Archive for the ‘Trey Gowdy’ Category

During his interview with Maria Bartiromo this morning, Devin Nunes talked about the corruption within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, aka the FISC. House Intelligence Committee Republicans have been questioning the FISC’s integrity. Thus far, the FISC’s replies suggest a cover-up. Rather than answering Republicans’ questions, the FISC has stonewalled and given platitudes for answers. At this point, there’s a strong chance that FISA won’t be renewed when it expires this year.

Rep. Nunes expressed his frustration with the FISC during his interview with Bartiromo:

“It’s hard to imagine a worse person the FISC could have chosen outside [James] Comey, [Andy] McCabe, or [Adam] Schiff,” Nunes said. Speaking to Fox News contributor Sara Carter, Nunes added: “It’s a ridiculous choice. The FBI lied to the FISC, and to help make sure that doesn’t happen again, the FISC chose an FBI apologist who denied and defended those lies. The FISC is setting its own credibility on fire.”

It’s important to fill in the details:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris, a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and written extensively in support of the FBI’s surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare, to oversee the FBI’s implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice inspector general report last year.

The development on Friday, first reported by independent journalist Mike Cernovich, has roiled Republicans who have demanded accountability at the FBI. House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told The Daily Caller that Kris’ appointment was “shocking” and “inexplicable.”

Quite frankly, this is what’s meant by the fox meeting the henhouse. By all accounts, Kris is the personification of the Swamp. Putting the Swamp in charge of reforming the Swamp is something that only the Swamp would think is reasonable. The truth is that this truly jeopardizes FISA.

If this is how unserious the FISC is, then they shouldn’t expect support from either side of the political aisle. There’s too much trust invested in the FISC to let it be untrustworthy. In fact, a total overhaul of that institution is warranted:

Earlier this month, the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered the FBI to re-verify all previous warrant applications involving the FBI attorney who falsified evidence against the former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. However, Fox News has learned the court did not order the FBI to double-check warrant applications involving other officials who made key omissions and errors in warrant applications as the bureau sought to surveil Page.

The FISC’s failure to request a comprehensive evaluation of previous submissions has stunned court-watchers who have questioned whether enough is being done to deter future misconduct by the FBI. In the past, the FISC has gone so far as to prohibit some FBI agents from appearing before the court after finding impropriety.

What’s needed is a reform-minded person to fix the FISC. In fact, I’d argue for hiring someone from outside the FISC to help with the reformation. Andy McCarthy or Trey Gowdy would be at the top of that short list, as would Michael Mukasey. This isn’t the type of thing that I’d entrust to leftists. They aren’t trustworthy. Before reforming the FISC, I’d put together a commission to determine what reforms and safeguards were needed. Mssrs. McCarthy, Gowdy and Mukasey need to serve on that commission. Ditto with Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh.

Eliminating the FISA Court likely isn’t a legitimate option. That being said, keeping it in its current structure isn’t a legitimate option, either. This needs to get fixed immediately. And I mean fixed, not tampered with.

This morning, Sen. Schumer made a major mistake during his press conference. He said that “any Senate impeachment trial should be ‘focused on the facts that the House presented, not on conspiracy theories.'” Then he renewed his request for 4 new witnesses that didn’t testify.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to square those statements. At this point, they’re contradictory at best. How do you focus solely on the facts that House Democrats presented, then insist on calling 4 witnesses that House Democrats didn’t call?

It’s apparent that Sen. Schumer hasn’t figured it out that this is hurting Democrats. The longer Pelosi hangs onto the articles of impeachment, the more this looks like a partisan operation. The longer Sen. Schumer insists on calling witnesses that the House didn’t fight for, the weaker the prosecution’s case looks. And the Democrats’ case already looked weak.

The only thing that’ll hurt the Democrats’ efforts more is what’s inevitable. Picture Pelosi sitting in her office thinking of the nightmare of choosing between Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff to be the lead prosecutor. Then think of that nightmare happening on national TV. Then think of it happening for the next 2-3 weeks right before the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary.

