Quote:FBI'S FORREST GUMP AND WHAT HE DID FOR CLINTON AND TRUMP
HILLARY'S SERVER PROBE
Peter Strzok was a key investigator into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified intelligence when she was Secretary of State. Here is how his role affected the key players.
Huma Abedin: Cleared despite telling untruths
Hillary Clinton's right-hand woman was interviewed by Strzok and questioned about her knowledge of the existence of Clinton's secret server.
Strzok wrote a summary of the interview which said: 'Abedin did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago when it became public knowledge.'
In fact Abedin had been involved in a series of email exchanges which demonstrated that she knew about the server, including one from an IT aide whihc said: 'I had to shut down the server. Someone was trying to hack us...'
Mills was chief of staff and counselor to Clinton when she was Secretary of State.
Strzok summarized the interview with her which he conducted in April 2016, saying: 'Mills did not learn Clinton was using a private server until after Clinton’s tenure. Mills stated she was not even sure she knew what a server was at the time.'
In fact a series of emails from the time demonstrated that neither assertion by Mills could be true.
'hrc email coming back — is server okay?' Mills emailed to Justin Cooper, the IT aide in February 2010.
Despite that email, Strzok accepted that she did not know what a 'server' was at the time.
In August 2011 she received a email from Stephen Mull, a State Department IT official, which said Clinton had asked for a new Blackberry which was malfunctioning 'possibly because of her personal email server is down'.
Abedin was also sent the email.
Hillary Clinton: Cleared her of criminal level gross negligence by removing term from critical Comey memo
Then FBI Director James Comey sent a message to three top officials in the bureau on May 2, 2016, summarizing the latest position on the Clinton probe.
It included the damning sentence: 'There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the private email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified material.'
The phrase 'grossly negligent' was critical as that is the standard which needs to be reached to bring a federal prosecution for mishandling classified intelligence. In other words, Comey was saying that she should be charged.
But the language was changed on June 10 and the phrase 'grossly negligent' replaced by Strozk with 'extremely careless' - below the standard for prosecution.
The memo then formed the basis for James Comey's July statement on Clinton which said she would not be charged.
THE RUSSIA PROBE
After Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel to look into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Strzok was assigned to his team. He was removed when his anti-Trump texts to his mistress came to light. Here is what us known and what is still unknown of his actions
Mike Flynn: Oversaw interviews where he lied to FBI
Strzok was the official overseeing FBI interviews of Mike Flynn, the former general who was Trump's first national security adviser.
It is unknown exactly how many times Flynn was interviewed by the FBI but he dramatically pleaded guilty last Friday to lying to the feds in an interview in January when he was still in office.
Flynn admitted lying about his dealings with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador to the U.S.
He was interviewed at least once more and now faces a sentence of up to five years in prison for his crime.
However it appears likely he will receive a far lighter sentence as he is a co-operating witness with the Mueller investigation and has even agreed to take part in covert evidence-gathering for the FBI.
Jared Kushner and other Trump officials: Did he oversee interviews and charges?
Mugshot: George Papadopolous, first Trump aide to plead guilty in the Mueller probe
As the FBI's most senior counter-intelligence agent on the Mueller taskforce, it appears certain that Strzok would also have overseen the interviews
it is known the FBI has conducted so far, but his involvement has not been confirmed.
One of those questioned by FBI agents includes Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law.
Others known or reported to have been interviewed include Hope Hicks, now Trump's White House director of communications.
She had been his campaign spokeswoman and steamed his suits while he wore them on his plane.
Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign director, was interviewed by the FBI after his home was raided in a dramatic pre-dawn entry, and has now been charged with counts including conspiracy.
Also charged was Rick Gates, Manafort's aide in the campaign and Manafort's long-time right hand man.
And the first guilty plea in the Mueller probe was by George Papadopolous, a campaign aide who admitted lying to the FBI. Again Strzok's role is still to be made public.
(01-24-2018, 05:16 AM)guohua Wrote: It's seems there was a whole Secret Society at the FBI that were holding meeting after President Trump was Elected.
Yes, it is coming Apart For them.......
.......
