Scarborough: Obama's FBI had spies inside the Trump campaign

This is not a "debunked conspiracy theory." It is not "Russian misinformation." It is not a bunch of lies propagated by the White House to save Donald Trump from impeachment. It is not the manufactured Fake News based on information obtained by a "source close to the matter."(*)

No, this is the conclusion reached by Inspector General Michael Horowitz and it is reported by Rowan Scarborough, investigative reporter for the Washington Times.

The report discloses that the FBI dispatched against Trump allies multiple unnamed FBI informants known as confidential human sources (CHS). The most publicized was Stefan Halper, a longtime Washington national security figure and Cambridge University professor. He ingratiated himself to George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, while also attempting to engage with a senior Trump campaign official in New York.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s Dec. 9 report says that rather than hearing incriminating statements, Mr. Halper (whom he did not identify) recorded conversations that could be seen as exculpatory.

Mr. Horowitz rapped the FBI for not including them in four sworn affidavits agents presented to federal judges to authorize Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) electronic and physical spying on Mr. Page. ...

Mr. Horowitz listed that FBI decision as one of 17 glaring omissions or inaccuracies that misled the FISA judges who signed four surveillance warrants on Mr. Page.

“None of these inaccuracies and omissions were brought to the attention of OI before the last FISA application was filed in June 2017,” the IG said. “Consequently, these failures were repeated in all three renewal applications.”

Our once-honest news media is very busy trying to convince you that Horowitz didn't find evidence of political bias in the launch or continuation of Crossfire Hurricane, the clandestine investigation of the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. Despite the fact that Horowitz noted at least 17 errors or glowing omissions of evidence during the investigation, the media would have you believe that all 17 incidents of oopsie went in favor of the FBI and went against a finding of innocence is... well... just bad luck.

A coin flip coming up tails twice is bad luck. A coin flip going against you 17 straight times has odds of 131,072 to 1.

Paul Sperry at RealClearPolitics.com notes that Horowitz has a well-developed pattern of pulling knockout punches. He's a good bureaucrat and just does what bureaucrats do. But even a history like that can't explain what has happened here.

On October 1, 2019, this blog told you that the current push to impeach the President of the United States is intended to deflect attention away from the Horowitz report. That blog post came more than two months before the Horowitz report was even published on December 9, 2019. I wrote about it again here, and then again right here.

Scarborough's report also confirms what we already knew about where the Horowitz findings are going.

Attorney General William Barr says the FBI started the investigation on flimsy grounds. He has tapped John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to conduct an inquiry into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane.... Mr. Durham has been looking into Mr. Mifsud and, according to a defense attorney court filing in a criminal case, his office took possession of two cellphones used by the Maltese professor.

Mr. Mifsud is a shadowy figure mentioned throughout the Mueller report. Papadopoulos writes that he believes Mifsud is/was a western intelligence operative; CIA, DIA or FBI CounterIntel. Whoever he is, court records show that Durham has physical evidence on his involvement and was willing to go to Europe to get it.

This blog is not exactly a lone voice in the wilderness, either. For the last two years, Sharyl Atkisson, Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, John Solomon and Paul Sperry have all been reporting on the spying that went on in 2016. But since those are conservatives, their work has never been taken seriously.

Read this though, from someone with a very different perspective on President Trump:

Imagine if a similar situation had taken place in January of 2009, involving president-elect Barack Obama. Picture a meeting between Obama and the heads of the CIA, NSA, and FBI, along with the DIA, in which the newly-elected president is presented with a report complied by, say, Judicial Watch, accusing him of links to al-Qaeda. Imagine further that they tell Obama they are presenting him with this information to make him aware of a blackmail threat, and to reassure him they won’t give news agencies a “hook” to publish the news.

Now imagine if that news came out on Fox days later. Imagine further that within a year, one of the four officials became a paid Fox contributor. Democrats would lose their minds in this set of circumstances.

The country mostly did not lose its mind, however, because the episode did not involve a traditionally presidential figure like Obama, nor was it understood to have been directed at the institution of “the White House” in the abstract.

Instead, it was a story about an infamously corrupt individual, Donald Trump, a pussy-grabbing scammer who bragged about using bankruptcy to escape debt and publicly praised Vladimir Putin. Audiences believed the allegations against this person and saw the intelligence/counterintelligence community as acting patriotically, doing their best to keep us informed about a still-breaking investigation of a rogue president.

That's from Matt Taibbi, a senior editor at left wing icon Rolling Stone, writing at his independent site on Substack.com. His is one of the honest liberal voices that people should be listening to instead of parroting the formerly honest mainstream news media. Taibbi et al are very smart people and they are not conservatives.

There were FBI spies inside the Trump campaign. They lied to federal judges to gain access to Trump campaign officials. They repeated those lies in sworn statements even after they knew the truth. They manufactured and altered evidence. And their actions were sanctioned at the highest levels of the Department of Justice.

Anyone who believes Barack Obama didn't know what was happening is a fool.

Who believes that President Obama didn't know what his FBI was doing?

