General David Petraeus was arrested for leaving his classified schedule on mistress Paula Broadwell’s nightstand.  Kristian Saucier was arrested for taking a classified photograph on a submarine.  Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin had dozens of classified Clinton emails on a laptop and…

There are a great deal of inconsistent application of law surrounding classified information. There is also a great deal of fatigue surrounding discussion of those inconsistent applications.  Contradictions, inconsistency and obtuse justifications are as rampant in our midst as the political narratives shaping them.  Perhaps that’s by design.

We begin reading Chapter 11 of the IG Report with a growing acceptance that not only is there a need for a special counsel, but there is a brutally obvious need for multiple special counsels; each given a specific carve-out investigation that comes directly from the content of the Inspector General report.   This issue of the handling of the Weiner/Abedin laptop screams for a special counsel investigation on that facet alone.  Why?

Well, consider this from page #388 (emphasis mine):

Midyear agents obtained a copy of the Weiner laptop from NYO immediately after the search warrant was signed on October 30.

The laptop was taken directly to Quantico where the FBI’s Operational Technology Division (OTD) began processing the laptop. The Lead Analyst told us that given the volume of emails on the laptop and the difficulty with de-duplicating the emails that “at least for the first few days, the scale of what we’re doing seem[ed] really, really big.”

Strzok told us that OTD was able “to do some amazing things” to “rapidly de-duplicate” the emails on the laptop, which significantly lowered the number of emails that the Midyear team would have to individually review. Strzok stated that only after that technological breakthrough did he begin to think it was “possible we might wrap up before the election.”  (pg 388)

The key takeaway here is two-fold.  First, the laptop is in the custody of the FBI; that’s important moving forward (I’ll explain later).  Also, specifically important, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, the lead investigative authority in the Hillary Clinton MYE (Mid-Year-Exam), is explaining to the IG how they were able to process an exhaustive volume of emails (350,000) and Blackberry communications (344,000) in a few days; [Oct 30 to Nov 5]

Note: “OTD was able “to do some amazing things to rapidly de-duplicate” the emails on the laptop.”

OK, you got that?

Now lets look at the very next page, #389 (again, emphasis mine):

[…] The FBI determined that Abedin forwarded two of the confirmed classified emails to Weiner. The FBI reviewed 6,827 emails that were either to or from Clinton and assessed 3,077 of those emails to be “potentially work-related.”

The FBI analysis of the review noted that “[b]ecause metadata was largely absent, the emails could not be completely, automatically de-duplicated or evaluated against prior emails recovered during the investigation” and therefore the FBI could not determine how many of the potentially work-related emails were duplicative of emails previously obtained in the Midyear investigation. (pg 389)

See the problem?  See the contradiction?

Strzok is saying due to some amazing wizardry the FBI forensics team was able to de-duplicate the emails.  However, FBI forensics is saying they were NOT able to de-duplicate the emails.

Both of these statements cannot be true.  And therein lies the underlying evidence to support a belief the laptop content was never actually reviewed.  But it gets worse, much worse….

To show how it’s FBI Agent Peter Strzok that is lying; go back to chapter #9 and re-read what the New York case agent was saying about the content of the laptop.

The New York FBI analysis supports the FBI forensic statement in that no de-duplication was possible because the metadata was not consistent.   The New York FBI Weiner case agent ran into this metadata issue when using extraction software on the laptop.

CHAPTER 9:    The case agent assigned to the Weiner investigation was certified as a Digital Extraction Technician and, as such, had the training and skills to extract digital evidence from electronic devices.

The case agent told the OIG that he began processing Weiner’s devices upon receipt on September 26. The case agent stated that he noticed “within hours” that there were “over 300,000 emails on the laptop.”

The case agent told us that on either the evening of September 26 or the morning of September 27, he noticed the software program on his workstation was having trouble processing the data on the laptop.  (pg 274)

The New York Case Agent then describes how inconsistent metadata within the computer files for the emails and Blackberry communications, made it impossible for successful extraction.  The FBI NY case agent and the Quantico FBI forensics agent agree on the metadata issue and the inability to use their software programs for extraction and layered comparison for the purposes of de-duplication.

