FBI Director James Comey held a secret Oval Office meeting with President Barack Obama two weeks before Trump’s inauguration and may have deliberately misled Congress about it, according to an email sent by National Security Advisor Susan Rice that GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham partially unclassified.
The meeting — which Comey never previously disclosed to Congress — occurred in the White House on Jan. 5, 2017. It included Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Rice deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and Comey. The topic of the meeting was potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
By failing to inform the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the meeting in his June 8, 2017, testimony, Comey may have deliberately and intentionally misled Congress about his interactions with the former president, especially a meeting so close to Trump entering the White House.
“President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office,” Rice wrote in an email written the day before the inauguration.
The National Archives gave Grassley and Graham “classified and unclassified emails” about the meeting.
Previously, Comey contended he only met with the Obama twice, once in 2015 and another “to say goodbye in late 2016,” according the former FBI director’s June 8, 2017, testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) – once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016,” Comey’s opening statement read.
Grassley and Graham stated on their websites they “were struck by the context and timing of this email, and sent a follow up letter to Ambassador Rice.”
“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation,” the two senators told Rice.
“In addition, despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book,’” they continued.
Rice is scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Feb. 22.
Grassley co-authored the letter to Rice as chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Graham as chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism.
I don’t think Obama spied on Trump, Hell i Know he did.
Spying On Trump: Americans overwhelmingly believe the Obama administration “improperly surveilled” Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and a majority say they would like to see a special prosecutor appointed to look into possible misconduct by the FBI and Department of Justice in spying on Trump, the latest IBD/TIPP poll shows.
One fact emerges from the poll of 900 people conducted from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2: The public doesn’t necessarily buy into the Democratic narrative that the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russia to tamper with the 2016 presidential election.The poll also suggests that many Americans think the roots of the allegations made against Trump extend beyond the two major party campaigns in the last presidential election and deep into the Obama era’s intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracies, and may involve active political bias on the part of supposedly nonpartisan employees of both the Justice Department and FBI.
In the IBD/TIPP survey of public opinion, we asked respondents “How closely are you following news stories about the role played by the FBI and the Department of Justice during the 2016 presidential election?” Of those who responded, 72% said they were following the story either “very closely” (39%) or “somewhat closely” (33%). Our responses were taken only from those who were following the story closely.Some 55% of those said it was “likely” that the Obama administration “improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.” There was an obvious partisan split among the responses, with 87% of Republicans and 55% of independents saying the improper spying took place, but only 31% of Democrats.
On the question of whether a special counsel was needed to “investigate whether the FBI and the Department of Justice improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election,” 54% responded “yes,” and 44% “no.” Again, 74% of Republicans and 50% of independents wanted a special counsel appointed. But even 44% of Democrats thought it would be a good idea.
If so, a full-on investigation might be in the cards, not just of the so-called Steele dossier on Trump, which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and by the Democratic National Committee, but of key members of the Obama administration, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI Director James Comey.
We further asked Americans whether they thought “some senior career civil servants at the FBI and Department of Justice knowingly coordinated to frame the president with allegations of Russian collusion in order to cast a cloud over his presidency.”
There, the readings were not as definitively strong as with the other two questions. Of those queried, 35% said yes, Justice and FBI officials coordinated their actions to frame the president for colluding with the Russians, while 60% said no. This had by far the biggest partisan split of all, with 77% of Republicans saying yes, but just 11% of Democrats and 30% of independents agreeing.
Plainly, Americans are concerned by what they’ve read and heard of the surveillance of the Trump campaign and would like a full investigation.
The poll’s contents are troubling for those in the Democratic Party and the left-leaning media who had hoped to make a case with the American people that President Trump worked with Russian officials to win the 2016 election. The American people don’t seem to believe it.
More seriously, recent revelations suggest that the Obama administration FBI and Justice Department “basically conspired with the Democratic Party, the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign to exonerate her of violations of the Espionage Act and, in the course of trying to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president, to frame him for a nonexistent crime of collusion” with the Russians, as former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova told Fox News.
Using the Hillary-funded Steele dossier on Trump, which included false and outrageous claims that couldn’t be verified, the FBI and Justice Department convinced the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on sometime Trump volunteer Carter Page. In doing so, they were able to spy on much of the rest of the Trump campaign, as well. However, the initial application for the surveillance in October 2016 did not mention that the source for the surveillance request was a political campaign. If it had, it might well have been rejected.
The possibility that an administration used the federal apparatus to spy on a political foe reeks to high heaven. As House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes noted last week, “The American people understand the FBI should not go to secret courts, using information that was paid for by the Democrats to open up investigations with warrants of people of the other political party.” It’s the stuff of banana republics and totalitarian dictatorships.
With so many Americans having questions about the Russia collusion scandal, we won’t be surprised if it leads not just to an investigation of the events of late 2016, when much of the activity took place, but to the time before that — when the Obama administration, keen on protecting Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects, began to use the federal bureaucracy for what appears to be political purposes. For the record, that’s against the law.
The question going forward may well become: What did President Obama know about the dossier, and when did he know it?
James The Corrupt Comey and Peter S. Needs to be investigated NOW.
