FBI and DOJ have Been Under Investigation Since January American Lens

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Many thought the 2015 marriage ruling brought full equally. But everything could quickly slide back.

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President Donald Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital and pledged to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the New York Times reported. In televised remarks from the White House, Trump reversed nearly seven decades of U.S. policy. He also promised to eventually move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but signed a waiver under the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act that allows the State Department to avoid penalties for keeping the mission in Tel Aviv. The European Unions top diplomat, Chinas foreign ministry, Pope Francis and other world leaders condemned the move.
At a NATO foreign ministers summit, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended President Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, the Post reported. Diplomats meeting with Tillerson condemned the move, saying it harmed chances for peace in the Middle East. Germanys foreign minister warned that the Trump administration is undermining the transatlantic relationship between the U.S. and Europe, according to the Post. On Wednesday, Tillerson said he is hopeful that Russia and the U.S. could reach a deal on a peacekeeping force to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S. and Russia have disagreed about whether the proposed peacekeeping force could operate along Ukraines Russian border.
A whistleblower said that Michael Flynn sent messages to business partners during the presidential inauguration saying that their U.S.-Russia project to build nuclear reactors in  across the Middle East was, good to go, Politico reported. Congressional democrats said the whistleblower approached them last summer with the information that Flynn sent messages to Alex Copson, Flynns partner on the previously reported power plant scheme, during Trumps inaugural address. Copson said Flynn stated that Russia sanctions that might hamper the project would be removed under the new administration. Rep. Elijah Cummings said special counsel Robert Muellers team requested that congressional democrats hold off on releasing the information until the special counsels investigation completed certain investigative steps.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned Russia from participating in the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the Times reported. The ban is an unprecedented punishment for Russias extensive state-backed doping program. Russian government officials are barred from attending the games and its national symbols will not be part of any official Olympic ceremony. Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would not bar Russian athletes from competing as neutral individuals, the Washington Post reported. Putin denied the IOCs claims about the Russian doping operation during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
British intelligence and police forces stopped a plot by extremist militants to assassinate Prime Minister Theresa May, Sky News reported. Police arrested two men last week who planned to use an improvised explosive device to attack 10 Downing Street, which serves as the official residence of the prime minister. The men appeared in court on Wednesday to face charges of terrorism related to the plot to use explosives, including a suicide vest, to kill the prime minister, according to Reuters.
Secretary Tillerson said that Cuba bears responsibility for not stopping the attacks against U.S. diplomatic personnel at the U.S. embassy in Havana, the Times reported. The State Department discovered the attacks against 24 of its staff in Cuba in January. Doctors treating the victims found brain abnormalities in their investigation into hearing, vision, and mental damage, the AP reported. U.S. officials said the medical finding laid out more evidence against the previously discussed possibility of sonic attacks and instead implied that something else must have caused the damage.
A joint U.S.-Afghan military operation killed the top al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported. A series of air and ground operations in several Afghan provinces led to the death of Omar bin Khatab and over 80 other al-Qaeda operatives. U.S. officials said the operations showed the progress that Afghan security forces are making in the fight against terrorism.
China denied that it attempts to influence Australian domestic politics as the Australian prime minister proposed a new law designed to limit foreign influence, the Times reported. The Chinese embassy in Australia said media reports about its attempts to exercise soft power in the country were misleading. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull proposed bills banning foreign campaign donations and requiring registration of foreign agents. Australian media has reported extensively on political pressure put on Chinese students at Australian universities to support the Chinese Communist Party.
The Senate confirmed Kirstjen Nielsen as Secretary of Homeland Security in a 62-37 vote, the Post reported. Nielsen, an attorney and cybersecurity expert who was the deputy to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, will take over from Acting Secretary Elaine Duke.
 

