Horowitz: On the FISA side, we found, as you noted, a lack of documented testimony evidence about intentionality, but we also noted the lack of satisfactory explanations and in fact leave open the fact that, for the reasons you indicated, it’s unclear what the motivations were. On the one hand, gross incompetence, negligence? On the other hand, intentionality? And where in between? We weren’t in a position, with the evidence we had, to make that conclusion, but I’m not ruling it out.
So with the evidence that they had, Horowitz couldn't make the definite conclusion that the problems with the FISA warrants and investigation were because of political bias, but he couldn't rule it out.
He also suggested that the alternative is gross incompetence or gross negligence.
So take your pick. Horowitz suggests:
- Gross incompetence
- Gross negligence'
- Intentionality (bias)
Horowitz (when pressed) could not find any valid reason why the FBI did what they did with the FISA warrants. The fact that he didn't have enough evidence to demand it was political bias is an afterthought. Any possible explanation is riddled with problems for the FBI and James Comey.
25 comments:
when all is said and done, horowitz's report is, from a practical perspective, worthless.
it indicts no one, exonerates no one, and is the work of an 0linsky tool.
like i said, worthless.
His testimony is more damning than the report.
His testimony debunked the biased start of the investigation and pointed out problems in FISA that need correction.....Which to me is a good thing......!!!!!!!
Scott A**hole if you actually watched the hearing, you would finally find out this was not a coup.
But the Washington Times props de Trump
Based on what roger?
CS is right. Testimony was damning as hell.
Hey Roger...
Get back to me when you've read the report!
His testimony was pretty damning.
- He called the FISA warrants "illegal surveillance"
- When asked how bad his report was for the FBI, he replied "It's pretty bad"
- That he had never seen an alteration of an email impact a court document like this example
“We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.”
“We believe this circumstance reflects a failure not just by those who prepared the FISA applications, but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command, including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed.”
CNN, MSNBC and all of the liberal sites are pretty much ignoring the hearing today to concentrate on the impeachment debate... as if people are actually interested in that.
In the local Strib, the impeachment headlines have not yet been a top five read story yet.
Although in a comedic take, the NYTimes is suggesting that Horowitz said that the evidence showed "gross incompetence" rather than "bias"... which isn't what he said.
He stated he didn't know if it was bias or not. He couldn't rule it out... and then suggested that the alternative was "gross incompetence" or "gross negligence" by Comey, McCabe and pretty much EVERYONE associated with the probe. Horowitz also stated that even more people should probably be fired or worse.
Giuliani Associate Got $1 Million from Russia
December 11, 2019 at 7:29 pm EST
“Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas got $1 million from Russia in September, a month before he was charged with conspiring to funnel foreign money into U.S. political campaigns, according to U.S. prosecutors who asked a judge to jail him for understating his income and assets,” Bloomberg reports.
From the court filing:
“Parnas failed to disclose, in describing his income to the government and pretrial services, the fact that in September 2019, he received $1 million from a bank account in Russia into Account-1.
“The payment raises provocative new questions about the nature of the work Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were doing and who they were doing it for. Much about the nature of their work remains unclear.”
NOTHING CORRUPT GOING ON HERE, NO, NOT AT ALL.
Watchdog Details Internal Tensions Over FBI Probe
“Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Wednesday that a senior prosecutor failed to convince him that the FBI’s 2016 investigation of President Trump’s campaign was improperly opened, revealing new details about internal tension among senior officials over the politically explosive case,” the Washington Post reports.
Politico:
“Horowitz also seemed to criticize a senior prosecutor Barr has tasked to examine some of the same events, U.S. Attorney John Durham, suggesting that it was improper for Durham to issue a highly unusual statement Monday disagreeing about the basis for the Russia probe. The watchdog said he knew of Durham’s view but was taken aback that he would announce it publicly while his investigation is still underway.”
He called the FISA warrants "illegal surveillance
so dems are fine with "illegal surveillance"
How low can they go ?
Obama administration was the MOST CORRUPT EVER !!!
GOP CONDEMNS FBI Powers They LONG SUPPORTED
December 11, 2019 at 8:04 pm EST
“One by one, Republican senators expressed outrage Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had committed errors in how it sought and obtained surveillance on a former Trump campaign adviser, describing the findings contained in a new inspector general report as evidence of alarming privacy violations that could be wielded against any American,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The concerns echoed those made by civil liberties advocates for decades. But they came this time from self-described national security hawks who have long voted to RENEW AND EXPAND U.S. surveillance powers.”
Hypocrisy thy name is...
The New York Times
The Perverse Servility of Bill Barr
Frank Bruni 11 hrs ago
Donald Trump famously said that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not “lose any voters.” I don’t know about that. But I’m confident that he wouldn’t lose Bill Barr.
Execution privilege, Barr would probably call it. He’d release a statement or hold a news conference to say that Trump had a spastic trigger finger or was triggered by Adam Schiff or was set up by those dastardly Ukrainians, who are never up to any good. HA HA HA HA HA Such is the magnitude of Barr’s servility, the doggedness of his deference. He’s the president’s moral launderer. Trump does evil, and Barr washes him clean.
As attorney general, he’s supposed to be the NATION’S lawyer. But he has bought into the autocratic delusion that TRUMP EQUALS AMERICA, that national interest and presidential prerogative are inextricably intertwined. So he’s Trump’s advocate, come hell or high crimes, as surely as Pat Cipollone or Rudy Giuliani is.
On Monday, showing fresh contempt for the people who work under him in the Justice Department, Barr renounced a determination by the department’s inspector general that the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was legitimate and that anti-Trump bias was not its animating force. He did this instantly.
