{"id":37729,"date":"2019-12-11T16:48:13","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T21:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=37729"},"modified":"2019-12-11T16:48:13","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T21:48:13","slug":"even-rolling-stone-has-figured-it-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=37729","title":{"rendered":"Even Rolling Stone Has Figured It Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Rolling Stone<\/a> posted an article about the Inspector General’s Report. Please follow the link to read the entire article–it is well written and informative. I will try to highlight some of it, but you really do need to read the whole thing.<\/p>\n

The article notes:<\/p>\n

The Guardian <\/em>headline reads: \u201cDOJ Internal watchdog report clears FBI of illegal surveillance of Trump adviser<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a \u201cclearing\u201d of the FBI, never clear me of anything. Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia<\/a> investigation was.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like the much-ballyhooed report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Horowitz report is a Rorschach test, in which partisans will find what they want to find.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz\u2019s conclusion that there was no evidence of \u201cpolitical bias or improper motivation\u201d in the FBI\u2019s probe of Donald Trump\u2019s Russia contacts, an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had \u201cauthorized purpose<\/a>\u201d to conduct.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Horowitz uses phrases like \u201cserious performance failures,\u201d describing his 416-page catalogue of errors and manipulations as incompetence rather than corruption. This<\/strong> throws water on the notion that the Trump investigation was a vast frame-up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose \u201cserious\u201d procedural problems and omissions of \u201csignificant information\u201d in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president).<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article comments on the role the news media played in this drama:<\/p>\n

Not only did obtaining a FISA warrant allow authorities a window into other Trump figures with whom Page communicated, they led to a slew of leaked \u201cbombshell<\/a>\u201d news stories that advanced many public misconceptions, including that a court had ruled there was \u201cprobable cause\u201d that a Trump figure was an \u201cagent of a foreign power<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong. Some key points:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The so-called \u201cSteele dossier\u201d was, actually, crucial to the FBI\u2019s decision to seek secret surveillance of Page.<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Press figures have derided the idea that Steele was crucial to the FISA application, with some insisting it was only a \u201csmall part<\/a>\u201d of the application. Horowitz is clear:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We determined <\/em>that <\/em>the Crossfire <\/em>Hurrican<\/em>e <\/em>team\u2019s <\/em>r<\/em>ece<\/em>ipt <\/em>of Steele\u2019s election <\/em>reporting <\/em>on September 19, 2016 played a <\/em>centra<\/em>l <\/em>and <\/em>essent<\/em>i<\/em>al role<\/em> in the <\/em>FBI\u2019<\/em>s <\/em>and Department\u2019s decision to <\/em>seek the <\/em>FISA order. <\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The report describes how, prior to receiving Steele\u2019s reports, the FBI General Counsel (OGC) and\/or the National Security Division\u2019s Office of Intelligence (OI) wouldn\u2019t budge on seeking FISA authority. But after getting the reports, the OGC unit chief said, \u201creceipt of the Steele reporting changed her mind on whether they could establish probable cause.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article notes:<\/p>\n

Steele in his \u201creports\u201d embellished his sources\u2019 quotes, played up nonexistent angles, invented attributions, and ignored inconsistencies. The FBI then transplanted this bad reporting in the form of a warrant application and an addendum to the Intelligence Assessment that included the Steele material, ignoring a new layer of inconsistencies and red flags its analysts uncovered in the review process.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then, following a series of leaks, the news media essentially reported on the FBI\u2019s wrong reporting of Steele\u2019s wrong reporting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The impact was greater than just securing a warrant to monitor Page. More significant were the years of headlines that grew out of this process, beginning with the leaking of the meeting with Trump about Steele\u2019s blackmail allegations<\/a>, the insertion of Steele\u2019s conclusions<\/a> in the Intelligence Assessment about Russian interference, and the leak of news about the approval of the Page FISA warrant<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a result, a \u201cwell-developed conspiracy\u201d theory based on a report that Comey described as \u201csalacious and unverified material that a responsible journalist wouldn\u2019t report without corroborating,\u201d became the driving news story in a superpower nation for two years.\u00a0<\/em>Even the\u00a0New York Times,\u00a0<\/em>which published a lot of these stories, is in the wake of the Horowitz report\u00a0noting Steele\u2019s role<\/a>\u00a0in \u201cunleashing a flood of speculation in the news media about the new president\u2019s relationship with Russia.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article has a fantastic conclusion:<\/p>\n

No matter what people think the political meaning of the Horowitz report might be, reporters who read it will know: Anybody who touched this nonsense in print should be embarrassed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rolling Stone doesn’t always get it right, but this time they nailed it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Rolling Stone posted an article about the Inspector General’s Report. Please follow the link to read the entire article–it is well written and informative. I will try to highlight some of it, but you really do need to read … 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":[790,10911,10687,11607,12331,12073,1369,3035,5933,1083,11559,11437],"class_list":["post-37729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fbi","tag-fisa","tag-fisa-warrant","tag-inspector-generals-report","tag-leaks","tag-michael-horowitz","tag-national-security","tag-robert-mueller","tag-rolling-stone","tag-russia","tag-special-counsel","tag-steele-dossier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37729","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=37729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37730,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37729\/revisions\/37730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}