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Executive Summary of the Executive Summary
So the Horowitz Report (here) was just released, and we Ricochetti are already suffering serious indigestion. My buddy Gary Robbins has already lamented:
Gary Robbins (View Comment): The Executive Summary is 15 pages long! Can we please have an Executive Summary of the Executive Summary?
OK, I’ll give it a shot, but I think that this deserves a separate post. Incidentally, Gary is not quite correct. The executive summary is actually 19 pages long.
As a matter of terminology, the Horowitz Report involves the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation and four individual investigations on current and former members of the Trump campaign — George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn. The initial decision to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was made in July 2016.
1. The decision to open the Crossfire Hurricane and four related investigations did not violate DoJ or FBI guidelines or procedures, which the Report characterized as a “low threshold” and a “judgment call” that could be made at a relatively low level within the FBI. The decision was made by Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director Bill Priestap. This decision followed consultation and consensus including the FBI Deputy Director (Andrew McCabe), the FBI General Counsel (James Baker), and Section Chief Peter Strzok (who reported to Priestap). Strzok and Lisa Page made “statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for then candidate Hillary Clinton.” While Lisa Page attended some discussions, she did not play a role in the decisions to open the investigations.
2. The Horowitz team did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced Priestap’s decision to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Priestap was Strzok’s boss, and while there was evidence of political bias on the part of Strzok, he wasn’t the decision-maker.
3. The Horowitz team did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decision to open the four individual investigations. These were technically opened by Strzok, who was biased, but were a result of a consensus process that included his boss Priestap.
4. The Crossfire Hurricane team’s use of more intrusive techniques, including the use of Confidential Human Sources (CHSs) to record conversations with high-level Trump campaign officials, was properly approved by Priestap under FBI policies. The next point criticizes the policies.
5. The Horowitz Report recommends changing FBI policy to require consultation with DoJ in advance of conducting CHS operations involving advisors to a major party candidate’s presidential campaign. Policies require such consultation in “numerous other sensitive circumstances,” but prior policy did not require it in this instance.
6. There were very serious problems with the initial FISA application. The report is brutal on this point. “Our review found that FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate.’ We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.” The report details “seven significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the initial FISA application.
7. There were additional, very serious problems with the subsequent three renewal FISA applications. None of the initial seven inaccuracies and omissions were corrected, and the report identified “10 additional significant errors in the renewal applications.” As a result, the DoJ “officials who reviewed one or more of the renewal applications, including [former Deputy AG] Yates, [former acting AG and acting DAG] Boente, and [former Deputy AG] Rosenstein, did not have accurate and complete information at the time they approved them.”
8. “We concluded that the failures described above and in this report represent serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications. . . . Although some of the factual misstatements and omissions we found in this review were arguably more significant than others, we believe that all of them taken together resulted in FISA applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.” The Horowitz report does not speculate regarding whether accurate and complete information would have led senior DoJ officials, or the FISA court, to decline to approve any or all of the four FISA applications.
9. The serious errors in the FISA application process implicate the chain of command at the FBI, including senior officials. Again, the report is quite brutal on this point. “That so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI, and that FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process. … In our view, this was a failure not only of the operational team, but also of the managers and supervisors, including senior officials, in the chain of command.”
10. While not violating a policy, the FBI sent a participant to a strategic intelligence briefing given by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to candidate Trump and his national security advisors for investigative purposes, which “could potentially interfere with the expectation of trust and good faith among participants in strategic intelligence briefings, thereby frustrating their purpose.” In other words, the FBI sent a “spy” into what was supposed to be an important national security briefing for someone who might be the next President — Hillary Clinton was also briefed, as were the VP candidates. The spy was not named, and was identified only as “SSA 1,” and described as “the supervisor for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” (Context indicates that this person was not Priestap, Strzok, or Lisa Page.) Senior FBI officials approved this action by consensus after a meeting, including former FBI Deputy Director McCabe and former FBI General Counsel Baker. Horowitz recommended hat the FBI establish a policy regarding the use of defensive and transition briefings for investigative purposes, including DoJ approval. The decision to send “SSA 1” to the Trump briefing was discussed at high levels of the FBI, including Deputy Director McCabe and General Counsel Baker, but was not approved by DoJ.
I think that these are the major points.
Published in Elections
To his credit, Trump has done a good job with judges, regulations and taxes.
I had the interesting experience of going to two Christmas Parties in a row several years ago. The first was with the Coconino County Bar Association, where I was regarded as this renegade Republican in a Democratic County, and I realized that I was likely the most conservative person there.
The second Christmas Party was for the Coconino County Republican Party. I realized that I was likely the most libertarian person there.
It is what it is.
