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The Robert Mueller Investigation


Hugo Stiglitz

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14 minutes ago, Captainant said:

the wiretaps have borne useful and actionable information in criminal proceedings. Both sides, indeed.

Assuming that you are referring to the bolder section of the last paragraph in your quote, you are misreading it. The use of material in criminal proceedings is referring to Steele’s prior work. I believe it is a reference to his work on FIFA corruption. 

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1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

Assuming that you are referring to the bolder section of the last paragraph in your quote, you are misreading it. The use of material in criminal proceedings is referring to Steele’s prior work. I believe it is a reference to his work on FIFA corruption. 

Ah gotcha I believe you are correct. So Page's FISA application used findings and evidence that were used in prior criminal proceedings?

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2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Ah gotcha I believe you are correct. So Page's FISA application used findings and evidence that were used in prior criminal proceedings?

No. The use of Steele’s prior work in the fbi fifa corruption proceedings was used to bolster the credibility of his current work as a political operative under contract to fusion under contract to the dnc. 

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For you cons thinking the December release of the IG report will be to your liking, brace yourselves:

The New York Times also reported that, overall, Horowitz criticized the FBI’s handling of the application and renewals for Page, suggesting instances of sloppiness or negligence. But Horowitz is expected to debunk allegations of a broader conspiracy against President Donald Trump — teeing up a situation where people on both ends of the political spectrum can claim victory.

https://www.vox.com/2019/11/22/20977630/inspector-general-report-carter-page-russia-investigation

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4 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Thank goodness the FBI didn’t break the rules to prevent our government from going full blown fascist puppet state.  

Worked out well for them. In fact, the actions of the director of the fbi likely tilted the election to Trump. Unintended consequences and all that. 

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41 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Worked out well for them. In fact, the actions of the director of the fbi likely tilted the election to Trump. Unintended consequences and all that. 

The Deep State does make mistakes some items. In fact quite frequently. Iran out front should have told ya. 

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16 hours ago, Anastasis said:

FBI lawyer says that FBI lawyer falsifying documentation related to the factual basis for a FISA application has no material impact on the factual basis of said FISA application. 

Checkmate.  

But that didn't change the fact that some guy heard another guy in bar talking about how the 3rd guy said the Russians were doing something. 

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4 hours ago, notre dame joe said:

But that didn't change the fact that some guy heard another guy in bar talking about how the 3rd guy said the Russians were doing something. 

Yeah, we can't trust the Trump DOJ and its appointed investigators, not to mention nearly 1,000 former federal prosecutors, because Deep State.

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3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

The abuses of the government in connection with surveillance programs and the FISA court are a worthy topic of discussion.

But they have only the barest connection to the Mueller report and investigation, so they should be decoupled, imo.

WRT to thread. I think this is the right place.  There is where all the play by play related to the Russia investigation has gone down. The things being reported on related to the Russia investigation that evolved into the Mueller investigation. 

 

WRT broader impact on interpretation of the Mueller report, I don't think any the findings impact the conclusions, esp Volume II. Trump should be impeached and removed from office for obstruction.  No internal investigations into compliance with FBI policies and procedures are going to change that. As I have stated previously, I think that the likely outcome is a CAPA plan. I think that this is what the conclusion of the OIG report will recommend. 

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More from NYT, you know the sources without much reflection. For those that have ears to hear, let them hear. FISA process problems, and problems with the FISC representations specifically wrt the dossier content have been conceded at this point in friendly media leaks. I am not going to do the selective quoting thing that the twatters do. Of course, you have to be listening on the day before thanksgiving. Don't be afraid to sift through the spin. The punchlines, in particular with regards to a few of the issues that I have hammered on regarding the dossier and its use, the various back channels, representations in FISC applications, and flaws in the process are buried more than a few paragraphs deep. 

 

 

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s inspector general found no evidence that the F.B.I. attempted to place undercover agents or informants inside Donald J. Trump’s campaign in 2016 as agents investigated whether his associates conspired with Russia's election interference operation, people familiar with a draft of the inspector general’s report said.

The determination by the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is expected to be a key finding in his highly anticipated report due out on Dec. 9 examining aspects of the Russia investigation. The finding also contradicts some of the most inflammatory accusations hurled by Mr. Trump and his supporters, who alleged not only that F.B.I. officials spied on the Trump campaign but also at one point that former President Barack Obama had ordered Mr. Trump’s phones tapped. The startling accusation generated headlines but Mr. Trump never backed it up.

