House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Tucker Carlson to discuss the ongoing investigative situation with James Comey.
Representative Nunes highlights the difference between Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Durham; noting there is a possibility the investigative review of Mr. Durham touches on a great deal more than IG Horowitz. WATCH:
The DOJ has filed a response motion requesting a reversal of a prior court order that would have forced unredacted release of the “David Archey Delcarations“; detailed descriptions of the James Comey memos. [Detailed Backstory]
In their latest filing (full pdf below) the DOJ and FBI are falling back on the familiar “sources and methods” justification to block DC Circuit Court Judge Boasberg’s earlier ruling.
[Backstory for those unfamilar] In the background of what was The Mueller Investigation, there was a FOIA case where the FBI was fighting to stop the release of the Comey memos. Within that courtroom fight Mueller’s lead FBI agent David Archey wrote a series of declarations to the court describing the content of the memos and arguing why they should be kept classified.
The FOIA fight shifted; and the plaintiff, CNN, argued for public release of the content of the FBI agent’s descriptions, now known as the “Archey Declarations”.
After a lengthy back-and-forth legal contest, on June 7th Judge James E Boasberg agreed to allow the FBI to keep the Comey memo content hidden, but instructed the DOJ/FBI to release the content of the Archey Declarations. The DOJ is seeking to reverse that order.
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The epicenter of the deepest defensive mechanism of the Deep State is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The SSCI is the bunker, the intelligence manipulation operations headquarters. The SSCI is where the political nuclear weapons (black files and IC gathered political surveillance research) are housed. As a direct consequence the SSCI is the most corrupt and manipulative committee in all of congress.
President Trump has withdrawn the nomination of John Ratcliffe because both wings of the most corrupt deep state apparatus had formed a hardened defense in the SSCI:
Let me be perfectly clear. The issue is the SSCI.
The weaponized issues of corrupt DC endeavors are always associated with the SSCI. It is also not coincidental that ODNI Dan Coats was Senator Dan Coats…. and where was his tenured membership prior to becoming Director of National Intelligence? Yup, the SSCI.
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The interesting aspect here is to remind ourselves that James Comey is currently in the “Principal Review Phase” of a pending IG report that is specific to his conduct.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz has written a report of Comey’s conduct. Part of that process included a criminal referral to US Attorney John Huber, and a prosecution declination. James Comey has obviously reviewed the IG report (an NDA restricts his ability to talk specifically about it); and we are awaiting publication of the final report.
It sounds like former FBI Director James Comey has concluded his response to the Inspector General’s report. Which means the IG report is soon to be released.
Now that we know the Department of Justice Inspector General is about to release a report on former FBI Director James Comey; and now that we know the OIG Principal Review Phase was already initiated; we can start to monitor the IG Website for the release.
It appears the pending IG report will cover the conduct of James Comey and how he handled a series of memos he produced; contemporaneous accounts written by Comey covering events he documented outside of normal FBI protocol.
As part of the process, the inspector general report has been given to James Comey in advance. According to John Solomon reporting, Comey lawyers Patrick Fitzgerald and Daniel Richman, along with spokesperson Keith Urbahn are all participating in his review of the report content. This is called the “Principal Review Phase”.
In the example of the 2018 IG report on Andrew McCabe, the OIG gave McCabe’s team a week during the principal review phase, and then published the report two days after the responses were submitted. [McCabe Report Reviewed] We don’t know how long James Comey has had the report, but my hunch is several days.
If the IG sticks to the same general feedback timeline as the McCabe report, we could see a final IG report very soon; perhaps even as early as tomorrow (Friday August 2nd); which would line-up with the DOJ request for additional time in the Comey Memo/Archey Declaration FOIA case in the DC Circuit (Judge James Boasberg) also due Aug 2nd, and possibly delayed due to the background of the Comey IG report being released.
