OpenCDA

June 14, 2018

DoJ OIG Final Report – FBI & DoJ Interference in 2016 Election

06-14-2018 OIG Report CoverThe long-awaited US Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General’s report concerning the FBI’s and DoJ’s interference in the 2016 election was released Jkune 14, 2018.  Here is a link to the 568-page (some pages blank) report.

I’m sure some readers will disagree with my characterization “the FBI’s and DoJ’s interference.”  Read the report and come to your own conclusions.  My opinion, a conclusion, is that they interfered, and that inteference seems to be continuing even now by the FBI’s and DoJ’s unlawfully withholding information Congress needs to perform its Constitutionally-required oversight.

Spontaneous statements can be valid indicators of state of mind.

The text messages between two high-up FBI employees, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, were spontaneous, not scripted.  One (see page 402 headed August 8, 2016) that was particularly chilling.  It read:

“In a text message on August 7, 2016, Page stated, “[Trump’s not ever going to become president, right?  Right?!”  Strzok responded, “No.  No he’s not.  We’ll stop it.” [emphasis mine]

Keep in mind that Peter Strzok was not some hump brick agent — he is an FBI Deputy Assistant Director.  Lisa Page was the Special Counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.   It’s fair to wonder just how far they would be willing to go to stop Donald J. Trump from being elected President.

And yet in a press conference Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray reiterated what was asserted in the report:  There was nothing in the FBI’s conduct of the investigation that indicated political bias.   (more…)

November 14, 2016

FBI Director Comey’s Letters

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , , , — Bill @ 7:20 pm

hillaryloserfsbPredictably, Hillary Clinton blames FBI Director James Comey for her loss in the 2016 presidential election.  She asserts that Comey’s July and October comments and letters to certain Congressional oversight committee chairmen and minority ranking members caused some of her supporters to vote for Trump or at least not vote for her.

Assume she’s correct about the influence Comey’s letters may have had on some voters.

The real question, then, is whether Comey acted with malice or favoritism toward either nominee.  Did he intend to influence the outcome of the election?

OpenCdA doesn’t think he did.  An equally strong and even more plausible argument is that Comey was performing the duties required and expected of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Hillary Clinton’s illegal storage and retention of national security information on her unsecured private email server and her illegally allowing unauthorized persons (e.g., her housekeeper) to handle and view that information elevated the severity of her actions.  More than just violating statutes and administrative orders, Clinton maliciously jeopardized the national security.  As Secretary of State,  Clinton was required to know and understand the various national security regulations and laws to not only conform her own conduct but also to ensure her employees complied with those regulations and laws as well.    By virtue of her position, she knew using the private email server to traffic in national security information was wrong.  She cannot claim ignorance as a defense.

As we’ve pointed out in several preceding OpenCdA posts, the FBI has multiple responsibilities.   Not all of them will or should end in an arrest, prosecution, and trial.  Protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage is frequently at the top of that list.

Whether the Clintons  want to admit it or not, their knowingly allowing her server to be used to exchange national security information seriously jeopardized the national security.  Using BleachBit overwrite software, Clinton intentionally tried to hide evidence of her culpability from the Intelligence Community.    The effect was that she obstructed the Intelligence Community’s effort to assess the damage done to national security.  She made it difficult and maybe impossible to conclusively itemize what national security information was actually compromised and by whom.

If the Clinton private email server had not been used to traffic in national security information, it would likely not have been of even passing interest to Congress.   But once the FBI determined the server had been used to unlawfully store national security information, it had a duty to investigate and keep Congress informed about the threat to national security.  To do otherwise is to make it difficult or impossible for Congress to exercise its responsibility to oversee Executive Branch departments and agencies.

FBI Director James Comey was between the dog and the fire hydrant, but it was Hillary Clinton who pumped the dog full of diuretics when she created her illegal email server and used it to illegally traffic in national security information.

FBI Director James Comey did not conceive, build, and use the backchannel unsecured email system.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did.

November 1, 2016

Cooperating Witness? Or Defendant?

