I literally have to prance off to get a root canal. “On Prancer, on Dasher, on Comet . . . .”
@tsalmon
I guess law school lacks something. You are certainly confused about the nature of proof. Given Democrats believe we should charge perpetrators with “hate crimes”, (People should be charged based upon what they are thinking?), I suppose that is to be expected.
Frankly, if this was not a discussion about a serious problem, I would say you have become comical. Maybe the seriousness does not matter. The Bible reveals God has a sense of humor, and that is a serious book. Still, I suppose the laugh is on all of us, not just you. Your comedy is not wholly your own.
1. Is the Steele Dossier a dead letter. Well, for obvious reasons it is at this point. If Mueller was an honorable man, he would have dropped the investigation of Trump within a month of his appointment. He didn’t.
2. The Mueller Investigation was launched by the Trump administration? You actually said that? Next thing you are going to tell me is that Comey and Trump are buddies, that Rosenstein is trusted and beloved by all the folks in the White House.
3. What is absolute immunity? We are suppose to impeach Trump because the courts don’t move rapidly enough to please the Democrats? You are complaining about Trump’s “power grabs” after 8 years of Obama’s pen and pencil executive orders?
4. Even the New York Times admits former Obama officials acted to subvert the Trump administration. We have had books and editorials written by these people. CNN hires them. After the DOJ IG report and Congressman Schiff Sham Show, we still have to prove that high officials in the government are conniving against the Trump administration?
If Democrats cannot plot their way out of a paper bag, then why do you vote for such idiots?
And funniest of all? You don’t hate Trump. Well, hate is not especially funny, but after all your unrelenting anti-Trump diatribes the denials have become a joke.
@tsalmon
Well, I am guessing your root canal is done. I hope you are feeling better.
Went better than expected, and way better than the last time I had one of these procedures. Not exactly what I wanted for Christmas though.
Seems that retirement replaced work with a series of scheduled and unexpected doctors appointments. Getting old sure ain’t for softies. It’s like a Red Queen game where one has to run as fast as one can just to stay in one place for a while.
All-in-all though, it makes one appreciate the alternative. I’ve never enjoyed more God’s gift of the world and God in it, in family, in friends, in everything and everyone, even in our friendly debates big brother. Thanks for your thoughts.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/sunday-review/trump-horowitz-report.amp.html
That’s nice. Have you skipped the editorials and just tried reading the report’s executive summary?
The Report only criticizes the FISA system’s abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department. Are you surprised that law enforcement might abuse it’s powers when it lacks oversight and proper constitutional checks? Or are we only to place ethical and legal limits on government overreach when Trump is the victim of it, but not when he is the perpetrator of it? It seems like all this outrage is very selective.
@tsalmon
The report is from the DOJ IG. An IG doesn’t have much investigative power. None outside the agency of his office.
The question about Trump doesn’t make sense.
“The question about Trump doesn’t make sense.”
That it doesn’t make sense to you is what is interesting.
The secretive nature of the FISA court system makes it a natural vehicle for government overreach. Overreach is a bug built into that system. It seems like Carter Page has a right to feel victimized by the overzealous government surveillance, but does anything in the report really justify Trump’s Deep State conspiracy myths?
Right now Trump’s former Campaign Chairman is in jail. One of Trump’s Campaign advisors plead guilty and was sentenced. His former Assistant Campaign Chairman and former National Security Advisor pled guilty and are awaiting sentencing after agreeing to cooperate with investigators. Perhaps Trump’s oldest political adviser, a self proclaimed “dirty trickster”, was just convicted. Trump’s “fixer” attorney is in jail for, in part, lying to Congress about his efforts in Russia on behalf of Trump to get Putin to approve a Trump Hotel project, something that Trump was lying to the American people about during the election. Trump’s son and son-in-law met with Russians during the election hoping to get “dirt” on Hillary, and then Trump lied about it. Even one of Trump’s biggest supporters, the NRA, has been implicated in a Russian influence operation.
The common denominator in every one of these cases, along with Trump, is someone close to Trump or his campaign either working for or with Putin operatives, or lying to investigators about working with Putin operatives. And yet somehow our government went too far when they started investigating Russian influence in favor of Trump’s election and inside the Trump campaign? Funny how the Deep State was so out to get Trump but none of these damaging investigations actually leaked during the election?
On the other hand, it isn’t blatant government overreach for the POTUS to seek a FOREIGN investigation into an American citizen who just happens to be Trump’s political rival and into a refuted conspiracy theories about Crowdstrike, a publicly owned American company based in Silicon Valley (that has actually done cyber security for the RNC)?
Everybody is outraged about government overreach. Obama and his officials are accountable for the FISA Court abuse that happened on their watch. And yet Trump Republicans only believe on being outraged by government overreach of Democratic administrations while ignoring Trump’s far more blatant unconstitutional abuses of his power. The selectivity of outrage would be humorous if it were not so damaging to our democratic institutions.
