FLASHBACK: OBAMA INSISTS HE DOESN’T GET INVOLVED IN FBI INVESTIGATIONS
‘I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI’
Feb 7, 2018
Today Fox News reported President Obama asked the FBI for updates on the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
“[Lisa] Page wrote to Strzok on Sept. 2, 2016, about prepping Comey because ‘potus wants to know everything we’re doing,'” Fox News reports. “According to a newly released Senate report, this text raises questions about Obama’s personal involvement in the Clinton email investigation.”
But in an April 2016 interview on Fox News Sunday, then-President Obama said he “guaranteed” he was staying out of the FBI probe.
“I do not talk to the Attorney General about pending investigations,” Obama told Chris Wallace. “I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line and always have maintained it –”
Asked to assure the American people the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton would be treated no differently than anyone else, Obama was emphatic: “I guarantee it. I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case but in any case. Full stop. Period.”
Here’s a transcript of the exchange:
WALLACE: “Mr. President, when you say what you just said — what Josh Earnest said as he did, your spokesman, in January — ‘the information from the Justice Department is that she’s not a target,’ some people, I think, are worried whether or not the decision, whether or not how to handle the case, will be decided on political grounds, not legal grounds. Can you guarantee to the American people, can you direct the Justice Department to say, ‘Hillary Clinton will be treated as the evidence goes, she will not in any way be protected.'”
OBAMA: “I can guarantee that. I can guarantee that not because I give Attorney General Lynch a directive, that is institutionally how we have always operated. I do not talk to the Attorney General about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line and always have maintained it –”
WALLACE: “–So, just to button this up –”
OBAMA: “I guarantee it. I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case but in any case. Full stop Period.”
WALLACE: “– And she will be treated no differently?–”
OBAMA: “Guaranteed, full stop, period. Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department because nobody is above the law.”
WALLACE: “Even if she ends up as the Democratic nominee?”
OBAMA: “How many times do I have to say it, Chris? Guaranteed.
An Oregon jury convicted a previously deported Mexican national of sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl. The convicted child-rapist has a history of crimes in the U.S.
The little girl’s mother told law enforcement officials in Clackamas County last year that a man broke into their 9 and 5-year-old daughters’ bedroom. The man came through the window of their apartment at night on February 25 and sexually assaulted their daughter. Although he escaped through a window, law enforcement officials were able to find his fingerprints, KATU2 in Portland, Oregon reported.
Breitbart Texas reported that federal officers arrested 48-year-old Santiago Flores-Martinez when he was trying to cross back into Mexico in late April. The port’s Anti-Terrorism Contraband Enforcement Team (A-TCET) apprehended the Mexican national at the San Ysidro port of entry. San Ysidro is a district within the City of San Diego and is on the California-Mexico border near Tijuana.
Officials identified Flores-Martinez when they retrieved biometric information on him via the “Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System” (IAFIS).
Police began searching for the accused child rapist on April 25.
Fox 12 Oregon reported the jury found Flores-Martinez guilty on charges that include first-degree sex abuse, attempted rape, burglary, and coercion. His sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin on Monday.
The convicted child rapist has used the aliases “Felipe Coeto” and “Isidro Ramos Flores.”
The previously deported Mexican national has a criminal record in the U.S. that dates back to 1994. Immigration officers deported him in 2001 after serving two years in prison in Oregon.
Clackamas County is located just southeast of Portland, Oregon. The county is listed by the Center for Immigration Studies as being a sanctuary jurisdiction that has policies prohibiting local law enforcement officials from cooperating with federal immigration officers.
The House Intelligence Committee released its classified memo detailing alleged abuse by senior FBI and Justice Department officials on Friday, after the president approved its release.
Among the memo’s findings are:
The anti-Trump dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee formed an “essential” part of the initial and all three renewal surveillance applications against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page;
The political origins of the dossier were “known to senior DOJ and FBI officials,” but those origins were not included in applications to obtain the warrant;
Also used to justify the surveillance warrants against Page was a news story supposedly corroborating the dossier, that was pushed by the dossier author Christopher Steele himself — yet the FISA application incorrectly says Steele did not provide the information in the article;
Perkins Coie — the law firm for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hosted a meeting with Steele, Fusion GPS and media (this revelation makes it harder for the Clinton campaign and the DNC to deny they knew about the dossier, though Clinton and other top DNC officials at that time have denied knowing about it);
Steele was “suspended and then terminated” as an FBI source, after the FBI learned that he made an authorized disclosure of his relationship with the FBI to liberal media magazine Mother Jones, and he lied to the FBI about his previous media contacts with Yahoo! and other outlets;
Steele — although portrayed as a “boy scout” by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson — had personal bias against candidate Donald Trump, telling senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president”;
Ohr’s wife Nellie Ohr assisted with the dossier, but the FBI or the DOJ did not disclose this connection in the application for the FISA warrant, even though Bruce Ohr worked “closely” with Deputy Attorney Generals Sally Yates and then Rod Rosenstein;
At the time that the FBI used the dossier to obtain the spy warrant on Page in October 2016, head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Bill Priestap had assessed that the corroboration of the dossier was still in its “infancy,” and after Steele was terminated as a source, an FBI unit assessed his reporting as only “minimally corroborated”;
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that no warrant would have been sought without the dossier;
The FISA warrant also mentioned information related to another Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, even though there was no evidence of cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos;
The memo does not state what the information about Papadopoulos was, but said that information was the trigger to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation on Russian meddling and collusion in late July 2016 (he had told an Australian diplomat at a London bar that a Maltese professor connected to Russia had told him he had dirt on Clinton in the form of emails);
Peter Strzok, the No. 2 at the FBI’s counterintelligence division opened the bureau’s investigation on Russian meddling and collusion (text messages between him and fellow FBI official and lover Lisa Page show that he held an anti-Trump bias).