Both NY and Quantico contradict the statement to the IG by FBI Agent Peter Strzok.  However, that contradiction, while presented in a factual assertion by the IG, is entirely overlooked and never reconciled within the inspector general report.  That irreconcilable statement also sheds more sunlight on the motives of Strzok.

Next up, there were only three FBI people undertaking the October Clinton email review.  To learn who they are we jump back to Chapter #11, page #389.

The Midyear team flagged all potentially work-related emails encountered during the review process and compared those to emails that they had previously reviewed in other datasets. Any work-related emails that were unique, meaning that they did not appear in any other dataset, were individually reviewed by the Lead Analyst, [Peter] Strzok, and FBI Attorney 1 [Tashina Gauhar] for evidentiary value.  (pg 389)

Pete Strzok, Tash Gauhar and the unknown lead analyst.  That’s it.  Three people.

This is the crew that created the “wizardry” that FBI Director James Comey says allowed him to tell congress with confidence that 1,355,980 electronic files (pg 389), containing 350,000 emails and 344,000 Blackberry communications were reviewed between October 30th and the morning of November 6th, 2016.

Three people.

Pete, Tash and one lead analyst.  Uh huh.

Sure.

The Inspector General just presents the facts; that’s obviously what he did.  Then it’s up to FBI and DOJ leadership to accept the facts, interpret them, and apply their meaning.

No bias?

But FBI is committed to bias training?

FUBAR.

There is an actual hero in all of this though.  It’s that unnamed FBI Case Agent in New York who wouldn’t drop the laptop issue and forced the FBI in DC to take action on the laptop.  Even the IG points this out (chapter #9, page 331):

We found that what changed between September 29 and October 27 that finally prompted the FBI to take action was not new information about what was on the Weiner laptop but rather the inquiries from the SDNY prosecutors and then from the Department. The only thing of significance that had changed was the calendar and the fact that people outside of the FBI were inquiring about the status of the Weiner laptop. (pg 331)

Those SDNY prosecutors only called Main Justice in DC because the New York case agent went in to see them and said he wasn’t going to be the scape goat for a buried investigation (chapter #9, pg 303) “The case agent told us that he scheduled a meeting on October 19 with the two SDNY AUSAs assigned to the Weiner investigation because he felt like he had nowhere else to turn.” … “The AUSAs both told us that the case agent appeared to be very stressed and worried that somehow he would be blamed in the end if no action was taken.”

On October 20, 2016, the AUSAs met with their supervisors at SDNY and informed them of their conversation with the Weiner case agent. The AUSAs stated that they told their supervisors the substantive information reported by the case agent, the case agent’s concerns that no one at the FBI had expressed interest in this information, and their concern that the case agent was stressed out and might act out in some way. (pg 304)

Why would the New York Case Agent be worried?

Consider Page 274, footnote #165:

fn 165:  No electronic record exists of the case agent’s initial review of the Weiner laptop. The case agent told us that at some point in mid-October 2016 the NYO ASAC instructed the case agent to wipe his work station. The case agent explained that the ASAC was concerned about the presence of potentially classified information on the case agent’s work station, which was not authorized to process classified information.

The case agent told us that he followed the ASAC’s instructions, but that this request concerned him because the audit trail of his initial processing of the laptop would no longer be available. The case agent clarified that none of the evidence on the Weiner laptop was impacted by this, explaining that the FBI retained the Weiner laptop and only the image that had been copied onto his work station was deleted. The ASAC recalled that the case agent “worked through the security department to address the concern” of classified information on an unclassified system. He told us that he did not recall how the issue was resolved.

