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And Now, the Counter Investigation
Bill Barr wants to know who started the Russia probe and whether the spying on the Trump campaign was legal. First reported by the New York Times and confirmed by the AP, Barr has appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham to investigate the investigators.
This is actually the third counter investigation and the most serious. FBI inspector general Michael Horowitz is already looking into the government’s use of wiretaps through FISA and U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber’s is reviewing FBI misconduct claims.
Durham is a career prosecutor who was nominated for his post as U.S. attorney in Connecticut by Trump. He has previously investigated law enforcement corruption, the destruction of CIA videotapes and the Boston FBI office’s relationship with mobsters.
In nominating him, the White House said Durham and other nominees for U.S. attorney jobs share Trump’s vision for “making America safe again.”
Durham was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2018. At the time, Connecticut’s two Democratic senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, called Durham a “fierce, fair prosecutor” who knows how to try tough cases.
Sen. Lindsey Graham also said that he wants to “investigate the investigators.” I’m guessing there’s a lot of nervous chatter bouncing around the Beltway tonight.
Published in General
Mueller ran a lot of time off the clock. The statute of limitations may loom large in some instances.
Fun to speculate who will turn rat first. Should we have a pool?
It will be interesting to see if there’s now a preemptive effort to demonize Durham, despite his unanimous Senate confirmation, or if the decision is to lay back and not attack him until it’s determined where (and how fast) Durham’s going with his investigation. But it’s unlikely he’ll simply be left alone, and not face the same type of accusations Barr’s facing right now from Democrats.
Delayed until after he had a Democratic House to hand his report to.
IF?
I like former FBI General Counsel James Baker as the first rat off the sinking ship.
He was in it up to his eyeballs 2015 through 2017 and they kept him around for the IG investigation until late 2018. Baker is now under criminal investigation for leaking.
He’s been palling around with the Lawfare thugs, but he has that characterless lawyer like weaselly rat faced look to him which makes me believe he’d turn on his bosses if it kept him out of the pokey.
So put me in the pool for whatever the dollar limit is with my bet on the weaselly rat faced James Baker.
…a dish best served cold. Yummy.
I think Mike Rogers already did, and that’s the basis for all of this
Jeff Hawkins: “I think Mike Rogers already did, and that’s the basis for all of this”
Rogers was not a rat; he was a Patriot who did his duty, but yes without Rogers much of this would never have come to light. It is alleged by some that Rogers went to Trump once he was elected and laid out the whole conspiracy and that is why Trump could hang so tough when it appeared from the outside the conspiracy was closing in. Rogers also went to FISA Court Judge Collyers a couple weeks after the first FISA warrant against Page and informed her of the fraud.
Many have claimed that the real criminals in all this will never go to jail or be prosecuted. Too much is being revealed and/or has been revealed and there is more bombshells to come for that.
Besides, I believe at least Carter Page and Papadopoulos are going to sue to have it ruled in court that any conviction and evidence gathered from the probes will be very poisonous fruit from a very poisoned tree and therefore should be thrown out and any conviction of theirs thrown out with it. Judicial Watch is also suing to uncover the email coverup which will be absolutely devastating to the conspirators when fully revealed to the public. Those suits should uncover a lot and put tremendous pressure on the three investigations to do their job faithfully, particularly Huber, who has been reported to have not interviewed any serious witnesses after over a year.
The big thing is pre-emptive vs. post-action. Durham’s going to get demonized unless there’s some sort of fix in to whitewash the whole thing or drag it out past the 2020 election — the only question is will they guy who Democrats unanimously confirmed two years ago now be the next worse-than-Hitler on their list before he ever does anything in the investigation, or will they at least wait until he starts filing subpoenas before they start working with their preferred media outlets to put him into that category?
I think Rosenstein already has. Hence the deer in the headlights look at the press conference.
Barr offered him an off ramp, and he took it.
Exactly. I give Blumenthal until Thursday at about 3:15pm, maybe 3:40pm, for the worm to turn. Durham will no longer be a “fierce, fair, prosecutor” but a “weak, partisan, hack.” And soon enough Mr. Comey will enlighten us all as to the decrepit state of Durham’s soul.
I’ve never trusted Rosenstein and think he was part of that cabal but agree with you – he sure seems to be acting like someone that’s already made his ‘deal’. It would be hilarious if he ended up wearing a wire but recording his collaborators.
