The FBI is charged with acting under strict legal restrictions and court orders. Spying is not a term traditionally associated with those activities.

But it also misses the point Barr appears to be making. The IC does spy; that’s what they do. Barr may have been referring less to the FBI and more to the IC’s possible murky involvement.

This seems to be validated by Barr’s second haymaker in as many weeks: his appointment of a surrogate investigator, U.S. Attorney John Durham. Why would the attorney general add a third investigation to those under way by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber? Because those investigations are focused on the FBI. Durham’s assignment is not similarly constrained; his marching orders appear broader.

Through Durham, Barr can start dusting for fingerprints across the government, not just the FBI. The squirming has begun.
…
IC leaders aren’t used to being held to account by the Justice Department, and their oversight by Congress generally is mild. Theirs is a comfortable world, obfuscated and kept mysterious by the liberal use of their classified-information shield. The demonization of Attorney General Barr has begun — a sign that he is probably on the right track. And the IC leaders are on notice.

Who’s going to waste their time defending themselves from charges made by bozos in the media.

When the FBI interviews them and asks them the relevant questions, or DOJ brings charges, etc…get back to me.

Key phrase (from a Papadopolous tweet): “Italy… is giving up Brennan.”

Because he’s a lousy dresser? Well we shall see….

(…with some “interesting” responses by Lynch when queried about the “FBI or DOJ…ever investigat[ing] the Trump campaign for political purposes”….
“Moi?” she said—surprisingly!)

Hey, maybe it’s time to dust off Susan Rice’s quaint memo to self….

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/barr-will-expose-truth-in-brennan-comey-blame-game-former-federal-prosecutor-says
https://www.wnd.com/2019/05/email-comey-blamed-brennan-for-promoting-debunked-dossier/
https://pjmedia.com/video/gowdy-emails-between-brennan-and-comey-show-one-of-them-demanding-that-dossier-be-put-in-intel-assessment/

A matter of extreme partisan denial?
A matter of parallel universes?
A matter of “[a word] means just what I choose it to mean”?

(“…under oath.” — Well, one just might get one’s wish….)

File under:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—–neither more nor less.
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—–that’s all.”

Why wouldn’t Comey, Brennan and Clapper try to defend themselves in this particular way? (Clearly, it’s Instant Exoneration! Clever and elegant!!)….

Defend themselves from what? The FBI hasn’t even opened a criminal case. Not even Barr is making this charge, afaik. Trump’s FBI director sees nothing wrong. Even noted Leftist Jeff Sessions didn’t see a problem.

But McCarthy’s got the smoking gun. FISA apps need to be verified. Yet Comey clearly states that the dossier wasn’t. On top of that the FISA app says it was.

It’s so clear cut. One wonders why no FBI agent has asked Comey or Brennan about it under oath.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/05/18/spy_vs_spy_euphemism_at_the_fbi.html

“On Thursday, CNN host John Berman asked former FBI general counsel James Baker: “Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign as the attorney general suggested?” Baker didn’t initially say no, but rather objected that the word “spy” has negative connotations.

Baker then seemed to switch the question from whether spying occurred to its intent, saying: “There was no intention by myself or anybody else I’m aware of to intrude or do activities with respect to the campaign.” Then he continued his sentence with a clause that significantly modified even that claim. There was no intrusion of the Trump campaign, he said, done “in order to gather political intelligence to find out what the political strategies were.” The FBI was only interested in what the campaign was up to regarding Russia.

There’s a very big difference between saying “I didn’t spy” and saying “I didn’t spy for inappropriate reasons.” The former is a denial, the latter is all but an admission. Baker asserted there was no spying done to gather information on Trump’s campaign strategies. Which could very well mean there was spying, just not any for the narrow reason given.”

At least he ought to be up to his eyeballs….

(But, heh, for some peculiar reason the MSM doesn’t seem to be all that interested in these particular conflicts of interest…. Yep, a real head-scratcher….)