IG SpyGate Report: FBI, DOJ Committed 31 Violations of FISA Protocol in Trump Team Wiretaps
No political bias in the opening of the investigation, BUT, oh, by the way, at least three dozen instances of errors, omissions and deviations from FISA protocol, all in the direction of keeping an active wiretap against the Donald Trump Presidential Campaign.
Clearly the talking point has been circulated. The mainstream media’s only focus on the long awaited Inspector General’s Report on SpyGate: No political bias in the origins of that investigation into utterly fabricated allegations of Russian collusion by the 2016 Donald Trump campaign. A conclusion that is repudiated by general knowledge of evidence, including massive and oblate anti-Trump bias in the upper echelons of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, revealed in published statements and digital communique from agents and leadership of both organizations and the willfully knowing use of DNC opposition research in composing and leveraging the infamous and unverified Steele Dossier as the foundational piece of evidence in obtaining FISA permissions to wiretap Trump team members Carter Page and George Papadopolous.
Closer inspection of the 500 page report however tells the story of an FBI and Department of Justice desperate to justify a counterintelligence operation against Donald Trump and his inner circle, specifically for the purposes of gaining insight into the campaign that could then be used to the advantage of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, a plot betrayed by no less than 31 identifiable violations of FISA court requirements for intelligence surveillance of American citizens and making repeated efforts to massage evidence, alter witness testimony and pad damaging statements and evidence, while omitting exculpatory evidence that flew in the face of the Trump-Russia narrative necessary to keep spying on the Trump campaign. And one needs look no further than the Inspector General’s executive summary to find damning evidence of illegality by a glaringly anti-Trump DOJ.
Among the highlights:
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- Deliberate concealment of a prior working relationship by Carter Page with either the CIA or the NSA in a context involving frequent contact with Russian intelligence operatives that would have been wholly consistent with his both his security clearance and responsibilities as an official operational contact.
In the words of the report,“Omitted information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an “operational contact”for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application;”
- Deliberate concealment of a prior working relationship by Carter Page with either the CIA or the NSA in a context involving frequent contact with Russian intelligence operatives that would have been wholly consistent with his both his security clearance and responsibilities as an official operational contact.
- The DOJ vastly exaggerated the prior track record and importance of previous surveillance and evidence collected by Christopher Steele all while covering up the source of Steele’s funding for the research that produced the infamous “Dirty Dossier,” flatly ignoring Democrat Party ties and Steele’s repeated contact with members of Democrat friendly organizations and personnel. Quote:
“Included a source characterization statement asserting that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings,”which overstated the significance of Steele’s past reporting and was not approved by Steele’s handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures;” - Repeated instances after the Papadopolous and Page wiretaps were in place of omitting clearly exculpatory statements obtained via consensual surveillance, while tamping up or massaging the significance of statements that supported the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory. In one instance early in the investigation, completely ignoring a direct statement by Papadopolous denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like Wikileaks in the release of the Hillary-Podesta emails.
- Absolute omission that the initial contact with Trump team member George Papadopolous was none other than intelligence asset, Joseph Mifsud, who provably lied about his initiated contact with Papadopolous and the soliciting of information about a possible Russian assist in gaining opposition research on Hillary Clinton.
In all, Horowitz’s inquest identified seven application deficiencies in the initial FISA warrant process against the Trump campaign and 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.” Even more troublingly, Horowitz concludes that NOTHING was done to rectify said deficiencies and violations of FISA statute even in cases where those violations were identified and provably known to FBI and DOJ personnel.
“We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in thefirst FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, orunsupported by appropriate documentation, based uponinformation the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.
“None of these inaccuracies and omissions were brought to the attention of OI before the last FISAapplication was filed in June 2017. Consequently, these failures were repeated in all three renewal applications. Further, as we discuss later, we identified 10 additional significant errors in the renewal applications.”
In summary, 21 repeated examples of FISA abuse, either deliberate or complicit and an additional 10 newly unique errors in the FISA renewal process. Attorney General William Barr and Republican Congressmen who have addressed the FISA fraud issue specifically highlight the renewal errors as particularly incriminating confirmation that there was zero interest by DOJ-FBI personnel in an exculpatory outcome that would have predicated an ending of the Trump wiretaps. In simplest terms, multiple actors across multiple layers of interagency authority did everything they possibly could to keep the wiretaps in place, regardless of evidence, for as long as possible and for maximum derived advantage in the creation of the Russian collusion narrative both in political and more importantly, in American media circles.
The laughably concluded absence of political bias in the etymology of SpyGate leaves Horowitz in the unenviable position in upcoming Senate testimony of describing and explaining statistical happenstance that would find a virtuously objective, utterly pristine and prudentially above board FBI engaging in an obvious pattern of mistake, oversight, overstatement and concealed exculpatory that was constantly to the advantage of those wanting to imperil the Trump campaign, while simultaneously shielding Hillary Clinton from indictment over her mishandling of classified information and the compromise of her personal email server.
And while libidinous lovers, Strzok and Page sang each other bedtime lullabied reassurances about the omnipotent power of their investigative authority to continue serving as a security blanket and verbatim, “insurance policy,” against a Trump victory that set the hostile forces of the entrenched tyrannical American bureaucracy on their collective asses.
It should be nothing if not entertaining to watch.
Especially for Msrs. Barr and Durham, whose own broader and tooth-laden inquest remains to be revealed.