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Jesse Lempel explained how Tier III terrorist designations work and the dispute between the courts and the administration on the designations  proper scope.
J. Dana Stuster updated the Middle East Ticker, covering the death of the ex-Yemeni president, the Jerusalem embassy announcement, and the trial of Reza Zarrab.
Stewart Baker shared the Cyberlaw Podcast, featuring an interview with Susan Hennessey and Andrew McCarthy on unmasking and FISA Section 702.
James Pfander reviewed Amanda Tylers new book on the history of habeas corpus in war.
Vanessa Sauter shared the Lawfare Podcast, featuring audio from an event with Bruce Riedel on his new book about the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Josh Blackman analyzed the claim that the president cannot obstruct justice.
Benjamin Wittes argued that the president can obstruct justice in the context of carrying out his constitutional duties.
 
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Source: The Trump Team Definitely Colluded With a Foreign PowerJust Not the One You Think | The Nation

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Saved Stories Saved Stories – None Republicans are betting the future won’t happen. Who wants to tell them? – USA TODAY Donald Trump Jr. to face questions about Russia contacts on Capitol Hill – ABC News More charges could be coming against former Trump aide in Russia probe – CNN Legal Weed Is Coming to … Continue reading“6:52 AM 12/6/2017 – Obstruction of Justice was Coming from Inside the FBI – FrontPage Magazine”

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Mike Novas Shared NewsLinks Mike Nova’s Shared NewsLinks FBI Increasingly Politicized Under Comey and Mueller Poland’s former military intelligence head detained God’s Plan for Mike Pence – The Atlantic Mueller Said to Have Subpoenaed Deutsche Bank: DealBook Briefing – New York Times Russia Banned From 2018 Winter Olympics, Some Athletes to Compete Under Neutral Flag … Continue reading“11:53 AM 12/6/2017 – FBI Increasingly Politicized Under Comey and Mueller”

