FBI Spying Ruined..

The Wall Street Journal

Opinion | Commentary

FBI Spying Ruined My Good Name

FISA has failed to protect American citizens from abusive surveillance.

My name is Carter Page, and I wish you were hearing it for the first time. If you were, I could introduce myself—a former naval officer who has worked for political figures from both parties. But my identity has been reduced to a series of false accusations. If something isn’t done to prevent future abuses of power by intelligence agencies, I won’t be the last to lose his good name this way.

In 2016-17 the government I once served investigated me on suspicion of being an intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. This week Inspector General Michael Horowitz detailed how officials committed troubling errors over the course of the probe. From the day news of the investigation broke, I have faced threats to my life and have been forced to live like a fugitive. I still don’t feel safe enough to establish a fixed residence.

I still have many questions about the FBI investigation that ruined my life. If you value your privacy, reputation and right to political expression, you should too.

I’m by no means the first person to raise these concerns. In the 1970s, the Church Committee uncovered troubling abuses. In response, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. FISA was supposed to protect U.S. citizens from the formidable investigatory powers the government can turn on foreign agents and terrorists. But it didn’t protect me. And those surveillance powers have grown exponentially since the 1970s.

The Horowitz Report on the FBI and its Consequences

Mr. Horowitz’s report identified “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the application for a surveillance warrant against me. Among them: the FBI’s altering a document to secure my FISA warrant’s renewal, as well as its repeated reliance on uncorroborated information in the Steele dossier to justify intrusive surveillance. “That so many basic and fundamental failures were made,” the report said, “raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process.”

The irregularities continued after the investigation ended. In 2018 the FBI made my FISA warrant application public in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, something it hasn’t done with any other application in FISA’s 40-year history. The intelligence community also stonewalled me. After the inspector general drafted his report, the Justice Department wouldn’t let me review it before its release. The department lets only those interviewed for a report review its draft, in this case including former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom Mr. Horowitz earlier referred for criminal investigation for lying to investigators.

While I appreciate Mr. Horowitz’s work, it’s not enough. When he testifies Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, members should ask him the following questions:

• Will you recommend prohibiting the use of uncorroborated political opposition research in FISA applications?

• How can Americans have faith in the FISA process after an FBI lawyer was found to have falsified evidence in a warrant application?

• What timeline do you recommend for a review of responsibility and oversight within the FBI chain of command in my case, and who should carry out that investigation?

• What other steps do you recommend to reform the FISA process so such abuse can’t happen again?

My experience should be a warning. For three years, I have opened myself up to more than 40 hours of interrogation without a lawyer, including full days of questioning before the House and Senate Intelligence committees and by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. After all this testimony, and after more than a year of round-the-clock surveillance under FISA warrants, I have never been charged with any crime. If senators don’t demand answers, they’re practically inviting intelligence agencies to use their surveillance powers to target domestic political opponents.

I will never completely restore my name. All I can do is try to make sure this never happens again. As the Supreme Court warned nearly a half-century ago: “The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power.”

Mr. Page is the managing partner of Global Natural Gas Ventures LLC.

POWERLINEBLOG

Censure Schiff, not Trump

Politico reports that a small group of House Democrats — about ten of them — are floating the idea of censuring President Trump instead of impeaching him. All of these Democrats represent districts carried by President Trump three years ago. Among them are Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.), and Ben McAdams (D-Utah). Schrader explained:

I think it’s certainly appropriate and might be a little more bipartisan, who knows.

At this point, I’m not sure any Republican member would back even a censure motion. We’ll never know, however. For Speaker Pelosi and company, abandoning impeachment in favor of censure is surely out of the question.

The interesting question for me is how many of the group that prefers censure will be unwilling, once it comes down to it, to vote in favor of impeachment. Even if all ten (or so) were to vote against impeaching Trump, Pelosi would still have enough votes to get it done. However, that many defections would be a huge embarrassment for Pelosi and a victory for Trump.

That’s why I believe many of the ten will bite the bullet and vote for impeachment, in the end. And most of those who do (along with some others who represent districts Trump carried) will probably lose their seats as a result.