It is not derailing.. The secret society part has been clearly mentioned
Quote:‘It’s corruption of the highest levels of the FBI’: Agency informant ‘has told Congress a secret society at the bureau held clandestine off-site meetings after Trump’s election victory’
A Republican senator is claiming that an FBI informant told Congress of 'off-site meetings' held by a 'secret society' of agents at the bureau
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, told Fox News that the development is indicative of ‘corruption of the highest levels of the FBI’
The Justice Department last week provided messages to Congress between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
Page and Strzok spoke of forming a 'secret society' after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the election
Strzok is a counterintelligence agent who worked on Hillary Clinton 's email case; Page worked with Strzok on the special counsel investigation into Russia
Page left the Russia probe last summer and Strzok was dismissed after their anti-Trump texts to each other were discovered
Texts between the pair from December 14, 2017 to May 17, 2017 are missing
Time frame covers the transition to the beginning of special counsel probe
By Dailymail.com Reporter
PUBLISHED: 21:35 EST, 23 January 2018 | UPDATED: 22:30 EST, 23 January 2018
A Republican senator is claiming on Tuesday that an FBI informant told Congress that a ‘secret society’ formed by agents of the bureau held off-site meetings after Donald Trump’s election.
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, told Fox News that the development is indicative of ‘corruption of the highest levels of the FBI.’
‘That secret society - we have an informant that's talking about a group that were holding secret meetings off-site,’ Johnson said.
‘There is so much smoke here.’
‘A secret society?’ Fox News host Bret Baier asked Johnson. ‘Secret meetings off-site of the Justice Department? And you have an informant saying that?’
‘Correct,’ Johnson said.
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Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, is claiming on Tuesday that an FBI informant told Congress that a ‘secret society’ formed by agents of the bureau held off-site meetings after Donald Trump’s election
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+6
Peter Strzok, the deputy assistant director of counterintelligence, and fellow FBI agent Lisa Page were revealed to have spoken about a 'secret society' that was to be formed after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the election
‘Is there anything more about that?’ Baier asked.
‘No. But we have to dig into it - this is not a distraction. Again, this is bias - potentially corruption - at the highest level of the FBI,’ Johnson said.
‘By the way, Robert Mueller used to run the FBI,’ he said.
‘He is in no position to do an investigation over this kind of misconduct.’
Johnson called for a second independent counsel to investigate the matter.
‘So I think at this point in time we probably should be looking at a special counsel to undertake this investigation - but Congress is going to have to continue to dig," he said.
+6
In an appearance on 'The Story with Martha MacCallum,' Rep. Trey Gowdy said the two agents also discussed deleting their text message history.
Five months of their conversations later went missing
‘When you see this kind of bias and corruption in the FBI you have to ask the question, are there similar individuals highly biased –‘ political operatives burrowed into the Department of Justice as well. Does Attorney General Sessions really have a department he can rely on and trust as well?’ he asked.
Two FBI officials who derided Trump in text messages prior to the presidential election and suggested taking out an 'insurance policy' in case he won were revealed on Monday to have talked about forming a 'secret society' the day after the Republican politician beat Hillary Clinton.
The conversation was part of a batch of communications between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page the Department of Justice provided last week to Congress, two members of Congress told Fox News.
In an appearance on 'The Story with Martha MacCallum,' Rep. Trey Gowdy said, 'The day after the election, what they really didn't want to have happen, there is a text exchange between these two FBI agents, these supposed to be objective, fact-centric FBI agents saying, "Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society."
'So of course I'm going to want to know what secret society you are talking about, because you're supposed to be investigating objectively the person who just won the electoral college. So yeah - I'm going to want to know.'
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President Donald Trump put the spotlight Tuesday back on the two FBI officials who disparaged him in text messages prior to the presidential election and whom he'd previously accused of 'treason,' this morning
FBI director defends bureau in wake of Republican criticism
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Standing beside Gowdy in the joint interview was Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, who the first of the two Republican legislators to mention it.
'We learned today about information that after, in the immediate aftermath of his election, that there may have been a "secret society" of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI, to include Page and Strzok, that would be working against him,' Ratcliffe said.
He added, 'I'm not saying that actually happened, but when folks speak in those terms, they need to come forward to explain the context with which they used those terms.'