mikenova shared this story from Washington Free Beacon.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, once America’s storied crime fighting agency, is under fire for an increasing leftward politicization blamed on recent liberal directors and a bureaucracy operating with nearly unchecked power.
Once a bastion of conservative anti-communism under long-time director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI has become one of the more liberal political agencies of government, and some critics say appears increasingly to operate outside normal constitutional controls.
The shift is the result of a bureaucratic culture that emerged in the 1990s and was fueled by its two most recent former directors, James Comey and Robert Mueller, who ran the agency for the past 16 years. Mueller headed the FBI from 2001 to 2013, when Comey took over and served until he was fired by Trump in May.
Both former directors currently are at the center of a fierce political debate over the FBI’s competency and integrity.
“People are finally tumbling to the realization that this [FBI] has become a proto-KGB,” said a former senior intelligence official with extensive experience in counterintelligence. “We’re in a constitutional crisis. These guys are playing out a silent coup against an elected official.”
President Trump castigated the FBI this week in unusually harsh tweets and comments.
Commenting on disclosures that the Justice Department’s inspector general launched an investigation of political bias by senior FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for Mueller’s Russian election meddling probe, Trump compared the FBI’s lenient approach to Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server while secretary of state with the recent case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about post-election contacts with Russia.
“Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI ‘agents role in Clinton probe under review.’ Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge,” Trump tweeted on Sunday.
“After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness,” the president declared.
On Tuesday, Mueller appeared to counter the comments by leaking word he has issued subpoenas for bank records at Deutche Bank related to Trump and members of his family.
The leak produced a spate of news stories under the ongoing liberal narrative of the past year of alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, a narrative lacking hard facts.
The problem of the FBI, according to national security strategist Angelo Codevilla, is more the result of careerism and an out of control bureaucracy than liberal politicization of the ostensibly nonpartisan FBI, the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency and main domestic counterspying and counterterrorism agency.
“Im afraid that the explanation is all too simple: Bureaucratsemployees of large organizationsfigure out on which side their bread is going to be buttered,” Codevilla said. “They learn to think, feel, and do what advances their careers.”
Under President Barack Obama, the FBI suffered a string of failures that critics blame on the FBI being pressured by liberal, politically correct policies that emphasized diversity and multiculturalism of its workforce over competence and results.
The problem is evident whenever a U.S.-based terror attack or other major crime takes place and the FBI, seemingly ever on the lookout for ways to protect its reputation, puts out word to pro-FBI news reporters that the problem is less serious than it is.
That was the case shortly after several major Islamic terror attacks in the United States when Bureau officials initially put out word the attacks had no link to terrorism.
Similarly, when North Korea conducted a major cyber attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014, the FBI agent heading the probe at first said there was no foreign involvement in the hack.
In another case last June, after an anti-Trump gunmanand Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) supportershot a congressman and four other people in Alexandria, the FBI sought to minimize the politics of the incident. The agent running the investigation, Tim Slater, told reporters the shooting was “spontaneous,” despite evidence the shooter had a list of targeted members of Congress.
John Guandolo, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, has criticized the FBI for caving in to pressure from Muslim groups in watering down its training of agents by limiting references to Islam and jihad, or holy war.
“I am not aware of any time in the FBI’s history when FBI leadership was so incapable of performing their duties as they are today,” Guandolo said.
“The FBI’s inability or lack of desire to aggressively pursue obvious major threats to the republicthe Marxist and Islamic movements for instanceis stunning and frightening.”
Guandolo said that instead the FBI is working with “our Islamic enemy.”
“In fact, all three of the Muslim organizations listed on the FBI’s website as ‘Outreach Partners’ are Muslim Brotherhood organizations,” he said.
Additionally, liberal left or Marxist inclinations appear to motivate some of the FBI’s key leaders.
Guandolo said FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was promoted by Comey despite internal leadership reviews that questioned his fitness.
Congressional Republicans are investigating whether McCabe should have recused himself from the Clinton email probe.
McCabe’s wife, a Democrat, received payments of some $700,000 from a political action committee affiliated with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of Clinton, during a failed bid to run for the state senate.
The president’s online criticism of the FBI was followed by comments he made Monday calling the FBI’s treatment of Flynn “very unfair” compared to how the Bureau treated Clinton during last year’s election-year investigation into the misuse of her private email server.
“I feel badly for Gen. Flynn. I feel very badly. Hes led a very strong life,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “I will say this, Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and they destroyed his life. I think its a shame.”
The president referred to the July 2, 2016, FBI interview of Clinton regarding her use of a private email server used while she was secretary of state to send some highly classified information and the deletion of emails after published reports of the private server revealed the existence of it.
Clinton, according to the FBI summary of the interview, asserted she did not recall being given a security briefing on handling information held in Special Access Programs (SAP), the government’s most sensitive secrets. Some SAP information on drone strike targeting was found on her private email server.
Days after the FBI interview, Comey issued his now famous public statement recommending against prosecuting Clinton for mishandling classified information, despite evidence the mere presence of the secret information is a crime.