The finding is one of several by Mr. Horowitz that undercuts conservatives’ claims that the F.B.I. acted improperly in investigating several Trump associates starting in 2016. He also found that F.B.I. leaders did not take politically motivated actions in pursuing a secret wiretap on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page — eavesdropping that Mr. Trump’s allies have long decried as politically motivated.

But Mr. Horowitz will sharply criticize F.B.I. leaders for their handling of the investigation in some ways, and he unearthed errors and omissions when F.B.I. officials applied for the wiretap, according to people familiar with a draft of the report. The draft contained a chart listing numerous mistakes in the process, one of the people said.

Mr. Horowitz concluded that the F.B.I. was careless and unprofessional in pursuing the Page wiretap, and he referred his findings in one instance to prosecutors for potential criminal charges over the alteration of a document in 2017 by a front-line lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 37, in connection with the wiretap application.

Mr. Horowitz’s mixed bag of conclusions is likely to give new ammunition to both Mr. Trump’s defenders and critics in the long-running partisan fight over the Russia investigation. Last week, Mr. Trump described the coming report in a phone interview with “Fox & Friends” as potentially “historic” and predicted “perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Horowitz declined to comment. The people familiar with the inquiry cautioned that the draft report was not final. The New York Times has not reviewed the draft, which could include other significant findings.

Mr. Trump has long chafed at the Russia investigation, which overshadowed the first years of his presidency. Ultimately, the special counsel who took over the Russia inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III, found insufficient evidence to charge any Trump associates with conspiring with Russia’s interference.

But the president’s allies have seized on the F.B.I.’s conduct in opening the inquiry as potentially problematic. Attorney General William P. Barr prompted alarm among defenders of the F.B.I. by accusing the bureau this year of spying on the campaign.

The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed in 2017, has said he would not use the term spying to describe F.B.I. activities in 2016. The Mueller report reaffirmed the factors that the F.B.I. used to open its investigation, and Mr. Horowitz’s findings are also said to show that the F.B.I. acted properly in opening the inquiry.

F.B.I. officials started the investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, in July 2016 after learning that a Russian intermediary had offered information that could damage Hillary Clinton to a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos. The F.B.I. eventually began looking at four Trump campaign advisers who had ties to Russia, including Mr. Papadopoulos, and as law enforcement and intelligence officials were realizing the extent of the Kremlin’s ongoing campaign to sabotage the election.

The F.B.I. was cognizant of being seen as interfering with a presidential campaign, and former law enforcement officials are adamant that they did not investigate the Trump campaign organization itself or target it for infiltration. But agents had to investigate the four advisers’ ties with Russia, and the people they did scrutinize all played roles in the Trump campaign.

Mr. Trump and his allies have pointed to some of the investigative steps the F.B.I. took as evidence of spying, though they were typical law enforcement activities. For one, agents had an informant, an academic named Stefan A. Halper, meet with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos while they were affiliated with the campaign. The president decried the revelation as an “all time biggest political scandal” when it emerged last year.

The F.B.I. did have an undercover agent who posed as Mr. Halper’s assistant during a London meeting with Mr. Papadopoulos in August 2016. And indeed, another Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, reportedly pushed Mr. Halper for an ambassadorship in the Trump administration.

Mr. Halper turned down the job and told the F.B.I. that Mr. Navarro had made the overture, according to a person familiar with the offer.

Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that Mr. Halper tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign itself, the people familiar with the draft report said, such as by seeking inside campaign information or a role in the organization. The F.B.I. also never directed him to do so, former officials said. Instead, Mr. Halper focused on eliciting information from Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos about their ties to Russia.

Mr. Barr has suggested that the F.B.I. assigned other informants as well to figure out whether any Trump associates were working with the Russians. The F.B.I. gave Mr. Horowitz’s team extraordinary access to its informant database, and his investigators examined other F.B.I. informants with possible ties to the Trump campaign.

In each case, they found that the F.B.I. had not deployed those people to gather information on the Trump campaign itself, the people said.

