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FBI Conspiracy?
I will not speculate too much, per the Code of Conduct, but something stinks at the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
Last night news organizations were given access to 375 text messages between FBI Counterintelligence Investigator Peter Strzok and his mistress/co-worker/lawyer Lisa Page. Most of them are pretty mild but do show a clear hatred of Donald Trump and some mild cheerleading for Hillary Clinton. But then there is this:
I want to believe the path u threw out 4 consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event u die b4 you’re 40
A quick recap of the players here: Andy is Andrew McCabe who was Number Two at the bureau and took over as Acting Director when Trump fired Comey. Strzok was the lead investigator on the Clinton emails and interviewed Mrs. Clinton and her aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. He was also the lead interviewer on Gen. Michael Flynn who has been charged with lying to the Bureau and remains Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s big catch so far. Lisa Page was also involved in all of the major political investigations and was hired and then removed from the Mueller team along with her lover.
The question here is just what was the “path” laid out in McCabe’s office? What was the FBI’s “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency?
To further muddle (or maybe clarify?) the picture, McCabe cancelled an appearance before the House Intelligence Committee this week because it came to light several days ago that Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Director, was reassigned when it came to light that he had met with his wife’s employer — Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS and their controversial dossier author Christopher Steele.
Was the Steele dossier the FBI’s insurance policy? Or was it something else?
The FBI should have a certain level of independence and insulation against politicization. But as we saw with the Bureau’s founding director J. Edgar Hoover, independence without accountability breeds corruption. Something stinks at 935 Pennsylvania Ave. NW and needs more than a plug-in air freshener. The place needs scrubbed and fumigated.
Published in Domestic Policy
I will make a bet that someone could take inventory of the functions and decide that some of them could be transferred to other departments.
And some would have to stay with the FBI. But we’ve federalized too many crimes as it is, so maybe we just need to deal with the repercussions. There will be repercussions either way.
Those emails sure look like a prima facie case of conspiracy. For any of us – if we wrote them and came to the attention of this very same FBI – you can be sure it would be enough to ruin our lives, even if we managed to be found innocent (and bankrupt). A nation of laws… what a joke.
It’s the former, in my opinion. So far the Sessions pick for DOJ has been a complete disaster from the losing of his Alabama seat to his seeming impotence as AG. As I’ve said before, if this were something threatening asset forfeiture, he MIGHT become animated.
I would think it would not take a special prosecutor, just a clear directive from Sessions, for a properly vetted (i.e.,not one whose life and donations reveal partisan activist tendencies) DOJ prosecutor to be assigned to convene a grand jury (preferably outside DC where 90% of the voters went for Hillary) and subject these bureaucratic James Bond wannabes to a proper grand jury grilling. Let’s see just who and where the rats are, and if the facts warrant, then let’s indict under existing laws to prosecute their crimes against the duly elected executive.
Or give me a few hours , immunity, and a blow torch
That’s a pretty damning piece by Gowdy. I know he’s essentially making an argument, not asking a question, but still – all lined up like that, the DoJ and FBI look like Soviet-era flunkies, protecting their political interests, first and last.
One of about 4,834 reasons why Trump. I know that’s not new news, but when people take a look at this, even if they don’t wade too deeply in the details, they’re nauseated. What in the hell does any of this have to do with what we entrust these idiots to actually do? Fight crime?
Nope. They maneuver, politically, and hope that they don’t get caught. That’s what they do all day.
This may be true, but irrelevant. Ham radio is a rare hobby. I have trouble believing that the Feds are monitoring their channels. And Mssrs McCabe and Strozyk would certainly know.
I watched the video clip that Dorrk posted. It was the first time I ever saw Gowdy on video; I wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a police lineup before this.
He did very well in explaining the issue of conflict-of-interest, but I thought it was pretty weak to bring it all down to, “What do I tell the folks back home?” That’s just asking Rosenstein to give a lying assurance, which is something anybody in his position can do in his sleep.
It would have been better if he had asked for verifiable guarantees that the hiring procedures and day-to-day operations precluded any such conflicts-of-interest elsewhere on the team.
Without such guarantees, he could have asked if the investigator’s internal reports, testimonies, and activities were organized and documented well enough that another team without such conflicts of interest could be brought in to take over the investigation.
Maybe others have better ideas of what he could have done, but just getting an answer to, “What do I tell the people back home,” suggests a lack of seriousness.
His intentions are clear. The problem is if his job puts him in a position in which he has the capability of “protect[ing] the country” from Trump.
Gowdy said the whole reason for the IC law in general and Mueller’s appointment in particular is the presence or appearance of conflict of interest.
Rosenstein just declared that to be irrelevant so long as the conflict of interest doesn’t affect the work product. Trust him and Mueller, they’ll make sure it doesn’t. Or doesn’t look as though it does. Publicly, anyway.
America’s secret police?
Doc Jay”
I was never a Sessions fan. Remember this whole dumpster fire started with his appointment and recusale (I include Roy Moore in the fire). Sessions lost me years ago with his favoring of Civil Asset Forfeiture.
This wouldn’t be the first time an agent from a government agency assassinated a world leader. The Progs have been trying to work up their nut bar Antifa base to do just that. If whipping up the Antifa goons doesn’t produce the desired result, sooner or later they are going to get tired of waiting, and then they will take action from within the government. We are well on our way to being a banana republic, this is the next step.
