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Old 06-12-2019, 12:38   #1
tonyz
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The FBI Tragedy: Elites above the Law

As usual, a thorough discussion by VDH asking reasonable questions which require reasonable answers.

The FBI Tragedy: Elites above the Law
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
June 11, 2019 6:30 AM
National Review

After decades in the FBI, the top brass came to believe they could flout the law and pursue their own political agendas.

One of the media and beltway orthodoxies we constantly hear is that just a few bad apples under James Comey at the FBI explain why so many FBI elites have been fired, resigned, reassigned, demoted, or retired — or just left for unexplained reasons. The list is long and includes director James Comey himself, deputy director Andrew McCabe, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, attorney Lisa Page, chief of staff James Rybicki, general counsel James Baker, assistant director for public affairs Mike Kortan, Comey’s special assistant Josh Campbell, executive assistant director James Turgal, assistant director for office of congressional affairs Greg Bower, executive assistant director Michael Steinbach, and executive assistant director John Giacalone. In short, in about every growing scandal of the past two years — FISA, illegal leaking, spying on a presidential candidate, lying under oath, obstructing justice — someone in the FBI is involved.

We are told, however, that the FBI’s culture and institutions are exempt from the widespread wrongdoing at the top. Such caution is a fine and fitting thing, given the FBI’s more than a century of public service. Nonetheless, many of those caught up in the controversies over the Russian-collusion hoax were not recent career appointees. Rather, many came up through the ranks of the FBI. And that raises the question, for example, of where exactly Peter Strzok (22 years in the FBI) learned that he had a right to interfere in a U.S. election to damage a candidate that he opposed.

And why would an Andrew McCabe (over 21 years in the FBI) think he had the duty to formulate an “insurance policy” to take out a presidential candidate? Or why would he even consider overseeing an FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s improper use of emails when his wife had been a recent recipient of Clinton-related PAC money? And why would McCabe contemplate leaking confidential FBI information to the press or even dream of setting up some sort of operation to remove a sitting president under the 25th Amendment? And how did someone like the old FBI vet Peter Strozk ever end up at the center of the entire mess — opening up the snooping on the Trump campaign while hiding that fact and while briefing the candidate on Russian interference in the election, interviewing Michael Flynn, preening as a top FBI investigator for Robert Mueller’s dream team, right-hand man of “Andy” McCabe, convincing Comey to change the wording of his writ in the Clinton-email-scandal investigation, softball coddling of Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, instrumental in the Papadopoulos investigation con — all the while conducting an affair with fellow FBI investigator and attorney Lisa Page and bragging about his assurance that the supposedly odious Trump would be prevented from being elected. If a group of Trump zealots were to call up the FBI tomorrow and allege that a member of Joe Biden’s family has had unethical ties with the Ukrainian or Chinese government, would that gambit “alarm” the FBI enough to prompt an investigation of Biden and his campaign? How many career-professional Peter Strozks are still at the agency?

In sum, why did so many top FBI officials, some with long experience in the FBI, exhibit such bad judgment and display such unethical behavior, characterized by arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and a belief that they were above both the law and the Constitution itself? Were they really just rogue agents, lawyers, and administrators, or are they emblematic of an FBI culture sorely gone wrong?

How and why would James Comey believe that as a private citizen he had the right to leak classified memos of presidential conversations that he had recorded on FBI time and on FBI machines?

Does the FBI inculcate behavior that prompts its officials to repeatedly testify under oath that they either don’t know or can’t remember — in a fashion that would earn an indictment for most similarly interrogated private citizens? Was Strozk’s testimony to the Congress emblematic of a career FBI agent in his full? Was Comey’s? Was McCabe’s?

To answer those questions, perhaps we can turn to an analogous example of special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller. We are always advised something to the effect that the admirable Vietnam War veteran and career DOJ and FBI administrator Bob Mueller has a sterling reputation, and thus we were to assume that his special-counsel investigation would be free from political bias. To suggest otherwise was to be slapped down as a rank demagogue of the worse kind.

But how true were those beltway narratives? Mueller himself had a long checkered prosecutorial and investigative career, involving questionable decisions about the use of FBI informants in Boston, and overseeing absolutely false FBI accusations against an innocent suspect in the sensationalized anthrax case that began shortly after 9/11.

The entire Mueller investigation did not reflect highly either on Mueller or the number of former and current DOJ and FBI personnel he brought on to his team. In a politically charged climate, Mueller foolishly hired an inordinate number of political partisans, some of whom had donated to the Clinton campaign, while others had legally defended the Clinton Foundation or various Clinton and Obama aides. Mueller’s point-man Andrew Weissman was a known Clinton zealot with his own past record of suspect prosecutorial overreach.