The Justice Department turned over copies of the communications last week. But it revealed a critical gap in messages between Strzok, a counterintelligence agent who worked on Hillary Clinton's email case, and Page, an agent who worked with Strzok for a time on the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference, as it did.
Texts the pair sent each other between December 14, 2017 and May 17, 2017 are missing, the department said.
Strzok, the deputy assistant director of counterintelligence, told Page in texts that he had been asked to be part of Mueller's team but he wasn't sure he'd accept the invitation.
'You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I'd be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern, there's no big "there" there,' he told her in May 19 a message the FBI turned over to Congress.
Lawmakers also revealed on Monday a conversation in which Strzok and Page discussed deleting their text exchanges. Five months of messages later went missing.
New messages provided to Congress last Friday revealed their chatter immediately after the election about forming a 'secret society' and referred to 'Our task' with a capital O.
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that Justice is taking all available actions to recover the missing messages.
Johnson, who's the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, read aloud the exchange about Mueller's investigation Tuesday on a radio show.
Copies of the exchange that came two days after Mueller was appointed were obtained by the Daily Caller.
Johnson told Milwaukee radio host Jay Weber on Tuesday that the message was 'jaw-dropping' considering their previous conversations about Trump.
Even 'the man who had a plan to do something because he just couldn't abide Donald Trump being president' had a sense there's no there there, he said.
'I think that's kind of jaw-dropping,' he said. 'And look at what this nation's been put through as a result.'
Without seeing the rest of text, it's just smoke, Johnson said, noting that legislators would need to see the rest of the texts to connect the dots.
'They are purposefully it seems like evading, putting some of these work-related messages on a platform that is untraceable,' he said.
'It looks like they're mishandling those federal records.'
He made similar comments on Brian Kilmeade's radio show.
'We have just been dragged through months of this special counsel and the FBI Deputy Assistant Director of the Counter-Intelligence Division is saying two days after Mueller has been appointed, his gut sense is there is no big there there… it really is pretty jaw dropping.'
Exclusive: FBI agent who sent ‘F Trump’ texts to lover
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Quote:President Trump just called it “one of the biggest stories in a long time.” But the real story isn’t what he thinks.
By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Jan 23, 2018, 1:20pm EST SHAREMORE
[img=720x0]https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mX4oAm1rAXg-T8k8zU7f3bnFCOQ=/0x0:4950x3300/1200x800/filters:focal(2171x1052:2963x1844)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58425913/643699430.jpg.0.jpg[/img]Mark Reinstein/Corbis/Getty Images
In the conservative world, outrage over “the missing texts” is everywhere.
The allegation, which you’re hearing from President Trump, Fox News, and Republicans in Congress alike, is that the FBI intentionally deleted an unknown number of texts between two FBI employees. The messages of special agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page supposedly contain proof of an FBI plot to undermine the Trump presidency.
Strzok and Page have been in the crosshairs of the White House and its defenders since the mid-December release of texts in which they discussed an “insurance policy” against Trump in the runup to the November election. Special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from his team when he became aware of the texts, but that hasn’t stopped some conservatives from alleging that they prove the Mueller probe is a partisan witch hunt.
“Are we really supposed to believe that the FBI simply lost text messages from that important time frame? This is like Watergate but far worse,” Sean Hannity said on his Monday night show. “This reeks of law-breaking, it reeks of conspiracy, and it reeks of obstruction of justice.”
There is very little evidence to support this allegation, but it shows every sign of snowballing into a big deal. President Trump called the missing messages “one of the biggest stories in a long time” in a Tuesday morning tweet; Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said an investigation into how they disappeared is already underway.
The “missing texts” conspiracy has legs because for months, Republicans have been arguing that the FBI in general, and Mueller’s probe specifically, is irreparably biased against Trump. Some Republicans, like Florida Rep. Francis Rooney, have called for a ”purge” of purportedly disloyal bureau personnel.
This rhetoric points to the real scandal here: Republicans are trying to impose a partisan, Trump-loyalist litmus test on America’s top law enforcement agency. Moreover, they’re working to derail a probe into the growing evidence that Russia meddled in an American election on a massive scale.