It is also possible that the F.B.I. received unsolicited material from inside the Trump campaign; outsiders often submit potential evidence to the bureau that agents did not seek. But it is not clear whether Mr. Horowitz uncovered any such instances.

Mr. Horowitz will also undercut another claim by Trump allies — that the Russian intermediary who promised dirt to Mr. Papadopoulos, a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud, was an F.B.I. informant. Mr. Papadopoulos has helped spread that claim; he contends without evidence that the F.B.I. or the C.I.A. set him up to derail Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Image

George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, has accused law enforcement and intelligence officials of unfairly targeting him without backing up his claims.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

Mr. Papadopoulos served 12 days in prison last year on a conviction of lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Mr. Mifsud. Agents said his falsehoods hampered their ability to interrogate Mr. Mifsud, who was briefly in the United States but later left the country, out of the reach of the F.B.I., and disappeared from public view.

The report is also expected to debunk another theory of Trump allies: that the F.B.I. relied on information to open the investigation from a British former spy, Christopher Steele, himself a onetime bureau informant who compiled a dossier of damaging, unverified information on Mr. Trump.

The F.B.I. did cite the dossier to some extent to apply for the wiretap on Mr. Page. The inspector general will fault the F.B.I. for failing to tell the judges who approved the wiretap applications about potential problems with the dossier, the people familiar with the draft report said. F.B.I. agents have interviewed some of Mr. Steele’s sources and found that their information differed somewhat from his dossier.

Mr. Horowitz plans to say that the wiretap application, which referenced Mr. Papadopoulos, should have also included a statement he made to the undercover agent in London that could be seen as exculpatory or self-serving, the people familiar with the draft report said. Mr. Papadopoulos said at the time that he had nothing to do with Russia and knew no one else who did, he recounted in a book he has written.

Though a wiretap itself is an intrusive investigative tool, F.B.I. officials obtained a wiretap on Mr. Page after he had left the Trump campaign.

In addition, the inspector general examined Mr. Steele’s contacts with Bruce G. Ohr, a Justice Department official and an expert on Russian organized crime. Mr. Ohr, himself a target of Mr. Trump’s ire, spoke with Mr. Steele several times after the F.B.I. terminated its relationship with him in the fall of 2016 because he spoke with a reporter about his concerns about Mr. Trump. Mr. Ohr relayed information from those conversations to the bureau.

Mr. Horowitz is expected to criticize Mr. Ohr for keeping his meetings with Mr. Steele from his superiors.

The report will mark the end of one chapter of the Justice Department’s scrutiny of the F.B.I.’s handling of the Russia investigation, though the saga is ongoing. Mr. Barr has assigned the United States attorney for Connecticut, John H. Durham, to also examine the origins of the inquiry and the government’s collection of intelligence involving the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians.

Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.

 

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I, for one, am beside myself knowing that the FBI was “careless and unprofessional in pursuing the Page wiretap”.  In the scheme of things, this is fucking laughable.  The house is on fire and you’re worried that the fire department didn’t connect one of the hoses according to OSHA regulations. 

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More NYT reporting. Well, like 5 lines of reporting, the rest is editorializing. But still worth a sift through.  

The amount of spin coming during the lead up here is pretty amazing to watch unfold. From yes, #bothsides.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/us/politics/barr-inspector-general-report-russia.html?

Full text under tags:

Barr Is Said to Doubt Inspector General’s Finding on Russia Inquiry

If the attorney general rebuts the finding that the F.B.I. had sufficient cause to open the investigation, the president’s allies could use his skepticism to dismiss the entire report.

Attorney General William P. Barr’s doubts are significant because they could be perceived as the nation’s top law enforcement officer siding with President Trump over law enforcement officials.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Katie Benner and Michael S. Schmidt

Dec. 2, 2019

158

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr has told Justice Department officials that he is skeptical of a conclusion by the department’s inspector general that the F.B.I. had sufficient information to open the investigation into whether any Trump associates conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential race, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

Should Mr. Barr rebut the inspector general’s assessment, due out next week in a highly anticipated report, Mr. Trump’s allies will most likely use that pushback to dismiss the work itself. The review is expected to contradict some of the unfounded theories about the 2016 election that the president and his allies have promoted.

Mr. Barr’s doubts are significant because they could be perceived as the nation’s top law enforcement officer siding with Mr. Trump, who has long cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Russia investigation, over law enforcement officials.

