Comey and Mueller

Back in 2014, per the NYT defined "spying" as being "subjected to surveillance by the federal government."

What caused this sudden change?

 

It's only warantless domestic spying when Republicans do it.

When Obama did it, it's merely the utilization of national security letters to avoid court oversight of surreptitious domestic electronic surveillance of the communications of private US citizens.

 

Keep it coming Joe Fan. Lots of good information there.

 

If you have been reading along or otherwise following this story, you know that the Congress has been releasing transcripts of different witnesses lately, roughly a year after their testimony.

The James Baker transcript is out now. Baker was one of the top lawyers at the FBI and a close confidante of James Comey. He resigned back in May 2018, on the same day as controversial FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

The Baker trancript indicates there were many more FISA applications on the Trump people than just for Carter Page and (we assume) Michael Flynn. In fact, it looks like the anti-Trump group at the FBI/DOJ made 17 FISA applications.

You may also recall that the FISA judge at that time was Judge Rudy Contreras who was personal friends with Peter Strzok. It looks like Judge Contreras was slinging out whatever FISA application his friend Strzok put under his nose. Which is probably why Contreras was forced to recuse himself once Mueller took over in the Flynn case.

This is Mark Meadows questioning Baker --

 

Comey said that he doesn’t think electronic surveillance is spying.

He’s correct! Everyone knows that you have to be wearing a black trench coat with a small note pad and pen to be classified as “Spying.”

 

Here is an article about what the price might be for those who spied --

"Actions by Justice Department officials in spying on a Donald Trump campaign adviser in 2016 could be a crime or merely an administrative offense, legal experts say.

Crimes could include perjury or misleading a court, they say, while disciplinary action for an administrative offense could mean being fired or losing a law license.

Testifying last week before two separate congressional panels, Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General report about the surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page will be released in May or June.

Barr also indicated that he planned a further review of government “spying” on the Trump campaign.

What’s known is that the Obama administration’s Justice Department obtained a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to conduct electronic surveillance on Page in October 2016.

The inspector general’s review is looking at whether Justice Department or FBI officials did anything improper in obtaining the warrant approved by a federal judge.

“Before looking at the legality, the department should examine the process behind getting a FISA warrant against a presidential campaign. That’s something that should be approved by the attorney general first,” John Yoo, a former assistant U.S. attorney general under President George W. Bush, told The Daily Signal.

Domestic spying on political opponents was a big part of what prompted the FISA law in the 1970s after President Richard Nixon’s administration, the goal being to put a check in place...."​

Potential Consequences of Spying on Trump Campaign

 

Sure does sound like a Watergate type of event. If I remember correctly they sent an FBI agent to be a mole within the Trump campaign? Is that any more ethical than recording phone calls or bugging a room? It is the same activity for the same purpose.

 

Media lied, ratings died

 

Wait a HuffPost reporter? I really believe that.

 

Yeah, you know, Huffpost . They are known for having no political agenda whatsoever.

 

Does this mean we finally get the transcript of the Bill/Loretta tarmac conversation?

If not, why not?

 

Because, Democrats....c'mon, man!

 

And those two situations are comparable in what way?

 

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

 

I’m confused on your comparison. One was before being cleared and the other was after being cleared? Don’t get your logic.

 

The media is once again making damn fools of themselves today. They just can't let it go.

 

Hey @LongestHorn! Do we have Trump now?

 

Liberals have conceded they cannot meme
Their answer -- censorship, of course
The same answer they have to political debate

 

What’s this “not exoneration” Mueller is talking about? It’s not his job to exonerate or file charges. He needs to stick with the facts of his investigation only and pass his findings on to the AG.

This TDS make the Dems and even the never trumpers lose their mind.

 

You may recall Mueller was forced to remove politically biased Trump-hater Peter Strzok off his investigative team. This occured after IG Michael Horowitz revealed Strzok's biases and affair with another team member Lisa Page, both of whom were married to other people.

How did Mueller respond?

He embedded FBI analysts in Horowitz' office whose sole purpose was writing summaries of his investigation and reporting his findings back to FBI HQ. It is undisputed that Mueller kept Strzok and his team in the loop even after he was forced to fire Strzok over bias and improper behavior.

As enlightening as Horowitz' different investigations have been, he lacks the authority and ability take anything to a grand jury. IGs can only compel current DOJ employees to talk to investigators. And so while internal reviews of this sort are helpful to the public (us), they are not a real substitute for grand jury subpoenas and full blown FBI investigations, which is what we need in the case of McCabe, Strzok and Page. These folks must be compelled to testify before grand jury. Until they do, we will never get to the bottom of FBI malfeasance in either the Clinton or Trump investigations.

 

After the Mueller report was published, Senator Grassley asks --

"Were our premiere law enforcement and intelligence agencies co-opted by candidate Trump’s political opponents in an attempt to take him down?
Did political bias or unverified claims taint decisions by senior agency officials?"​

The people deserve to know the answers to these questions.

 

With regard to George Papadopoulos who was used as one of the predicates to open this "investigation" in the first place, the Mueller Report revealed they found zero evidence indicating Papadopoulos shared Joseph Mifsud's claim that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails with any other Trump campaign official.

There was nothing to it, from the start.
And they knew it.

And for the purposes of this forum, Papadopoulos is one of the names some posters in here were hanging their hats on. There was never anything there, as they were told at the time.

 

Mueller is not a good guy. His teams over the years have routinely been in trouble with federal judges. There are multiple examples of this besides just what Andrew Weissmann got caught doing in the Enron case.

In this matter, Mueller knew immediately that he had no collusion case. I would argue that he even knew this before he accepted the position. But none of that stopped Mueller from investigating Trump for 15 months, which is abusive and which is consistent with the pattern from Mueller and his teams. And Mueller knew Trump tweeting about Manafort/Cohen had nothing to do with "obstruction" since there was nothing to obstruct.

So why did Mueller keep pursuing the matter?

Mueller also kept teasing "collusion" in various court filings throughout 2018. Some ex-federal-prosecutors have suggested that Mueller's goal with all of this was swaying the 2018 Congressional elections
See https://www.realclearinvestigations...bias_could_carry_through_to_final_report.html

 

Among the records produced during this matter were January 2017 between the James Boys -- Clapper and Comey. The emails revealed how those two "shared a good laugh" at President Trump's expense when he asked them to publicly refute the bogus charges in the Steele dossier published shortly after they privately briefed him on them.

 

In addition, Christopher Steele was a political operative employed by multiple parties. Besides the DNC and Clinton Campaign, he was also employed by a sanctioned Russian oligarch at the same time. And that Russian oligarch had some unsettled business with members of the campaign Steele was smearing. Here, 'sanctioned' means has cover of Putin.
The FISA Court was not informed of any of this

 

Looking at the timing of events it likes you are correct Joe Fan about a purpose of the Mueller investigation. It wrapped after the 2018 elections. I'm sure they thought they might be able to dig up something to get to an impeachment. But affecting the 2018 elections had to be priority 1b.