What the hell is going on at the FBI? You can say the same about the Department of Justice overall. After years of investigating the leaks to the press during the 2016 election, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said that they don’t know who was leaking because it seems as if everyone was just talking to the press willy-nilly and sharing sensitive information. In short, there were more leaks at the FBI than the Iraqi Navy during the 2016 race at a time when our nation’s preeminent law enforcement and domestic intelligence agency had to be as apolitical as possible. We all know they failed in every phase of that endeavor. It took four years for this report to drop—where the conclusion was the FBI could not figure who was leaking stuff to the press from…the FBI. Oh, and the suspicion that Rudy Giuliani has insider knowledge of the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton turned out to be a huge nothing burger as well. (via WaPo):
A four-year probe by the Justice Department Inspector General could not determine who in the FBI spoke to reporters about sensitive subjects during the 2016 election, or find evidence that Rudolph W. Giuliani had inside information about an investigation into Hillary Clinton that upended the race in its final days.
The report issued Thursday by Inspector General Michael Horowitz said there were “substantial media contacts” with numerous FBI employees, but the evidence could not “determine whether these media contacts resulted in the disclosure of nonpublic information.”
Horowitz faulted what he called “a cultural attitude at the FBI that was far too permissive of unauthorized media contacts in 2016.”
The 10-page report is the long-awaited summary of an issue that consumed the FBI and Justice Department during the presidential contest between Clinton and Donald Trump. The FBI director at the time, James B. Comey, told the inspector general that he was determined to find out who was leaking to reporters, particularly after articles about internal disputes between the Justice Department and the FBI over how to handle a faltering probe of the Clinton Foundation.
[…]
Horowitz said there were simply too many contacts between reporters and the FBI to determine who might have told journalists about sensitive details of cases. His office did find misconduct by three senior FBI officials who accepted things of value from reporters, like tickets to a baseball game, or a seat at a dinner function.
[…]
The findings on Giuliani’s pre-election claims are emblematic of a long-running leak investigation that ultimately led nowhere.
Two days before Comey’s announcement, Giuliani — a former U.S. Attorney in New York who had become an outspoken Trump supporter — said on Fox News that the GOP nominee had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”
After Comey’s announcement, suspicions intensified that Giuliani had inside information about the Clinton case.
What a circus. It just adds to a long list of events that have made this agency into a total joke. First, they had a rogue FBI agent, Peter Strzok, signing off an operation to spy on the Trump campaign based on a shoddy and unverified piece of political opposition research—the Steele dossier—which was funded by the Clinton campaign. Ex-FBI director James Comey knew the document was Clinton-funded from day one. He has an extramarital affair with a former bureau lawyer, Lisa Page, who sends tens of thousands of anti-Trump texts including one that says they’ll “stop” Trump from becoming president. All of this as Strzok is a top counterintelligence agent at the FBI and a key point person regarding the sensitive investigations into Russian collusion and Hillary Clinton’s email server. The two also felt the FBI was too hard on Hillary. This lovebird fiasco tarnished the FBI’s reputation. Page left the FBI. Strzok was demoted to human resources after texts were revealed to the public. He was later fired. Prior to his demotion, he was briefly on the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller. Strzok said his anti-Trump texts were a sign of patriotism. Page threw him under the bus, saying the texts are meant to be taken as they’re written.
Then, this agency said that they couldn’t find any evidence that the shooting of the GOP congressional team was politically motivated. It was only executed by a far-left Bernie Sanders supporter who hated the GOP. They lost track of the Pulse Nightclub shooter’s wife.
Worse of all, this agency was at the forefront of the collusion hoax. They falsified documents to secure spy warrants on American citizens, like Carter Page. And someone at the bureau hid exculpatory evidence that could have removed Michael Flynn from legal purgatory. And now, we can’t even find out who’s been leaking stuff to the press.
We know that disgraced deputy director Andrew McCabe spoke to the Wall Street Journal about the Clinton Foundation investigation. He was fired for lying about that, but there are a lot of bad hombres that just got away.
