Bill Barr doesn't believe his IG

Well, Bill, the IG thought they were sufficient.

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


UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Oh boy, that Horowitz Report is going to cause trouble

Nearly a decade before the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka met a British intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk -- and when the agent left his covert service and moved into private practice in 2010, she stayed in touch, ABC News has learned.

The two exchanged emails but never worked together, and the man, Christopher Steele, would one day re-emerge in a most unexpected way, taking a central role in the Russia scandal that consumed the early years of her father’s presidency, according to a source familiar with their past contacts.

The prior relationship came to light as investigators with the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office was looking into allegations of political bias at the origins of the Russia investigation since May 2018.

[...]

In 2007, Ivanka Trump met Steele at a dinner and they began corresponding about the possibility of future work together, the source said. The following year, the two exchanged emails about meeting up near Trump Tower, according to several emails seen by ABC News. They suggest Ivanka Trump and Steele stayed in touch via emails over the next several years. In one 2008 exchange they discussed dining together in New York at a restaurant just blocks from Trump Tower.

[...]

The inspector general's report, which was released publicly today, briefly references these past dealings. In his discussion with investigators from the inspector general’s office, Steele cited his past cordial relationship with Ivanka Trump as reason to believe that he was not biased against her.

“If anything he was ‘favorably predisposed’ towards the Trump family before he began his research,” he told the investigators, the report says.

  ABC

I don't think that necessarily follows. He may have been favorably predisposed towards Ivanka.

Steele told investigators he met with “a Trump family member at Trump Tower and ‘been friendly’ with [the family member] for some years,” even gifting the person “a family tartan," and that the idea he was biased against the family from the start was “ridiculous,’” according to the report.

[...]

President Trump and his political supporters have depicted Steele as a villain since word of his role in creating the dossier became public. The president called him “dopey” and a “failed spy” and on Twitter referred to him as “Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame” who was “tied into Crooked Hillary.”

There's probably nothing to see here, but it's interesting that this turned up in the Horowitz report. It'll give anti-Trumpers something to shout about.

Would the Barr DOJ actually investigate Trump's Ukraine extortion plan?

Legal experts see signs that DOJ is laying the groundwork for a potential criminal probe into whether the president and his top advisers broke federal laws by withholding a White House meeting and nearly $400 million dollars in foreign aid from Ukraine unless the country’s new leaders agreed to investigate Trump’s political rivals.

In Washington, the FBI has already contacted an attorney for the whistleblower who first revealed the scheme. In New York, federal prosecutors are expanding a probe into Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, who played a pivotal role in the Ukraine campaign. And on Capitol Hill, lawmakers busy with impeachment are collecting documents and testimony that could help fuel any DOJ probe into the president and others around him who were involved in the scheme.

[...]

But the ghosts of 2016 linger. DOJ and FBI leaders are still weathering bipartisan scorn for their handling of dual election-year probes into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the Trump campaign’s Russia connections. Any moves to examine Trump as 2020 heats up will receive similar scrutiny — as will any choice not to examine Trump.

[...]

“This is a dereliction of duty by Bill Barr to not treat this as a criminal matter. It’s Bill Barr protecting the president,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which has been leading the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s behavior. “The way to handle it would have been to appoint a special counsel to investigate all these matters.”

[...]

The confusion started in late September when a department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, issued a statement saying Trump had been cleared of any campaign finance violations that might stem from his July 25 call with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

[...]

But a senior DOJ official also said Kupec’s Sept. 25 statement shouldn’t be taken as the final statement on the matter. Instead, the person said Kupec was speaking only to the specific issues the inspector general had raised after reviewing the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. The comment, the official said, shouldn’t be seen as ruling out the possibility that DOJ would examine other issues tied to the Trump-Zelensky call.

  Politico

That sounds like a hedge against bad publicity to me.

Legal experts and several Democratic lawmakers say those other issues could include a conspiracy to commit bribery and extortion by conditioning an official government act — a presidential visit and the release of financial aid — on Ukraine’s opening of political investigations that Trump considered valuable. Trump’s actions also raise other potential violations of federal laws governing the solicitation of campaign contributions from a foreign national, the lawmakers and legal experts added.

But they're not in charge of the DOJ.

In recent weeks, the department has started to show an interest in some of the players central to the Ukraine plot.

In early October, federal prosecutors indicted two Giuliani business associates — Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — on campaign finance charges.

