Not a Tick-Tock

All day long, even before the Mueller news broke, Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge has really been leaning-forward, giving insight into the pending Inspector General report by OIG Michael Horowitz. Herridge is one of those reporters who is careful not to get out in front of her skis.  Ms. Herridge is not a book-selling member of the tick-tock community of pundits.

We noted earlier how the specific emphasis of Ms. Herridge seemed to indicate the Horowitz report was closer to the surface of completion than previously thought.
Immediately after the Mueller news broke (around 5pm EST), Herridge filed her first live report providing details of the Mueller report.  Within that first report Herridge stated she was previously bound to “confidences” until the Mueller probe was complete.
In subsequent reporting we begin to see what those confidences are, and how they connect to her exclusive reporting on text messages between Andrew McCabe and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Ms. Herridge is strongly emphasizing a few key points that need additional emphasis:

♦ First, IG Horowitz is looking into the leaking of memos that contain classified information by “Senior FBI Executives”.  This bullet-point directly relates to the James Comey memos that were leaked to the New York Times by Comey himself.  On this first point, that would mean Comey is under investigation by the DOJ for those leaks.

♦ Second, IG Horowitz is following up on his own investigative finding where he found FBI officials were taking gifts from media.  This violates FBI policy and could be a bigger ethical issue depending on the details.  Interestingly, connecting this path to bullet-point #1, Herridge says: “by those same Senior Executives.”  That would indicate former FBI Director James Comey, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe would be under investigation for taking gifts from media.

♦ Third, Herridge reports on what we already knew.  IG Horowitz is investigating FISA surveillance abuse that stems from the fraudulently obtained FISA Title-1 surveillance warrant gained on Carter Page.   This third point we knew about; however, Herridge then drops a bombshell...

Herridge notes she has exclusively gained 40 pages of text messages and communication between Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page.   Her reporting from earlier today only revealed two of those pages.
Additionally, Herridge reveals these McCabe/Page messages were not provided to congressional oversight while republicans were in charge of the committees.  This is huge, because this speaks to two key issues:

#1) corruption that existed inside the FBI (2017, 2018) that was/is keeping information from congress; and…

#2) the possibility of AG William Barr changing the dynamic so those same corrupt officials can no longer hide the information.

On both of those points, everyone following the story closely has noted that current DOJ and FBI officials were actually part of the corruption.  Those officials were responsible for deleting text messages, and redacting text messages damaging to the institutions.
With Mueller completing his two-year probe, we might see those corrupt officials no longer able to hide damaging details.  At least this seems to be the overall tone behind how Catherine Herridge is conveying her reporting (ie. prior confidences now removed).
Unfortunately Fox News has not uploaded the Herridge segments.  However, the key segment is available below prompted to 29:18  WATCH:
https://youtu.be/O0qTSmNWoEs?t=29m18s
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(IG Report – DOJ/FBI Misconduct)

Perhaps there’s reason for cautious optimism that AG William Barr might provide the change needed to finally start seeing some measure of accountability.
With Mueller now out of the way it would appear the impediment to President Trump declassifying the FISA documents has been removed.

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