Criminal law, Justice, Lawyering

Barr Assigns Federal Prosecutor To Investigate Origins Of Russia Probe

Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned John H. Durham, the United States Attorney in Connecticut, to investigate the origins of the Russia Investigation. The country remains divided over the Russian Investigation with many questions raised as to political influence and targeting. Durham is a former special prosecutor with a long and distinguished record at the Justice Department, including prior investigations into CIA abuses of detainees and internal corruption. Besides, he has one of the most intense official photos in government that I have ever seen.

There will be some overlap in the investigation. The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is already investigating the use of wiretap applications and any political influences in the investigation. John W. Huber, the United States Attorney in Utah, has been investigating in conjunction with Horowitz. This will be the third investigation and does not count congressional investigations.

Horowitz has had an incredible career. Durham graduated with honors from Colgate University in 1972 and received his law degree in 1975 from the University of Connecticut School of Law. He was also a VISTA volunteer for two years on a Montana Indian reservation.

The appointment should satisfy critics who have demanded a full investigation into the origins of the investigation and the role of the Steele Dossier in the early decisions. Frankly, I believe that, at this point, the public interest is best satisfied with the maximum level of transparency. That means Trump dropping his executive privilege arguments and the Justice Department fully investigating both sides of the matter. My concern is only that I fail to understand why the Huber and IG investigations were not sufficient.

What do you think?

165 thoughts on “Barr Assigns Federal Prosecutor To Investigate Origins Of Russia Probe”

    1. Spygate (conspiracy theory) – Wikipedia

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spygate_(conspiracy_theory)

      Spygate is a conspiracy theory initiated by President Donald Trump in May 2018 that the ….. After receiving information about George Papadopoulos’s activities, the FBI began surveilling the Trump campaign to see if it was coordinating with the …

    2. Excerpted from the article linked above:

      Shortly after Trump’s allegation, several members of Congress received a classified briefing on the matter from the Justice Department. Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee and a former federal prosecutor, stated after the briefing:

      I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump…President Trump himself in the Comey memos said if anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it, and it sounds to me like that is exactly what the FBI did. I think when the President finds out what happened, he is going to be not just fine, he is going to be glad that we have an FBI that took seriously what they heard…. The FBI is doing what he told them to do.

      [end excerpt]

      Contributed by Late4Dinner

  2. Here’s a hypothesis: not sufficient because Huber was non-compliant with the instructions he received from Sessions and has not investigated anything.

    I suspect if you have an honest and thorough history of this affair, you’ll discover that anyone in the department who cared to defied the Attorney-General during Sessions’ time in office.

    One question I’d like answered is just who made the recommendation that Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray be appointed to the positions they’ve held.

  3. The Democrats should rip a page from Trump’s playbook and answer the Republican’s investigations with 3 words; “Witch hunt” and “Hoax.” Give them a taste of their own medicine- let’s see how they like it- “Witch hunt, Witch hunt, hoax!”

    1. JS:
      They’ll scream that right up until the sentencing hearing. I’m looking forward to a frog-walking parade of Comey, Strozk, Clapper, Brennan and, if we’re truly blessed, ol’ Lady MacBeth herself, Hillary. Won’t that be a wonderful day? Durham took down the framing FBI agents in the Boston office who knowingly put innocent two men on death row at mobster Whitey Bolger’s request. He’ll have no problem turning lightweights like McCabe, Ohr and Page into government witnesses. Horowitz will give him the documents and the Grand Jury testimony will flow like the Mississippi. Then the corrupt Dems will learn what it really means when Trump says he’s a counter puncher. Were I Biden, I’d be distancing myself from spy master Obama. That rock is yet to be turned but it’s under investigation, too. This oughta be fun.

      1. I hope you’re right, but I’m not wagering you are. I’m expecting ‘prosecutorial discretion’ to prevent anyone from being held accountable. It may also be that the schemers responsible for systemic abuse of power knew how to avoid discrete criminal offenses.

        We see here in this forum that partisan Democrats fancy that any activity which advances the interests of the Democratic Party is ipso facto legitimate. Any complaints are just the ‘right-wing noise machine’. The partisan Democrats and careerist lifers employed by the Department of Justice are smarter than the boobs who post here, but the conclusions they draw are likely to be (in effect) the same.

        1. “It may also be that the schemers responsible for systemic abuse of power knew how to avoid discrete criminal offenses”
          ***********
          The beauty (and beast) of RICO is that if you use a phone, text, email or letter in your nefarious and fraudulent (like fraud on the FISA court) activities you’ve violated the law. (All federal court filings are electronic, btw). Here’s betting the plotters used one or more. As for discretion, no one wants to be the guy who left coup plotters off the hook on that basis. Remember Barr, not Durham, makes the call on prosecution.

          1. So an NSD counter-intelligence investigation into Russia’s attempts to cultivate and recruit two out of the four foreign policy advisers of the Trump campaign is now to be construed as an ongoing racketeering “enterprise” under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970. But that is NOT Trump criminalizing the national security of the United States. No! That is Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation criminalizing the national security of the United States. Putin wins again. And Mespo applauds.