Mueller did not initially disclose why FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strozk were taken off his investigative team, and he staggered their departures to suggest that their reassignments were normal rather than a consequence of the couple’s unprofessional personal behavior and their textual record of rank Trump hatred. Mueller’s very appointment was finessed by former FBI director and Mueller friend James Comey and was largely due to the hysteria caused by Comey’s likely felonious leaks of confidential and classified FBI memos — a fact of no interest to Mueller’s soon-to-be-expanded investigation.

During the investigation, Mueller was quite willing to examine peripheral issues such as the scoundrelly behavior of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and the inside lobbying of Paul Manafort for foreign governments. Fine. But Mueller was curiously more discriminating in his non-interest in crimes far closer to the allegations of Russian collusion. That is, he was certainly uninterested about how and when the basis for his entire investigation arose — the unverified and fallacious Steele dossier that had been deliberately seeded among the FBI, CIA, and DOJ to achieve official imprimaturs so it could then be leaked to the press to ruin the campaign, transition, and presidency of Donald Trump.

Mueller’s team also deliberately edited a phone message from Trump counsel John Dowd to Robert Kelner, General Michael Flynn’s lawyer, to make it appear incriminating and possibly unethical or illegal. Only after a federal judge ordered the full release of the transcript did the public learn the extent of Mueller’s selective and misleading cut-and-paste of Dowd’s message.

Mueller’s own explanations about the extent to which he was guided by the precedent of presidential exemption from indictment are at odds with his own prior statements and in conflict with what Attorney General Barr has reported from a meeting with Mueller and others. In those meetings, Mueller assured that he was after the truth and did not regard prior legal opinions about the illegality of indicting a sitting president as relevant to his own investigations. But when he essentially discovered he had no finding of collusion, he then mysteriously retreated to the previously rejected notion that he was powerless to indict Trump on a possible obstruction charge.

Mueller displayed further contortions when he recited a number of alleged Trump wrongdoings but then backed off by concluding that, while such evidence for a variety of different reasons did not justify an indictment of Trump, nonetheless Trump should not be exonerated of obstruction of justice.
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Old 06-12-2019, 12:40   #2
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Elites above the law continued...

Mueller thereby established a new but lunatic precedent in American jurisprudence in which a prosecutor who fails to find sufficient cause to indict a suspect nonetheless releases supposedly incriminating evidence, with a wink that the now-besmirched suspect cannot be exonerated of the alleged crimes. Think what Mueller’s precedent of not-not-guilty would do to the American criminal-justice system, as zealous prosecutors might fish for just enough dirt on a suspect to ruin his reputation, but not find enough for an indictment, thereby exonerating their own prosecutorial failure by defaming a “guilty until proven innocent” suspect.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Mueller’s team knew early on in their investigation that his lead investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had been correct in their belief that there was “no there there” in the charges of collusion — again the raison d’être of their entire investigation.

Yet Mueller’s team continued the investigation, aggregating more than 200 pages of unverified or uncorroborated news accounts, online essays, and testimonies describing all sorts of alleged unethical behavior and infelicities by Trump and his associates, apparently in hopes of compiling their own version of something like the Steele dossier. Mueller sought to publish a compendium of Trump bad behavior that fell below the standard of criminal offense but that would nonetheless provide useful fodder for media sensationalism and congressional partisan efforts to impeach the now supposedly not-not guilty president.

Note again, at no time did Muller ever investigate the Steele dossier that had helped to create his existence as special counsel, much less whether members of the FBI and DOJ had misled a FISA court by hiding critical information about the dossier to obtain wiretaps of American citizens, texts that Mueller himself would then use in his effort to find criminal culpability.

We were told throughout the 22-month investigation that “Bob Mueller does not leak.” But almost on a weekly schedule, left-wing cable news serially announced in formulaic fashion that “the walls were closing in on” and the “noose was tightening around” Trump as another “bombshell” disclosure was anticipated, according to “sources close to the Mueller investigation,” “unnamed sources,” and “sources who chose to remain unidentified.” On one occasion, CNN reporters mysteriously showed up in advance at the home of a Mueller target, to capture on camera the arrival of paramilitary-like arresting officers.

When it is established beyond a doubt that foreign surveillance of and contact with George Papadopoulos was used to entrap a minor Trump aide as a means of providing an ex post facto justification for the earlier illegal FBI and CIA surveillance of the Trump campaign, and when it is shown without doubt that Steele had little if any corroborating evidence for his dirty dossier, Mueller’s reputation unfortunately will be further eroded.

