VANITY: The Inspector General Report was very important...Here's why.

Various | 6/17/2018 | Myself

[rlmorel]

NOTE: I am taking much of this from the Dan Bongino podcast "Episode 743: The Aftermath". I am listing these in the order he presents them.

Here are EIGHT major points to take away from the Inspector General Report.

It is wise to keep in mind that this report was NOT about spying on Trump, and it was NOT whether Hillary Clinton used an unauthorized private email server.

This IG report was about the conduct of the FBI and the DOJ during the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal.

We should keep in mind what this report is, and isn't. This may very well net some high people and result in some criminal prosecutions, but that isn't what is most important about this report.

What is important are the things contained in the report that are going to have a bearing on other investigations that are certainly going to come down the pike. This was NOT an insignificant or empty report. We shouldn't fall into the trap the media sets to dismiss this "as a nothingburger". Here's why:

---

POINT #1:POLITICAL BIAS WAS NOTED. The media has said the report stated there is no evidence of political bias. They are being deliberately incorrect (lying) IMO. The report says there is no DIRECT evidence of political bias, no smoking gun. However, it specifically states on page 398 that there is PLENTY of circumstantial evidence of political bias and they classify them as follows (from the IG Report):

"...We identified three categories of text messages that raised concerns about potential bias in FBI investigations. The first were text messages of a political nature commenting on Trump and Clinton. We specifically highlight these text messages because Strzok and Page played important roles in investigations involving both Trump and Clinton, and the exchange of these text messages on an FBI-issued device potentially created an appearance of bias. The second category we identified were text messages that combined expressions of political sentiments with a discussion of the Midyear investigation, potentially indicating or creating the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations. The third category raised similar questions with respect to the Russia investigation.

So, they definitively state what is obvious to anyone who had read the transcripts of messages between Strzok and Page, as well as comments from McCabe and Comey...that there was indeed political bias.

---

POINT #2: COMEY USED PERSONAL EMAIL ACCOUNTS FOR OFFICIAL FBI BUSINESS. Comey admitted he used a personal email account for official business. And he is running the probe into someone accused of using a personal email account for...official business. This destroys Comey utterly, and he had to know it. It also means any idiotic (and we all knew it was idiotic from day one, but that never meant it wouldn't happen) "obstruction of justice" charge against Trump for firing Comey is...stillborn. If it ever went to a point where Comey is called to testify in any obstruction of justice proceeding, he would be shredded. He knows it, too.

DEFENSE FOR TRUMP: Mr. Comey, what were you in charge of investigating regarding email during the 2016 Presidential campaign?

COMEY: I was running an investigation into whether then candidate Hillary Clinton had been using a personal email account for official government business on an unauthorized server.

DEFENSE FOR TRUMP: Mr. Comey, have you ever, in violation of the law, used personal email accounts for official FBI business?

COMEY: Er...uh...yes.

DEFENSE FOR TRUMP: These proceedings are closed.

---

POINT #3: COMEY DID NOT KNOW HUMA ABEDIN WAS MARRIED TO ANTHONY WEINER. COMEY DID NOT KNOW HUMA ABEDIN WAS MARRIED TO ANTHONY WEINER. Really? Really, really? This might not destroy him legally, but at best, it is going to destroy him intellectually. Could he REALLY be such a cloddish dolt? Could he really, REALLY have been this totally uniformed and ignorant, especially as it relates to to one of the single most explosive, controversial, and historically impactful FBI investigations in American history. This is not an insignificant thing. And to even consider he may not have, at the time of either the FBI probe or during the IG interview with him is stunning.

---

POINT #4: COMEY WAS INSUBORDINATE BY USURPING PROSECUTORIAL DECISION MAKING. When closing the probe and Comey said that there would be no prosecution of Hillary Clinton, he had no business or authority to make that statement. That was NOT his purview. His team (The FBI with him at the helm) played an investigative role ONLY. PERIOD.

---

POINT #5: OBAMA LIED ABOUT KNOWING ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON'S USE OF A PERSONAL EMAIL ACCOUNT FOR OFFICIAL BUSINESS. Obama said, on the record, that he found out about Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account for official business from the media. But there were emails where he was not only a recipient, he responded.

