Exclusive DOJ INSPECTOR GENERAL INVESTIGATING FBI, CIA, FISA COLLUSION

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...l-reviews-alleged-fisa-abuses-by-doj-fbi.html

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced Wednesday he will review potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses by both the Justice Department and the FBI, following requests from Congress and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The Office of the Inspector General released a statement Wednesday outlining the start of the review.

“The OIG will initiate a review that will examine the Justice Department’s and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) relating to a certain U.S. person,” the statement obtained by Fox News read. “As part of this examination, the OIG also will review information that was known to the DOJ and the FBI at the time the applications were filed from or about an alleged FBI confidential source.”

Video
Sexton: DOJ has been trying to hide information about FISA
The OIG statement added that Horowitz also would “review the DOJ’s and FBI’s relationship and communications with the alleged source as they relate to the FISC applications.”

The statement continued, “If circumstances warrant, the OIG will consider including other issues that may arise during the course of the review.”

Last month, Sessions directed Horowitz to probe the allegations of government surveillance abuse, in light of memos released on Capitol Hill by the House Intelligence Committee about FBI and DOJ efforts to obtain FISA warrants to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

“We believe the Department of Justice must adhere to the high standards in the FISA court,” Sessions said in February at a news conference. “Yes it will be investigated. And I think that’s just the appropriate thing the inspector general will take that as one of the matters he’ll deal with.”

House Intel Republicans released a memo in late February detailing the DOJ's and FBI’s surveillance of Page, saying the infamous anti-Trump dossier funded by Democrats “formed an essential part” of the application to spy on him.

Video
Lewandowski talks investigation into potential FISA abuses
The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by Fusion GPS, was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through the law firm Perkins Coie. It included salacious and unverified allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia.

The Republican memo stated that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testified that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought” from the FISA court “without the Steele dossier information.”

The memo also said Steele, who worked as an FBI informant, eventually was cut off from the bureau for what the FBI described as the most serious of violations, “an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”

The memo noted that the FBI and DOJ obtained “one initial FISA warrant” targeting Page and three FISA renewals from the FISC. The statute required that every 90 days, a FISA order on an American citizen “must be reviewed.”

Former FBI Director James Comey signed three FISA applications for Page, while McCabe, current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who leads the Russia probe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente signed at least one, according the Republican memo.

Democrats, then, released a rebuttal memo.


Nunes on Russia probe, FISA abuse, media coverage
The White House said the GOP memo raised “serious concerns about the integrity of decisions made at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the FBI to use the government’s most intrusive surveillance tools against American citizens.”

Republican lawmakers and Sessions had been pressing Horowitz to probe the alleged FISA abuses.

Just this week, FBI Director Wray announced plans to “double the number” of agents handing records for the House Judiciary Committee after it subpoenaed the Justice Department for documents on FISA, the Clinton email investigation and the firing of McCabe.

Over the last year, Horowitz has been conducting a review of the FBI's and DOJ’s actions related to the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. A final report on the investigation is expected in several months.

 

Nuh uh

 

Lewandowski and Nunes are pieces of shit, the other guy probably is too.

 

Uh, yeah.

I think Benedict Arnold said something along those lines about George Washington right after his traitorous plot was exposed.

 

I take it back, they are "real Americans". Right a long with the Manhattan Candidate.

 

Indictments will be handed down any day now.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...o-that-kick-started-russia-investigation.html

Nunes threatens to enforce subpoena over FBI memo that kick-started Russia investigation

By Catherine Herridge | Fox News

Nunes demands original document that started the Russia probe
Fox News intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge discusses how House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is demanding the original document that prompted the Russia investigation.

Congressional investigators are still facing roadblocks over FBI records, despite promises of cooperation from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to a letter obtained by Fox News on Wednesday.

The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, wrote that he has been denied a clean copy of the 2016 FBI memo that kick-started the Russia counterintelligence investigation — now known as the special counsel’s Russia probe.

“On March 14th, 2018, Committee investigators were given access to a still heavily redacted version of the EC (FBI memo known as an electronic communication), which — as I informed Director Wray the next day via phone — was unsatisfactory,” Nunes, R-Calif., wrote.

READ THE FULL LETTER HERE


Congressional investigators, such as Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes (center), are still facing roadblocks over FBI records, despite promises of cooperation from FBI Director Christopher Wray (left) and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (right).

“On March 23, 2018, FBI’s Assistant Director for Legislative Affairs informed the Committee that FBI would refuse to further unredact the EC (FBI memo) based on its sensitivity. The document in question is not highly classified, and law enforcement sources have apparently not been shy about leaking to the press information that the Department and Bureau refuse to share with Congress.”