On the other hand, think of how positive Republicans are, knowing that Doug Collins, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe have been named impeachment managers for the trial. The thought of Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler making unsubstantiated accusations based on hearsay and presumptions, then watching Mssrs. Collins, Jordan and Ratcliffe present exculpatory evidence that’ll exonerate President Trump is something Republicans should look forward to. Anytime that the face of the Republican Party is Collins, Jordan and Ratcliffe, it’s a good day. Anytime that Nadler and Schiff are the faces of the Democrat Party, it’s a fantastic day for the GOP.

In the first half of this interview, Trey Gowdy dismantles Speaker Pelosi’s impeachment arguments and Sen. Schumer’s trial arguments:

When it comes to tormented logic, it’s difficult to find ‘logic’ more tormented than Jim Comey’s logic. Tuesday, Mr. Comey wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that sounded totally defensive.

In his op-ed, Mr. Comey wrote “The conspiracy theory makes no sense. The FBI wasn’t out to get Donald Trump. It also wasn’t out to get Hillary Clinton. It was out to do its best to investigate serious matters while walking through a vicious political minefield. But go ahead, investigate the investigators, if you must. When those investigations are over, they will find the work was done appropriately and focused only on discerning the truth of very serious allegations.”

Mr. Comey, you’re either a sanctimonious egotist or you’re too stupid to be the director of the FBI. It’s sad to think that someone this warped was once the director of the world’s premier law enforcement agency. Let’s get Trey Gowdy straighten him out on Mr. Comey’s allegations:

Democrats have started their whisper campaign, asking ‘what happens if they investigate this and it comes up empty? Will Republicans accept that outcome?’ That’s the definition of a whisper campaign. That won’t happen this time because serious people like Trey Gowdy, John Ratcliffe and Lindsey Graham have seen the documents that will be declassified.

That’s entirely different than Adam Schiff saying that he’d seen evidence that was “more than circumstantial”:

The truth is that nobody has seen this phantom evidence. The Mueller team of investigators and prosecutors didn’t find it. If they had, they would’ve prosecuted the people involved. That didn’t happen.

The truth is that Mssrs. Gowdy, Graham and Ratcliffe are honest people of integrity. Mr. Schiff is a political hack with a high security clearance.

Mr. Comey has written op-ed after op-ed, done townhalls, during which he’s said things that weren’t credible. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that he was trying to poison potential jurors with his antics and propaganda. Innocent people don’t act defense attorneys like Mr. Comey is doing. Mr. Comey is protesting too much.

Earlier tonight, President Trump “ordered U.S. intelligence officials to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr’s investigation into ‘surveillance activities’ directed at the president’s 2016 campaign.”

Let the finger-pointing begin. Comey, Clapper and Brennan are already attempting to incriminate each other. In the end, I suspect that they’ll each be ‘successful’, with each of them getting prosecuted and convicted or getting prosecuted and flipping on the other 2. Either way, the chances of this turning out well for that trio isn’t high.

Let’s get serious about this for a minute. Democrat spinmeisters point to the DOJ’s IG report and insist that it’s a comprehensive report on the origins of the faux investigation. It isn’t because it isn’t exhaustive. It can’t reach the places that the AG’s investigation can get to. First, the IG can’t call in people from all of the IC agencies. It’s limited by statute to the agency it’s assigned to.

Next, the IG can’t interview people who worked inside the DOJ but have since left. That means the IG can’t interview the central figures in the investigation. Specifically, it prohibits the IG from interviewing Comey, Lynch, McCabe, Strzok and Page. Ditto with Clapper and Brennan.

Trump also gave Barr “full and complete authority” to declassify information related to the investigation, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. The notice comes as Barr is conducting a review of what he has described as “spying” on members of the Trump campaign during the investigation into Russian interference.

Sanders said Trump had directed the intelligence community to “quickly and fully” cooperate with the investigation at Barr’s own request. “Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions,” Sanders said.

This gives Attorney General Barr wide latitude to investigate the investigators. Last Sunday, Trey Gowdy made a rather interesting prediction during Maria Bartiromo’s show:

Considering the fact that Trey Gowdy a) has seen these documents and b) is one of the most honest people to ever serve in Congress, I’m betting that there’s some former employees of the FBI and the IC who should be exceptionally worried.