@tsalmon
Selectivity of the outrage? The selectivity is coming from people who want to impeach Trump without any evidence he did anything wrong.
Look at what you wrote. It is obvious you know you bet on the wrong horse, but your pride refuses to allow you to admit it. If the best you can up with is a diatribe against Trump that is wholly based upon guilt by association, you should know better.
You have legal training. You passed the bar. You know better than this. Yet your response is to launch a new attack at every juncture. There is no practical way to debate an unending stream of crap. That’s why we have sewage treatment plants.
Ha! I tell you that there is a selectivity of outrage and you respond by being outraged at me and attacking me personally, essentially accusing me of being disingenuous and dishonorable. I love you big brother, and I’ve known you long enough to also know that anger and attack is what you do when the facts and the law are failing you. You’ve been doing this since we were kids. 😆
Your post is about the IG Report, and the fact that, although there was significant wrongdoing in the FISA application process for one person, Carter Page, the IG also shot down all the Deep State Coup nonsense that Trump continuously spews. Guilt by association? That is your characterization, but you don’t deny that the investigation netted a good many people closely connected to Trump and his campaign. It also exposed quite a bit of Trump cheating and lying.
As for the impeachment, the evidence seems sound enough to me. It’s pretty much undisputed and admitted to on camera by Trump’s “acting” Chief of Staff and Trump himself. And don’t you find it strange that, if Trump is indeed as innocent as you claim, Trump is making the constitutionally unprecedented claim of “absolute immunity” and preventing from testifying just the people who could exonerate him? (Can you imagine your outrage if Obama had made that claim for Clinton during the Benghazi hearings or the investigation into her emails that flowed from it?).
Ok, now it’s time for you to double down on outrage, call me names and tell me how awful I am. I love you even so. Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho. 🎅🏻
@tsalmon
Now Santa is a symbol of outrage? Ho Ho 🤨
You are going to impeach Trump because he exercises executive privilege and forces Congress to take its subpoenas to court? That’s been going on since George Washington. Nothing new about it. It is a stupid charge.
Trump gave Mueller plenty of access. After Mueller issued his report — when Congress insisted on continuing to dig — Trump said enough is enough.
Even so, when Congressman Schiff came up with his so-called whistleblower, Trump shut that investigation down by releasing a transcript of the supposedly damning phone call. Releasing such a transcript was unprecedented!
Except for the people accusing Trump, there is no evidence anyone committed a crime. Read the DOJ IG report! That’s why the impeaching Trump has become a sick joke.
The DOJ IG report does not reach many conclusions about who should be prosecuted, but the content of the report is damning. We don’t have to read between the lines. It shows that Democrats are actually guilty of the things that they accuse Trump of doing. The Steele Dossier, the thing that FISA request depended upon, was paid for by the Clinton campaign, and the Obama DOJ/FBI knew it. But they used it anyway.
Dance and prance around all you want. Accuse others of doing what you have clearly been doing. Proclaim your brotherly love. Hate Trump if you must. It is not about you. It is not about me. It is about the truth, at least as close as we are capable of getting to it.
How close to the Truth are you willing to get? Will you set aside your pride?
Trump was just forced to two million dollars to charity because his own charity was just another fraud.
The issue wasn’t fraud, but New York charity law (though the fund raiser took place in Iowa). Fraud would mean pocketing the money or taking money under false pretenses. The money was distributed to veteran’s charities.
Speaking of charities, how is that Clinton foundation doing?
Their best year was the one Hillary was supposed to win the election.
Weird.
Hundreds of millions racked up over years as a “public servant” dictating our foreign policy decisions.
But that 2 million in
frauddonations to veterans!Similar to a magic trick, we aren’t supposed to look at the other hand….just see this shiny object over here people!
So too the linked piece:
The IG report revealed that the FBI manipulated documents and concealed evidence to obtain and renew FISA warrants to keep a political rival under surveillance.
The writer, however, is more concerned about the privacy rights of the director of counterintelligence to hide an inappropriate relationship he was having with a subordinate.
I understand such full disclosures (IG reports, full transcripts of calls and so forth) aren’t the liberal way. They’d prefer to “leak” out of contextual statements/unsubstantiated rumors and run them to the public via anonymous “whistle blowers”.
It seems like all this outrage is very selective.
You asset this after linking to that absurd editorial?
assert, not asset.
AbsurdIty is good word for it Liz. Trump was just forced to two million dollars to charity because his own charity was just another fraud. Trump’s whole career in business, entertainment and politics has been about selling fool’s gold, snake oil and conspiracy mongering. (Even Trump’s hair and complexion is a fraud).
In the past, you admitted that Trump was a conman, but you liked his con. We are watching the theater of the absurd every day and some of us are outraged by the fraud and some us are outraged because we keep lapping up Trump’s frauds. Kafka could not have written something so absurdly surreal, don’t you think? 😏
Tom,
Will anyone be prosecuted is the question.
Regards and goodwill blogging