Anonymous ID: 82f991 Aug. 1, 2019, 9:40 p.m. No.7305419   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>5443 >>5531

Reports: James Comey Is Torched In The Department Of Justice's IG Report On Obama-Era FISA Abuses

 

Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s team referred Comey for possible prosecution under the classified information protection laws, but Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors working for Attorney General William Barr reportedly have decided to decline prosecution — a decision that’s likely to upset Comey's conservative critics.

Prosecutors found the IG’s findings compelling but decided not to bring charges because they did not believe they had enough evidence of Comey’s intent to violate the law, according to multiple sources.

 

Although a technical violation, the DOJ did not want to “make its first case against the Russia investigators with such thin margins and look petty and vindictive,” a source told me, explaining the DOJ’s rationale.

But Comey and others inside the FBI and the DOJ during his tenure still face legal jeopardy in ongoing probes by the IG and Barr-appointed special prosecutor John Durham. Those investigations are focused on the origins of the Russia investigation that included a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign at the end of the 2016 election, the source said.

 

The lack of prosecution is certain to demoralize some conservatives, who long have called for Comey’s head. But the IG report, set to be released within the next few weeks, likely will provide significant condemnations of Comey’s conduct, sources tell me.

While they cautioned that the IG’s final report won’t be complete until it gets feedback from Comey’s lawyers in the next few days, it is expected to conclude that the former FBI director improperly took with him memos that were FBI property when he was fired, transmitted classified information via an insecure email account, and shared some of the memos with his private lawyers. Some of the Comey memos were classified up to the “secret” level, but the FBI has not disclosed whether those were shared with his lawyers like the classified confidential memo was.

 

The IG concluded in prior investigations that Comey’s firing was not driven by Trump’s fears about the Russia investigation ruining his presidency but, rather, by DOJ concerns about Comey’s performance in the Hillary Clinton email probe. Horowitz concluded that Comey wrongly “usurped” the authority of the attorney general when, on July 5, 2016, he announced he would not seek criminal charges against Clinton for transmitting classified information — some of it top secret — on her insecure private email server.

 

That IG report also chided Comey for criticizing Clinton’s email practices as reckless without filing charges and for improperly announcing the reopening of the email probe in late October 2016, just a few weeks before Election Day when Clinton and Trump were locked in a tight race.

Ironically, Comey’s decision not to charge Clinton for violating the Espionage Act for mishandling classified information on her email server mirrors the same rationale that Barr’s DOJ applied in declining prosecution of him: a lack of evidence of intent.

 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/08/01/reports-james-comey-is-torched-in-the-department-of-justices-ig-report-on-fisa-n2551023