When it comes to legal matters, Trey Gowdy doesn’t mince words. He’s one of the most honest people to have recently served in Congress. If he says that someone is in legal jeopardy, bet on that person to start hiring attorneys. This afternoon, Mr. Gowdy stated that former CIA Director John Brennan was in hotter legal hot water than former FBI Director Jim Comey. It isn’t a secret that Jim Comey is in trouble. That’s what’s behind his constant blabfests on CNN and on speaking tours.

What’s known is that the FBI didn’t attempt to verify the Steele Dossier until after the election, which is well after Jim Comey attested to the FISA Court that it had been verified and that Christopher Steele was a trustworthy informant. Those aren’t accurate statements, which means, I suspect, that he’ll be one of the first people dragged before U.S. Attorney John Durham’s grand jury to get squeezed by Mr. Durham into turning state’s evidence against Brennan and other bad actors from the Obama administration. (Jim Clapper and Loretta Lynch pop to mind. Imagine that.)

“That’s a pretty easy thing to sort out, who insisted that the dossier or the unverified material from Chris Steele be included,” he said. “But … sometimes when you have two people, I can tell from you having been in the courtroom, sometimes when people are blaming each other, they are both right. It’s both of them. And I think it’s interesting Brennan and Comey right now, the only thing they seem to share is a hatred for Donald Trump. It’s going to be interesting if they begin to turn on one another. I’ve seen the document. I’m not going to describe it any more than that, Comey’s got a better argument than Brennan based on what I have seen.”

I wouldn’t want to be either of those gentlemen at this point. Yes, I use the term gentlemen loosely in that sentence. If I wasn’t such a gentleman, I’d probably call Comey, Clapper and Brennan losers. But I digress.

Even Rod Rosenstein is upset with Comey:

Here’s why Mr. Rosenstein is upset:

When Jim Comey testified behind closed doors, Mr. Comey frequently testified that he didn’t know the answer to the question he was asked or FBI counsel testified that he wasn’t allowed to testify per FBI rules. One such instance got fairly heated. Here it is:

Mr. Gowdy: I think the whole world has read the memo and — or most of the world. My question is whether or not Director Comey — I think he’s already answered he had no conversations with Rod Rosenstein. My question is, whether or not — and he’s entitled to his opinion — whether or not he believes that that framed a sufficient factual basis for his termination as the FBI Director.
Ms. Bessee: He is entitled to his opinion, but to the extent — because he also stated that he is also a witness in the investigation.
Mr. Gowdy: Which investigation is he a witness in?
Ms. Bessee: To the special counsel. He said he is a potential witness.
Mr. Gowdy: Well, you just said witness. Is there an obstruction of justice investigation?
Ms. Bessee: I believe there is an investigation that the special counsel is looking into.
Mr. Gowdy: Well, we all know that. Is it an obstruction of justice investigation?
Ms. Bessee: Mr. Chairman, can you rephrase the question, please?
Mr. Gowdy: Yes. Director Comey, you’re familiar with the memo drafted by Rod Rosenstein. You have not talked to Rod Rosenstein, as I understand your testimony. Do you believe the memo, just on the cold four pages of the memo, four corners of that document, do you believe it provides sufficient basis for your termination? Even if you would have done it differently, is it a basis for your termination?
Mr. Comey: I can’t answer that, Mr. Chairman, because it requires me to get into the mind of the decisionmaker, who is the President, and I’m not in a position to do that.
Mr. Gowdy: Do you have any evidence the memo was subterfuge to fire you, but not for the — but for a different reason?
Mr. Comey: I have no evidence at all about how the memo came to be created. I know that it was part of the documentation that was attached, what was sent to me, delivered to the FBI on the day I was fired. That’s the only thing I have personal knowledge of.

That’s just one of the heated exchanges between Chairman Gowdy, Director Comey and Ms. Bessee. Here’s the entire transcript:

What I found fascinating about this video is Chairman Gowdy’s statistics:

According to Chairman Gowdy, Comey replied “I don’t remember” 71 times, “I don’t know” 166 times and “I don’t recall” 8 times. That’s a pretty pathetic performance for a man leading the premier law enforcement agency in the world. These weren’t insignificant questions about things that happened long ago. They were central questions about major recent investigations that he supposedly headed.