The FBI used evidence it knew was questionable to launch and then continue a clandestine investigation into a candidate for President of the United States. They obtained warrants through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts--venues that were created to allow U.S. counterintelligence officials monitor suspected terrorists--to tap the telephones of people who worked for the Donald Trump Campaign. Even when information they developed plainly told them that there was nothing there, they continued to eavesdrop and leak, eavesdrop and leak some more, and so forth and so on until Robert J. Mueller took over in spring 2017. And all this time, then Attorney General Loretta Lynch didn't know about it?

Moreover, what did President Barack Obama know about this unprecedented and potentially explosive investigation into the affairs of Donald Trump? There were lurid, salacious rumors about videotaped nudity, bizarre sex acts that even I blush about. Obama heard about none of this? After all, Obama made his first splash onto the national political stage in part because his opponent in the Illinois U.S. Senate seat withdrew from the race. His opponent bailed out because a media investigation revealed...  allegations of lurid, salacious rumors about videotaped nudity and bizarre sex acts. Who put the Chicago Tribune and WLS-TV onto the scent of a Republican sex scandal?

And whose Department of Justice used sketchy evidence to launch a similarly sex-tinged deep dive into President Trump's campaign?

Obama didn't use the IRS to harass his political opponents, did he? Well...

Strangely enough, the IRS did target organs of the opposition party during the last administration, but the episode has largely faded from public memory without resolution. May 10 marks the fifth anniversary of the revelation that President Obama’s IRS targeted conservative groups for more than two years prior to the 2012 presidential election.

While some of the faces at the IRS have changed, the law that enabled their misuse of power has not. Congress’s failure to address the problem leaves the U.S. democratic process vulnerable to further abuses.

Lois Lerner, the career official at the center of the IRS scandal, retired on full pension after invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before Congress. John Koskinen, appointed IRS commissioner by Mr. Obama to lead the agency “in difficult times,” served his full term, spending the better part of four years stonewalling congressional requests for information. On his watch, the IRS destroyed evidence subject to subpoena.

And his State Department wouldn't run interference on a former Secretary of State's embarrassing run-in with Congress over tens of thousands of compromised Top Secret emails, would it? Umm...

The development on Capitol Hill came the same day the Associated Press reported the existence of a personal email server traced back to the Chappaqua, New York, home of Clinton. The unusual practice of a cabinet-level official running her own email server would have given Clinton – who is expected to run for president in the 2016 campaign – significant control over limiting access to her message archives.

The practice would also complicate the State Department’s legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests. The department would be in the position of accepting Clinton’s assurances she was surrendering everything required that was in her control.

Congress said it learned last summer about Clinton’s use of a private email account to conduct official State Department business during its investigation of the Benghazi attacks on a US mission in which four Americans died.

“It doesn’t matter if the server was in Foggy Bottom, Chappaqua or Bora Bora,” the House speaker, John Boehner, said. “The Benghazi select committee needs to see all of these emails, because the American people deserve all of the facts.”

"I think Michael Horowitz was surprised to learn... and I cannot believe that there is an investigation that would take you inside a presidential campaign and four people who were targeted within that campaign and that doesn't require some kind of supervisory review and initiation beyond simply the inner-reaches of the FBI?"

Too bad you can't impeach a former President. If only to change his 'honorific' from 'Former President' to 'Disgraced ex-President' Barack Hussein Obama.

In investigations under way at DOJ, an ominous drumbeat draws ever closer

This is not a "Fox News conspiracy theory." This has not been "already debunked." It is as real as Robert Mueller's collusion investigation but it is unlike that quixotic probe in two very ominous ways:

1. It has a near 100% chance of showing demonstrable collusion by federal officials with foreign governments, and
2. It can result in actual indictments of yuuge names.

That link above takes you to a Politico article. Politico has been the tip of the Democrats' media spear since November 2016. That "newsroom" is about as unbiased as MSNBC. The article was originally (and perhaps blindly) put together to provide cover for Congressional Democrats' pumping up expectations of the special counsel's report.

Again, this is no wild right wing conspiracy theory.

The drumbeat started sounding way before President Donald Trump had a cordial, totally innocent telephone conversation with newly-elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last summer. 

Politico shows that the investigations started in 2018. Other news sources show that the release of Horowitz's report has been delayed more than once, meaning that it has resulted in a farther-reaching probe with lots of information that will be news to John O Public.

Other news sources show that as Horowitz's probe draws to its close, a second and seemingly oblique probe by John Durham is expanding. Durham is adding investigators and widening the scope of his investigation.

It could be related to the length of time it is taking Inspector General Michael Horowitz to deliver his more limited report that has been repeatedly promised for some months now. Previously, Horowitz was criticized for pulling his punches on the Hillary Clinton investigation. This will not be so easy now with Barr and Durham going over the same material. Horowitz is not able to interview those no longer working for the government--most of the potential miscreants having slipped away--but Barr and Durham have no such restriction. They can follow leads anywhere.

Recently that has taken them to Italy to speak with intelligence officials. They have also apparently spoken with their peers in Australia and the UK. Did something come of that? It would be strange if it didn't, especially now that we have learned that Durham's mission has expanded, "adding agents and resources.".

