Last night Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired embattled Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. President Trump reacts:
Beyond the thirst for clicks, ratings and perpetual outrage there’s an aspect to the Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Rudolph Contreras story that deserves some attention.
♦First, the DOJ wasn’t withholding anything from congress. The DOJ told congress they (or their staff) could review any of the documents, including Strzok and Page texts, at the DOJ in their totality; as a consequence of the ongoing oversight.
However, if congress -or their staff- wanted to take possession of the documents, they would only be allowed to *remove* redacted copies.
The outrage machine shouts “cover up“, etc.
No. Not quite.
Why?
Because the IG investigative documents, in addition to being part of an internal review, are also evidence within an ongoing criminal investigation. Hence, the earlier statement by AG Jeff Sessions. The statement everyone, sucked-into and/or participating within the outrage machine, loves to ignore.
Again, before grabbing your Sean Hannity branded pitchfork, think.
With a dual track within the IG investigative findings: ¹“internal wrongdoing” and ²“potential criminal conduct”, you realize that evidence collected by the IG -that may have prosecutorial value- will be closely protected by the investigative unit, including the Sessions assigned prosecutor, and not released.
It is not hard to see the “why” when you set aside emotion and ignore the outrage machine.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz recommended a review by the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility. The referral was based on IG Horowitz interviewing McCabe and identifying McCabe was lying about his instructions to FBI Communication Director Michael Kortan leaking to media on his behalf.
Mike Kortan, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok then proceeded to leak to Devlin Barrett (WSJ and WaPo), along with other journalists, with approvals from Andrew McCabe.
After IG Horowitz referred McCabe’s false statements to the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), the OPR investigated and recommended to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and AAG Rod Rosenstein that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe should be fired. Moments ago Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced McCabe is fired:
For those following the increasingly curious case against General Mike Flynn, events take another unusual turn today. Congressional investigators have shared a set of unredacted text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his cohort DOJ Attorney Lisa Page which reveal a personal friendship between Agent Strzok and Flynn’s initial presiding judge Rudolph Contreras.
On November 30th, 2017, Mike Flynn signed a guilty plea; ostensibly admitting lying to investigators. The plea was accepted by Judge Rudolph Contreras; who is also a FISA court judge. Six days later, December 7th, 2017, Judge Contreras “was recused” from the case without explanation.
The case was reassigned to DC District Judge Emmet Sullivan. The Contreras recusal always seemed sketchy. The key question was: if the conflict existed on December 7th, wouldn’t that same conflict have existed on November 30th, 2017?
Today questions about the conflict seem to have been answered. Text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reveal the FBI agent and Judge Contreras were close personal friends. –SEE HERE–
Apparently DOJ lawyer Lisa Page was unaware that “Rudy” was a FISA court judge until July 25th, 2016, when she posited a question to her small group co-conspirator FBI agent Peter Strzok.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes appears on Fox News at Night to discuss the ending of the Trump-Russian investigation and the continuance of the ongoing FISA abuse and FBI/DOJ corruption investigations.
Part of the interview surrounds the new request by Senator Chuck Grassley for a second special counsel. As Nunes notes the Grassley request is almost identical to his own.
Chairman Chuck Grassley along with republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are formally requesting a second special counsel to investigate the FBI and DOJ involvement in the Clinton-Steele Dossier.
The republicans asked Office of the Inspector General to explore the FBI and DOJ’s handling of dossier in February; but now they are requesting Attorney General Jeff Sessions and DAG Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel (full pdf below) because the IG does not have the ability to obtain testimony from witnesses who are not DOJ employees. This is the same motive of request from HPSCI Chairman Nunes and Trey Gowdy.
The PR Firm for the corrupt U.S. intelligence apparatus known as The Washington Post, runs a story about H.R. McMaster being fired tonight.
The Washington Post quotes “five people with knowledge of the plans”.
Except there’s a problem, there are no plans.
No plans except to entrap staff and intelligence community leakers; likely those five ‘leakers’ are in/around the National Security Council, and they just got caught.
WaPo – President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.
Interestingly Reuters is continuing the McCabe narrative with an article quoting an unnamed FBI official who urges Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to fire Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Given the rather expansive wealth of McCabe the angle of preserving his pension seems more than a little odd.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who stepped down in January after criticism from President Donald Trump, met on Thursday with a U.S. Justice Department official in an effort to preserve his pension, according to a source familiar with the matter.
McCabe planned to retire on Sunday with full benefits, but some or all of his pension could be at risk after the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended firing him for misleading Justice Department investigators about his supervision of probes into Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presidential opponent, said the source, who requested anonymity.
It’s well known that Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan doesn’t want to be in an actual leadership position; and it’s also well known -enhanced by the campaign, and victory, of Donald Trump- that Republicans did not want to win the majority position and face having to reveal their true UniParty agenda.
The evidence of this UniParty positioning has been staring the electorate in the face, repeatedly and brutally, since candidate Donald Trump actually campaigned on key tenets of the Republican party and found himself being openly opposed by GOP leadership.
Now, a stunning discovery surfaces of Paul Ryan’s Congressional Leadership SuperPAC, congressionalleadershipfund.org, actually campaigning for the Democrat, Conor Lamb, in the recent PA18 congressional race.
As evidenced by Big League Politics the Paul Ryan SuperPAC sent a mailer to Pennsylvania CD-18 voters touting Lamb’s favorable position on gun ownership rights:
A 17-year-old Jihadist in Palm Beach Florida stabbed three people, killing one, over the weekend – BACKSTORY HERE.
Corey Johnson admitted to police he was inspired by ISIS and carrying out the attacks on behalf of Islam. Yesterday local, state and FBI officials also admitted that he was “on their radar“, uh huh.
Well, you’re likely not going to believe how extensive their radar contact and monitoring was.
As an example: they were mirroring his social media in real time; they knew he had contacts with ISIS; they knew he was behind international threats; the FBI was ‘actively‘ monitoring him; and all the officials met several times to discuss the likelihood his unstable behavior might lead to much worse. But they didn’t want to take action, because he was a minor, and preferred “redirection” or diversionary programs to change his behavior.
FLORIDA – […] In January 2017, several local law-enforcement agencies and the FBI came together with the staff at William T. Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens, where he was a student at the time. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office received information that Johnson supported the terrorist organization ISIS and had reached out to the group online, expressing his desire to join them.