Why the texts have fueled a conspiracy theory
To understand why the “texts” have become such a big deal, we need to go back to the 2016 campaign.
During that time, Strzok had been assigned to the investigation into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia — while also conducting an extramarital affair with Page. Strzok and Page discussed work and national politics quite frequently over text message, neither of them making any secret about their views of Trump. Strzok referred to Trump as a “douche” and an “utter idiot,” and told Page that Hillary Clinton “just had to win” the race.
Most damningly from the Republican point of view, Strzok once referred to an “insurance policy” against Trump winning.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” he told Page. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
It’s a really confusing message. It could easily be read, as former Bush administration attorney Stewart Baker argues, as Strzok simply explaining why he’s spending time worrying about the prospects of a Trump victory.
But when the messages were released to the public in December 2017, after news broke that Mueller had dismissed Strzok from his role in the Russia investigation, the pro-Trump press seized on it as proof of an anti-Trump conspiracy theory in the FBI — especially since the “Andy” referred to in the message could be Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI.
“WE WILL LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED”
The issue had receded from the headlines in 2018 until last Friday, when the Justice Department announced that it did not have records of Strzok-Page texts between December 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017. This is a crucial time in the Russia investigation, encompassing Michael Flynn’s resignation due to lies about Russia ties and FBI Director James Comey’s firing — so this naturally raised some eyebrows.
The official explanation from the Justice Department is that there was a problem with Strzok and Page’s bureau-issued Samsung Galaxies — that “firmware upgrades” and other technical issues deleted records of texts sent from many phones across the bureau. But Trump and his allies didn’t buy it and have waged a furious campaign in the media to declare the missing texts as proof of an FBI conspiracy.
There is no evidence to support such a wild claim. Whether there actually was a software glitch is easily verifiable; according to a Monday statement from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Inspector General’s office is already investigating the issue.
“We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced,” Sessions wrote. “If any wrongdoing were to be found to have caused this gap, appropriate disciplinary action measures will be taken.”
So it’s possible that Strzok and Page were part of a widespread FBI conspiracy to undermine Trump, one that reaches so far into the bureau that they had a mole in the IT department who was willing to delete their most damning messages. It’s also possible — and much more likely — that the
US government ran into technology glitches, which is not exactly unheard of.
The party of law and order is waging war on the FBI
John Moore/Getty Images
The “texts” have struck a chord because they play directly into the growing Republican strategy to counter the Mueller probe.
As members of Trump’s campaign and inner circle continue to be indicted and investigated, making it harder and harder to dismiss the Mueller investigation as a nothingburger, the most hardcore Trump supporters in Congress and the media have begun arguing instead that the FBI cannot be trusted. The Mueller probe is indeed a “witch hunt,” as the president tweeted, proof that the bureau is a corrupt institution that needs to be purged.
Conservative media now regularly refers to a “deep state” of FBI and Justice Department officials working to undermine Trump. Increasingly, this kind of conspiratorial language has bled over into the actions of elected officials. In November, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) gave a speech on the House floor arguing that the Mueller probe was part of a quiet coup against America’s elected officials.
“We are at risk of a coup d’état in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly elected president of the United States,” Gaetz said.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) has put together a secret memo — one that he won’t even share with the Justice Department — that allegedly shows proof of institutional anti-Trump bias at the FBI and DOJ. The memo, like the texts, has become a kind of cause célèbre in the conservative movement. #ReleaseTheMemo is a popular hashtag in right-wing social media circles.
On Monday, Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and John Ratcliffe (R-TX) went on Fox News to allege there were secret Strzok-Page texts — ones that they alone had picked up on — showing evidence of a “secret society” of anti-Trump Justice Department officials.
“It makes it harder and harder for us to explain away one strange coincidence after another,” Ratcliffe said.
The “texts,” in this narrative, are the new version of Hillary Clinton’s private server emails — a kind of totem that conservatives can point to in order to prove that their enemies really are nefarious and that proof of their wildest theories is there if only someone could find it. This is typical in conspiracy theories; strange coincidences are strung together in a narrative that looks scary if you squint at it right. The absence of proof is taken as its own kind of proof.
