John Durham, the US Attorney who was appointed by Attorney General (AG) William Barr to conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe released a rare statement Monday saying he disagrees with conclusions of the so-called FISA report, after DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz found in that review that the probe’s launch largely complied with DOJ and FBI policies.
“Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened,” U.S. Attorney John Durham said in a statement.
On Monday, IG Horowitz released his report saying his investigators found no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding efforts to launch the 2016 investigation by lying to a FISA court to obtain a FISA warrant to use to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign adviser Carter Page in the early months of the investigation. The IG report did say that it found that there were “significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised.”
“I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff,” Durham said. “However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.”
Americans need to understand that an Inspector General does not have the power to call a grand jury or to subpoena people or documents. Nobody has to listen to him, and nobody has to agree to answer any of his questions. John Durham, as a US Attorney, does have those powers, which is more-than-likely why he is disagreeing with the IG’s report.
While the IG was investigating DOJ actions during the Russia probe, Durham has been running his own investigation into the alleged misconduct and improper use of government surveillance on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
Back in October we reported that Durham’s ongoing probe has transitioned into a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, AG Barr ripped the FBI’s “intrusive” investigation after the release of the IG’s report, saying it was started based on the “thinnest of suspicions.”
“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a US presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said in a statement.
Barr showed some anger that James Comey’s FBI received exculpatory information, but continued the investigation into the Trump campaign anyway.
“It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory,” Barr said. “Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration.”
Remember also that Robert Mueller’s witch hunt investigation into Trump-Russia collusion ended up with his report saying that his investigators found not a single piece of evidence that the Trump campaign had anything to do with the Russians in the 2016 election.
Barr said the FISA report shows a “clear abuse” of the surveillance process.
“In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source,” Barr said.
In other words, they lied to the FISA court when applying for a FISA warrant, which is a felony.
Barr added, “The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory. While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.”
The release of Horowitz’s report comes at a time when Washington is in the middle of an impeachment inquiry by Democrats who are racing against the clock to get the president impeached before the Durham report comes out and exposes everything the Democrats did during the 2016 election.
Throughout the last three years, a pattern keeps emerging. Every time the Democrats accuse Trump of doing something, it’s actually Democrats who did it. They accused the president of colluding with Russia during the campaign, when in fact it was Hillary Clinton and the DNC that colluded with Russian FSB agents to obtain dirt on Trump. The Democrats claim Trump threatened the Ukrainian President to withhold US aid when in fact Joe Biden, as vice president in the Obama administration was the one who leveraged $1 billion in US aid, threatening to withhold it unless the then Ukrainian President Poroshenko fired their Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor who was investigating Joe Biden’s son and Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company known for corruption, where Hunter sat on the board and served as chief legal counsel.
After three years of watching Democrats do everything than can to get away with the illegal spying campaign they launched on Trump and his campaign, to the attempted cover ups after the election, and how the Democrats have been attacking this president over bogus accusations from the very start of his presidency, it’s no wonder AG Barr is frustrated.
John Durham made his statement today, because he knew the Fake News media would try to spin the IG report against Trump and to support the Democrats. Judging by Barr and Durham’s respective statements today, there’s a whole lot of bad times ahead for those who attempted the first government coup in our nation’s history during and after the 2016 election.
