Horowitz: ‘I Think the Activities We Found Here Don’t Vindicate Anybody Who Touched’ the FISA Applications
“We believe this circumstance reflects a failure not just by those who prepared the FISA applications, but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command, including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed.”
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz lashed out at the FBI during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He released his report on the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe and FISA warrants on former Trump adviser Carter Page a few days ago.
Horowitz reiterated his belief that the evidence provided to his team showed the FBI had an “adequate basis” to begin a collusion probe.
Attorney General Bill Barr and US Attorney John Durham, who is conducting his own investigation, disagreed with the findings. Horowitz told the committee that neither man “provided evidence that changed his key findings.”
However, Horowitz tore into the FBI after his investigation found numerous errors by the agency over the authorization and renewals of FISA warrants on Page.
Former FBI Director James Comey complained about the way people smeared the FBI as Horowitz conducted his investigation in an op-ed in The Washington Post after the report came out. He boasted that the agency “fulfilled its mission — protecting the American people and upholding the U.S. Constitution.” He demanded apologies.
Horowitz has some bad news for Comey:
“The activities we found here don’t vindicate anybody who touched this,” Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Wednesday while testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on his report.
From Fox News:
“We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny,” Horowitz said in his opening statement before the committee.
“We believe this circumstance reflects a failure not just by those who prepared the FISA applications, but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command, including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed,” he said.
Horowitz found 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FISA applications:
The report said that Page’s FISA application omitted information that the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that he had been “approved as an ‘operational contact’ for the other agency from 2008 to 2013.”
The Crossfire Hurricane team also left out Page’s “consensually monitored statements to an FBI” confidential human source saying that he “literally never met” Manafort, as well as Papadopoulos’ monitored statement to the FBI “denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like WikiLeaks in the release of emails.”
Horowitz noted that under FBI policy, every FISA application must contain a “full and accurate” presentation of the facts and that agents must ensure that all factual statements in FISA applications are “scrupulously accurate.”
“These are the standards for all FISA applications, regardless of the investigation’s sensitivity, and it is incumbent upon the FBI to meet them in every application,” Horowitz said Wednesday. “Nevertheless, we found that members of the Crossfire Hurricane team failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure that the Carter Page FISA applications were scrupulously accurate.”
“Our review identified significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised, particularly the FBI’s failure to adhere to its own standards of accuracy and completeness when filing [FISA] applications,” Horowitz said Wednesday, noting that he recommended that the FBI “review the performance of all employees who had responsibility for the preparation or approval” of Page’s FISA applications, including “senior officials in the chain of command” of the Crossfire Hurricane team for “any action deemed appropriate.”
Horowitz pointed out to the committee that the “FBI leadership supported relying on” Christopher Steele’s now-famous dossier in order to justify a FISA warrant on Page even though a DOJ attorney advised against it.
The attorney cautioned the FBI over concerns “Steele may have been hired by someone associated with a rival candidate or campaign.”
The Democratic party and failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton paid for the dossier.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) brought up FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who changed an “email that he sent to the supervising agent who thereafter relied on it to swear out the final FISA application.” Cruz mentioned that an ordinary citizen would face prosecution if they did the same:
“So the men and women at home need to know what’s happening,” Cruz continued. “A lawyer at the FBI creates fraudulent evidence, alters an email, that is in turn used for the basis of a sworn statement to the court that the court relies on. Am I stating that accurately?
“That’s correct,” Horowitz answered. “That is what occurred.”
Horowitz added that he has never “seen an alteration of an email end up impacting a court document like this.”
“If a private citizen did that in any law enforcement investigation, if they fabricated evidence and reversed what it said, in your experience,” Cruz then posed. “Would that private citizen be prosecuted for fabricating evidence, be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, be prosecuted for perjury?”
This exchange. Staggering.
Cruz: “A lawyer at the FBI creates fraudulent evidence, alters an email that is in turn used as the basis for a sworn statement to the court that the court relies on. Am I stating that accurately?”
Horowitz: “That’s correct. That’s what occurred” pic.twitter.com/pnsp7gssT1
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) December 11, 2019
“Is it spying?” Senator Graham asks
“It’s illegal surveillance” IG Horowitz responds
That’s also called spying, folks.
