There has been quite a stir about how Reince Priebus attempted to push the FBI into becoming PR flacks for the White House in response to the New York Times story about Russian intelligence operatives being in contact with Trump associates. But I think there’s another story here and a much bigger problem. It may be that the FBI has on open virulent bias for Trump and simply can’t be trusted to investigate him on their own. We may need, as has been asked for by voices as diverse as both Nancy Pelosi and Darrel Issa, to have a Special Prosecutor assigned to investigate not just Russia and Trump, but the FBI themselves.
It’s not like the FBI hasn’t displayed a extreme partisan ideological bent in the past and disturbed the implementation of justice to meet those ends. Under J. Edgar Hoover they the COINTELPRO program that targeted the left anti-war and civil rights movements with illegal surveillance, infiltration, false witnesses and planted evidence. Although much of that ended with the regime of Hoover, some individuals such as Agent Gary Aldridge continued to have a hard-right mindset when he worked within the Bill Clinton White House.
Clinton’s Republican FBI Director Louis Freeh let his ideology get in the way of Justice when he refused to consider that the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing may have been committed by hard-right anti-gay anti-abortion activist Robert Eric Rudolph instead of nearly railroading innocent Security Guard Richard Jewel. Rudolph would go on to commit several more bombings with fatal casualties until he was finally arrested in 2003. It was not as bad as COINTELPRO, but it wasn’t good either.
Therefore it’s not beyond the realm of reason, to expect for this kind of thing to happen again with the FBI.
The problem becomes obvious as you can tell from the Secret Gaggle that Sean Spicer had, where they specifically excluded CNN and the New York times who broke these stories, in which the main thing he does — literally — is throw FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe under the bus, and then spin the wheels over him during a breathless 26 minute rant in defense of Reince Priebus.
Spicer: The Deputy Director of the FBI was at the White House for a 7:30 meeting — whenever it was — the morning that the story came out, he asked to see the Chief of Staff after the meeting privately and said in fairly colorful terms that the New York Times story was not accurate. As frankly any would at the time said — “Could you clarify that then? If it’s not true, could you clarify the story?” The Deputy Director then said “I’ll get back to you.” When he got back to us he said “Hey, we don’t want to get into the practice of having to refute every story.” Uh, the Chief of Staff said “Well, you’ve put us in a very difficult position. You’ve told us that a story that made some fairly significant accusations, was not true. And now you just want us to sit out there? And I think we have a right, and if there’s information, or if you’re saying that the stories not right, could you at least make it available to the media, or some folks in the media that, Yes, that’s stories not right, it made very, very serious allegations.”
Further in the Director of the FBI said to Reince that “You have every right to go out and say that you’ve been briefed by us.” Which he did.
A CBS reporter then asks if this information from McCabe is why Reince went on Meet the Press and said he’d been briefed by the FBI.
Spicer: And the Director. They said literally, “The story in the New York Times is not accurate.”
The reporter then contrasts the situation where Bill Clinton spoke — in public by the way — with then AG Loretta Lynch — who literally recused herself from the Clinton case as a result — compared to Spicer and McCabe saying that the Administration has said “It’s different because the Chief of Staff was talking about a report” but she points out that the “report was about an investigation, so does the Administration worry that the CoS has crossed a line?”
Spicer: No no no no. Let’s reverse engineer this. 1) The Deputy Director comes to us, we didn’t go to them. This difference is in… [crosstalk] and I will … [he digresses for a minute about doing a gaggle not precluding doing something on camera later]…. the Deputy Director came to us Chief of Staff of the RN.. of the White House, and literally said “The story is false.” So here are the two scenarios: One is that the Chief of Staff says nothing and just stares at him. Which is what some of folks in this room believe he should have done. He should have just sat there and said.., which...now...if any of you, the second piece of this is nine times out of ten when I deal with any of you guys and I’ll say “we had a big problem with the story in X publication and X outlet” well the first thing I get asked is “Did you push back? Did you ask for a correction?” And I think in this case… the point is all we simply did was say “Wow, you’re bring us information, saying that something, a story in the New York Times is not accurate. So is there something that you’re doing to let other journalists know because they’re asking us?”
