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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

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The long anticipated Department of Justice (DoJ) Inspector General (IG) report on the actions taken by the FBI over the course of the 2016 presidential election campaign is for the most part almost entirely old news. Further, the takeaways from the findings are milquetoast at best in tense and tone. This is highlighted by findings that are defined in descriptions and terms such as; Former FBI Director James Comey screwed-up “extraordinarily and insubordinately.” FBI senior director Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, special counsel to the Deputy Director, sent unprofessional and damaging text messages to each other while they worked on two high-stakes, politically charged investigations (the Hillary Clinton and Mueller investigations). The finding that indicated Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server wasn’t smart, but it also wasn’t criminal (unfortunately we know better, she committed felonies and should have been charged). And of course, it was revealed Strzok was removed from the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he exchanged anti-Trump text messages with Page. Such references in the IG Report not only highlight the flawed behavior and biases at the highest levels, but also magnify and provide a much deeper glimpse into the real corruption of the Deep State, and the extent to which it and its mindset and thinking have embedded itself into the principle upper echelons of our federal law enforcement, justice system, investigative, and intelligence apparatus.
Further, if anything, the report confirms — in painstaking detail — what we basically already knew. But it also forces readers to do something really difficult in the age of Trump, when there is a tempting pull on the left and the right to see everything in black and white, and that’s to hold multiple competing thoughts in your head at the same time.
Before, I go any further, I need to caveat what a U.S. Government Inspector General’s Report or IG Report really is.
First, there is major misconception on the purpose and intent of IG Reports. Nearly all major U.S. Department and agencies all have an office of the inspector general (OIG). Having served as a senior officer in the U.S. military, I am extremely familiar with the OIG and IG Reports. They are not investigations. They’re purpose is to provide information based witnesses, suspected wrong doing, and wrongful intent and violations of policy, procedures and regulations. Again, they are not investigations, and certainly not criminal investigations. They serve to inform and provide Directors, military Commanders, and Senior Officials in-charge of government agencies, departments, organizations and military commands knowledge of violations, possible illegal activities, and or situations that warrant potential further action, such as conducting an actual investigations or in many cases criminal investigations by those in-charge or by bringing in outside authority such as the FBI, or Congress (Congressional Committee investigation, hearings or inquiry) to determine whether policy, procedures, rules, directives, or laws have been violated. And if it is necessary, determined the need for criminal referrals and, or criminal indictments can or must be presented.
That said, the facts need to be black and white and all the evidence contained within must point out the rights and wrongs, standards met and violations identified and lawful and criminal actions.
Let’s continue … so former FBI Director James Comey’s conduct during the 2016 election provided reasonable grounds for his firing, and yet that does not vindicate President Trump’s decision to fire him.
During the spring of 2016 as soon as it became apparent that the FBI’s Clinton investigation, would not lead to criminal charges, Director Comey began thinking about how the conclusion of the investigation could be announced without Republicans accusing the FBI of political bias. Although he took part in discussions with senior DoJ leadership about how the decision would be rolled out, he began to craft his own plan for announcing that there would be no charges brought against Mrs. Clinton.
Similarly, as the political climate around him became more frantic, Director Comey became convinced he’d need to make the announcement on his own, and be more transparent than DOJ protocol would permit. This included making statements that would publicly condemn Clinton’s private email practice. This was probably Comey’s biggest mistake as it violated a sacrosanct DoJ rule, one that is in place for good reason. If the ultimate decision is not to prosecute someone, then you don’t get to pass judgment on their behavior certainly not publicly. They either broke the law, or they didn’t. And if they didn’t, that’s the end of the story, period.
Further, Director Comey didn’t tell DoJ leadership that he would be making his independent statement until the morning of his July 5th, 2016, press conference. He told the IG that he did this to prevent DoJ leadership from stopping him from delivering his statement, albeit a lie. On his decision to do so, in one of its most damning statements focusing on Comey’s conduct, the IG report says,


“We found that it was ‘extraordinary and insubordinate’ for Comey to do so, and we found none of his reasons to be a persuasive basis for deviating from well-established Department policies in a way intentionally designed to avoid supervision by Department leadership over his actions.”