The IG knows that the reputation and future of the FBI are on the line, and he’s trying to protect the institution as best he can with word games.
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) December 11, 2019
Is it kind of off-the-charts bad?
Horowitz: It’s pretty bad. pic.twitter.com/t0U812VWjE
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 11, 2019
#Horowitz agrees someone at the FBI needs to be fired. Lots have been fired already or left. The #FISAAbuse against @carterwpage is astonishing – I don’t believe this is the only time. What someone should ask Horowitz is ‘what evidence would you need exactly to constitute bias?’
— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) December 11, 2019
Horowitz tells Sen. Kennedy he "agrees completely" that someone at FBI needs to be fired.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) December 11, 2019
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Comments
“basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams”
This indicates that these were not isolated errors. When that many experienced people ignore or circumvent rules, it’s because the culture there doesn’t respect the rules.
True That.
Nice of them to connect the dots and do the chalk outline of their dead organizations’ corpses though………..
Next up: Barrack!
Cruz: IG Report Shows Obama Admin’s Stunning Abuse Of Power…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Q9kTeNRJg&feature=youtu.be&t=141
Pelosi sure is doing lots of 180 degree turns and palm faces today.
Here’s just one reason why.
CNN: Polls Of Independent Voters On Impeachment “Do Not Look Good For The Democrats”
https://www.weaselzippers.us/439520-cnn-polls-of-independent-voters-on-impeachment-do-not-look-good-for-the-democrats/
If CNN is admitting to that, it probably means that the DEMS have lost most “independents.”
Horowitz is trying to walk a tightrope. He knows there are serious crimes here, but he does not want to be the one to come out and say it candidly. He is a weasel.
That’s actually his job. He points out where procedures were not followed, and how exactly the process turned out to work. It is left to others to determine exactly what laws were broken and how to prosecute.
No. He didn’t want to hang himself.
I find a refreshing precision in his report and his testimony. All he does is lay out, in detail, the facts as he found them. This is heavy lifting, indeed, and the report explicitly confirms its limitations.
Comey took unjustified comfort in his refusal to say there was “political bias” at the inception of the investigation. They simply do not comment on the motivation for the actions. For example, the basis for the mess might have been a bias against the Russians, not necessarily the Trump campaign. Other information might elucidate that point.
The report also says that Comey’s and Lynch’s testimony about lack of memory was too cute for words, and that the explanations for the “errors and omissions” proffered by the team in general and management in particular were unsatisfactory, that is, not credible.
The report recommends further investigation of the actions of the entire team to the FBI, placing the FBI explicitly under supervision of the DOJ in civil liberties cases and in cases run out of the DC office. It states that the IG will now audit ALL of the FISA cases.
I keep hearing that the IG does not have “all the tools” to reach various essential, or sometimes even correct, conclusions. It is like you take your car to the repair shop and the manager warns you, “We don’t have all the necessary electronic testing equipment, and the mechanics don’t have all the sockets they may need, but we’ll do the best we can.
Heck – either give the IG all the tools necessary to make correct and complete decisions, or quit spending all the taxpayer money on these faulty, incomplete reports.
The IG report isn’t faulty, it does what it was intended to do, whitewash the whole thing keep the FBI and Clinton out of harm’s way.
The politics played during the Q&A is infuriating!
Q: IG Horowitz did your investigation find evidence that contradicts the narrative that NASA staged the Apollo Moon Landings?
A: No, our investigation found no evidence to contradict.
WTF! Why Doesn’t Horowitz(or other witnesses) simply state my investigation covered none of the Democrat Agenda Issues and Talking Points you are peddling and I know and everyone else knows that the only reason you are asking me questions about subject matter that I have no authoritative answer is so you can get a sound bite to be echoed throughout the MSM which you count on your #gruberstupid Democrat Voters will take hook line and sinker.
The problem is that there are too many low information voters who never go past the headlines. The politicians need stupid people and they prey on them.
The IG does NOT say there was no spying. The IG insists on using the word “surveillance”, but surveillance is a SYNONYM for SPYING. Synonyms are words that sound different but have the SAME MEANING !!!!
Synonym for “SPYING” is SURVEILLANCE
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/spying
Mr. Britt, in addition, Horowitz deferred not only to “surveillance,” but to “chs…confidential human sources.” As you and many others would say, “SPYING.”