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To say there is broad-based confusion is an understatement. The recent reporting by John Solomon of The Hill only makes the confusion worse. Let’s stand back and reconcile two issues (with evidence to support) that are MASSIVELY conflated.
First, go read the full Solomon article. Notice the entire construct of the article surrounds “The Comey Memos“. As you will see, this specific topic is important. Within the Solomon article you will find (emphasis mine):
[…] Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s team referred Comey for possible prosecution under the classified information protection laws, but Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors working for Attorney General William Barr reportedly have decided to decline prosecution — a decision that’s likely to upset Comey’s conservative critics.
Prosecutors found the IG’s findings compelling but decided not to bring charges because they did not believe they had enough evidence of Comey’s intent to violate the law, according to multiple sources.
A recent FOIA release from Judicial Watch (full pdf below) reveals that two of Mueller’s initial FBI agents, based on dates and redactions – likely Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, visited James Comey on June 7th, 2017, to retrieve a collection of his memos.
[However, a word of caution, one of the memos was titled “last night at 6:30pm” and is being widely misinterpreted to have been written the night before (June 6th, 2017) when that is not accurate. It is likely that memo relates to the January dinner in the White House with President Trump that held the same sentence.]
(pdf here)
If we ignore the misinterpreted “last night” memo aspect (dinner with potus in January ’17), here’s what we can learn from this FOIA release:
♦First, the memos were picked up while FBI agent’s Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka were lead FBI agents that transferred into the Mueller team. Therefore it’s likely they were the two who traveled to Comey’s house for this June 7th effort.
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We previously outlined Mr. Zhongtian Liu [HERE] as part of the early 2018 explanation for how China was exploiting the NAFTA loophole as an end-run around tariffs. Today the Central District of California U.S. Attorney announces his indictment.
LOS ANGELES– A federal grand jury indictment unsealed late Tuesday alleges a complex financial fraud scheme in which a Chinese company exported to the United States huge amounts of aluminum – disguised as “pallets” to avoid customs duties of up to 400 percent – and “sold” the purported pallets to related entities to fraudulently inflate the company’s revenues and deceive investors around the world.
The 53-page indictment alleges that China Zhongwang Holdings Limited, Asia’s largest aluminum extrusion company; Zhongtian Liu, the company’s former president and chairman; and several individual and corporate co-defendants lied to U.S. Customs and Border Protection to avoid paying the United States $1.8 billion in anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) that were imposed in 2011 on certain types of extruded aluminum imported into the United States from China.
It was only a matter of time before someone explained how the Chinese advisors to Chairman Xi Jinping are using President Trump’s inability to hold the coup plotters accountable as evidence they can wait out the President.
This is the crossover, where a lack of accountability for “Spygate” now begins to negatively influence the geopolitical, economic and strategic position of President Trump. However, there’s an upside to this dynamic….
In several interviews the president has noted his preference to keep the DOJ and FBI issues at a distance and deferred action to others. The economic reset is President Trump’s #1 priority. If Trump identifies the lack of DOJ and FBI accountability as an impediment to the economic program, he may become much more engaged.
SHANGHAI—Plodding progress in trade negotiations between the U.S. and China this week is partly the result of a new tactic from Beijing, which increasingly thinks waiting may produce a more-favorable agreement.
Former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker appears with Lou Dobbs to discuss ongoing issues in/around the DOJ and FBI.
Matt Whitaker notes the corrupt members of the FBI/DOJ who have left the institution; but stops short of criticizing current FBI Director Chris Wray. Whitaker expresses strong support and respect for John Ratcliffe’s nomination to ODNI.
Whitaker positions himself as an advocate for transparency, but is careful not to be critical of those in the DOJ and FBI who are working diligently against releasing documents that would actually bring about transparency. The implied message is that declassification of material will ultimately force transparency…. [but he doesn’t say it].
…Every minute spent outraged at what Comey, McCabe or Muller did yesterday, is one minute less that Bill Barr is being held accountable for what he is not doing today…