Summary:

• There were only three people in the Mid-Year-Event team granted authority to physically do the Clinton email review.
• They were: FBI Agent Peter Strzok, FBI Attorney-1 Tashina “Tash” Gauhar, and an unnamed lead analyst.
• FBI Agent Peter Strzok says they were able to cull the number of emails through the use of “some amazing things to rapidly de-duplicate” the emails.
• The New York FBI case agent assigned to the Weiner investigation, a certified Digital Extraction Technician, as well as the FBI forensics team in Quantico say it was impossible to use the conflicted metadata to “de-duplicate” the emails.
• Someone is lying.
• FBI Director James Comey said his investigative unit used some form of “wizardry” to review the content of the Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner laptop.
• The Inspector General makes no determination as to who is telling the truth; and never asked the question of whether an actual review of the laptop emails took place.
• The FBI still has possession of the Abedin/Weiner laptop.

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https://www.scribd.com/embeds/381806566/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-4WfKaOih0Xm7EA7gdK93

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⇑ These Cannot Both Be True ⇓

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The ultimate disruption.

Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) appears on Fox News to discuss the IG report and the upcoming appearance of Michael Horowitz to the Judiciary and Oversight committee coming this Tuesday June 19th.

On Monday June 18th both Horowitz and FBI Director Chris Wray will be appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee (Chairman Grassley).  Then on Tuesday Horowitz will appear before the House Joint Judiciary/Oversight Committee.

We need Jim Jordan to ask some basic questions [SEE HERE] and gain clarity from Horowitz.  Tuesday is likely the best hope for answers because we have Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe, Ron DeSantis, Louie Gohmert, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Steve King, possibly Mark Meadows and Chairman Goodlatte asking the questions:

One of the interesting aspects of the IG report is the documented use of personal email by participants within the FBI “small group” Mid-Year-Exam (MYE) team. [pg 424]

One of those documented examples involves FBI Agent Peter Strzok downloading the content of the sealed Anthony Weiner Indictment, October 29, 2016, to his personal email address. Unauthorized extraction of a ‘sealed SDNY indictment‘, and transmission to a non-secure system, is a felony.

(From summary pg vii) We found that Strzok used his personal email accounts for official government business on several occasions, including forwarding an email from his FBI account to his personal email account about the proposed search warrant the Midyear team was seeking on the Weiner laptop.

==> This email included a draft of the search warrant affidavit, which contained information from the Weiner investigation that appears to have been under seal at the time in the Southern District of New York and information obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena issued in the Eastern District of Virginia in the Midyear investigation. <==

We refer to the FBI the issue of whether Strzok’s use of personal email accounts violated FBI and Department policies.

Details of this specific example continue on pages 426, 427, 428 and footnotes #217 #218:

[…]  During our review, we identified several instances where Strzok used his personal email account for government business.  […]  Most troubling, on October 29, 2016, Strzok forwarded from his FBI account to his personal email account an email about the proposed search warrant the Midyear team was seeking on the Weiner laptop.

This email included a draft of the search warrant affidavit, which contained information from the Weiner investigation that appears to have been under seal at the time in the Southern District of New York and information obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena issued in the Eastern District of Virginia in the Midyear investigation.

The footnotes here are interesting:

fn #217 reads: ” The OIG previously notified the respective U.S. Attorney’s Offices about Strzok’s actions.”

Presumably fn #217 reflects the Office of Inspector General informing the Southern District of New York (sdny) and Eastern District of Virginia (edva) about Strzok downloading sealed Weiner investigation material to a personal email system and presenting abstracts containing that information to EDVA to gain the Huma Abedin laptop search warrant.

fn #218 reads: “We requested access to Strzok’s personal email account. Strzok agreed to produce copies of work-related emails in his personal account but declined to produce copies of his personal emails. Strzok subsequently told the OIG that he had reviewed the emails residing in his personal mailboxes and found no work-related communications. We determined that we lacked legal authority to obtain the contents of Strzok’s personal email account from his email provider, which requires an Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) search warrant to produce email contents. Strzok’s email provider’s policy applies to opened emails and emails stored for more than 180 days, which ECPA otherwise permits the government to obtain using a subpoena and prior notice to the subscriber. See 18 U.S.C. § 2703(a), (b)(1)(B)(i); COMPUTER CRIME AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, SEARCHING AND SEIZING COMPUTERS AND OBTAINING ELECTRONIC EVIDENCE IN CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS at 129-30 (2009). In addition, although we learned that a non-FBI family member had access to Strzok’s personal email account in 2017, Strzok told the OIG that no one else had access to his personal email account during the period in question (i.e., late October 2016).”

