FBI Gave Secrets to Steele

 

It has been clear to me for some time that the FBI is corrupt. How corrupt is still open for debate, but there has been no doubt in my mind about it, at the highest levels. This is, of course, nothing new. Under Hoover, it was as corrupt as such things can be. Still, we had hoped, in 2016 that was behind us. Not so.

This at Real Clear Investigations piece is scary. Any American should be horrified, but of course, the left will not be, and Never Trumpers won’t be, because let’s face it, there is nothing that will make either one of those groups change their mind. The Never Trumpers who can be won over have been (welcome all).

A month before the 2016 presidential election, the FBI met Christopher Steele in Rome and apparently unlawfully shared with the foreign opposition researcher some of the bureau’s most closely held secrets, according to unpublicized disclosures in the recent Justice Department Inspector General report on abuses of federal surveillance powers.

That is the opening paragraph. While DOJ lawyers want to put people away for seven years for process crimes, the FBI is breaking the law to help a candidate go after another in a presidential election.

The FBI’s decision to share classified information with a partisan operative and private foreign citizen is all the more curious because the team investigating figures associated with the presidential campaign of Donald Trump made extensive efforts to keep the very fact of Crossfire Hurricane a secret from their own colleagues at the bureau.

I have been in the behavioral health business for almost 30 years. I can tell you when people are hiding secrets from their friends, they are doing something wrong. It is clear the people doing this knew it was wrong when they were doing it.

The closing paragraphs are the strongest:

To appreciate the magnitude of the FBI’s breach of the rules governing classified materials, consider how the bureau’s former Director James Comey and former General Counsel James Baker have used classification to limit what Michael Horowitz was able to ask them. Comey and Baker “chose not to request that their security clearances be reinstated for their OIG interviews,” the Inspector General writes. “Therefore, we were unable to provide classified information or documents to them during their interviews to develop their testimony, or to assist their recollections of relevant events.”

The idea that the FBI is gratuitously sharing classified information with a foreign informant is rather extraordinary, says lawyer Bigley. “If one of my clients did this, they would be stripped of their security clearance, out of a job, and probably facing indictment.”

If nothing comes from this, we can be sure America is a banana republic now. The power of the DOJ is only to be used against conservatives and enemies of the deep state. The rules are only to advance their agenda. The laws are only enforced to attack their enemies.

I expect this information will be ignored across the board.

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  1. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    Cato Rand (View Comment):
    Last time I checked, the Attorney General of the United States had launched a (much needed) investigation into it, lead by a prosecutor who is highly regarded by, among others, supporters of the president. We await the results. What more could you want? I personally hope a lot of heads roll and will share your concern if they don’t. But pending the outcome of that investigation, the answer to this question is “wait for the outcome of that investigation.”

    And yet McCabe a known liar was just let off scot free.  This is the stuff violent revolutions aren made of.

    • #61
  2. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):
    However, one disturbing aspect of this are reports over the past few months that a DC grand jury refused to return an indictment against McCabe on this matter. If true, it raises a bigger problem. If there are indictments related to the Russia hoax and if the indictments are sought in DC, will any grand jury in this 98% Democratic city approve them?

    We saw a DC jury in the Stone case. Stone is a clown and did lie to Congress but the judge suppressed jurors’ bias and did not permit the defense lawyers to challenge them. That is why I am hopeful when Barr chooses people from Missouri to do investigations and why CNN and the left leftist media were stupid to smear a kid from Kentucky. 

    • #62
  3. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    The OP breaks my heart (my heart seems to be getting broken a lot, lately).

    I’ve served with FBI FLY teams (no idea what that acronym stands for) overseas and regional FBI guys and gals here in CONUS (but posse comitatus; got it.  Where there’s a will, there’s a waiver).

    These people were true blue American heroes, the kind of people who you hope and pray your kids will be like.  They put themselves without hesitation in harm’s way for this country and its security.  Now their reputations are spattered with mud, vomitus and fecal matter.

    This all just makes me sick.

    • #63
  4. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    This thread by Leslie McAdoo Gordon (found via the excellent Undercover Huber) is worth reading and does a good job of explaining the weakness of the case against McCabe regarding the Clinton email leaks, particularly on false statements to the FBI.  As she points out, and has written on previously, the same issues making the McCabe case weak should have prevented the Flynn case from being prosecuted which goes to the fundamental issue of unequal treatment and the disgraceful conduct of Mueller and his team of Democratic partisan lawyers. 