Which could simply be a move to make Rudy the scapegoat.

An assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York on the case told a judge last month that DOJ’s “investigation is ongoing” into the matter. And subpoenas it has obtained since the indictments have given a sense of where the investigation is leading.

[...]

One subpoena seeking documents went to Pete Sessions, a former Texas congressman who is widely believed to be referenced in the Parnas-Fruman indictment in connection with efforts to remove Yovanovitch. Another document request went to a firm launched by Brian Ballard, a prominent Trump fundraiser from Florida who did business with Parnas.

[...]

Most recently, several media outlets reported that SDNY officials were also examining Giuliani’s consulting business for a bevy of potential federal crimes, including money laundering, campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice and wire fraud.

[...]

DOJ’s Washington headquarters also has an interest in Giuliani’s case.

That disclosure came out in a roundabout way. Last month, department spokesman Peter Carr issued a statement to The New York Times confirming DOJ had been poking around on a separate case involving at least one of Giuliani’s other clients. That case included a meeting between Giuliani and the department's criminal division chief, Brian Benczkowski, over the summer. The Washington Post last week identified Giuliani’s client as the Venezuelan energy executive Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, who has been under scrutiny for possible money laundering and bribery.

[...]

Then there’s the whistleblower.

[...]

The FBI agent contacted one of the whistleblower’s attorneys in a way that indicated the person was not the subject or target of a probe, the person said. Yahoo! News first reported the FBI’s outreach to the whistleblower attorney.

Combined, legal experts and lawmakers say, the different DOJ and FBI moves could indicate a federal probe that’s edging closer to the president.

But questions also remain about federal agents’ objectives, given a number of recent events.

The last time the department investigated the president — special counsel Robert Mueller’s multiyear probe — it stopped short of charging Trump with any crimes, citing an internal legal opinion that says a sitting president can’t be indicted while in office. The same issues would apply to the Ukraine situation.

[...]

“Trump has made it clear that he perceives any scrutiny to be a declaration of war,” said Barbara McQuade, a former Obama-era U.S. attorney from Michigan. “Agents who investigate Trump and his associates put their careers in jeopardy, but I hope that the FBI would be undeterred.”

[...]

Republicans dismissed questions that the president could be facing any kind of DOJ scrutiny for the Ukraine matters that have also been at the center of the impeachment probe.

[...]

Giuliani also has scoffed at questions about his legal jeopardy.

“Ohhhhh, wow,” the president’s personal attorney said Nov. 23 when asked on Fox News if he were concerned about getting indicted. “Do you think I’m afraid? Do you think I get afraid? I did the right thing. I represented my client in a very, very effective way. I was so effective that I discovered a pattern of corruption that the Washington press has been covering up for three or four years.”

[...]

DOJ and the FBI after are also set to receive more scrutiny early next month, when the department’s inspector general will publish a report examining the early stages of the government’s Russia probe. The document is expected to criticize some bureau leaders and low-level FBI officials who worked on the Russia probe, even though it is also expected to reaffirm that officials did not improperly spy on the Trump campaign, as the president has claimed, and that political bias did not taint the investigation.

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

The first guy to rat gets the best deal

Two Soviet-born donors to a pro-Trump fundraising committee who helped Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to investigate Democrat Joe Biden were arrested late Wednesday on criminal charges of violating campaign finance rules and are expected to appear in court on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Florida businessmen, have been under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and are expected to appear in federal court in Virginia later on Thursday.

  WSJ

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

Background

DOJ Kavanaugh attorneys' award addendum

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

Impeach now

Two operatives reporting to President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani established a backchannel between him and Ukrainian officials, according to a Buzzfeed News report.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman met with top figures in Ukraine and set up meetings for Giuliani in an attempt to gather information to use in the 2020 presidential election, according to the publication.

[...]

In March, about a month after a meeting with Parnas, Fruman and Giuliani, prosecutors in Kiev announced they would investigate certain officials in connection with trying to rig the election for Clinton, which Trump himself touted in an interview with Fox News.

Parnas has said he also expects information the two obtained to play a major role in Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to Buzzfeed.

[...]

Parnas told Buzzfeed he and Fruman did not draw a salary for working as liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian officials.

“All we were doing was passing along information,” he told Buzzfeed. “Information was coming to us — either I bury it or I pass it on. I felt it was my duty to pass it on."