Speaking of censure, the House ought to censure Adam Schiff for revealing the names of individuals swept up in call logs he obtained who are not the target of a criminal investigation. With Democrats in control of the House, I don’t think the Republicans can force a vote to censure Schiff (they failed to so in October). But if Republicans retake the House, censuring Schiff should be their first order of business. 

AG Barr Blasts FBI's Russia Probe as 'Intolerable' 'Travesty,' Based on 'Garbage' with 'Many Abuses'

Debra Heine for American Greatness

Attorney General William Barr tore into the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign on Tuesday, calling it “intolerable,” inexplicable,” and a “travesty” with “many abuses.”

In interviews with NBC and the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, Barr noted that the Bureau’s case was weak to begin with, but continued long after it had “collapsed.”

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Monday found in his highly anticipated IG report (which now has an audio version) that the FBI had adequate reason to initiate the Russia investigation, while noting that the threshold was low to launch such an investigation. He also found that there was no documented evidence to support the allegation that FBI and DOJ officials acted out of political bias.

The bulk of Horowitz’s report however is a scathing rebuke of the FBI’s gross misconduct throughout its fatally flawed Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

The AG disputed the Horowitz’s assessment that FBI’s investigation was properly predicated with no evidence of bias but noted that although he disagrees with Durham on those points, “there are still people in this town where you can be adults and be professionals and have disagreements without tearing each other’s hearts out.”

Speaking at the WSJ event on Tuesday, Barr said it was too soon to determine that the FBI was not motivated by political bias in the investigation, and that John Durham, the federal prosecutor he appointed to examine the origins of the probe, was better equipped to answer that question than the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

“That’s why we have Durham,” he pointed out. “He will have a broader appreciation of all the facts and a determination can be made.”

Barr added that although Horowitz didn’t find evidence of political bias, “it quickly became apparent that it was a travesty, and there were many abuses.”

He said that “from day one, it generated exculpatory information and nothing that substantiated any kind of collusion.”

“They withheld from the court all the exculpatory information and information about the lack of reliability of Steele,” he complained, but used the unverified dossier—which they knew was “garbage”—to get the FISA warrant.

“It’s hard to look at this stuff and not think it was a gross abuse,” he said.

In a particularly egregious move, he said the FBI told the FISA court that they found dossier author Christopher Steele’s sub-source to be credible and cooperative in an effort to bolster their case after they interviewed him and found out that had no useful information.

The AG argued that the basis for the investigation was too “flimsy” to be adequately predicated. “This was a 28-year-old volunteer in a campaign in a bar off-hand [saying] what was described as a suggestion of a suggestion.”

He also wasn’t convinced that the subject matter being discussed was all that concerning, given the circumstances at the time.

“It was some vague allusion that the Russians had something that they could dump,” he said. “At that time—in May of 2016—there was rampant speculation going on in the media and the blogosphere and political circles that Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2014 may have been hacked and therefore the Russians had those emails. So drawing a conclusion that this kind of vague comment … showed pre-knowledge of the Clinton email hack and dump I think was a big stretch.”

The portion of the interview that deals with the IG report begins about 27 minutes into the video below:

U.S. Attorney General William Barr calls the FBI's investigation of President Trump's campaign a "travesty" in comments made at the #WSJCEOCouncilevent in Washington, D.C. 

Watch live: https://t.co/XNSYTdJfaO

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 10, 2019

“There were some things that were done in the investigation that were not included in Horowitz’s report and he’s looking at those things,” Barr told NBC News’ Pete Williams.

The AG added that he told Durham a few weeks ago to start focusing on the post-election period because that’s when documents were falsified in order to get the FISA renewals and exculpatory information was withheld from the court.

“I did that because of some of the stuff that Horowitz has uncovered which to me is inexplicable,” he explained. “Their case collapsed after the election and they never told the court and they kept getting renewals on these applications.”

He added: “The question really is, what was the agenda after the election?” Barr asked. “They kept on pressing ahead after their case collapsed. This is the president of the United States!”

Barr also explained his role in assisting Durham in his investigation overseas after his Democrat/media critics assailed him for improperly inserting himself into the probe.

