Russiagate Lives!

There's just a couple stories, but a fair number of links.

Whoda thunk, the FBI cheats and doesn't do its best work when no one is bothering to check? Wave the national security flag, and the judges just give you permission to spy on anybody. Well, AG Horowitz checked. WaPoo, Problems with FBI surveillance extended far beyond probe of Trump campaign, Justice Dept. inspector general says

The Justice Department inspector general revealed Tuesday that his investigators found errors in every FBI application to a secret surveillance court examined as part of an ongoing review — suggesting that problems exposed in the bureau’s probe of President Trump’s 2016 campaign extend far beyond that case alone.

The memorandum issued by Inspector General Michael Horowitz stems from an audit launched last year after his office found 17 serious problems with the FBI’s surveillance applications targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. These interim results seem to indicate that other sensitive counterintelligence and counterterrorism cases have been similarly plagued by mistakes.

Trump has long decried the FBI investigation of him and his campaign’s contacts with Russians as a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at wrecking his candidacy and his presidency, and he and his supporters are likely to embrace the new revelations as further evidence of wrongdoing among former FBI leaders.

Tuesday’s findings suggest, however, that the bureau may be suffering instead from broad, institutional weaknesses more than political bias, as problems were found in an array of cases managed by FBI field offices around the country.

Trump highlighted various inspector general reports about the FBI at his coronavirus briefing Tuesday and remarked, “You know what, I don’t think this country’s gonna take it, to tell the truth.”

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said the inspector general’s audit shows that “the entire process is prone to abuse” — a function of inadequate accountability and oversight.

“The irony here is that, in one sense, the memorandum suggests that the Carter Page episode was not a partisan political scandal,” Vladeck said. “The irony is it suggests it was part of a far bigger and more problematic pattern — a nonpartisan, systemic problem.”

It can be both. Embrace the healing power of "and." The Post is claiming vindication that the FBI fucks them all up, and not just the Trump investigations because it might mean it's not political.

More analysis at CTH from sundance, Rank and Vile – DOJ Inspector General Identifies 93 Percent Non-Compliance Within FISA Review – Issues So Bad IG Presents Interim Report Before Reviewing Details…

The results were so bad the IG produced an interim memorandum to the DOJ and FBI [pdf link here]. Within the 17-page-memo the IG notifies Attorney General Bill Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray that all of the claimed FISA processes, in every field office, are grossly deficient, and in most cases there is zero compliance with FISA standards. The IG memorandum is presented before the IG even looks at the specifics of the non-compliance.
Below is the report/memorandum. Additionally I am summarizing the stunning top-lines identified by the IG memo:

• The IG reviewed 29 FISA applications, surveillance warrants, used against U.S. persons.
• The 29 FISA applications were from eight different field offices.
• The FISA applications were from Oct/2014 through Sept/2019.
• All of the FISA applications reviewed were approved by the FISA court.

The ‘Woods File’ is the mandatory FBI evidence file that contains the documentary proof to verify all statements against U.S. persons that are contained in the FISA application. Remember, this is a secret court, the FISA applications result in secret surveillance and wiretaps against U.S. persons outside the fourth amendment.

♦ Within the 29 FISA applications reviewed, four were completely missing the Woods File. Meaning there was zero supportive evidence for any of the FBI claims against U.S. persons underpinning the FISA application. [ie. The FBI just made stuff up]
♦ Of the remaining 25 FISA applications, 100% of them, all of them, were materially deficient on the woods file requirement; and the average number of deficiencies per file was 20. Meaning an average of twenty direct statements against the target, supporting the purpose of the FISA application, sworn by the FBI affiant, were unsubstantiated. [The low was 5, the high was 63, the average per file was 20]
♦ Half of the FISA applications reviewed used Confidential Human Sources (CHS’s). The memo outlines that “many” of applications containing CHS claims had no supportive documentation attesting to the dependability of the CHS.
♦ Two of the 25 FISA applications reviewed had renewals; meaning the FISA applications were renewed to extended surveillance, wiretaps, etc. beyond the initial 90-days. None of the renewals had any re-verification. Both FISAs that used renewals were not compliant.

But wait… it gets worse. . . .