The memo was released without any of the redactions sought by the FBI and the DOJ. Read it below:
Join Our Show on tomorrow were we will give the BSET report on what President Trump had to say at the State of The Union address. Liberals showed up just to have long faces because they truly hate when America does well. We will also discuss those hero’s that the President invited as special guest.
Just some of the points we will be covering below:
No one in their right mind should trust the Government.
The author who wrote Clinton Cash and sparked an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation is preparing to launch his highly anticipated investigative follow-up—a book that appears it will be every bit as explosive as his last.
On Monday, publishing giant Harper Collins released the book cover of Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer’s forthcoming book, Secret Empires: How Our Politicians Hide Corruption and Enrich Their Families and Friends. While little is known about the book’s contents, five images on the book’s cover suggest that Schweizer’s next targets may include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), former Vice President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State John Kerry, and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
According to the publisher, Secret Empires will expose vast corruption by top Washington figures who leverage their political power to enrich their family members and friends, often by helping grease deals with foreign entities.
The author of four major New York Times bestsellers, Schweizer has garnered praise from conservatives and progressives alike for his reputation as a nonpartisan deep-dive investigative journalist. Newsweek dubbed him “the wonk who slays Washington.” Indeed, among Washington insiders, the launch of a Schweizer book is regarded as somewhat of an event—one that has resulted in ethics probes, the passage of major anti-corruption legislation, members of Congress stepping down, and, in the case of the Clintons, an FBI investigation.
In 2012, 60 Minutes based a feature report on Schweizer’s book Throw Them All Out that exposed congressional insider trading by members of Congress. The 60 Minutes report won the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based journalism. After Schweizer’s revelations, Congress overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill called the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) to ban lawmakers from using insider knowledge to make personal stock trades. As left-leaning Slate noted, Schweizer wrote “the book that started the STOCK Act stampede.” One of the main targets of the book, the powerful chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus (R-AL), announced he would not seek reelection following the book’s revelations.
In 2013, Schweizer released Extortion:How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets and sparked the resignation of Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ). Schweizer revealed that Andrews used $16,575 from his leadership PAC to jet he and his family to a lavish resort in Edinburgh, Scotland. CBS’s 60 Minutes partnered with Schweizer again to report Extortion’s findings. Following Rep. Andrews’s resignation, Schweizer said: “The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) is a nonpartisan investigative research team committed to exposing cronyism and misuse of taxpayer money. For those discouraged by the cronyism corrupting Washington, the Andrews resignation demonstrates that we can hold them accountable. For those in power who are engaging in self-enrichment, we have two words: watch out.”
Then in 2015, Schweizer sent shockwaves through Washington, DC, with the release of Clinton Cash. The book revealed that Hillary Clinton’s State Department, along with eight other agencies, approved the transfer of 20 percent of U.S. uranium and that nine foreign investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times ran a 4,000-word front-page story based on the book and confirmed its findings, as did the Washington Post and several others. Hillary Clinton’s campaign kicked into overdrive trying to refute the book’s myriad revelations. Surprisingly, some of Schweizer’s strongest defenders came from the political left. Progressive columnist Eleanor Clift hailed Schweizer “an equal-opportunity investigator, snaring Republicans as well as Democrats.” And Columbia University Earth Institute Director Jeffrey D. Sachs said Clinton Cash was “compelling reading on how Bill and Hillary have mixed personal wealthy, power, and influence peddling.”
A feature-length documentary film based on the book debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and also received wide praise. MSNBC said the film was “devastating” and that it “powerfully connects the dots.”
Later, in November 2016, the New York Times reported that an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation “was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book Clinton Cash, according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.”
Will Secret Empires result in a similar political firestorm? For now, Schweizer isn’t saying.
“My publisher has me under a strict embargo not to reveal any contents from the book,” Schweizer told Breitbart News.
According to HarperCollins, Secret Empiresis slated to hit bookshelves nationwide March 2oth.