What’s atypical about this conspiracy is that it’s being embraced by much of the conservative movement — up to and including the president of the United States.
Well they asked for feed back
so I tried to post this
Quote:Author Needs to work on propaganda skills. Is not slowly introducing the point of conspiracy.. Author also needs to use more subtle virtue signalling.. Perhaps instead of painting rebuplicans in this, he should of used a more strawman approach.. Think it out a little bit.. Imtead of, those crazy republicans believe x.. A more you wont believe this one, some people think X.. Again... see less insulting and less detectable.. Give the author a c -, with a pat on the head.. Give him a scooby snack ( got to have his trophy)
01-24-2018, 12:57 PM (This post was last modified: 01-24-2018, 12:57 PM by BIAD.)
This is going to be a difficult job, D.C is rank with what the public would perceive as corruption.
For politicians, it's just business as usual, but the difference is that many are now aware of things such
as to hide one embarrassment, you cover it with another.
Kill twenty twenty people to hide your chosen victim... easy.
To make a song-and-dance about a Government shut-down that only effects State parks etc in order
to shroud the revelation of a joint mission to destroy an opposing political party... no problems.
This particular pit is deep and if all the vampires are successfully dragged out into the light, we may end-up
realising how far the web of deceit is spread and wonder if the ignorance of the whole was better.
As I indicated on another thread, if a group of people on the internet are discussing Washington's political wars
and the shady antics -and having viable evidence it prove their claims, then really, the whole system is failing.
You're not supposed to be aware of this, you're supposed to watching kittens.
To back up this theory, the president’s allies have cited text messages exchanged by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two FBI employees who worked on the Hillary Clinton email investigation and had an affair. The first batch of texts, released last month, revealed that neither was a big fan of Trump or an array of Democratic politicians and figures. An additional set of text messages sent to Congress in recent days has set off a new round of stories.
For some Republicans, the latest texts confirm everything they’ve always suspected.
“Peter Strzok and Lisa Page believed that then-candidate Donald Trump was a threat to this country and appeared to be taking steps, as sworn members of law enforcement, to subvert the will of the American people,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said in a press release Monday.
The idea that the FBI sought to undermine Trump during the 2016 election was unlikely on its face. The bureau’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s emails produced a slew of negative headlines for her and provided plenty of fodder for Trump and his allies to attack their Democratic opponent. And if FBI officials really were trying to get Clinton elected, they did a terrible job: Trump won.
But one previously unreported Strzok-Page exchange, from the eve of Election Day, does even more to undercut the GOP’s “deep state” narrative. In it, the two FBI employees discuss James Kallstrom, a former bureau official who headed the FBI’s New York field office a couple of decades ago. During the 2016 campaign, he endorsed Trump, called the Clintons an “organized crime family” and was making the rounds on TV airing what he said were complaints from within the bureau about then-FBI Director James Comey’s management of the Clinton probe.
The bureau had been taking a lot of heat from the right for its handling of the Clinton investigation, and much of the criticism seemed to be emerging from the FBI field office in New York. According to a later report in Vanity Fair, Comey’s concerns about a leak from that office even played a role in his decision to send a letter about the Clinton investigation to Congress 11 days before the election, which set off a media firestorm that Clinton later blamed for her Electoral College loss.
Strzok and Page’s election eve texts discuss a conversation Strzok had with a woman both of them knew. The woman, whom HuffPost has been told does not work at the FBI, was critical of the bureau’s handling of the Clinton investigation. She thought the bureau should’ve publicly undermined people like Kallstrom and gone after agents who were leaking to the press. Here’s the exchange, which was included in the first set of text messages that the Justice Department provided to Congress last month:
Page: Oh god █████
Page: What is she saying?
Page: She does realize you’ve been in EVERY conversation that has been had about this case, right?
Strzok: That we should have gone on the record saying Kallstrom and others are not credible (which may be valid), but then saying we could pull his tolls if we wanted to. Because she knows all about our policy regarding investigations of members of the media.
Strzok: Yes but she’s an expert who knows everything. I’m telling you, it’s wildly infuriating. She has good points but then assumes wildly impossible understanding of things to make groundless assertions.