“The person running the investigation is John Durham,” Barr insisted. “But this is a very unusual circumstance where we are going to foreign governments and asking them to assist and cooperate—including some of their sensitive materials and personnel,” he explained. “And the U.S. Attorney doesn’t show up on the doorstep in some of these countries like London and say, ‘hey, I want to talk to your intelligence people,’ and so forth.”

He told Williams that his purpose was to introduce Durham to the appropriate people and set up channels to help his investigation in the countries that were involved.

Barr also defended Durham’s statement on the IG report after it came out Monday.

“Based on the evidence collected to date, & while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the IG that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened,” Durham stated.

The attorney general said that it was necessary for Durham to come out with a statement to avoid public confusion.

“I think it was sort of being reported by the press that the issue of predication was sort of done and over even though it was a very limited look at that issue by the IG given the narrowness of the evidence available to him.

“I think it was important for people to understand that Durham’s work was not being preempted and that Durham was doing something different … and there are areas of disagreement. I think it was perfectly appropriate so the public could understand the relationship between the two exercises.”

“I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press,” Barr said. “I think there were gross abuses…and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.

Difference between

Closing the Choice Gap In..

https://fee.org/articles/closing-the-choice-gap-in-us-education/?

Closing the Choice Gap In US Education

Entrepreneurs will be the ones to successfully create and scale affordable alternatives to conventional K-12 schooling, closing the choice gap.

Kerry McDonald - Tuesday, December 10, 2019

We hear a lot about education achievement gaps, learning gaps and opportunity gaps between different groups of students, typically based on socioeconomic status, race or ethnicity. Generally speaking, the achievement gap describes persistent differences in academic proficiency. The learning gap reveals discrepancies between what children are expected to know at a certain stage and what they actually know. And the opportunity gap explains how differences in resources, backgrounds, and circumstances can lead to different outcomes, such as college attainment rates. These are all important gaps to consider and strive to close, but one glaring gap is missing: the choice gap.

The Choice Gap

The reality is that many families have limited choices about where and how to educate their children. They may not like their assigned district school, but homeschooling may be undesirable or unrealistic and private school is often too expensive or unavailable. In some states, lower-and middle-income families may be able to take advantage of emerging education choice mechanisms, such as education savings accounts and tax-credit scholarship programs, that give them access to funds to use for private education options, but for many lower- and middle-income families, private alternatives are out of reach.

The choice gap is particularly clear and concerning when surveys show that selecting private options is the preferred choice for many parents. According to EdChoice’s 2019 Schooling in America Survey:

More than four out of five students attend a public district school, but less than half of public school teachers and less than a third of current school parents would prefer to send their children to a district school.

For Shaylanna Hendricks Graham, the lack of private options for her two children, ages seven and five, is frustrating. I wrote about Graham in my book Unschooled where she described why she and her husband made the decision not to enroll their children in school and to homeschool them instead. “There is a clear disadvantage for children of color and it can be damaging emotionally and psychologically for many children of color,” Graham explained.

We wanted to shelter our children from having that experience in school. We also wanted to make sure that they learned the true history and origin of our ancestors and the great impact that our African ancestors had in the history of the world.

She added:

Schools systematically treat our brown children as if they are less-than and less deserving than the rest and it is our intention that our brown children have a much more positive life experience.

I recently checked in with Graham, who lives in Boston. She said that homeschooling has become challenging, particularly as she tries to meet her children’s varying needs and give them enough social and academic enrichment, while also running a small consulting business. This reflects a wider trend among homeschooling families. The recent EdChoice surveymentioned above found overall satisfaction with homeschooling decreased by 10 percent since last year. After looking into local private school options with price-tags of over $35,000 a year, the couple realized that was more than they could pay, especially for two children.

Entrepreneurs Creating New Alternatives

Ideally, says Graham, she would prefer a more affordable, private hybrid homeschool program or micro-school that would allow her to continue the homeschooling lifestyle that she and her husband cherish, while also offering consistent, high-quality opportunities for her children to play and learn outside the home.

A model that allows for drop-off, offers enriching classes or opportunities for development in areas, as well as the freedom for the children to choose how they want to spend their day, would be a dream come true,

Graham says. “We would be happy to pay $7,000 for a program like this,” she adds.