(pg 428) We refer to the FBI the issue of whether Strzok’s use of personal email accounts violated FBI and Department policies. As noted above, Page left the Department on May 4, 2018.

Who was the primary stakeholder in the laptop? And who, as a matter of this very specific set of circumstances, did not have any control over the data?

As you consider this seemingly small and innocuous aspect of the IG report…. remember all of the effort that Hillary Clinton’s team put into the control over the information within her email network(s)…. Think about the exhaustive efforts into controlling, deleting, hiding, scrubbing, masking, transferring, bleach-bit wiping, etc. etc.  Three years of exhaustive physical and financial expenditures to ensure the content of the communication network was never retrievable by any investigative authority; millions spent, lawyers paid…. and…

Now fast forward to late 2016…

Think about 675,000 emails and Blackberry communications; “emails dated beginning in 2007 and covering the entire period of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State” [pg 324] just magically appearing in September 2016… and this time, literally, Clinton has no control over them.

Think about it for a few seconds.

Think about the angst.

Think about the potential ramifications.

Think about it from Clinton’s perspective.

Remember, throughout this campaign period her team and the FBI team were working hand-in-glove; a political reciprocity agreement with the Obama White House.

Now consider Page #315:

At 2:30 p.m. on October 26, Midyear FBI personnel, Midyear prosecutors, NYO, and SDNY participated in a conference call about the Weiner laptop. The highest ranking participants for each group on the call were Strzok, Toscas, the NYO A/SAC, and Kim.

The NYO A/SAC, ASAC, SSA, and Weiner case agent all participated in the call. This was the first time that the Weiner case agent had spoken directly with anyone associated with the Midyear investigation.

The case agent told us that he felt he was asked questions about information that he had already reported up the chain of command in September. He stated:

They were asking questions that I had already repeatedly answered in other calls. In other words, people were asking what domains are you seeing? How many emails are you seeing? What do you think you’re seeing? Who are they to, who are they from? What are the domains? Oh, we have that domain? What years? Like, questions that we, I had been asked and either had answered preliminarily, and then we became uncomfortable legally searching for those answers. But these were things that were known to me and had been made known above me for weeks.

The Weiner case agent stated that “the only thing that was new” was that others on the call asked him to speculate on what he had seen. According to the case agent, he stated, “Based on the number of emails, we could have every email that Huma and Hillary ever sent each other. It’s possible, given the pure volume, it’s possible.”

The NYO SSA described the call as “just basically discussions and information about…potentially what…was there, which we still didn’t know because we hadn’t looked at anything.” The A/SAC thought the call was “matter-of-fact” and said it was the first time they were questioned by an NSD lawyer.

According to the A/SAC’s notes, NYO briefed that there were 675,000 emails on the laptop spanning a time period from 2006 to 2016, and stated that there “appears to be blackberry messages” on the laptop.

The FBI’s Midyear team told us that they learned important new information on the call.  Strzok described it as “the triggering event” and FBI Attorney-1 [Tashina Gauhar] stated that this was the “call where it was crystallized to me what was on the laptop.”  (link)

Who were the stakeholders?

Knowing the nature of all FBI investigative benefits-of-doubt previously afforded throughout 2015 and 2016; do you think the FBI DC team didn’t immediately notify Team Clinton directly or through some facilitating channel?