Strzok: Told her twice she was either calling me stupid or a liar.
Page: Uh, what crimes are we investigating? And I’m sorry, that’s a terrible idea. Going to war with the formers?
Page: Jesus, █████. I’m sorry. That would make me blind with rage.
Strzok: Leaking information about ongoing investigations. Which is incorrect information. By agents who don’t know about things talking to him. See? That’s the thing. Her initial point, that we should have gone after the agents talking harder and sooner, is not unreasonable. But the subsequent discussion falls into uniformed assertions.
“Pulling his tolls” is FBI-speak for using an administrative subpoena to obtain phone records. If they were part of a “deep state” operation to keep Trump from being elected, weaponizing government power to target a critic of the FBI and root out anti-Clinton forces within the bureau would’ve been a pretty solid move.
Yet both Page and Strzok recoiled at this suggestion. Strzok found the criticism and the woman’s suggestion “wildly infuriating.” Page, an FBI lawyer, said that the criticism would’ve made her “blind with rage” and wondered what possible legal basis there could be for obtaining Kallstrom’s phone records. The texts make clear that both Strzok and Page were frustrated by stories that reflected poorly upon the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe and elsewhere suggest that Page may have spoken with a reporter, evidently in defense of the bureau’s actions in the Clinton Foundation investigation. But in their texts on the eve of Trump’s election, both seem to recognize that obtaining phone records of a former FBI official to hunt down his anti-Clinton sources within the bureau was a pretty bad idea.
Related Video:
Those who believe the FBI was plotting to stop Trump from taking office have also focused on a text in which Strzok compares the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia with an “insurance policy.” But as The Wall Street Journal reported, that text message was meant only to suggest that FBI agents couldn’t delay the investigation simply because they thought Trump was unlikely to get elected.
Still, the “deep state” theory doesn’t seem likely to die anytime soon. In a letter to Congress, the Justice Department said the FBI hadn’t retained the texts between Strzok and Page from Dec. 14, 2016, through May 17, 2017. The news that the bureau didn’t keep those messages has already churned up more anti-FBI criticism this week, with Republicans claiming to see nefarious motives.
Not long after a “Fox & Friends” segment focusing on the texts Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted about the story, inaccurately stating that the FBI had lost “perhaps 50,000” texts that Strzok and Page exchanged in five months. If that were true, the pair would have done an incredible amount of texting: more than 320 messages per day. The 50,000 figure actually refers to all of the texts between the two, over a much longer time, that the FBI found. Trump called the news “one of the biggest stories in a long time.”
It’s quite possible the missing texts will be recovered through other means, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to take disciplinary action if any wrongdoing was behind the gap.
“We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source,” Sessions said in a statement Monday night.
“If we are successful, we will update the congressional committees immediately.”
The Justice Department’s decision to allow reporters to view the text messages released last month came under scrutiny and resulted in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about the decision. So the department is not giving reporters access to the latest batch of text messages it sent to Congress.
That means that members of Congress control which messages are revealed to the public. Republicans have recently made vague references to texts the pair reportedly exchanged the day after Trump’s election that referenced a “secret society.” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who chairs the Senate homeland security committee, focused on just a few exchanges, including one in which Strzok said the timing “looks like hell” after then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she would accept the recommendations of the FBI and career prosecutors in the Clinton investigation. Page sarcastically wrote that Lynch’s announcement was “a real profile in [courage], since she knows no charges will be brought.”
Meanwhile, as first reported by The Daily Beast, the FBI said that House Republicans have refused to show the bureau a copy of the memo Republican staffers preparedalleging that the bureau abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the 2016 campaign.
“The FBI has requested to receive a copy of the memo in order to evaluate the information and take appropriate steps if necessary,” FBI spokesman Andy Ames said in a statement also provided to HuffPost. “To date, the request has been declined.”
Ryan Reilly is HuffPost’s senior justice reporter, covering criminal justice, federal law enforcement and legal affairs. Have a tip? Reach him at ryan.reilly@huffpost.com or on Signal at 202-527-9261.
01-24-2018, 10:49 PM (This post was last modified: 01-24-2018, 10:50 PM by BIAD.)
