IG Report Released
COMPLETE WHITEWASH

Here. I'm going to start skimming. If you see anything good, quote it in the comments, if you would be so kind.

The whitewash is successful.

Long live the coup.

The AG Guidelines and the DIOG do not provide heightened predication standards for sensitive matters, or allegations potentia lly impacting constitutionally protected activity, such as First Amendment rights. Rather, the approval and notification requirements contained in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG are, in part, intended to provide t he means by which such concerns can be considered by senior officials. However, we were concerned to find that neither the AG Guidelines nor the DIOG contain a provision requiring Department consultation before opening an investigation such as the one here involving the alleged conduct of individuals associated with a major party presidential campaign.

Crossfire Hurricane was opened as a Full
Investigation and all of the senior FBI officials who
participated in discussions about whether to open a
case told us the information warranted opening it. For
example, then Counterintel ligence Division (CD)
Assistant Director (AD) E.W. "Bill" Priestap, who
approved the case opening, told us that the
combination of t he FFG information and the FBI 's
ongoing cyber intrusion investigation of the July 2016
hacks of the Democratic Nat ional Committee's (DNC)
emails, created a count erintelligence concern that the
FBI was "obligated" to investigate. Priestap stated that
he considered whether the FBI should conduct
defensive briefings for the Trump campaign but
ultimately decided that providing such briefings created
the risk that "if someone on the campaign was engaged
with the Russians, he/she would very likely change
his/her tact ics and/or otherwise seek to cover-up
his/her activities, thereby preventing us from finding
the truth." We did not identify any Department or FBI
policy that applied to this decision and therefore
determined t hat the decision was a judgment call that
Department and FBI policy leaves to the discretion of
FBI officia ls. We also concluded that, under the AG
Guidelines and the DIOG, the FBI had an authorized
purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane to obtain
information about, or protect against, a national
security threat or federal crime, even though the
investigation also had the potential to impact
constitutionally protected activity.

Additionally, given the low threshold for
predication in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG..

"Predication" means "pretext," effectively. The rules provide for a very low standard -- almost a complete lack of standard -- for opening up an investigation into a Republican presidential candidate. They're saying that literally anything can constitute a "good faith" reason for suspicion.

Here, the "FFG" information means "Friendly Foreign Government" and refers to Alexander Downer's claim that Papadoplous said something about Russia having Hillary's emails.

...we concluded that the FFG information, provided by a government the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from an FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the investigation. This information provided the FBI with an articulable factual basis that, if true, reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a t hreat to national security, or both, may have occurred or may be occurring. For simi lar reasons, as we detail in Chapter Three, we concluded that the quantum of information articulated by the FBI to open t he individual investigations on Papadopoulos, Page, Flynn, and Manafort in August 2016 was sufficient to satisfy the low threshold established by the Department and the FBI.

Low threshold means "no threshold whatsoever."

Now we turn to the whitewashing of bias:

As part of our review, we also sought to determine whether there was evidence that political bias or other improper considerations affected decision making in Crossfire Hurricane, including the decision to open the investigation. We discussed t he issue of political bias in a prior OIG report, Review of Various Actions in Advance of the 2016 Election, where we described text and instant messages between then Special Counsel to the Deputy Director Lisa Page and then Section Chief Peter Strzok, among others, that included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for then candidate Hillary Clinton. In this review, we found that, while Lisa Page attended some of the discussions regarding the opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four individual cases. We further found that while Strzok was directly involved in the decisions to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four individual cases, he was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters. As noted above, then CD AD Priestap, Strzok's supervisor, was the official who ultimately made the decision to open the investigation, and evidence reflected that this decision by Priestap was reached by consensus after multiple days of discussions and meetings that included Strzok and other leadership in CD, the FBI Deputy Director, the FBI General Counsel, and a FBI Deputy General Counsel. We concluded that Priestap's exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision. We similarly found that, while the formal documentation opening each of the four individual investigations was approved by Strzok (as required by the DIOG), the decisions to do so were reached by a consensus among the Crossfire "Hurricane agents and analysts who identified individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had recently traveled to Russia or had other alleged ties to Russia. Priestap was involved in these decisions. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations.

Oh -- there was an Interagency Consensus.

I see.

The omissions -- the deliberate lies and actual fraud perpetrated upon the FISA court -- is "concerning," but none of the rats confessed to having been responsible for the lies, therefore there are no lies, or at least we're going to pretend them away:

We also found the quantity of omissions and inaccuracies in the applications and the obvious errors in the Woods Procedures deeply concerning. Although we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the part of the case agents who assisted in preparing the applications, or the agents and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures, we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or missing information....

Thanks to artisinal 'ette for that one.

Page xiv of the executive summary more or less says:

"That so many basic and fundamental errors
were made by three separate, hand- picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI, and that FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command's management and supervision of the FISA process."

There's more but all that's being done? A fucking audit.

That via alexthechick.

posted by Ace of Spades at 01:08 PM

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