His views are sure to inflame critics of Mr. Barr, who have accused him of siding with the president over the rule of law in his handling of the special counsel’s findings and in a recent speech in which he defended Mr. Trump’s use of executive authority. While it is a part of the executive branch, the Justice Department has typically sought to maintain some independence from the White House to guarantee that justice is applied fairly and not wielded as a political cudgel.

Mr. Barr’s skepticism could place more pressure on John H. Durham — the federal prosecutor who is conducting a separate criminal inquiry into the roots of the Russia investigation — to find evidence backing Mr. Barr’s position. Mr. Durham has already unearthed some evidence that supports Mr. Barr’s uncertainty of the inspector general’s findings, according to a lawyer involved in the Durham inquiry.

The attorney general has also expressed skepticism at the F.B.I.’s decision to investigate Mr. Trump’s own ties to Russia and whether he obstructed justice. It is unclear whether the report by the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, will address that.

Mr. Barr has privately praised Mr. Horowitz for his work and has not made clear whether he will publicly disagree with the report. It is standard practice for the Justice Department to submit to the inspector general a written response to his findings, which is then included in the final assessment. Mr. Barr could use that opportunity to issue a formal rebuttal, or he could make a public statement of some other kind.

“The inspector general’s investigation is a credit to the Department of Justice,” the department’s spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said in a statement on Monday night. “Rather than speculating, people should read the report for themselves next week, watch the inspector general’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and draw their own conclusions about these important matters.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Horowitz declined to comment. The Washington Post first reported the dispute.

It was not clear what Mr. Barr based his uncertainty on. The threshold to open the Russia investigation was not particularly high. The F.B.I. can open a preliminary inquiry based on “information or an allegation” that a crime or threat to national security may have occurred or will occur, according to bureau policy. Typically, agents open counterintelligence investigations with a small amount of evidence, Lisa Page, a former F.B.I. lawyer who has also been a target of Mr. Trump’s ire, testified privately to congressional investigators last year.

The conclusion that the F.B.I. had enough evidence when it opened the Russia investigation will be part of the long-anticipated report that wraps up Mr. Horowitz’s nearly two-year inquiry into aspects of the case, including its origins and whether the F.B.I. abused its surveillance powers when it sought a wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser.

While Mr. Horowitz is expected to sharply criticize the F.B.I.’s top leaders, he is not expected to find that any of the bureau’s officials acted out of political bias against Mr. Trump when they decided to investigate links between his associates and Russia. Ultimately, Mr. Horowitz concluded that the F.B.I. violated no rules when it began its delicate inquiry, work that not only thrust the bureau into a politically treacherous position, but has also overshadowed much of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Mr. Horowitz’s “excellent work has uncovered significant information that the American people will soon be able to read for themselves,” Ms. Kupec said in her statement.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, eventually took over the Russia inquiry and affirmed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. But he found insufficient evidence to charge any Trump associates with conspiring with the Russian operation and declined to say whether Mr. Trump obstructed the investigation itself.

Mr. Barr, who has for decades expressed a maximalist view of executive authority, has long questioned whether aspects of the inquiry were legitimate. His skepticism began even before he was attorney general, when he wrote a 19-page memo to Justice Department leaders arguing that Mr. Trump was within his authority to fire James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, which Mr. Mueller was investigating as potential obstruction of justice. During a hearing, Mr. Barr told Congress that he believed that “spying” had occurred on the Trump campaign, and that he wanted to determine whether that surveillance was lawfully predicated.

As Mr. Horowitz worked on his review, senior Justice Department officials have also discussed putting in place procedures and guidelines that would force the bureau to get Justice Department approval before opening an investigation on someone like the president, one person who has been briefed on those conversations said.

Mr. Horowitz also found that a low-level lawyer at the F.B.I., Kevin Clinesmith, altered a document to include false information, and then included it in a packet of information that the F.B.I. used to renew a warrant to secretly wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser.

That information could have been part of the reason Mr. Durham began his work as a departmental review and shifted it in recent months to a full criminal investigation. He is not expected to complete his work anytime soon. His criminal investigation spans not only the F.B.I., the subject of Mr. Horowitz’s report, but also the C.I.A.

Mr. Horowitz will release the more than 400-page report next Monday, and he will testify before Congress about his findings on Dec. 11.