            Remind me again, who is the sitting President of the United States?

            1. There’s the crime (so-called Russian election interference) and the use of the crime for political purposes like spying and lying to a court( the failed coup). I’d like to hear about both. Wouldn’t you?

        2. I think the days of sweeping malfeasance under the rug are over. This was a multi-pronged coup attempt and will be exposed. Higher duty, my a$$. These lifers have determined that they know what’s best and did all possible to make it so. They are traitors to our system, our country and to all of us that voted in Trumper HRC and the status quo.

          1. Well those who voted for Trump were a minority and the “lifers” and “traitors” somehow failed to announce the Trump campaign investigation at the same time as they did Hillary’s in October of 2016. Some “coup”!

          2. It would have been so much simpler of the “coup plotters” to have prevented Trump from being elected in the first place so that they wouldn’t have to try and topple Trump after the fact with a coup d’état based on a hoax hunting for a witch. Of course, they did neither of those two things. What they did was conduct a counter-intelligence investigation of Russia’s attempt to cultivate and recruit members of the Trump campaign. And they did that without publicly disclosing that they were doing that. In fact, they went to extraordinary lengths to prevent their counter-intelligence investigation of Russia’s attempted cultivation and recruitment of members of the Trump campaign from being publicly disclosed by Trump, himself.

          3. They are traitors to our system, our country…

            True. No one disputes this

            Their behaviors these days are straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

        3. I’m also not very optimistic. I read this article yesterday and this seems to be a legitimate concern:

          In the late 1960s the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case commonly referred to as Garrity, that statements given by law enforcement employees which were compelled by their employer under threat of being fired, are protected from being used against the employee in subsequent criminal prosecutions of the employee.
          https://saraacarter.com/mine-field-if-barr-has-any-intention-of-prosecuting-fisa-abuses-he-should-stay-clear-of-ig-report/?utm_source=Darkwire+Inc&utm_campaign=71fbb8b96b-May+13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5f3d745e4f-71fbb8b96b-283364877

      2. Yes mespo, if all our wildest fantasies were somehow true, wouldn’t that be a wonderful day.

        Maybe you can just imagine that result along with the rest of your fantasy.

        My fantasy was that all these “plotters” had had their leader Comey announce the Trump campaign investigation in October 2016 when he blew up Hillary’s campaign and cost her 3-4% of the vote 2 weeks before election day.

    2. Ding Dong The Witch Was Dead The Wicked Witch, Which which it is
      Ding Dong The Wicked Witch was daid.

      Then aong came Ocasio.

  4. Why, it was just yesterday, May 13th, 2019, when GW Law School Professor Jonathan Turley wrote in a post entitled “Constitutional Or Conceptual Crisis? The Atonal Strategy of the House Investigations”:

    The question is whether there is a true strategy behind these moves other than an investigation for investigation’s sake.

    [end excerpt]

    Perhaps Turley intended to put the sentence cited above into today’s post about Trump and Barr launching Putin’s counter-investigation into the FBI. Or not. What do you think?

  5. The National Security Division of the Justice Dep’t overruled Peter Strok’s proposal to conduct aggressive interviews of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in late July and early August of 2016. The NSD did so because they were afraid that the Trump campaign would leak to the press that the FBI was aggressively interviewing the foreign policy advisers of the Trump campaign.

    Consequently, the NSD asked Stephan Halper to conduct passive interviews with Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis (the man who had hired all four of Trump’s foreign policy advisers) in late August and early September of 2016. The FBI also sent an attractive young woman FBI agent by the name of Azra Turk to pose as an assistant to Halper and to flirt with Papadopoulos in an effort to winnow information from the then 28 year-old “coffee boy”.

    The information that Halper and Turk got from Page and Papadopoulos is likely to turn up as contributing to the probable cause for the FISA warrant on Carter Page beginning in October of 2016. Of course, if that is the case, then Rod Rosenstein would already know all about it and so would FBI Director Wray. So, unless Rosenstein and Wray were concealing that prospective information from AG Whitewash Barr, then Whitewash, too, would already know all about it. Or maybe the information gathered by Halper and Turk never made its way into the FISA application for Carter Page.

    Huh? What? Yeah. That’s right. How would any of the rest of us know anything at all about this stuff if it hadn’t already been publicly disclosed via the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth efforts of one Ninny Na-Na Nunes? Huh? What? Yeah. That’s right. It’s deja vu all over again.

  6. Come on Turley. Huber has done nothing. Obvious potential witnesses all report zero contact from Huber. But you already know that, don’t you?

    1. Huber was appointed in March of 2018 primarily to investigate the contents of a book published in 2015 and made into a documentary film in 2016 entitled “Clinton Cash” written by Peter Schweizer of Breitbart fame based upon research funded by The Mercer Foundation and conducted at the Government Accountability Institute, originally used as opposition research against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, but probably intended as the blueprint for the Impeachment of President Hillary Clinton at some point after she would have been inaugurated.

