FBI memo intensifies battle with GOP
By Jeff Mordock and Dan Boylan - The Washington Times - Updated: 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday, January 31, 2018
A rare public challenge by the FBI to Republican lawmakers has intensified the battle over a highly contentious House intelligence committee memo that alleges the bureau and Justice Department were politically biased against Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the document omits information which could impact its veracity — putting his leadership on a collusion course with President Trump and his GOP allies who say they want to soon release the document which the House Intelligence committee voted to make public earlier this week.
“With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” Wednesday’s FBI statement read.
“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
On Wednesday an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment if the agency would release additional information to include the “material omissions.”
Late in the day, House Intelligence committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes — who was warned by the DOJ last week that releasing the document would be “extraordinary reckless” — pushed back against the FBI.
“Having stonewalled Congress’ demands for information for nearly a year, it’s no surprise to see the FBI and DOJ issue spurious objects to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses at these agencies,” Mr. Nunes said. “The FBI is intimately familiar with ‘material omissions’ with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses.”
The document, which has been made available to the whole House, reportedly shows abuses in the intelligence community in order to obtain FISA warrants on Trump campaign aides, with the controversial anti-Trump dossier partially used as justification for observing Trump associates.
On Wednesday, the White House contributed to the drama as Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, appearing on CNN, said the administration is completing a “legal and national security” review before taking action on the memo.
On Tuesday night, as he left the floor of the House camber after completing his first State of the Union address, Mr. Trump was overheard telling Rep. Jeff Duncan, Republican South Carolina, that he “100 percent” will make memo public.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday Ranking GOP member of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, announced his retirement after a lengthy career.
Dems react with outrage
Reaction to the FBI’s forceful statement came swiftly from Capitol Hill Democrats, who fought bitterly against the memo’s release. From the Senate came a reiteration of the party’s argument that the entire memo was concocted to “mislead” the public and discredit the FBI, DOJ and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian meddling probe.
“It’s clear the [memo’s] goal is to undermine the special counsel’s investigation,” Senate Intelligence committee member, Dianne Feinstein said in a statement. “There have also been reports that Congressman Nunes refuses to answer whether his staff worked with the White House on the memo’s creation. There’s no excuse for playing politics with highly classified information. The president shouldn’t place personal or partisan interests above our national security.”
House Intelligence Committee Democrats, which voted against releasing the memo on Monday night along party lines, drafted their own response to the document — which is still being reviewed by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
While speaking at an event in Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, argued the the memo in no way proved that Mr. Trump had somehow been part of what Mr. Nunes called a “vast unmasking conspiracy” which allegedly involved Obama-era officials inappropriately making requests to uncover the identities of Trump campaign officials sweet up in foreign intelligence reports.
Mr. Schiff also published an op-ed in The Washington Post published in the Washington Times accusing Mr. Nunes of “cherry-picks facts” and smearing “the FBI and the Justice Department — all while potentially revealing intelligence sources and methods.”
Sen. Cory Booker called the release “treasonous,” saying it will likely erode Mr. Mueller’s investigation.
“When you violate the intelligence community’s mandates around classified documentation and what should be released, you could be betraying or, especially if you’re revealing sources and methods or giving some color to sources and methods, you are actually endangering fellow Americans in the intelligence community and our ability to source intelligence,” he said during an appearance on XM radio Wednesday.
McCabe Gone
The agency’s statement comes just days after FBI Director Andrew McCabe stepped down earlier than expected. A government official said McCabe, who left the bureau on Monday, is using his retirement eligibility to leave a few weeks earlier than planned.
But Fox News reported that Mr. Wray removed Mr. McCabe from the agency a day after Mr. Wray viewed the surveillance memo on Capitol Hill. Mr. McCabe is also leaving as reports surface that the Justice Department’s inspector general is reviewing his role in the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.
The Justice Department’s inspector general began the inquiry in January 2017 into several aspects of the Clinton email investigation, including whether Mr. McCabe should have recused himself from the investigation.
Mr. McCabe’s wife, Jill, received political contributions totaling $467,500 from the political action committee of then-Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, for her unsuccessful state Senate campaign in 2015. Records show that the state Democratic party made two other payments totaling $207,788 to her campaign.
Mr. McAuliffe was co-chairman of Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign and chairman of Ms. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported the inspector general is reviewing reports that FBI “appeared not to act for about three weeks” after discovering Clinton-related e-mails on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, New York Democrat. Mr. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, was one of the top advisers for Ms. Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr. McCabe, the second-highest ranking official the FBI examined the emails in late October 2016, nearly three weeks after the agency became aware of their existence, the Post reported.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/31/fbi-memo-intensifies-battle-gop/?
My comments: Appointing Christopher Wray as Director of the FBI may have been one of President Trump's worst decisions. It is Clear from what has been revealed so far, that Personnel at the FBI and DOJ is Abused the FISA Warrant Process. The Question is: Why has Wray resisted revealing what happened? Potentially, the future of the Trump Presidency is at stake here, because the Phony Mueller Investigation may have been based on the Illegitimate use of a FISA Warrant.
