Exclusive: Over 300 Saudi military aviation students grounded in U.S. after base shooting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 300 Saudi Arabian military aviation students have been grounded as part of a “safety stand-down” after a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people last week at a U.S. Navy base in Florida, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
The FBI has said U.S. investigators believe Saudi Air Force Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, acted alone when he attacked a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, before he was fatally shot by a deputy sheriff.
The shootings have again raised questions about the U.S. military relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has come under heightened scrutiny in Congress over the war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year.
Still, U.S. military leaders have sought to portray this as a localized issue which would not affect the overall U.S.-Saudi relationship.
“A safety stand-down and operational pause commenced Monday for Saudi Arabian aviation students,” said Lieutenant Andriana Genualdi, a Navy spokeswoman.
Another Navy official said the grounding was to help Saudi students prepare to eventually restart their training and similar procedures would have been taken if such an incident took place in a U.S. military squadron.
An Air Force spokeswoman told Reuters an undisclosed number of additional Saudi students have also stopped flying.

“Given the traumatic events, we feel it is best to keep the Royal Saudi Air Force students off the flying schedule for a short time,” the spokeswoman said.
“We are ensuring our Saudi students have access to available resources to help them deal with these circumstances. The safety and well-being of all our aircrew is a top priority.”
The Navy’s Genualdi said the grounding included three different military facilities: Naval Air Station Pensacola, Naval Air Station Whiting Field and Naval Air Station Mayport, all in Florida. The Air Force action applied to additional U.S. bases.
Genualdi added that while it was unclear when the Saudi students would be allowed to fly again, their classroom training was expected to resume soon. She added that aviation training had resumed for students from other countries.
There are currently about 850 Saudi students in the United States for military training.
Alshamrani was on the base as part of a U.S. Navy training program designed to foster links with foreign allies. He had started training in the United States in 2017 and had been in the Pensacola area for the past 18 months, authorities said.
A group that tracks online extremism has said Alshamrani appeared to have posted criticism of U.S. wars in predominantly Muslim countries and quoted slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Twitter hours before the shooting spree.

https://www.oann.com/exclusive-nearly-175-saudi-military-aviation-students-grounded-in-u-s-after-base-shooting/

Horowitz report is damning for the FBI and unsettling for the rest of us

Anti-Trump Liberal Jonathan Turley opinion at The Hill

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The analysis of the report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz greatly depends, as is often the case, on which cable news channel you watch. Indeed, many people might be excused for concluding that Horowitz spent 476 pages to primarily conclude one thing, which is that the Justice Department acted within its guidelines in starting its investigation into the 2016 campaign of President Trump.

Horowitz did say that the original decision to investigate was within the discretionary standard of the Justice Department. That standard for the predication of an investigation is low, simply requiring “articulable facts.” He said that, since this is a low discretionary standard, he cannot say it was inappropriate to start. United States Attorney John Durham, who is heading the parallel investigation at the Justice Department, took the usual step of issuing a statement that he did not believe the evidence supported that conclusion at the beginning of the investigation.

Attorney General William Barr also issued a statement disagreeing with the threshold statement. Nevertheless, the Justice Department has a standard requiring the least intrusive means of investigating such entities as presidential campaigns, particularly when it is the campaign of the opposing party. That threshold finding is then followed by the remainder of the report, which is highly damaging and unsettling. Horowitz finds a litany of false and even falsified representations used to continue the secret investigation targeting the Trump campaign and its associates.

This is akin to reviewing the Titanic and saying that the captain was not unreasonable in starting the voyage. The question is what occurred when icebergs began appearing. Horowitz says that investigative icebergs appeared very early on, and the Justice Department not only failed to report that to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court but also removed evidence that its investigation was on a collision course.

The investigation was largely based on a May 2016 conversation between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in London. Papadopolous reportedly said he heard that Russia had thousands of emails from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. That was viewed as revealing possible prior knowledge of the WikiLeaks release two months later, which was then used to open four investigations targeting the campaign and Trump associates. Notably, Democrats and the media lambasted Trump for saying the Justice Department had been “spying” on his campaign, and many said it was just an investigation into figures like Carter Page. 
Horowitz describes poorly founded investigations that included undercover FBI agents and an array of different sources. What they really discovered is the main point of the Horowitz report.

From the outset, the Justice Department failed to interview several key individuals or vet critical information and sources in the Steele dossier. Justice Department officials insisted to Horowitz that they choose not to interview campaign officials because they were unsure if the campaign was compromised and did not want to tip off the Russians. However, the inspector general report says the Russians were directly told about the allegations repeatedly by then CIA Director John Brennan and, ultimately, President Obama. So the Russians were informed, but no one contacted the Trump campaign so as not to inform the Russians? In the meantime, the allegations quickly fell apart. Horowitz details how all of the evidence proved exculpatory of any collusion or conspiracy with the Russians.