Low-cost micro-schools, hybrid homeschooling programs and other affordable private options would help to close the choice gap. Tuition that is a fraction of the cost of a traditional private school in a given location would expand choices for many parents and kids.

Education choice programs and similar public policy efforts can also help to narrow the choice gap for lower- and middle-income families, but entrepreneurs are showing that they can accelerate the process.

Acton Academy has been expanding its low-cost private education model nationwide, with classes occurring in homes and other intimate settings to simulate the multi-age, “one-room schoolhouse” atmosphere. Prenda is a rapidly-growing network of micro-schools in Arizona that also runs on a hybrid model and costs families about $5,000 per year.

While policymakers may continue to make headway with education choice programs, entrepreneurs will be the ones to successfully create and scale affordable alternatives to conventional K-12 schooling, closing the choice gap and perhaps the others as well.

If you are interested in learning more about a large-scale entrepreneurial project I am currently working on to fill this choice gap, please reach out.

This article was republished with permission from Forbes.

Mockingbirds of the Deep State

Diana West commentary for The Epoch Times
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

From attorney Sidney Powell’s Michael Flynn filing on Oct. 24:

“The defense has requested the phone records of James Clapper to confirm his contacts with Washington Post reporter [David] Ignatius—especially on January 10, 2017, when Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of ‘take the kill shot on Flynn.'”

If this order sounds like something out of the criminal underworld, welcome to the deep state, which isn’t too deep anymore, writhing and flexing in plain sight.

While Clapper was allegedly targeting retired Lt. Gen. Flynn secretly through Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, we know he was also targeting President Donald Trump by secretly leaking the Steele dossier to CNN’s Jake Tapper. It’s this mantle of secrecy that taints so much of what we read and hear.

Democracy doesn’t die in darkness, journalism does. “Intelligence sources say …” whatever they want you to say.

True to his dishonest form, Clapper bald-faced lied about this leak to CNN, which would later become his employer, while under oath to Congress. But no worries, not for Clapper anyway. Clearly above the law, Clapper has never been, and never will be prosecuted for perjury before Congress. Roger Stone, on the other hand, not so much.

Notice through all of this poisonous fog that U.S. journalism has become merely a cloaking conduit for the so-called Intelligence Community. There are no boundaries to “anonymous sources,” nor any limits on their power in information warfare.

I was particularly struck by this terrifying mechanism of public control while listening to an interview with Russian-born Svetlana Lokhova, a British espionage historian. She’s currently suing FBI/CIA informant Stefan Halperand the parent companies of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and MSNBC for more than $25 million in punitive damages for their defamation of her good name in a series of baseless reports, seeded by Halper, the FBI, and others, that accused her of seducing Flynn on behalf of Russian intelligence. To call this a reckless disregard for the truth is gross understatement. It’s the weaponization of “intelligence” in the form of “free press”-disseminated disinformation.

Her revelations are startling. According to the logic of Lokhova’s extremely compelling brief, the anti-Trump conspirators (my term) moved on Flynn and concocted a romantic connection to Lokhova as a means of creating “Russian collusion” on the Trump team in the wake of Flynn’s abrupt departure from the Trump White House in February 2017.

To that end, Lokhova’s brief alleges that Halper enlisted espionage historian Christopher Andrew, a colleague of Halper’s at Cambridge, in an “intelligence seminar,” which also included Christopher Steele’s former MI6 boss, Sir Richard Dearlove.

Christopher Andrew?

Andrew is, without doubt, the most eminent historian of the British secret services and Soviet espionage in the UK, and for decades has been granted special access to closed archives and defectors by the state. Andrew was also a mentor, co-author, and longstanding friend of Lokhova, a graduate student at Cambridge at this time.

Long story short, Lokhova’s suit sets forth a sequence of malicious steps leading to Andrew publishing a slanderous article about Flynn and the unnamed Lokhova in The Sunday Times of London on Feb. 19, 2017: “Impulsive General Misha Shoots Himself in the Foot.”

The article is demonstrably false. The Lokhova brief states: “Andrew refused to correct the Andrew Article. He later falsely claimed that the Article was written to head off ‘fake news’ stories. In truth, Andrew wrote and published the Andrew Article in concert with Halper as part of the conspiracy to defame and smear Lokhova and to connect General Flynn to a Russian.”