---

POINT #6: THERE WAS A CRITICAL STRZOK TEXT MISSING FROM THOSE ORIGINALLY PROVIDED THAT APPEARED IN THE REPORT. Here are the two critical texts, with Strzok's response shown in the report:

PAIGE TEXT: “Trump’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

STRZOK TEXT: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

Strzok's response in red above was in the IG report, but was missing from the original "comprehensive" collection of the texts. The text itself is bad enough on its face, and can be interpreted in a number of ways, but the bigger question is: Why was it originally missing? Why? And if removed deliberately...by whom? This is NOT an insignificant item.

---

POINT #7: THE IG REPORT DID NOT SAY THAT THE HILLARY EMAIL SERVER WAS COMPROMISED-ONLY THE TRAFFIC. This means that someone got their hands on the traffic itself, not copied off the server. Why is this distinction important? Unencrypted emails maybe?

---

POINT #8: THE FBI WAS BEING BRIBED BY THE MEDIA. From the Daily Caller article: "...The contact between FBI agents and the media extended to receiving “improperly receiving benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events...” The root of a lot of the problems are leaks to the media. There were a lot of people at the FBI accepting gifts. It goes without saying what effect that most likely DID have with leaked information. Like a pedophile grooming a target, the Media was laying its groundwork with bribes.

[rlmorel]

I have read a lot of commentary (including on Free Republic) that dismisses this report as an empty shell. Dan Bongino things otherwise, and I agree, so I have paraphrased his commentary here..though I don't think I do him justice. But I hope it can convey the report in a more relevant and positive light.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Nicely done.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Nicely done.

[LucyT]

.

The Inspector General Report was very important...Here's why.

Check out article.

[Cicero]

Thanks, Lucy. Yes, I agree with this summary. Too many Freepers seem ready to dismiss these reports, in accordance with the lying press.

Remember, it doesn’t happen all at once, but one step at a time.

[Freee-dame]

Thank you for this excellent summary.

[Southnsoul]

Great job!

I posted the other day to Freepers who were criticizing the IG and his report and tried to point out how the report has a lot more in it than the media would want you to know.

If it hadn’t been for IG, Horwitz, we would probably have never heard about the anti-Trump texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

And you have highlighted even more interesting tidbits from the report and it’s much appreciated.

[palmer]

Unencrypted emails maybe?

All her emails were unencrypted, 100% of them. But the relevant question is whether they used link encryption. The answer is a little murky. By the time the server was noticed in 2015, it was using Exchange 2010 with a web interface with HTTPS. That was hosted at a hosting center. But from Jan to March 2009 there was no link encryption, and from March 2009 to Oct 2010 they probably used HTTPS. If IMAP and SMTP were used during that time, it is not know whether they were protected with SSL. Presumably after Oct 2010 they used HTTPS but that is not definitive.

[right way right]

Overall I think it points to a motive and a plan to commit a coup.
These people in these report who have pushed the limits of the American people have committed and, ARE still committing sedition! Who will enforce the law but us? The military? Perhaps a Trump loyalist military? Maybe the time is just not right and it just has to play out politically first. Once again we find ourselves anticipating an election for the survival of the Republic. Fake Republicans and all in the mix. Wow.

[rlmorel]

(Thanks for the ping to the list, LucyT...coming from you, that is a compliment.

It was not a revelation to me since I knew what the report was, but...I had stopped remembering at some point it was about the FBI and DOJ behavior, and had fallen into the lazy (for me!) mindset of accepting at some level it was about the Clinton Email Scandal itself...and it was a bit of a shock to me to remember the context.

[rlmorel]

I am trying to grasp the significance of why it is apparently an important distinction that it was the email server TRAFFIC that was compromised, not a login to the server itself and retrieval of the emails that way.

I can feel the significance of it in my head, I can almost pin it down logically, but I just cannot put my finger on it. It eludes me...I have to go listen to the podcast again. If I can discern his emphasis on it, I will post it here to provide the context.

[Reverend Wright]

That’s all true as far as it goes.

But the OIG conclusion was, that despite all the evidence of bias, and all the improper decisions made in the investigation, there wasn’t evidence that bias influenced the investigation outcome.

