by Luke Rosiak


Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe tasked the mistress of lead agent Peter Strzok to stay apprised of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private server — a decision that other bureau officials took issue with at the time, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s bombshell report.

McCabe was supposed to be insulated from the probe by two levels of management: Strzok worked for counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who worked for national security head Michael Steinbach, who reported up to McCabe. However, Strzok communicated about the probe with his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked directly for McCabe and acted as a liaison for the Clinton investigation for the deputy director.

The report says:

Lisa Page, who was Special Counsel to McCabe, became involved in the Midyear investigation after McCabe became the Deputy Director in February 2016. Page told the OIG that part of her function was to serve as a liaison between the Midyear team and McCabe.

Page acknowledged that her role upset senior FBI officials, but told the OIG that McCabe relied on her to ensure that he had the information he needed to make decisions, without it being filtered through multiple layers of management.

Several witnesses told the OIG that Page circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge. McCabe said that he was aware of complaints about Page, and that he valued her ability to “spot issues” and bring them to his attention when others did not.

McCabe has been the subject of concerns about political bias in the FBI’s handling of the case because of his family’s ties to the Clintons.  Around the time of the investigation, McCabe’s wife received $700,000 from Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. The money was for McCabe’s wife to run for state senate, an unusual amount of money for that office.
The IG report makes clear that McCabe intentionally essentially used Page as a mole to bypass multiple subordinates to feed him information about the probe.

It also contains an organizational chart detailing the chain of command on the Clinton emails investigation, annotated by The Daily Caller News Foundation here to highlight the way in which Page’s role was to be McCabe’s eyes and ears instead of relying on the normal channels.

Much of the most blatant anti-Trump rhetoric from FBI agents involved in the case has come from the text messages of Strzok and Page. Page made no secret where her allegiances lie, writing: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok replied: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

The two exchanged tens of thousands of texts about the matter.

Politics

Corrupt: McCabe Used Strzok’s Mistress To Keep Unauthorized Tabs on Clinton Probe

By Luke Rosiak
June 17, 2018 at 3:43pm

Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe tasked the mistress of lead agent Peter Strzok to stay apprised of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private server — a decision that other bureau officials took issue with at the time, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s bombshell report.

McCabe was supposed to be insulated from the probe by two levels of management: Strzok worked for counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who worked for national security head Michael Steinbach, who reported up to McCabe. However, Strzok communicated about the probe with his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked directly for McCabe and acted as a liaison for the Clinton investigation for the deputy director.

The report says:

Lisa Page, who was Special Counsel to McCabe, became involved in the Midyear investigation after McCabe became the Deputy Director in February 2016. Page told the OIG that part of her function was to serve as a liaison between the Midyear team and McCabe.

Page acknowledged that her role upset senior FBI officials, but told the OIG that McCabe relied on her to ensure that he had the information he needed to make decisions, without it being filtered through multiple layers of management.

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Several witnesses told the OIG that Page circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge. McCabe said that he was aware of complaints about Page, and that he valued her ability to “spot issues” and bring them to his attention when others did not.

McCabe has been the subject of concerns about political bias in the FBI’s handling of the case because of his family’s ties to the Clintons. Around the time of the investigation, McCabe’s wife received $700,000 from Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clintons who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. The money was for McCabe’s wife to run for state senate, an unusual amount of money for that office.

The IG report makes clear that McCabe intentionally essentially used Page as a mole to bypass multiple subordinates to feed him information about the probe.

It also contains an organizational chart detailing the chain of command on the Clinton emails investigation, annotated by The Daily Caller News Foundation here to highlight the way in which Page’s role was to be McCabe’s eyes and ears instead of relying on the normal channels.

Much of the most blatant anti-Trump rhetoric from FBI agents involved in the case has come from the text messages of Strzok and Page. Page made no secret where her allegiances lie, writing: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok replied: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

The two exchanged tens of thousands of texts about the matter.

Texts show that Page was conflicted about taking the job with McCabe, because she is a lawyer and he wanted her to be his “special assistant.”“ The Deputy Director picked ME to work for him,” Page wrote on Feb. 3. But “I’m a lawyer, it’s my identity.”

RELATED: Peter Strzok Loses Security Clearance as Conspiracy To Harm Trump Unravels

Strzok said it would be tough to get McCabe to call her his “special counsel.” But ultimately — with Page considering turning down the job if she could not get the title — that’s what happened. “Let [McCabe] take the lead on role and expectations.”

It is unclear why it was so important to McCabe that information about the Clinton probe not be “filtered through multiple layers of management,” the IG report said, but officials may have believed that it would be inappropriate or abnormal to share certain information with him.