Even worse, another agency that appears to be the CIA told the FBI that Page was actually working for the agency in Russia as an “operational contact” gathering intelligence. The FBI was told this repeatedly, yet it never reported that to the FISA court approving the secret investigation of Page. His claim to have worked with the federal government was widely dismissed. Worse yet, Horowitz found that investigators and the Justice Department concluded there was no probable cause on Page to support its FISA investigation. That is when there was an intervention from the top of the FBI, ordering investigators to look at the Steele dossier funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign instead.

Who told investigators to turn to the dossier? Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired over his conduct in the investigation after earlier internal investigations. Horowitz contradicts the media claim that the dossier was just a small part of the case presented to the FISA court. He finds that it was essential to seeking FISA warrants. Horowitz also finds no sharing of information with FISA judges that undermined the credibility of the dossier or Christopher Steele himself. Surprisingly little effort was made to fully investigate the dossier when McCabe directed investigators to it, yet investigators soon learned that critical facts reported to the FISA court was false. FISA judges were told that a Yahoo News article was an independent corroboration of the Steele dossier, but Horowitz confirms that Steele was the source of that article. Therefore, Steele was used to corroborate Steele on allegations that were later deemed unfounded.

The report also said that Steele was viewed as reliable and was used as a source in prior cases, yet Horowitz found no support for that and, in fact, found that the past representations of Steele were flagged as unreliable. His veracity was not the only questionable thing unveiled in the report. Steele relied on a character who, Horowitz determined, had a dubious reputation and may have been under investigation as a possible double agent for Russia. Other facts were also clearly misrepresented. The FISA application was based partly on an exchange with Page and an FBI source. Page was asked by the source if he expected an “October surprise” and, when pressed, said there could be the release of 30,000 emails. That was a reference to reports that 30,000 deleted Clinton emails were being sought. But the statement was misrepresented to FISA judges as a reference to the Democratic National Committee emails.

The source relied on by Steele was presented as conveying damaging information on Trump. When this source was interviewed, he said he had no direct information and was conveying bar talk. He denied telling other details to Steele. This was all known to the Justice Department, but it still asked for warrant renewals from the FISA court without correcting the record or revealing exculpatory information discovered by investigators. That included the failure to tell the court that Page was working with the CIA. Finally, Horowitz found that an FBI lawyer doctored an email to hide the fact that Page was working for us and not the Russians.

Despite this shockingly damning report, much of the media is reporting only that Horowitz did not find it unreasonable to start the investigation, and ignoring a litany of false representations and falsifications of evidence to keep the secret investigation going. 
Nothing was found to support any of those allegations, and special counsel Robert Mueller also confirmed there was no support for collusion and conspiracy allegations repeated continuously for two years by many experts and members of.

In other words, when the Titanic set sail, there was no reason for it not to. Then there was that fateful iceberg. Like the crew of the Titanic, the FBI knew investigative icebergs floated around its Russia investigation, but not only did it not reduce speed, it actively suppressed the countervailing reports. Despite the many conflicts to its FISA application and renewals, the FBI leadership, including McCabe, plowed ahead into the darkness.

FBI Terminated Anti-Trump Source Stefan Halper ‘For Cause’ In 2011

Madeline Osburn reporting for The Federalist

Among the many revelations found in the new report about the FBI’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign is the fact that one of the FBI’s confidential sources, most likely Stefan Halper, was fired from the FBI in 2011 because he had “questionable allegiance to the [intelligence] targets” he was supposed to be monitoring.

Halper, a former Republican operative and White House aide-turned-foreign policy academic, was used as an informant for the FBI’s 2016 investigation into Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

Halper organized an intelligence seminar in 2016 and paid for Page’s travel to and from the seminar. Papadopoulos also said Halper paid him to fly to London to discuss foreign policy issues, where Halper grilled him on Russia and Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The recent IG report confirms the FBI then used unverified information from both Halper and British spy Christopher Steele to obtain FISA warrants to wiretap Page.

In Appendix I of the report, investigators identify claims the FBI asserted as facts in its FISA applications and evaluate which claims were made without corroborating evidence. The FBI claimed “Source #2,” (which is likely Halper) “has routinely provided reliable information that has been corroborated by the FBI.” Investigators found the FBI provided “no supporting documentation” of this claim.