Further, as the IG report states in more detail, this was not the only time Comey deviated from DoJ practice, trying to preemptively limit Republicans’ accusations that the FBI was politically biased in favor of Clinton. Virtually, every move by Comey to thwart these accusations though only led him further down a path of taking unusual and harmful steps against Clinton.
Likewise in many ways, the DoJ IG report reads like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s memo on firing Comey. And yet, in no way does it vindicate President Trump’s decision to fire him. Why? Because the idea that Trump fired Comey over his conduct during the Clinton investigation was always a pretext. Also, after President Trump took office, he left Director Comey in place for several months. During this time, according to Comey, Trump made efforts to shore up his personal loyalty to the president. It was only after it became clear that the Russia investigation wasn’t going away that President Trump pulled the trigger and fired Comey.
Finally, the report suggests that Comey acted improperly, but was not motivated by political bias. While it does not question his decision not to pursue a criminal case against Clinton, it harshly criticized the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the matter.
With regard to the text messages exchanged between FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, special counsel to the deputy director, are both highly problematic and yet did not ultimately affect the decisions taken in the Clinton email investigation.
Certainly, if you’ve been watching Fox News and recently reading President Trump’s Twitter feed, you’ve learned a lot about Strzok and Page by now. The two FBI officials are central figures in the “Deep State That is Out to Get Trump” narrative. The two FBI officials were having a romantic affair during the time in question and exchanged private text messages, which have previously been widely reported. The texts reveal that both Strzok and Page had concerns about the prospects of Trump becoming president and a preference for Clinton. The IG report includes this alarming exchange between the two of them:


Lisa Page to Peter Strzok: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”


It is apparent in the report, the DoJ IG is clearly worried and concerned that Strzok’s political bias may have played a crucial role in his conduct of the Clinton and Russia investigations. Certainly, Horowitz is especially concerned about whether it had anything to do with the FBI’s delay in analyzing the batch of emails found on Anthony Weiner’s (Hillary’s senior aide Huma Abedin’s pedi-pervert husband’s) laptop in September 2016 after the FBI had already closed out the Clinton investigation. Further, the IG report states out right that lots of excuses were given to explain why the FBI didn’t take action more quickly, but the IG didn’t find any of them persuasive. Really! Likewise, Strzok’s role in all of this was particularly concerning because of the political bias revealed in his texts with Page, the IG notes, in this case:


“Under these circumstances, we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”


Of course, however, when the DoJ IG searched for evidence “that the Weiner laptop was deliberately placed on the back-burner by others investigators in the FBI to protect Clinton,” it didn’t find any. Surprisingly, how convenient was that? In the end, ultimately, the IG found that Strzok’s political bias, and its potential to influence decisions in the Clinton investigation, had no effect.
The report indicated that, “Strzok was not the sole decisionmaker for any of the Clinton specific investigative decisions we examined in that chapter. It noted we further found evidence that in some instances Strzok and Page advocated for more aggressive investigative measures in the Clinton investigation, such as the use of grand jury subpoenas and search warrants to obtain evidence.”
The bottom line of which notes that still, these messages and others have done enormous damage beyond the scope of the Clinton investigation, the IG found, pointing out,


“We found that the conduct of these five FBI employees brought discredit to themselves, sowed doubt about the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation, and impacted the reputation of the FBI.”