So that morning I got say 5, 10, 15 phone calls from you and your colleagues “Hey, there’s a report in the New York Times, what do you think about it?” If someones coming to us saying it’s not a true story our goal was literally “Will your public affairs office take this phone call?” [Another reporter begins to ask a question] Hold on, I just want to be clear.
I really am intrigued by, I really don’t know what else we were supposed to do. We were provided information, and this notion that CNN that we pushed back or we applied pressure. “Pressure” by definition is applying force. So if we had said “if you don’t do this, if you don’t do that...” that’s pressure and I get that would have been wrong.
“We order you to do this, we urge you to do that, we require you… “
We literally responded, when presented with information and said, “could you let the media know that? What you’re informing us of?” And the answer was “Well we don’t want to get in the middle of starting a practice of doing this.” So our answer was “Well, why did you come to us with this information if not to illicit a response?”
I mean I don’t know what else you do except to say “Gosh, could you clear the record up?” That is a very different scenario than trying to exert influence on a situation. We literally responded to what they came to us with.and said “Ok, what are you going to do about it?”
Guess what Spicey? That’s called exerting pressure. When the White House Chief of Staff asks someone in the Government to do something, he doesn’t have to say “or else” out loud, we all know what the “our else” is. Your. ass. gets. fired. He seems to think pressure requires a threat but it doesn’t. Not in this case. The threat is implied in the job title, just as we saw when the Bush Administration fired a pack of U.S. Attorneys without explanation. McCabe serves at the pleasure of the President, and if he becomes displeased — he can get gone. That’s a given.
Also, the FBI has no obligation to do your PR for you Spicey, they informed you and as you claimed the Director said “You have every right to put out that you were briefed.” So put it out.
Spicer: The thing that’s interest to me, is that had we not done anything, and just sat there. It would have been irresponsible and frankly malpractice to say “I was informed that we didn’t do anything and yet we didn’t act.”
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing? Look, you don’t have to just “sit there” you can take that information and run with it. It was a gift. It came in a nice box with a bow on top. Be happy. Say “Thank you” and shut up about getting another one, you don’t try to get the FBI to do your job for you. You’re the Press Secretary, do some pressing. Good god, man do they have to cut your your sandwich for you too? Why not have them water your lawn? Walk the dog? Are you responsible for nothing?
Another reporter asked “Do you have any Idea what McCabe’s motivation was?” Which is the question of the hour. What. was. he. thinking?
Spicer: No.
Reporter: Then he asked the CoS to call him back at the FBI only to be told by FBI headquarters “There’s nothing we can do” and it was a very small circle of people who knew about this and yet it leaked. [This seemed less like a question than like a helpful hint of where to take the discussion next...]
Spicer: I think that’s concerning. I mean again, remember the timetable. We didn’t ask them for a… Reince had never met the guy at that.. prior to that morning, he wouldn’t known who he was and frankly… he showed up at a meeting, Director Comey was traveling that day, it was an Intel meeting on a separate subject. So the idea.. and again… they don’t dispute any of this chronology that [McCabe] pulled him aside. So if you logically ask yourself “Why would he pull him aside?” to update him on a story just to say “Hey, I know we’ve never met before but I just wanted to know if you read the paper today?” I mean, logically that makes zero sense.
And Spicer is right here, it does make zero sense. It really doesn’t. WTAF?
“Hey, you don’t know me, but can I do you a PR solid for no particular reason at all?”
The FBI has refused to say anything about this investigation and their findings concerning it to anyone. Anyone! They refused to answer questions put to them by Congress in a classified meeting and frustrated them so badly that some where proclaiming “The FBI Director has no credibility”. Why exactly then would the Deputy Director who’d never met Priebus come sauntering up like a guy looking for a hot date and slip him some tongue to knock down a New York Times story that happens to overlap with a current FBI investigation? Why’s he suddenly so talky talky with a total stranger?