He told the publication the back-channel was initiated on the Ukrainian end, with officials telling him and Fruman that they needed connections to meet with U.S. officials and [k]new Parnas was acquainted with Giuliani.

[...]

“Trump has either authorized Giuliani to engage in private diplomacy and deal-making, or even worse, remains silent while Giuliani and his dodgy band of soldiers of fortune engage in activities that severely undermine US credibility and are contrary to fundamental US interests,” [Former federal prosecutor Kenneth McCallion] told Buzzfeed.

  The Hill

You see what happens when you don't stop him?

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

Laying the groundwork for impeachment

“Tomorrow, we will be issuing document requests to over 60 different people and individuals from the White House to the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Jr., Allen Weisselberg, to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power,” Nadler said on “This Week” Sunday.

  ABC

That should put the actual impeachment proceedings to coincide with campaigning for the 2020 elections. And perhaps that was their plan all along, and all this talk about waiting for the Mueller report and bullet-proof evidence was just smokescreen.  I have no doubt the Dems are sneaky enough to do that, and there are at least a couple who are smart enough.

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

House GOP would like to waste more time and money

Republicans have quietly and unceremoniously ended their congressional investigation of whether the FBI and Justice Department were biased in their handling of inquiries into Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

House judiciary chairman Robert Goodlatte and oversight chairman Trey Gowdy, who are retiring next week, sent a letter rather than a full report to the Justice Department and the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. It wraps up an inquiry that was conducted mostly behind closed doors.

[...]

Goodlatte and Gowdy say in their letter that they reviewed thousands of documents and conducted interviews that “revealed troubling facts which exacerbated our initial questions and concerns”. They call on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate further. A separate report issued this year by the Justice Department’s own internal watchdog found there was no evidence that the then FBI chief James Comey or the department were motivated by political bias toward either candidate.

Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, and Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the oversight panel, are expected to formally end the investigation when they take power in January. Nadler has called it “nonsense”.

  Guardian

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

Are the Republicans in Congress smoking dope?

Perhaps I should ask, how long have the Republicans in Congress been smoking dope?

Grassley might not know.  But Sessions does.  I don't think the DOJ will take this up.  They might haul it out every once in a while for publicity.

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

UPDATE:

No more boring hearings

The Strzok hearing is apparently very entertaining.

As Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, delivered his opening remarks, aides displayed poster boards to highlight the guilty pleas Mueller has obtained in his ongoing probe.

Republicans briefly objected to the visual aids. “Cite the rule,” Democrats said, and Cummings was ultimately allowed to proceed.

  The Hill

Strzok lays out his "we'll stop him" text with great indignity at the charges being leveled at him:




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

UPDATE:

Holy shit.  Devolution in action.



UPDATE:



Indeed.

UPDATE:

He's the fuhrer

If he says it, it's so.



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

Dictator Don not happy with the IG report conclusions

President Donald Trump on Friday savaged his Justice Department's watchdog report on the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as a “horror show,” and disputed its finding that the bureau’s management of the high-profile case was not influenced by political bias.

“The report, the IG report was a horror show. I thought that one sentence of conclusion was ridiculous,” Trump said during an unannounced interview with Fox News on the North Lawn of the White House. “The end result was wrong. There was total bias.”

[...]

“The people of the FBI are incredible. I would bet if you took a poll in the FBI I would win that poll by more than anybody's ever won a poll, but the top people were horrible,” Trump said. “I'm actually proud because I beat Clinton dynasty, I beat Bush dynasty, and now, I guess, hopefully, I'm in the process of beating very dishonest intelligence.”

  Politico

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

Bringing it proudly back

What say you, Chris Wray?

Wray says the report only addresses a specific set of facts and the actions of a handful of officials. He says “nothing” in the report “impugns” the integrity of the FBI workforce as a whole.

Wray also says the report found “errors in judgment” and policy violations, but it found no evidence of political bias or improper consideration “actually impacting the investigations under review.”

  TPM

Hm.

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

DOJ report on FBI slightly less than Trump was looking for

But bad, nonetheless.

The Justice Department's internal watchdog has concluded that the FBI's most controversial decisions during the 2016 presidential election were not politically motivated, but the FBI's reputation has nonetheless been hurt by the actions of some of its agents – findings that come after a nearly two-year assault on the FBI by Donald Trump and other Republicans alleging FBI officials allowed political considerations to influence investigations.

