PrairiePundit

PJ Media: When President Donald Trump fired Intelligence Community (IC) Inspector General (IG) Michael Atkinson in April,  Atkinson claimed  the president fired him for duly passing on the report of the Ukraine “whistleblower” to Congress — the report that led to Trump’s impeachment — and urged whistleblowers to speak out. According to Pedro Orta, a former CIA agent and whistleblower who allegedly faced multiple rounds of retaliation for attempting to expose abuse of power at a CIA base in 2015, Trump was right to fire Atkinson and the former IC IG’s posturing on whistleblowers conflicts with his record of suppressing claims of retaliation. Orta called the source that led to Trump’s impeachment the “so-called Ukraine whistleblower” because he was not a whistleblower as defined by the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA) and because his report did not concern “intelligence activities,” so it did not fall under Atkinson’s authority. “What IG ...

NY Times: Trump Takes Aim at a Watergate Reform: The Independent Inspector General The idea after the Watergate scandals was to keep government honest. President Trump’s goal seems to be to ensure its loyalty. The only IG who has done a good job since Trump was elected was the one for the DOJ who uncovered much of the coup attempt by the FBI and others who backed Obamagate attempts to thwart the Trump administration.  The Intel IG actually facilitated a Democrat coup attempt and bogus impeachment effort for a nothing burger call to the Ukraine President.  The Intel IG looked more interested in covering up Biden corruption rather than investigating it.  Other IGs, were co-opted by deep state operatives attempting to damage the Trump administration instead of looking for real problems.

Washington Post: Trump’s slow-motion Friday night massacre of inspectors general The unprecedented spate of removals and their timing have reinforced how President Trump is rather obviously seeking to undermine independent oversight of his administration. The only IG who has actually done a good job is the one at the DOJ who uncovered the Democrat sponsors FISA abuse and spying operation against Trump.  The IG who facilitated the Ukraine impeachment coup attempt did great damage to the reputation of IG's in general.  They appear to be captive of the Democrats bad faith attacks on Trump by embedded Obama partisans. What Trump is seeing is Obama era partisans who are trying to undermine his Presidency with bogus attacks and distractions.  The media reaction seems typical of their support for Obama era bad faith attacks on Trump.  Their lack of criticism of Obamagate abuses has left them with little credibility in attacking Trump on much of anything.

NY Times: Trump Ousted State Dept. Watchdog at Pompeo’s Urging; Democrats Open Inquiry The lawmakers said Steve Linick, the State Department’s inspector general, had opened an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s conduct. Democrat appointed IG's have for the most part been used as part of the Democrats on going coup attempts against the President.  The only one who is worthy of any respect is the DOJ, IG who uncovered the coup attempt inside his department and the abuse of the FISA court in service of a coup attempt.  Horowitz actually did a fairly decent job in exposing corruption by the FBI and DOJ.  The intel IG changed the rules to facilitate a coup attempt by Trump haters.  If this IG was going to pursue similar issues, he deserved to be fired.

Susan Crabtree: For many of President Trump’s closest advisers and allies, the housecleaning is years overdue, while critics are aghast that he’s choosing to act in the middle of a pandemic. Even as Trump and many high-profile members of his team are laser-focused on fighting the COVID-19 crisis, the White House is following through with a months-long plan to replace several administration inspectors general, part of the cadre of internal agency watchdogs who are supposed to serve as the first line of defense against government malfeasance and corruption. During Tuesday’s daily coronavirus task force briefing, Trump implied that he no longer had faith in their oversight capabilities and he was in the process of replacing several of them. “We have a lot IGs from the Obama era. … I left them largely” in place, he said. The president then openly complained about “reports of bias” surrounding some of their actions and acknowledged that he had moved to replace seven of them. “We’r...

Washington Post: Trump takes step to try to curb new inspector general’s autonomy, as battle over stimulus oversight begins President Trump called “unreasonable” the broad investigative authority given to a new inspector general office. IG's have a mixed reputation in recent months.  The DOJ IG did a pretty good job of finding the abuses at the FBI, DOJ and FISA court.  The Intel IG appears to have participated in a coup attempt by facilitating an alleged whistleblower's use of hearsay to help Democrats mount a misguided impeachment effort.  I suspect the Democrats insisted on this one in another attempt to push their next coup attempt. The Democrats have not acted in good faith on much of anything since the 2016 election and I doubt they will start now even if it hurts the country.

Julie Kelly: Intelligence Community’s Inspector General Is the Link Between FISAgate and Impeachment The American public must know more about Michael Atkinson’s ties to the same agency and same culprits who launched the phony Russian collusion scheme. This is the guy who changed the rules to allow alleged whistleblowers to file complaints using hearsay.