Perhaps the answer to that question outlines why Peter Strzok suddenly found a need to download the sealed SDNY Weiner indictment and transfer it to his personal email?

Curioser and curiouser…

MORE HERE

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https://www.scribd.com/embeds/381806566/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-4WfKaOih0Xm7EA7gdK93

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Regardless of what anyone might think about Paul Manafort individually, the fact that a federal judge is willing to put a white-collar defendant behind bars until trial  is absurd.  Paul Manafort has been charged with tax avoidance and financial crimes stemming from 2006 and 2009. [Detention order pdf below]  Manafort is accused of contacting a possible witness in the case; however, the prosecution refuses to tell Manafort who the witnesses or victims are.  His defense argues that it’s impossible to avoid contact with witnesses when the prosecution won’t tell the court who the witnesses are. So the judge throws him in jail.

Mueller is a rogue agent willing to tear down the constructs of the justice system in order to defend the inherent corruption within his beloved institutions.  Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said today it was “obnoxious to our Constitution” to put former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort behind bars prior to a trial.

“He has never been convicted of anything. He is as innocent as you and I,” Dershowitz said in an interview on MSNBC on Friday. “And the idea of locking somebody up before a trial is so obnoxious to our Constitution that every civil libertarian should be up in arms. What they can do if they think that he’s tampering with witnesses is: They can subject him to home arrest, take away his computer … they can have all kinds of restrictions, but the idea of putting somebody in jail before they’ve been convicted is an enactment of civil liberties.”

Dershowitz comments come after Manafort was taken to a federal jail on Friday after U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson revoked his current bail that permitted him out on house arrest and after he pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction. He will stay at the federal jail until his trial in September. (read more)

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/381886101/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-TahJ5b3MSuXxWcPhL8cF

One of the information issues with the IG report is that it’s written entirely from an insiders perspective.  Therefore without an understanding of how divisions within Main Justice related to the discussed activity within FBI main DC offices it can be very confusing to understand.

The ‘insider narration’ makes it difficult to see what happened with the Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner laptop; and how the Clinton emails were discovered.  However, because the issue is so important the IG report spends three chapters on this time-frame between September 28th and October 29th, 2016; and ultimately the next day, Oct. 30th, when a search warrant was executed for the laptop content.

IG Horowitz takes this aspect of the investigation into granularity and nuance (Chapters 8, 9 and 10).

At the heart of the activity during this critical period is FBI lawyer #1 Tashina “Tash” Gauhar who was on a video conference call with the FBI New York Field Office (NYFO) as the discoveries of hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails were relayed internally to the Mid-Year-Event (MYE) team in DC on September 29th, 2016.

Almost a full month went by until October 27th, 2016, when the MYE team all gathered with James Comey to talk about the laptop issues and the emails.   Within the IG review of this period, there is a bunch of ass-covering documentation that takes place in hindsight to the events.  The IG is careful to point out each time his investigation is presented with documentary evidence that was clearly written long-after the events being questioned.

The central IG question is: why didn’t the FBI take immediate action to review 725,000 Clinton-centric emails on the Huma/Weiner laptop?  Why did they wait a month before seeking a search warrant?  Why were they doing nothing?

With these three basic questions Horowitz enters a matrix of FBI excuses, obtuse claims, he-said/she-said, and ultimately a bunch of statements by the MYE team that simply didn’t make a lick of sense.  Or put more diplomatically in IG language: “we found most of the explanations offered for this delay to be unconvincing.” (pg. 324)

IG REPORT  pg 324 – By no later than September 29, the FBI had learned virtually every fact that was cited by the FBI in late October as justification for obtaining the search warrant for the Weiner laptop, including that the laptop contained:

• Over 340,000 emails, some of which were from domains associated with Clinton, including state.gov, clintonfoundation.org, clintonemail.com, and hillaryclinton.com;
• Numerous emails between Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin;
• An unknown number of BlackBerry communications on the laptop, including one or more messages between Abedin and Clinton, indicating the possibility that the laptop contained communications from the early months of Clinton’s tenure;178 and
• Emails dated beginning in 2007 and covering the entire period of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State

The IG boiled down the FBI team excuses into four categories.

