Jonathan Turley on the Horowitz Report
Turley’s entire piece is well worth reading, but here are some highlighted details:
…[A]nother agency that appears to be the CIA told the FBI that [Carter] Page was actually working for the agency in Russia as an “operational contact” gathering intelligence. The FBI was told this repeatedly, yet it never reported that to the FISA court approving the secret investigation of Page. His claim to have worked with the federal government was widely dismissed. Worse yet, Horowitz found that investigators and the Justice Department concluded there was no probable cause on Page to support its FISA investigation. That is when there was an intervention from the top of the FBI, ordering investigators to look at the Steele dossier funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign instead.
Who told investigators to turn to the dossier? Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired over his conduct in the investigation after earlier internal investigations. Horowitz contradicts the media claim that the dossier was just a small part of the case presented to the FISA court. He finds that it was essential to seeking FISA warrants. Horowitz also finds no sharing of information with FISA judges that undermined the credibility of the dossier or Christopher Steele himself.
The report also said that Steele was viewed as reliable and was used as a source in prior cases, yet Horowitz found no support for that and, in fact, found that the past representations of Steele were flagged as unreliable. His veracity was not the only questionable thing unveiled in the report. Steele relied on a character who, Horowitz determined, had a dubious reputation and may have been under investigation as a possible double agent for Russia. Other facts were also clearly misrepresented.
Perhaps my favorite parts – if “favorite” is the appropriate word – are these two:
The source relied on by Steele was presented as conveying damaging information on Trump. When this source was interviewed, he said he had no direct information and was conveying bar talk…
Finally, Horowitz found that an FBI lawyer doctored an email to hide the fact that Page was working for us and not the Russians.
Bar talk and Orwellian lies. Works for me.
[NOTE: When I looked, the comments I saw to Turley’s article seem dominated by anti-Turley trolls. No surprise there.]
In a Russian bar in the summer of 2016.
His Titanic analogy is really good and easy for people who haven’t followed this to understand.
I have very little doubt that a large proportion of “leftist”/anti-Trump comments on the internet are paid trolls, or at least dispatched, not just “honestly” speaking out on their own.
Note to “Remnant” – This is how the civil and dispassionate dialogue about ideological differences is going. And remember: it’s for this comparitively mild rebuke from a guy who is basically ON THEIR SIDE.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/473387-turley-home-office-inundated-with-threatening-messages-since-impeachment
https://www.foxnews.com/media/andy-mccarthy-brian-kilmeade-jonathan-turley-death-threats-impeachment-inquiry-president-trump
AesopFan: “Before I finished my testimony, my home and office were inundated with threatening messages and demands that I be fired from GW.”
I suspect that IG Horowitz was trying to thread the needle to avoid a similar reaction. The hard core leftists are scum who will stop at nothing to get their way. The Founders knew there were power hungry people around, but they didn’t foresee that the U.S. would become a society with some people who are devoid of Christian ethics and filled with rage at the government they bequeathed to us. That a man of objective mind like Turley can be attacked so viciously does not bode well for others standing up to the mob. It shows how courageous Trump really is. With all his faults, he is the man we need at this time.
Essentially the precedent being set by the left is that if you don’t want to ruin your life and the lives of your family members, the lives of anyone you hire to work for you in the capacity of your position, or even who attempts to defend you, don’t run for office as a Republican. Democrats have no plans to ever have to win nationwide elections in which we deplorables have a say, and if by some chance they lose one, they plan to do everything they are doing now to neuter and upend it.
It is plainly evident that if any of the Republican candidates had been nominated in Trump’s place and gone on to win that election against Clinton, the same combination of lawfare and social media fabrication and hysteria would have been employed. I expect that there would have been different details for Cruz, or Rubio, or Jed! or whoever it might have been, but they would have done the same thing and kept ratcheting it up as needed until accomplishing their goal of removing or neutralizing that person. They were not ready for what Trump, a non-politico, was willing stand for and throw back at them; a politician would have long since given way and licked their toes like a chastened puppy. (Yes, including Cruz.)
I don’t care how you feel about Trump. You cannot really be right of center, a moderate, or even left of center with an intact thought process, and defend what is going on. This is the destruction of the Republic that we were warned about. Sorry Remnant, if you’re still lurking, that is pointed directly at you. A lot of frog-boiling went on for a long time, while we could pretend that there was the chance for your precious civil and dispassionate dialog, but after the Clinton election the masks came off. The left is not playing with us, those who won’t embrace their globalism, anymore; they plan to stomp us like ants and then blame us for sticking to their feet afterward.
KyndyllG, you stated the situation exactly.
This stuff is kind of like a, ‘Vote him off the island’ thing; we don’t like him he should never have been here, he is not one of us and what he actually does accomplish is going to be another reason to ‘Vote him off of the island’.
Impeccable logic if the unworthy candidate gets elected and that is what it has come down to after three years, and the Electrical College must have had a power outage due to Climate Change which is a Republican problem.
The investigation was largely based on a May 2016 conversation between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in London. Papadopolous reportedly said he heard that Russia had thousands of emails from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton
Comey’s FBI abused its power and obstructed justice by allow Clinton’s email crimes to go unpunished, and whitewashed her crimes instead of investigating them to prepare for trial. Comey knew he was not going to indict the clearly guilty Clinton, and illegally avoided indicting her.
