Three perspectives on the IG report

The Inspector General's perspective is that, in pursuing the FISA warrants against Carter Page, the FBI committed 17 significant errors and omissions.  This is in addition to many errors in the "Woods Procedures" that are designed to ensure that a confidential human source's otherwise unverified stories are at least vetted in by specific statements from the source's FBI handler concerning his experience with the source. In this case, the FISA application inexplicably included statements that Steele's handler did not and would not support.

The IG calls these “serious performance failures" and found "unsatisfactory" the explanations it received for the lapses. Nevertheless, the IG cannot quite bring himself to conclude that all these inexplicable errors can be attributed to political bias. Nor is he prepared to "speculate" whether the higher-ups who were duped by the errors of subordinates would have approved the FISA applications if they hadn't been misled. It's hard to understand why he would need to speculate. Why not ask the higher-ups directly: would you still have approved the applications, knowing what your subordinates misled you about? Why or why not?

Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham already have weighed in with alternative views. Barr stated:
The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration. 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. 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.
Durham stated:
[Unlike the IG investigation], 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. 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.

20 comments:

Dad29 said...

This is NOT 'the Government we deserve.'

This is the Government purchased by the Establishment, using our tax dollars.

With what we have left in dollars, purchasing ropes, tar, feathers, lumber for stocks is moving ever higher on the list.

Cassandra said...

I don't actually find the question of 'bias'/subjective motivation interesting, as bias is hard to prove and tends to be in the eye of the beholder (my bias is perfectly understandable - yours is evil). If there's a legitimate purpose for the investigation, it's going to be awfully hard to prove bias (and in fact, bias is less important that the central question of whether the investigation was conducted correctly/lawfully).

To me, that whole line of reasoning is too close to what has been argued against Trump over and over (he was acting within the course/scope of his authority, but he had a bad *motive* - which, like the motives of the Pensacola shooter - we may never know). So somehow, the entirely legitimate exercise of a government function becomes wrong/bad because we infer malign motivation. Note I'm not saying they didn't have that motivation. Just that that's a heckuva lot harder to prove than that they didn't follow their own rules.

The Woods procedures are there to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening in the first place, and they go right to the question of whether evidence supporting the FISA was sufficient. That the FBIs own safeguards were either (1) wholly inadequate, in several key areas or (2) where they did have safeguards, were pretty much violated in every orifice seems (to me) the most damning takeaway.

Still reading/digesting the report. Glad Durham isn't arguing the process wasn't abused.

Cassandra said...

Horowitz:

Our review found that FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are “scrupulously accurate.” We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed. We found that the problems we identified were primarily caused by the Crossfire Hurricane team failing to share all relevant information with OI and, consequently, the information was not considered by the Department decision makers who ultimately decided to support the applications.

Ouch!

Texan99 said...

Yes, I'm not really reading the "exoneration" report everyone's been trying to leak for the last week. Just about the only nice thing they had to say was they didn't find political bias. Otherwise it's a fairly dreadful report implying that Crossfire Hurricane was run by a bunch of dishonest boobs.

Cassandra said...

I was actually surprised, given the pre-release spin, how scathing it is so far.

I started highlighting important passages so I can find them again, but there are so many that I had to start using different colors :p

Cassandra said...

Meanwhile.... how about this for a smoking gun?

Downer said that his memo did not indicate that Papadopoulos or anyone else on the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia to obtain the information.

“There was no suggestion — [neither] from Papadopoulos nor in the record of the meeting that we sent back to Canberra — there was no suggestion that there was collusion between Donald Trump or Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russians,” Downer said.

So, given that the IG report emphasizes it was the Papadapoulos/FFG thing that was the predicate (NOT the crappy Steele dossier), I'm not getting a valid predicate for the investigation. Unless - as Horowitz asserts - that the bar was just so absurdly low that they were authorized to investigate even the slightest rumor.

To me, the abuse isn't that they investigated. I'm OK with a low bar for checkout out tips - better safe than sorry.

It's that, having launched the investigation, they proceeded to use invasive surveillance, without adequate grounds (by their own rules) for doing so.

And no matter how hard they try, they can't get away from the fact that "but for" the Steele dossier, the would never have gotten the FISA warrant. And that they never should have renewed that warrant 3 times.

Cassandra said...

Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/john-durhams-investigators-do-not-agree-with-doj-igs-findings-on-origin-of-russia-probe/

Assistant Village Idiot said...

So they know it is politically biased, but because they cannot absolutely prove that, they say they can reach no firm conclusion on bias.

Contrast this to interpreting Trump's motives WRT Ukraine and Russia for impeachment.

Christopher B said...

I could be wrong but I think he couldn't ask the higher-ups because he waited until they had been retired or fired (McCabe and Comey in particular), and thus beyond his reach.

Texan99 said...

Good point.

Christopher B said...

As someone commented at another site, using the Downer-Papadopoulos contact to launch an investigation of the Trump campaign is like using a report from one person that someone was told a third person had possession of stolen goods to launch an investigation of the person who received the information instead of the possible thief.

Texan99 said...

Liz Harrington:

"Soliciting foreigners to dig up dirt to open investigations into a political rival?

"That’s not what happened on President Trump’s innocent congratulatory phone call with the president of Ukraine. But it is what President Obama did in the summer of 2016 when he turned the Federal Bureau of Investigation into an arm of the Hillary Clinton campaign."

But Comey is taking the usual victory lap, because he's certifiable.

Texan99 said...

Scott Adams is unusually angry today. After he calms down, though, he looks dispassionately at the argument that the presence of 17 separate FBI errors, all in favor of the President's enemies, conclusively establishes bias. He counters that the simpler explanation is cogs in a corporate machine who are told to achieve an institutional result, in this case a successful FISA warrant. Not that there isn't also bias, but the one-sidedness of the errors isn't the best evidence for it.

Grim said...

Fair. The most likely explanation is that the FBI is this corrupt all the time.

Texan99 said...

Agreed, though I do remember a recent example of how the corruption inexplicably worked in the other direction, to clear Hillary Clinton. That means sometimes the institutional bias toward success in a high-profile prosecution can yield in favor of the best interests of the nation, so we have that going for us.

E Hines said...

the presence of 17 separate FBI errors.... Not that there isn't also bias, but the one-sidedness of the errors isn't the best evidence for it.

It may not be the best evidence, but it's pretty good evidence, and at least should be sufficient to trigger a criminal investigation into whether they add up to something. Just like tossing 17 coins taken from a number of different pockets, coins that entered those pockets from a single purse, and getting 17 heads ought to lead to an investigation into the origin of those coins and into the person whose purse it was.

Especially since the holder of the present metaphorical purse, the FBI, found in favor of the same political party in both the Clinton and Trump cases.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

AG Barr today:

"I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press," Barr said. "I think there were gross abuses …and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.

"I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith."

Seems fair enough.

Grim said...

I wonder when was the last time the FBI and the Attorney General were hostile to one another?

Grim said...

Or the President and the FBI: Trump gave a speech tonight talking about "scum" at the FBI destroying people's lives. They're in for a richly-deserved reckoning, I believe.

douglas said...

"Or the President and the FBI"
I'd reckon that J. Edgar taught us that a President keen on political survival shouldn't mess with institutions that have "six ways from Sunday of getting back at you". I'd also figure that most Presidents had enough dirt and/or a sufficient lack of guts to take them on.

What's really driving them crazy, I think, is that they were certain there was dirt everywhere you looked with Trump if you could just lift the carpet. When they got (bogus) permission to lift the corner of the rug, they were stunned to find ... nothing. No dirt of substance. They had gone all in and now were completely vulnerable.