OT: AG Report Is Out
- Thread starter FLaw47
- Start date
Dude. You have to give Foxnews a few minutes to spin this... THEN Trump and Hannety need a few more minutes to get the message out telling the Trumpians what to think on the matter. These things take time.
Fair point, gotta give them time to all get on the same page.
Yep, picture in your mind... Hannety in a Jedi robe on his set tonight. He waves his hand in front of the camera and says "These are not the droids you are looking for. The IG is obviously part of the deep state too. Move along". Then we'll be in business.
Obviously, you haven't read the thing, so you tell me what's in the IG report. Your thread.
Thank you sir for giving me the thread. Of course I haven't read the whole thing. It's 500 pages long. I doubt that I'll ever read it. HOWEVER, before I posted above, I DID read the executive summary. At a mere 12 pages, It was a fast read. I think that the most interest here on the board (and certainly by you @orangelvis ) is the whole issue of the Clinton Email investigation and the investigation into Trump. Namely you think that there was some government conspiracy to help Hillary and Damage Trump. I'm cutting and pasting the conclusions of the IG on the Clinton email probe or the Midyear Investigation as is was referred to in the report.
The usual caviots: 1. I used FoxNews download the report. I made the assumption that the .pdf was accurate. 2. In the report's text just above the quoted material, the report was discussing the text messages between FBI agents, saying they were going to stop Trump. The IG reports that the investigators were very concerned about those messages This is for context, which is an important thing 3. I'm no Trump fan at all.
Conclusions:
"There were clearly tensions and disagreements in a number of important areas between Midyear agents and prosecutors. However, we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed in Chapter Five, or that the justifications offered for these decisions were pretextual.
Nonetheless, these messages cast a cloud over the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation and the investigation’s credibility. But our review did not find evidence to connect the political views expressed in these messages to the specific investigative decisions that we reviewed; rather, consistent with the analytic approach described above, we found that these specific decisions were the result of discretionary judgments made during the course of an investigation by the Midyear agents and prosecutors and that these judgment calls were not unreasonable. The broader impact of these text and instant messages, including on such matters as the public perception of the FBI and the Midyear investigation, are discussed in Chapter Twelve of our report."
And there you are sir. NO POLITICAL BIAS. NO DEEP STATE. Trump is full of crap on ALL of these accusations. Just as I predicted the whole time.
This is not to say that the FBI was without fault, but reading through the executive summary, it seemed that Mueller did a hell of a lot more to help Trump than Clinton (no that I think he meant to do either).
Those are the CONCLUSIONS that the IG drew. Now I'm sure that folks on both sides are going to cherry pick stuff to suit their argument. But the above are the quoted conclusions of the IG on the part of the report we were most concerned about.
Hopefully, you Trumpians have been told what to think by now (see close to the top of this thread for the imagined methodology). So I'm going to let someone tell us how the IG is all wrong and Trump is once again walking on water while all these other folks are "out to get him".
Nobody tells me what to think. Like I said earlier today, this is the first day of the revealing and nothing major was happen today. The IG is not a prosecutor. He can't make judgments about intent. He can only report on documents and testimony. The report was actually more damning than I thought it would be, at least the little I've read of it; considering that Rosenstein has had it for the last month. Still frustrating that parts are redacted; especially names of employees, etc. Don't be patting yourself on the back...lol The report covers a lot of stuff. There is only a few key things that I'm interested in and will be pertinent to the Trump/collusion investigation.
Cool, let us know what those bad things are. I've never made a claim that the report was going to have anything damaging in it, you have. It's not my responsibility to point to all the sections that don't suggest there's a deep state. If there are deep state items please feel free to point them out.
Hahaha. It's not my responsibility to convert you. The report just came out hours ago. There will be a hearing on Tuesday I think. Don't worry, I'll be pointing out plenty as everything is read and digested. The dems are the ones that are taking a victory lap over the Executive Summary, which has little to do with the evidence within each section.
The summary is written in legal ease. "Documentary or TEstimonial evidence". Within the scope of what an IG can actually do, this can simply mean, and I'm being simplistic: I didn't find any campaign material, campaign posters, etc and no one stated that they used a political bias when asked.