When a wiretap target is a U.S. person, a FISA warrant requires renewal every 90 days. The FBI renewed its wiretap three times with the FISA court after the initial warrant. On the third and final renewal application, the FBI finally divulged that its informant, Halper, had previously been terminated because the FBI questioned his motivation for informing. The terms “opened” and “closed” in this case mean “hired” and “fired,” respectively.

“In or about December 2008, Source #2 was opened as an FBI source. In or about January 2011, Source #2 was closed as an FBI source for, among other things, motivation for reporting, but not for validity of reporting. Source #2 was reopened in or about March 2011. Since that time, Source #2 has routinely provided reliable information,” IG investigators wrote. The IG found no supporting documentation for this claim either.

On page 352 of the report, an agent told investigators Halper had been “closed for cause” in 2011, resulting in “interpersonal conflict.” The agent also said when he hired Halper again for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Halper was told this was his “‘last opportunity’ and that the FBI would not tolerate the issues that had arisen in the past.”

Again, this source, whom the FBI apparently had multiple personnel issues with in the past, was the source the FBI cited in its applications to obtain permission to wiretap Trump campaign associates.

In March 2016, Halper endorsed Hillary Clinton, saying she would “be best for US-UK relations and for relations with the European Union.”

Anyone Want To Tell Me What Democrats Are Good For?

We had some kind of an out of control shooting in Jersey City. Seems 5 or 6 are dead, 2 of the shooters were killed 1 missing.

Media and Liberals immediately start talking about gun control. See the idiot post by Shannon Watts:

Can someone let Shannon Watts know that New Jersey has all the gun laws Democrats say they want nationally, a Dem Governor and Jersey City has had entirely Democrat mayors since 1917 except in 2001? The NRA doesn’t run NJ, Democrats do and their laws don’t stop mass shootings.

It sounds like it was a drug bust gone bad, it may be terrorism, we will eventually find out.

Meanwhile, the disgusting Liberals, our Media and Democrats will Scream Gun Control.

Never mind none of their current gun laws in Jersey City prevented this tragedy.

Vote Republican, Re-elect Trump, give Republicans the House, Senate and White House so we can put a stop to the insanity of Liberalism.

Dems Trying to Change the Constitution

written by Jenna Ellis for Townhall

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own 

and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall

House Judiciary Report BOMBSHELL:
Dems Trying to Change the Constitution

Source: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

The jig is up. The Democrats have now actually admitted—in writing—that their sad little attempt at impeachment is entirely baseless. The House Judiciary Committee Report was released Saturday and admitted two very critical points:

First, the Democrats are trying to change the standard of impeachment. They are literally changing the rules to fit their theatrical story. Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler wrote in the preface that the previous reports on grounds for impeachable offenses in the Nixon and Clinton eras “remain useful points of reference, but no longer reflect the best available learning on questioning relating to presidential impeachment.”

Why, Jerry? Because you have no evidence for legitimate grounds of impeachment? This only proves that President Trump indeed does not belong in the ranks of Nixon and Clinton, where there was actually evidence of impeachable offenses.

Second, the Democrats are proceeding with impeachment against President Trump not because of any past wrongdoing which they have no proof of, but to “save the Nation” from Trump remaining in office. That is not a constitutionally permissible reason to impeach. That’s why we have elections. The American people get to decide who remains in office, absent clear evidence of impeachable offenses actually committed. We don’t impeach or convict based on a vague fear for democracy from the opposition party.

The Report, however, claims that impeachment exists, “not to inflict punishment for past wrongdoing, but rather to save the Nation from misconduct that endangers democracy and the rule of law.” This is not the standard for any legal proceeding in any context in the United States. We do not bring charges (even articles of impeachment) or convict based on the possibility of a future threat “to democracy” or otherwise.

The Democrats are totally failing. They have no evidence that genuinely qualifies as an impeachable offense and are now trying desperately to aggregate a lot of nothing (even going back to the dead Mueller Report) to try to force their end game of impeaching President Trump simply because they don’t want him to be re-elected. Please, they are saying, don’t be sidetracked with facts and evidence and law and standards.

But this is precisely why America is not a nation of rulers but of the rule of law. The Democrats are trying to be the very tyrants they pretend they are fighting against. They are trying to manipulate our supreme law of the land and subvert the will of the American people who voted Donald Trump into office. Thank God we are in fact a constitutional republic and have standards of law in this country!

If Schiff and Nadler’s circus continues and the Democrats are successful in lowering the standard of impeachment to merely desiring to oust the sitting president of an opposition party, why bother even having elections? But make no mistake—that is actually the Democrats’ long game. They want to overthrow the American Constitution and our rule of law. They want to be tyrants. They want all the power and will stop at nothing to get it. At every turn, they simply change the rules when they don’t want to play by the rules.