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 4:42 pm

humaabedinweinerNow we learn that the FBI discovered some Hillary email server case emails on the laptop computer of none other than Huma Abedin’s estranged husband Anthony “Carlos Danger” Weiner.

Through her personal attorney, Abedin states she didn’t know those emails were on Anthony Weiner’s computer.

If Abedin is denying using Carlos’ computer for work-related emails, then how did the emails get there?

It appears to OpenCdA that the FBI now owns Huma Abedin.  She swore under oath that she had turned over all devices containing Clinton email server related messages.

It also appears to us that Abedin has two choices:  She can become a fully cooperating truth-telling witness in the FBI’s investigations of both Clinton’s email and her family’s foundation,  or she can become a defendant and risk spending time in a federal penitentiary.  Since daddy is likely already facing prison time for soliciting sex with an underage girl, if Huma wants to give their four year-old son Jordan some semblance of a normal life, it shouldn’t be a difficult choice.

October 27, 2016

… And Now We Know Who and Why

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , , — Bill @ 12:59 pm

hillaryfsb78FBI Director James Comey’s July 5th announcement surprised many people, but it completely stunned the over 100 FBI investigators and 6 DoJ National Security Division attorneys who had worked on the Clinton private email server investigation.   The investigative team had nearly unanimously recommended charging Democrat Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with numerous very serious violations of national security laws.

But thanks to recent FBI releases of more of her emails which Clinton thought she had not only deleted but overwritten as well, the world now knows that President Barack Hussein Obama had directed his sycophant Attorney General Loretta Lynch that under no circumstances was Clinton to be charged with any crimes.

Many people would assume Obama’s order to Lynch was to protect Clinton’s candidacy.  But again thanks to the FBI releases of the emails, even liberal propaganda mills the New York Times and Politico were forced to report that Obama was more likely trying to prevent one of his own very serious lies to the American public from being revealed.

On March 15, 2015, Obama gave a highly-publicized interview in which he told the world he had learned about Clinton’s private email server the same way as everyone else — from the news.  The Clinton email dump reveals that Obama was lying, and Hillary Clinton, her lawyer Cheryl Mills, and her campaign advisor John Podesta knew it.   A March 7, 2015, email from Mills to Podesta told Podesta about emails from Obama (using a pseudonym) to Clinton on her private server that long predated his March 15, 2015, interview.   Here are the Politico story and the New York Times story.

And now we know why FBI Director James Comey said what he said on July 5.

Comey almost certainly had been told by Lynch that she really didn’t care what evidence the FBI and DoJ investigators found.  She had already made an agreement with Barack Hussein Obama to decline prosecuting Clinton.  Why?  Because any prosecution of Clinton would most certainly have revealed the President’s own bald-faced lie to the people.

Infinitely more worrisome than Obama’s lie to the public, a Clinton criminal trial could and probably would reveal that Obama was aware the server was illegally being used to store classified information.  Even the very bribable Democrats and lily-livered Republicans in Congress would be forced to deliberate impeachment, not of Obama (who will presumably be gone on January 20, 2017) but of President Hillary Clinton.

Loretta Lynch’s loyalty may at some point in her legal career have been to the principle of rule of law and the US Constitution.  No longer.  Loretta Lynch’s loyalty is to Barack Hussein Obama.   The public will rightly wonder what tangible gratuity Lynch will receive in return from the Clintons or their Foundation.

It’s highly doubtful that Lynch has either the personal or professional integrity and dignity to follow in the steps of Nixon’s Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus.  They resigned rather than follow Nixon’s politically-motivated orders to fire the special prosecutor.  Lynch didn’t even have the courage to refuse to meet privately on her government airplane with the disgraced former President William Jefferson Clinton even though her Justice Department was investigating Clinton’s wife for her crimes which gravely imperil the national security.

The American public should be very, very concerned that Obama’s US Department of Justice, particularly but not exclusively Mahogany Row at Main Justice, has become so politicized.

One of the often-heard arguments against Hillary Clinton’s presidency is that she will likely be able to appoint at least three US Supreme Court justices.  Voters need to recognize that it is worse than that.