I've already seen, within some of the pertinent sections, where the IG states that he cannot rule out political bias for the specific incident.
Why don't you just give it a day or two and we'll see...or not. Chuck Shumer and a hoard of other dems are all over tv claiming that the report proves that Comey gave the election to Trump lol.
They are basically saying all the staff including Comey himself and the many others were just bad at their job, insubordinate and made multiple connected bad decisions, but that it was not with political or criminal intent. They just suck at their job...LOL. The IG like orangelvis said is limited in what assumptions they can make on intent. To me as a person watching this entire fiasco, the intent is plain as the nose on anyones face. The DOJ/FBI was turned into the KGB soft by Obama and they were turned loose to protect Hillary and to destroy Trump. If Hillary won as they all thought, this information would have never seen the light of day. It also may have never seen the light of day if they didnt go after Trump still after the election, but the deep state doubled down and decided to do a coup de tat and remove Trump that is still in progress, but that will fail.
Worst case scenario for Trump is democrats take control of the house and impeach him. The senate will not convict him even if it happens unless enough never trumper republican senators decide to turncoat and make enough numbers to convict and remove him from office. I can only see him being impeached at worst, but not removed.
Best case scenario for Trump is the republicans keep the house and the senate and he continues his epic roll of success for the USA and the special counsel flames out like it rightfully should.
This is IG report part two though with more on the way. Horowitz is investigating spygate now. I am not sure he can investigate the CIA counterintelligence part of it though and thats where a good bit of the law breaking went on toward the Trump campaign.
On a final note, what is up with Jeff Sessions? He is basically a figurehead at this point. The deep state must have some serious dirt for him to be acting like he is.
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Obviously someone is taking their talking points from FoxNews. As @orangelvis points out, I was surprised by some of the things the IG report points out as well... namely that Comey made bad decisions and was insubordinate.
If you read the executive summary, you know that they questioned his decision to publicly announce the closing of the Clinton email case AND his decision to send a letter to congress/announce that the case was reopened. The IG is correct. Both these decisions violated FBI policy. Comey SAID that he didn't think any decision to close the Clinton case by the DOJ (lead by Democratic AG Lynch... would be considered a legitimate one by Republicans...and tell me you guys wouldn't have gone ballistic over it). The IG said he should have followed policy b/c there was no evidence that Lynch was politically biased. It's also important to note that the IG report vindicates the decision to close the case AND the DOJ decision (the next day) to not prosecute Clinton.
Rinse and repeat for the reopening of the Clinton case. He should NEVER have made that decision to send the letter to congress and speak publicly about reopening the case w/o vetting it with the DOJ. A process that would have lasted until past the election. Comey again sites the belief that if he had followed policy and gone through the DOJ process people would have thought that the FBI "sat" on the info until after the election. The IG didn't buy that. They said (again that he should have followed protocol and his failure to do so was insubordination).
I agree that the IG report can't completely know everyone's intent. And you are correct. BUT apparently you and Orangelvis (and FoxNews) can. You fully believe that a bunch of FBI/DOJ/CIA/ and probably now IG people all are conspiring against Trump and have the intent undermine him. Without any evidence, you just know.
Again, the IG report says that based on the ACTIONS of the people involved, there's no evidence of bias.
You are the one that is taking a single point from the Executive Summary and painting the whole document with it. There are other "points" in the Summary that contradict your point. The Summary is an Orwellian pile of contradictions that allows the writer to take both sides. The absolute proof is in the body of the document.
If you were really interested in the truth, you wouldn't be spouting all of this CNN tripe without looking for yourself, but that would be too demanding for someone who's mind is already sealed and delivered.
I've already seen plenty of evidnce of what I and millions of others feared all along, and that is that the Obama Admin is guilty of trying to turn this country into a banana republic. That's right! Thanks to this report, we now know that Obama knew about the server and was communicating with Hillary over the server knowingly. We now know information regarding regarding the Strzok/Page texts that Rosenstein has been unconstitutionally hiding from Congress. The "No, no. He won't. We will stop him" text.
We know that 12 or more high level FBI people were taking gifts from MSM reporters, including Dinners, driinks, and sporting event tickets. I can assure you Fox News was NOT any of these reporters. I can go on and on here, but it really won't make any difference to the weak-minded, who don't care about the Constitution, the rule of law or equal application of the law.