That’s not America. Regardless of one’s political party and perspective on policy, this is now much, much bigger than that. This is a constitutional crisis. This is the very core of our American government and civil society. For everyone who loves freedom and liberty for ourselves and our families, this transparent impeachment scam is the only reason we need to never vote Democrat again. The Democrats gave us that reason in writing.

IG’s FISA Report Undercuts ‘Schiff Memo,’ Which Defended FBI And Steele Dossier

Chuck Ross reporting for DailyCaller

• The Justice Department watchdog’s report undercut key claims in the so-called Schiff Memo, released in February 2018 by Rep. Adam Schiff.
• The memo downplayed the Steele dossier’s significance to the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page. Schiff released it in response to a memo from Rep. Devin Nunes which criticized the FBI’s handling of the dossier. 
• The DOJ watchdog found that the FBI made significant errors and omissions in its applications to spy on Page.   

The Justice Department inspector general’s report undercut many of the claims in a memo that Rep. Adam Schiff released in February 2018 defending the FBI and the Steele dossier, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

In the memo, Schiff, a California Democrat, downplayed the FBI’s use of information from former British spy Christopher Steele in applications for surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Schiff, who now chairs the House Intelligence Committee, also asserted that the FBI did not omit any key details about Steele from the warrant applications and that investigators went to great lengths to verify the dossier.

The Justice Department inspector general’s report contradicted Schiff’s defense. It listed 17 significant omissions and errors that the FBI made in the Carter Page surveillance warrants, including derogatory information about Steele and at least one of his sources.

Schiff’s memo was a response to a report that his counterpart, California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, released on Feb. 2, 2018. The so-called Nunes memo criticized the FBI for relying on the unverified Steele dossier and for failing to disclose evidence of Steele’s political and personal bias against Donald Trump. Schiff defended the FBI and Steele, a former British spy who worked in 2016 for the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. 

The key claim in the Nunes memo — that the Steele dossier “formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application” — is backed up by the inspector general’s report. The inspector general also faulted the FBI for failing to tell the surveillance court that Steele told a Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, that he was “desperate” in September 2016 to see Donald Trump lose the election.

The Nunes memo does have some flaws. It criticized the FBI for failing to disclose that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded Steele’s investigation of Trump. But as Democrats have noted, the FBI acknowledged that Steele was working for someone who opposed Trump’s presidential candidacy.

The Schiff Memo

CLAIM: “FBI and DOJ officials did not ‘abuse’ the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”

 

House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ rebuttal to Nunes memo, Feb. 24, 2018.

REPORT: “We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.”

The IG found widespread evidence that the FBI and DOJ omitted information significant to the FISA applications. In all, the report tallied 17 errors and omissions in the FBI’s renewal applications for FISA warrants against Page. Among the key omissions was Steele’s claims to the FBI in October 2016 that a major source for the dossier was a “boaster” and “embellisher.”

CLAIM: “DOJ met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.”

 

House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ rebuttal to Nunes memo, Feb. 24, 2018.

REPORT: “Although some of the factual misstatements and omissions we found in this review were arguably more significant than others, we believe that all of them taken together resulted in FISA applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.”

CLAIM: “DOJ cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page — but made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”

 

House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ rebuttal to Nunes memo, Feb. 24, 2018.

REPORT: “Further, we found that the first FISA application drew heavily, although not entirely, upon the Steele reporting to support the government’s position that Page was an agent of a foreign power.”

CLAIM: “In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting.”

House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ rebuttal to Nunes memo, Feb. 24, 2018.

REPORT: “[B]ecause the FBI did not have information corroborating the Steele reporting relied upon in the Carter Page FISA application, it was particularly important for the application to articulate to the court the FBI’s assessment of the reliability of the source.”

CLAIM: “DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias.”

House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ rebuttal to Nunes memo, Feb. 24, 2018.

REPORT: As noted previously, an FBI attorney “did not believe at the time” that Steele’s “desperate” remark “needed to be included in the renewal applications because the comment was only Ohr’s opinion of Steele’s feelings toward Trump.”

CLAIM: “Senior FBI and DOJ officials have repeatedly affirmed to the Committee the reliability and credibility of Steele’s reporting, an assessment also reflected in the FBI’s underlying source documents. The FBI had undertaken a rigorous process to vet the allegations from Steele’s reporting, including with regard to Page.”

House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ rebuttal to Nunes memo, Feb. 24, 2018.

REPORT: “The FBI discovered discrepancies between Steele’s reporting and statements sub-sources made to the FBI, which raised doubts about the reliability of some of Steele’s reports.”

