It was Friday December 1st, 2017, when the media first hit the headlines announcing the guilty plea for former National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn. It was less than 24 hours later, Saturday December 2nd, when ‘a group’ within the DOJ hit back with announcements revealing the political bias of FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Despite the transparency of timing the media ignored the relationship between the two events. However, people who were following the granular details -within the intelligence community conflict- accepted the IG releases would be used as fuel for congressional review and inquiry….. and that’s exactly what happened.
Unfortunately, the focus was so intense on what later became ‘dueling memos’ no-one paused to look at the granules against the bigger picture. Despite the media story pointing out Strzok and Page were removed from duties on the Special Counsel (Mueller) team in July and August 2017, no-one questioned what was happening between July/August 2017 and the December 2nd media release announcing their dispatch.
If anyone in January had begun cross referencing the Nunes, Goodlatte, Grassley discoveries and their volumes of investigative interviews; against the backdrop of the IG information to Mueller in July ’17; they would have possibly connected the dots that outlined the appearance of a criminal review – and a transparent need for an authorized DOJ entity to construct rules for cooperation within the ongoing IG investigation.
We now know Attorney General Jeff Sessions and DAG Rod Rosenstein assigned federal prosecutor John W. Huber to that task. However, even without knowing his name, we always knew the existence of the parallel prosecutor because the fingerprints of his tasks were evident.
The IG couldn’t simultaneously report on his discovery of criminal conduct and yet construct the parameters for cooperation and compliance with his investigation. IG Horowitz doesn’t have that authority, that’s a federal prosecutors job.
So if people within the FBI and DOJ were cooperating with an internal investigation that was discovering criminal conduct, someone from within the DOJ had to be cutting the deals. Jeff Sessions told us yesterday that person is John Huber.
As a person familiar with such specific investigative measures shared:
“They are sat down, told to not do anything, say anything or discuss anything UNTIL they get an attorney. At which time, the attorney is handed a letter from the investigating unit. That letter says in essence, this is how screwed you are. If you want to be less screwed you will sign this letter of cooperation and assist us. When we don’t need you, you sit there. When we do we will call you and you will provide what we need. Any deviation from this agreement lands you in jail for the full term.”
If you stand back and look at all activity from July 2017 through March 2018 you can get a good feel for who is inside the “small group”, who is cooperating and who is not.
♦COOPERATING GROUP – FBI Agent Peter Strzok, FBI/DOJ lawyer Lisa Page, DOJ Attorney Bruce Ohr, DOJ-NSD Deputy Asst. Attorney General George Toscas; FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker and Asst. FBI Director in charge of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap, are all still employed within the system. Strzok, Page, Ohr, and Baker have been removed from responsibilities, but there are still there. Bill Priestap is still in responsibility and still there.
♦NOT COOPERATING GROUP – FBI Communications Director Mike Kortan (quit), DOJ-NSD Deputy Asst. Attorney General David Laufman (quit), AG Loretta Lynch AAG Sally Yates, DOJ-NSD Asst Attorney General Mary McCord (quit), FBI Director James Comey (fired), Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe (fired), FBI Director Chief-of-staff James Rybicki (quit).
AG Sessions, while responding to an irrelevant congressional request for a special counsel, told us yesterday that Huber is in charge of a “team” of prosecutors. Yet some weird and seemingly illogical reason, many people don’t seem to understand that.
There’s already a team of prosecutors reviewing all the evidence of criminality collected by Inspector General Horowitz. FULLSTOP.
There’s no need for a special counsel. Jonathan Turley understands this.
It is nonsensical to demand a Special Counsel when there has been a team of federal prosecutors reviewing the evidence for over six months. The outcome of their collective effort goes directly to federal indictments; there is simply no need for a special counsel.
Remember, the IG is looking at gross misconduct of official DOJ and FBI policy and practices. The prosecutor is looking at criminal misconduct from within those offices. The IG releases findings to the public, the prosecutor does not – until the courtroom. There is an overlap within the parallel of the IG and Prosecutor, but both have entirely different objectives.
There’s also evidence of an existing Grand Jury.
The only reason for a Special Council would be to etch in stone that an investigation is going to happen. However, it should not be difficult to conduct these investigations and nothing special should be required; the evidence was barely covered up because it was all but guaranteed that Hillary would be elected and all this would be secretly entombed in Obama’s pyramid.
@Deplorable Me: I think the demand for a Special Counsel can be traced to a couple of things. First and foremost, there is a huge lack of trust in our government. People believe our government is not working properly because of all the corruption and cover ups that have been exposed. Second, the scope of all this goes beyond the upper echelons of the FBI and DOJ. It extends to the upper echelons of the IC (Clapper/Brennan), the State Dept., quite possibly the Mueller investigation itself given the grand jury leaks, and most likely all the way to the Obama WH. This is huge in scope and is probably above the pay grade of a single prosecutor.
All indications are that the pucker factor for the swamp definitely went up this past week. The day after the FBI agent in Minnesota was indicted for doing a fraction of what McCabe did (a warning shot if there ever was one), McCabe set up a legal defense fund. He has raised over a half a million dollars in just a few days. Those aren’t little folks contributing. Those are heavy hitters. The types with a lot to lose. Remember, McCabe said if he goes down he’s taking everyone with him. The swamp is having lots of bowel movements in their pants right now.
@another vet:
That’s usually how it works. I hope McCabe got some self-defense and espionage training; he’s a prime candidate for suicide with statements like that.
Perhaps several parallel investigations need to be carried out simultaneously to prevent the collapse of the investigation if one person is taken out.