spliffsperlunk":37mg605v said:
I hope the Republicans are just as fair and impartial as the Democrats the MSM and the FBI have been to trump over the last 3 years.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz says that the FBI has been fair and impartial to Trump over the last 3 years,
here's some highlights from Hotowitz's testimony that you guys tried to roboedit your comments initially claiming that the "liberal left-wing media" did not cover the Horowitz testimony, which is utter hogwash:
Horowitz reiterated that he found no testimonial or documentary evidence of political bias or other improper motivation driving the FBI’s decision to open the counterintelligence investigation — dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane” — into the Trump campaign and Russia.
Horowitz also said that it was his conclusion that the investigation was adequately predicated.
Horowitz declined to say specifically that his findings refuted allegations about a “deep state conspiracy” against Trump and his campaign, saying simply that the inquiry found “no bias” in the opening of the investigation.
Horowitz also declined to weigh in on Barr’s disagreement with his findings after the attorney general issued a statement saying the investigation had been launched on the “thinnest” of suspicions. “He’s free to have his opinion. We have our finding,” Horowitz said.
He also said he met with Durham in November to discuss his findings, at which point Durham told Horowitz he believed the FBI would have been justified in opening a “preliminary investigation,” but not a full one. “But … [Durham] said during the meeting that the information from the friendly foreign government was, in his view, sufficient to support the preliminary investigation,” he continued, referring to information received about comments made by former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. He said Durham told him in November that the evidence actually did support a preliminary investigation. "He said during the meeting that the information from the friendly foreign government was in his view sufficient to support the preliminary investigation,” Horowitz said. Durham’s quibble was apparently minor enough, in Horowitz’s mind, that he said he was “surprised” to see Durham release the unusual statement about an ongoing investigation.
And
here's a few gems from I.G. Horowitz's report:
The information “reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security, or both, may have occurred or may be occurring.”
It said key officials, including former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, did not act with political bias. The IG report generally found that agents were justified in launching the investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane, as well as investigations into four Trump associates: Page, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. "[W]e found that each investigation was opened for an authorized purpose and, in light of the low threshold established by department and FBI predication policy, with adequate factual predication. For similar reasons … we concluded that the quantum of information articulated by the FBI to open the individual investigations on Papadopoulos, Page, Flynn, and Manafort in August 2016 was sufficient to satisfy the low threshold established by the Department and the FBI. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations.”
“We found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any confidential human source’s (CHS) within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign.”
“These officials, though, did not become aware of Steele’s election reporting until weeks later, and we therefore determined that Steele’s reports played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening.”
Key figures including agents and sources were actually supportive of Trump. One supervisory special agent (SSA) describes believing a CHS's information because the source was a Trump backer, he was “not worried about [the source] trying to provide information or getting dirty information on Trump.” He said any suggestion this CHS “was directed to damage or investigate the Trump Administration is just absurd.”
Not only was the source a Trump supporter, so too were the agents involved in cultivating him. Here’s a key footnote: We reviewed the text and instant messages sent and received by the Handling Agent, the co-case Handling Agent, and the SSA for this CHS, which reflect their support for Trump in the 2016 elections. On November 9, the day after the election, the SSA contacted another FBI employee via an instant messaging program to discuss some recent CHS reporting regarding the Clinton Foundation and offered that “if you hear talk of a special prosecutor … I will volunteer to work [on] the Clinton Foundation.” The SSA’s November 9, 2016 instant messages also stated that he “was so elated with the election” and compared the election coverage to “watching a Superbowl comeback.” The SSA explained this comment to the OIG by saying that he “fully expected Hillary Clinton to walk away with the election. But as the returns [came] in … it was just energizing to me to see … [because] I didn’t want a criminal to be in the White House.”
Michael Steele himself wasn’t exactly a Trump hater. It said Steele “stated that if anything he was ‘favorably disposed’ toward the Trump family before he began his research because he had visited a Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower and ‘been friendly’ with Ivanka for some years. He described their relationship as ‘personal’ and said that he once gifted a family tartan from Scotland to Ivanka.”
"We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page."
Horowitz said they did not find any records or evidence indicating that Mifsud was an FBI confidential human source or that his conversations with Papadopoulos were part of any FBI operation, and none of the witnesses interviewed had any information to support the allegation.
It has been long-reported that ex-counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok was the FBI official who formally opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in July 2016, but the inspector general report revealed that it was actually his supervisor, Bill Priestap, who ultimately made the decision.