[...]

Horowitz's report said [agent Page's anti-Trump messages back and forth with agent Strzok were] "not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects. This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice."

[...]

[I]n the nearly 500-page report released Thursday, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said he could not discount that political bias played a role in the FBI's delay in analyzing a laptop with potential evidence tied to Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

  ABC

I have to admit that one would be hard to explain otherwise, but then Comey turned around and announced that the investigation was being reopened, which was harmful in the opposite direction. So, it looks like there was a large clusterfuck in the FBI. I'm not sure that's actionable.

I didn't know about this exchange between the two agents:

"[Trump's] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Page wrote to Strzok in August 2016, as disclosed for the first time in Horowitz's report.

Strzok, at the time still leading the FBI probe into Clinton, responded: "No. No he's not. We'll stop it."

"We'll stop it"??? That does indeed look bad. On the other hand, Strzok was fired when Comey learned of these messages.  *Correction:  Mueller took Strzok off the case.  Comey was already gone.

Horowitz found anti-Trump messages from two other FBI agents and another FBI attorney that his report said "cast a cloud over the FBI's handling" of the Clinton case. In addition, "the damage caused by their actions extends far beyond the scope of the [Clinton] investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI's reputation for neutral factfinding and political independence," the report continued.

But, the report made clear, "our review did not find evidence to connect the political views expressed in these messages to the specific investigative decisions that we reviewed."

So, even finding that how Comey handled the Clinton investigation was "extraordinary and insubordinate", and "that Comey made a serious error of judgment," Horowitz found that "'judgment calls' made by those investigat[ing] Clinton 'were not unreasonable,' and the ultimate decision not to charge Clinton 'was consistent with the Department’s historical approach in prior cases under different leadership'." Yeah, because look at Alberto Gonzales, right?

So not quite the support Trump was looking for from the DOJ. He won't be happy.

But what does James Comey think?

We'll have to wait until His Lardship watches Fox News' report on the report before we get his tweet opinion.

The full report is here, where you can read it for yourself.

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

UPDATE 6/15:

His Lardship is unhappy with the conclusions.

The DOJ Comey finding: pre-leaking a draft

I wouldn't post this, but I want to be able to compare it to the final report, and if I don't put it here, I'll never find it.

The Justice Department's internal watchdog has concluded that James Comey defied authority at times during his tenure as FBI director, according to sources familiar with a draft report on the matter.

One source told ABC News that the draft report explicitly used the word "insubordinate" to describe Comey's behavior.

[...]

In the draft report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz also rebuked former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for her handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server, the sources said.

[...]

"What is taking so long with the Inspector General's Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey," Trump said on Twitter. "Hope report is not being changed and made weaker!"

  ABC News

So, someone at the DOJ has already told him what's in the report?

There is no indication the president has seen – or will see – a draft of the report before its release.

I think that tweet is a very clear indication.

Horowitz [...] could revise the draft report now that current and former officials mentioned in it have offered their responses to the inspector general's conclusions, according to the sources.

Slippery James Comey's "defiance" caused Crooked Hillary to lose a good number of votes. Trump should be thanking him, not berating him.

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

What happened in the HPSCI meeting when voting to release "the memo"

Here's the transcript of the January 29 HPSCI meeting if you want to read it yourself.  (I haven't done so yet.)

And here are some excerpts from a Lawfare Blog summary of the transcript.

Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat on the Committee, made three motions: 1) that a rebuttal memo (the "minority memo") put together by the Dems should be made available to all members of the House, just as the Nunes majority memo was; 2) that the DOJ and FBI should be allowed to review both memos and then recommend to the Committee whether or not the Nunes memo should be released publicly; and 3) that if the Nunes memo gets released, the Dems rebuttal should also be released. All reasonable requests, all voted down by the Republicans.

Schiff emphasizes that only he and Rep. Trey Gowdy have seen the underlying intelligence on which the Nunes memo is based (only members of the Gang of Eight have access to the intelligence, but Gowdy viewed the intelligence for the majority).

I have to wonder if any of this is why Gowdy announced today that he's not going to seek re-election in November. I think it probably does. Either to protect himself, or to avoid what he believes will eventually be an inevitable impeachment. Or maybe he even has more reason.

