Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †
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):
President Trump delivers the weekly address for June 15th, 2018. The primary topic is homeland security and the importance of strong border and immigration controls:
The ultimate disruption.
Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) appears on Fox News to discuss the IG report and the upcoming appearance of Michael Horowitz to the Judiciary and Oversight committee coming this Tuesday June 19th.
On Monday June 18th both Horowitz and FBI Director Chris Wray will be appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee (Chairman Grassley). Then on Tuesday Horowitz will appear before the House Joint Judiciary/Oversight Committee.
We need Jim Jordan to ask some basic questions [SEE HERE] and gain clarity from Horowitz. Tuesday is likely the best hope for answers because we have Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe, Ron DeSantis, Louie Gohmert, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Steve King, possibly Mark Meadows and Chairman Goodlatte asking the questions:
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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President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP
Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †
Representatives Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis appear on Fox News to discuss the DOJ inspector general report after release:
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)