(01-24-2018, 10:37 PM)Armonica_Templar Wrote: ...It is just a conspiracy..
They think it is the deep state..
#propaganda
There's comments on the internet that any 'revealed' texts may be dodgy and again, it would be a prime target
to take the whole situation into the weeds by the MSM.
The BBC...? Well, they're still doing this kind of crap.
Quote:Donald Trump's 'hatred of sharks' benefits conservation charities.
'Donald Trump's alleged hatred of sharks has inspired people to financially support international shark charities. The US president's dislike for the marine animal was revealed last week in an In Touch Weekly interview with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He reportedly said that he would never give money to shark charities, adding: "I hope all sharks die."
Shark conservation groups have since noted an uptick in donations, one with the message: "Because Trump." "It can certainly be a challenge to raise money for a species that most people fear," Atlantic White Shark Conservancy chief executive officer Cynthia Wilgren told the financial news website. "We have been receiving donations in Trump's name since the story was published," she said.
According to Newsweek, someone adopted a 13-foot female white shark over the weekend last spotted off the coast of Mexico in the name of Donald J Trump. Even UK shark conservation groups like the Shark Trust, based in Plymouth, spotted a "noticeable" boost to their coffers.
A spokesperson told the BBC that "passionate messages" came with the donations, but were not fit for publication. The surge in donations followed the publication on Friday of an interview Ms Daniels gave In Touch Weekly in 2011, in which she claimed to have had an affair with the property mogul that started in 2006.
Some porn-star that allegedly had a fling with Trump 11 years ago.
She claimed that after watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, Mr Trump said: "I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks." Ms Daniels said he was "obsessed with" and "terrified of sharks"...'
Quote:By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department's internal watchdog said Thursday it recovered five months of missing text messages between two Federal Bureau of Investigation officials whom Republicans have accused of bias against President Donald Trump.
In a letter to several key Republican lawmakers, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said he would not object if the Justice Department shares with congressional committees the messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page that were recovered using forensic tools.
In texts that were previously released to Congress, Strzok and Page referred to Trump as an "idiot" and a "loathsome human." After news reports about the messages, lawmakers demanded to see them amid Republican concerns that agency officials were biased against Trump.
Strzok and Page both worked on the FBI's investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, and they also each briefly worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing probe into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Their cellphones are just two of "thousands" whose texts were not backed up and stored on the FBI's systems between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017, according to a Justice Department official.
The FBI has blamed the snafu on "misconfiguration issues" that occurred while the bureau was rolling out new software updates for Samsung 5 devices.
But Republicans have claimed the timing is suspect, especially because May 17 marks the date that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.
Strzok and Pages' text messages have become a focal point of congressional Republicans' investigation into whether the FBI is biased against Trump and gave Clinton more favourable treatment in its investigation of her private email use.
Horowitz, whose office is conducting its own review into the FBI's handling of the Clinton matter, discovered the texts over the summer and informed Mueller. Strzok was then reassigned. Page, meanwhile, left the team in July after her 45-day detail ended.
While Republicans have accused the two of bias against Trump, some of the texts suggest he was just one of many people targeted in their routine political banter.
At times, for instance, they were also critical of Clinton.
In addition, another Strzok text also appears to contradict the notion that the FBI is out to get Trump, after he told Page he was hesitant to join Mueller's team because of his "gut sense and concern there's no big there there."
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Quote:FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was reportedly forced out amid Trump's attacks.
'FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is leaving the bureau, multiple outlets reported Monday. A CNN producer and a Fox News report described sources as saying McCabe was told Monday morning to step down and that he was being "removed" from the FBI.
President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticized McCabe in recent months, ignored questions shouted at him about the report during a lunch with United Nations Security Council ambassadors, a Bloomberg reporter said on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the White House has sought to distance itself from the McCabe news. The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said during Monday's press briefing that Trump "wasn't a part of the decision-making process," adding that the president stood by all of his previous remarks about McCabe.
Later Monday, The New York Times reported that McCabe left the bureau after FBI Director Christopher Wray raised concerns about an upcoming Justice Department inspector general report examining McCabe's and other senior officials' actions during the 2016 presidential campaign. The FBI was investigating both the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's use of private email and the Trump's campaigns connections to Russia.