I seriously do recommend, if you can, listen to the the first 30 mins of the Spicer gaggle because it really does get full-on psycho between the 13-28 minute mark where literally Spicer is literally responding to questions with:
Spicer: I’ve never seen anything like this in my 30 days on the job!
God, it’s like comedy gold. SNL could just act out the transcript and it would be hilarious without any embellishments.
And...
Spicer: I’m gonna let the President’s tweet stand for itself.
When asked about if CNN and NYT wasn’t included in the pool because he didn’t like their reporting he said about 29 minutes in.
Spicer: Because I decided to expand the pool.
So that expansion just casually managed to push out the NYTimes, CNN, Poliico, the BBC, the Daily Mail — who are in a pending lawsuit with Melania Trump — and the LA Times? What. a. coincidence. Who got in while all of them got shoved out?
But, seriously, I mean it’s not like the Times didn’t go to the FBI before they published the article, they did and the FBI said… nothing.
The F.B.I. declined to comment. The White House also declined to comment Tuesday night, but earlier in the day, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, stood by Mr. Trump’s previous comments that nobody from his campaign had contact with Russian officials before the election.
Even the claim from the White House response was a probably a lie because Michael Flynn had been in contact with the Russians previously as reported by CNN separate from of the NYTimes. That’s called “independant corroboration” Spicey.
Both the frequency of the communications during early summer and the proximity to Trump of those involved "raised a red flag" with US intelligence and law enforcement, according to these officials. The communications were intercepted during routine intelligence collection targeting Russian officials and other Russian nationals known to US intelligence.
Among several senior Trump advisers regularly communicating with Russian nationals were then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and then-adviser Michael Flynn.
Officials emphasized that communications between campaign staff and representatives of foreign governments are not unusual. However, these communications stood out to investigators due to the frequency and the level of the Trump advisers involved. Investigators have not reached a judgment on the intent of those conversations.
And then after the election Flynn — while still a private citizen and not an Official representative of the U.S. Government in a potential violation of the Logan act — talked to the Russian Ambassador and discussed the sanctions that had been placed on them over Crimea, then forgot, then half remembered, lied about it to the FBI and VP, then got fired.
Besides the FBI had, in their own mind, already answered this question, and their answer was published by the New York Times way back in October.
Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia
WASHINGTON — For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.
Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.
Somehow the FBI is always the outlier. They have always said this, but the intel community hasn’t said it.
McCabe repeating these denials really wasn’t news from the FBI’s perspective, this was their pre-existing position. The problem is that the later Times story about the contacts didn’t depend on information coming from the FBI, it came from the NSA and elsewhere.
WASHINGTON — Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.
The FBI made their decision, but the intelligence agencies haven’t. Not yet, it seems. In short the battle here isn’t really between the White House and the New York Times, it’ s between the FBI against the NSA and CIA. If these calls were intercepted overseas, that is the purview of the NSA and CIA, not FBI unless they’ve had a FISA warrant allowing them to tap U.S. citizens. And it seems the NSA is literally livid about Trump: “He’s gonna Die in Jail.”
On Wednesday, former NSA intelligence analyst John Schindler provided some insight into the reaction of national security officials.
“Now we go nuclear,” he wrote on Twitter. “[Intelligence community] war going to new levels. Just got an [email from] senior [intelligence community] friend, it began: ‘He will die in jail.'”
“US intelligence is not the problem here,” Schindler added in another tweet. “The President’s collusion with Russian intelligence is. Many details, but the essence is simple.”
Yet somehow all the FBI can muster are shrugged shoulders and a “Hey, buddy have you heard the news about the Times story?” — Wink wink, nudge nudge — in a White House closet with Reince Preibus and a chilled chardonnay.
Although it’s not yet clear that these intercepts happened overseas, they could have included domestic calls, and might not have involved only Russian nationals, only people who are “known” as assets for Russian intelligence. That could be a lot of people. There were very few details in the NYTimes report as to exactly who is who.
The officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, the identity of the Russian intelligence officials who participated, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself.
How exactly do you prove that isn’t true when the report didn’t specify who was who on either side or the conversation? It could have included Michael Flynn who was paid $40,000 in 2015 to fly to Russia to have dinner with Putin. It could have been Carter Page who went on a business trip to Russia in December.
MOSCOW — Carter Page, an early foreign policy adviser to Donald J. Trump who was scrutinized by the F.B.I. on suspicion of private communications with senior Russian officials over the summer, was back in Moscow on Thursday.
Mr. Page was closelipped about the purpose of his visit, telling RIA Novosti, a Russian state-run news agency, that he would stay in Moscow until Tuesday and would meet with “business leaders and thought leaders.”
It could have been Roger Stone who claims he “has no contacts to Russia” except for when he appeared on Russian TV to deny the Kremlin’s involvement in the DNC hack.
Stone: I think it’s pretty established that the Russians did not hack the DNC. That’s a falsehood. Craig Murray, who is a respected British diplomat, has come forward and admitted that he was handed the material on the Clinton campaign cheating to beat Bernie Sanders by an informant, a disgruntled employee at the Democratic National Committee. After Seth Rich, an employee of the DNC, was shot in the back three times on the streets of Washington at 3 a.m., Julian Assange posted a $25,000 reward for information regarding his murder. If that isn’t a clear indication of who his source was, I don’t know what is. The entire notion that the Russians hacked this election and did so in order to affect the result is a falsehood, is a canard. The intelligence services and the deep state in our country have produced no evidence, no proof. What we have are, from our vaunted CIA, assessments, judgments, projections, briefings but no Republican on the Senate or House Intelligence Committee has been given or shown proof that this happened.
Yeah, that guys credibility is just golden. He doesn’t sound like a disinformation operative at all. It’s not like that exact story didn’t came directly from a Kremlin funded source like Sputnit News, [Because it did]
Or it could be Trump’s nominee for commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, because well, why not?
A study prepared exclusively for DCReport.org by James S. Henry reveals deep financial ties between Donald Trump’s nominee for Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, and three Russian oligarchs, whose lives and fortunes depend on staying in the good graces of Vladimir Putin.
…
These relationships between nominee Ross and the oligarchs involve ownership and management of a European bank with a reputation for laundering Russian money and making bad loans.
Sure, it could have been these guys, or i could have been Michael Cohen and Felix Sater who helped craft a secret back channel plan to end the Crimea conflict and lift the sanctions on Russia with a Ukrainian official who is now facing charges of treason.
Obviously all of these men, and also Paul Manafort — beyond the three specifically mentioned in the Times report as being looked at by the FBI, Flynn, Stone and Page — have had contacts who happen to be Russian are either in Russia or in nearby areas such as the Ukraine. For McCabe to state essentially that none of them had at any point communicated with Russian Intelligence operatives and assets either overseas or on U.S. soil — even unwittingly — is a fairly high wall to climb considering they all do have clear links to the area or people from the area. It also doesn’t make sense that if Russia was willing to hack the DNC they wouldn’t also want to insinuate themselves into Trump’s surroundings. Y’know, like SPIES do.
That is how the Russian Spy Ring in New York that was uncovered by the FBI in 2015 operated.
The subjects about which the men were tasked with gathering intelligence are believed to have included possible U.S. sanctions on Russia and U.S. efforts to develop alternative energy resources.
Sporyshev and Podobnyy also tried to recruit U.S. citizens as intelligence sources in New York, the complaint said.
Their targets included people working for "major companies" and "young women with ties to a major university located in New York," according to authorities.
People working at “major companies” based in New York. Nope, that doesn’t sound anything like people working for or around Donald Trump. Not a bit.
Again, none of these reports — except for Steele who alleges there was two-way information sharing between the Trump camp and Russia — have alleged that there was anything wrong, improper or illegal in these contacts. Only that there were a lot of them, meanwhile the FBI and Trump’s position is that “Nope, didn’t happen. Nothing to see here. Move along… move along.”