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley complains that the [Nunes] memo has distracted the committee from its work on the Russia investigation. [Rep. Mike Conaway (a Republican who has been leading the Russia investigation alongside Schiff in the wake of Nunes’s unofficial recusal)] points out that Steve Bannon is scheduled to come in for a second hearing on Wednesday (this hearing has since been canceled). [...] Schiff notes that the committee has yet to schedule a follow-up hearing with Corey Lewandowski. Nunes chimes in: “This is not a place to discuss the Russia investigation.”

Surely he doesn't mean this Committee, since that's exactly what it's supposed to be doing. He must mean this particular meeting, which is to call a vote on whether to release the Nunes memo.

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell argues that releasing the memo to the public will breach an agreement between the committee and the Justice Department that “there would be limited access to the mostly highly sensitive of materials as relates to Russia.” [...] Swalwell makes the point that Nunes’s memo risks destroying the relationship between the committee and the intelligence community, making it impossible for the committee to function as an oversight body.

This is the very point ex-intelligence officer Paul Pillar made in his article today on the subject.

All committee members vote in favor [of permitting the entire House access to the minority memo] except Republican Rep. Mike Turner, who was reportedly unable to make it back to Washington in time for the vote.

Nunes then reads into the record a letter from Republican Rep. Peter King calling for the Nunes memo’s public release under House Rule X, clause 11(g). Rep. King speaks in favor of the memo’s publication, noting that FBI Director Christopher Wray discussed the memo with Nunes and Gowdy the day before.

In response to King’s comment regarding Wray, Swalwell asks “what did the FBI say as to dissemination to the public?” He does not receive a response.

This is where Rep. Crawford comes in on TV saying Wray said there were no factual errors in the memo, a bald faced lie, as we found out today when the FBI released a statement saying the exact opposite. I have to wonder again if Gowdy decided to get out in part because he knew the GOP body was going to be lying, and he didn't want to get caught in it. Trey Gowdy, who always gave me the creeps, may turn out to be the only smart Republican in the bunch. These guys are on some seriously shaky ground. Orange jumpsuits all 'round, please.

Democratic Rep. Jim Himes asks Nunes whether his memo will be released in full or whether “references to highly classified information” will be redacted. Nunes does not directly answer, but suggests that the memo will be released without redactions, saying only: “We will make the content available.”

Nunes is obviously trying to be obtuse and uncooperative with the Democrats on the Committee.

[Schiff then makes his second motion] to postpone the vote until the FBI and Justice Department can review the Nunes memo in full and brief the committee. Nunes announces that “the Department of Justice and the FBI have been under investigation by this committee for many, many months for FISA abuse and other matters … I would urge my colleagues to vote no, we are not going to be briefed by people that are under investigation by this committee.”

The DOJ and FBI have been under investigation for many, many months? That must have come as a real shock.  We were just told this news after this meeting on Monday. All this time, we were under the impression that the House Intel Committee was investigating possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.  We knew they were going to clear Trump by the way they were conducting the investigation, but we didn't know they were using their time to investigate the FBI instead!

None of the Democrats appear to have been aware of this investigation.

That has to be a very serious violation of the Committee's own rules and procedures. In fact...

Quigley argues that Nunes has violated rule 9(a) of the committee’s rules, which requires the committee to conduct investigations “only if approved by the chair in consultation with the ranking minority member”—meaning Schiff. But Schiff says that this is the first he’s been formally notified of it.

This investigation should be officially disbanded, and Nunes should be sanctioned and removed from his position on the Committee.

Quigley asks Nunes whether he has coordinated the memo with the White House. “As far as I know, no,” says Nunes.

As far as he knows?? Who knows if he doesn't?

Quigley then asks whether any of the majority’s staff have coordinated with the White House. Nunes refuses to answer and cuts him off.

That'll be a "yes" then.

I'm going to assume that at the very least, Mueller will eventually haul Nunes in to the obstruction investigation.*

[Dem Rep. Jim] Himes voices his concern that the committee will apparently be releasing the memo unredacted, noting that “an immense amount of classified information will be available to the public.”

[...]

Swalwell suggests that, if Nunes insists that the FBI and Justice Department are under investigation, the committee could pass the memo to an inspector general of another agency for review before its release. He suggests the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Nunes does not respond.

Jesus Christ. Nunes is in very, very deep.

Schiff requests a delay of the memo’s release until after a briefing by the FBI and Justice Department. The Republicans vote it down along party lines. All Democrats vote in favor.