Yet the question is not merely whether a Comey, McCabe, or Mueller is atypical of the FBI. Rather, where in the world, if not from the culture of the FBI, did these elite legal investigators absorb the dangerous idea that FBI lawyers and investigators could flout the law and in such arrogant fashion use their vast powers of the government to pursue their own political agendas? And why was there no internal pushback at a supercilious leadership that demonstrably had gone rogue? Certainly, the vast corpus of the Strzok-Page correspondence does reflect a unprofessional, out-of-control culture at the FBI.

Just imagine: If an agent Peter Strozk interviewed you and overstepped his purview, would you, the aggrieved, then appeal to his boss, Andrew McCabe? And if Andrew McCabe ignored your complaint, would you, the wronged, then seek higher justice from a James Comey, who in turn might rely on a legal opinion from a Lisa Page or a brief from a James Baker? And failing that, might a Robert Mueller as an outside auditor rectify prior FBI misconduct?

Fairly or not, the current FBI tragedy is that an American citizen should be duly worried about his constitutional rights any time he is approached by such senior FBI officials. That is not a slur on the rank and file, but the legacy of the supposed best and brightest of the agency and their distortions of the bureau’s once professional creed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/...tes-above-law/
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Old 06-12-2019, 15:24   #3
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Originally Posted by tonyz View Post
As usual, a thorough discussion by VDH asking reasonable questions which require reasonable answers.

The FBI Tragedy: Elites above the Law
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
June 11, 2019 6:30 AM
National Review

After decades in the FBI, the top brass came to believe they could flout the law and pursue their own political agendas.
J Edgar H started this from the get go..
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Old 06-12-2019, 18:10   #4
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J Edgar H started this from the get go..
I agree. The FBI has had an attitude of being above the law from the beginning and should be abolished. Federal police force...the founders would be so proud.
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Old 06-13-2019, 08:10   #5
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Great article tonyz, thanks for posting.

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Think what Mueller’s precedent of not-not-guilty would do to the American criminal-justice system, as zealous prosecutors might fish for just enough dirt on a suspect to ruin his reputation, but not find enough for an indictment, thereby exonerating their own prosecutorial failure by defaming a “guilty until proven innocent” suspect.
I believe this tactic has been used for decades in the criminal-justice system. How many high level people have been accused of rape (years ago) and lost their position and career? How many low level people in possession of some valuable information in regards to some high level persons indiscretions have been raided by the FBI and found to have hard drives full of child porn?

These two things to my eye seem to be so common and so obviously a variation of what Mueller did. It almost seems that if one is in possession of "evidence", then it must logically follow that they must also be in possession of child porn, as if the two are inextricably linked.
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Old 06-15-2019, 16:56   #6
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Where does the FBI recruit from

Leftist universities and colleges so we should expect more of The Resistance in the government.
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Old 06-15-2019, 19:54   #7
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Great article tonyz, thanks for posting.



I believe this tactic has been used for decades in the criminal-justice system. How many high level people have been accused of rape (years ago) and lost their position and career? How many low level people in possession of some valuable information in regards to some high level persons indiscretions have been raided by the FBI and found to have hard drives full of child porn?

These two things to my eye seem to be so common and so obviously a variation of what Mueller did. It almost seems that if one is in possession of "evidence", then it must logically follow that they must also be in possession of child porn, as if the two are inextricably linked.
Illegals weapons, rape and child porn is a common theme with many FBI stings. One instance that comes to mind is July4Patriot aka Charles Dyer. Dyer was busted by the FBI for possession of stolen M203 Grenade Launcher, he spent at least year in prison while awaiting trial and only to have the charges dismissed. Then he went home to Oklahoma were he was convicted of raping his daughter.

I have no idea whether he was guilty or not, but it all seemed kind of fishy as to how it all went down.

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Leftist universities and colleges so we should expect more of The Resistance in the government.
We’re pretty much screwed for the immediate future. Reality won’t sit in until they run out of other people’s money to appease the zombie hoard.
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Old 06-15-2019, 21:46   #8
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Anybody remember the Oxbridge Communist infiltration in the UK?
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Old 06-16-2019, 21:37   #9
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Anybody remember the Oxbridge Communist infiltration in the UK?
Well... I wasn't there personally when it started but its tremors were felt (and secrets betrayed & lives lost) for decades. And in some cases in MI.6 charged with investigating each other - what a gig, eh?
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Old 06-16-2019, 22:35   #10
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And in some cases in MI.6 charged with investigating each other - what a gig, eh?
Well, the FBI had its own version of that with Robert Hanssen.

