How To Prepare For The Impending Justice Department Inspector General Report What can we expect from Inspector General Michael Horowitz's probe into abuses at the Department of Justice and FBI? For starters, don't get your hopes up.
The Department of Justice’s Inspector General announced on March 28, 2018, that he was going to look into the application to wiretap Carter Page, who had been an advisor to the Trump campaign. The review would analyze whether policies and procedures related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had been properly followed.
Earlier that year, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, then led by Republican Chairman Devin Nunes, had released a report about FISA abuse. The Justice Department fought the disclosure of the report bitterly, claiming it would egregiously harm national security.
The report was released, showing among other things that the Clinton campaign’s Russia collusion “dossier” formed an essential part of the application to spy on Page, that the role of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee was not properly disclosed to the court that approved the application, and that dossier author Christopher Steele’s relationship and posture was not appropriately disclosed. The report noted that the application cited a Yahoo News article written by Michael Isikoff without noting that the source of that article was Steele. It revealed that Bruce Ohr, a DOJ official, continued to talk to Steele after Steele was terminated as a source to the FBI, and that Bruce’s wife Nellie was a colleague of Steele’s on the Russia collusion project. Her role was not disclosed to the court. Bruce Ohr disclosed Steele’s extreme political bias to the FBI but that bias was not mentioned to the court. The report also showed that the dossier was not validated before being used for the application or before a portion of it was briefed to President-elect Trump in January 2017. The report also noted the extreme political bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton on the part of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, two officials involved in the process. Text messages between the two included discussions of coordinated leaks to the media and an attempt to have an “insurance policy” in the unlikely case Trump won.
The Democratic minority, led by current chairman Adam Schiff, said that there was no FISA abuse.
QuoteHorowitz report expected to clear FBI of misdeeds in Russia probe The Hill, Dec 7, 2019
The Justice Department's report that is expected to conclude that the FBI's federal investigation into potential links between Russia and President Trump's 2106 campaign wasn't politically motivated will be released Monday.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who wrote the report, is said to have found that there was enough evidence to justify the FBI wiretapping Carter Page, Trump's former campaign adviser who reportedly had contact with Russian officials multiple times.
Carter Page: Horowitz report will only tell 'part of the story' The Hill, Dec 8, 2019
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page said the report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz expected to be released Monday will only tell “part of the story.”
Page told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that he expects there to be more “exculpatory” information that is still classified that will not be in the report.
“Well, I think we’ll learn part of the story tomorrow,” Page said. “What I’ve learned from some of the leakers and the -- one of the papers of record -- a top reporter there said that, you know, there’s a lot of exculpatory information which is remaining classified, and there’s been internal battles."
“So, we’ll have to see how that all plays out,” he said.
Page also claimed in the interview that the government and reporters had targeted him because he had some ties to Russia.
The Justice Department’s internal watchdog investigation focused on whether the FBI acted appropriately in its probe, starting in July 2016, into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. The president and GOP lawmakers have claimed the report would show FBI wrongdoing in the investigation.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that the Horowitz report is expected to find the FBI’s investigation justified but flawed.
13 Things To Look For In The Inspector General FISA Abuse Report The Federalist, Dec 9, 2019
Today, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz will reportedly issue his findings on the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI’s compliance (or lack thereof) with the legal requirements and internal policies and procedures related to the Carter Page Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications. Horowitz’s report follows a 20-month investigation into possible FISA abuse, as well as an inquiry into the DOJ and FBI’s relationship and communications with dossier author Christopher Steele, triggered by requests from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and members of Congress.
Horowitz’s investigation was limited in scope and thus will leave unanswered many of the questions surrounding the FBI’s targeting of the Trump campaign in the spring and summer of 2016—concerns hopefully addressed soon by Attorney General William Barr and the federal prosecutor he assigned to investigate those matters, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham. But, given the breadth of the already released details indicating substantial abuse of the FISA process, the IG’s report should address a plethora of problems, some identified by then-House Intelligence Committee chairman, Devin Nunes, and many more discovered as additional facts became known while the Russia collusion hoax unraveled over the last two years.
1. Concerns about Federal Surveillance of Carter Page
2. What Criminal Allegations Existed Against Page?
3. Did the FBI Follow the Woods Procedures?
4. Why Did Page’s Application Not Follow the Usual Path?
5. Was Any Application Info False or Misleading?
6. Hiding the Steele Dossier Commissioners From the Court
7. Why the FBI Lied about Steele’s Press Contacts
8. Other Information Questioning Steele’s Reliability
9. The Bruce Ohr Problems
10. Then There’s Nellie Ohr
11. What the FBI Withheld about Page’s Help Prosecuting Spies