I guess that includes Gowdy. Coward. He's not out of the woods in this, either, if this goes to the obstruction case, no matter whether he retires from office or not. Of course, he could always be "flipped".

Schiff now requests that the minority’s memo be released publicly alongside Nunes’s memo. Conaway says that he will oppose the motion. He would prefer for the minority memo to go through the same process as the Nunes memo: pause for a “time of reflection” after releasing the memo to the House before releasing it to the public.

How handy. The rebuttal has to lag behind. And how long might it take for "reflection" in this amazingly corrupt GOP-led committee?

Schiff argues the majority is behaving hypocritically: the committee’s Republicans criticized Hillary Clinton for what FBI Director James Comey called her “extremely careless” handling of classified information, but they are now planning to vote to release classified information in what the Justice Department called an “extraordinarily reckless” fashion.

Hypocrisy is the least of their crimes.

All present Republicans vote against [the third motion requesting release of the minority memo along with the majority one]. All Democrats vote for it, with the exception of Rep. Jackie Speier, who votes present.

What the hell is Jackie's problem?

Finally, the committee votes on Nunes’s motion to release his memo to the public.

All Republicans present vote in favor—except for Rep. Will Hurd, who has stepped out of the room and will add his “aye” vote retroactively at the end of the meeting. All Democrats vote against making the memo public.

Schiff calls for another vote on his motion to release the minority memo alongside the Nunes memo, now that the committee has voted for the Nunes memo’s release. The vote is the same.

Schiff requests that the transcript of these proceedings be released to the public as soon as possible.

But that's not even the worst...

When Benjamin Wittes and I reached out to the offices of every committee Republican (except Nunes) and asked whether the representatives had faith in the factual conclusions of the memo, only three members of the committee answered in the affirmative (six did not respond to our repeated requests to contact them, and three responded but conspicuously did not answer our question as to the memo’s integrity).

WTF is wrong with these people? It seems the whole of the Republican elite has gone to the dark side. Why would you implicate yourself in such shady, and even illegal, activity? Something is terribly wrong in this government.

[O]f the majority, only Nunes, Conaway and King speak up over the course of the meeting—and Conaway’s points are mostly procedural, not a substantive defense of the memo. Also notable is that Rep. Chris Stewart told us last week that he would support the Nunes memo’s release if sensitive information were redacted, and yet voted for the unredacted memo’s publication. During the meeting, Conaway similarly voiced concerns over publication of classified information—albeit regarding the minority memo—but voted in favor of the unredacted Nunes memo’s release as well.

Un-freaking-believable. This Committee has gone light years beyond being worthless and has stepped over into some very dark territory.

UPDATE:

My god, it gets even worse!

*UPDATE:

UPDATE:  Mike Quigley has posted his interview with Anderson Cooper.

UPDATE 2/1:

Just. Wow.

Ex-HPSCI member* bemoans the current committee

*Correction: Paul Pillar describes himself as an ex-intelligence officer. Sorry for the error.

An important ingredient in building a cooperative relationship has been the committees’ record in protecting classified information, which up to now has been good.

In subsequent years the intensified partisanship that has infected everything else in Congress, especially since the Gingrich revolution in the 1990s, has affected both intelligence committees as well. In recent times the infection has been worse in HPSCI than in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Most recently the problems in HPSCI have centered on the activities of committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA). Nunes once recused himself from anything having to do with investigations into Russia’s relationship with the Trump campaign, after it came to light that Nunes had been functioning as a messenger for the White House on the matter. But he and others now seem to have forgotten that recusal.

HPSCI has become enmeshed in the congressional Republican effort to denigrate the FBI and Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russia matter. That effort obviously is being waged to distract attention from the subject of the investigation and to discredit preemptively any findings unfavorable to the Republican in the White House.

  National Interest

If you're interested in reading the whole thing, the article, by Paul Pillar, who served as an intelligence officer in the 80s, describes what he understands to be the issue in the Nunes memo and how to interpret what is being done with it. It summarizes the points made by an ex-FBI agent in his article about what the memo would need to provide to be considered of any real import.

It's also interesting to me that it's a Republican - Devin Nunes - who's tearing down the trust between the Intel Committee and the FBI/DOJ, whose members are mostly known for their conservative, Republican values.

