The Department of Justice’s inspector general report on Obama-era FISA abuses is out and the media is rushing to highlight that there was no bias when it came to the FBI’s investigation into the allegations that the Trump campaign had Russia ties. We know there was no Russian collusion. It was a myth and peddled by the media for two years. The Mueller report torched that narrative. And it did so by shredding the infamous, unverified, and totally debunked Trump dossier. That document is ground zero for this nonsense. It’s what set off the counterintelligence probe which then became the special counsel investigation. It’s formed the basis for this Russian collusion nonsense. And it was the basis for the FISA spy warrant against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official.
It’s now clear this document was garbage. I mean the errors in the dossier could’ve been discovered through a Google search. And yet, this document was cited as credible evidence. It was political opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrats. Even some within British intelligence were skeptical of the document. So, why all of the screw-ups in the process? There were 17 of them, which included altering information, omitting other pieces, including exculpatory evidence relating to Page. Oh, and in case you missed that part of the hearing—yeah, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, no evidence was unearthed that Page was a foreign agent.
Sen. Lindsey Graham: "A little bit about Steele. In 2015, the British Intelligence Service said you need to watch this guy, he's not reliable." https://t.co/03eFXJlw0X pic.twitter.com/NZYm9jODKc
— The Hill (@thehill) December 11, 2019
IG Michael Horowtiz: "We found investigators failed to meet their basic obligations in ensuring that the FISA applications were scrupulously accurate." https://t.co/03eFXJD6Sv pic.twitter.com/5qgYBaCg9n
— The Hill (@thehill) December 11, 2019
NBC News’ Mitchell: “pretty egregious,” “very clear mistakes made by the FBI” in FISA process pic.twitter.com/ad1AmgRNxp
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 11, 2019
Horowitz just now. "The FBI at the end of this process told us that they found no evidence” that Carter Page was a foreign agent.
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) December 11, 2019
The media reaction has been predictable. The FBI may have skipped some steps concerning an intrusive spy warrant that requires a sign off by a secret court, but there was no bias. Trump was wrong. Trump’s spy claim is debunked. So, that means what happened was sort of bad, but nothing major, right? Nope. And there is at least one liberal reporter who is calling out the media for their antics concerning this report. Michael Tracey, formerly of Young Turks, ran the no bias claims through the shredder on Twitter.
That the media could be presenting this IG Report as "vindication" of the FBI once again shows how thoroughly corrupted the media is by their allegiance to the security state apparatus -- predictable given how many former members of that apparatus are now employed by the media
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
The Steele Dossier, and the sequence of events it sparked, represent such a massive media / law enforcement failure that the implicated parties will never accept responsibility so long as Trump is around. It's just not within their capacity. Deny, deny, deny is all they can do
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
"Political bias" is a red herring. If the FBI flouted procedures because they had an overblown, conspiratorial belief in the nature of "Russian interference," rather than explicitly-articulated animosity toward Trump individually, that's still a damning exhibition of "bias"
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
The FBI used outright fabrications to surveil a presidential campaign at the peak of an election season -- an unprecedented intervention by the security state -- but we're told by the media this is no big deal. Take out the word "Trump" and it'd be an obvious national scandal
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
Pelosi explicitly said last week that impeachment was never about Ukraine, it was about punishing Trump for his alleged conspiratorial relationship with Putin: Ukraine was just the spark. So that's the prism through which everything happening with impeachment should be understood
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
The so-called "Nunes Memo" -- universally mocked by the media when it was released in Feb. 2018 -- asserted that the Steele Dossier "formed an essential part" of the Carter Page FISA application and "material and relevant information was omitted." All 100% true, per IG Report
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
Jeffrey Toobin just made an interesting point on CNN. It doesn’t matter what the actual articles of impeachment are, he says. No one will remember. It just matters that Trump is impeached. Revealing comment.
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
"Bias" doesn't have to manifest as overt partisan favoritism in order to be a big problem. If FBI officials were willing to fudge crucial facts to obtain an expansive FISA Warrant on a US citizen, they had to be operating under a whole set of "biased" (security state) assumptions
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 10, 2019
FBI official told the IG without the Steele Dossier, "he would not have thought they could establish probable cause" to get a FISA Warrant on Carter Page. We've been told for years that the centrality of the Steele Dossier to the Russia investigation was a GOP conspiracy theory
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 9, 2019
IG Report explicitly faults FBI for never disclosing in multiple FISA applications that Christopher Steele was "desperate that Trump not get elected and passionate about him not being the US President" but journalists are celebrating that FBI was cleared of all political bias...?
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 9, 2019
IG Report says the Carter Page FISA request "drew almost entirely" from the Steele Dossier to establish probable cause that Page was facilitating "a well-developed conspiracy" between Russia and Trump. This was such an enormous fraud pic.twitter.com/pnDqTwaG7O
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 9, 2019
BOMBSHELL:
— Trump War Room (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TrumpWarRoom) December 11, 2019
Inspector Horowitz admits that the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign was based "entirely" on information from the debunked Steele Dossier.
The media continues to deny this fact! pic.twitter.com/Crpn28dW1P
“That the media could be presenting this IG Report as "vindication" of the FBI once again shows how thoroughly corrupted the media is by their allegiance to the security state apparatus -- predictable given how many former members of that apparatus are now employed by the media,” he tweeted. I mean just look at CNN’s line up of commentators and those over at MSNBC, some of which are James Comey lackeys.
In short, he and everyone else with cognitive function know that this is a serious scandal. And if Trump wasn’t president, this would be treated more seriously.
Exactly. You don't keep going back to the same empty well over and over again, sometimes outright fabricating evidence in the process, unless there is a prejudice at work. This is as much about Russia as it is about Trump.
— Heliopause (@stevesond) December 11, 2019
“The FBI used outright fabrications to surveil a presidential campaign at the peak of an election season -- an unprecedented intervention by the security state -- but we're told by the media this is no big deal. Take out the word "Trump" and it'd be an obvious national scandal,” Tracey added.
Over at The Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel dissected the no bias claim writing, “When IG says he found no "documentary" evidence of bias, he means just that: He didn't find smoking gun email that says, ‘let's take out Trump.’ And it isn't his job to guess at the motivations of FBI employees.”
“He straightforwardly lays out facts. Those facts produce a pattern of FBI playing the FISA Court--overstating some info, omitting other info, cherry-picking details. Americans can look at totality and make their own judgment as to ‘why’ FBI behaved in such a manner,” she added.
Tracey torched this aspect of the report noting, “'Political bias’ is a red herring. If the FBI flouted procedures because they had an overblown, conspiratorial belief in the nature of ‘Russian interference,’ rather than explicitly-articulated animosity toward Trump individually, that's still a damning exhibition of ‘bias.’
All of these errors broke in a way that was meant to hurt the Trump team. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI officials that shed light on the bias within the FBI, spoke about an “insurance policy” against Trump reportedly with ex-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. That policy is supposedly a reference to the Trump dossier. Strzok was having an extramarital affair with Page, sent tens of thousands of anti-Trump texts to Page, and was a key person in signing off on the counterintelligence probe into Russian collusion and the bureau analysis of Hillary Clinton’s email server. The two worried if the FBI was being too hard on Clinton during the latter inquiry, by the way. There’s no bias, really? Sorry, this is simply not believable. And this is just one example of FBI employees exhibiting bias against the president and his supporters.
Horowitz says he could not reach a conclusion about what motivated the extensive FBI "errors" that all happened to enable unprecedented surveillance of a presidential campaign. I guess that "motivation" will always be a mystery, couldn't possibly be any kind of "bias"
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 11, 2019
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