WhatFinger

Good, but Congress needs to investigate too.

Justice Department inspector general officially launches probe of FBI's Carter Page surveillance

By Dan Calabrese ——--March 29, 2018

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Justice Department inspector general officially launches probe of FBI's Carter Page surveillance One of President Trump's recent missteps was his decision to trash Michael Horowitz, the inspector general for the Department of Justice, as unfit to lead an investigation into the FBI's apparent abuses of power in the Carter Page matter and the Hillary e-mail investigation. Horowitz is a straight shooter, and is not in league with the likes of James Comey and Andrew McCabe. He's going to do a serious investigation and report the facts whatever they turn out to be, and yesterday it was formally announced he's going ahead and doing just that:
The inspector general will examine the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s compliance with legal requirements in its application for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, said in the statement. Republican lawmakers have alleged abuses in how top law-enforcement officials sought in 2016 to monitor the former campaign adviser, Carter Page. They have alleged that officials didn’t properly disclose to the court the partisan motivations of information they received from an ex-British spy, whose work in gathering the information was being funded by Democratic Party intermediaries. A separate memo from Democrats defended federal investigators’ handling of the surveillance. It said the FBI had relied on information beyond what the ex-spy, Christopher Steele, provided, had corroborated some of his report and had told the court about Mr. Steele’s motivations. The inspector general will also look at what information the FBI and Justice Department knew about a source that provided information used in the application, the statement said. Separately, the inspector general has been reviewing the FBI’s handling of its probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Some of its findings led to the dismissal of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe this month. Mr. Sessions’ referral of the issue to the inspector general raised President Donald Trump’s ire last month. “Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse,” he tweeted, adding the decision was “DISGRACEFUL!”.
The president just might get some real truth and justice out of Mr. Horowitz in spite of his impulsive tweet disparaging the man. The FBI was shameless about stonewalling requests from Congress for information on this matter, to the point where it took a threat by Speaker Paul Ryan to hold Christopher Wray and Rod Rosenstein in contempt of Congress before they would turn over what had been subpoenaed five months earlier. Even the, they redacted much of the essential information, ostensibly for national security reasons but really just to cover up the FBI's malfeasance. Horowitz will be in a position to get everything he needs to uncover the real truth, and he won't be shy about saying so publicly if they try to stonewall him too. But none of this excuses Congress from its constitutional oversight role, which means Devin Nunes's Intelligence Committee has to stay on top of all this. It is now clear that the Obama Administration's Justice Department abused its law enforcement powers in order to create a pretext for spying on a man who'd been tied to the Trump Administration. Yes, that is worse than Watergate, no matter which establishment pundits scoff at the notion. It's not yet being treated as that serious because the mainstream media don't want to know, and the FBI and DOJ have been effective so far in stonewalling the information that would leave no doubt about it. Mr. Horowitz should be able to get through the stonewall. And when he's done so, President Trump might even feel compelled to thank him for his efforts.

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Dan Calabrese——

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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