I thought that already happened during the Clinton administration.
If you interpret the banana as a phallic symbol.
Heh. Well, I’ve been curious about this story since the Trump Tower / Russian Bank / FISA story – the way it suddenly flamed up in the press, then vanished, then turned into a backlash about Trump’s “Obama wiretapped me” tweets. From the start it was odd: NYT says “The government tapped Trump Towers,” and everyone on the lefty side said “yes! There’s something there! Git ’em!” and then nothing, and then Trump says “The government tapped Trump Towers” and the same people who’d cheered the FISA warrant are saying Trump was wrong.
Why the tap was placed, in other words, has bugged me since it was a strange sideshow, so I’m obligated to incorporate anything that seems relevant and plausible into the conjecture.
As for the ham radio stuff, yes, I’m sure the NSA et al can find these transmissions, but as Judge Mental said, do they? Gary asked:
I’m imagining the Cat Detector Van from “Monty Python,” for some reason.
Ham transmissions wouldn’t be unlicensed, though – she had a license. And again, it’s odd that she just decided to get a ham radio license. I don’t think she’s suddenly started to collect QSL cards.
You can’t do anything suddenly in amateur radio. It’s hard to get a ham license. It’s not like Citizen’s Band. She had to have learned something about electrical engineering; depending on the class of license, she’d have to know “Morse” (international telegraph) code. It’s not something that a anti-Trump conspirator could pick up easily.
Why go to the trouble and expense if any of us on the site could come up with ten other, simpler, more secure ways to communicate secretly?
This may be a garbled fact, if it is a fact.
True. What’s *interesting* doesn’t mean it’s proof of anything. That said, how many of us on this site, if asked to come up with a secure way of communicating would have come up with ham radio?
You no longer have to know Morse code to get a Technician Ham radio license, which is what Nellie Ohs has. You do have to know something about how radio transmission and reception works, and you have to know which frequencies each license class is authorized to use. http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed
By the way, amateur radio is a great hobby, and way more fun than I thought it would be.
Ham radio isn’t secure, but transmissions are hard to catch and record, as they are ephemeral, and not moderated through computers. To catch some one’s transmission you would have to know, or be scanning for their frequency and the time that they are transmitting.
Ricochet has more spooks than an Abbott and Costello haunted house comedy. Any members of the Intelligence Community care to step up to the plate (you’re protected by your avatar, more or less) and evaluate this as tradecraft? Would this fly on “The Americans”?
“OK, Natasha, write to the FCC and apply for a license under your own name. Then buy a transmitter, whose frequency range is known, and transmit in the clear”.
“But Boris, how will you tell me the times and contact frequencies?”
“Oh, the way we always do. I’ll meet you in the park. We’re married, so no one will think anything of it. Or scan your text into the public domain QR code converter and insert them as periods at the end of sentences. Use the public fax at Fed Ex/Kinko’s”.
I would suggest encoding them in a cat video.
I meant to capture message 52 to code it into a cat video – love it!
But I highlighted the above sentence, as it speaks a mouthful. I cannot tell you how shocked I am at what is unfolding – I keep thinking how can you be more shocked but it keeps coming…..I even heard today on the radio that these two also communicated through a ham radio! Lisa applied for a ham radio license – I am deeply disappointed as an American citizen, what I am discovering going on in our Nation’s Capitol. I had to put up with 8 years of Obama, but he was our president and I would defend him as such as an American.
I am appalled at the “powers that be” assumed Hillary Clinton, someone I would not even vote for to head Mosquito Control in my county, would assume the presidency. Our president, love him or hate him, was duly elected by the people, who were fed up with the Obama (and the continuation of it with Hilary) doctrine and elected Trump. Amazing what is being uncovered in our democracy, the beacon of freedom and democracy for the world.
Gary?
If this is true and there are members of the intelligence community on Ricochet, can you please speak to what is going on with our country and its leadership, especially in light of the fact that Russia is so intent on disrupting democracy, but more disturbing, what is happening with our own citizens and this story? This is deeply worrying…..
Google some other Gowdy Q&A sessions. It’s not a lack of seriousness. They usually use their allotted time to speech-make, not necessarily ask questions, especially if they know they’re not going to get the answer they want. So they pile up the evidence and ask the witness to explain how there’s no conspiracy there.
It’s a bit of a Gordian knot and he unraveled a lot of it in his presentation. That’s what I liked. Asking them if their documentation is in order is going to net what, exactly? “Yes, I’ve created File System Alpha-Omega in the offchance our lies would be seen through, and so someone else can come in and take what we’ve decided is relevant and/or not damning to ourselves or our political masters and start fresh work immediately on getting indictments for myself, my management chain, and possibly Barry”.
High expectations.
Can’t they just pass notes, like we did in school?
Which is why I don’t plan to google for more. I’ve already seen enough of these blowhard investigations in the past. Gowdy puts on a better show and makes a better speech than the others, but what’s the end game? What’s the point? What is the outcome supposed to be?
Asking if their documentation is in order would make people think about the possibility that the team is replaceable by one that could do a better job. It would make us know that they are aware of the possibility. I’m not saying it’s the best that could be done, but asking what to tell the people back home is silly. He’s putting himself in the position of passing on their own lame assurances and putting his own stamp of approval on them. He should at least be asking for verifiable information, not just the say-so of someone whose say-so has proven unreliable up to now.