Fox News is told the FBI memo was likely drafted by, or with input from, Agent Peter Strzok in July 2016, when the bureau formally opened its counterintelligence investigation. Strzok was removed from the investigation last year by Special Counsel Robert Mueller after anti-Trump texts between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page were discovered.



Nunes threatened enforcement of subpoenas that were issued last August if the FBI memo is not provided by April 11. With enforcement of those same subpoenas looming this past January, Nunes, Wray and Rosenstein met. According to the letter, Wray and Rosenstein “expressed a desire to restore a constructive relationship with the Committee, and specifically asked that we seek to proceed on a more informal basis.”

Fox News asked the FBI and Justice Department for comment on the Nunes letter, why a clean copy of the FBI memo was not provided to Congress, and how those actions have been consistent with the stated commitment from Wray and Rosenstein to cooperate with Congress.

There was no immediate response from either department, but Fox News will update the reporting if a response becomes available.

 

Nunez, Lewandowski and Fox News?

You just hit the trifecta of garbage.

 

Nothing burger.

 

Indictments are sure to follow very soon. Any day now.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ing-ex-fbi-deputy-director-andrew-mccabe.html

DOJ IG releases explosive report that led to firing of ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe

Department of Justice issues McCabe report

Andrew McCabe, onetime acting FBI director, leaked a self-serving story to the press and later lied about it to his boss and federal investigators, prompting a stunning fall from grace that ended in his firing last month, says a bombshell report released Friday by the Justice Department's internal watchdog.


Inspector General Michael Horowitz, appointed by President Barack Obama, had been reviewing FBI and DOJ actions leading up to the 2016 presidential election.


The report, handed over to Congress on Friday and obtained by Fox News, looked at a leak to The Wall Street Journal about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation.


The report says that McCabe authorized the leak and then misled investigators about it, leaking in a way that did not fall under a "public interest" exception.

"[W]e concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the CF investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of department leadership, was clearly not within the public interest exception," the report says.


McCabe was fired from his role as FBI deputy director last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just days before he would have been eligible for a lifetime pension after it was determined that he misled investigators reviewing the bureau’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server.


Sessions said that McCabe “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions.”


President Trump reacted to the report Friday in a highly charged tweet saying McCabe "LIED! LIED! LIED!" Trump also used the social media platform to describe allegations of collusion between his campaign and Moscow as "all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!"



The report faults McCabe for leaking information of an August 2016 call to Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett for an Oct. 30, 2016, story titled “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.” The story -- written just days before the presidential election – focused on the FBI announcing the reopening of the Clinton investigation after finding thousands of her emails on a laptop belonging to former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin.


The Journal's account of the call says a senior Justice Department official expressed displeasure to McCabe that FBI agents were still looking into the Clinton Foundation, and that McCabe had defended agent's authority to pursue the issue.


"Among the purposes of the disclosure was to rebut a narrative that had been developing following a story in The WSJ on Oct. 23, 2016, that questioned McCabe’s impartiality in overseeing FBI investigations involving [Clinton], and claimed that McCabe had ordered the termination of the [FBI's Clinton Foundation investigation] due to Department of Justice pressure," the report says.


That leak confirmed the existence of the probe, which then-FBI Director James Comey had up to that point refused to do. The report says that McCabe "lacked candor" in a conversation with Comey when he said that he had not authorized the disclosure and didn't know who had done so.


The IG also found that he also lacked candor when questioned by FBI agents on multiple occasions since that conversation, where he told agents that he did authorize the disclosure and did not know who was responsible.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said that the report showed that the decision to fire McCabe "was the correct one."


"According to the inspector general report, Mr. McCabe repeatedly lied under oath about the disclosure of information to a reporter. In doing so, he not only violated FBI policy, but he may have committed a federal crime," he said in a statement.
...
Fox News’ Chad Pergram, Jake Gibson and Alex Pappas contributed to this report.

 

FAKE NEWS

NO COLLUSION

 

DOJ IG RECOMMENDING CRIMINAL CHARGES FOR MCCABE, 15-20 years prison sentence possible.

 

Will he be in the cell next to Trump?

 

There all crooked!
I hope both republicans and dems go to jail!
There is plenty of corruption and breaking of the law going on.
Comey is s dirty cop and he’s alone on an island!

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...er-leak-dodge-in-house-gop-russia-report.html

Clapper hit for dossier leak dodge in House GOP Russia report

By Brooke Singman | Fox News
James Clapper accused of misleading congress
Former intelligence chief James Clapper is facing scrutiny for allegedly providing “inconsistent testimony” to the House Intelligence Committee regarding his discussions with the media about the anti-Trump dossier.

The claim was contained in the report released Friday by House Intelligence Committee Republicans.

The report declared investigators had found “no evidence” of collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russia -- findings that Democrats vehemently disputed. But while the report was touted by Trump allies, it could cause problems for Clapper, the director of national intelligence under the Obama administration.

