I've been saying the following for 3 years:
1. There was extreme bias in the FBI and Muelers team against Trump. VERIFIED
2. Trump's campaign was spied on by the Obama administration. VERIFIED
3. The whole Russia Collusion nonsense would completely boomerang and result in investigation and charges laid against the Obama administration. Well, you can see the writing on the wall.
I'm home from law school for Christmas, and I have actually been meaning to look at the IG report, so I'm glad you suggested it thethe. Here's what I gleaned from the executive summary re: your 3 points.
1) I don't see that in here. The report explicitly says:
"We concluded that Priestap's exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision."
"We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations."
"We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI's decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page."
"Finally, we also found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivations influenced the FBI's decision to use CHSs or UCEs to interact with Trump campaign officials in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."
The existence of "bias" in the abstract is irrelevant. This current admin is obviously "biased" against Obama; I'm sure you would agree that's only relevant if it results in them actually doing something wrong.
2) I definitely don't see that in here. This is true only in the same way that "We found WMDs in Iraq" is true, i.e. only if you redefine "spying on the campaign" to be the thing everyone already knows about (the investigations into Flynn, Manafort, PapaJohns, and Page) and which was not problematic (i.e., these were mostly standard investigations that found real crimes, and Page wasn't even on the campaign in the FISA period). The report says:
After the opening of the investigation, we found no evidence that the FBI placed any CHSs or UCEs within the Trump campaign or tasked any CHSs or UCEs to report on the Trump campaign.
3) I honestly won't be surprised if Barr tries to charge some people with some stuff. Not sure what that proves other than he's kind of a hack. Still waiting on him to bring those Iran-Contra charges.
From reading the executive summary, the IG report essentially boils down to:
- they followed the rules for opening and running the investigations, but the rules probably let them do too much without oversight
- they later got a warrant without giving all the negative evidence.
- they never updated the warrant applications when renewing them
Which, absolutely, hell yeah, I'm on board with that 1000%. If this results in some tamping down on the post-9/11 Patriot Act, omnipotent police state nonsense, that's great. I'm glad conservatives are finally realizing how much power we have given over to the state out of the love for "law and order." The FISA courts and the side-stepping thereof have been hot button issues at least as far back as the GWBush administration.
The problem is you are seeing this as some sort of political conspiracy against Trump, rather than seeing the massive discretion we give to cops (and prosecutors!) and why people complain about them. This kind of sloppy police work happens
all the time, everywhere. The only reason you are seeing it here is people in power are actually affected for once, and they have the ability to actually look at these processes under a microscope. The issue isn't that they did it to Trump: it's that
they do it to everybody, and the lack of oversight makes them sloppy. From the report:
"The agents and SSAs also did not follow, or appear to even know, the requirements in the Woods Procedures to reverify the factual assertions from previous applications that are repeated in renewal applications and verify source characterization statements with the CHS handling agent and document the verification in the Woods File."
You
really think these folks were following all these protocols in their other cases? Honestly, Trump is lucky. The FBI
actually at least tried to follow the rules, because they were aware this was big deal case, and they still messed up. But if you really think normal cops are going around giving judges the "full story" and all the evidence which undercuts probable cause when they ask for a warrant, then I have 17 bridges I can sell you.