America Appoints its own radical enemies as the top chief of the nation’s security.
EDITORIAL – LiesHunter.Com
On July 31, 2016, the Department of Justice and the FBI opened an investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane”, into whether Donald J. Trump for President Campaign were coordinating with the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 US Presidential Election while turning a blind eye to electoral fraud committed by the Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Executive Summary
Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire
Hurricane Investigation
The Department of Justice (Department) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) undertook this review to examine certain actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department during an FBI investigation opened on July 31, 2016, known as “Crossfire Hurricane,” into whether individuals associated with the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign were coordinating, wittingly or unwittingly, with the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
OIG Methodology
The OIG examined more than one million documents that were in the Department’s and FBI’s possession and conducted over 170 interviews involving more than 100 witnesses.
These witnesses included
former FBI Director Comey,
former Attorney General (AG) Loretta Lynch,
former Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Sally Yates,
former DAG Rod Rosenstein,
former Acting AG and Acting DAG and
current FBI General Counsel Dana Boente,
former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe,
former FBI General Counsel James Baker, and
Department attorney Bruce Ohr and his wife.
The OIG also interviewed Christopher Steele and current and former employees of other U.S. government agencies.
Two witnesses, Glenn Simpson and Jonathan Winer (a former Department of State official), declined our request for voluntary interviews, and we were unable to compel their testimony.
We were given broad access to relevant materials by the Department and the FBI. In addition, we reviewed relevant information that other U.S. government agencies provided the FBI in the course of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. However, because the activities of other agencies are outside our jurisdiction, we did not seek to obtain records from them that the FBI never received or reviewed, except for a limited amount of State Department records relating to Steele; we also did not seek to assess any actions other agencies may have taken.
Additionally, our review did not independently seek to determine whether corroboration existed for the Steele election reporting; rather, our review was focused on information that was available to the FBI concerning Steele’s reports prior to and during the pendency of thet Carter Page FISA authority.
Our role in this review was not to second-guess discretionary judgments by Department personnel about whether to open an investigation, or specific judgment calls made during the course of an investigation, where those decisions complied with or were authorized by Department rules, policies, or procedures. We do not criticize particular decisions merely because we might have recommended a different investigative strategy or tactic based on the facts learned during our investigation.
The question we considered was not whether a particular investigative decision was ideal or could have been handled more effectively, but rather whether the Department and the FBI complied with applicable legal requirements, policies, and procedures in taking the actions we reviewed or, alternatively, whether the circu msta n ces surrounding the decision indicated that it was based on inaccurate or incomplete information, or considerations other than the merits of the investigation. If the explanations we were given for a particular decision were consistent with legal requirements, policies, procedures, and not unreasonable, we did not conclude that the decision was based on improper considerations in the absence of documentary or testimonial evidence to the contrary.
(The whole document that count 478 pages, follows this excerpts.)
Conclusions
In July 2016, 3 weeks after then FBI Director James Comey announced the conclusion of the FBI’s “Midyear Exam” investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of government emails during her tenure as Secretary of State, the FBI received reporting from a Friendly Foreign Government (FFG) that, in
a May 2016 meeting with the FFG, Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos “suggested the Trump team had received some kind of a suggestion” from Russia that it could assist in the election process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to candidate Clinton and President Obama.
Days later, on July 31, the FBI initiated the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that is the subject of this report.
As we noted last year in our review of the Midyear investigation, the FBI has developed and earned a reputation as one of the world’s premier law enforcement
agencies in significant part because of its tradition of professionalism, impartiality, non-political enforcement of the law, and adherence to detailed policies, practices, and norms. It was precisely these qualities that were required as the FBI initiated and conducted Crossfire Hurricane.
However, as we describe in this report, our review identified significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised, particularly the FBI’s failure to adhere to its own standards of accuracy and completeness when filing applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authority to surveil Carter Page, a U.S. person who was connected to the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign.
We also identified what we believe is an absence of sufficient policies to ensure appropriate Department oversight of significant investigative decisions that could affect constitutionally protected activity.
