Inspector General Michael Horowitz and FBI Director Christopher Wray will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow at 2pm. Thus begins the Potomac Two-Step; a generally well known DC approach to protect the interests of the swamp.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley might ask some pointed questions; however, other than re-election ‘talking point’ campaign questioning by Senator Ted Cruz, expect little in the way of actual accountability with this crew.  A person only needs to look at the names on the Senate Judiciary Committee to predict the insufferable obfuscation.

Senators: Orrin Hatch, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, John Cornyn, Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, Mike Crappo, Thom Tillis, John Kennedy, Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse, Dick Durban and Dianne Feinstein…. resist we much, and we must, we much, about that, be committed.

It is the Tuesday joint-house hearings, when the actual questions *might* be raised:

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General David Petraeus was arrested for leaving his classified schedule on mistress Paula Broadwell’s nightstand.  Kristian Saucier was arrested for taking a classified photograph on a submarine.  Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin had dozens of classified Clinton emails on a laptop and…

There is a great deal of inconsistent application of law surrounding classified information. There is also a great deal of fatigue surrounding discussion of those inconsistent applications.  Contradictions, inconsistency and obtuse justifications are as rampant in our midst as the political narratives shaping them.  Perhaps that’s by design.

We begin reading Chapter 11 of the IG Report with a growing acceptance that not only is there a need for a special counsel, but there is a brutally obvious need for multiple special counsels; each given a specific carve-out investigation that comes directly from the content of the Inspector General report.   This issue of the handling of the Weiner/Abedin laptop screams for a special counsel investigation on that facet alone.  Why?

Well, consider this from page #388 (emphasis mine):

Midyear agents obtained a copy of the Weiner laptop from NYO immediately after the search warrant was signed on October 30.

The laptop was taken directly to Quantico where the FBI’s Operational Technology Division (OTD) began processing the laptop. The Lead Analyst told us that given the volume of emails on the laptop and the difficulty with de-duplicating the emails that “at least for the first few days, the scale of what we’re doing seem[ed] really, really big.”

Strzok told us that OTD was able “to do some amazing things” to “rapidly de-duplicate” the emails on the laptop, which significantly lowered the number of emails that the Midyear team would have to individually review. Strzok stated that only after that technological breakthrough did he begin to think it was “possible we might wrap up before the election.”  (pg 388)

The key takeaway here is two-fold.  First, the laptop is in the custody of the FBI; that’s important moving forward (I’ll explain later).  Also, specifically important, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, the lead investigative authority in the Hillary Clinton MYE (Mid-Year-Exam), is explaining to the IG how they were able to process an exhaustive volume of emails (350,000) and Blackberry communications (344,000) in a few days; [Oct 30 to Nov 5]

Note: “OTD was able “to do some amazing things to rapidly de-duplicate” the emails on the laptop.”

OK, you got that?

Now lets look at the very next page, #389 (again, emphasis mine):

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One of the interesting aspects of the IG report is the documented use of personal email by participants within the FBI “small group” Mid-Year-Exam (MYE) team. [pg 424]

One of those documented examples involves FBI Agent Peter Strzok downloading the content of the sealed Anthony Weiner Indictment, October 29, 2016, to his personal email address. Unauthorized extraction of a ‘sealed SDNY indictment‘, and transmission to a non-secure system, is a felony.

(From summary pg vii) We found that Strzok used his personal email accounts for official government business on several occasions, including forwarding an email from his FBI account to his personal email account about the proposed search warrant the Midyear team was seeking on the Weiner laptop.

==> This email included a draft of the search warrant affidavit, which contained information from the Weiner investigation that appears to have been under seal at the time in the Southern District of New York and information obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena issued in the Eastern District of Virginia in the Midyear investigation. <==

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Representatives Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis appear on Fox News to discuss the DOJ inspector general report after release:

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Regardless of what anyone might think about Paul Manafort individually, the fact that a federal judge is willing to put a white-collar defendant behind bars until trial  is absurd.  Paul Manafort has been charged with tax avoidance and financial crimes stemming from 2006 and 2009. [Detention order pdf below]  Manafort is accused of contacting a possible witness in the case; however, the prosecution refuses to tell Manafort who the witnesses or victims are.  His defense argues that it’s impossible to avoid contact with witnesses when the prosecution won’t tell the court who the witnesses are. So the judge throws him in jail.

Mueller is a rogue agent willing to tear down the constructs of the justice system in order to defend the inherent corruption within his beloved institutions.  Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said today it was “obnoxious to our Constitution” to put former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort behind bars prior to a trial.

“He has never been convicted of anything. He is as innocent as you and I,” Dershowitz said in an interview on MSNBC on Friday. “And the idea of locking somebody up before a trial is so obnoxious to our Constitution that every civil libertarian should be up in arms. What they can do if they think that he’s tampering with witnesses is: They can subject him to home arrest, take away his computer … they can have all kinds of restrictions, but the idea of putting somebody in jail before they’ve been convicted is an enactment of civil liberties.”

