{"id":33801,"date":"2018-07-08T21:21:28","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T01:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=33801"},"modified":"2018-07-08T21:21:28","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T01:21:28","slug":"another-reason-foia-requests-are-valuable-for-providing-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=33801","title":{"rendered":"Another Reason FOIA Requests Are Valuable For Providing Transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Solomon at The Hill<\/a> posted an article on Friday about more information found in the memos recently released to various Senate and House Committees. The memos reveal government agencies misused to achieve a political goal. Thankfully, in spite of all their efforts, that goal has not been achieved. However, I have no doubt that the people behind the attempt to undo the 2016 presidential election have not given up.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the highlights of the information in the recently released memos (as noted in the article):<\/p>\n

The memos show Strzok, Lisa Page and others in counterintelligence monitored news articles in September 2016 that quoted a law enforcement source as saying the FBI was investigating<\/a>\u00a0Carter Page\u2019s travel to Moscow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The FBI team pounced on what it saw as an opportunity as soon as Page wrote a letter<\/a> to then-FBI Director James Comey<\/a><\/span> complaining about the \u201ccompletely false\u201d leak.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAt a minimum, the letter provides us a pretext to interview,\u201d Strzok wrote to Lisa Page on Sept. 26, 2016.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Within weeks, that \u201cpretext\u201d \u2014 often a synonym for an excuse \u2014 had been upsized to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant, giving the FBI the ability to use some of its most awesome powers to monitor Carter Page and his activities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To date, the former Trump adviser has been accused of no wrongdoing despite being subjected to nearly a year of surveillance.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some internal memos detail the pressure being applied by the FBI to DOJ prosecutors to get the warrant on Carter Page buttoned up before Election Day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In one email exchange with the subject line \u201cCrossfire FISA,\u201d Strzok and Lisa Page discussed talking points to get then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe<\/a><\/span> to persuade a high-ranking DOJ official to sign off on the warrant.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This group did not give up after the election:<\/p>\n

The day after Trump\u2019s surprising win<\/a> on Nov. 9, 2016, the FBI counterintelligence team engaged in a new mission, bluntly described in another string of emails prompted by another news leak.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need ALL of their names to scrub, and we should give them ours for the same purpose,\u201d Strzok emailed Page on Nov. 10, 2016, citing a Daily Beast article<\/a> about some of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort<\/a><\/span>\u2019s allegedly unsavory ties overseas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAndy didn\u2019t get any others,\u201d Page wrote back, apparently indicating McCabe didn\u2019t have names to add to the \u201cscrub.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what Bill said,\u201d Strzok wrote back, apparently referring to then-FBI chief of counterintelligence William Priestap. \u201cI suggested we need to exchange our entire lists as we each have potential derogatory CI info the other doesn\u2019t.\u201d CI is short for confidential informants.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an extraordinary exchange, if for no other reason than this: The very day after Trump wins the presidency, some top FBI officials are involved in the sort of gum-shoeing normally reserved for field agents, and their goal is to find derogatory information about someone who had worked for the president-elect.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

These and other documents are still being disseminated to various oversight bodies in Congress, and more revelations are certain to occur.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, now, irrefutable proof exists that agents sought to create pressure to get \u201cderogatory\u201d information and a \u201cpretext\u201d to interview people close to a future president they didn\u2019t like.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clear evidence also exists that an investigation into still-unproven collusion between a foreign power and a U.S. presidential candidate was driven less by secret information from Moscow and more by politically tainted media leaks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that means the dots between expressions of political bias and official actions just got a little more connected.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is chilling to think that supposedly non-partisan members of the government used the powers of government for political purposes. It is more chilling to realize that at this moment they have not paid for their crimes. Unless someone is held responsible for these crimes, Americans will totally lose faith in what used to be upstanding organizations–the FBI and the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

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John Solomon at The Hill posted an article on Friday about more information found in the memos recently released to various Senate and House Committees. The memos reveal government agencies misused to achieve a political goal. Thankfully, in spite of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10136,10929,11438,3637,790,3972,10685,9533],"class_list":["post-33801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2016-presidential-election","tag-andrew-mccabe","tag-carter-page","tag-doj","tag-fbi","tag-foia","tag-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act","tag-the-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33802,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801\/revisions\/33802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}