Prosecutor resigns from Durham investigation

Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned - at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said.

Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by email Thursday evening. The short email was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it.

  Hartford Courant

She should have said.

Durham recruited Dannehy to join his team after he was appointed by Attorney General William Barr more than a year and a half ago to examine the the FBI’s legal justification for a disputed counterintelligence investigation that looked for ties between President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian efforts to meddle in the election.

[...]

Colleagues said Dannehy is not a supporter of President Donald J. Trump and has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr - who appointed Durham - to produce results before the election. They said she has been considering resignation for weeks, conflicted by loyalty to Durham and concern about politics.

Durham is notoriously circumspect and neither he nor members of his team have revealed anything about the direction of their work. But Durham associates, none of whom have specific knowledge of the investigation, have said recently that it is their belief he is under pressure to produce something - perhaps some sort of report - before the presidential election in November.

Gee, you think?

The work has taken far longer than expected, in part because of complications caused by the corona virus pandemic. In the meantime, team members - some of whom are current or former federal investigators or prosecutors with homes in Connecticut - have been working long hours in Washington under pressure to produce results, associates said.

[...]

The thinking of the associates, all Durham allies, is that the Russia investigation group will be disbanded and its work lost if Trump loses.

[...]

The Durham investigation produced its first public result in August with the arrest or former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who is accused of doctoring email from the CIA about a former Trump campaign adviser who was a target of secret FBI surveillance, according to documents filed in Washington’s federal court.

The altered memo concerned former low level Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, who years earlier had agreed to act as a source for the CIA and provide information to the agency about Russians he met in the course of business. The CIA wrote in the memo to the FBI that Page was a source. Clinesmith altered the memo to say that he was not, a change that arguably allowed the FBI to extend a wiretap order that it had for Page.

[...]

Barr has dropped hints in public that Durham’s investigation will produce something more significant - before the election - than the arrest of Clinesmith, who was charged with making a false statement.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Barr is Trump's personal attorney in deed, if not in name

President Trump is openly telegraphing that he fully expects his attorney general to validate one of his biggest lies: that the real crime in 2016 wasn’t Russia’s sabotaging of our election but rather the decision by law enforcement to investigate it.

New public comments from William P. Barr provide Trump with ample grounds for being confident that Barr will deliver for him.

[...]

Barr’s full [NBC News] interview is now online, and it’s worse than you thought. It whitewashes away a crucial aspect of the I.G.’s conclusions in a way that’s easy to overlook but serves Trump’s political needs in deeply disingenuous fashion.

[...]

He claims “the incumbent government used the apparatus of the state” to “spy on political opponents,” in a way that could have affected “the outcome of the election” and thus posed a “danger to our free system.”

Barr claims there was never any serious evidence of “collusion” and excoriates the FBI for having an inadequate basis for launching the investigation, given the “very potent powers” the FBI has at its disposal.

[...]

Barr insists the inspector general’s analysis of this was “very limited,” vowing that his own forthcoming review would take a much more thorough look at the investigation’s genesis.

[...]

In saying those things, Barr is rewriting the story of 2016 in a subtle but consequential way. He’s implying that the FBI’s initial investigation was only motivated by what it had learned about the Trump campaign’s intentions with regard to coordinating with Russia’s electoral subversion effort.

[...]

In fact, when the FBI launched this investigation, it had already developed an awareness that Russia was undertaking this attack on U.S. democracy — separate and apart from any Trump campaign involvement with it. This was a critical reason the FBI launched its investigation.

The inspector general’s report is very clear and emphatic on this point.

[...]

As the I.G. notes, it also involved “numerous attempts to hack into state election systems,” including “confirmed access into elements of multiple state or local electoral boards.”

“It was in this context” that the FBI launched its investigation, the I.G. reports, when the FBI learned that a Trump campaign adviser had revealed he’d learned that Russia possessed dirt on Hillary Clinton.

[...]

Officials told the I.G. that the new information about the Trump campaign precipitated the investigation, but only on top of the fact that Russia was already “targeting U.S. political institutions” and trying to manipulate the “U.S. democratic process.”

This context, the I.G. concludes, helped provide the FBI with the “legitimate law enforcement purpose” of protecting against “a national security threat or federal crime.”

This is entirely elided by Barr.

[...]

