Bias and the IG report
There is no question that many of the lead investigators in the Clinton email case and the Trump/Russia case were deeply opinionated, with strongly emotional attitudes towards the main people involved. Those opinions went in one direction only: virulently anti-Trump, and strongly desirous of her election instead.
That in and of itself should raise tremendous suspicion, because although in the FBI and DOJ the goal has traditionally been to keep one’s personal opinions out of it and to be objective and fair, human beings rarely meet that goal even if that want to (and it’s not clear how much they even want to these days). One of the better ways to overcome the problem is to have a balance of opinions on the team. That’s just common sense.
But that’s most definitely not the way it was in these investigations.
Another way to attempt to preserve whatever objectivity one can muster is to not freely air one’s pre-existing negative or positive opinions to other investigators. In other words, to keep one’s mouth shut about it and not stir the feelings up, and to avoid influencing stirring up the possibly-prejudicial opinions others on the job might hold.
But apparently many of the lead investigators in these cases (not just the now-famous Strzok and Page) felt very comfortable casually airing negative opinions about Trump and to couch them in the sort of language you might expect from foul-mouthed teenagers. No restraint whatsoever seem to have been used. And again, none of this was balanced by anyone—not a single soul—saying anything good about Trump.
Plus, they wrote quite a bit about how badly they wanted Hillary to win. And that’s even before we get to messages about possible actions they might take about Trump, such as Strzok’s “we’ll stop him” from becoming president.
Obviously, the water in which these big fish swam was so anti-Trump that they expressed such thoughts quite freely. Of course, they didn’t think the world was going to be privy to their words, but the fact that they and quite a few others continued to communicate with each other on official job-related emails and/or texts indicates a degree of comfort that is hard to fathom, but indicates that such feelings were probably so commonplace in both places of business as to be completely unremarkable.
That, in and of itself, is a strong indication that bias must have infected the workplace and informed its decisions. The fact that there is no direct evidence that it did is also unremarkable, because (as remarked by me and many others) it would have been absurd for someone to have stated or written that such-and-such an official anti-Trump decision was due to pre-existing anti-Trump feeling. Of course the agents making such decisions would never say that, and in fact my guess is that they themselves may have not even been aware of how much those feelings influenced their decisions in the matter of the emails and the collusion investigations.
Andrew C. McCarthy says it best:
Utterly biased people may have made manifestly flawed decisions, [IG Horowitz] tells us, but as long as they were not blatantly irrational decisions, we’re going to call them justifiable and move on. But were the decisions politicized? If a biased person makes a less than optimal decision, isn’t there an itty-bitty possibility that the bias clouded his judgment?
In essence, the IG answers, “Who really knows?” . . . except he says it in a way that enables the FBI to pretend he has found no evidence of bias at all. Observe this gem, from the report’s executive summary:
“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions.”
Directly affected? What does that mean? Do the FBI and Obama Justice Department have to stamp the “I’m with Her” logo on Combetta’s immunity agreement before we can say bias directly affected the decision? Could bias have indirectly affected the decision?
A comparison of the decisions that were made in both investigations:
When Ted Cruz dropped out of the GOP presidential race, making Trump the de facto nominee, the very first thing Strzok said upon hearing the news from Page was, “Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE” ”” i.e., “Mid Year Exam,” the code name for the Clinton caper. The best way to “stop” Trump was to free Hillary to beat him. So, the bureau simultaneously labored to close the case on her and invent a case on him.
In the blink of an eye, then-director Comey was briefing Obama’s National Security Council on Carter Page; the Obama intelligence agencies were tapping their foreign partners, targeting Trump-campaign advisers to run informants at, and internalizing the Steele dossier. While the FBI scooped up the last laptops it needed to complete the predetermined closing of the emails probe, Attorney General Lynch had her convenient tarmac chat with Bill Clinton, and the bureau conducted the perfunctory interview with Hillary ”” an interview so pointless that the FBI and Justice Department did not object to the presence of Mrs. Clinton’s co-conspirators in the room, even though the IG report concedes that this flouted elementary investigative protocols…
How do you best evaluate the FBI’s approach to the Clinton case? Well, if I may invoke that term again, common sense says you look at how the same agents handled another case which bore on the same event that informed their every decision, the 2016 election. The question is not whether every Clinton-case decision was defensible considered in isolation; it is whether the quality of justice afforded to two sides of the same continuum by the same agents at the same time was . . . the same.
