THREAD: You will probably see plenty of spin and headlines today claiming the FBI is exonerated in this report. That is laughable, to put it lightly. The report eviscerates senior officials who broke rules and abused power.
Let's go over some of the details.
For starters, the "no bias" talking point you see is misdirection from the left. See this line, from the IG:
"Our role in this review was not to second-guess discretionary judgments by Department personnel about whether to open an investigation"
If you see someone harping on the "bias" point, they are giving you a broad, misapplied talking point to distract from the specifics within the IG report that are damning.
Some top takeaways:
1) FBI heavily abused the FISA process. Presented false info and withheld exculpatory info from the court.
2) FBI used 'defensive briefings' to investigate Trump campaign officials
3) FBI relied on knowingly dubious sources for anti-Trump information
Page 361: MAJOR FISA abuse.
IG identified "numerous serious factual errors and omissions in the applications ... that undercut certain allegations in the FISA applications."
They knowingly used bad information to surveil American citizens in the Trump campaign.
Wow.
Page 341: In August 2016, the FBI used a briefing with the Trump campaign as an opportunity to gather potentially relevant investigative information about Michael Flynn, a member of the Trump campaign at the time.
What IG report page 341 tells you: the FBI used a defensive briefing with the Trump campaign as a tool for an investigation into its members. Unbelievable.
Page 289: Peter Strzok lied to the OIG?
Strzok said he "didn’t know whether Bruce Ohr kept meeting with Steele after Steele was terminated." But Strzok’s handwritten notes show he got updates on 12/12/16, 12/20/16, and 1/23/17 regarding Ohr and Steele's ongoing communications !
Page 64. Andy McCabe kept Peter Strzok on the Crossfire Hurricane team, despite warnings. IG says there were even times Strzok (and Lisa Page) evidently bypassed chain of command to advise specifically McCabe about case related information. Red flag.
Another IG report nugget: as we suspected, FBI kept using Chris Steele even after he was terminated for cause. Bruce Ohr met with the FBI 13 times (!) to pass along information he had been given by Steele, who had been fired.
There is more we'll continue sharing. Bottom line: this report confirms what we've been saying. There was significant abuse all over the FBI's efforts to investigate the Trump campaign.
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