There's no way to have an honest discussion with people who are obviously sold out to a socio-facist ideology and only spew the propagandist msm talking points. The msm is full of former alt-leftist who leave their gov't jobs and are immediately become media employees.
Whether you believe there was bias or not matters not to me. People involved will go to jail. McCabe is already indicted and looking for immunity to testify. 28 rank and file FBI agents are literally begging for subpoenas to testify against their former bosses and John Huber has been quietly operating behind the scenes for 8 months.
I saw you mention a lot of evidence without providing it again. Seems like you have a shtick!!
No. Seems like you are too lazy to look into the other 480 pages of the report to see the truth. Everything I said is in the report. Seems like you are LARPing as a genuinely interested American!!!!
You have to know that Obama said; at the time, that he didn't know about Hillary's illegal server. Said he learned about it when it came out in the press. The Report absolutely contradicts that.
In an August 2016 email exchange between Strzok and Page. Page texts Strzok asking: " He can't win, can he? CAN HE?? Strzoks reply to this has been redacted from Congressional subpoenaed documents. Yesterday was the first time that text was seen by anybody. So we know that Rosenstein has been obstructing congress. We've known that anyway, but you probably didn't because CNN doesn't talk about real things. Obviuously, Trump had every reason to fire Comey, so the bullsh!t obstruction is no more. What I've said in previous threads, how did the Russia collusion probe actually start and when, looks extremely shaky for the antifa lovers, also.
Thinking people are seeing that the Obama/Hillary admin was MUCH more dangerous to our election and constitution than Russia could ever hope to be. The FBI sitting on the Weiner server for 6 weeks was more or attributed to bias by the report and that shoots Chuck Shumer squarely in the ass in his assertion that Comey gave the election to Trump. It's spin! The truth is, they were trying to sit on it until after the election, but the NY prosecutors forced Comey to cover HIS ass by writing the letter to Congress. Did you not read it? Why? Apparently, you're the one with the shtick. But, you're not really interested, are you. Had me fooled for a few exchanges. You're just LARPing.
JOHN HUBER...remember that name
Like I said, the report reaches the conclusion that there is NO EVIDENCE of political bias at the FBI or DOJ. Sure, you can go into the report and cherry pick points all day (both sides of the aisle are doing that right now).
Because Orange, you seem to be saying that the report contains evidence of the "deep state" but the IG ignored that and said that there was no political bias in the executive summary? So the executive summary is not a summary of the report? I was under the impression that an executive summary.... well kind of took all the information in the report... and drew conclusions from all that evidence and detail. The CONCLUSION from those 480 pages is that there is no evidence of political bias. Unless the IG is now part of your deep state? Here's one of your MANY quotes on the subject:
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Almost ruined my computer when I saw Shep Smith. Lol. Hey pal, just sit back and watch what's gonna happen in a couple of weeks. So, you don't believe that Obama's DOJ/FBI/CIA/NSA conspired to let Hillary off the hook and then conspired before and after the election to harm Trump? Conspiracy? You need to get out more. Tell you what. I think the IG report will be out in a couple weeks; we'll see, won't we? I'm not a betting man; never have been, but I'm tempted to bet anyone who wants, that some of these people are going to jail.
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We do see... Good thing you didn't bet the house, because the IG report (the report that YOU been siting for months, saying that all this deep state stuff was going to come out) says that there was NO EVIDENCE OF POLITICAL BIAS.
Because Orange, you seem to be saying that the report contains evidence of the "deep state" but the IG ignored that and said that there was no political bias in the executive summary? So the executive summary is not a summary of the report? I was under the impression that an executive summary.... well kind of took all the information in the report... and drew conclusions from all that evidence and detail. The CONCLUSION from those 480 pages is that there is no evidence of political bias. Unless the IG is now part of your deep state? Here's one of your MANY quotes on the subject:
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Almost ruined my computer when I saw Shep Smith. Lol. Hey pal, just sit back and watch what's gonna happen in a couple of weeks. So, you don't believe that Obama's DOJ/FBI/CIA/NSA conspired to let Hillary off the hook and then conspired before and after the election to harm Trump? Conspiracy? You need to get out more. Tell you what. I think the IG report will be out in a couple weeks; we'll see, won't we? I'm not a betting man; never have been, but I'm tempted to bet anyone who wants, that some of these people are going to jail.
