AG Barr Blasts Media and Deep Staters -- and Criticizes Horowitz -- in Interview

This was an amazing statement from Barr. Barr ain't no c*c*, I'll tell you that.

A short clip is available at the above Fox link, but seriously, it's a great 20-25 minutes.

Attorney General Bill Bar is blasting the FBI's conduct during the Russia investigation, saying investigators relied on "flimsy" evidence in launching the probe and disputing key conclusions from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report released Monday.

Horowitz was critical of the FBI for their practices in using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but he concluded that the investigation itself was launched properly, without evidence of political bias.

“It’s hard to look at this stuff and not think that it was a gross abuse,” Barr said during a discussion Tuesday at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council forum in Washington. He referred to the investigation as a whole as a "travesty."

"Where I disagree with Mike, I just think this was very flimsy," he said about the basis for the investigation. The FBI cited comments by Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos to an Australian official as sparking concerns about the campaign's possible involvement with Russia. Barr dismissed this as "a comment made by a 28-year-old volunteer on a campaign in a bar."

Barr also pointed to the FBI’s failure to include key evidence in their FISA warrant applications that would have gone in Page’s favor.

"They withheld from the court all the exculpatory information," he said, calling the anti-Trump dossier used to bolster the warrant applications a "sham."

Read the whole thing; I can't excerpt it all. A short video at the link.

When it was pointed out that people were complaining that there had not been any arrests in this matter, Barr said, "Not yet." Though I don't think he was hinting about anything; I think he was being factual, and emphasizing they're not done with the investigation.

He also said, in an earlier interview with NBC, that he suspected the entire fake investigation was launched "in bad faith."

"I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press," Barr said. "I think there were gross abuses …and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI."

"I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith."

In the Wall Street Journal interview, Barr also emphasized that Horowitz did not exonerate the Deep State at all; he merely found no documentary or testimonial evidence of an admission of bad faith or political bias. In other words, while the circumstances scream bad faith, no one admitted it in an interview and no one was foolish enough to write an email saying "We are mounting this investigation for purely political reasons, YOLO!"

Barr notes that that's all the IG can do -- he can't "draw conclusions," as Barr and Durham can, but can only report the verified facts he discovered.

And if -- without the fear of prosecution, and some taking deals to turn on the higher-ups -- none of the conspirators straight-up admitted the conspiracy to Horowitz, Horowitz was required to say "No evidence found."

But Barr emphasized: Barr or Durham are not so limited.

Full video below. Skip to 27:00 to get to the stuff about the illegal conspiracy. After that, the interviewer asks about antitrust investigations into the tech monopolies, if you're interested in that.

posted by Ace of Spades at 04:11 PM

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