In other words, Lokhova’s brief states that Andrew, British doyen of the espionage historians, wrote the article as part of a disinformation operation to smear Flynn and, by extension, Trump with nonexistent Russian links.

Given Andrew’s work in the archives of intelligence, where the raw history of the Soviet art of disinformation lies, his involvement in an intelligence operation as a vector of disinformation himself comes as a special kind of shock. How could this be?

Did his British intelligence masters call in a chit for his many years of special access to secret files? Maybe this, too, is the case with Ignatius, who ostensibly covers intelligence as a journalist. If the Flynn brief is correct, Ignatius also is regarded as a servant, or colleague, perhaps, by the so-called Intelligence Community.

In her interview, Lokhova revealed that she asked Andrew to withdraw the article. He replied to her that he could not, “that he was under a lot of pressure but he wouldn’t specify what it was.”

It’s unlikely we’ll discover who that someone powerful is. However, we can already see that we are living in a “free society” in which our channels of information are poisoned by secret state actors.

Diana West is an award-winning journalist and author, whose latest book is

“The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.”

Happy Receipt Day: Here’s a Reminder of the ‘Conservatives’ Who Insisted FISA Abuse Was a Conspiracy Theory

Bonchie reporting for RedState

With the release of the IG report on the Trump-Russia investigation, and despite the media’s best efforts, much has been exposed showing misconduct at the FBI. The Carter Page FISA warrant was fraudulently garnered, using unverified information, doctored evidence, and outright lying to the court. With that news comes the reminder that a lot of establishment “conservatives” trashed Devin Nunes and white-knighted for Adam Schiff last year when the House released dueling reports on the matter.

Now that we know Nunes was largely correct and Schiff was blatantly lying in his rebuttal, it’s worth taking a look back. Thanks to Sean for finding and bumping these old tweets because they are very informative. I won’t comment on each one, but simply let what’s there do the talking.

Man, that’s good stuff.

And then there was David French, formerly of National Review. French was especially hostile to Nunes at the time he released his memo and came out publicly in support of Schiff’s conclusions, arguing they were “uncontested facts” that proved Republicans were wrong about the abuse of the FISA system. Surely, French would take his lumps, admit his error, and move on, right? Nah, he decided to call people who are pointing out how wrong he was “grifters,” because that’s all these people have these days.

Perhaps it would have been more prudent to wait for the evidence instead of going to bat for someone like Adam Schiff, but there’s apparently no end to the list of people certain “conservatives” will ally with if it means taking shots at the President. In the end, all of the above commentators were simply wrong. Instead of being willing to approach the latest news with some humility, most of them are just spinning the same as they always were.

The fact is, the FBI was not pure in this process. Those of us who saw the obvious evidence years ago and opined that there was malfeasance were right. Blind trust of bureaucracies has never been a conservative principle and it was mind-numbing to watch so many claim any questioning of these agencies was sacrilege. This was always more about politics than true principle.

But being Never Trump means never having to say you are sorry. There’s always the next lefty investor to pump millions into a “newsletter” written with a tinge of orange man bad.

IG Report Confirms Schiff FISA Memo Media Praised Was Riddled With Lies

Mollie Hemingway reporting for The Federalist

Nearly two years later, the inspector general's report vindicates the Nunes memo while showing that the Schiff memo was riddled with lies and false statements.

The new inspector general report on FISA abuse settles the debate between Republicans and Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Both groups put out memos about the Department of Justice’s efforts to secure a warrant to wiretap Carter Page.

At the time of their release, the media praised Democrat Adam Schiff and his memo and vilified Republican Devin Nunes and his memo. Nearly two years later, the inspector general’s report vindicates the Nunes memo while showing that the Schiff memo was riddled with lies and false statements.