    If there is not a reckoning for all this we might as well pack up and go home because it’s all over for America.

    • #64
  5. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Boss Mongo (View Comment):

    The OP breaks my heart (my heart seems to be getting broken a lot, lately).

    I’ve served with FBI FLY teams (no idea what that acronym stands for) overseas and regional FBI guys and gals here in CONUS (but posse comitatus; got it. Where there’s a will, there’s a waiver).

    These people were true blue American heroes, the kind of people who you hope and pray your kids will be like. They put themselves without hesitation in harm’s way for this country and its security. Now their reputations are spattered with mud, vomitus and fecal matter.

    This all just makes me sick.

    It wouldn’t take more than a handful of agents to cure their Bureau’s rep. All it would take to rehab the FBI in the public’s eyes would be for the occasional agent to stand up to a McCabe or a Comey. It takes more to be an American hero than physical courage. It’s hard to buck the chain, sure, but that is what it would take to restore and revalidate America’s respect.

    People out here are longing to respect them again. The leadership isn’t going to change without pressure from the ranks as well as from the politicians. The ranks are full of guys who love the suck altho’ they’d never say so, who’d take a bullet in preference to failing a mission or letting a kidnapper run free. They’re going to have to show us some different courage this time.

    Where are the real whistle blowers? Where are the guys who are supposed to be on our side? It wouldn’t take many of them. We shake in rage at what they did to Michael Flynn, who tried to clean the stables. Ok, that’s one.

    • #65
  6. CJ Inactive
    CJ
    @cjherod

    Boss Mongo (View Comment):

    The OP breaks my heart (my heart seems to be getting broken a lot, lately).

    I’ve served with FBI FLY teams (no idea what that acronym stands for) overseas and regional FBI guys and gals here in CONUS (but posse comitatus; got it. Where there’s a will, there’s a waiver).

    These people were true blue American heroes, the kind of people who you hope and pray your kids will be like. They put themselves without hesitation in harm’s way for this country and its security. Now their reputations are spattered with mud, vomitus and fecal matter.

    This all just makes me sick.

    These are the sort of people I would want working for the DRO I would hire in a stateless society. When the State has a coercive monopoly on such services, you get the corrupt detritus mixed in.

    • #66
  7. Samuel Block Support
    Samuel Block
    @SamuelBlock

    Interesting… you know, in the horrible sense. 

    But am I the only one who noticed that the lawyer’s name is Bigley? 

    • #67
  8. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

     

    • #68
  9. Autistic License Coolidge
    Autistic License
    @AutisticLicense
    • #69
  10. Autistic License Coolidge
    Autistic License
    @AutisticLicense

    Cato Rand (View Comment):

    Brian, is it really lost on you that there is no contradiction between thinking both: 1) that the FBI has behaved horrifyingly corruptly in the Steele/Russia/FISA mess; and 2) that Donald Trump is a person of low, self-serving character who has done and said awful things and does not have the public good at top of mind when making decisions?

    If it is, please explain how those two thoughts are mutually exclusive. I am firmly convinced of both and find no contradiction whatsoever between them.

    This is becoming such a frequent – and completely valid – observation about Trump v Establishment that, if I were a Twittering man, I’d coin something like #BothAreTrue.

    • #70
  11. Mountie Coolidge
    Mountie
    @Mountie

    James Comey, July 5, 2016: 

    “To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”

    To paraphrase: Laws are for little people, nothing is going to happen here. 

     

    • #71
  12. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Mountie (View Comment):

    James Comey, July 5, 2016:

    “To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”

    To paraphrase: Laws are for little people, nothing is going to happen here.

    I remember that mind-boggling statement.  It was just after he stated:

    Hillary Clinton violated a statute that contains felony penalties.
    All her operative statements made to the public during the course of investigation were inaccurate.
    But, she will not face prosecution because there is not “clear evidence’ of intent to violate the statute, even though intent is not a legal requirement to establish such violation.

    On the other hand it was certainly understandable because they needed to clear the decks so Hillary could beat Trump.  Glad no bias was involved!

     

    • #72
  13. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    Remember a year ago when it was found that a bunch of FBI agents in DC were taking bribes from reporters.

    Every agent and every reporter should have been arrested and charged in that.  

    I dont think a single agent was fired.

    Oh its a criminal offense to bribe a FBI agent.  I would have arrested every reporter involved who gave them so much as a coffee.

     

     

    • #73
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