Russia, China, and Israel probably all have a good number of her poorly secured emails. Trump’s joke was relevant.
Investigating Trump was pre-emptive CYA by the FBI, who expected Clinton to win and forgive any prior coverup. Trump was at rallies leading chants to Lock Her Up. (It’s not too late!)
Who told Papadopolous about the Russians and emails, BEFORE May? I read it was some other FBI connected person. Mifsud?
Horowitz should have recommended criminal investigations.
He should be fired.
The Trump Resistance may be part of a much larger cultural turning point than just animus by the losing party in an election.
I just started The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium By: Martin Gurri. Most who post here would find it interesting.
Gurri: “We are in an open war between publics with passionate and untutored interests and elites who believe they have the right to guide those publics”.
Gurri blogs here: https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/
One of his points is that the elites no longer have a monopoly on information. Attempts to create and enforce a narrative are seen through and mocked.
When you add the explosion of job destroying technology just starting to be widely deployed, acknowledged by Andrew Yang but few others, to the incredible debt at all levels of society and governments, you have a situation where the old arrangements run by the old elites have no answers.
The Trump Resistance may be part of a much larger cultural turning point than just animus by the losing party in an election.
The ‘impeachment process’ is a transparent fraud. (Christine Blasey Ford was another transparent fraud). North of 40% of the public is content with transparent fraud as long as it gets them what they want.
We had an inkling of this 19 years ago during the Florida recount brouhaha when the Republicans took the position that the black-letter rules in force on election day should govern the tabulation of ballots and the Democrats took the position that the only legitimate procedure was the one that gave them what they wanted. Without procedural principles to which competing and contending parties can repair and respect, it’s just force majeure. So far, Republicans have respected the simulacrum of procedural norms as manifested in the legal system, even though they are perfectly aware that manipulation and abuse courtesy the opposition is routine. Lawfare, electoral fraud, media propaganda, harassment by sorosphere LARPers, harassment by the nexus of tech companies and financial services, harassment by corporate HR, harassment by corporate philanthropy, & c. are now mundane fare and permitted by gatekeeper officials (e.g. college deans and Democratic mayors). It’s getting escalatingly difficult to maintain the constitution of liberty, and if the social breakdown arrives, a lot of sombodies are going to be hurt real bad.
I read through the written statement Horowitz just delivered at a Senate hearing.
The semi-obvious: His investigation was only slightly better than perfunctory. I suspect interviews that were conducted was always collegial and rarely very informative. This investigation should have been conducted and finished within several months instead of years.
He basically says that the predication requirements for such an investigation were extremely lax, so none of those lax rules were broken. As in, it never occurred to any of the rule makers that a high threshold should be set for spying on political campaigns. Maybe new rules should be created along those lines.
He does say that the presentations made to the FISC were a mess. So, predication OK, what followed was a disaster (a disaster described in deferential words).
It dawned on me that the actions of the FISC itself are not in Horowitz’s purview (I think?). So we know that the FISA judges were misled with and about the Steele dossier, but …
Did they know who was being spied on? That it was a presidential campaign? What the hell were these judges thinking and doing? Unless they were wildly misled about everything, they need to be held accountable and removed in all likelihood.
Watching the Senate Hearing on the IG Report. Lindsay Graham was on fire in his opening remarks.
OldTexan on December 11, 2019 at 1:36 am said:
This stuff is kind of like a, ‘Vote him off the island’ thing;
* * *
An apropos analogy, on several levels.
IIRC, in the early days of these reality shows, the TV producers actually brought in some survival experts, who taught the “hanging with the gurus” show-bodies how to get by.
However, they were soon removed from the guest lists in favor of ithe nept but beautiful drama divas.
FWIW, I don’t and didn’t watch any of them.
Dick: thanks for the book recommendation.
A sane Democratic party would run a Gabbard/Yang ticket.
In re Art Deco & Roy:
The Kavanaugh hearings with the inane Blasey-Ford testimony were definitely a trailer for the Impeachment Movie, but having called forth Graham “You want power; I hope to God you never get it” 2.0 it looks like the Democrats are having to deal with their own monster.
“Republicans took the position that the black-letter rules in force on election day should govern the tabulation of ballots and the Democrats took the position that the only legitimate procedure was the one that gave them what they wanted. Without procedural principles to which competing and contending parties can repair and respect, it’s just force majeure.” – Art Deco
Indeed.
That’s one of the events that most helped transform me into a political junkie.
Dan “Fake but Accurate” Rather was another.
The most jaw-dropping point about both was that the consequences for blatantly subversive behavior were not only not commensurate with the infractions, but rebounded into positive propaganda in the hands of the Left.
Hillary’s email server was the same thing on steroids.
None of the three was “rewarded” for their behavior with what they originally wanted, but they were rewarded with complacency & approbation.
Thus validating the maxim: What you don’t punish, you get more of.
Dick Illyes: I’m looking at Gurri’s top blog post today, and it is fascinating. Thanks for the link.
https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2019/12/10/2019-the-year-revolt-went-global/