CLAIM: “The Majority cites no evidence that the FBI, prior to filing its initial October 21, 2016 application, actually knew or should have known of any allegedly inappropriate media contacts by Steele. Nor do they cite evidence that Steele disclosed to Yahoo! details included in the FISA warrant, since the British Court filings to which they refer do not address what Steele may have said to Yahoo!”

House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ rebuttal to Nunes memo, Feb. 24, 2018.

REPORT: “Drafts of the Carter Page FISA application stated, until October 14, 2016, that Steele was responsible for the leak that led to the September 23 Yahoo News article.”

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FBI Knew The Steele Dossier Was Highly Dubious As Early As January 2017, But Still Relied On It For FISA Renewals

Erielle Davidson reporting for The Federalist

The FBI smelled garbage. It relied on said garbage anyway.

According to the just-released Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, the FBI knew as early as January 2017 that the reporting contained in the “Steele Dossier,” authored by former FBI informant and once-British spy Christopher Steele, was highly questionable, if not pure junk.

The dossier contained a heap of entirely sensational, unverified allegations against President Donald Trump, which many in the media seized upon with sheer and unabated glee. Steele had assembled the dossier while contracted out by the American investigative firm Fusion GPS. During the Republican primaries, Fusion GPS’ work was financed by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative media outlet. Once Trump became the Republican nominee, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party began footing the bill for the opposition research on then-nominee Trump.

The document catapulted to infamy when it was revealed that the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign had at least partially relied on the DNC-funded dossier when investigators sought a court order to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

The original application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was filed in October 2016. When a wiretap target is a U.S. person, a FISA warrant requires renewal every 90 days. Given there were several renewals associated with Page’s wiretap after the initial application in October 2016 — in January, April, and June 2017, to be exact — at least two of the three renewal applications were made after the FBI knew the Steele dossier had serious credibility issues. The FBI filed the renewal applications anyway.

According to the IG’s report, “[T]he FBI did not have information corroborating the specific allegations against Carter Page in Steele’s reporting when it relied upon his reports in the first FISA application or subsequent renewal applications.” However, when information is obtained from a “Confidential Human Source” of the FBI, such as Steele, the agent need only to be sure the information then used in the FISA application reflects what was stated by the CHS.

However, the Office of the Inspector General “determined that Crossfire Hurricane team was unable to corroborate any of the substantive allegations regarding Carter Page listed in Steele’s election reporting which the FBI relied on in the FISA application.”

When the FBI conducted interviews with Steele’s various sources, numerous inconsistencies began appearing between source statements and the allegations in the dossier. As early as January 2017, one of Steele’s sources had made statements that raised “significant questions about the reliability of the allegations included in the FISA applications.” For instance, whereas Steele had reported Trump’s sexual encounters at the Ritz Carlton to be “‘confirmed’ by a senior, western staff member,” interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source revealed the sexual activity was merely “rumor and speculation.”

The primary sub-source also noted that the bribe Steele reported to have taken place between Page and Igor Sechin, the president of Russian energy company Rosneft, was never actually communicated to Steele by the primary sub-source. According to the report, the IG “reviewed the [source] texts [relied upon by the primary sub-source] and did not find any discussion of a bribe, whether as an interest in Rosneft itself or a ‘brokerage.’”

The primary sub-source was questioned again in March 2017, and “the Washington Field Office agent (WFO Agent 1) who conducted that interview and others after it told the OIG that the Primary Sub-source felt that the tenor of Steele’s reports was far more ‘conclusive’ than was justified.” According to the WFO, “the Primary Sub-source explained that his/ her information came from ‘word of mouth and hearsay;’ ‘conversation that [he/she] had with friends over beers;’ and that some of the information, such as allegations about Trump’s sexual activities, were statements he/she heard made in ‘jest.’” In other words, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the Steele dossier was highly problematic. Nonetheless, a FISA renewal application to continue spying on Page moved forward the next month.

The IG report notes that the renewal applications to continue wiretapping Page communicated none of these glaring inconsistencies. According to the report, “Carter Page FISA Renewal Application Nos. 2 and 3 advised the court that following the January interview with the Primary Subsource, ‘the FBI found the Russian-based sub-source to be truthful and cooperative.’” The FBI smelled garbage but did not alter its course with regard to targeting Carter Page.

According to the IG’s report, “[FBI Director James] Comey and [Deputy Attorney General Sally] Yates approved the first renewal application, Comey and then Acting Attorney General Dana Boente approved the second renewal, and then Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and then Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Rod Rosenstein approved the third renewal.”

It seems the failure to screen information used in the repeated FISA applications occurred within several rungs of the FBI. As the IG report asserts, “Information that was known to the managers, supervisors, and senior officials should have resulted in questions being raised regarding the reliability of the Steele reporting and the probable cause supporting the FISA applications, but did not.”