That’s concerning.
McCabe was stating to Priebus that he knew for a fact that nothing like the above had occurred, so I guess the FBI knows who every Russian spy in the world really is and none of them talked to anyone Trump knows and therefore the Times — or the intelligence officials talking to them — were just full of it? Even when other news agencies have confirmed some of these contacts as well? Oh, wait, those other agencies were CNN who also were somehow disinvited to the gaggle and were unable to push back on Spicey. What a coinky dink.
Washington (CNN) For the first time, US investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN. As CNN first reported, then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier prior to Trump's inauguration.
None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.
To be clear CNN here is not talking about contacts between Russians and Trump associates, these are contacts between different Russians which match exactly what has been described by former MI6 Agent Christopher Steele. And Steels has a lot to say about how the FBI has been handling this issue from the beginning.
However, say security sources, Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
...
The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city.
The Times and CNN said there were contacts, not that there’s any proof someone said or promised anything wrongful during the contacts, just that they had communication. The FBI report from October says they haven’t found any “influence” between Trump and Russia — but it didn’t deny there was “contact”, they didn’t address that issue. What’s different now is McCabe saying — in contradiction to the Times and CNN and The New Yorker and our foreign intelligence allies — that “there were no contacts.” Even when it’s not just the Times saying that, it’s the people who should know — CIA and NSA — who seem to say something different.
Let me repeat, some of the intelligence agencies of our allies have this information too.
As part of intelligence operations being conducted against the United States for the last seven months, at least one Western European ally intercepted a series of communications before the inauguration between advisers associated with President Donald Trump and Russian government officials, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The sources said the interceptions include at least one contact between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian official based in the United States. It could not be confirmed whether this involved the telephone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that has led to Flynn’s resignation, or additional communications. The sources said the intercepted communications are not just limited to telephone calls: The foreign agency is also gathering electronic and human source information on Trump’s overseas business partners, at least some of whom the intelligence services now consider to be agents of their respective governments. These operations are being conducted out of concerns that Russia is seeking to manipulate its relationships with Trump administration officials as part of a long-term plan to destabilize the NATO alliance.
If you follow the bread crumbs, the trail of evidence is relatively clear. FBI ignored Steele for months frustrating him so much he went public to David Corn at Mother Jones last October. In that same month the FBI was saying, in possibly a move to undercut Corn’s report, that Trump had “No clear ties to Russia” even though he sold a mansion to a Russian Oligarch for $95 Million in 2008. And held the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013. And Donald Jr. said this for some reason.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
So that’s not clear or anything. Too bad we can’t refute that claim with like, Tax Returns or something.
When it came to fully confirming that Russia was indeed the source of the DNC hack, all the intelligence agencies agreed long before the FBI finally came to the plate a week late and ten dollars short. Then you had repeated leaks by the FBI about Clinton’s server by an “Anti-Clinton Insurgency”, and then you get the Weiner email later released publicly when it could have been transmitted to Congress confidentially under a security classification. But nooo. Then they blow off Congressional inquires about the Russia investigation only to have McCabe now dropping little nuggets of handy wisdom on Priebus in the hallway? What is that all about?
Spicer: So, I don’t know what [McCabe’s] motivations were, I think hopefully that they were informing up, what the status of the story was.
[Questions flood in]
And can I make one more claim, just to catch up on something Holly asked, because I’ve seen lot of reporting about “was it proper?” First of all there’s nothing, there’s literally, a memo out from a past Attorney General about how DOJ will deal with the White House there’s literally a carve out for dealing with public affairs. This is a story in the New York Times that was not accurate according to them. So this idea about how we handled it, or how they handled it.. there’s literally in the memo, which is all it is, it’s a guidance memo, there’s literally a carve out that specifically addresses how to handle public affairs matters.
Literally, dude, literally.
The guidance memo described by Spicer and issued by Attorney General Eric Holder in 2009 is located here and states the following.