It’s galling in the extreme that Barr would piously claim concern for preserving the sanctity of our elections while hand-waving away the massive outside disruption effort as a central reason the investigation was legitimately launched.

[...]

In fact, this was a serious and disruptive attack on our democratic processes and on liberal democracy itself. Barr is helping make all that go poof.

This also serves to downplay the threat of another outside attack and Trump’s eagerness to benefit from that, too, which he has openly telegraphed. And anything that obscures that eagerness helps Trump dodge accountability for his use of his office to extort another foreign power into helping rig the next election, for which he’s being impeached.

[...]

Trump wants to make all of those facts disappear. And Barr is effectively using the power of law enforcement to help him do it.

  Greg Sargent @ Wapo

Bill Barr needs to be impeached as well.

Excerpts from Chris Wray's response to IG Michael Horowitz

[T]he FBI accepts the Report’s findings and embraces the need for thoughtful, meaningful remedial action. I have ordered more than 40 corrective steps to address the Report’s recommendations. Because our credibility and brand are central to fulfilling our mission, we are also making improvements beyond those recommended by the OIG. And where certain individuals have been referred by the OIG for review of their conduct, the FBI will not hesitate to take appropriate disciplinary action if warranted at the completion of the required procedures for disciplinary review.

[...]

Notably, many of the employees described in the report are no longer employed at the FBI.

[...]

First, we are modifying our processes under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), both for initial applications and renewals, to enhance accuracy and completeness.

[...]

Second, we undertook an extensive review of investigative activity based out of FBI Headquarters.

[...]

Third, we are making significant changes to how the FBI manages its Confidential Human Source (CHS) Program.

[...]

Fourth, I am establishing new protocols for the FBI’s participation in Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)-led counterintelligence transition briefings (i.e., strategic intelligence briefings) provided to presidential nominees.

[...]

Fifth, I am mandating a specialized, semiannual training requirement for FBI personnel at all levels who handle FISA and CHS matters.

[...]

Where protection of certain sensitive information is well-founded, I remain committed to upholding the laws and longstanding policies governing classification and public release. I am just as committed to the principle that possible embarrassment and chagrin to the FBI or its employees is not, and should never be, the basis of a decision not to divulge FBI information. The FBI has worked closely with the OIG and DOJ on the classification issues implicated by the Report. Our joint process with the OIG and DOJ has ensured all material facts could be presented in this Report, with redactions carefully limited and narrowly tailored to specific national security and operational concerns. I am grateful for the mutual assistance of the OIG and DOJ in responsible presentation of this extremely sensitive information.

Since becoming FBI Director in August 2017, I have emphasized to FBI agents, analysts, and staff the importance of doing things the right way, by the book. I am humbled to serve alongside these dedicated men and women, and I am confident that the actions we are taking will strengthen our historic institution, ensure that we continue to discharge our responsibilities objectively and free from political bias, and better position us to protect the American people against threats while upholding the Constitution.

  FBI

Barr rejects DOJ IG report

Perhaps the IG will soon be tweet-fired

The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horo­witz, is due to release his long-awaited findings in a week, but behind the scenes at the Justice Department, disagreement has surfaced about one of Horowitz’s central conclusions on the origins of the Russia investigation.

[...]

Barr has not been swayed by Horowitz’s rationale for concluding that the FBI had sufficient basis to open an investigation on July 31, 2016.

[...]

It’s not yet clear how Barr plans to make his objection to Horowitz’s conclusion known. The inspector general report, currently in draft form, is being finalized after input from various witnesses and offices that were scrutinized by the inspector general. Barr or a senior Justice Department official could submit a formal letter as part of that process, which would then be included in the final report. It is standard practice for every inspector general report to include a written response from the department. Barr could forgo a written rebuttal on that specific point and just publicly state his concerns.

[...]

The attorney general has privately contended that Horowitz does not have enough information to reach the conclusion the FBI had enough details in hand at the time to justify opening such a probe. He argues that other U.S. agencies, such as the CIA, may hold significant information that could alter Horo­witz’s conclusion on that point, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

  WaPo

More Trump-style bullshit. 'There's something you don't know that will prove I'm right.'

The inspector general operates independently of Justice Department leadership, so Barr cannot order Horowitz to change his findings.

I think Trump can fire him, though.