And then, on Tuesday, did it again, with even less subtlety and more sanctimony. “It was a travesty,” he said of the investigation, and he was speaking not just of the sloppiness and haste of some of the F.B.I.’s actions, with which the inspector general also took issue. He was dismissing the WHOLE EFFORT AS ROTTEN.
It was an eerie echo of his efforts last spring, when he sought to neuter Robert Mueller’s findings about the Trump campaign’s openness to Russian help and the president’s attempts to obstruct justice. Give Barr points for consistency. He has bought fully into the idea that the zeal of Trump’s detractors MATTERS MORE than the presidents’ ABUSES of power.
But WHAT OF THE CONSTITUTION? What of COMMON DECENCY? Barr isn’t concerning himself with those. To do so would call into question the honor of serving in this administration, the compliment of holding the job that Trump gave him. And he wants that compliment. That pedestal. He prefers to see himself as a holy warrior than as an UNHOLY DUPE.
To appreciate his perspective, you must travel back two months, to the University of Notre Dame, where he delivered a speech that garnered some headlines but not nearly enough of them.
You should read it. You should savor its grandiosity — it has references to the dawn of homo sapiens, the twilight of the Judeo-Christian order, Edmund Burke, James Madison — so that you can understand his current overreach, born of his certainty that he knows better than the rest of the body politic and is called to heal us.
You should note his remarks’ obsession with morality and you should TRY NOT TO LAUGH, the same way you stifle chuckles when you’re reminded that Mike Pompeo is a putatively worshipful Christian and you try to square that with how he ABETTED the persecution of Marie Yovanovitch, leaves his State Department charges TWISTING IN THE WINDd and genuflects before a FALSE PROPHET. IN TRUMP HE TRUSTS.
You should dwell on the part of Barr’s jeremiad where he says that “men are subject to powerful passions and appetites and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community.” Ruthless? Roughshod? That’s TRUMP in an alliterative NUTSHELL, but Barr seemed to be perversely oblivious to that. He was making a case for Trump’s presidency.
The wonder of this wretched moment has never been the existence and stench of a bad egg in the Oval Office. That’s hardly strange, given how ably shamelessness serves ambition. The wonder is how many other bad eggs the current president has assembled or hatched. The wonder is this fluffy, funky omelet of unscrupulousness.
All these SUPPOSEDLY GODLY men — Barr, Pompeo, Mike Pence, Ben Carson, Rick Perry and more — cluster around such a demonstrably GODLESS one. They rationalize that Trump’s indulgence of certain religious factions absolves him of his sins. Barr is the principal agent of that absolution.
He’s also a paragon of hypocrisy, telling Pete Williams of NBC News that the F.B.I. investigation of Trump’s campaign was an ominous abuse of government power for partisan aims. That description better suits THE CONDUCT FOR WHICH TRUMP IS ABOUT TO BE IMPEACHED. I don’t know how Barr kept a straight face.
Actually, I do. Since betrothing himself to Trump, he has had ample practice. In the Notre Dame speech, without any palpable sense of irony, he urged a “moral renaissance” and delivered this priceless line: “No society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity.” I agree. DUMP TRUMP.
In our society, IMPEACHMENT is one of those means. The LAW
is another. And if Barr could dig out his conscience from under all those layers of ego, he’d see that the RAPACIOUS INDIVIDUAL IN DIREST NEED OF RESTRAINT is the one he’s letting roam free.
Obama administration was the MOST CORRUPT EVER !!!
yep
So much for a spam free thread.
Damn idiot Jane.
thebradfordfile™
@thebradfordfile
Dear CNN viewers:
Everything they told you is a lie.
Carter Page wasn't a Russian spy.
The dossier was an utter joke.
The FBI lied to the FISA court.
They spied on Trump.
Everyone knew it.
Donald J. Trump is a VICTIM.
AG Barr is freaking hero.
You're welcome.
Pushed into a corner and squeezed Palsy almost admitted the Truth.
"When asked about criticisms of “the speed” of the House Democrats impeachment, Pelosi replied, “Speed? It’s been going on 22 months—two and a half years, actually.”
more like 3 years, stupid Skan k.
I see a multi-million dollar convention left San Francisco (Nancy Pelosi home ttruu) because of all the shit in the street sidewalks and the homeless bums .
Obama administration was the MOST CORRUPT EVER !!!
That's definitely not what the historians will be saying.
OBAMA administration was the MOST CORRUPT EVER !!!
IT WILL BE WRITTEN IN THE HISTORY BOOKS.
Forever.
Democrats are expecting wide-scale defections among their rank and file when Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump come to the floor for a vote next week, the Washington Post reports."
Why , they have the evidence some where, this is a winning issue for them right?
His testimony was pretty damning.
- He called the FISA warrants "illegal surveillance"
- When asked how bad his report was for the FBI, he replied "It's pretty bad"
- That he had never seen an alteration of an email impact a court document like this example
devin nunes and his 2018 memo detailing the attempted coup have been completely vindicated. the horowitz report matches that memo almost exactly.
“The concerns echoed those made by civil liberties advocates for decades. But they came this time from self-described national security hawks who have long voted to RENEW AND EXPAND U.S. surveillance powers.”
Hypocrisy thy name is...
Not hypocrisy, there was legitimate concern after 9-11 and the purpose of FISA was to conduct spying against terrorist groups who infiltrated the United States.
It was a necessary tool, until it was abused.
After the abuse by the FBI, I doubt the law will survive.
After the abuse by the FBI, I doubt the law will survive.
i think the law can be salvaged with some changes.
i think the FBI is irredeemable and should be disbanded immediately, all of it's employees fired, and all of their pensions summarily cancelled.
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