This indeed should strike fear in the hearts of the Democrats. The Department of Justice holds the whip hand. They can indict people. Yes, the Democratic Congress can impeach. And no wonder they are trying their best to do that now. They are riding high--or some of them may think they are--because of polls and the nonstop outrage of the media.

But most of the public doesn't know the full story or anything close. ...

Last week in this space, I argued that the Democrats' seizure of Trump's innocent phone call with President Zelensky is a panicked attempt to get in front of Horowitz's findings and paint his investigation as a partisan response to the fake, unauthorized "impeachment inquiry."

“He is not naive,” says [former U.S. Attorney Stephen] Robinson. “He understands the political implications of the work that he’s been asked to do and the potential impact it could have. He’s not going to wilt under that.”

It's not hard to predict how the increasingly panicked Democrats and their media sycophants will react when John Durham impanels a grand jury and starts indicting a few big names like Robert Mueller, James Comey, John Brenner and James Clapper. All of these people left large fingerprints all over an attempt to frame and impeach an honestly elected President of the United States and broke the law and destroyed the trust of the American people.

They never thought this would happen. They fully expected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016. She would have quickly moved to bury the Fusion GPS affair, the Steele Dossier and any evidence of collusion to get dirt on then candidate Trump. We would never have heard about Joe Biden's blatant attempt to extort Ukrainian officials to end an investigation into his son's dealings with a corrupt natural gas company because no video of him bragging about his extortion.

In fact, it would come as no surprise if Mrs. Clinton decides to jump into the 2020 Democrat primary and immediately start whining about a partisan witch hunt against her.

The drum is beating, and it's only going to get louder as the truth finally gets closer.

Democrats' purely partisan impeachment push is designed to deflect impact of the Horowitz Report

The Horowitz Report? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a Horowitz Report?

Given the lightspeed pace of the news cycle these days, the fact that you may not have heard about an investigation conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz (or forgot about it) is totally understandable. I forgot about it.

Last month, IG Horowitz notified DOJ and Congress that he has concluded his probe into FBI spying in the 2016 election and is finalizing his report:

Horowitz's team examined the FISA application and three renewals beginning in October 2016 to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The applications relied on the unverified dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS and funded by Democrats.

Republicans have alleged the FBI and the Justice Department misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the dossier's Democratic benefactors, which included Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and its author's anti-Trump bias were left out of the FISA applications, and they have demanded accountability. Democrats countered that the FBI acted appropriately, saying the Justice Department and the FBI met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis for probable cause.

Meanwhile, Barr's "investigation into the investigators" is underway, and the attorney general has said he is working very closely with Horowitz. The inspector general can recommend prosecutions, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr tasked to lead the review of the origins of the Russia investigation, has the ability to convene a grand jury and subpoena people outside the government.

This is a big deal, and it shows why Democrats are in such a hurry to wrap up their partisan witch hunt and impeach Donald Trump. DOJ already knows what the report will say, and the Attorney General is already working on collecting evidence to present before Mr. Durham's grand jury:

Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

Barr’s personal involvement is likely to stoke further criticism from Democrats pursuing impeachment that he is helping the Trump administration use executive branch powers to augment investigations aimed primarily at the president’s adversaries.

But the high-level Justice Department focus on intelligence operatives’ conduct is likely to cheer Trump and other conservatives for whom “investigate the investigators” has become a rallying cry. Barr has voiced his own concerns, telling lawmakers in April that he believed “spying did occur” when it came to the U.S. investigation of the Trump campaign.

The direct involvement of the nation’s top law enforcement official shows the priority Barr places on the investigation being conducted by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who has been assigned the sensitive task of reviewing U.S. intelligence work surrounding the 2016 election and its aftermath.

Democrats and the media are trying to paint the release of the upcoming Horowitz report (yes, another report), Barr's overseas meetings and the inevitable grand jury probes as a panicked defense against impeachment by the Trump Administration.

It is nothing of the kind, and it is absolutely not manufactured in response to the current impeachment inquiry. IG Horowitz launched his probe more than a year ago in 2018. Overshadowed in the media by the Mueller collusion dud, the Horowitz report was supposed to have been released months ago:

The president and other critics of the Russia investigation have long maintained that the bureau inappropriately “spied” on the Trump campaign using unverified information provided by Steele. The FBI’s decision to seek a surveillance warrant against Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page—a warrant they applied for and obtained after Page had already left the campaign—is the chief focus of the probe by Horowitz, a Harvard-educated former federal prosecutor who has held his post since 2012.

Attorney General Bill Barr poured gasoline on those complaints last week, telling lawmakers that he believes “spying did occur” on the campaign in 2016. He also said that Horowitz’s report “will be complete in probably May or June, I am told,” and confirmed that he is conducting his own review, parallel to the inspector general, of the FBI’s conduct in 2016.

Democrats and the media would have you believe that Barr's work in the last few weeks is in response to the Ukraine affair. The reverse is true: The Ukraine affair is a preemptive strike against what Democrats rightly believe will be a very ugly account of their spying on the 2016 Trump campaign.

But wait, there's more. We'll examine what pulling up the Ukrainian floorboards revealed a bit later...