People familiar with the draft language of Horowitz’s report said that while it is critical of some FBI employees, and found some systemic problems in surveillance procedures, it overall does not agree with Trump’s charge that the investigation was a “witch hunt” or a politically motivated attack on him first as a candidate and then as president.

Instead, the draft report found that the investigation was opened on a solid legal and factual footing, these people said.

Part of Barr’s reluctance to accept that finding is related to another investigation, one being conducted by the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, John Durham, into how intelligence agencies pursued allegations of Russian election tampering in 2016. Barr has traveled abroad to personally ask foreign officials to assist Durham in that work. Even as the inspector general’s review is ending, Durham’s investigation continues.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Investigating the investigators

An FBI official is being investigated after allegedly altering a document connected to surveillance of a 2016 Trump campaign aide, CNN reported Thursday, citing people briefed on the matter.

The alleged altering was reportedly discovered as part of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's probe into whether the FBI followed the law and its own policies while applying for a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign official Carter Page during the 2016 election.

[...]

Sources told CNN that a witness admitted to the change after being confronted by Horowitz's team about the document. Whether the FBI employee still works for the bureau and the person's rank and identity are reportedly unknown.

It is also reportedly unknown whether the document in question played a significant role in the investigation of Page.

  The Hill

How was it altered? That could be important. But as long as we don't know, GOP Trumpets are free to scream about it as proof the investigation was illegitimate.  The Hill should tell us this.  The Post did:

The Justice Department inspector general has found evidence that an FBI employee may have altered a document connected to court-approved surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, but has concluded that the conduct did not affect the overall validity of the surveillance application, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

  WaPo

That won't be part of their scream campaign.

The person under scrutiny is a low-level FBI lawyer who has since been forced out of the agency, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss material that has not yet been made public.

The allegation is contained in a draft of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report analyzing the FBI’s Russia investigation, which witnesses have in recent weeks been allowed to review, people familiar with the matter said. The report is scheduled to be released publicly Dec. 9.

The employee was forced out of the FBI after the incident was discovered, two U.S. officials said. Horowitz found that the employee erroneously indicated he had documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis for the application. He then altered an email to back up that erroneous claim, they said.

That conduct did not alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had a proper legal and factual basis, the officials said.

So,the agent was found out and fired by the FBI itself, and the underlying FISA application still had a proper basis.

Horowitz has been exploring various aspects of the Russia probe but was focused in particular on applications the FBI filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Page’s electronic communications.

Looks like he's turned up nothing to nullify or prosecute.  But the GOP and Trump cabal have until December 9th to make people think he did.  I'm guessing that's why this bit leaked.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Impeach Barr while you're at it

The Barr DOJ tried to get away with some slimey shit on their investigation of the Russia-interference investigators. If the report is accurate, this wouldn't be necessary.

The Justice Department inspector general’s office told witnesses set to review draft sections of its long-awaited report on the FBI investigation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign that they would not be allowed to submit written feedback, but later asserted that was not their intention after a Washington Post report disclosing the unusual restriction.

  WaPo

Jesus, these people are so fucking corrupt.

The Post’s report, first published early Thursday evening, detailed a series of parameters that some feared could make the final document less accurate. At the time, the Justice Department inspector general’s office declined to comment. But late Thursday night, Stephanie Logan, a spokeswoman, said the office would clarify to witnesses that they could submit written feedback “consistent with rules to protect classified information.”

"Clarified."

“As part of our factual accuracy review, and consistent with our usual practice, we are providing witnesses with the opportunity to review portions of the report that relate to them,” Logan said. “Also consistent with our practice, we undertake every effort to ensure witnesses can provide their comments and we are clarifying to witnesses that they will be able to provide written comments, consistent with rules to protect classified information.”

The Post had reported hours earlier that — as is the case in most inspector general probes — witnesses were being invited to review draft sections of the report and offer comments and corrections. But — unlike most cases — they were told those comments must be conveyed only verbally, people familiar with the matter said.

And why would that be?

The initial directives left some witnesses concerned that their objections might not be recorded precisely and incorporated into the inspector general’s findings, the people said.

A very reasonable concern.

The witnesses, they said, were also concerned that the process gave the inspector general complete control in characterizing any comments witnesses make — and left witnesses with limited ability to create a paper trail that might help them show their words were captured inaccurately.

