Reports indicate that the long-awaited Justice Department Inspector General’s report on alleged FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016 will be released on Dec. 9, but it appears one of the potentially criminal findings has already been leaked to the media.
President Donald Trump and his allies have argued for years that the FBI broke laws and regulations to obtain a 2016 FISA warrant that was used to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and promulgate an FBI investigation into supposed Russian collusion that led to the two-year special counsel investigation that ultimately debunked that false narrative.
The bulk of the liberal media, chief among them CNN, dismissed that assertion as a baseless conservative conspiracy theory.
Yet, that network was just forced to report that Inspector General Michael Horowitz has referred for criminal prosecution a former FBI lawyer that is accused of altering a document in the application for the FISA warrant — pretty much confirming what conservatives have suggested for years, BizPac Review reported.
Evan Perez, CNN’s chief justice reporter, broke the grim news for the left to host Wolf Blitzer, and after giving a run-down of what he had learned from his anonymous sources about this particular snippet from the FISA report, Perez noted that it was a “big deal, obviously, to make a change to a document.”
To be sure, Blitzer and the others on the CNN panel tried their best to downplay the significance of the report, and the article itself attempted to assert the allegedly altered document does not “undermine the premise” of the FISA warrant.
However, it was nevertheless abundantly clear from the reactions of the panel that this is a “big deal” that blows apart the media’s years-long narrative of summarily dismissing the allegations of FBI FISA abuse.
One thing to keep in mind is the fact that this is almost certainly just one small piece of the Horowitz report that is ostensibly set to be publicly released, with a hearing for Horowitz to summarize his findings before the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled for Dec. 11.
Given that the FISA report is rumored to be more than 1,000 pages long — far more pages than necessary to document this potential crime and other “mistakes” made by FBI officials — there is a strong possibility that other potentially criminal behavior will be unveiled in that report.
In all likelihood, this leak to CNN is but the first of many that will occur over the next couple of weeks before the full report is released, as individuals who were implicated or face potential prosecution scramble to try and find favorable media coverage to set their preferred narrative ahead of time.
Whether that works or not remains to be seen, and given what a crushing blow even this particular report had for CNN, it will be difficult for them to continue spinning and downplaying the likely constant drip of narrative-busting news that will precede an absolute flood of heretofore covered-up truth about what really happened in 2016.
The full release of the FISA report can’t come a moment too soon, and hopefully, those who could soon face justice have properly consulted their attorneys, as they will probably need them.
Of course, Blitzer’s first concern was how the information would be used by Trump and his allies to bolster the long-standing assertion of FBI abuse targeted against him.
“This is exactly what people close to the president have been saying, that the FBI committed wrongdoing in starting this investigation,” Perez said.
He added that there were still details to learn and it remained unclear just how much “political hay” could be made out of it.
Blitzer then turned to former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, a noted Trump critic, who called the report from Perez “alarming.”
“If there was an FBI agent, sworn to uphold the Constitution, who can be proven to have altered a document in connection with a legal proceeding, including the obtaining of a FISA warrant, that’s really serious,” he said.”It doesn’t get a lot more serious than that.”
President Donald Trump and his allies have argued for years that the FBI broke laws and regulations to obtain a 2016 FISA warrant that was used to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and promulgate an FBI investigation into supposed Russian collusion that led to the two-year special counsel investigation that ultimately debunked that false narrative.
The bulk of the liberal media, chief among them CNN, dismissed that assertion as a baseless conservative conspiracy theory.
Yet, that network was just forced to report that Inspector General Michael Horowitz has referred for criminal prosecution a former FBI lawyer that is accused of altering a document in the application for the FISA warrant — pretty much confirming what conservatives have suggested for years, BizPac Review reported.
Evan Perez, CNN’s chief justice reporter, broke the grim news for the left to host Wolf Blitzer, and after giving a run-down of what he had learned from his anonymous sources about this particular snippet from the FISA report, Perez noted that it was a “big deal, obviously, to make a change to a document.”
To be sure, Blitzer and the others on the CNN panel tried their best to downplay the significance of the report, and the article itself attempted to assert the allegedly altered document does not “undermine the premise” of the FISA warrant.
However, it was nevertheless abundantly clear from the reactions of the panel that this is a “big deal” that blows apart the media’s years-long narrative of summarily dismissing the allegations of FBI FISA abuse.
One thing to keep in mind is the fact that this is almost certainly just one small piece of the Horowitz report that is ostensibly set to be publicly released, with a hearing for Horowitz to summarize his findings before the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled for Dec. 11.
Given that the FISA report is rumored to be more than 1,000 pages long — far more pages than necessary to document this potential crime and other “mistakes” made by FBI officials — there is a strong possibility that other potentially criminal behavior will be unveiled in that report.
In all likelihood, this leak to CNN is but the first of many that will occur over the next couple of weeks before the full report is released, as individuals who were implicated or face potential prosecution scramble to try and find favorable media coverage to set their preferred narrative ahead of time.
Whether that works or not remains to be seen, and given what a crushing blow even this particular report had for CNN, it will be difficult for them to continue spinning and downplaying the likely constant drip of narrative-busting news that will precede an absolute flood of heretofore covered-up truth about what really happened in 2016.
The full release of the FISA report can’t come a moment too soon, and hopefully, those who could soon face justice have properly consulted their attorneys, as they will probably need them.
Of course, Blitzer’s first concern was how the information would be used by Trump and his allies to bolster the long-standing assertion of FBI abuse targeted against him.
“This is exactly what people close to the president have been saying, that the FBI committed wrongdoing in starting this investigation,” Perez said.
He added that there were still details to learn and it remained unclear just how much “political hay” could be made out of it.
Blitzer then turned to former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, a noted Trump critic, who called the report from Perez “alarming.”
“If there was an FBI agent, sworn to uphold the Constitution, who can be proven to have altered a document in connection with a legal proceeding, including the obtaining of a FISA warrant, that’s really serious,” he said.”It doesn’t get a lot more serious than that.”
Bharara, too, wanted to learn more details, but based on what he’d heard, he said, “But that’s not a good thing. It’s a terrible thing.”
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