The memo from the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee reported:

1. A salacious and unverified dossier formed an essential part of the application to secure a warrant against a Trump campaign affiliate named Carter Page. This application failed to reveal that the dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
2. The application cited a Yahoo News article extensively. The story did not corroborate the dossier, and the FBI wrongly claimed Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, was not a source for the story.
3. Nellie Ohr, the wife of a high-ranking Justice Department official, also worked on behalf of the Clinton campaign effort. Her husband Bruce Ohr funneled her research into the Department of Justice. Although he admitted that Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” this and the Ohrs’ relationship with the Clinton campaign was concealed from the secret court that grants surveillance warrants.
4. The dossier was “only minimally corroborated” and unverified, according to FBI officials.

All of these things were found to be true by the Inspector General Michael Horowitz in his December 9 report. In fact, Horowitz detailed rampant abuse that went far beyond these four items.

The Democratic minority on the committee, then led by Rep. Adam Schiff, put out a response memo with competing claims:

1. FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant.
2. The DOJ “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”
3. In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele’s reporting.
4. The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect “valuable intelligence.”
5. “Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias.”
6. The FBI conducted a “rigorous process” to vet Steele’s allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.
7. Steele’s prior reporting was used in “criminal proceedings.”

Each of these claims were found by Horowitz to be false.

Horowitz found that FBI and DOJ officials did in fact omit critical material information from the FISA warrant, including several items exculpatory to Page. Material facts were not just omitted but willfully hidden through doctoring of evidence.

The warrants were based on Steele’s dossier, which was known by January 2017 to be ridiculously uncorroborated. The renewals did not find information that corroborated Steele’s reporting. The warrants clearly didn’t allow the FBI to collect valuable intelligence. And Steele’s prior reporting was not used in criminal proceedings.

“We found that the 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,” the executive summary of the report says.

The media joined Department of Justice bureaucrats in bitterly opposing the release of the Nunes memo. The Justice Department released a letter to the press saying the action was “extraordinarily reckless,”would be “damaging” to “national security,” and would risk “damage to our intelligence community or the important work it does in safeguarding the American people.”

Then, when the report was released, the media made a variety of contradictory claims, all of them downplaying or dismissing the memo as nothing whatsoever. “Why Were The Democrats So Worried About The Nunes Memo?” asked The New Yorker. Rachel Maddow said that, far from destroying national security, instead the memo delivered “a sad trombone for Trump.” “It’s a joke and a sham,” claimed Washington Post writers.

“The memo purports to show that the process by which the FBI and Justice Department obtained approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to conduct surveillance on former Trump adviser Carter Page was deeply tainted,” the Post article says. “It does this by straining every which way to suggest that the basis for the warrant was the so-called ‘Steele dossier,’ which contains Democratic-funded research by former British spy Christopher Steele.” (The IG confirmed this week that the efforts to secure a warrant to spy on Page were dropped due to lack of evidence until Steele delivered his memos.)

On the other hand, Salon called the memo “fake news.” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who fervently believes that Trump is a traitor who colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, all evidence to the contrary, went even further. “The Nunes Memo Is Fake and the Russia Scandal Is Very Real,” he claimed. “While the evidence that the DOJ has been corrupt or even sloppy in its investigation has disintegrated, evidence for the seriousness of the investigation itself has grown progressively stronger,” Chait claimed.

CNN had their good buddy James Clapper, an Obama intelligence chief, say that the memo was a “blatant political act.” John Brennan, Obama’s CIA chief who was also implicated in the spying on the Trump campaign, told Politico that the memo was “exceptionally partisan.” Politico claimed the memo “makes no sense.”

“Nunes Memo Accidentally Confirms the Legitimacy of the FBI’s Investigation,” asserted The Intercept. “All Smoke, No Fire,” claimed resistance member Orin Kerr in The New York Times. “The Nunes Memo Continues To Backfire,” declared the hyperpartisan Washington Post editorial board.

A great example of the general media treatment of the issue of FISA abuse was offered up by U.S. News and World Report. “Nail in the Coffin for Nunes Memo,” declared the headline of an article that effusively praised Schiff while utterly condemning Nunes. “Nunes’ memo was a bad joke from the start,” the author writes, going on to assert that Page was a dangerous agent of Russia, multiple Trump campaign operatives were surveilled for excellent reason, and the ex-British spy secretly hired by Hillary Clinton to produce the dossier alleging Trump was a secret agent of Russia was simply beyond reproach.