The title of the Mueller report is Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. My question is, where are Volumes 3 and 4 which look into the Hillary campaign? Hmmmmm?
When the likes of James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, and Peter Strzok finally realize they don’t get to interfere in American election outcomes either, it will be a great day for justice. I hope we all get to see the look of astonishment on their faces as they’re frog-marched into court.
The people are sovereign!
I’m sure we will be told this is all political by people who spent the past two years telling us how important the Mueller investigation was.
Ah, now it’s time for Republicans to go around speculating wildly about how Barr really knows the truth and when his report comes out it will throw all the Dems in jail.
Personally I’m looking forward to the all important counter counter investigation. Where we can really get at the truth.
It’s quite obvious a Full FBI investigation was initiated without probable cause. This FBI investigation included four FISA warrants to surveil a United States citizen whom we now know had done nothing even close to what was alleged in the FISA warrant.
This happened …. it is not speculation. The question is how did the DOJ/FBI circumvent all the firewalls which are in place to prevent this type of abuse of Federal law enforcement and counter intelligence surveillence powers.
Wildly speculating. The source for Russian information into the original investigation was Peter Steele. He was interviewed by the State Department and said there was a recruiting effort underway in this country being paid for through the Russian Consulate in Miami.
Russia has no consulate in Miami.
The recipients of the memo explaining Steele was either lying or hallucinating were redacted because the memo was classified by the FBI. In April of this year. The memo was also written ten days before the first FISA application for wiretapping. (Remember when “wiretapping” was a controversial term? Kind of like “spying” is now? Good times, good times.) The only reason I can come up with for that classification is that the list of recipients would make the recipients look bad. Either they stood by and allowed a fraudulent document to be used in front of a FISA court, or they’re all dumber than a bag full of hammers.
Well there’s always the counter, counter, counter investigation that should take us through the 2024 election. By then we will need a Russian passport just to vote.
I don’t find the abuse of power by our (Un)Intelligence Community against the people (and I don’t just mean Page and Papadopolous) all that funny. The IC (and others throughout the Obama administration) tried to influence the outcome of a “free and fair” election and, when that failed, they tried to subvert the duly elected government. Haha?
I don’t trust anybody except Rand Paul to advocate for my Constitutional rights. I hope he continues to survive the attacks on his life. If the Dems are not squealing about somebody, I definitely don’t trust them. I assume that the top priority of each agency is to defend the budget and reputation of that agency. We cannot count on any inter-agency rivalry to out bad apples as it seems the CIA/FBI/FISA court are all too chummy these days.
Going full tinfoil hat, I am starting to think the ex-CIA guys (plumbers) working for Nixon intentionally went rogue and got caught in Watergate Hotel to screw Nixon who won the 1972 election 520-17. It seems naive to think the CIA only involves itself in foreign elections. You old timers can correct me there.
I think Mike Rogers spotted some of this and went straight to the President-Elect with the reveal. Bruce Ohr might be one who will contribute to this investigation, particularly on the weak substance for the FISA warrants. There are a couple of set-ups that were criminal in intent on Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos.
The devin nunes meeting also happened and was way controversial.
Some joviality can be attributed to a sense of relief that we are now, finally, investigating the real crimes–not the political revenge.
Do you mean this Mike Rogers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers
Yeah, funny as in “haha, did you see how close that bullet came to our collective head??”
@MollieHemingway!
This great thing about appointing Durham is his history prosecuting rogue FBI operations. There are two important aspects of this. First, he knows how to navigate through these opaque agencies. He likely already knows how these kind of operations are conducted, how they try to hide evidence, etc.
Second, his previous work destroys the myth that the FBI and other agencies are made up exclusively of Boy Scout Leaders who are ethical patriots beyond question. Just going over his resume reminds us of how corrupt they have been and can be.
This scandal is actually the synthesis of patriots on the left and on the right versus the corrupt Uni-party center. Any constitutional conservative is appalled at these shenanigans as is any true, classic liberal, or even lefty who has a healthy fear of government excess.
So we get to watch who, precisely, defends these people and practices. And it took someone who posed a real threat to the status quo to get all these cronies to self-reveal. Another great retrospective reason for the election of DJT.
I wasn’t meaning Rogers was a rat but rather informed everyone of what was happening, I understand I wasn’t clear on that, and my apologies for the confusion.