Tyler Durden
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Attorney General William Barr told the Senate Judiciary Panel this week that he has assembled a team at the Justice Department to probe whether the spying conducted by the FBI against the Trump campaign in 2016 was improper, reports Bloomberg.
Barr suggested that he would focus on former senior leaders at the FBI and Justice Department.
“To the extent there was overreach, what we have to be concerned about is a few people at the top getting it into their heads that they know better than the American people,” said Barr.
Barr will also review whether the infamous Steele dossier – a collection of salacious and unverified claims against Donald Trump, assembled by a former British spy and paid for by the Clinton campaign – was fabricated by the Russian government to trick the FBI and other US agencies. (Will Barr investigate whether Steele made the whole thing up for his client, Fusion GPS?)
“We now know that he was being falsely accused,” Barr said of Trump. “We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”
Mueller’s report didn’t say there were false accusations against Trump. It said the evidence of cooperation between the campaign and Russia “was not sufficient to support criminal charges.” Investigators were unable to get a complete picture of the activities of some relevant people, the special counsel found.
Although Barr’s review has only begun, it’s helping to fuel a narrative long embraced by Trump and some of his Republican supporters: that the Russia investigation was politically motivated and concocted from false allegations in order to spy on Trump’s campaign and ultimately undermine his presidency. –Bloomberg
As Bloomberg notes, Barr’s review could receive a boost by a Thursday New York Times article acknowledging that the FBI sent a ‘honeypot’ spy to London in 2016 to pose as a research assistant and gather intelligence from Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos over possible Trump campaign links to Russia.
The Trump re-election campaign immediately seized on the Times report as evidence that improper spying did occur. “As President Trump has said, it is high time to investigate the investigators,” said Trump campaign manager, Brad Parscale in a statement.
During Barr’s Wednesday testimony, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) told Barr “It appears to me that the Obama administration, Justice Department and FBI decided to place their bets on Hillary Clinton and focus their efforts” when it came to investigating the Trump campaign.
Depending on what Barr finds, his review of the Russia probe could give Trump ammunition to defend himself in continuing congressional inquiries — and in a potential impeachment for obstructing justice. Barr told senators that Trump’s actions can’t be seen as obstruction if he was exercising his constitutional authority as president to put an end to an illegitimate investigation.
Barr’s efforts follow two years of work by a group of House Republicans who have been conducting dozens of interviews regarding the FBI’s and Justice Department’s conduct in the early stages of investigation of Trump and his campaign. –Bloomberg
On Thursday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) issued a criminal referral for Nellie Ohr – a former Fusion GPS contractor who passed anti-Trump research to her husband, then the #4 official at the DOJ.
On Thursday, Meadows said that Barr’s “willingness to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation is the first step in putting the questionable practices of the past behind us,” and that the AG’s “tenacity is sure to be rewarded.”
The FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign after a self-professed member of the Clinton Foundation, Joseph Mifsud, fed Papadopoulos the rumor that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton. That rumor would be coaxed out of the former Trump aide by another Clinton-connected individual – Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who would notify authorities of Papadopoulos’ admission, officially launching the investigation.
Barr says he wants to get to the bottom of it.
His review will examine the above chain of events that set the investigation into motion, and whether any US agencies were engaged in spying on or investigating the Trump campaign before the probe was officially launched.
Barr said he’s working with FBI Director Christopher Wray “to reconstruct exactly what went down.” He said he has “people in the department helping me review the activities over the summer of 2016.”
Notably, Barr said his aides will be “working very closely” with the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz is conducting his own investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation and whether there were abuses when the FBI obtained a secret warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 to spy on another foreign policy adviser to the campaign, Carter Page. –Bloomberg
Barr will also investigate when the DOJ and FBI knew that the Democratic Party and Clinton was Steele.
More subterfuge, or is this really happening?
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Next up: Barr announces the FBI violated the law numerous times, but “no reasonable prosecutor would push charges”.
It worked for Hitlery’s emails, it’ll work again for her spying.
In the BEST case, they’ll blame it all on some low level bureaucrat (maybe Strzok), give him a show trial to satisfy the people, and simply ignore all those who gave his orders.
I fear you are right. There’s no evidence that anyone from Trump downwards really has the stomach to go in for the kill. They are all too frightened of the ‘deep state’. The irony is that if they did it’s than likely quickly find the rats turning on each other in an effort to escape justice. Unfortunately though Trump probably cannot even trust the security team around him – the key to Putin’s survival – he can!
You go Barr, show that pack of rabid demadogues that you’re no chicken but a fighting bantam rooster.
I won’t be holding my breath though.
“Barr will also review whether the infamous Steele dossier was fabricated by the Russian government to trick the FBI and other US agencies. ” Wow, if they’re that stupid, then we’d better farm out the entire justice system to the Russkies. PS: Take a look at the Manafort paybook the Ukies cooked up while you’re at it Barr. Dollars to donuts the Ukies forged it and Hillarity knew it., maybe even ordered it. Probably right along with the Steele dossiere itself. Heck, if the FBI’s that easy to fool, then telling apart a Ukie from a Russkie must be a… Read more »
He will have to go back to 9.11…they are the real perps
Of course, we all know that the U.S. interferes in the elections of other countries on a regular basis, like right now in Venezuela, where Maduro wine fair and square and Guaido did not even run. Did other countries interfere in the 2016 U.S. election? You bet! Ukraine tried to find “dirt” on Trump and at the same time Israel was heavily financing Trump through supporters of Israel. Why does the CIA waste so much time investigating Russia which had little to do with the 2016 election and not Ukraine or Israel? And why not investigate Briton? MI-6 also played… Read more »
Washington’s gotten too big for its britches, interfering in elections and nations outside of its sphere of influence. Dumbass Abrams brought the long ongoing scenario front stage to everyone’s attention once again with his brilliant ‘our backyard, monroe doctrine, blah blah blah bilge’. Washington reminds me of every man’s spousal nightmare “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine too’, If anything, real or imagined, is messing up Washington’s genetically programmed behavior, it’s just simple payback for bad karma. These boobs should have figured it out by now. America’s long lost heroes of stand up virtue, James Arness and… Read more »
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