It’s rather disgusting to hear Mr. Comey talk about transparency after hiding behind the FBI’s attorney. It’s clear that the FBI’s attorney’s mission was singular: protect Mueller. The FBI’s attorney didn’t care a whit about informing the public or the committees. She primarily cared about hiding important facts.

The NYTimes’ bias shines through in this article. It starts in a paragraph that says ‘In the lead-up to the report, Trump’s allies agreed that this was paramount. The central question in my opinion,’ David Bossie, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, wrote this week on the Fox News website, ‘is did Hillary Clinton and her cronies get preferential treatment in her email server investigation for political reasons?’ And the report’s answer is clear: No.”

One of the findings of the 568-page report is that there is proof that Hillary’s emails were accessed by hostile actors. Contrary to Jim Comey’s declaration of July 5, 2016, that’s a violation of the Espionage Act. The fact that most of her top campaign people got immunity suggests that the FBI didn’t pursue them with the same vigor that Special Counsel Robert Mueller pursued Paul Manafort or Carter Page.

Then there’s this:

Federal investigators and prosecutors did not give preferential treatment to Clinton. They pursued the case on the merits. They were guided by, as the inspector general’s report puts it, “the prosecutor’s assessment of the facts, the law, and past Department practice.”

Right. Tell that to David Petraeus and Gen. Flynn. Mueller’s team couldn’t find the political mainstream if they were given a GPS and a year’s worth of gasoline. Mueller’s prosecutorial team looks more like Hillary Clinton’s donor list than a team of skilled prosecutors. Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte disagree with the NY Times:

Chairman Goodlatte stated emphatically that well-established DOJ and FBI procedures weren’t followed in investigating Hillary. That says it all. Goodlatte then said that there’s a stark contrast in the procedures used in the Hillary email investigation and the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. No grand jury was impaneled for the Hillary ‘investigation’. There was a grand jury impaneled for the Trump-Russia investigation. Again, that says it all.

The most significant mistake in the investigation didn’t help Clinton. It hurt her, badly. It was James Comey’s decision to violate department policy and talk publicly about the investigation. If it weren’t for that decision, the polling data suggests Clinton would be president.

This is disgusting reporting. If Hillary had followed government procedures, there wouldn’t have been an investigation. Hillary acted like this nation’s laws didn’t apply to her. The fact that she’s now gotten bit by the FBI is karma. What comes around goes around.

If Democrats cared about the US, we wouldn’t have to deal with Rep. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif.), leaking information about the House Intelligence Committee on a daily basis. If Democrats cared about the US, we wouldn’t have to deal with discredited former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe whining about Jeff Sessions firing him. If Democrats cared about the US, we wouldn’t have to deal with former FBI Director Jim Comey leaking confidential information to a professor.

Last week, Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2016, criticized the people living in blue collar states, saying “If you look at the map of the United States, there’s all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coast, I win, you know, Illinois and Minnesota, places like that. I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards.”

The point is that presidents are supposed to represent the entire nation.

Trey Gowdy put it best in talking about McCabe:

Here’s that part of the transcript:

WALLACE: Now, Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director who was fired late Friday night says the reason that he was fired was to undercut his credibility as a potential witness in the Mueller investigation. I want to put up some of Andrew McCabe’s statement: This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals, more generally. It is part of this administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and at the efforts of a special counsel’s investigation, which continue to this day.
Congressman, your response?
GOWDY: Oh, Andy McCabe has undercut his credibility all by himself. He didn’t need any help doing that. And I find it richly ironic that he is lamenting that those are attacking the FBI when he himself does the exact same thing. It was the FBI who said he made an unauthorized disclosure and then lied about it. That wasn’t President Trump. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t a crazy House Republicans. It was his own fell FBI agents that said he leaked and then lied about it. So, if he’s got credibility issues, he needs look no further than himself.

McCabe didn’t tell the truth. President Trump didn’t destroy his credibility. McCabe destroyed his credibility by being a partisan instead of being a law enforcement officer.