The explanations given to the OIG for the FBI’s failure to take immediate action on the Weiner laptop fell into four general categories:

1. The FBI Midyear team was waiting for additional information about the contents of the laptop from NYO, which was not provided until late October.

2. The FBI Midyear team could not review the emails without additional legal authority, such as consent or a new search warrant.

3. The FBI Midyear team and senior FBI officials did not believe that the information on the laptop was likely to be significant.

4. Key members of the FBI Midyear team had been reassigned to the investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election, which was a higher priority.

The IG walks through each of the four points, and identifies why each of them makes absolutely no sense against events that were taking place at the time. Ending with this summation:

Page #330: In sum, we concluded that the explanations given for the failure of the FBI to take action on the Weiner laptop between September 29 and the end of October were unpersuasive.

The FBI had all the information it needed on September 29 to obtain the search warrant that it did not seek until more than a month later. The FBI’s neglect had potentially far-reaching consequences. Comey told the OIG that, had he known about the laptop in the beginning of October and thought the email review could have been completed before the election, it may have affected his decision to notify Congress. Comey told the OIG, “I don’t know [if] it would have put us in a different place, but I would have wanted to have the opportunity.”

And then the IG gets to the heart of the matter:

Page #331: We found that what changed between September 29 and October 27 that finally prompted the FBI to take action was not new information about what was on the Weiner laptop but rather the inquiries from the SDNY prosecutors and then from the Department [Main Justice]. The only thing of significance that had changed was the calendar and the fact that people outside of the FBI were inquiring about the status of the Weiner laptop.

And right there, this becomes a great example why we see so much criticism of the IG report.  The report clearly says why the excuses make no sense and were false.  The IG report also clearly says what is most likely the real reason for the re-opening of the investigation.  Both good points.

However, what is missing from the report is an explanation for: ‘why the FBI didn’t initiate the review’?

The IG give a reason for the excuses not to be believed; gives a reason for the FBI finally taking action; but it never gives the reason why the Clinton email review was not undertaken….. the report leaves the actual biggest point as a dangling question.

Every intellectually honest person reading knows the MYE team didn’t investigate the laptop because they didn’t want to re-open the investigation; and the FBI team (Via McCabe, Page, Strzok and Tashina Gauhar) figured it could simply be avoided.  However, the IG cannot prove that, because the participants deny it.   So the IG can only disprove the FBI assertions and excuses…. and he did.  But that leaves the FBI getting away with the corrupt part of it…. and leaves all of us frustrated, again.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/381806566/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-4WfKaOih0Xm7EA7gdK93

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It’s October 27th, 2016, the day before James Comey announces his FBI decision to re-open the Clinton investigation. Jim Rybicki still saying McCabe should be recused from input; everyone else, including FBI Legal Counsel James Baker, is disagreeing with Rybicki and siding with Lisa Page.

Meanwhile the conversation has shifted slightly to “PC”, probable cause. Read:

While Lisa Page is leaking stories to Devlin Barrett (Wall Street Journal), the internal discussion amid the “small group” is about probable cause.

The team is now saying if there was no probable cause when Comey closed the original email investigation in July 2016 (remember the very tight boundaries of review), then there’s no probable cause in October 2016 to reopen the investigation regardless of what the email content might be.

This appears to be how the MYE “small group” or “tight team” justify doing nothing with the content received from New York. They received the emails September 28th and it’s now October 27th, and they haven’t even looked at it. Heck, they are debating if there’s even a need to look at it.

Then on October 28th, 2016, the FBI and Main Justice officials have a conference call about the entire Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton email issue. Here’s where it gets interesting.

George Toscas and David Laufman from DOJ-NSD articulate a position that something needs to happen likely because Main Justice is concerned about the issue of FBI (McCabe) sitting on the emails for over three weeks without any feedback to SDNY (New York).