The IG report said numerous people in the FBI were telling McCabe to recuse himself from the Clinton probe due to the appearance of conflict. McCabe resisted recusal and got into an “argument” and tense conversations with FBI officials.

FBI General Counsel James Baker “had a series of conversations with McCabe culminating in a ‘very intense’ conversation in which Baker told McCabe that he believed he needed to recuse himself and that it was better that he do it ‘than have the boss order him to do it.’ He said McCabe ‘was not happy about it’ and ‘had lots of questions’ and they had a ‘good argument back and forth,’” the report said.

Then-FBI Director James Comey said in the report that he would have taken McCabe off the investigation sooner had he known about the donations to McCabe’s wife.

McCabe has not addressed whether he knew that Page and Strzok were having an affair and whether that is why Page had such a knack to “spot issues” in the Clinton probe.

McCabe was fired in March 2018 for displayed what the IG called a “lack of candor” during interviews about his authorization of an FBI official to speak with The Wall Street Journal in October 2016 about the Clinton email investigation and is currently suing the government.

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By Chris Agee


A recent report compiled by U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz makes public new allegations and contradicts previous statements regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email server.

The scandal became a major campaign issue during her 2016 presidential bid and resulted in a federal investigation, which was the subject of the report released this week.

A number of high-ranking officials were named in the document and accused of some level of involvement in the scandal, including former President Barack Obama. Clinton served as secretary of state during Obama’s first term in office.

One of the major revelations in Horowitz’s report involves Obama’s apparent “direct contact” with Clinton through the private email account. He reportedly used an account with a pseudonymous email username.

“FBI analysts and Prosecutor 2 told us that former President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account,” a footnote in the 568-page report states.

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The emails sent and received were not classified, according to the inspector general, and there was no indication the president purposely communicated with his secretary of state through an unsecured channel.

Nevertheless, Obama critics say the report appears to contradict statements both the president and then-White House press secretary Josh Earnest offered when the investigation got underway in 2015.

In a CBS interview, Obama said he learned of the email controversy at “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”

Earnest issued a followup statement acknowledging that as “many people expected,” Obama “did over the course of his first several years in office, trade emails with the secretary of state.”

At the time, skeptics maintained that the difference between a secured “.gov” email address and Clinton’s “.com” domain should have been enough to raise a red flag for Obama. Earnest and others, however, continued to maintain the president did not have advanced knowledge of Clinton’s email situation.

Obama was cited in the inspector general’s report for reasons other than his email correspondences with Clinton.  As National Review noted, Obama made multiple appearances in the document.

His contribution to the controversy was largely limited to his assertion in a “60 Minutes” interview, that some in the intelligence community felt undermined their investigation.

“Former President Obama’s comments caused concern among FBI officials about the potential impact on the investigation,” the report states. “Former (Executive Assistant Director) John Giacalone told the OIG, ‘We open up criminal investigations. And you have the President of the United States saying this is just a mistake. … That’s a problem, right?'”

Others in the FBI had similar reactions, the inspector general reported.

“Former AD Randy Coleman expressed the same concern, stating, ‘(The FBI had) a group of guys in here, professionals, that are conducting an investigation. And the … President of the United States just came out and said there’s no there there,'” Horowitz wrote. “Coleman said that he would have expected someone in FBI or Department leadership to contact one of Obama’s national security officials, and ‘tell (him or her), hey knock it off.'”

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by Benjamin Arie

Call it cosmic payback or reaping what you sow — either way, life has a way of swinging back like a boomerang and hitting people with a strong dose of reality.

That’s what former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just found out, but he seems oblivious to the irony. The bureau figure who was fired for leaking to the press is now complaining about how unfair it is that there are leaks from the FBI, at the same time as he’s demanding immunity in exchange for his testimony to the Senate committee investigating the bureau’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

McCabe is one of the figures in the middle of several political bias scandals at the FBI, including the discredited “Trump dossier” and apparent spying by the FBI against Donald Trump’s presidential  campaign.

Back in March, the second-in-command at the FBI was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The reason was simple: McCabe repeatedly leaked sensitive information to the media and then lied about it.

A report from the Department of Justice’s inspector general explained that McCabe was funneling details about a Clinton Foundation investigation to The Wall Street Journal, and was then dishonest about where the leak had come from… namely, himself.

“The report states that McCabe authorized another FBI agent to leak information about an ongoing investigation into (the) Clinton Foundation to The Wall Street Journal, not in the interest of the public, but for his own personal gain,” summarized The Federalist.

That official report goes on to explain in detail how McCabe “lacked candor” — bureaucrat-speak for “lied” — about leaks at least three times, including under oath.

Now, showing just how tone-deaf the former bureau official truly is, McCabe is complaining about leaks from the FBI… yes, the same organization where he was fired for leaking like a sieve.