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We do see... Good thing you didn't bet the house, because the IG report (the report that YOU been siting for months, saying that all this deep state stuff was going to come out) says that there was NO EVIDENCE OF POLITICAL BIAS.
Sorry, you're wrong on all points. You don't understand 1. what the IG role is. 2. What's important in the report. 3. The IG conclusions mean nothing when it comes to intent of bias. 4. People will go to jail. 4. McCabe already indicted and looking for immunity to testify..FACT!. 5> Not my job to educate you. 5. The IG is NOT a prosecutor, just a rules and procedures internal guy; much like the HR guy of a corp.
again...JOHN HUBER....educate yourself on who this is
Sure man...The conclusions of the IG report are all wrong... The IG report surely made a big deal of political bias, but it means nothing. Got it.
You need to read the entire Summary. You're the one nitpicking it. I think the IG did the best job he could. He is not the final arbiter of what went on. His report was much more important for the new information it contained and not so much what his opinion is. That's where YOU are being misled by CNN, Shumer, Pelosi and all the other alt-leftist.
Don't worry...Be Happy
Even the WaPo online is admitting something to the effect that other than Comey, other high ranking FBI officials were willing to take action to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. Stay Tuned
out and about...it's titled "5 takaways from the....." Of course most of the rest is slanted bs and not unsubstantiated opinion.
Ok, so here are the 5 takeaways:
The report criticizes Comey for public disclosures (He shouldn't have been talking about the Clinton campaign, this helped Trump)
The report also accuses Comey of insubordination (He shouldn't have made public addresses without coordinating with DOJ, this helped Trump)
The report validates the result of the Clinton email investigation (Says that deciding not to charge was fine)
The report slams individual agents' biases (This what I assume you're talking about. I don't think anyone has contested that specific people had biases but they have contested if those biases affected their ability to do their job. IG report said no.)
The report arms supporters of Trump and Clinton with new ammunition (Report can be cherry picked to sell a narrative, which you've done).
I think it's rich that the part you agree with is legit and the rest of "slanted bs". Seems kind of hypocritical to me.
Theres absolutely no way Clinton did not break the law. Comey basically made it impossible to reopen the case as he gave everyone involved immunity and allowed them to destroy evidence.
So Comey destroyed evidence and gave everyone involved immunity, yet none of this is mentioned in the IG report? Mmmm it would seem to me that this would definitely be "political bias", yet the non partisan IG report simply ignores that part. OK.
This sounds as legit as Trump saying to FoxNews that the IG report completely exonerated him in the Russian investigation, when the IG report doesn't examine that at all.
Clinton staff destroyed the evidence. Acid wash and bleach pit on the hard drives and hammer destroyed phones. Comey and his stooges just allowed it complicitly...Its a fact. BTW...Fox News is the reliable news source out there compared to the others.
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I'm not an alt-leftist and I have no use for Pelosi at all. I listen to FoxNews and CNN and then I look stuff up. I simply call bullshit when one man (who is a known liar and conspiracy theorist) starts trashing whole institutions' leadership and people who've spent their whole careers working for justice. Both sides are picking their talking points and there's plenty of ammo for both sides. BUT, it's not nitpicking the summary (Which I have indeed read) to say that the IG found no evidence of political bias at the FBI or the DOJ for ANY of the issues they were investigating.
The major flaw with your argument is that they did nothing to prevent trump from being elected. None of the collusion was leaked. Comey did, however, totally destroy Clinton’s campaign, which even Trump himself has admitted in an effort to avoid obstruction of justice.
Hillary was going to lose no matter what...deal with it. Her big butt was dirt no matter what the lying pollsters were trying to sell us. They were never worried enough about Trump to act on what they were cooking up. The reopening of the Hillary investigation was a CYA for them for after Hillary's inevitable victory that they saw coming. Hillary was going to lose no matter what in reality. Now the NBC Access Hollywood tape that was released shortly before the election was supposed to be the kill shot, but Trump could not and still cannot be stopped. He is a force of nature for the American dream.