The ideological contamination will not be limited to appellate decisions by the US Supreme Court.

The next President will appoint not only Supreme Court justices.  The next President will also appoint some new or additional federal judges and appoint or reappoint some or all of the 94 US Attorneys.  For citizens who need to seek the remedy and justice of the federal courts, the thought that any or all of those appointees could be like Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch or Janet Reno or John Mitchell or Ed Meese or Alberto Gonzales is terrifying.

September 11, 2016

Deep Throat, Ver. 2.0?

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 1:45 pm

comeyWill present FBI Director James Comey be revealed in the footnotes of history as ‘Deep Throat, Ver. 2.0?’

OpenCdA certainly hopes so.  It would help explain Comey’s contradictory conduct in the Clinton email and Foundation investigations.  Out of one side of his mouth, Comey has laid out sufficient evidence for the criminal indictment of Hillary Clinton on numerous violations of national security and criminal law.  Yet out of the other side, he has said no reasonable prosecutor would even consider such a filing.

We cling to one last very weak straw of hope that Comey and the FBI have not succumbed to Beltway Toxicity and subordinated the country’s foundational principle of the rule of law to the rule of man (or woman).

Comey knows that the decision to charge or not charge Hillary Clinton with the crimes she has allegedly committed rests exclusively with the US Attorney General and her headnodders on Mahogany Row at Main Justice.

OpenCdA readers will recall, however, that after what Attorney General Loretta Lynch said was a purely spontaneous meeting between her and Slick Willy in late June on the tarmac at Sky Harbor Aiport, Lynch promptly said she would not make the decision to charge or not charge, leaving it up to her subordinates at Main Justice.

Our hope is that Comey is doing publicly what former FBI Deputy Director W. Mark Felt did sub rosa during Watergate:  Turn whistle-blower to get evidence of Hillary Clinton’s culpability into the voters’ hands.   For years Felt was identified only by the pseudonym ‘Deep Throat’ in connection with the Watergate scandal.

Unlike Mark Felt who astutely played on the Washington Post owner Katharine Graham’s disdain for Nixon, Comey has chosen to neuter the Clinton-worshipping skews media by going directly to the people.  With his initial public statement on July 5, 2016, and then with the FBI’s release of its summary of the investigation in a bury-it-deep news dump the Friday before Labor Day, Comey has laid out the evidence showing more than enough to support criminal indictments of Clinton and some of her close associates.  The skews media had to report Comey’s releases even though the facts undermined Clinton’s and the media’s assertions of innocence.

Of course, we have acknowledged being wrong about Loretta Lynch’s judgment and integrity, so we must also consider that this Wall Street Journal editorial and this Breitbart exposé may have been more on the mark about FBI Director James Comey.

July 24, 2016

Oh, The Irony!

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 12:37 pm

Hilary on SVROpen CdA wonders if our three or four loyal readers fully see the irony in the Democratic National Committee’s assertion that it was the Russians who hacked into the DNC’s emails and got embarrassing information revealing how the DNC sought to sabotage Senator Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign?

And yet if Attorney General Loretta Lynchpin and the Jefe Feeb are to be believed, they just couldn’t seem to find any indication at all that Russia’s SVR (the foreign intelligence service) or the FSB (counterintelligence) even knew about Clinton’s unsecured private email server which contained very sensitive national security information.

If it was funny, we would be laughing.  It isn’t, and we aren’t.

June 30, 2016

Boy, Were We Wrong!

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 2:00 pm

Lynch copyIn our OpenCdA posts on November 18, 2014, and December 5, 2014, we expressed our unqualified support for the US Senate to quickly confirm President Obama’s nominee, Loretta Lynch, to be the new United States Attorney General.  Our support was based on her responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee and Lynch’s performance as a straight-up US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York.

But then yesterday in a television news report from ABC15 News Arizona in Phoenix, we first learned that Attorney General Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met privately for 15 to 30 minutes on her airplane at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.  A few more details about the meeting were in today’s online Washington Post story headlined Attorney general meets with former president Clinton amid politically charged investigation into his wife’s email.