It wasn’t. One was kid gloves, the other was scorched earth. The candidate they hoped would win got the former; the candidate they needed to “stop” got the latter.
The MSM and the Democrats (and I suppose the NeverTrumpers, although I’ve not read them on the subject) seize on the lack of direct evidence of bias influencing the decisions made to say that there was no bias at all. But this lack has nothing to do with there being no bias at all, and in fact applies an impossibly high standard of proof. But that point is most likely lost on most of the people to whom the MSM is speaking.
[NOTE: Other good articles to read are this, this, and this.]
The DNC, Republican establishment, and fringe elements of the so-called “deep state” are reactionary, to the extent that they will circumvent the Constitution, People’s will, and the law, in order to progress their faith, ideology, and traditions for secular profit.
The perps (you know who I mean) may not have hatched a detailed plot to favor one candidate and work against the other, but the uniformity of mindsets made it easy to do just that. That said, I’m convinced that Strzok had a plan and Lisa Page and others may have been privy to it. IMO, Strzok. Page, and the other unidentified pro -Hillary FBI types should be questioned in front of a grand jury. Peter Strzok, the Forrest Gump of the FBI, is a keystone witness. The truth is out there. Will Jeff Sessions grow the spine to go after it? Well, we can dream can’t we?
When people act as if they can get away with something nefarious, it’s generally because everybody else doing whatever it is seems to be getting away with it.
Authority may be, at best, doing an obvious fake frown followed by a wink and a nod.
That’s my guess when somebody in the media does something that is not only dishonest but which takes more planning than a spur of the moment lie.
You don’t need a conspiracy when everybody thinks alike.
Pavlov’s dogs didn’t conspire to salivate. Props to whomever made that observation.
The FBI is like DoD…Republican territory. Even Trump knows this:
One would think RWingers would take some pride in that.
Aside from the fact that 100% of the procedural violations that fell into the “extraordinary” category suggest Right-Wing bias, you may want to consider that there will be another report concerning leaks.
While exploring the single most extraordinary violation of procedure…Comey announcing the reopening of the Clinton case right before the election, which, statistically speaking, likely turned the election…the IG explored the accusation that Comey was motivated by fear that anti-Clinton agents would leak the info.
Giuliani appeared to get classified info. Devin Nunes too. Even Neo points out in the other post:
The idea of a lefty FBI is absurd, contradicted by the IG report, and contradicted by Trump himself. Before the Party of “Lock Her Up / the CP5 are still guilty / knock their heads on the roof” decides to go after FBI agents, you should consider this fact.
Richard wrote, “Pavlov’s dogs didn’t conspire to salivate.”
But, did they follow the pack?
Manju:
Again, you seem to be willfully misunderstanding. As is often the case with you.
No one’s talking about the rank and file. They are actually irrelevant to the decision-making process here. My first sentence in this post begins “There is no question that many of the lead investigators…”
LEAD investigators. Later I write, “But apparently many of the lead investigators in these cases (not just the now-famous Strzok and Page) felt very comfortable casually airing negative opinions about Trump…” LEAD investigators again. And later I refer to them as “big fish.”
That’s what I’m talking about here and elsewhere, and those are the decision-makers, and those are the subject matter of the IG report.
As for the rest, refer back to the links I’ve given you many times.
There is an article out today saying that the Deep State is not a conspiracy so much as it is an organism, one that will instinctively protect itself.
I’ve written here many times about the all-spectrum Gramscian attack against Western bourgeois societies, and how successful it has been.
In that case, as in this, while there may be centers of Leftist power trying to stir up trouble for it’s enemies, there does not necessarily have to be any central leader giving orders from their underground HQ, but rather what has been termed a “conspiracy of shared values,” which can, of course, supplement centrally directed attacks.
A situation in which people who are of the same mindset, who have read the same articles, gone to the same group of schools–and been indoctrinated there, absorbed the same leftist ideology, world-view, and attitudes, who travel and socialize in the same inward looking circles, and get their news from the same selected news outlets, each work as an independent agent against the enemies of the Left within their own spheres of influence.
They need no specific marching orders, they all generally, instinctively, know what to do.