I find the critics of the critics just as tiresome. Every negative thing said about Trump is attributed to unreasoned malice without any concern for context (Goldberg was opposed to nationalism and populism long before Trump came around, for instance.) The positive things the writers in question say about Trump are either ignored or greeted with a sort of condescending amazement which will be easily forgotten the minute the, “They never say anything good about Trump,” narrative needs to be trotted out again.
Trump has made the effort to reach out more than once. Example: http://ricochet.com/705087/this-headline-is-something
Link to politico headline from member feed post by @concretevol : https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/13/trump-reelection-black-voters-082853
To be fair, I think this is a much greater “if” than I think you think it is.
Betting on the Democrats to not be stupid or greedy is somewhat of a fools errand.
The far-left side of the Democratic Party has a locked-in belief that changing American demographics have already made them either into the majority in the U.S., or so close that any far-left candidate would only have to win one big swing state to take the White House, because they’ve got 250 or so Electoral Votes locked in.
That was the whole point of Bernie’s run in 2016 and his huge amount of support — the Democrats who were just liberals and closer to the center wanted to use the gender card with Hillary in the same way they had used the race card in 2008 and ’12 to elect Obama. The progressives had come to believe in the Permanent Democratic Majority; you didn’t need Hillary, because any Democrat was a near-lock to win the White House.
The fact that Hillary’s not in the White House is evidence to the angry progressives that Hillary wasn’t progressive enough in her 2016 campaign. The only thing that’s going to, if not change their minds, at least get them to shut up for a while, would be getting Bernie or Liz to win the nomination and then end up in 2020 about like Corbyn did Thursday night, or McGovern did in 1972.
I don’t know about other non-white demographics, but I think the Dems are in for a rude awakening from blacks and Hispanics regarding social issues sooner rather than later. Whether it happens in 2020 remains to be seen, but it will happen.
There’s this weird thing where the Democrats assume that immigrants are natural socialists. Just because they flee here from countries that went socialist doesn’t mean they favor socialism. It might actually mean the opposite.
Eventually all coalitions on the left fracture unpleasantly, because the leadership of each faction in the end wants to be the Alpha leader who tells everyone else what to do. The current situation using passive/agressive victimology isn’t as overt a split, as, say, the splits between Stalinism, Leninism, Trotskyies and the rogue Bukharin fanboy was 80-90 years ago, but you’re seeing something similar today, where race trumps cis-gender feminism, but is in itself trumped by LBGTQ activists, and where the T now trumps the L when it comes to things like who can compete in women’s athletics. Lots of people figure to get pretty tired of walking on pins and needles as part of a coalition where they could find themselves, if not at a show trial, than at least a victim of social media cancel culture without a moment’s notice (and where getting trumped by some other special interest group could start pushing more and more people over to Trump, even if they keep quiet about it outside of the voting booth).
The Democrats don’t “assume that immigrants are natural socialists.”
They changed our immigration laws in the mid-1960s to obtain that result, bringing in more poor and poorly educated immigrants likely to remain dependent on government and, thus, good Democratic machine voters: easily bribed, or led by the nose by sold-out “community leaders”.
That they mostly come from countries where politics = looting is a bonus, from the Democratic standpoint.
The ‘open borders’ thing for Democrats is fairly recent. Black mayors (Marion Barry comes to mind) we’re not thrilled about sharing minority set-asides and federal largesse with Latino illegals. The AFL-CIO wanted enforcement because the flood of illegals have a downward ratchet effect on wages. It was the US Chamber of Commerce and small business groups that resisted any workplace enforcement because (a) it was a new form of liability risk, and (b) some industries benefit from the low-wage labor market.
Now that the Dem party represents only the views and sensibilities of upscale white leftists and Twitter monkeys and no longer even pretends they care about anyone else, the actual interest of minorities and labor no longer matter. ‘Open borders’ is a fetish of elites. It is why Trump and Boris Johnson are in office and will likely stay there a while longer.
@oldbathos — Of course the Democratic Party pretends to care about other groups than white progressives.
They have to, if they want to win elections.
To immigrants, they offer unlimited family reunification (i. e., chain migration), as well as the same kinds of benefits blacks get as putative descendants of slaves.
To native born minorities, they offer more political clout via greater group numbers, even if competition from immigrants lowers their market wages, so that they can extort benefits via the political process.
Well, they don’t care about private sector unions — the Democrats still really, really care about pleasing the public sector ones, due to the symbiotic relationship between Democratic politicians approving higher pay, benefits and pensions for public sector workers, and dues from those workers going back into campaign contributions for Democratic candidates.
Public sector unions and low-income sectors in the U.S. who still vote Democrat even with the new polcies to import as many workers as possible to undercut private sector wages and provide even lower income (and sometimes off-the-books) labor are pretty much on mental auto-pilot, where it’s still 1936 and FDR and Sen. Bob Wagner Sr. are passing expansive pro-union labor laws.