Thanks to Deputy Director McCabe, Main Justice in DC, specifically DOJ National Security Division, now looks like they are facilitating a cover-up operation being conducted by the FBI “small group”. [which is actually true, but they can’t let that be so glaringly obvious].

As a result of the Top-Tier officials conference call, Strzok is grumpy agent because his opinion appears to be insignificant. The decision is reached to announce the re-opening of the investigation. This sends Lisa Page bananas…

…In rapid response mode Lisa Page reaches out to Devlin Barrett, again to quickly shape the media coverage. Now that the world is aware of the need for a Clinton email investigation 2.0 the internal conversation returns to McCabe’s recusal.

Please note that at no time in the FBI is anyone directing an actual investigation of the content of the Clinton emails. Every single second of every effort is devoted to shaping the public perception of the need for the investigation. Every media outlet is being watched; every article is being read; and the entire apparatus of the small group is shaping coverage therein by contacting their leak outlets.

Michael Horowitz: FBI Agent Peter Strzok walks like a biased duck… looks like a biased duck… sounds like a biased duck… has all the same characteristics of a biased duck… and took the exact action a biased duck would take; therefore “We do not have confidence” FBI Agent Peter Strzok is not a biased duck.

[…] when one senior FBI official, Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, Page, that “we’ll stop” candidate Trump from being elected—after other extensive text messages between the two disparaging candidate Trump—it is 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. Moreover, as we describe in Chapter Nine, in assessing Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop in October 2016, these text messages led us to conclude that we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision was free from bias. (p.420)

Christopher Wray: “I take these findings seriously, and we accept these findings and recommendations.” … “This report did not find any evidence of political bias or improper considerations actually impacting the investigation under review.”

This is the infuriating part.  Think about this carefully.  This is not some arbitrary irrelevant institution within the bureaucracy of government.  The FBI is the “premier” law enforcement investigative apparatus within the entirety of the United States homeland security apparatus.  We rely upon the FBI’s investigative skills, training and application of common sense as they carry out their official responsibilities.

In essence the FBI has the primary responsibility for ensuring the internal safety and security of Americans through a process of evaluating evidence and threats; and more importantly taking action on clear evidence of those threats to avoid public safety issues.

Yet, the most important investigative body; within the system of U.S. law and order; cannot identify, admit, accept and take action upon a clear and present threat within its own organizational ranks. A political bias that is transparently obvious to the rest of America.

Allow me to put the IG/DOJ/FBI principle, at the heart of the matter, another way…

…It looks like a terrorist;  it acts like a terrorist; it communicates like a terrorist; it behaves in the same manner a terrorist would behave; it carries an exploding vest; it is heading to an event where a large number of people are gathered;….we do not have confidence it is not a terrorist – and yet, the FBI takes no action.

All of a sudden,… with specific thanks to the clear inability of the FBI to apply common sense as outlined within the IG report on politicization inside the FBI:  The Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, Orlando Pulse Nightclub, Las Vegas Mandalay Bay and Broward County Parkland School massacres take on a transparent outlook. 

Additionally, the popular talking point presented by those who defend the DOJ and FBI is about how the “rank and file” shouldn’t be blamed for the politicization and corrupt behavior of the senior DOJ and FBI leadership.

Oh really?

Well, lets take a look at the “Rank and File”:

On August 29, 2016, Agent 1 and Agent 5 exchanged the following instant messages as part of a discussion about their jobs. The sender of each message is noted after the timestamp.

• 10:39:49, Agent 1: “I find anyone who enjoys [this job] an absolute fucking idiot. If you dont think so, ask them one more question. Who are you voting for? I guarantee you it will be Donald Drumpf.”
• 10:40:13, Agent 5: “i forgot about drumpf…”
• 10:40:27, Agent 5: “that’s so sad and pathetic if they want to vote for him.”
• 10:40:43, Agent 5: “someone who can’t answer a question”
• 10:40:51, Agent 5: “someone who can’t be professional for even a second”

On September 9, 2016, Agent 1 and Agent 5 exchanged the following instant messages.