I have to suggest that was the point.

The inspector general is aiming to complete the witness reviews by Nov. 21, although release of the report may wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday.

[...]

The report’s release is also likely to be a major credibility test for Barr, who has suggested impropriety by past leadership at the FBI. With Horowitz’s review ongoing, Barr earlier this year tapped a federal prosecutor in Connecticut — U.S. Attorney John Durham — to separately explore whether the intelligence activities aimed at people tied to the Trump campaign were lawful. Durham’s investigation is exploring potential crimes, officials have said.

The real witch hunt.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So Rudy is still alive

What was that Trump said about Rudy a while back?  Oh yeah, "He'll get his facts straight."

Details, details, details

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Investigating the investigators

Federal prosecutors reviewing the origins of the Russia investigation have asked witnesses pointed questions about any anti-Trump bias among former F.B.I. officials who are frequent targets of President Trump and about the earliest steps they took in the Russia inquiry, according to former officials and other people familiar with the review.

The prosecutors, led by John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, have interviewed about two dozen former and current F.B.I. officials, the people said.

[...]

Mr. Durham’s review is further along than previously known.

[...]

Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators have sought help from governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and unfounded conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are trying to deliver Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent review.

  NYT

Imagine that.

And on Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, tied Mr. Durham’s investigation to the Ukraine scandal, infuriating people inside the Justice Department. [...] His team has interviewed private Ukrainian citizens, a Justice Department spokeswoman has said without explaining why.

[...]

Mr. Barr has said that he viewed some investigative steps as “spying” on the Trump campaign and that there was a “failure among a group of leaders” in the intelligence community. He has said he began the Durham review in part to prevent future missteps.

Sure.

Mr. Durham has yet to interview all the F.B.I. officials who played key roles in opening the Russian investigation in the summer of 2016, the people familiar with the review said. He has not spoken with Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence official who opened the inquiry; the former director James B. Comey or his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe; or James A. Baker, then the bureau’s general counsel.

Because you work your way from bottom up, so by the time you get to the top, you have as much information as you can get. Then you can hang them if they lie about it.

The president granted Mr. Barr sweeping powers for the review, though he did not open it as a criminal investigation. That means he gave Mr. Durham the power only to read materials the government had already gathered and to request voluntary interviews from witnesses, not to subpoena witnesses or documents. It is not clear whether the status of the review has changed.

That seems odd.

Mr. Durham’s team, including Nora R. Dannehy, a veteran prosecutor, has questioned witnesses about why Mr. Strzok both drafted and signed the paperwork opening the investigation, suggesting that was unusual for one person to take both steps.

[...]

Mr. Durham has also questioned why Mr. Strzok opened the case on a weekend, again suggesting that the step might have been out of the ordinary. Former officials said that Mr. McCabe had directed Mr. Strzok to travel immediately to London to interview the two Australian diplomats who had learned about the Russians’ offer to help the Trump campaign and that he was trying to ensure he took the necessary administrative steps first.

[...]

Many of the questions from Mr. Durham’s team overlapped with ones that the Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, has posed in his own look into aspects of the Russia inquiry, according to the people.

Mr. Horowitz’s report, which is most likely to be made public in the coming weeks, is expected to criticize law enforcement officials’ actions in the Russia investigation. Mr. Horowitz’s findings could provide insights into why Mr. Barr thought that the Russia investigation needed to be examined.

We know why. There's no mystery there. He thought it because Trump wanted it.

Durham’s questions seem focused on elements of the conservative attacks on the origins of the Russia inquiry. It is not clear whether he has asked about other parts of the sprawling investigation, which has grown to include more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence and interviews of about 500 witnesses.

Wow.

One former official said that in his interview with Mr. Durham’s team, he pushed back on the notion that law enforcement and intelligence officials had plotted to thwart Mr. Trump’s candidacy, laying out facts that prove otherwise.

What do you want to bet those never make it into the report?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Barr's Italian vacations

Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

  

On its face, that seems ourageous. Not that I'm a fan of US intelligence agencies, but this does not seem like a legal, much less ethical, job for the US Attorney General.

Barr’s personal involvement is likely to stoke further criticism from Democrats pursuing impeachment that he is helping the Trump administration use executive branch powers to augment investigations aimed primarily at the president’s adversaries.

