Horowitz Report - Comey spying on and lying to the President of the United States

Justice Dept. Watchdog Has Evidence Comey Probed Trump, on the Sly

Now an answer is emerging. Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon file a report with evidence indicating that Comey was misleading the president. Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent.

An actual conspiracy - not a fake Russian one

Two U.S. officials briefed on the inspector general’s investigation of possible FBI misconduct said Comey was essentially “running a covert operation against” the president, starting with a private “defensive briefing” he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration. They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a “counterintelligence assessment” of Trump during that January 2017 meeting in New York.

In addition to adding notes of his meetings and phone calls with Trump to the official FBI case file, Comey had an agent inside the White House who reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides, according to other officials familiar with the matter.

Although Comey took many actions on his own, he was not working in isolation. One focus of Horowitz’s inquiry is the private Jan. 6, 2017, briefing Comey gave the president-elect in New York about material in the Democratic-commissioned dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Reports of that meeting were used days later by BuzzFeed, CNN and other outlets as a news hook for reporting on the dossier’s lascivious and unsubstantiated claims.

Comey’s meeting with Trump took place one day after the FBI director met in the Oval Office with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to discuss how to brief Trump — a meeting attended by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who would soon go to work for CNN.

So in essence, Comey was conspiring with the outgoing Administration in an attempt find dirt on the incoming President and undermine his reputation and legitimacy. He wasn't acting on his own. He wasn't acting in good faith. It was a coordinated effort to smear Donald Trump by spreading a conspiracy theory that he was in cahoots with the Russians to steal an election. Something they had no evidence of, and something that they still have no evidence of after five separate investigations.

This is a matter of fact. If Comey put covert people on the inside of the Administration in order to report back to him, then that constitutes spying. If he did so without a warrant to justify the actions, then that is likely a criminal action. If he did so at the request of the previous Administration, then all hell should break loose. I would wait for a bit more information and analysis from those who understand this better. But at best, it's a shameless act of political conspiracy (to whatever level), even if it doesn't rise to criminal conspiracy.

Let's be clear. The idea of an outgoing administration and existing FBI and others meeting about how the incoming President should be lied to and deceived regarding internal spying that they denied was taking place should be outrageous to even the worse Trump haters. Not because it happened to Trump, but because it happened to any President. It's a literal coup that shows a corruption that far exceeds anything (including Watergate) that has ever happened in our Government annals.

Of course, the Trump haters will okay Comey's actions, because they hate Trump and even breaking the law and committing treason are small prices to pay to undermine the bad orange man. But make no mistake, the idea that firing Comey was some sort of "obstruction" should be tossed in the garbage and burned. He wasn't an FBI director. He was a double agent acting against the President.

Will anything come out of this? Part of me says that it's time to move on even if Comey and others are likely dead to rights guilty of treason. People are tired of Russia and the 2016 election (not that Democrats seem to notice). But most certainly the fact that Barr has assigned a second prosecutor to handle the fall out of the Horowitz report strongly suggests that there will be indictments of former officials. Whether those officials could include Comey or others with high profiles remains to be seen.