Why did the FBI sit on the Weiner laptop for 6 weeks? I believe they were trying to sit on it through the election, Hillary wins, and nobody ever knows!! Why did Comey, at the last minute, Reopen Investigation---two days later exonerate her again! Think the FBI read all of those 30K emails in two days? Comey had no choice but to reopen after the Southern District NY prosecutors emailed saying they were going to release it to the press. Comey had already sworn under oath to Congress that there were no more devices nor emails unaccounted for. If he hadn't reopened, he would be vulnerable once the time line was exposed.
I would simply state that Hillary destroyed her own campaign. If not for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the country wouldn't be in this mess. I don't say this lightly and I'm not gloating, because I love our country and I really hate the deep, stark division we're in. IT'S NOT OVER. Hillary Clinton will soon be the destruction of many dems and repubs.
Strzok plainly stated in text that he would stop Trump. Recently, we've been hearing stuff about a spy; is it a spy...is it not a spy...etc. I am beyond confident that it will be proven that Pappadop, Page were set up by foreign plants, spies, whatever... with the idea that the Russians had Clinton Emails...then other foreign actors extracted the info and then Strzok went to England to get it . He came back and started the Russian Collusion investigation.
Ok. you read the other 480 something pages and you don't see any bias. Got it.
Stay tuned....JOHN HUBER...
You and I would probably say that the other is biased. You think I'm biased; I think you're biased, right? Truthfully, we would both be correct in saying so, right? Let's say for instance, that because I know you have voted for a candidate that I vehemently disagree with, I call you a "low rent, uneducated, stupid POS". Would you not chalk that up to me being biased? If you actually read the other 480 pages, it's as clear as day. Not one individual cited in this report says anything positive about Trump. ALL individuals, who have emails, texts, etc; cited in the report are BIASED against Trump and are PRO Hillary. Read it. I dare you.
If you think the IG's conclusions are irrelevant then you are way out of your depth here. The OIG makes referrals to the appropriate prosecutorial office based on its findings. In this case it is not going to make referrals to a US Attorney solely for personal bias reflected in text messages without meeting a standard of proof that some sort of federal crime was committed. The OIG can also make referrals to the DOJ-OPR for noncriminal administrative misconduct. In either circumstance, the standard is extremely low for the OIG to make referrals. If you have heard the phrase "a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich," then think even lower than that. If the OIG doesn't make a referral then it means there is nothing there. While there is circumstantial evidence that Strzok did not act impartially in his duties, the OIG has determined that a text is not enough proof in itself that the decisions of the agency were tainted by a handful of agents' personal animus toward the president. Causation is the key issue here, not intent. And I will put out there that the OIG is infinitely more qualified to make this determination than anyone you listen to or read in the media. If you think this thing legitimately has legs after the report then you have an incomplete understanding of how the system works.
Respectfully, what are your qualifications to tell us anything related to this other than it being your opinion? We have some heavy hitters with huge documented backgrounds in federal law enforcement on Fox saying otherwise. This sounds like your opinion to me and everyone has one. We can watch all the cable networks and watch two heavily educated people sit right beside each other and disagree over virtually anything. My opinion is the Obama police state tried to drop the hammer on Trump and are still at work currently.
It’s based on an objective understanding of how internal investigations by the OIG within the DOJ function. It’s also based on an understanding of the elements of any crime and the burden of proof that is required for any investigation within the DOJ to progress. I have a professional doctorate and years of experience in administrative law to back up my statements, not that it matters in an anonymous public forum. Tell me, what crime are these experts claiming has been violated, as well as what facts are available proving the causation element of any obstruction of justice and RICO statutes? The OIG refers matters to a US Attorney if the facts tend to meet its very low standard of proof (see McCabe). That’s not the case here. I wouldn’t weigh in this way on a topic on which I didn’t have some expertise.
Ok...then answer these questions based on your expertise.
1- Did President Trump commit obstruction of justice even if there turns out to be no underlying crime to obstruct?
2- Did Hillary break any laws in reality?
3- Did FBI handle Hillary investigation by the book and properly?
4- Was the methodology by which FISC warrants were obtained proper and legal?