Among all the other damaging effects of this escapade is that it a may drive a final politicized nail into the coffin of effective oversight of intelligence, at least on the House of Representatives side of Capitol Hill. If this is how a committee majority is to conduct business, and how it is to handle classified information, then neither the American people nor the FBI or other national security agencies have reason any more to believe that effective oversight by this committee is possible.

We had that figured out already.

An irony is that amid all the rhetoric about a deep state and supposed abuses within security agencies, Nunes and company are killing the most effective mechanism that American democracy has for ensuring that such a deep state does not arise and that such abuses do not occur.

So the Trump cabal is actually quite effective at burning down the country. I guess we didn't have a very strong Democracy after all.

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

Clueless, or just pretending?

Donald Trump is telling friends and aides in private that things are going great — for him.

Some reasons: He's decided that a key witness in the Russia probe, Paul Manafort, isn't going to "flip" and sell him out, friends and aides say. He believes Robert Mueller, who heads the investigation, can be crushed, if necessary, without being fired. Sweeping tax and regulatory cuts will juice the economy and get him re-elected in 2020, he is predicting. He thinks he's learned how to handle the dysfunction of Congress.

  NBC

I'm sure Trump thinks he's the greatest, and he sees himself as a winner, but I think he feels compelled to bluster because he hasn't really convinced himself, believing other people will believe what he tells them. I think down deep, he's scared. Well, down as deep as Donald Trump goes, which isn't far.

"He called to congratulate me on how brilliant and prescient I was to tell him to run for president," said one friend, who asked not to be identified, laughing at the thought. "What he was really doing was flattering himself by flattering me. But for him, it was a long and very enjoyable monologue."

[...]

"He loves all the pomp and circumstance and the salutes," said another friend.

You see, he doesn't really have friends.  Any more than he has a strategy.

[Trump's] first-year job rating is the worst of any president in modern times. Scholars are comparing him to James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, the two most inept embarrassments in the history of the presidency. Polls show that the country is deeply divided and dispirited about its future. Even allies condemn his racist rants and juvenile Twitter feuds with pop stars.

[...]

Trump — who trusts no one, or at least no one for long — has now decided that he must have an alternative strategy that does not involve having Justice Department officials fire Mueller.

"I think he's been convinced that firing Mueller would not only create a firestorm, it would play right into Mueller's hands," said another friend, "because it would give Mueller the moral high ground."

Not to mention, get Trump into even hotter water.

Instead, as is now becoming plain, the Trump strategy is to discredit the investigation and the FBI without officially removing the leadership. Trump is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team.

Yeah, right. For what? He's all talk.

"Here's how it would work: 'We're sorry, Mr. Mueller, you won't be able to run the federal grand jury today because he has to go testify to another federal grand jury,'" said one Trump adviser.

Which is actually what he's getting by the House Intel opening an investigation into the FBI and DOJ. That's part of the plan. Prosecuting Mueller isn't in the works. They're not that stupid. No court in the land would hear that case.

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

What's wrong with "the memo"

If I thought for a moment Congress would actually rein in FBI abuses and provide oversight that prevented things like destroying whistleblowers rather than protecting them and setting up mentally ill and disillusioned young men to get a win for the "war on terror," I'd be all for an investigation of the FBI. But that's not what will happen. It's only meant to protect the Turd in Chief.

Here's a Twitter thread from Julian Sanchez that is both more articulate and reasoned on this idea. It begins:

Julian Sanchez article on the subject.

Desperation leads to bad judgment

That's not a suspicous desperate measure to interfere with the Mueller investigation at all.

Has the House Intel finished with its Russian collusion investigation then?  Do they plan on making a report?  Will they permit any Democrats to sit on this investigation?  If they do, what happens when a Democrat starts questioning Wray and Comey about what the GOP, Giuliani and the New York FBI were doing to thwart Hillary's campaign?

These people are insane.

If I thought for a moment Congress would actually rein in FBI abuses and provide oversight that prevented things like destroying whistleblowers rather than protecting them and setting up mentally ill and disillusioned young men to get a win for the "war on terror," I'd be all for an investigation of the FBI.  But that's not what will happen.  It's only meant to protect the Turd in Chief.

Also, they supposedly voted to release "the memo".

They must be absolutely certain Mueller has the goods on Trump, and perhaps on some of them as well, to be this desperate.

Overrule then and join the effort to obstruct justice?

Crazy.

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