Dershowitz comments come after Manafort was taken to a federal jail on Friday after U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson revoked his current bail that permitted him out on house arrest and after he pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction. He will stay at the federal jail until his trial in September. (read more)

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One of the information issues with the IG report is that it’s written entirely from an insider’s perspective.  Therefore without an understanding of how divisions within Main Justice related to the discussed activity within FBI main DC offices it can be very confusing to understand.

The ‘insider narration’ makes it difficult to see what happened with the Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner laptop; and how the Clinton emails were discovered.  However, because the issue is so important the IG report spends three chapters on this time-frame between September 28th and October 29th, 2016; and ultimately the next day, Oct. 30th, when a search warrant was executed for the laptop content.

IG Horowitz takes this aspect of the investigation into granularity and nuance (Chapters 8, 9 and 10).

At the heart of the activity during this critical period is FBI lawyer #1 Tashina “Tash” Gauhar who was on a video conference call with the FBI New York Field Office (NYFO) as the discoveries of hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails were relayed internally to the Mid-Year-Event (MYE) team in DC on September 29th, 2016.

Almost a full month went by until October 27th, 2016, when the MYE team all gathered with James Comey to talk about the laptop issues and the emails.   Within the IG review of this period, there is a bunch of ass-covering documentation that takes place in hindsight to the events.  The IG is careful to point out each time his investigation is presented with documentary evidence that was clearly written long-after the events being questioned.

The central IG question is: why didn’t the FBI take immediate action to review 725,000 Clinton-centric emails on the Huma/Weiner laptop?  Why did they wait a month before seeking a search warrant?  Why were they doing nothing?

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Michael Horowitz: FBI Agent Peter Strzok walks like a biased duck… looks like a biased duck… sounds like a biased duck… has all the same characteristics of a biased duck… and took the exact action a biased duck would take; therefore “We do not have confidence” FBI Agent Peter Strzok is not a biased duck.

[…] when one senior FBI official, Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, Page, that “we’ll stop” candidate Trump from being elected—after other extensive text messages between the two disparaging candidate Trump—it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.

This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Moreover, as we describe in Chapter Nine, in assessing Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop in October 2016, these text messages led us to conclude that we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision was free from bias. (p.420)

Christopher Wray: “I take these findings seriously, and we accept these findings and recommendations.” … “This report did not find any evidence of political bias or improper considerations actually impacting the investigation under review.”

This is the infuriating part.  Think about this carefully.  This is not some arbitrary irrelevant institution within the bureaucracy of government.  The FBI is the “premier” law enforcement investigative apparatus within the entirety of the United States homeland security apparatus.  We rely upon the FBI’s investigative skills, training and application of common sense as they carry out their official responsibilities.

In essence the FBI has the primary responsibility for ensuring the internal safety and security of Americans through a process of evaluating evidence and threats; and more importantly taking action on clear evidence of those threats to avoid public safety issues.

Yet, the most important investigative body; within the system of U.S. law and order; cannot identify, admit, accept and take action upon a clear and present threat within its own organizational ranks. A political bias that is transparently obvious to the rest of America.

Allow me to put the IG/DOJ/FBI principle, at the heart of the matter, another way…

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FBI Director Christopher Wray will be holding a 5:30pn press conference to discuss the issues and fallout from the DOJ Inspector General report released earlier today.

UPDATE: Video Added

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Those reading the report will note the executive summary and conclusions were not written by the same IG officials who wrote the body of the investigative findings.  The investigation doesn’t match the summary.  The media is using the summary for their narrative; however the content within the IG report is entirely devastating.

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The 18-month Inspector General review of the DOJ/FBI investigation of the Hillary Clinton email has been released – OIG RELEASE LINK HERE

This IG inquiry is specifically looking into whether the FBI investigation was corrupted by political influence in their determination of the Clinton outcome. The IG report provides background on the overall issues, the potential crimes; the subsequent coverup; and the corruption that infested the 2016 Department of Justice and the FBI.

Here’s The Report:

[scribd id=381806566 key=key-4WfKaOih0Xm7EA7gdK93 mode=scroll]

(pdf link)

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Don’t Comment Unless You’ve Read The Full Report

Important note.  Read, but don’t focus on, the “executive summary” or “conclusions”; those two sections were written by political administrators in FBI and DOJ leadership.  Focus on the substance of the documented facts within the IG report.  You’ll note the specific facts don’t support the “summary/conclusion”.

Analysis will follow.

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The Potomac Two-Step

♦ Statement from Trey Gowdy. [SEE HERE] Given the nature and construct of the statement it was obviously written before today and timed for a release at a specific time of day today. Reeks of familiar UniParty swamp defense. Chaff and Countermeasures.

WASHINGTON, DC – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy released the following statement after the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report on FBI and DOJ actions in advance of the 2016 election.

“I am alarmed, angered, and deeply disappointed by the Inspector General’s finding of numerous failures by DOJ and FBI in investigating potential Espionage Act violations by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (read more)

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