“If the GOP’s defense of Page is puzzling so is its targeting of Steele, an accomplished British former spy with an expertise in Russia and Vladimir Putin,” claimed the U.S. News and World Report article. Steele’s reputation with most reporters was not based in reality and he doesn’t even claim he verified any of the information in his report, which a sprawling special counsel investigation was unable to corroborate in any of its central and major claims.

It is unclear if the media will revisit, much less apologize for, their false claims about the Nunes memo or credulous support of Schiff’s memo.

The IG Report Is A Huge....

https://reason.com/2019/12/09/ig-report-fbi-fisa-carter-page-trump-media/?

The Inspector General Report Is a Huge Blow to the FBI's Credibility. Why Is It Being Treated Like Vindication?

The government's surveillance of Carter Page might not have been improperly motivated, but it was still seriously flawed.

Robby Soave12.9.2019

(Jeff Malet Photography/Newscom) 

The Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General released its highly anticipated report on the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign's Russia connection on Monday.

Make no mistake: The report chronicles serious wrongdoing with respect to the FBI's surveillance of Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, and is ultimately a damning indictment of the the nation's top law enforcement agency. All Americans should have serious concerns about the FBI's respect for constitutional principles, ability to carefully evaluate conflicting information, and its competency in general.

Many in the media have focused on the fact that the OIG report failed to turn up any evidence that the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign's possible connections to Russia was politically motivated. The Washington Post's key takeaway was that the report amounted to a "triple rebuke" of the president and his allies. CNN's article led with "conspiracy theories debunked" and called the Russia probe "legal and unbiased," before conceding "serious mistakes" that the network predominantly attributed to a "low level FBI lawyer." In general, the Trump-critical mainstream media has treated the faltering of the most fervent pro-Trump partisans' conspiracy theory about a deep state coup as some kind of full acquittal of the FBI. It's not. The OIG report is a chronicle of massive government wrongdoing.

As Scott Shackford explained in his post on this subject, the report by Michael Horowitz found 17 "serious performance failures" relating to warrants obtained by the FBI through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment (FISA) courts for the purposes of monitoring Page. The FISA warrant, which was reauthorized three times, contained false and misleading information about Page. It omitted that he had previously disclosed his Russian contacts to a government agency; it overstated the government's confidence in the Christopher Steele dossier and ignored Steele's own doubts about one of his sources; it declined to mention that Page had said he and Paul Manafort had "literally never met"; and in general it ignored information that rendered unlikely the theory that Page was a Russian asset.

These are alarming failures. They undercut the government's position that FISA courts are a sufficient guardian of Americans' civil liberties, and that the FBI is capable of responsibly exercising the vast powers granted to it. No one should feel confident that a court would block the FBI from engaging in surveillance, even if the information was flawed or faulty.

And yet the FBI and its cable news surrogates essentially spent Monday afternoon and evening taking a victory lap. The agency itself led the charge: A spokesperson for the FBI said the report "does not impugn the FBI's institutional integrity. It doesn't doubt—or propose any changes to—the FBI's mission or our core values. It doesn't criticize—or even question—the brand that this organization has earned over 111 years."

On CNN, Erin Burnett uncritically interviewed FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who expressed great pride in his organization. "I know we didn't do anything wrong," he told her. "What we did was our job. I've known all along that we did the right thing." MSNBC had more of the same, with host Ari Melber interviewing David Kelley, an attorney for former FBI Director James Comey. The FBI's wrongdoing was mentioned, but only as an afterthought. Over and over again, the main story was the wrongness of Team Trump, and the absence of evidence that the FBI was ideologically motivated to work against the president.

Trump and his supporters were dead wrong to attribute to malice what is better explained by stupidity. But the latter is no less troubling, and it would be terrific if the media would spend more time holding the G-men's feet to the fire. It would also be terrific if Republicans could channel their momentary frustration about government surveillance programs into some sort of sustained pushback against civil liberty violations. Alas, the PATRIOT Act has been repeatedly reauthorized along mostly bipartisan lines.

It's official: The dossier was malarkey

Byron York reporting for Washington Examiner

The new report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is an absolutely damning indictment of the Steele dossier. 