5 - Was the counter intelligence investigation launched against Trump campaign proper and legal?
6 - Finally............how do you think this whole thing comes out?
If you feel like answering all of this........Thanks in advance!
I will try but I can’t give a completely informed answer to all of those questions. I am not privy to all of the pertinent facts in every instance you are referring to. And I think it’s important that everyone understands that the public can’t really make an informed prediction on any criminal investigation because we don’t get all of the facts, and the media generally does a very poor job of illustrating the important facts and explaining how they tie into the relevant law regarding a criminal investigation.
1. I would suggest you read the actual statutory language of the obstruction of justice statutes. They don’t require that anyone must be found guilty of an underlying crime for the statutes to apply. In fact, if you think about it, that would be absurd. If someone were able to successfully obstruct the prosecution of a crime then they would always be immune to prosecution for obstruction of justice, as there would be no underlying crime for them to obstruct. That sort of interpretation would totally defeat the purpose of the statutes. It is the interference itself that is criminal, whether the investigation leads to a conviction or not. Which begs the question of why anyone would interfere with an investigation if they were innocent. The innocent mind typically doesn’t seek to obfuscate the truth.
2. Here is the thing. It’s not up to the court of public opinion to determine if someone broke laws. That responsibility lies solely with an impaneled jury with all of the facts and arguments before them. The FBI decided not to refer the matter to the US Attorney because it determined that the facts did not support a conclusion that she or her staff acted with gross negligence with regard to the custody of her emails. I can guarantee you that not a single layperson in this country has a good idea of what the gross negligence standard is, and most experts don’t. Gross negligence is inherently nebulous. The only thing you can go on is that the FBI decided it didn’t meet this standard and chose not to refer the matter for prosecution.
3. I can’t weigh in on this. And neither can any talking head if they are being honest. The only entity that could is the OIG. The OIG has stated that any agency discretion with regards to that investigation was proper. Every government officer has personal opinions. That doesn’t mean that they can’t objectively carry out their duties. It doesn’t become bias unless it affects decision making, which the OIG determined wasn’t the case. We don’t have access to the complete story that the OIG has access to, so I will defer to its decision.
4. The public has zero clue what goes in the FISA courts, so I can’t weigh in. It really is a black box, so if you have an innate distrust of the judiciary, you will cry foul. I trust the judicial system, and I am in a position to trust it based on my education and experience. It doesn’t mean you have to. I won’t play politics with the impartiality of our judiciary. This would probably surprise you, but the most liberal and conservative members of the Supreme Court agree about 60% of the time. Our judiciary isn’t tainted with politics and activism like the media would like to lead you to believe.
5. I think anytime there is evidence that a foreign entity has interfered with the political processes of our democracy, it has to be looked at with a microscope. The innocent will be vindicated.
6. How do I think this whole thing turns out? Trump serves the rest of his term. No impeachment. But that’s just what I think. I don’t have access to all of the facts, and Mueller’s team isn’t going to jeopardize a case they have been carefully building by leaking to the media. The thing is that the populace, including both of us, doesn’t have access to all of the factual developments that Mueller’s team has. I will say that from a strategic standpoint, Trump’s legal team does him no favors and should try to be more transparent. The innocent have nothing to hide.
1. I would suggest you read the actual statutory language of the obstruction of justice statutes. They don’t require that anyone must be found guilty of an underlying crime for the statutes to apply. In fact, if you think about it, that would be absurd. If someone were able to successfully obstruct the prosecution of a crime then they would always be immune to prosecution for obstruction of justice, as there would be no underlying crime for them to obstruct. That sort of interpretation would totally defeat the purpose of the statutes. It is the interference itself that is criminal, whether the investigation leads to a conviction or not. Which begs the question of why anyone would interfere with an investigation if they were innocent. The innocent mind typically doesn’t seek to obfuscate the truth.
2. Here is the thing. It’s not up to the court of public opinion to determine if someone broke laws. That responsibility lies solely with an impaneled jury with all of the facts and arguments before them. The FBI decided not to refer the matter to the US Attorney because it determined that the facts did not support a conclusion that she or her staff acted with gross negligence with regard to the custody of her emails. I can guarantee you that not a single layperson in this country has a good idea of what the gross negligence standard is, and most experts don’t. Gross negligence is inherently nebulous. The only thing you can go on is that the FBI decided it didn’t meet this standard and chose not to refer the matter for prosecution.
