#FISAReport: 10 Questions Senators Should Ask IG Horowitz at Wednesday’s Hearing

#FISAReport: 10 Questions Senators Should Ask IG Horowitz at Wednesday’s Hearing

#FISAReport: 10 Questions Senators Should Ask IG Horowitz at Wednesday’s Hearing

If you haven’t been watching the partisan witch hunt, er, impeachment hearings, I don’t blame you. In my book, it’s right up there with a double root-canal followed by a colonoscopy. That said, tomorrow might be a good time to start paying attention to the craziness that has taken hold of our federal government. Why? Because Wednesday is the day that Inspector General Michael Horowitz will make his way to Capitol Hill to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham, where they’ll be grilling Horowitz on his long-anticipated FISA Abuse Report that finally dropped yesterday.

Now before we discuss what might transpire during the hearing, can we just take a look at this headline from yesterday afternoon?

“I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff. However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” [U.S. Attorney John Durham]

And then Attorney General Barr weighed in:

https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/1204125535166763009

…Attorney General William Barr ripped the FBI’s ‘intrusive’ investigation after the release of Horowitz’s review, saying it was launched based on the ‘thinnest of suspicions.’”

“‘“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,”’ Barr said in a statement.”

“Barr expressed frustration that the FBI continued investigating the Trump campaign, even as ‘exculpatory’ information came to the light.”

Holy smokes! Talk about your polite smackdowns. This is significant given that 1) statements like these strongly disagreeing with an Inspector General’s findings are extremely rare and 2) U.S. Attorney Durham is conducting a separate investigation—with far more sources and access than Horowitz had—into what transpired both before and after Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States. So if Misters Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, etc etc etc think they’re out of the woods, they might want to seek shelter, because it appears Mr. Durham is not messing around.

But back to tomorrow’s hearing. Here are a handful of questions—were I to list ALL the questions I have, we’d be here all day!—that should be asked (and answered; though I have my doubts!) of Mr. Horowitz tomorrow:

  1. Firstly, why, if the FBI genuinely believed Russia was trying to infiltrate the Trump camp, was the campaign not informed of that threat just as the bureau has done in other cases (see Dianne Feinstein)?
  2. If the investigation into Donald Trump’s suspected connections to Russia were legit and a “well-defined conspiracy,” rather than politically motivated, then why did the FBI rely heavily on the now-debunked Steele Dossier, a campaign rival opposition product, in its application for a surveillance warrant?
  3. Why would the FBI need to spy on Carter Page, a man who they knew was a cooperative asset for the bureau well before RussiaGate was even a twinkle in anyone’s eye, and omit that fact from their first application?
  4. Why did the FBI omit from its application a substantial amount of evidence that was exculpatory in nature? (For example, George Papadopoulos’s claim that no one within the Trump campaign had any collaborative associations with Russia, and Carter Page’s statements that denied associations with key Russian players, statements that contradicted the FBI’s stated theories.)
  5. Why did the FBI present the information within the Steele Dossier as verified, when it clearly was not? And given we know that the Steele Dossier is an opposition research product full of untruths, how does using it as “central and essential” evidence not constitute a politically-motivated fraud on the court, and a violation of the rights of many U.S. citizens?
  6. Why was the court not made aware that Christopher Steele’s dossier was opposition research bought and paid for by the president-elect’s general election rival? Wouldn’t that be a material fact that the court would need in order to weigh the legitimacy of the requested FISA warrant?
  7. We know that former Trump campaign staffers have been convicted and punished for providing alleged false statements to the FBI, so why would the FBI’s false statements/omissions of fact to the FISA court not amount to a criminal act punishable by same?
  8. Why was the court not made aware that Steele had engaged in direct contact with news sources, who penned articles that were then used as evidence in the FISA application?
  9. Why were George Papadopoulos’s denials that the Trump campaign was responsible for the DNC email hack omitted from the application?
  10. And why do you think Mr. Durham and Attorney General Barr are in significant disagreement with your findings of no political motivation for the surveillance warrants?

I could go on, but I imagine there will be lots of questions tomorrow that some of us haven’t even thought of yet. And just FYI: the FISA Abuse Report is far more damning than Mr. Comey et al—who is still fibbing, I might add—and their liberal media cohorts would have us believe.

Whatever happens tomorrow, it won’t be controlled by Adam Schiff, or Jerrold Nadler, or any of the other power-abusing Democrats whose sole mission is to unseat a duly-elected president is their unabashed thirst for unchecked power. And it may just tell us how deep in the D.C. Swamp Michael Horowitz may dwell.

In case you’re interested, you can watch the hearing live at the YouTube link above tomorrow morning. Here’s hoping the GOP will be playing hardball and not foosball.

 

Feature Image Credit: Geralt via Pixabay; free for commercial use per Pixabay license; image cropped.

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3 Comments
  • Charles N. Steele says:

    Ten excellent questions. One conclusion I draw is that the FISA Court should be abolished; this sort of star chamber frame-up is exactly what we get from secret courts, despite assurances from proponents that they’ll obey the law.

  • Mike-in-Keller says:

    The questions are not good, because they do not go to the real issue — the IG Report is being used by the Democrats to say that the FBI was perfectly justified in going forward with the FISA applications. The IG made a finding that there was no bias at the FBI. This is going to be used as an exoneration of Comey, Brennan, Strzok, Lisa Page, and all the rest of them.

    The question that should be posed is: Your IG Report found 51 violations and 9 false statements. And yet, you found no bias, no abuse. Would 52 violations have crossed the line? How about 152? What number of violations would be necessary for you to begin to think that there was a motive?

    Q2 — You found 9 false statements. False statements require a motive. You don’t make a false statement without having a goal in mind. How many false statements would you need to find to begin to think that there was a motive?

    • GWB says:

      To paraphrase a tweeter quoted on Instapundit last evening:
      When there’s 51 ‘mistakes’, and they ALL go ONE direction – in favor of the sitting administration and against the political opponent – they’re NOT “mistakes”.

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