Recusal and Conflicts

~ The Background is HERE ~ 

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

A brief post just to emphasize a point about DC and how the power centers protect themselves.  You might remember when Attorney Jeff Sessions was told he needed to recuse himself from anything to do with the Trump-Russia investigation.  We know from FOIA requests of schedules, the participants in the meeting on the date of those discussions:

Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself at the conclusion of a meeting involving Jody Hunt, Dana Boente, Jim Crowell, Tashina Guahar and Scott Schools; an apparent conflict of interest.  Now consider….

Mary McCord was Acting Asst. Attorney General for the National Security Division, when she submitted the fraudulently constructed FISA application used against Carter Page. Mary McCord, knowingly and with specific intent, defrauded the court and broke the law.  Mary McCord then went on to join Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler in the construction of the articles of impeachment. She did not recuse herself. 

At the time the Carter Page application was filed (October 21, 2016), Mary McCord’s chief legal counsel inside the office was a DOJ-NSD lawyer named Michael Atkinson.  In his role as the legal counsel for the DOJ-NSD, it was Atkinson’s job to review and audit all FISA applications submitted from inside the DOJ.  Essentially, Atkinson was the DOJ internal compliance officer in charge of making sure all FISA applications were correctly assembled and documented.  McCord and Atkinson knowingly submitted a fraudulent FISA application.

Atkinson then went on to become Intelligence Community Inspector General where he changed the rules for CIA whistleblowers to allow the accusation against President Trump to surface which resulted in an impeachment investigation. When ICIG Michael Atkinson turned over the newly authorized anonymous whistleblower complaint to the joint House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee (Schiff and Nadler chairs), who did Michael Atkinson give the complaint to?  Mary McCord.

Consider the conflicts within the Supreme Court. Mary McCord, knowingly and with specific intent, lied to the FISA court to support the FBI targeting of Trump.  Mary McCord’s husband, Sheldon L Snook, was running the office of the counselor to Chief Justice John Roberts; the office which would intercept any communication from the FISA court to the Chief Justice if the FISA court had any concerns about the false FBI application. No one from the office, or the Chief Justice counselor recused themselves.

Conflicts of interest only surface to create personnel changes when those changes meet the interests of the DC administrative state.  When those conflicts exist but they are useful to the interests of the DC administrative state, they are ignored.