• 08:56:43, Agent 5: “i’m trying to think of a ‘would i rather’ instead of spending time with those people”
• 08:56:54, Agent 1: “stick your tongue in a fan??”
• 08:56:58, Agent 5: “i would rather have brunch with trump”
• 08:57:03, Agent 1: “ha”
• 08:57:15, Agent 1: “french toast with drumpf”
• 08:57:19, Agent 5: “i would rather have brunch with trump and a bunch of his supporters like the ones from ohio that are retarded”
• 08:57:23, Agent 5: “:)”

November 9, 2016, the day after the presidential election. FBI Attorney 2 and another FBI employee who was not involved in the Midyear investigation exchanged the following instant messages

09:38:14, FBI Attorney 2: “I am numb.”

09:55:35, FBI Employee: “I can’t stop crying.”

10:00:13, FBI Attorney 2: “That makes me even more sad.”

10:43:20, FBI Employee: “Like, what happened?”

10:43:37, FBI Employee: “You promised me this wouldn’t happen. YOU PROMISED.”

10:43:43, FBI Employee: Okay, that might have been a lie…”

10:43:46, FBI Employee: “I’m very upset.”

10:43:47, FBI Employee: “haha”

10:51:48, FBI Attorney 2: “I am so stressed about what I could have done differently.”

10:54:29, FBI Employee: “Don’t stress. None of that mattered.”

10:54:31, FBI Employee: “The FBI’s influence.”

10:59:36, FBI Attorney 2: “I don’t know. We broke the momentum.”

11:00:03, FBI Employee: “That is not so.”

11:02:22, FBI Employee: “All the people who were initially voting for her would not, and were not, swayed by any decision the FBI put out. Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS that think he will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing. They probably didn’t watch the debates, aren’t fully educated on his policies, and are stupidly wrapped up in his unmerited enthusiasm.”

11:11:43, FBI Attorney 2: “I’m just devastated. I can’t wait until I can leave today and just shut off the world for the next four days.”

11:12:06, FBI Employee: “Why are you devastated?”

11:12:18, FBI Employee: “Yes, I’m not watching tv for four years.”

11:14:16, FBI Attorney 2: “I just can’t imagine the systematic disassembly of the progress we made over the last 8 years. ACA is gone. Who knows if the rhetoric about deporting people, walls, and crap is true. I honestly feel like there is going to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally. This is the tea party on steroids. And the GOP is going to be lost, they have to deal with an incumbent in 4 years. We have to fight this again. Also Pence is stupid.”

That’s the rank and file, reflecting how the rank and file feel about us.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/381806566/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-4WfKaOih0Xm7EA7gdK93

On Page Xii of the IG report the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ-OIG) highlights numerous FBI officials who accepted bribes from multiple media outlets including: “tickets to sporting events”, “golf outings”, “drinks and meals” as well as exclusive invitations and admission to “nonpublic social events”.

The OIG investigative finding was disturbing enough to launch a separate set of investigations that will be included in follow-up reports.

IG REPORT – We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.

In addition, we identified instances where FBI employees improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events. We will separately report on those investigations as they are concluded, consistent with the Inspector General Act, other applicable federal statutes, and OIG policy.

The harm caused by leaks, fear of potential leaks, and a culture of unauthorized media contacts is illustrated in Chapters Ten and Eleven of our report, where we detail the fact that these issues influenced FBI officials who were advising Comey on consequential investigative decisions in October 2016.

[…] We do not believe the problem is with the FBI’s policy, which we found to be clear and unambiguous. Rather, we concluded that these leaks highlight the need to change what appears to be a cultural attitude among many in the organization.  (link to pdf – page Xii of executive summary)

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/381806566/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-4WfKaOih0Xm7EA7gdK93

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