And Wray, RR and Sessions were able to latch onto that, claim the FBI was vindicated and all they needed was mandatory “bias” training.

Trump is not in a political position to fire them all right now, so they get away with it for the time being.

And the same thing will happen on the FISA warrants and spying/infiltration of the Trump campaign. The OIG will find plenty of incriminating details, but no smoking gun that can’t be dismissed as discretionary decision in an investigation.

This OIG result proves that the Swamp cannot reform itself, and only wholesale firings and institution abolition/restructuring will do it.

[PA Engineer]

Thanks for the ping. Agree with the eight points. The pearl clutching brigade invaded the threads before ink on the report was dry.

[rlmorel]

I have looked at this as a coup nearly from the first mention, and this is just a larger part of it.

What makes the whole thing irritatingly cloudy (to me) is the way that Hillary’s email issues have been conflated far and wide with the DNC server hack and their emails, and the SpyGate things that are all tied in.

But in its entirety, I think foreign intelligence agencies, the State Department, the CIA, domestic intelligence entities, the DNC, the Clinton Campaign, the FBI, and the DOJ all have a significant finger in this.

There is no doubt in my mind this was a soft coup attempt on a legally elected president.

I personally think it goes all the way up to and including Obama. I don’t think he will be brought to account on it, but I think players like Brennan and Clapper, McCabe, possibly even Comey, and a significant number of underlings will be pinned and prosecuted.

[discostu]

It’s not important because it doesn’t match the narrative and will be ignored. Just like the UN Oil for Food report after we invaded Iraq that totally validated everything Bush said and got zero coverage.

[rlmorel]

I admit I am more hopeful than you.

I have long viewed this as the single most significant political scandal in the history of this country, and when all is said and done over the next 3-6 years, it will not be able to be ignored and dismissed as they are currently trying so hard to do.

IMO, too much water over the dam.

But I could be wrong, and have to keep that option open as well.

I simply cannot bring myself to believe that our Republic is over yet. I can’t. But if I accept your outlook...than I have to admit that to myself. I just can’t do it yet.

I understand I could be wrong in this, but....this type of thing has always been a personal flaw for me.

[Sivad]

C-SPAN should be some interesting TV when they drag
Horowitz’s dieing ass in front of congressional
committee hearings in the next week or two. I wish
they could split the questioning. Let the Democrats
play their softball game first followed by the GOP
hardball matchup.I’d prefer not to waste my time
suffering through Schiffty shit.

[right way right]

Sobering.
We’re on the same page.
I think millions are.

[right way right]

Nothing worse than a Shiffty lying Lawyer.

[palmer]

I read the FBI report on the server over a year ago, so it is not fresh. But there is one fact you may be missing. From the IG report:

However, the LHM also stated that the FBI identified one successful compromise of an account belonging to one of former President Clinton’s staffers on a different domain within the same server former Secretary Clinton used during her tenure. The FBI was unable to identify the individual responsible for the compromise, but confirmed that the individual had logged in to the former staffer’s account and “browsed email folders and attachments.”

That's a server compromised, not just traffic monitoring. It's almost a certainty that the "traffic" was "compromised". That's pretty basic whether the server is in a hosting center or on cable at someone's house. The traffic can pretty much be sniffed. More importantly routers anywhere in the world can sniiff traffic to their heart's content and it is a certainty that foreign intel agents would monitor their network traffic especiallly from a high profile visitor.

So the question is what was the link and was the link encrypted. If they used HTTPS which seems most likely, then it is unlikely that any email was revealed that way (via traffic). For the first two months they didn't have link encryption so there was no protection from traffic monitoring whatsoever.

But there are other possibilities like using IMAP and SMTP with some email clients, and those may or may not have been protected with SSL. For the first two months (Jan-Mar 2009) they definitely were not.

Note that a "traffic compromise" could also be done by an HTTPS compromise (man-in-the-middle attack). I've read that was possible, due to a self-signed cert, until they started using a Network Solutions cert. It's not known if that was done. I have not found a definite source on whether or how long they used a self-signed cert. It might be in the original FBI report.