Barr needs to put down the bagpipes and pick up his .45 sidearm, and start acting like a sheriff.

December 10, 2019
AG Barr Blasts Media and Deep Staters — and Criticizes Horowitz — in Interview
This was an amazing statement from Barr.
…

Horowitz was critical of the FBI for their practices in using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but he concluded that the investigation itself was launched properly, without evidence of political bias.

“It’s hard to look at this stuff and not think that it was a gross abuse,” Barr said during a discussion Tuesday at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council forum in Washington. He referred to the investigation as a whole as a “travesty.”

“Where I disagree with Mike, I just think this was very flimsy,” he said about the basis for the investigation. The FBI cited comments by Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos to an Australian official as sparking concerns about the campaign’s possible involvement with Russia. Barr dismissed this as “a comment made by a 28-year-old volunteer on a campaign in a bar.”

He also said, in an earlier interview with NBC, that he suspected the entire fake investigation was launched “in bad faith.”

“I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press,” Barr said. “I think there were gross abuses …and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.”
“I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith.”

In the Wall Street Journal interview, Barr also emphasized that Horowitz did not exonerate the Deep State at all; he merely found no documentary or testimonial evidence of an admission of bad faith or political bias. In other words, while the circumstances scream bad faith, no one admitted it in an interview and no one was foolish enough to write an email saying “We are mounting this investigation for purely political reasons, YOLO!”

Barr notes that that’s all the IG can do — he can’t “draw conclusions,” as Barr and Durham can, but can only report the verified facts he discovered.

And if — without the fear of prosecution, and some taking deals to turn on the higher-ups — none of the conspirators straight-up admitted the conspiracy to Horowitz, Horowitz was required to say “No evidence found.”

But Barr emphasized: Barr or Durham are not so limited.

Do David French, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, and the rest of the gang finally start treating claims of Dan Jones, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, Adam Schiff and John Brennan with some skepticism, given their track history of remorseless lies?

And if they don’t begin to offer the most minimal level of skepticism towards the claims made by proven liars — what conclusions can we begin to draw about this group?” – Ace (h/t Art Deco)

Maybe not in the opening (see Turley’s Titanic analogy), but certainly in the subsequent investigation. Like, about 1 nanosecond after the permission to proceed was given. Kind of like the Big Bang.

Everyone but the “cruise ship conservatives” (A.D.) knew where the ship was headed from the beginning.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/12/horowitzs-findings-belie-his-conclusion-of-no-political-motivation.php

As Sen. Lindsey Graham said today [12/09], whatever one concludes about whether the Justice Department had sufficient grounds to go to the FISA court initially, it’s clear that the DOJ acted dishonestly in failing thereafter to apprise that court of the problems it discovered with the Steele report. Graham said he considers this failure to be a crime.

Horowitz did not find that politics motivated the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. But given the large number of improper acts (and failures to act) that occurred thereafter, many of them egregious, and given the words of some of those who committed them — e.g. “Viva la Resistance!” — it seems clear that politics motivated the way the investigation proceeded. And if that’s true, it’s reasonable to believe that politics were involved from the inception.

Absolutely. From the very depths of her private, state-of-the-art, sweltering, smoked-up sweat lodge.

The firmly-held belief (backed up by a non-stop avalanche of demonization) has always been “Anyone is better than Trump”; and so it only makes sense that the Democrats have firmly decided to give the voters…”Anyone”.

With great fanfare, excitement and enthusiasm….

At least initially.

Because now that they’ve taken a step back (as it were), they’ve discovered that more than a few (read practically “all”) of these “Anyones” are pretty pathetic (though each in their own inimitable way)—no, make that execrable—no matter how you cut it.

So that while “Anyone is better than Trump” is still the official company credo (along with such boilerplate as “supporters of the person in the street” and “supporters of human rights” and “supporters of justice” and “American Psychos”, sorry “Patriots”), they are desperate to find a candidate that will attract more than mere puzzlement, discontented grumbling or shrieks of laughter (or agony).

It’s not coming easy….

…Hence impeachment—that all-purpose tool for all seasons and needs.

Hence any possible lifeline that their necessarily selective interpretation of Horowitz’s report might offer.

(While Hillary checks her looking glass with ever increasing frequency…and preens…and dreams….)

She apparently believes that voters are stupid or that, in the age of “Orangeman bad,” Democrat voters will be willing to just ignore such a major lie, and indicator of untrustworthiness.

See https://pjmedia.com/election/warren-denies-receiving-any-benefit-as-a-result-of-native-american-lie/

https://youtu.be/E-RVW1aC6_U

What’s interesting is what the Democratic electorate finds appealing.

Sleepy Joe is toast if the impeachment process reaches the senate. In the unlikely event he survives Trump’s impeachment trial, he may spontaneously self-destruct in any of a number of other ways, from past gaffes to new gaffes to sudden ocular bleeding; he’s egg-like in his fragility and I doubt the progs will choose him.

I think Bernie will ultimately come up short as well. A significant portion of Bernie’s base resents him for giving in to and *endorsing* Hillary after the bought-and-paid-for superdelegates knifed him in the back in 2016. He rolled over for Hillary. He’s old and weak.

Plus, neither of these old white men are intersectional enough.

Mayor Pete gets one intersectional brownie button for being funny. But apparently the blacks hate him. Regardless, Bootie-gig is toast as soon as he kisses his husband in public. I expect the other top-tier dem candidates to start making appearances with their spouses to precipitate his downfall.

Lieawatha is the most intersectional of the top-tier candidates still standing. Her Medicare-for-all plan is a PR disaster, not going to be easy to film-flam her way out of that one; but she *did* get past the cultural appropriation hurdle (thus far). Trump did his best to make of her a laughing stock and she willed herself past the mockery to become a legitimate contender (thus far). I give her credit for moxy and I believe she’s the smartest of the bunch.

Then there’s Hillary. She’s a fucking bottle of ipecac. The prog movement will be at death’s door before they consider imbibing that shit again. But a man can dream…

Trump humiliating Hillary back in 2016 was super funny. A second win over her would be even funnier.

They’d get 45% of the ballots if they nominated a dead dog in the road. What’s interesting is what the Democratic electorate finds appealing. Felonia von Pantsuit still polls quite well. Among the actually competing candidates, you have Joseph Biden, a man who has never held an executive position, a man whose professional history before going into politics consisted of 4 years as an associate in a suburban law firm, a man with intellectual deficits at least as pronounced as Dan Quayle’s, a man with a history of comically blatant and self-aggrandizing lying (which included passing of Neil Kinnock’s family history as his own), a man whose paternal governance produced a train-wreck like Hunter. That he’s suffering the cognitive decline you often see in 77 year old men leaves them unperturbed. Your other choices include another biographical fabulist w/o executive experience whose signature is advocacy of state appropriation of ever greater shares of the country’s productive capacity and a mediocre business-as-usual mayor who has two other features (1) mastery of what one wag called ‘Harvard bull$hit” and (2) a manifest disinclination and incapacity to maintain a normal domestic life (which Democratic voters find appealing). Their best candidate is a 78 year old not-really-lapsed Trotskyist (who, at least, could run a municipal government capably and who, it’s a reasonable wager, is too old-left to have much affection for identity politics).

While we’re at it, wouldn’t it be sweet to carve up National Review‘s endowment among philanthropic bodies which are actually in the business of promoting starboard thought and policy? (Which don’t include The American Conservative, btw). Had quite enough of cruise-ship conservatives.