I’d love questioning Adam Schiff about what proof he has that the Trump administration gives a rip about the Mueller investigation. Thus far, I haven’t seen anything that’d indicate President Trump has done anything illegal. I’ve heard Rep. Schiff say he’s got proof that President Trump has acted illegally but I haven’t seen the proof. Thus far, the only logical conclusion to draw is that Democrats are using this fishing expedition exclusively for political gain.

I’d love questioning Sen. Manchin or Sen. Heitkamp why they voted against the tax cuts that’ve pushed the US economy into overdrive.

That’s the opposite of patriotism. That’s the definition of partisanship.

Technorati: Adam Schiff, Andrew McCabe, Jim Comey, Hillary Clinton, FBI, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Democrats, Trey Gowdy, Patriotism, Election 2018

Jim Comey’s tweet last night was the tweet of a bitter man. In Comey’s tweet, he said “All should appreciate the FBI speaking up. I wish more of our leaders would. But take heart: American history shows that, in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field, so long as good people stand up. Not a lot of schools or streets named for Joe McCarthy.”

I suspect that there won’t be any schools or streets named after Jim Comey, either.

Apparently, Mr. Comey isn’t happy that President Trump has decided to release the House Intelligence Committee summarization memo written mostly by Chairman Devin Nunes. According to the article, the “memo purportedly is critical of the FBI’s use of surveillance during the 2016 presidential campaign, particularly in the initial stages of its investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign.” As usual, Fox News’s Catherine Herridge broke the story. Here’s Comey’s tweet:

All should appreciate the FBI speaking up. I wish more of our leaders would. But take heart: American history shows that, in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field, so long as good people stand up. Not a lot of schools or streets named for Joe McCarthy.

— James Comey (@Comey) February 1, 2018

The most no-nonsense member of Congress, Trey Gowdy, said that the memo will be embarrassing to Adam Schiff:

Appearing on Dana Perino’s new show (The Daily Briefing), Rep. Trey Gowdy was asked about his position on potential new gun legislation. His reply was thoughtful and the last thing Democrats wanted to hear. It started with Perino quoting from Leah Libresco’s op-ed in the Washington Post. Ms. Libresco’s op-ed said “My colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States and I became frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people and the case for the policies that I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence.”

Next, Ms. Perino asked “I think there might be some people who might be persuadable on gun control legislation if there was any way to point to what could’ve been done to prevent this if there was a way to not infringe upon people’s Second Amendment rights. Maybe we would do that. Where do you see the debate on Capitol Hill after this?”

Chairman Gowdy replied “Well, Dana, I think it’s important for your viewers to know that we already have controls on what types of guns you can have and where you can have them, when you can use them and which individuals can even possess a single bullet so the question for me is whether the current controls are adequate and there’s 2 fundamental questions you just put your finger on. What law, had it existed at the time, would’ve prevented this mass killing or another mass killing? What law, but for its lack of implementation, could have prevented this? So that’s one question. The other question I want answered is, among the other panoply of gun laws, how are we doing in enforcing them? It is currently illegal for someone who’s already been adjudicated as being mentally ill to possess a single bullet. But if you look at DOJ’s statistics, you will see very few prosecutions under those laws. So I would ask this Department of Justice the very same questions that I asked of the Department of Justice the last 8 years under President Obama. Before you ask for new tools, convince me that the tools you have now are being fully used and are inadequate. I’ll be open to a piece of legislation that tells me ‘this won’t happen again’ but you’ve got to tell me how you’re using the current gun statutes and I was really underwhelmed at the level of prosecutions the last 8 years.”

Ms. Libresco’s op-ed offers these important insights into the gun control issue:

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

The depraved domestic terrorist that killed 59 and wounded over 500 others was a skilled rifleman. It’s apparent that he’d meticulously pre-planned this attack. I’d be surprised if he hadn’t trained extensively for his killing spree. Nothing about this horrific event sounds like the work of an amateur.

Republicans should tell Democrats the things that Chairman Gowdy told Dana Perino. If they did that, they’d silence the gun control debate in minutes.

Technorati: Las Vegas, Chuck Schumer, Gun Control, Department of Justice, Silencers