At the very least.

But the high-level Justice Department focus on intelligence operatives’ conduct is likely to cheer Trump and other conservatives for whom “investigate the investigators” has become a rallying cry. Barr has voiced his own concerns, telling lawmakers in April that he believed “spying did occur” when it came to the U.S. investigation of the Trump campaign.

By whom? If it's the FBI, that's what they do. If by spying he means CIA or other spies that are (ostensibly) limited to foreign spying, that's a different matter. If he means foreign spies who may have then given information to the Clinton campaign, then it's going to be hard to justify Trump campaign use of foreign intelligence against Biden.  Does he mean foreign spies giving info to the FBI? To the CIA?

The direct involvement of the nation’s top law enforcement official shows the priority Barr places on the investigation being conducted by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who has been assigned the sensitive task of reviewing U.S. intelligence work surrounding the 2016 election and its aftermath.

Is John Durham a Trump soldier? Probably rhetorical.

The attorney general’s active role also underscores the degree to which a nearly three-year-old election still consumes significant resources and attention inside the federal government.

Which is absolutely astounding considering the fact that TRUMP WON!

Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials expressed frustration and alarm Monday that the head of the Justice Department was taking such a direct role in reexamining what they view as conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of misconduct.

Barr has already made overtures to British intelligence officials, and last week the attorney general traveled to Italy, where he and Durham met senior Italian government officials and Barr asked the Italians to assist Durham, according to one person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

He had to go personally? He couldn't send a letter? Or make a phone call? Nothing suspicious here.

It was not Barr’s first trip to Italy to meet intelligence officials, the person said.

Italian vacations on the taxpayers dime in assistance to the president's abuse of power. Well done, Bill.

Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said: “Mr. Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials.”

[...]

Trump still complains frequently that those involved in the investigation of his campaign should be charged with crimes, asserting that the FBI search for possible election-season collusion between Russia and Trump campaign officials was a witch hunt spurred by agents and bureaucrats opposed to Trump becoming president.

Stalinesque.

“Even if one questions, as a threshold matter, the propriety of conducting a re-investigation of the Justice Department’s own prior investigation of Russia’s interference, the appointment of John Durham — a seasoned, nonpartisan prosecutor — provided some reason to believe that it would be handled in a professional, nonpartisan manner,” [David Laufman, a former Justice Department official who was involved in the early stages of the Russia probe] said. “But if the attorney general is essentially running this investigation, that entire premise is out the window.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

You CAN indict an attorney general and a secretary of state

When a summary appeared last week of the July phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, the scope of involvement by the Trump administration seemed at first to be limited. Trump had mostly used his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pursue his project, it seemed.

But that picture has quickly changed. The release of a whistleblower report Thursday suggested an active role by Barr, and said that a dozen US officials had listened to the Trump-Ukraine phone call, and that summaries of the call had been distributed more widely – raising the question of what proportion of Trump administration energies in recent months have been devoted to Trump’s pet projects.

[...]

Both William Barr, the attorney general, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, collectively participated in contacts between Trump and leaders of at least four foreign countries, according to multiple reports.

Those contacts were variously aimed at producing stories that could damage Joe Biden, Trump’s potential 2020 opponent, or at producing stories that could undermine the US intelligence community assessment from 2017 of Russian election tampering in the last election, the reports said.

[...]

Barr and Pompeo – whose vast portfolios nominally run from administering criminal justice in the United States to securing international alliances and combating threats abroad – have separately tried to distance themselves from the avalanching revelation that Trump’s conduct of the matters of state has apparently, in significant proportion, been devoted to the pursuit of the president’s personal bugbears and ambitions.

  The Guardian

When you live with pigs, you learn to grunt.

Barr was previously reported to be “surprised and angry” to find his name mentioned in a summary of a call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, while Pompeo, when asked what he knew about that phone call, replied that he had not seen a copy of the whistleblower document that flagged it: “I haven’t seen the complaint,” he told ABC News.

For Barr: sure, he's angry. He thought, for whatever reason(s), that his name would be kept out of it. And for Pompeo: that's not an answer to the question.

In fact, Pompeo reportedly took part in the call, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a senior state department official. For his part, Barr flew to Italy and to London to ask for help in “investigating” the roots of the Russia investigation, the Washington Post reported.