The IG’s report raises alarming questions regarding the level of discernment of those within the FBI. If a Democratic campaign had been the target of spying, would those in the FBI have treated the salacious (and frankly, ridiculous) dossier with more scrutiny? If they knew the allegations against Carter Page were increasingly suspect, why did they continue to file a FISA renewal, not once but THREE more times? The FBI should be forced to answer these questions.

As the mainstream media obsesses over a phone call with Ukraine wherein President Trump asked for well-founded allegations of corruption against Hunter Biden to be investigated, we have clear evidence that a DNC-funded oppo campaign was used to justify spying on the Trump campaign with the continued blessing of the FBI, despite alarming factual inconsistencies within the supposed “oppo.” It should be deeply unsettling that a figure funded by the Democratic Party was able to peddle falsities to the FBI that were then used to justify spying on their political opponents.

IG Report Confirms No FISA Warrant On Carter Page Without Steele Dossier

Chrissy Clark reporting for The Federalist

The much awaited Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) report, conducted by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, was released today. It finds that the FBI would not have had enough claimed evidence to secretly surveil former Trump aide Carter Page, and thus the Trump 2016 campaign, without using a “dossier” of opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

In 2016, after Page left the Trump campaign, the FBI asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for a warrant to secretly surveil Page. The FBI said it was concerned that Page had ties with the Kremlin in Russia, but their only confirmation of these allegations came from former British intelligence officer Steele.

Steele authored the “dossier” that alleged ties between President Trump and Russia. Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, a research group that received funding from a law firm representing Hillary Clinton’s campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee. Suspicious much?

The newly released FISA report confirms that the FBI would not have been able to spy on Page if it weren’t for Steele’s allegations.

“Nevertheless, we found that members of the [counterintelligence] team failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure that the Carter Page FISA applications were ‘scrupulously accurate,'” the report reads. This is because the counterintelligence team used unverified hearsay from Steele — and onlythe information from Steele — as evidence to justify eavesdropping.

In November 2017, a British top national security official warned U.S. officials in a memo that Steele should not be trusted. This information was originally published by The Hill, corroborated by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and mentioned in a filing by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s lawyers. Yet the FBI subsequently applied for two more reauthorizations of their surveillance of Page.

Despite the lack of credible information to apply for a FISA warrant at the outset, the FBI counterintelligence team went forward with their original filing anyways. They filed four total requests to the FISC to surveil Page, because when a wiretap targets a U.S. citizen, it must be renewed every 90 days as secret surveillance without evidence of a crime directly infringes on Americans’ civil liberties.

In the report, Horowitz’s team also says there were significant inaccuracies and omissions in the four FBI surveillance applications to the secret court.

“We identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in each of the four applications – 7 in the first FISA application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application,” the report says.

In April 2017, Page told the Justice Department, under oath, that his meetings in Moscow had no connection to the election. Yet the FBI filed its third and fourth FISA warrant applications after that point and continued to surveil him.

While the newly released FISA report says investigators did not find evidence of an overt political bias or improper motivation in the FBI’s decision to surveil Page, it is clear they started this investigation on false pretenses and knew long before the special counsel report or the FISA report that the grounds for surveilling Page were shaky at best.

The Former FBI Director Should Be Apologizing to Carter Page and to the Entire Country.

William McGurk commentary at Wall Street Journal

The former Federal Bureau of Investigation director has always been at his most natural when most aggrieved. Within hours of the release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report Monday, Mr. Comey had an op-ed up at the the Washington Post. 

In a tweet touting his piece, Mr. Comey put it this way: “So it was all lies. No treason. No spying on the campaign. No tapping Trumps wires. It was just good people trying to protect America.”

This comes as no surprise to anyone who remembers when an earlier inspector general report called him “insubordinate” for having “intentionally concealed” from his Justice Department bosses his plans for a press conference exonerating Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing over her use of a private email server to send classified material. 

Mr. Comey’s answer that time? An op-ed in the New York Times under the headline, “This Report Says I Was Wrong. But That’s Good for the F.B.I.”

Then, in August 2019, Mr. Horowitz’s office released still another report, this one dealing with Mr. Comey’s leaking of memos detailing confidential conversations he’d had with President Trump. In addition to highlighting Mr. Comey’s dishonesty toward the FBI agents dispatched to his home to retrieve the memos, the inspector general scored Mr. Comey for setting “a dangerous example” for the bureau. Later Mr. Horowitz testified that he’d recommended Mr. Comey be prosecuted.