The report stated that in a private interview with the committee on July 17, 2017, Clapper’s response wavered regarding his media contacts over the dossier. He initially denied those contacts, yet later admited to discussing the dossier contents with Jake Tapper of CNN, where Clapper landed a job after leaving government.


Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had contact with CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper in early January 2017. (AP/Reuters)

“When initially asked about leaks related to the ICA in July 2017, former DNI Clapper flatly denied ‘discussing the dossier [compiled by Steele], or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists’,” the report read.

But the report stated that Clapper “subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic.”

Clapper became a CNN national security analyst in August 2017, just one month after his "executive interview" with the committee.

According to the report, Clapper’s communication with Tapper took place in early January, around the same time leaders of the intelligence community briefed then-President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump on “the Christopher Steele information.” The report noted the dossier was provided in a “two-page summary.”

On Jan. 10, 2017, Tapper and other CNN journalists published an article that claimed classified documents, in the form of a two-page synopsis, were presented to Obama and Trump including allegations that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising information on the incoming president.

Steele was hired by research firm Fusion GPS to compile details for the anti-Trump dossier, containing salacious allegations against Trump. The dossier was published, in full, by BuzzFeed News in January 2017, following the CNN report. It later emerged that the dossier was paid for with funding from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.


According to the House Intelligence report, Clapper issued a statement the day after the CNN article was published in early January 2017 describing a phone call with Trump in which Clapper “expressed [his] profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press” and stressed that he does “not believe the leaks came from within the IC.”

When exactly Clapper spoke with Tapper and others is unclear.

When the House Intelligence Committee initially published key findings of its Russia probe in March, Clapper responded to the claim that his testimony was inconsistent.

“I didn’t have any contact with media until after I left the government on the 20th of January,” Clapper said on CNN on March 12, 2018.

In 2014, Clapper signed a directive barring intelligence community officials from talking to the media. The directive was focused to “mitigate the risks of unauthorized disclosures of intelligence-related matters.”

George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley said Monday that there is a “serious issue here.”

“Clapper has already admitted that he did speak with CNN. Now, he is insisting he didn’t speak to any media until January 20, but he indicated he spoke to CNN in early January,” Turley said on “Fox & Friends” Monday. “CNN reported that high level people had confirmed the information, and if one of those individuals is Clapper, it is a serious problem. He could be accused, again, of perjury.”

Turley added: “I think the public has the right to know more about these dates. The committee was correct that at a minimum, Clapper’s testimony is inconsistent. It could be much more serious than that.”

This isn’t the first time Clapper has run into trouble for his statements to Congress.

Back in 2013, he apologized for telling Congress that the National Security Agency doesn’t gather data on millions of Americans. He later said his answer was “clearly erroneous.”

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ions-should-be-held-in-contempt-congress.html

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is going to push Congress to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress.

The Californian Republican’s committee has been looking into allegations that the Justice Department and the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in their scrutiny of the Trump campaign.

"On Thursday we discovered that they are not going to comply with our subpoena," Nunes said on "Fox and Friends," adding, "The only thing left to do is we have to move quickly to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt and that is what I will press for this week."

Two weeks ago, Nunes sent to Sessions a classified letter, which he said was not acknowledged, and then he sent a subpoena.


GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (AP)

However, the Justice Department said it responded to Nunes' letter, as Maria Bartiromo reported on "Sunday Morning Futures."

"The Department has determined that, consistent with applicable law and longstanding Executive Branch policy, it is not in a position to provide information responsive to your request regarding a specific individual," Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd wrote in the signed letter. "The Department and its intelligence community partners would welcome the opportunity to discuss whether there are other ways to accommodate the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's oversight inquiry."

Nunes, who did concede that it’s possible Sessions personally is unaware of the subpoena, told "Fox and Friends" he wouldn’t accept "excuses" relating to national security concerns in terms of his ongoing investigation of how the Russia probe was handled.

"How many times have we heard this argument throughout this investigation?" he asked.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, expressed support for Nunes on "Fox and Friends."

"I have deeper and deeper concerns the more I see some of this, not only the stonewalling, but what’s been in some of these memos," said Scalise. "We’re also trying to get a lot of other information from the Department of Justice about this investigation, and everything that we uncover raises even deeper concerns about the direction."

As Fox News has reported, Nunes called the FBI and Justice Department redaction of his committee's Russia report "excessive and sloppy." The House committee's report found that FBI agents "did not detect any deception during [Michael] Flynn's interview.”

Flynn, who pleaded guilty to a single count of making "false, ficitious or fraudulent" statements to the FBI under Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russian probe, served as President Trump's national security adviser.

"This just cannot continue where we don't get information in a timely manner. Like I said, everything we have tried to get they tried to stop us from getting,” Nunes said.

Fox News' Jake Gibson and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.