He was in Italy when the complaint became public knowledge, which was just recently. So, they're still at their ventures on behalf of Trump's reelection campaign.

Trump also asked the Australian prime Scott Morrison for help, and Morrison agreed to assist, something first reported by the New York Times, and confirmed by the Australian government.

“It should trouble all of us that the attorney general is flying overseas and spending his time focused on discrediting the origins of the Mueller probe instead of combating crime here in the US,” tweeted the former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. “His personal involvement reinforces the view that he does Trump’s bidding.”

“Pretty clear that Barr is working feverishly [with] Trump to produce some kind of anti-Mueller report,” tweeted the MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

The justice department defied that characterization, issuing a statement Monday describing Barr’s work as business-as-usual to support the US attorney John Durham’s ongoing investigation of the FBI’s former investigation of Russian election tampering. The justice department opened the counter-investigation following Trump’s repeated claims that his campaign, which had serial secret contacts with Russian operatives, had been unfairly targeted for scrutiny.

[...]

But it was very unusual for the attorney general, much less the president, to be personally involved at such lengths in an internal investigation.

[...]

“In a real investigation, all that is needed is a request from a line prosecutor to the foreign country, made through the [justice department] Office of International Affairs, and pursuant to the terms of a mutual legal assistance treaty,” tweeted Harry Sandick, a former prosecutor in the southern district of New York.

[...]

Pompeo oversees the internal state department investigation – but has refused questions about it.

Trump finally got the attorney general he wanted.

One night in late October,
When I was far from sober,
Returning with my load with manly pride,
My poor feet began to stutter,
So I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came near and lay down by my side;
Then we sang “It’s all fair weather when good fellows get together”,
Till a lady passing by was heard to say:
“You can tell a man who boozes,
By the company he chooses”,
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

~Anonymous

UPDATE:

To be clear, this is not assistance in investigating the Bidens, but in the ostensibly legitimate investigation into the investigators of the Mueller investigation.

UPDATE:

Investigating the investigators

Maybe not going like they were hoping.

Christopher Steele, the former British spy behind the infamous “dossier” on President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, was interviewed for 16 hours in June by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, according to two people familiar with the matter.

[...]

[DOJ Inspector General Michael] Horowitz has been examining the FBI’s efforts to surveil a one-time Trump campaign adviser [Carter Page] based in part on information from Steele, an ex-British MI6 agent who had worked with the bureau as a confidential source since 2010.

[...]

Horowitz’s team has been intensely focused on gauging Steele’s credibility as a source for the bureau. But Steele was initially reluctant to speak with the American investigators because of the potential impropriety of his involvement in an internal DOJ probe as a foreign national and retired British intelligence agent.

[...]

The extensive, two-day interview took place in London while Trump was in Britain for a state visit.

[...]

Steele’s American lawyer was present for the conversation.

[...]

The interview was contentious at first, the sources added, but investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising.

[...]

[T]he extensive interview with Steele, and the investigators’ sense that he offered new and important information, may dampen expectations among the president’s allies who’ve claimed that Steele’s sensational dossier was used improperly by the bureau to “spy” on the campaign.

  Politico

Demands for an investigation into the so-called “Steele dossier,” authored by former UK MI6 spy Christopher Steele, were previously made by Republicans, and resulted in a Department of Justice Inspector General investigation that began in March 2018. Many conservatives lambasted the report for being the catalyst of the FBI investigation into Trump, although fact-checking organizations have demonstrated that wasn’t the case at all.

Still, Trump allies alleged that a specific action taken by the FBI — the monitoring of Trump campaign aide Carter Page — was unduly made, since the FISA warrant was issued in part based on selections from the Steele dossier.

[...]

Attorney General William Barr, who now heads the Justice Department, told a congressional committee that the Horowitz probe would be completed by May or June.

One of the two sources said Horowitz’s investigators appear to have found Steele’s information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation. Its completion date is now unclear.

  Hill Reporter

The twelfth of never as long as Trump and Barr are in office.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday he believes the public will soon see that much of the Trump-Russia dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele was "made up."

[...]

"This is a man who made up this entire document. As you're starting to see it's unraveling, his sources are not real or if they are real they're second and third hand. So a lot of this is just made up out of whole cloth," said Nunes.

  Fox News

Well, what a surprise.