United States Attorney John Durham’s criminal investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation is reportedly taking a close look at former CIA Director John Brennan.
Durham has “requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on his inquiry,” The New York Times reported. “He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.’s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates.”
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That would be great except I’m sure the CIA will clean it up, delete anything necessary to keep Brennan in the clear. He’s one of my worst hated. He’s such an arrogant ass.
Hopefully one or both of these crooks can be indicted, but they are slippery folks, it comes down to how well and how consistently they kept their tracks covered.
Barr fires back at Comey: FBI’s “unexplained misconduct” can’t be explained away as mistakes
“There are episodes there that simply cannot be squared with innocent mistakes.”
Barr states that he has actually “reached no determination” on what drove the FBI’s improper actions in Operation Crossfire Hurricane, but that the totality of all instances of “serious misconduct” doesn’t suggest an accidental nature:
MACCALLUM: Jim Comey spoke with Chris Wallace and he said that the 17 mistakes and omissions that were uncovered in the FISA process, he attributed it to sloppiness largely. What do you say to that?
BARR: I think there’s some of them very hard to square with the idea that these were just mistakes and sloppiness. I have said that a number of these episodes leave open the possibility of inferring bad faith or improper motive. But I hasten to add that, as I’ve said all along, that I’ve reached no determination on that, nor do I think a final determination on that is appropriate until all the evidence is there. Horowitz pretty well summed it up, which is this could be on the one hand, at the very least, gross incompetence. On the other hand, it could also be improper motive, and he was not in a position to make that call. And that’s why we have the US attorney, John Durham, looking into this.
BARR: I think there are episodes there that simply cannot be squared with innocent mistakes. And I think people have to come to terms with that.
“People,” in this case, includes James Comey himself. Comey didn’t appear inclined to do so in his own interview with Wallace, even when Wallace made it clear that he was very skeptical that these were just innocent mistakes, too. Wallace reminded Comey that at least
one “mistake” had resulted in a criminal referral for potential perjury — Kevin Clinesmith’s doctoring of e-mail to hide Carter Page’s true status with the CIA — which Comey had sloughed off as “not been resolved.” That’s a pretty glib response over manufactured evidence in a spy case from the man in charge of the bureau that ran it.
Speaking of spying, Barr had a rebuttal to Comey’s refusal to admit to it. Barr also took aim at Comey for trying to use the whole FBI as a shield against criticism of his own leadership, too:
MACCALLUM: Yeah, and I want to ask you about that in a moment. Are you surprised that James Comey is so convinced himself that all of this was completely above board? He came out and said there’s no spying at all on the president.
BARR: The IG report and the recent letter from the FISA court pulls the rug out from under that analysis. There was serious misconduct, as the court itself has said. And one of the things that I object to is the tact being taken by Comey, which is to suggest that people who are criticizing or trying to get to the bottom of the misconduct are somehow attacking the FBI. I think that’s nonsense. We’re criticizing and concerned about misconduct by a few actors at the top of the FBI, and they should be criticized if they engaged in serious misconduct. That doesn’t mean we’re criticizing the FBI, and I think the tact of trying to wrap yourself in the institution and say, gee, people who are criticizing the decisions I made are attacking the institution. I noticed people feel free to criticize me. And I don’t say, gee, you’re attacking the honest men and women of the Department of Justice. I think leaders, you know, have to own their decisions and are fair game if they make bad decisions.
That point is especially well taken. The FBI has thousands of thoughtful men and women trying to do the best they can to enforce the law and protect the country. They probably don’t appreciate it when a few who abused their authority, and broke the law, and violate the rights of American citizens to potentially play politics use them as human shields against accountability.
So who gets the last word?
John Durham. When that comes, expect James Comey to get a sudden case of laryngitis.