Both Lynch and Clinton denied that anything in their conversation was inappropriate.

Maybe, but we know that Lynch is obviously an experienced federal prosecuting attorney, and Clinton was at one time a practicing attorney.  Without any doubt, both Lynch and Clinton knew any private meeting between them would create an appearance of impropriety and be a very serious breach of legal ethics and professional conduct.  Conceivably, in Clinton’s case, his conduct could rise to the level of obstruction of justice.

OpenCdA would like to believe that AG Loretta Lynch was blindsided, that neither she nor her staff had agreed in advance to meet with Clinton.  Former president Clinton is a proven liar, so we do not believe his version of this story, that he just happened to be at Sky Harbor at the same time Lynch was and that he spontaneously decided to meet with her.

Unless there had been prior coordination of such a meeting, Lynch’s security detail should have stopped Clinton at the bottom of the stairs to her aircraft.  Clinton should never have been allowed to board her aircraft.  Lynch should have instructed her staff to politely but firmly decline to allow Clinton on board to meet with her and remind him of how such a meeting would appear.   It was the AG staff’s job to politely but firmly deliver that message to Clinton.  Once the AG’s staff had informed Clinton that the AG would not meet personally with him, it became the duty of the FBI SAs on her security detail to prevent his unauthorized boarding of her aircraft, physically if necessary.

AG Loretta Lynch had the duty, the authority, and the “muscle” to prevent former president Clinton from being in a position to  compromise her objectivity and integrity in making a charging decision about Hillary Clinton.  She failed.

Lynch’s failure of duty taints any decision she might be asked to make about Hillary Clinton’s alleged criminal conduct.

OpenCdA believed that after the fetid stench of Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch would be an ethical and professional breath of fresh air at the top of the US Department of Justice.

Boy, were we wrong!

December 5, 2014

AG-Nominee Lynch Senate Questionnaire

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: — Bill @ 8:43 am

Lynch copy[

OpenCdA’s November 18, 2014, post entitled Confirm Loretta E. Lynch — Soon! informed readers that Lynch would be required to complete a detailed questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee in preparation for her confirmation hearings.  We promised that when it became available, we would post Lynch’s completed questionnaire and her answers here.

Here is the Senate Judiciary Committee’s 56-page questionnaire with Attorney General nominee Loretta E. Lynch Hargrove’s answers.

November 18, 2014

Confirm Loretta E. Lynch — Soon!

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: — Bill @ 7:13 am

Lynch copyOpenCdA hopes that Loretta E. Lynch will soon be confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the full Senate to be the next Attorney General of the United States.  She is currently serving as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.  Lynch has a strong record of criminal prosecutions in public corruption, civil rights, and white collar crime cases, but she is perceived to be less an ideologue than her predecessor Eric Holder.   She is not particularly close to President Obama and was not his first choice to replace Holder.  She currently chairs the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee which represents the voice of the U.S. Attorneys and provides advice and counsel to the Attorney General on policy, management and operational issues impacting the Offices of the U.S. Attorneys.

We hope that if confirmed as Holder’s successor, Lynch would encourage President Obama to quickly replace the US Attorney for the District of Idaho (Wendy J. Olson) with one who mirrors Lynch’s own commitment, competence, and experience in prosecuting public corruption and white collar crime cases.   Hopefully a Lynch recommendation for Idaho would be an aggressive, experienced go-getter on his or her way up rather than someone trying to transition into a retirement position with an Idaho law firm.  We would prefer she recommend a US Attorney replacement from outside Idaho, although that would certainly deviate from protocol and rankle Idaho’s Congressional delegation.

Before too long, Lynch will complete a Senate Judiciary Questionnaire for Non-Judicial Nominees and submit it to the Senate Judiciary Committee to use in preparing for Lynch’s confirmation hearing.  As an example of the kinds of information sought from Lynch, here is the Questionnaire submitted by Elena Kagan when she was nominated to be President Obama’s Solicitor General in 2009.

Lynch’s questionnaire responses are public record, so they will be posted on OpenCdA when they become available.

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