John Kass: Now that the Horowitz report is out, revealing all those lies told by the FBI as it worked to hamstring a presidency with a debunked Russia collusion theory, here’s a question: Where do U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff — the Inspector Javert of Trump Impeachment Theater — and Schiff’s eager handmaidens of the Washington Democratic Media Complex go now to get their reputations back? Nowhere. There is no place for them to go. It really doesn’t matter where Schiff goes. The Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee will be blamed when impeachment boomerangs on the Democrats. Schiff’s Washington Beltway establishment media enablers, those who’ve carried his water for years, may ignore the impact the Horowitz report has on Schiff’s reputation. They might just spin it all away. And the more witless among them have already reverted to their default positions: tribal hooting, while comparing anyone who disagrees with them to Hitler. If you want the short version, just...

Charles Lipson: ... So, who are the weakest links as Durham’s investigation moves forward? One is surely Kevin Clinesmith, a lawyer in Comey’s FBI who is highlighted in the Horowitz Report (pages 186-190). Sen. Lindsey Graham mentioned those pages in his Tuesday press conference. In them, Horowitz presents evidence that Clinesmith not only altered official documents, he completely changed their meaning. The altered documents painted Carter Page as a foreign spy; the originals said there was no evidence for that. The exculpatory evidence was hidden from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts. The lies helped gain a secret warrant to spy on Page. ... The FISA court was told Carter Page was a foreign agent when the FBI, DoJ, and CIA knew he was not. The court was told Russians had offered Page billions of dollars in an oil-and-gas deal to pay for his help. The FBI, DoJ, and CIA knew there was no such offer. The same officials pulled the same trick with the Steele dossier. The...

Kevin Brock: Imagine the Department of Justice inspector general (IG) conducting a review of the Jeffrey Epstein case. It might read something like this: “While it is clear that Mr. Epstein abused minor girls, there is no documentary or testimonial evidence that he was motivated by a deviant sexual interest in those young girls.” The newly released IG investigation into FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) enshrines the report’s main catchphrase — “documentary or testimonial evidence” — in the hall of fame for legalese absurdities. The report by IG Michael Horowitz is one long expose of a confluence of actors at the top of the FBI who, by their own words, despised Donald Trump and came together to open and run an investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign, falsifying documents, withholding evidence and using a confidential source who had stated clearly that his goal was to prevent a Trump presidency. Despite these flashing lights, the IG essen...

streif: ... We an argue until the cows come home about all manner of trivia but the big picture is this: the FISA Court was lied to by the FBI. It was lied to knowingly and through negligence. Key leaders who were responsible for pushing the FISA warrant through on Carter Page were either pig ignorant of their legal responsibilities or they chose to ignore those responsibilities because they knew what FBI headquarters wanted done. None of this is a good look and I hope that Barr lights a fire under FBI Director Wray and makes him fix what is broken. Devin Nunes was right about what the FBI did wrong and Adam Schiff lied about it.  We should remember both things.

Brian Joondeph: Despite several years living through "the calm before the storm," it now appears that storm clouds are building on the horizon.  Many of us are impatient and growing weary of "tick tock" bombshells that turn out to be firecrackers.  Long promised "pain" for Deep State bad actors has turned out to be anything but, unless pain means being hired as an analyst at CNN or MSNBC. Will December be the month the pincers close in on the Deep State?  Some promising storm clouds are building.  Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz  will appear  before Senator Lindsey Graham's Judiciary Committee on December 11, with the long promised I.G. report on FISA abuse to be released December 9. The report is already being downplayed by the media, with the New York Times  warning , "DOJ watchdog report expected to clear Comey, McCabe, and Strzok of bias in Trump-Russia probe."  Okey-dokey, case closed....

Sean Davis: Intel Community IG Stonewalling Congress On Backdated Whistleblower Rule Changes Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies, acknowledged that his office secretly changed key whistleblower forms and rules in September, but refused to explain to lawmakers why those changes were backdated to August. ... As The Federalist reported and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) confirmed , the spy watchdog secretly changed its whistleblower forms and internal rules in September to eliminate a requirement that whistleblowers provide first-hand evidence to support any allegations of wrongdoing. In a press release last week, the ICIG confessed that it changed its rules in response to an anti-Trump complaint filed on August 12. That complaint, which was declassified and released by President Donald Trump in September, was based entirely on second-hand information, much of which was shown to be false following the declassification and r...

Elizabeth Vaughn: Delay In DOJ Inspector General’s Report Due To ‘Reluctant Witnesses’ Coming Forward At ’11th Hour’ I think he is gathering evidence from sources in the State Department that also interacted with Steele.

Washington Times: The inspector general President Obama fired last month filed a lawsuit Friday to get his job back, claiming the firing was politically motivated and broke a 2008 law governing how watchdogs can be dismissed. Gerald Walpin, inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service, was removed June 10. In a letter telling Congress of his decision, Mr. Obama said he no longer had confidence in Mr. Walpin, but did not elaborate. Mr. Walpin says he was fired because he targeted an Obama supporter, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, in a successful investigation that resulted in Mr. Johnson and an academy on which he formerly served as executive director repaying half the $847,000 it received in government grants. He also said in its haste to dump him, the administration never interviewed him or any of his staff - an omission Mr. Walpin said in his lawsuit violates a 2008 law meant to protect government watchdogs. The law requires that Congress be notified 30 d...