 

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34 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

Keep your powder dry.  I would fully expect DOJ to submit a rebuttal.

If so, and if it is focused on specifically the predication, it will likely be a narrow rebuttal.  

Keep in mind that the OIG investigation was launched specifically to examine the process used to obtain the FISA surveillance warrant on Page, information related to the Steele dossier, and the relationship between Steele and the FBI. All of these other issues, which seem to be getting the most spotlighting in the leaky run up here fall under that "may arise during the course of...".  Which is fine, I think that it is good to examine the predicate (maybe declassify the case opening file would be nice) and the use of undercover informants targeting campaign aides, but the focus of the inquiry is the FISA process.

We already have indication there is a chart of FISA process errors, indication that an FBI lawyer who worked the file was referred for potential prosecution related to process violations, that the level of transparency related to the use of Steele's work is criticized, that the FBI's attempts to verify the contents revealed unreliable sources, and that the back door mechanism used to keep Steele engaged will get some scrutiny.  I don't think that you are going to see a full rebuttal.  Sounds like WaPo is making a mighty big deal out of some rather limited internal DOJ discussions. 

 

But hey, maybe I am wrong.

 

Examination of the Department’s and the FBI’s Compliance with Legal Requirements and Policies in Applications Filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Relating to a certain U.S. Person

The OIG, in response to requests from the Attorney General and Members of Congress, is examining the Department’s and the FBI’s compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) relating to a certain U.S. person. As part of this examination, the OIG is also reviewing information that was known to the DOJ and the FBI at the time the applications were filed from or about an alleged FBI confidential source. Additionally, the OIG is reviewing the DOJ’s and FBI’s relationship and communications with the alleged source as they relate to the FISC applications. If circumstances warrant, the OIG will consider including other issues that may arise during the course of the review.

FBI's Adjudication of Misconduct Investigations

Edited by Anastasis
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1 hour ago, workswithseed said:

@Anastasis do you just like the beating? God, your persistence is pretty finominal.

Maybe.  And as a sure sign of God's disapproval of my excess, I don't even get the payoff when the report drops, or game threading of the Senate hearing. Got called out of the bullpen for business travel next week. 

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4 minutes ago, suddenly shaggy said:

Don't worry. I'm sure Anastasis will manage to find the other side of this somehow.

Focus bitch made. Maybe Horowitz will include the FBI assessment table that relates the verification status of each of the claims in the Steele dossier.  Then wecan compare it to the WaPo piece you love. That would be something. 

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7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Focus bitch made. Maybe Horowitz will include the FBI assessment table that relates the verification status of each of the claims in the Steele dossier.  Then wecan compare it to the WaPo piece you love. That would be something. 

When is the latest OIG report happening?  Soon IIRC?

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9 minutes ago, zork said:

When is the latest OIG report happening?  Soon IIRC?

Well, one dropped under the radar last week. Identifying issues with validation of confidential informants (see below). The more on point one, at least wrt to the current exchange, drops on monday. 

(U) Results in Brief (U) We found that the FBI's vetting process for CHSs, known as validation, did not comply with the Attorney General Guidelines. We also found deficiencies in the FBl's long-term CHS validation reports which are relied upon by FBI and Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) officials in determining the continued use of a CHS. Further, the FBI inadequately staffed and trained personnel conducting long-term validations and lacked an automated process to monitor its long-term CHSs. (U) The joint DOJ-FBI committee tasked with oversight of the FBl's CHS program did not meet its composition requirements placing an undue burden on just a few members. The committee also had a backlog of CHSs awaiting continued use determinations, potentially allowing them to operate when they should not have. (U) The FBI also missed an opportunity to identify its non-compliance with established CHS validation requirements because it did not follow its own directives for incorporating new procedures into policy. Further, we identified issues related to the FBI's current validation process for CHSs with characteristics the FBI considers significant and its lack of policy for communicating with CHSs. Lastly, a newly proposed system designed to align its CHS base with its highest priorities will rely on ingesting data from at least one FBI system with known data quality issues.

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21 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Focus bitch made. Maybe Horowitz will include the FBI assessment table that relates the verification status of each of the claims in the Steele dossier.  Then wecan compare it to the WaPo piece you love. That would be something. 

Can someone translate this for me? Thx

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