Paul Sperry: The FBI Team That Ran Crossfire Hurricane -- Currently Under Investigation by IG John Durham -- Is of Course the Team That Ran the Mar-a-Lago Raid

Why shouldn't they be.

Why shouldn't they be.

The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President Trump's handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham's investigation of the bureau's alleged abuses of power and political bias during its years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.

The FBI's nine-hour, 30-agent raid of the former president's Florida estate is part of a counterintelligence case run out of Washington -- not Miami, as has been widely reported -- according to FBI case documents and sources with knowledge of the matter. The bureau's counterintelligence division led the 2016-2017 Russia "collusion" investigation of Trump, codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane."

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit, the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by both Durham and the bureau's disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

In addition, a key member of the Crossfire team -- Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten -- has continued to be involved in politically sensitive investigations, including the ongoing federal probe of potentially incriminating content found on the abandoned laptop of President Biden's son Hunter Biden, according to recent correspondence between the Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI whistleblowers have alleged that Auten tried to falsely discredit derogatory evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign by labeling it Russian "disinformation," an assessment that caused investigative activity to cease.

Auten has been allowed to work on sensitive cases even though he has been under internal investigation since 2019, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred him for disciplinary review for his role in vetting a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded dossier used by the FBI to obtain a series of wiretap warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz singled out Auten for cutting a number of corners in the verification process and even allowing information he knew to be incorrect slip into warrant affidavits and mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

In congressional testimony this month, Wray confirmed that "a number of" former Crossfire Hurricane team members are still employed at the bureau while undergoing disciplinary review. In the meantime, Wray has walled off the former Russiagate investigators only from participating in FISA wiretap applications, according to the sources.

Hey guys -- don't criticize the Smug Twitter Liberals with Guns. It's too dangerous for them.

We'll just have to stop criticizing our clearly corrupt government. It's The American Way Now (TM).

At American Greatness, Adam Mill disagrees that this is The American Way Now (TM). After recounting the FBI's illegal and corrupt stormtrooper behavior over the past six years -- and its absurd claims that it cannot make its affidavits and warrants public, as that would expose "sources and methods," as it leaks like crazy to all of its favorite leftwing corporate media stenographers, he thinks it's time instead to criticize them more stingingly.

Speaking of sources, the FBI appears to have activated its many allies, including some Republicans, to come to its defense. Former Vice President Mike Pence, according to the Times, "called on Republicans to stop attacking the nation's top law enforcement agencies over the F.B.I.'s search of Mar-a-Lago." Other "moderates," says the Times, "chastised their colleagues for the broadsides against law enforcement." That's absurd.

The FBI must feel the hot sting of public condemnation or the abuses will continue to escalate. There are many peaceful and legal avenues the public can and should take to push back against the FBI. Further, we should pay close attention to the names of Republicans who feel a mysterious compulsion to defend this clearly indefensible raid. It might be worth asking whether any FBI personnel contacted any public official to lobby for public relations support and whether anything was said to help motivate these public figures.

Updated:

I don't know if that's necessary. The standard braindead Don't Know What Time It Is conservazombie is still possessed by a slavish leathergimp fetishization of anything having to do with authority, even when that authority is being used to crush them.

Because Tradition. Because that's the way things were 20 years ago, when things were completely different.

Because while leftwing NPCs get their coding updated from Central Processing Command every week or ten days, "conservative" NPCs are incapable of getting their coding updated, ever. It's all hardware, no software.

It was 2003. It is 2003. It will always be 2003.

He has a great last line to the column. He demands that the full affidavit be made public -- the FBI leaks from it as it finds it convenient, so might as well cut out the middleman and just make it public now -- and says, repeating the FBI's own bullshit back to it, If you have nothing to hide, why not just come clean now?

Meanwhile: What's this?

Have the Capitol Police and FBI been hiding video of the "insurrection" because they know Capitol Police officers permitted "insurrectors" into the Capitol, therefore giving them permission to be there, just as the Colbert Nine supposedly had?

posted by Ace at 12:10 PM

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