In his discussion with McCabe, Wray suggested a demotion, a former official told The Times, but McCabe instead decided to leave. In the days before McCabe's departure, a pair of recent stories detailed Trump's interactions and relationship with the deputy director.
The Washington Post reported last week that during an Oval Office meeting last year -meant to be an introductory meet-and-greet session after the president fired James Comey as FBI director in May -Trump asked McCabe, the acting FBI director at the time, who he voted for in the 2016 presidential election. A former official told The Post that McCabe found the question "disturbing."
During the meeting, Trump reportedly made pointed remarks about McCabe's wife, Jill McCabe, who ran as a Democratic candidate for a Virginia Senate seat in 2015 and lost. Her campaign received $675,000 in donations from the Virginia Democratic Party and a super PAC operated by Terry McAuliffe, the former governor who is a close friend of Clinton's.
Months after that election, McCabe became the FBI deputy director, and he later helped lead two investigations related to Clinton, including into her email use, though he later recused himself from those. Also last week, the news website Axios, citing three sources, reported that Wray threatened to resign after Attorney General Jeff Sessions pressured him, at Trump's urging, to fire McCabe.
Axios also reported that Sessions was pressuring Wray to oust James Baker, a former general counsel for the bureau. Trump has for months taken aim at McCabe on Twitter, often falsely claiming that McCabe was investigating Clinton while his wife was accepting campaign donations linked to her.
Last month, Trump, apparently quoting a Fox News segment, tweeted: "FBI's Andrew McCabe, 'in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton.'"
Earlier, he went after McCabe and Comey, tweeting: "How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin' James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife's campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?"
That wasn't all. Trump referred to a Post report saying McCabe planned to retire early this year, when he is eligible for full pension benefits. "FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!" Trump tweeted.
The move also came just a day after Wray viewed a Republican memo that alleged surveillance abuse by McCabe, Comey, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Fox News reported. McCabe is just the latest official to call it quits or to appear to be forced out of the Justice Department since Trump took office last year...'
It's like a 'draining' effect.
Quote:'...The Post on Saturday quoted a person who had interacted with the team of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia's election interference, as saying prosecutors were pursuing a theory that Trump's actions with regard to the Russia investigation have followed a pattern.
"Their theory appears to be that he goes after people who are not loyal," they said. "He wants in place people who are loyal, to make sure he doesn't get in trouble in the investigation." Soon after NBC broke the news of McCabe's departure, Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., weighed in on Twitter.
"I wonder why???"
And "Yea right, that’s why he stepped down a day after the FBI saw the FISA memo and the day the house votes on its release. Sure. That’s it. Now the other media sheep have their talking points. Go spread the gospel. Who do you think you’re kidding at this point? "...'
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Da Lazy Scholar: IMHO shutdown avoided reason
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Newly released texts between FBI agent and lawyer removed...![[Image: 47F290A700000578-0-image-m-10_1515719669442.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2018/01/12/01/47F290A700000578-0-image-m-10_1515719669442.jpg)
The president accuses FBI agent removed from Mueller's team...![[Image: 47F290B100000578-0-image-m-9_1515512008978.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2018/01/09/15/47F290B100000578-0-image-m-9_1515512008978.jpg)
Were the anti-Trump FBI lovers LEAKERS as well? Republicans...![[Image: 475D748F00000578-0-image-a-6_1513364722426.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/12/15/19/475D748F00000578-0-image-a-6_1513364722426.jpg)
Trump slams 'disgraceful' FBI conduct after saying it is 'in...![[Image: 48806A1400000578-5302947-image-a-4_1516727148304.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2018/01/23/17/48806A1400000578-5302947-image-a-4_1516727148304.jpg)
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John Moore/Getty Images![[Image: 264f522252b66c5c6d9212e7ccb344f9]](https://s1.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/z_xz7KA7_oMHNsZ_14AhJQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW15O3c9NjQwO3E9NzU7c209MQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/homerun/the_huffington_post_584/264f522252b66c5c6d9212e7ccb344f9)
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