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FBI Tag

Monday, the FBI raided Michael Cohen's office. Cohen is Trump's personal attorney. Now, Geoffrey Berman, the Trump-appointed Interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is recused from the Cohen investigation. Berman's status as a Trump temporary appointee was used to claim that the warrant was not politically motivated. But now it turns out that Berman had recused himself and had nothing to do with the warrant against Cohen.

The FBI raid on the home and office of Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen reportedly took place after a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The search warrant apparently was obtained by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York.

The breaking news last night was that the DOJ Office of Inspector General announced it was launching an investigation of possible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court abuse. The presumption, though not literally in the OIG announcement, was that it concerned the FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page based on the Steele dossier.

The surveillance of Carter Page, based in part on the Steele Memo, has been the subject of a House Intelligence Committee memo authored by the Republican majority, and a Democrat counter-memo. The heart of the dispute is the failure to inform the FISA court that the Steele memo, which is almost entirely unverified, was paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, and that Steele was hostile to Trump. Carter Page, however, clearly was not the target, he was the excuse, as I wrote last month:

Terry James Albury was charged by the Department of Justice under the Espionage Act this week. Albury, who worked as a counterterrorism liaison for the Minneapolis--St. Paul International Airport was, "charged this week by the Justice Department's National Security Division with one count of "knowingly and willfully" transmitting documents and information relating to national defense to a reporter for a national news organization. Albury was also charged with a second count of refusing to hand over documents to the government," according to MPR.

The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on an Iranian company and nine Iranians for hacking into American universities. A tenth person received sanctions after he hacked accounts belonging to HBO employees to steal data and unaired episodes of shows like Game of Thrones. Officials said these individuals do not work for the regime, but did their work for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fired outgoing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was set to retire in about 24 hours. From The Washington Post:
Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department Inspector General and the FBI office that handles discipline had found “that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

Nothing to see here I guess except that the man who provided the tip to the FBI that started the whole Trump-Russia collusion investigation has ties to failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. A recent report claims former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer organized a $25 million donation to the Clinton Foundation.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has sent ten questions to former and current government officials about the dossier published by Fusion GPS against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, funded by failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC. Former British spy Christopher Steele authored the dossier. The ten questions include when they became aware of the information in the dossier and how they handled it.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has charged lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan for making "materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations" to his office and the FBI. Van Der Zwaan will appear in a federal court in Washington this afternoon. He is expected to enter in a guilty plea since he was charged with a criminal information. Mueller claims Van Der Zwaan lied about his communications with former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates and with someone else only identified as Person A and deleted emails that his office requested concerning a report from 2012 with Ukraine's Ministry of Justice.

"Liddle' Adam Schiff, the leakin' monster of no control" might be Trump's best nickname yet. But nicknames aside, Trump gave Rep. Adam Schiff, his Russia/collusion arch nemesis a backhanded compliment Sunday. Friday, the Department of Justice indicted 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities. The DOJ also concluded that there was no willing or knowing collusion between an American citizen and Russian operatives nor did Russia's feeble efforts to disrupt the 2016 election move the dial in any meaningful way.

We recently noted that the FBI dropped the ball on the Parkland shooter, having received a very specific and explicit warning about Nikolas Cruz in early January 2018. That warning, including that Cruz was a potential school shooter, was ignored by the FBI. Yet the more we learn about everything that came before the attack, the worse it gets. There were so many red flags.