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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A thought on impeachment: Democrats case has real gaps. The holes are blatant. Witnesses having no evidence. Firsthand witnesses who dispute the allegations. Etc.
For a situation like that, time is the Democrats’ worst enemy. Because there’s key questions they can’t answer.
An example: if there was a political bribery scheme going on, like Democrats say, how did it not come up ONCE in FIVE meetings between US-Ukraine over the relevant time period? That makes zero sense. You’re telling me Ukraine was extorted, and they never asked? Or mentioned it?
That’s just one example of plenty. Sondland is *central* to their case, for instance—cited 600+ times in their report. He’s admitted he has no evidence beyond assumptions. That’s their star witness. Huge problem.
In case you were inclined to believe the Democrats' suggestion that their witnesses are unbiased, here's one of them—Noah Feldman—building the case for impeaching President Trump in April, 2017. Not even 3 months after inauguration.
The House Democrats' impeachment report is 300 pages of nonsense, with far too many problems to address individually. But let's go over a few of them...
1) Up front, Democrats released this report to the public around 2:00pm. Again, it's 300 pages. They're having the full Intelligence Committee vote on the report the same day... just a few hours later. Should be an automatic red flag.
2) Democrats claim @realDonaldTrump "demanded" Ukraine investigations. They build their case on this using Alexander Vindman, who said he interpreted the call this way too.
The "demand" characterization is ridiculous, for many reasons. @RepChrisStewart lays out a few.
You see a theme throughout these transcripts of the need to clean up corruption. Ambassador Yovanovitch laid it out: President Trump had a “deep rooted skepticism” about Ukraine corruption, and sending taxpayer funds to a corrupt nation.
She shared the concern on corruption
Gordon Sondland explained further: President Trump wanted Ukraine to root out corruption.
“I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelensky to do the right thing... to do what he ran on” (clean up corruption.)
Set aside the complete lack of a deliverable and the fact that Ukraine wasn't even aware aid was being withheld till later. The notion that this was some sort of political 'quid pro quo' is not backed up by the facts. It is nonsense.
It sure looks like James Comey misled Congress and the American people--at times under oath. Here are 5 questions Director Comey needs to answer. My op-ed-- washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds…
Question 1: Did Comey and his FBI improperly coordinate with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Department of Justice during the height of the Clinton email investigation?
He denied any coordination under oath. Evidence suggests this is not true.
Question 2: Why did Comey leave out pertinent facts when he briefed then-President-elect Trump on the Russian dossier?
He told President-elect Trump nothing of Christopher Steele's credibility issues or of the dossier's origin as a Democrat paid-for campaign document
New July 2016 texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page show a troubling reference to former FBI Director James Comey potentially intervening in the 2016 election
July 28, 2016: Text from Lisa Page to Peter Strzok, citing this article (bit.ly/2hO27Er): “Ha. First line made me smile”
The first line of that article? --“Potentially unpleasant news for Jim Comey: We need you to intervene in the 2016 election again”
To be clear: these are two high level FBI agents who appear to be discussing/laughing about the FBI Director potentially getting involved in the 2016 election--just days after the "Russia investigation" into the Trump campaign had begun.