The FBI didn’t flag that some emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server were marked classified with a “(C)” when they were sent — something that seemingly would have been one of the first and most obvious checks in an investigation, and one that FBI agents instantly recognized put the facts at odds with Clinton’s public statements.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General noticed it after the FBI missed it, texts between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, reveal. “Holy cow,” Strzok wrote, “if the FBI missed this, what else was missed?”
“Remind me to tell you to flag for Andy [redacted] emails we (actually ICIG) found that have portion marks (C) on a couple of paras. DoJ was Very Concerned about this,” he wrote.
“Found on the 30k [emails] provided to State originally. No one noticed. It cuts against ‘I never sent or received anything marked classified,’” he wrote, referring to statements by Clinton downplaying the danger of her email practices.
Much of the more in-depth investigation considered whether Clinton and her aides emailed materials that were classified but were not marked as such, a harder determination to make.
The exchange occurred on June 12, 2016. FBI Director Jim Comey disclosed the findings of marked-classified emails to the House on July 7.
On May 10, 2016, Strzok had suggested that in his mind, the investigation was closer to being finished than to just getting started — suggesting that if it weren’t for the inspector general, it might have closed down and cleared her despite missing the most obvious first step.
“I cannot overstate to you the sense of urgency about wanting to logically and effectively conclude this investigation,” he said.
The ommission allowed Clinton to repeatedly and prominently state that she had “never received nor sent any material that was marked classified” on her private email server while secretary of state.
She even said so at major debates, and because the FBI hadn’t caught the letter (C), and therefore never stated its findings, PolitiFact rated the claim “Half True.”
When the FBI belatedly noticed and relayed the truth, the fact-checking site said “Now we know it’s just plain wrong.”
Clinton decided to print out 55,000 pages instead of providing the State Department with her emails in their digital format, a technique sometimes used by lawyers to make searches harder for their opponents. A CTRL-F search for “(C)” could have missed the markings because State had to re-digitize the forms with Optical Character Recognition, which can get tripped up on symbols, perhaps interpreting it as something like “[C]” or a copyright symbol. Nonetheless, the classified marker always appears at the beginning of a paragraph and is visually distinct.
The comments come from 500 pages of texts released Wednesday by Senate investigators.
Markings denoting the different levels of classified information include (C) for confidential, (S) for secret, and (TS) for top secret.
Congressional investigators are puzzling over a December 2016 text message that suggests the Justice Department sought to grant immunity to Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
In a Dec. 13, 2016 text exchange, FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok sent his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, a text message referring to a conversation he had with the Justice Department discussing immunity and potential grand jury testimony.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released the text message along with 384 pages of additional records on Wednesday.
“Talked with DoJ about HA interview,” Strzok wrote to Page.
“Told them we had to interview, no immunity. They said they thought that would get counsel to the point of saying she’s either taking the 5th in the Gj or you need to give her immunity. I said that’s fine, please have discussions to get the decision to that point and I would run it up the chain.”
Peter Strzok text message to Lisa Page, Dec. 13, 2016.
The initials “HA,” the gender reference and other text messages that Strzok sent in that time frame strongly suggest that he was referring to Abedin.
A day before the text about immunity, Strzok said that a top FBI official had offered to meet with Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall.
Peter Strzok text message to Lisa Page, Dec. 12, 2016.
Kendall did not represent Abedin in the email case so it is unclear why the FBI sought to meet with him. A lawyer who represented Abedin on the email matter did not respond to a request for comment.
It is unclear what case Strzok was investigating at the time, and there have been no reports that Abedin was granted immunity or that she pleaded the Fifth.
The Hillary Clinton email investigation was closed for good on Nov. 6, 2016, just two days before the election. The FBI re-opened its investigation in late Oct. 2016 after Clinton emails were discovered on a laptop shared by Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
The FBI was still investigating Weiner for sending lewd messages to an underage girl.
The FBI officials investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server wrote that House Speaker Paul Ryan is a “jerk,” that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell looks like a turtle, that Oversight Committee chairman Trey Gowdy is a “dick,” and that newscaster Chris Wallace is a “turd.”
And as for former FBI Director James Comey: “Jim’s too blindly boyscoutish.”
Those comments come from 500 pages of texts released Wednesday by Senate investigators.
In the texts, agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, lawyer Lisa Page, also wrote that Congress is “contemptible.”
The Oversight Committee held a hearing Sept. 12 about “Classifications and Redactions in the FBI’s investigative file” on the Clinton case. Jason Herring, acting assistant director for Congressional Affairs of the FBI, was there to provide answers, while Page and Strzok watched.
Page appeared to fault the chairman of the oversight committee for asking “investigative questions” and indicated that Herring was supposed to have a simple “script” — of refusing to answer.
“Gowdy is being a total dick. All investigative questions. And Jason isn’t always stricking to the script on ‘I’m not answering that,’” she wrote. “Gowdy is really starting to piss me off,” she previously noted.
During the third presidential debate, Oct. 20, 2016, Strzok said, “I am riled up. Trump is a fucking idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer… WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY, LIS?!?!?!”
“Chris Wallace is a turd,” he added.
“Trump is a disaster. I have no idea how destabilizing his presidency would be,” Page said.
“Mitch McConnell always reminds me of a turtle,” Page wrote July 20, 2016.