Comey also would later disclose that under political pressure for Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch he agreed not to refer to the email scandal as an investigation and instead call it a “matter.”
Comey also granted immunity from prosecution for two key witnesses, Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson. The immunity prevented the FBI from conducting searches for evidence. The immunity deal also required the FBI to destroy the two aides’ laptops after they were searched, a step that potentially eliminated evidence of a crime.
In October, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) revealed that Comey had decided in May 2016months before the FBI probe of Clinton was completedthat he was planning to issue a statement exonerating Clinton.
“Conclusion first, fact-gathering secondthat’s no way to run an investigation,” the senators said in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray in August. “The FBI should be held to a higher standard than that, especially in a matter of such great public interest and controversy.”
An FBI source said Comey’s politically charged handling of the Clinton email probe upset many of the FBI’s agents who saw it as a disheartening indication of political bias in favor of Clinton.
Trump fired Comey in May prompting the Justice Department to create the special counsel investigation headed by Mueller, a long-time Comey associate.
The more recent disclosures that one of Mueller’s investigators, Strzok, is under investigation for anti-Trump bias is now raising new questions about the integrity of the special counsel probe and whether it too has reached a pre-determined outcome against the president.
The FBI also is under fire from Congress for refusing to provide documents to congressional investigators looking into the Democrat-funded private intelligence dossier at the center of Republicans’ investigation into the potential misuse of security agencies for political ends.
The Bureau has so far refused to provide the House Intelligence Committee with details on how it pursued salacious allegations regarding Trump and the Russians contained in the dossier produced by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said this week he is drafting a contempt of Congress resolution against Wray, the FBI chief, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for failing to disclose to Congress earlier Strzok’s political bias against Trump.
Nunes revealed Strzok was involved in the Clinton email probe in addition to Mueller’s election meddling probe and that hiding those facts from Congress was “a willful attempt to thwart Congress constitutional oversight responsibility.”
“This is part of a months-long pattern by the DOJ and FBI of stonewalling and obstructing this committees oversight work, particularly oversight of their use of the Steele dossier,” Nunes said. “At this point, these agencies should be investigating themselves.”
Security experts said it is likely that Strzok, the senior FBI counterintelligence official who specializes in Russian spying, has been the driving force behind the mainly Democratic political narrative that Russia stole the 2016 election from Clinton and gave it to Trump.
Congress wants to question him about what role the discredited Steele dossier played in the FBI’s Russian election meddling investigation.
One irony of the FBI’s zealousness on the Russian election influence probe is that for many years during the 1980s, the FBI refused to acknowledge that Moscow at the time was engaged in similar sophisticated disinformation and so-called “active measures” operations against the United States.
Under the Reagan administration, the FBI was forced to investigate and take steps to counter Moscow’s intelligence-driven influence operations.
Now it seems the FBI is convinced, despite the lack of evidence, there was a Russian conspiracy to elect Trump and it is searching for a way to prove its theory.
Observers say a major problem for the FBI today is a lack constitutional oversight and controls. Bureau leaders have created the myth that the White House or any agency cannot have any control over the FBI.
That is not true. While it would be illegal for the White House to interfere or corrupt FBI investigations, the Constitution makes clear the FBI, as an executive branch agency, is ultimately responsible to the president.
Under the Comey-Mueller bureaucracy, however, the FBI seems to regard itself as a power center answerable to no one, critics say.
According to FBI sources, FBI agents and other personnel have been told unequivocally that they are not to have any dealings with the White House, and that doing so risks career-ending measures.
As for Congress, the FBI for years also has stonewalled overseers under both Comey and Mueller.
Even routine requests for FBI documents and information have been rejected or ignored, and congressional overseers have not taken action to force the FBI to comply.
The lack of congressional oversight and administration controls have left the FBI with enormous power and little accountability.
The former intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity over concerns about FBI retaliation, said the mindset of Comey, Mueller and others of their group is that they are going to punish Trump for his criticism of the FBI.
“Mueller, Comey, and Rosenstein are going to make Trump pay for having dissed the bureau,” the former official said.
A spokesman for Mueller did not respond when asked if the special counsel probe has been tainted by Strzok’s involvement.
“Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the special counsels office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation,” the spokesman said.
An FBI spokesman defended the FBI’s handling of the issue of Islamic threat training and said the Defense Department and not the FBI was the first to refer to the Fort Hood terror attack as workplace violence.
On Strozk, FBI spokesman Andrew Ames referred to the statement on the matter.
“The matter is an ongoing investigation by the Office of Inspector General, consistent with well-established processes designed to objectively, thoroughly and fairly determine the facts regarding potential wrongdoing,” the statement said.
“The FBI has clearly defined policies and procedures regarding appropriate employee conduct, including communications,” the statement added. “When the FBI first learned of the allegations, the employees involved were immediately reassigned, consistent with practices involving employee matters.
The FBI employees are held to “the highest standards of integrity, independence and professionalism, as the American public rightly expects.”
Disclosure: The Washington Free Beacon was once a client of Fusion GPS, which produced the Steele dossier. That relationship ended in January 2017. For more information, see here.”
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