3. I can’t weigh in on this. And neither can any talking head if they are being honest. The only entity that could is the OIG. The OIG has stated that any agency discretion with regards to that investigation was proper. Every government officer has personal opinions. That doesn’t mean that they can’t objectively carry out their duties. It doesn’t become bias unless it affects decision making, which the OIG determined wasn’t the case. We don’t have access to the complete story that the OIG has access to, so I will defer to its decision.
4. The public has zero clue what goes in the FISA courts, so I can’t weigh in. It really is a black box, so if you have an innate distrust of the judiciary, you will cry foul. I trust the judicial system, and I am in a position to trust it based on my education and experience. It doesn’t mean you have to. I won’t play politics with the impartiality of our judiciary. This would probably surprise you, but the most liberal and conservative members of the Supreme Court agree about 60% of the time. Our judiciary isn’t tainted with politics and activism like the media would like to lead you to believe.
5. I think anytime there is evidence that a foreign entity has interfered with the political processes of our democracy, it has to be looked at with a microscope. The innocent will be vindicated.
6. How do I think this whole thing turns out? Trump serves the rest of his term. No impeachment. But that’s just what I think. I don’t have access to all of the facts, and Mueller’s team isn’t going to jeopardize a case they have been carefully building by leaking to the media. The thing is that the populace, including both of us, doesn’t have access to all of the factual developments that Mueller’s team has. I will say that from a strategic standpoint, Trump’s legal team does him no favors and should try to be more transparent. The innocent have nothing to hide.
Interesting viewpoint. I take it that you do have more faith in the system than some of us including me might. Based on your feedback, it sounds like you could be more in line with Trey Gowdy's opinion for instance. I still think a few rotten crooks at the top spoiled the bushel on this one. The devil is in the details and I still think the fix was in to get Trump. I want it though to be equitably settled for the sake of the country. The end goal for all of us is for the US to be the best and most successful country on the planet with opportunities for success and happiness for all. If Mueller comes for Trump, it better be iron clad and it better be related to any potential Russian interference in the election. If he comes out and tries to charge him with obstruction for firing Comey or some other unrelated crime from way back based on all the data they took from Cohen storm trooper style, then I and millions of other Trump supporters in this country will let it be known that its not right and will not stand. Time will tell.....hope they end this one way or another soon.
Actually, I generally would agree with your statements above. You, obviously don't realize, that in this case, there is the added presence of a gentleman by the name of John Huber, who was appointed by Sessions back in October. You should familiarize yourself with this if you are truly interested in what is going on and what will be going on. Also, Rosenstein has had the Report for the last month before it was disclosed. He is obviously the one who redacted names, etc. I wouldn't put it past Rosenstein to change anything he wanted to change within the document.
The IG testimony to Congress on Tuesday could be very interesting. We'll see.
Just read where you were/are an admin. law judge. I had dealings with one in Columbia back some 20 years ago. Had a business that brokered contractors within a certain industry. The state unemployment,security people tried to say that these contractors should be reclassified as employees. I was very familiar with "IRS 20 Questions" obviously, as I had to be sure I met them before beginning my business. This ALJ, after seeing all documentation, interviewing me, my office folks, and a few contractors, wrote a report and critiqued each of the 20 Questions with an Executive Conclusion at the end. For each of the individual questions, he stated that I passed the test. His Summary, however, stated that although I seemingly passed each question individually, as a whole, his opinion is that these people should be employees. How can 2+2+2+2 not equal 8 ? was my response. Finally, my lawyer got him and the commission people to defer to whatever the IRS determined.
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As far point number 3.
The FBI works under the authority of the DOJ; at least that's how I understand it. If the DOJ calls and demands that the FBI stop referring to the proceedings as an "investigation" and call it a "matter", would that lift the burden, so to speak from the FBI to properly follow procedures, rules etc? Also, what threshold would have to met for an IG to state that 'bias" was used in an investigation. Aren't these things mostly subjective and totally dependent upon the "bias", if you will, of the IG?