The dossier, compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign, was a collection of damaging and unfounded rumors about candidate Donald Trump. It was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and overseen by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. It was never verified, and some of it was laughably far-fetched from the very beginning.

Still, the dossier's tales were taken seriously by officials in the highest ranks of the FBI — then-director James Comey and top deputy Andrew McCabe. In January 2017, Comey briefed President-elect Trump on the dossier's most sensational allegations. The briefing provided a hook for some news organizations to tell the public of the dossier's existence, and then, days later, publish the entire document.

The reporting did terrible damage to a new president as he took office. And now, the Horowitz report definitively shows that it was all garbage.

The report makes clear the dossier never had even a shred of credibility. Steele had no firsthand knowledge of anything in the document. He got all his information secondhand or thirdhand from sources who themselves heard things secondhand or thirdhand. 

When the FBI managed to track down one of Steele's main sources, the source was amazed that Steele took the information so seriously. It was "word of mouth and hearsay," the source said, "conversation ... with friends over beers." The source said he takes what his own sources tell him "with a grain of salt," and that it was, in the end, "just talk."

Nevertheless, Steele, along with his Democratic sponsors and the highest levels of U.S. law enforcement, used those conversations with friends over beers to throw American politics into chaos and do irreparable harm to a newly elected president.

Look at three of the dossier's most incendiary charges:

1) The "well-developed conspiracy" between Trump and Russia. The dossier claimed that Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort used low-level foreign policy adviser Carter Page as an intermediary to the Russians in a plot to weaken Clinton. But when the FBI interviewed Steele's "sub-source" — that is, a person in Russia who gathered gossip from others and passed it on to Steele — agents heard an account that was "not consistent with and, in fact, contradicted the allegations of a 'well-developed conspiracy.'" In a secretly recorded conversation with an informant, Page said he "literally never met" or "said one word to" Manafort and complained that Manafort never responded to Page's emails. And then, according to the report, Steele himself told the FBI that his source was a "boaster" who "may engage in some embellishment." Nevertheless, Steele passed on the "well-developed conspiracy" allegation — the foundation of the entire Trump-Russia collusion fabrication — and the FBI, for a while, believed it.

2) The Carter Page bribe. The dossier reported that during a July 2016 trip to Moscow, Page met with Igor Sechin, head of the Russian energy giant Rosneft and a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sechin, the dossier said, offered Page a huge bribe, in the form of a multibillion-dollar brokerage interest, to persuade Trump, should he become president, to end U.S. sanctions. The FBI talked to Steele's subsource, who said he got information from another source via text message, and the texts never said anything about a brokerage offer to Page. "We reviewed the texts," the inspector general report says, "and did not find any discussion of a bribe, whether as an interest in Rosneft itself or a 'brokerage.'" Somewhere along the line, the Page "bribe" was created out of whole cloth. Beyond being false, it was, of course, enormously harmful to Page's reputation.

3) The pee tape. The most sensational and salacious part of the dossier was the allegation that businessman Trump watched prostitutes perform a kinky sex act in a Moscow hotel room in 2013 while Russian spy cameras recorded the whole thing. It didn't happen. The report says the subsource involved in that story told the FBI he warned Steele the story was "rumor and speculation," which the subsource had not been able to substantiate. It had not been "confirmed" by a Western staff member at the hotel, as Steele claimed. And then this: The subsource told the FBI "that some of the information, such as allegations about Trump's sexual activities, were statements he heard made in 'jest.'" It was all a joke.

Nevertheless, the nation's top intelligence chiefs were so excited by the sex story that they decided Comey should give that briefing to Trump in January 2017. Then, news of the briefing leaked, which led to the leak of the entire dossier, which raised the Trump-Russia affair to a new and higher level.

And of course, it was not known at the time, but the FBI used the dossier to persuade a court to authorize a wiretap of Page.

Those were just the two most shameful episodes in the shameful history of the dossier. Now that the Horowitz report has shown it all to be bunk, it's hard to say what should happen now. Certainly, those responsible for creating, validating, and spreading the lies — Steele, Comey, Fusion GPS, and others — should suffer disgrace. But for those hurt in the affair, reputations cannot be easily restored. The disruption to the nation's public life cannot be measured. And the damage cannot be undone.