More newsy articles, Tobias Hoonhout at NR, IG Horowitz Found ‘Apparent Errors or Inadequately Supported Facts’ in Every Single FBI FISA Application He Reviewed, News Thud, Bill Barr Finds Errors In Every FISA Application Audited By IG Horowitz In Probe, Goes Public, Chuck Ross at Da Caller, DOJ IG Checked 29 More FBI Spy Warrants, And Found Problems With All Of Them and Capt. Ed at Hot Air, DoJ IG: FBI Problems On FISA Warrants “Far Beyond” Crossfire Hurricane — And FBI Leadership Was Well Aware Of It

Scott Johnson at Power Line, Horowitz Audits FBI snarks:

I’m sure this will all come as a great shock to James Comey. We await an effusion of his deep thoughts on Twitter.

More snark from Insty, I’D CALL IT A CLOWN SHOW EXCEPT THAT IT’S NOT FUNNY: IG Horowitz Found ‘Apparent Errors or Inadequately Supported Facts’ in Every Single FBI FISA Application He Reviewed and Sarah Hoyt LOOK AT HOW SHOCKED MY FACE IS! DOJ IG Report: “We do not have confidence that the FBI” acted “in compliance with FBI policy” on FISA applications.

The other issue is Weiner's laptop. Stu Cvrk at Red State, About That Anthony Weiner Laptop…

Will we ever know what was on Anthony Weiner’s laptop? Apparently not, if we are to rely on the FBI to provide us the whole truth. I mean, who among us can believe ANYTHING coming from the FBI these days – even in the Age of Trump? Director Christopher Wray appears to be more concerned about protecting the outward appearance of his agency than disclosing any Obama-era criminal conduct. And we know there is plenty of that just from the public record!

Like, for instance, that fabled Weiner laptop. To refresh your memory from what I consider to be the best authoritative account:

FBI investigators in New York were analyzing a Dell laptop, shared by Abedin and Weiner, as part of a separate sex-crimes investigation involving Weiner’s contact with an underage girl. A former Democratic congressman from New York, Weiner is serving a 21-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to sending obscene material to a 15-year-old.
On Sept. 26, 2016, the lead New York agent assigned to the case found a large volume of emails – “over 300,000” – on the laptop related to Abedin and Clinton, including a large volume of messages from Clinton’s old BlackBerry account.
The headers indicated that the emails on the laptop included ones sent and/or received by Abedin at her clintonemail.com account, her personal Yahoo! email account as well as a host of Clinton-associated domains including state.gov, clintonfoundation.org, presidentclinton.com and hillaryclinton.com.
The agents had reason to believe that classified information resided on the laptop, since investigators had already established that emails containing classified information were transmitted through multiple email accounts used by Abedin, including her clintonemail.com and Yahoo! accounts. Moreover, the preliminary count of Clinton-related emails found on the laptop in late September 2016 — three months after Comey closed his case — dwarfed the total of some 60,000 originally reported by Clinton.
FBI officials in New York assumed that the bureau’s brass would jump on the discovery, particularly since it included the missing emails from the start of Clinton’s time at State. In fact, the emails dated from the beginning of 2007 and covered the entire period of Clinton’s tenure as secretary and thereafter. The team leading the Clinton investigation, codenamed “Midyear Exam,” had never been able to find Clinton’s emails from her first two months as secretary.
By Oct. 4, the Weiner case agent had finished processing the laptop, and reported that he found at least 675,000 emails potentially relevant to the Midyear case (in fact, the final count was 694,000). “Based on the number of emails, we could have every email that Huma and Hillary ever sent each other,” the agent remarked to colleagues. It appeared this was the mother lode of missing Clinton emails.

Except that the laptop was deep-sixed, for all practical purposes, as corrupt FBI Director James Comey swept the entire Hillary Clinton email investigation under the rug when he exceeded his authority by “exonerating” her just a few days before the 2016 election.

Sidney Powell exposing the Weiner laptop contents(HRC/HUMA VID?) that made NYPD officers throw up after seeing pic.twitter.com/7JyVzM7HDJ

— JustInformed Talk (@JustInformU) March 15, 2020

Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media, Newly-Released Hillary Clinton Emails Show Classified Information, Redacted Obama Talking Points. Of course.