In a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee by McCabe’s attorney on his behalf, the disgraced former FBI deputy director essentially whined to lawmakers and declared that he was “outraged” that leaks about a criminal investigation of his alleged wrongdoings were taking place.

“(A)s the result of a stream of leaks from the Department of Justice, it is now well-known that the (Office of Inspector General) has made a criminal referral to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia,” the former deputy complained through his attorney.

“As you know, the grounds for such a referral is the very low standard of ‘reasonable grounds to believe there has been a violation of Federal criminal law,'” the letter continued, bizarrely implying that reasonable suspicion of a federal crime was a bad reason to investigate someone.

“Even so […]  these leaks have forced us to acknowledge the criminal referral,” the letter admitted.

The complaining and finger-pointing over the same type of leaking that McCabe was fired for doing didn’t stop there.

“And, unfortunately, the stream of leaks has continued: As recently as last Thursday, additional leaks led to the reporting of specific investigative steps allegedly taken by the United States Attorney’s Office in response to the referral,” the document stated.

“We are outraged by these leaks and last Friday requested an investigation by the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility into the source(s) of the leaks,” McCabe’s attorney explained.

That’s right: Apparently, leaking information to the media and then lying about it is completely fine when it can damage Donald Trump, but McCabe is suddenly “outraged” when similar leaks start actually hurting him.

Maybe he’s just upset that he’s not the only snitch in town.

Incredibly, the former deputy director then demanded immunity from prosecution in order to testify to Congress about matters related to the crimes — leaking and lying — that he’s accused of committing.

“Mr. McCabe is willing to testify, but because of the criminal referral, he must be afforded suitable legal protection,” the letter declared. “Accordingly, we hereby request that the Judiciary Committee authorize a grant of use immunity to Mr. McCabe,” it stated.

If there was still any doubt about why cronies like James Comey and Andrew McCabe needed to go, this should clear it up.

They see themselves as special and above the law, and can’t seem to even comprehend that their own actions — and the culture of leaking that they created — have consequences.

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by Scott Kelnhofer

Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report about the Justice Department and FBI’s 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server is expected to be made public in the coming weeks, and one source told ABC News the draft of the report uses the word “insubordinate” to describe former FBI Director James Comey’s behavior.

“The draft of Horowitz’s wide-ranging report specifically called out Comey for ignoring objections from the Justice Department when he disclosed in a letter to Congress just days before the 2016 presidential election that FBI agents had reopened the Clinton probe, according to sources,” ABC reported.

Horowitz’s draft report was also critical of Comey for failing to consult with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other senior Justice Department officials before making his July 5, 2016 announcement on national TV in which he said said that while there was no “clear evidence” that Clinton “intended to violate” the law, the former secretary of state was “extremely careless” in her “handling of very sensitive, highlyclassified informaion."

Horowitz also criticized former Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the draft report for her handling of the federal investigation into Clinton’s personal email server, the sources told ABC News.

The draft of the report was finished last month. Horowitz said the Justice Department and FBI will be permitted to submit a formal response that will be attached to the final report.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump went on Twitter to complain about the delay in the report’s release.

The report has been widely expected to be critical of Comey. The only question is just how damaging the report would be of the former FBI director.  “It’s not going to be good, it’s just a question of how bad it’s going to be,” a former Justice Department official told CNN last month of what’s expected to be in Horowitz’s report.

CNN law enforcement analyst James Gagliano said sources tell him to expect “a damning indictment” of Comey and the FBI’s upper echelon.

According to a May 16 report in The Washington Post, “The report is expected to blast former FBI director James B. Comey for various steps he took in the investigation, particularly his announcing in July — without telling his Justice Department bosses what he was about to say — that the FBI was recommending that Clinton not be charged, and for revealing to Congress just weeks before the presidential election that the bureau had resumed its work.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, the report is also expected to scrutinize whether former FBI Director Andrew McCabe should have recused himself from the Clinton investigation, since his wife’s campaign for the Virginia legislature was aided by then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally.

The report is also likely to criticize the thousands of texts exchanged by two FBI employees — agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page — who were extremely critical of President Donald Trump and others, the WSJ reported.  The report is currently being reviewed and is expected to be released this month.

What is taking so long with the Inspector General’s Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey. Numerous delays. Hope Report is not being changed and made weaker! There are so many horrible things to tell, the public has the right to know. Transparency!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2018

Rudy Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers, told the Associated Press in recent days that he believed the report would be damaging to Comey’s reputation.

“This is going to be the final nail in his coffin,” Giuliani said of Comey. “This guy has already proven to be a leaker and liar and we believe the report is going to make that plain.”

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