How did Mr. Comey respond? By ignoring the larger indictment of his FBI leadership and focusing only on Mr. Horowitz’s finding that they’d unearthed no evidence Mr. Comey had leaked classified information. “I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice,” Mr. Comey tweeted.

So another Comey tweet demanding yet another apology is entirely likely. And it points to the low bar Mr. Comey has now set for America’s most prestigious law enforcement agency: Unless the conduct is criminal, anything goes. 

In practice this means overlooking a great deal of ugly behavior. The following, culled from Mr. Horowitz’s new report, is long but by no means exhaustive:

• Even though Christopher Steele’s dossier was full of material Mr. Comey himself characterized as “salacious and unverified,” it played a “central and essential role” in the bureau’s decision to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

• The FBI failed to inform Justice of “significant information that was available” but “was inconsistent with, or undercut,” claims in the FISA applications that Mr. Page was “an agent of a foreign power.”

• The FBI ignored various warnings about Mr. Steele’s political bias, and it took him at his word when he falsely told agents he wasn’t the source for a Yahoo News article the FBI would cite in its application to the court.

• Overall, the report identifies “at least 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications”—for which investigators received no “satisfactory answers.” 

• The FBI also didn’t inform the FISA court that Mr. Page had served as a Central Intelligence Agency source and received a “positive assessment” for candor from the agency. 

• Mr. Comey pushed to include Mr. Steele’s dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment even though the CIA “expressed concern about the lack of vetting.”

• An FBI lawyer altered an email he’d received confirming Mr. Page had been a CIA source. After he changed it to read “not a source,” the email was then used to help renew the FISA warrant on Mr. Page. 

Mr. Horowitz lays the blame at the top: “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 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. 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 [investigation’s] chain of command, including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed.” 

Mr. Comey’s memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” relates how as FBI director he kept on his desk a copy of the October 1963 memo from J. Edgar Hoover asking for permission to wiretap Martin Luther King. He claims he did so to help ensure the bureau would never forget how a “legitimate counterintelligence mission . . . morphed into an unchecked, vicious campaign of harassment and extralegal attack.”

Mr. Horowitz’s findings about what was done under Mr. Comey’s leadership suggest there’s still a need for such a reminder. But maybe it should be a copy of the FISA applications for Carter Page the FBI sent to the court with false, misleading and incomplete information—and Mr. Comey’s signature.

The Salvation Army Is Not...

John Hirschauer reporting for National Review

The Salvation Army Is Not Homophobic

December 9, 2019

Salvation Army members sing and dance to encourage people to donate in New York City, November 28, 2014. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

But that hasn’t stopped LGBT activists from successfully painting it as such.

The Salvation Army’s philanthropic efforts serve 130 countries around the globe, and its aid reaches roughly 23 million people annually. While perhaps most famous for its homeless, hunger, and disaster initiatives, the church funds an array of lesser-known services for vulnerable people: hotlines for victims of domestic abuse, after-school programs for at-risk youth, and job-training programs for the mentally ill. Its work fills critical gaps in the oft-derelict patchwork of public services, both domestically and abroad. It is one of the largest charitable organizations in the country, and is synonymous with American Christmastide.

It is also a Protestant sect, an institutional church with its own dogma, doctrine, and theology. Among its beliefs is an utterly orthodox opposition to same-sex marriage, which is, at most, incidental to the service work it performs — it serves people without regard to race, religion, sex, or sexual preference. Yet it has recently come under renewed fire from LGBT activists and others for its putative “homophobia.”

No one ever really says how the Salvation Army is “homophobic,” or even attempts to define what homophobia is. They just level the charge, and the cultural powers that be presume it to be true. Insinuation, in the age of the Internet, goes quite a ways. The once-stalwart, ostensibly Christian fast-food giant Chick-fil-A recently felt the need to divest from the Salvation Army because of its alleged “anti-LGBTQ stance.” And even Pete Buttigieg, a “symbol of LGBT progress,” has been unable to outrun the madness. After a picture of Buttigieg in a Salvation Army apron emerged, the online version of Out, the monthly magazine devoted to LGBT-related issues, excoriated the mayor for deigning to volunteer for the “Homophobic Salvation Army.”

The Out piece, of course, didn’t manage to put meat on its accusation. Its implication was that Buttigieg is something of a self-hater for ringing a bell and wearing an Army-branded red apron. That, again, presumes that the Salvation Army is a “homophobic” organization, which it is not, if we are to insist upon words retaining their meaning — the church and its attendant charity arm do not harbor an “unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals.” They do not discriminate in their provision of services, and there is a compendium of examples of LGBT persons who have expressed gratitude for the work that they do. The only way Out can insist that they are “homophobic” is to stipulate that a belief about marriage held by 31 percent of Americans — and 49 percent of African Americans, including, until 2010, Barack Obama — is necessarily motivated by “unreasoning fear” or “antipathy.” It insisted upon doing just that, citing the fact that the Salvation Army once “circulated internal memos opposing marriage equality” as evidence that the church has a past ridden with anti-LGBT bigotry.