I think that Manju does a real public service in demonstrating how the Left perceives the world; as Scott Adams says, we are watching different movies.
And then Neo gives us all the answers.
It’s a win-win situation!
Here is Kurt Schlichter stating the obvious with a bit more brimstone than McCarthy lobs:
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/06/18/the-ig-report-was-a-whitewash-and-devastating-all-at-once-n2491691
“Let’s try a hypothetical. You are on a jury. My client is a black man claiming racial discrimination by his company. I present you with texts from key leaders in the company — who are still employed in high positions at the company — discussing how they hate black people. I demonstrate that at every single opportunity, the company made choices that hurt my client, just like at every opportunity the FBI and DOJ made choices to help Hillary the Harpy. Then, I show the company fired my client with no evidence of his wrongdoing, just like the FBI exonerated Stumbles O’Drunky with tons of evidence of her wrongdoing. Do you think I presented “no evidence?”
You, as a juror, have a choice — was my client discriminated against?
I, as his lawyer, also have a choice — Ferrari or Lamborghini?
The IG report sidestepped the most critical point, the one that is resulting in the American people losing their last remaining fragments of faith in our system, the fact that there are demonstrably two sets of rules, that there are two brands of justice in America.”
“Rose tints my world keeps me safe from my troubles and pain”… – Rocky Horror Picture Show
Where does Trump get these guys–Comey, Rosenstein, Sessions, Wray?
Can we really trust that any of these guys is telling us citizens “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about any of these matters?
I think not.
Who is recommending these Deep State operatives? How could so savvy a guy as Trump be so mistaken in his choices of key personnel?
Impeccably dressed and manicured Wray was a huge disappointment, as he professed to see nothing essentially wrong with an FBI that I see as pretty much discredited in the eyes of probably a majority of the American public.
Wray sees a little bit of dirt that just needs to be flicked off the facade, I see a building about to collapse, and a reputation pretty thoroughly destroyed.
Same thing for the supposedly incorruptible Horowitz of the “no bias that effected outcomes” mantra.
Almost 600 pages of damning evidence on every page–and who knows what even more damning and explosive evidence was left out–a top echelon at DOJ and the FBI that hated Trump and despised his supporters and those who voted for him, said so, and vowed to “stop” President Trump.
Horowitz says “well, their might have been some bias, but there was no actual proof that it effected outcomes” when that bias, that hatred, infected every aspect of how the DOJ and FBI and their top officials treated Hillary and her associates, and how those same institutions and officials treated Trump and his associates, and their respective actions; Hillary got a pass, while Trump got hammered.
Horowitz and Wray should star in a new version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” fawning over the naked Emperor and telling him–over and over–just how magnificent his new clothes are.
It seems to me that somewhere in the Bible some government official rhetorically asked, “what is truth?”
Neither Wray nor Horowitz really wants to find it.
Snow on Pine Says:
June 18th, 2018 at 10:33 am
Where does Trump get these guys–Comey, Rosenstein, Sessions, Wray?
* * *
Remember that Andrew McCarthy — no friend of the Democrats or the Left — has only recently, and very reluctantly, been led to the conclusion that many of his good friends and long-time colleagues are NOT the upstanding ethical un-partisan-in-their-work registered-Republican paragons of virtue that he believed them to be.
Why should President Trump be any more knowledgeable or prescient than his advisers, who thought the same thing (and perhaps still do…)?
Some people like me already knew decades ago that evil ran deep in District of Columbia. Of course, almost nobody wanted to believe it, and it was easier to ignore the accurate revelations. If they didn’t ignore it, they would have to risk dying by going against the Deep State. We can’t have that now, can we.
Americans would rather stay alive and watch football, than go against the True Powers of the status quo and the powers that are. There’s the modern Land of the Brave right there.
ymarsakar Says:
June 18th, 2018 at 5:05 pm
Some people like me already knew decades ago that evil ran deep in District of Columbia.
* * *
Evil and other things…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymeads/2018/06/17/not-a-surprise-dc-has-more-psychopaths-per-capita-than-anywhere-else-in-the-united-states-n2491666
It’s getting like a jihad against conservatives.
I also call back to the ‘leaderless cells’ model that the militias were accused of back in the time when the MSM was breathless about the threat they posed. No need for a central controlling authority.