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Mueller thereby established a new but lunatic precedent in American jurisprudence in which a prosecutor who fails to find sufficient cause to indict a suspect nonetheless releases supposedly incriminating evidence, with a wink that the now-besmirched suspect cannot be exonerated of the alleged crimes.
Not entirely new. I have long been bothered by the practice of naming individuals as "unindicted co-conspirators" in conspiracy cases. This seems to have the same effect of besmirching one's reputation without giving him or her the opportunity to defend themselves. Of course, I am also bothered by "perp walks" and other tactics by police agencies to besmirch reputations and potentially bias jurors before a suspect has even been indicted.
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Old 02-16-2020, 11:41   #11
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Andrew McCabe

On Andrew McCabe, et al...

Let me see if I’m close...high ranking federal supervisory agent/management is fired for “lack of candor” e.g., lying...

= no charges...

Flynn, Stone, others accused of lying...not only charges...but facing hard time in federal prison.

Durham had better be lining up at least some of these plotters and liars for some criminal charges...or it will appear to all but the most obtuse that some are truly above the law.

Can you imagine if these folks had actually won the 2016 presidential election?
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Old 02-16-2020, 14:34   #12
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The Conservative Tree House has recently posted an interesting expose on FBI actions during early stages of Trump administration.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com...e/#more-183512

The FBI Corruption is Far Worse Than We Currently Imagine – President Trump Authorized His Own Surveillance…
Posted on February 13, 2020 by sundance
NOTE: Article updated 4:00pm to resolve conflict between Exec. Order 13787 / Exec. Order 13775 on DOJ succession and FISA authorities.

Last month the DOJ admitted to the FISA court that two of the four FISA warrants used against Carter Page were fraudulently obtained.

The “DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in [April and June 2017] “if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter]Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.”” (link)

However, what the DOJ did not admit publicly was how the current FBI Chief Legal Counsel, Dana Boente, participated in obtaining the April 2017 warrant. In hindsight this story explains the ongoing issues within the FBI.

The original FISA application was October 21st, 2016. The first FISA renewal was January 12, 2017 (84 days from origination) and prior to the inauguration of President Trump. The second renewal was April 7, 2017 (85 days from prior renewal). The third renewal was on June 29th, 2017 (83 days from prior renewal).

The originating FISA and first renewal were authorized by the Obama administration officials. However, it was the second renewal -now identified as fraudulent- on April 7th 2017, under the Trump administration, when the conniving FBI ran into a problem.

Here’s what happened.

<snip>
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Old 02-16-2020, 15:07   #13
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JUSTICE: The Sense of Entitlement !

The Deep State Partially Exposed by the NON PROSECUTION of the "elites" in Congress, Federal Agencies, Law Firms, Think Tanks & insiders with connections to the Deep Staters is so blatant that the ongoing criminal conduct is continuing without any interference from DOJ, DOD, Main Stream Media and propaganda from talk show hosts. The DNC has to find a way to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders from becoming the Democrat nominee, Michael Bloomberg to the rescue because Joe Biden is failing to garner support. The next POTUS will have to be a democrat picked by the Deep State Elites or EQUAL JUSTICE may (should) LOCK THEM UP...It will be very interesting to see who will make a deal to avoid Prison by ratting/testifying against their former associates. It's possible Comey, McCabe, Strock could join Robert Hannsen in the Colorado Super-Max... Brennan & Clapper could end up like Vince Foster, Seth Rich, William Colby, Bernie Epstein...JUST THINKING...
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Old 02-16-2020, 15:19   #14
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The DNC has to find a way to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders from becoming the Democrat nominee, Michael Bloomberg to the rescue because Joe Biden is failing to garner support. The next POTUS will have to be a democrat picked by the Deep State Elites or EQUAL JUSTICE may (should) LOCK THEM UP...

Just saying...
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Old 02-16-2020, 15:37   #15
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On Andrew McCabe, et al...

Let me see if I’m close...high ranking federal supervisory agent/management is fired for “lack of candor” e.g., lying...

= no charges...

Flynn, Stone, others accused of lying...not only charges...but facing hard time in federal prison.

Durham had better be lining up at least some of these plotters and liars for some criminal charges...or it will appear to all but the most obtuse that some are truly above the law.

Can you imagine if these folks had actually won the 2016 presidential election?
The rot is so deep in DC that I honestly doubt that anyone is going to be held accountable. AG Barr doesn't have the stones to amputate the diseased limbs, so it will continue to fester under the surface waiting for the right environment to reappear. Barr may not even have the man power to do what should be done. At this point Barr is concerned with COG, and he'll sacrifice Flynn and Stone to keep the .GOV ship afloat.
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