Perhaps the most inane example of the smear campaign came via singer Ellie Goulding, who was appalled to learn that the nonprofit she had once supported believes about marriage what, until the cosmic equivalent of a second ago, was widely held to be self-evident. Goulding was scheduled to perform at the Dallas Cowboys halftime show but threatened to withdraw the appearance because of the Cowboys’ affiliation with the Salvation Army. “Upon researching this,” Goulding said, she “would have no choice but to pull out unless [the Salvation Army] very quickly [makes] a solid, committed pledge or donation to the LGBTQ community.” The thousands of gay persons the charity serves in homeless shelters every year, the housing units it provides for transgender people, and all the other services it provides to the “LGBTQ community” apparently don’t count as a “committed pledge.” In truth, what it seemed like Goulding was really asking for was affirmation: If the Salvation Army didn’t lend its institutional approval to sex acts that its faith forbids — even while serving persons who engage in such acts the same as it serves everyone else — she insisted that she would withdraw her support.

I’m reminded of Adrian Vermeule’s thesis:

Progressive liberalism has its own cruel sacraments — especially the shaming and, where possible, legal punishment of the intolerant or illiberal — and its own liturgy, the Festival of Reason, the ever-repeated overcoming of the darkness of reaction. Because the celebration of the festival essentially requires, as part of its liturgical script, a reactionary enemy to be overcome, liberalism ceaselessly and restlessly searches out new villains to play their assigned part.

The pool of potential villains is rather thin in 2019. The charitable arm of the Salvation Army, apparently, will have to do. The Festival, after all, must go on.

Moderate House Dems Grow Increasingly Concerned About 2020 Reelection Chances Due to Impeachment Push

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState

With the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry hearings over and the Judiciary Committee’s close to wrapping up, concerns are continuing to grow among moderate House Democrats about their reelection chances in 2020.

I’ve written previously about polls showing how the public hearings were backfiring on Democrats, especially when it comes to independent voters. There have also been media reports where journalists stated they heard rumors on Capitol Hill that moderates were “getting cold feet” on the impeachment issue, and that a censure option was being floated as an alternative for impeachment as the election year grows near.

As the process drags on, the panic is rising. CNN spoke Friday to anonymous House Democrats who are raising alarm bells about how impeachment could hurt their chances at the ballot box:

“The fact of the matter is this does have political consequences and the people who will suffer significant political consequences are our moderate members. In fact, there are on-year amounts of money being spent in districts all across our moderates. For our leadership not to engage with moderates at all to either talk about how they are going to message or what they are going to put in it, seems to be a giant oversight,” [one moderate] member said.

Another moderate Democratic member lamented that the information about articles of impeachment are “secondhand.”

“I would say look I am concerned about not knowing what the articles will have in them. I am concerned about the timeline of this whole impeachment process. For me, right now, I am struggling to see how the evidence supports impeachment at this point,” the member said on the condition of background in order to speak freely about internal discussions.
[…]
The House Judiciary Committee hearing also raised questions about how the President might have obstructed justice as part of the Mueller report. That caused concern for moderates who worry that the articles could reach back too far to Mueller and lend credence to GOP talking points that Democrats are trying to re-litigate the 2016 election.

Here’s the funny thing that House Democratic leaders and others in a rush to impeach Trump won’t talk about: The vast majority of Democrats playing the “we must do our Constitutional duty even if there are risks” card are Democrats in safe districts. Democrats like Schiff. Nadler. Pelosi. AOC. Those same Democrats also know they can lose a few Democrats next year in the election and still hold on to the majority.

So yeah, of course they’re going to be telling vulnerable Democrats to sweat it out and “do your duty.”

What these moderate Democrats are telling House leaders, in a nutshell is, hey, you may not be losing sleep over how this will affect my election, but I am. It’s also another reason why those same Democrats in swing districts appear to be weighing the information that is already in front of them a little more carefully than the rest of the caucus, which is why some of them are saying either on or off the record that the case has not been made.

As I’ve said before, the left’s non-stop obsession with impeaching Trump from day one has led to impeachment fatigue settling in among the independent and swing voters they desperately need to not only hold on to the House, but to win the presidential election. This is having a big impact on how middle-of-the-road House Democrats are proceeding.

If they do lose next year, Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for how this has so spectacularly backfired.