Practically every one of Comey’s decisions throughout the 2016 election hurt Clinton, and therefore potentially benefited Trump’s campaign, and yet Comey wasn’t motivated by political bias. Again, really?
Also concerning is the fact that the DoJ IG does not mince words when it comes to Comey and the mistakes he made during the 2016 election. And yet, not once does the IG find anywhere in the report that Comey was motivated by a desire to help one of the presidential candidates over the other, something for which he has been accused by both Democrats and Republicans — Comey was not trying to help Trump win and he was not trying to help Clinton win.
Looking at Comey’s decision to hold the July 5th, 2016, press conference, the IG noted:
“We determined that Comey’s decision to make this statement was the result of his belief that only he had the ability to credibly and authoritatively convey the rationale for the decision to not seek charges against Clinton, and that he needed to hold the press conference to protect the FBI and the Department from the extraordinary harm that he believed would have resulted had he failed to do so. While we found no evidence that Comey’s statement was the result of bias or an effort to influence the election, we did not find his justifications for issuing the statement to be reasonable or persuasive.”
Further, on Comey’s decision to alert Congress that the FBI was reopening the Clinton investigation in order to assess the batch of emails found on the Weiner laptop, the IG concluded:
“We found no evidence that Comey’s decision to send the October 28 letter was influenced by political preferences.”
Nevertheless, while numerous mistakes were made along the way over the course of the Clinton investigation, the way it reached its conclusion was sound.
This leads to the facts about the deletion of emails, the destruction of Mrs. Clinton’s electronic devices and emails.  How can it be that the Clinton team instructed someone to do this when this was under subpoena of the Congress.
An essential finding of the IG report, but one that I believe will be overlooked, is that the decision by the FBI and the DoJ to close the Clinton investigation without charges was free from political bias and met the proper legal standard. Federal prosecutors considered five federal statutes as they determined whether charges would be appropriate for Clinton and for each determined that sufficient evidence was lacking. The IG found no evidence to suggest this was an improper conclusion. Yet we all know this isn’t the case and in fact, Comey himself it was revealed that he is guilty of the same, using his private personal computer to conduct official FBI business. Of course, the IG reports states;
“We found no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations; rather, we determined that they were based on the prosecutors’ assessment of the facts, the law, and past Department practice,” the IG report says.
Despite the soft approach and more than obvious watering down of the IG Report, IG Horowitz document presents enough evidence of level and extent of misconduct and corruption in his report for Congress to demand that the obstruction end, and all documents be handed over to the Nunez’s Congressional Intelligence Committee ASAP!
Even President Trump this morning found it absolutely necessary to break his silence on the report, tweeting that the DoJ’s findings are a “total disaster” for the bureau and vindicated his firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.


Donald Trump @realDonald Trump
“The IG Report is a total disaster for Comey, his minions and sadly, the FBI,” Trump wrote online. “Comey will now officially go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI. I did a great service to the people in firing him. Good Instincts. Christopher Wray will bring it proudly back!”


In another tweet, the President took aim at politically charged text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page noting;
Donald Trump @realDonald Trump
“FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who headed the Clinton & Russia investigations, texted to his lover Lisa Page, in the IG Report, that “we’ll stop” candidate Trump from becoming President. Doesn’t get any lower than that!”


It is now obviously apparent why the DoJ had been fighting against the release of the information and documents as vigorously as they have. Of itself, this is an insight into the level of corruption that the real evidence will likely reveal corruptness that had penetrated every level of the Obama regime, and remains in the DoJ, the FBI, and the intelligence community.
Further, it proves the extent to which the federal government has been infiltrated by the Deep State. In and of itself, the DoJ IG Report is the “Smoking Gun” and now maximum utilization of the IG Report now should be used to force the revelation of the documents, the Deep State players, and their destructive and despicable action against Trump and America.

  • Col. Jim Waurishuk

    Jim Waurishuk is a retired USAF Colonel, serving nearly 30-years as a career senior intelligence and political-military affairs officer and special mission intelligence officer with expertise in strategic intelligence, international strategic studies and policy, and asymmetric warfare. He served as a special mission intelligence officer assigned to multiple Joint Special Operations units and with the CIA’s Asymmetric Warfare Task Force and international and foreign advisory positions. He served as Deputy Director for Intelligence for U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) during the peak years of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Global War on Terrorism. Waurishuk is a former White House National Security Council staffer and a former Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C. He served as a senior advisor to the Commander U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and served as Vice President of the Special Ops-OPSEC. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Hillsborough County (FL) Republican Executive Committee and Party and serves on the Executive Board of the Republican Party of Florida.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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