1. Pending or Contemplated Criminal or Civil Investigations and Cases
The Assistant Attorneys General, the United States Attorneys, and the heads oftheinvestigative agencies in the Department have the primary responsibility to initiate and superviseinvestigations and cases. These officials, like their superiors and their subordinates, must beinsulated from influences that should not affect decisions in particular criminal or civil cases. Asthe Supreme Court said long ago with respect to United States Attorneys, so it is true of all thosewho exercise the Department's investigatory and prosecutorial powers: they are representatives"not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in acriminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done." Berger v. United Srares, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935).
a. In order to ensure the President's ability to perform his constitutional obligation to"take care that the laws be faithfully executed," the Justice Department will advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil investigations or cases when- but only when -it is important for the performance of the President's duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.
So that’s literally fairly clear and again brings into question whether this was “appropriate from a law enforcement perspective” when Trump and his associates themselves are the targets of the investigation? It’s like having Mark Felt call up the chief Captain of the Genovese Crime family to tell him “Don’t worry about that racketeering story in the papers… we got you covered, pal.”
And yes it does mention the issue of public affairs, but not in the way Spicer claims.
b. Initial communications between the Department and the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal investigations or cases will involve only the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General, from the side of the Department, and the Counsel to the President, the Principal Deputy Counsel to the President, the President or the Vice President, from the side ofthe White House. If the communications concern a pending or contemplatedcivil investigation or case, the Associate Attorney General may also be involved. If continuing contact between the Department and the White House on a particular matter is required, theofficials who participated in the initial communication may designate subordinates from eachside to carry on such contact. The designating officials must monitor subsequent contacts, andthe designated subordinates must keep their superiors regularly informed of any such contacts.Communications about Justice Department personnel in reference to their handling of specificcriminal or civil investigations or cases are expressly included within the requirements of this paragraph. This policy does not, however, prevent officials in the communications, public affairs, or press offices of the White House and the Department of Justice from communicating with each other to coordinate efforts.
...
All communications between the Department and the White House or Congress that are limited to policy, legislation, budgeting, political appointments, public affairs, intergovernmental relations, or administrative matters that do not relate to a particular contemplated or pending investigation or case may be handled directly by the parties concerned. Such communicationsshould take place with the knowledge of the Department's lead contact regarding the subject
Neither the Deputy Director of the FBI or the White House Chief of staff are on the approved contact list, only the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General can inform the White House about current or anticipated investigations. And the problem right here is that if there is a “pending investigation or case” involving members of Trump’s campaign or White House staff McCabe shouldn’t have said ANYTHING to Priebus about it. Period. Case closed.
If there is an investigation, McCabe was completely out of line to say anything to Priebus and it’s interesting that the reason for not confirming what both McCabe and Comey said was “we don’t want to get into that” — not — “we won’t comment on a pending investigation” unless their hiding the details of this investigation from TrumpCo, just as some of the intelligence agencies are reportedly guarding sensitive information from him and his people for fear they might leak it to the Russians.
Or.. there is no FBI investigation of this matter.
If the reason is because the investigation is already complete, that they made up their minds about this way back in October, then the FBI should be able to go on the record about that and they wouldn’t have refused his request to let the press office talk about it. If they can say this to Preibus they should be able to say it to anyone else. This whole “we don’t feel like it” thing is even more bizarre if that’s the case, because as noted above, they already felt like it in October.
Either way if this is the situation, this doesn’t require — under the “public affairs” loophole -- for Priebus to directly contact McCabe or Comey about it, which is still weird, it could’ve been handled by Spicer and his staff with the press office at the FBI as a “press issue” as is outlined in the guidance memo. But, somehow again, nooo.
The third option is the most disturbing. It’s possible the FBI isn’t investigating and they aren't even planning to investigate. They just aren’t. Not yet. Despite the other reports coming from NSA and elsewhere they’re still slow-walking this, or just dropping the ball because they can’t bring themselves to consider it, just like they were last year with Steele’s memo, they’re struggling over this internally because some of them are loyal to Trump and that’s why McCabe had to go back and check with headquarters before denying Priebus’ request. Perhaps he wasn’t sure which way the wind was blowing.