Horowitz: No. No Spies. The FBI did not infiltrated the Trump campaign with spies. The FBI infiltrated the Trump Campaign and White House with Confidential Human Sources(CHSs) equipped with surveillance gear and instructions to gather information that can be used to impeach the POTUS.
What term did Horowitz use for “spy”…Confidential Human Resource or some Orwellian term like that.
They know Kleinsmith committed a crime, why wasn’t he indicted? Why didn’t the FBI stage a raid on his house in the middle of the night?
Why is he still employed? Why is Bruce Orr still employed?
Fire them, take away their pensions and health care. They’ll sing loud and take down odumbo and his minions.
My only question is this: “Why if the IG found all this stuff, like altering an e-mail, Why was there not a single criminal referral from the IG?”
Clinesmith has been the ONLY one actually referred for prosecution. The larger question, posed by, if iirc Jody Ernst, was why weren’t the rest referred? Horowitz’s answer, “That’s for others to determine.” What a coward! If he had referred all of those demonstrably culpable for prosecution, he would have admitted a clear political bias.
This is an investigation by the former administration of a political opponent during a presidential campaign. It doesn’t get more sensitive than that.
If it had been a legitimate investigation, they would have had compelling evidence of a crime to instigate it, and they would have dotted every i and crossed every t to verify it was by the book to avoid the appearance of a political prosecution. They did neither.
So when they make so many mistakes, omissions, deceptions and outright evidence tampering (in at least one case), it becomes more than the ‘appearance’ of political prosecution.
The acts committed by 0bama and 0bama top officials at the FBi and DOJ were not errors or mistakes, the 0bama top officials were and still are corrupt and intentionally committed criminal acts or abused their powers. No changes at the FBI, DOJ or in the FISA process could have prevented 0bama and his determined corrupt top officials from abusing federal resources in order to spy and then make false accusations of Russian collusion based on democrap lies against their political opponent in order to help Hillary win the 2016 election. The only way to prevent abuse of power and corruption and criminal acts in future elections is for the 0bama top officials involved in these criminals acts to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
So it turns out that you only need an articulable reason to start an investigation. Given that standard, just having the Steele Dossier show up on the FBI’s desk is sufficient to start the investigation, from the perspective of the FBI. That does not mean the people who sent it to the FBI were acting legally, but since Horowitz was only investigating the FBI, they were outside of his scope.
Further, having a legitimate basis for starting and investigation does not mean that the way it was conducted was also legitimate.
Think of it this way, if someone calls up the police and tells them you have been murdered, it is legitimate and entirely reasonable for the police to come by your house, potentially even with a warrent, but once you’ve met them at the door and assured a them that the rumors of your demise have been greatly exaggerated, then they are expected to go home and write it up as “Victim not actually dead; false report” and start figuring out who was crank calling them. It is not legitimate to kick off a full up homicide investigation, taping off areas and hauling in the last twenty people who saw you while you’re standing right there being very much not dead.
Sara Carter said it: “What someone should ask Horowitz is ‘what evidence would you need exactly to constitute bias?'” Seriously.
Anyone with two synapses to rub together can call what’s happened as “biased.”
Horowitz is being so circumspect on the question of bias that he’s wound up painting himself as a swamp critter.
Either that, or someone who wouldn’t say s#1t if he had a mouthful.
Even with Horowitz lying about FBI bias, the report utterly destroys FBI credibility.
Jim Jordan has it exactly right. “They don’t like us.” Trump has it exactly right. “They’re not just after me. They’re after you.” This crowd of over-educated, entitled persons believe that the American people are too stupid for self-government. They agree with Hillary Clinton that Trump supporters are “deplorable.” The election shouldn’t matter. They are so intelligent that they should correct the grave mistake made “by any means necessary.”
Comey has just doubled down on this belief with his op-ed. Only someone who believed that his critics had room-temperature IQs and second-grade reading levels could spout his garbage.
SHANDA!!!
Horowitz having his name on a report that states there is no evidence of bad intent when among other things there is evidence of an FBI lawyer’s altering evidence relating to a FISA warrant is damn shameful. How do we explain this crazy, evil, twisted logic to our kids? Makes me despair.
Three agencies? Why haven’t all of them been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud on the court and against the American people?