I don’t really know what’s going on, but none of this is good.
Either way, a lot of what McCabe did here doesn’t make sense and potentially supports the idea raised by Steele of a pro-Trump Cabal in the FBI — aka Trumpland — which seems to be based out of the New York FBI Office where McCabe began his FBI career in 1996 working on organized crime while Rudy Giulianni was Mayor.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.
This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
The agent called the bureau “Trumplandia”, with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected.
Are these New York based Giuliani friendly agents — potentially including McCabe — willing to slip the Trumpster Admin a little good news they can use for political purposes — the same way that the Weiner memo, after being foreshadowed by Rudy Giuiliani based on FBI Leaks, was strategically timed to do the greatest political harm possible without being based on any real evidence or probable cause — but won’t themselves go on the record about it? They’re throwing spitballs and hiding their hand?
If the NSA, CIA and other Intel agencies are right and the FBI is wrong... then they’ve participated in a deliberate cover-up of a Russian influence plot to implement a coup in our government.
At the very least McCabe should be recused just as AG Lynch decided to accept whatever recommendation Comey and the FBI presented without review. The New York Field Office should be sidelined on this case. At the worse the entire FBI should be pulled off this issue and have a Special Prosecutor — or possibly an independent commission as we had after COINTELPRO -- brought in as they have shown, time and time again, they can’t be trusted to find fair and honest justice in this case. They should be pulled not just to investigate Russia and Trump, but to investigate the FBI itself. Just how deep is Trumpland, how far are they willing to go? We need to find out.
I fear that the FBI is compromised. If so they must stand down.
Tuesday, Feb 28, 2017 · 12:34:43 AM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
There is an excellent diary here going beyond what I’ve laid out here documenting various times where the Russians themselves have confirmed contacts with the Trump campaign, so this is truly not just a NYTimes/CNN fever dream, there’s a pattern here.
After the election, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said "[o]bviously, we know most of the people from his entourage….. I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives.” [WashPost].
Sergey I. Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, stated that he frequently contacted Michael Flynn during the campaign (note, he (falsely) claimed this was “something all diplomats do”). [NYTimes].
In Ukraine, Manafort’s long-time friend and associate, Victor Kilimnik, repeatedly bragged about past work for Russian military Intelligence. [Politico].
Kilimnik said he kept in contact with Manafort during Trump’s campaign. [Politico].
Finally, intercepted communications between Russian officials also show they believed they had special access to Trump both during and after the campaign. [CNN].
According to the Russians themselves these were common and regular communications.
In addition to this there is also the fact that the DOJ Inspector General already has an investigation of Comey’s letter about Huma Abedin’s emails and just look at who he considers to be a problem child.
The Justice Department Inspector General says he will review how the FBI and Justice Department handled certain aspects of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The probe by Michael E. Horowitz will include a review of FBI Director James Comey's news conference in July and his two letters to lawmakers in late October and early November.
...
According to a Justice Department statement, Horowitz will also examine:
- Allegations that the FBI Deputy Director should have been recused from participating in certain investigative matters;
- Allegations that the Department's Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs improperly disclosed non-public information to the Clinton campaign and/or should have been recused from participating in certain matters;
- Allegations that Department and FBI employees improperly disclosed non-public information; and
- Allegations that decisions regarding the timing of the FBI's release of certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents on October 30 and November 1, 2016, and the use of a Twitter account to publicize same, were influenced by improper considerations.
The FBI Deputy Director “should have been recused?”
Uh, this is the same guy who button-holed Priebus about the “B.S.” New York Times report that is largely corroborated by multiple news agencies and reports? The same guy who was brought up in the FBI through the New York office that stonewalled Christopher Steele and declared all his information “bunk” back in October even though overseas Intelligence agencies continue to back it up?
Hmm….