      IOW, it’s not for nothing that Huber has done nothing. What did you think Huber was going to do? File a book report entitled “What I read over Summer vacation”?

      1. Huber was tapped by AG Sessions in November 2017, not March 2018. It was not public knowledge for several months.

        1. Hey Ptom. It’s a shame about your technical difficulties.

          P. S. Sessions putting Huber on double-secret probation four months before publicly disclosing Huber’s double-secret probation is the exact sort of persnickety sticklerism that has made Ptom Gnash a name on par with Dean Wormer.

  7. As I write this, there is no mention of this news by the lacky major news organizations. I wonder wy?

      1. How long did it take? Seems to me this is pretty major mews. Right now CNN has no mention of it on their web page. Huff post has it as their lead headline. Why the difference? One thinks it is not news, the other thinks it is major. This certainly has the potential for a major event. Much bigger than the non collusion story so many news organizations pushed for 2 years.

        1. Gee, Paul. That only The New York Times, The Washington Post and who knows who all else. Start with the first two that I can actually remember. Then fan out from there.

        3. Paul @ 9 am: “How long did it take?”

          Not long at all, if one looks at the posting time.

  8. I think the FBI is in trouble. John H. Durham did it before.

    Amid allegations that FBI informants James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi had corrupted their handlers, US Attorney General Janet Reno named Durham special prosecutor in 1999. He oversaw a task force of FBI agents brought in from other offices to investigate the Boston FBI office’s handling of informants.

    In December 2000, Durham revealed secret FBI documents that convinced a judge to vacate the 1968 murder convictions of Enrico Tameleo, Joseph Salvati, Peter J. Limone and Louis Greco because they had been framed by the FBI agency. In 2007, the documents helped Salvati, Limone, and the families of the two other men who had died in prison win a US $101.7 million civil judgment against the government.

  9. Politization of the AGs office. Trump has his Roy Cohn. It’s a sad day for all of us.

    1. No AnonymousAss, The sad day came with the “Politazation” of the FBI by the Obama administration against Trump while you and our ilk did not object because it suited your political agenda. Now when AG investigates something that actually merits investigation – you object – instead of being intellectually curious about origins of a runaway investigation of a hoax.

      1. The only problem with your thesis, Bill, is that it makes no sense whatsoever. Other than that, your thesis is good to go around and around The Brickyard with no yellow flags until it finally runs out of gas–someday (whenever).

        Did you know that the FBI could have, and probably should have, publicly disclosed their investigation of Russia’s attempts to cultivate the foreign policy advisers of the Trump campaign–including especially, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos? They did not do so because Lynch, Yates and Comey did not want to be accused of interfering in a U. S. election for President.

        Did you also know that a rather clever fellow by the name of Peter Strzok advised the FBI that they did not need publicly to disclose their investigation of Russia’s attempts at cultivating members of the Trump campaign, if they allowed Strzok to conduct aggressive interviews of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in just such a way that Trump, himself, would leak it to the press once Carter and George had complained to Clovis who would have then complained to Trump about members of the Trump campaign having been aggressively interviewed by the FBI?

        1. Oops. I forgot to mention that Strzok was told “No!” Strzok was not allowed to conduct aggressive interviews of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in late July and early August of 2016.

          1. Dear Late4Yoga: You have convinced me that our intelligence community handled the 2016 Trump situation with the utmost professionalism without a hint of impropriety. No need for push-back/oversight by media/AG/president/public. Nothing to see here. Left opting for Appeal to Authority when its suits their political agenda. If Barry O spied on in 2008 by Bush then Late4Yoga and other lefty loons would wearing their civil libertarian hats and screaming from the mountain tops from morning to night. And imagine if Rachel Maddow spied on by Trump admin same way Barry O/Eric “Wing Man” Holder” did to Fox’ Ed Henry? Dem Party has turned into an effing mess by media and nutcases like Late4Yoga – so much so that there are going to give away election in 2020 once again to a flawed Republic party. PS: And lets not forget about investigation into illegal taping of Romney “47 ;percent” comment in 2012 by Dem hacks – oh never mind, that investigation never happened.

            1. Imaginary spying? Really? Do you know what Carter Page did? Do you know what George Papadopoulos did? Who hired those two guys? Wait. Sam Clovis hired all four of Trump foreign policy advisers. So who hired Sam Clovis? Barrack Obama?

              BTW, the FBI was conducting a counter-intelligence investigations of Russia’s attempts to cultivate and recruit Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. You’re under no obligation to thank the FBI for having spared Trump the inevitable embarrassment of having hired Page and Papadopoulos to work in the Trump administration. If only the FBI had done Trump the same favor with respect to Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, then you might’ve been obligated to thank them for their service to Trump.

              1. Oh thank you for clarifying that the FBI should be thanked by Trump and his supporters. For what? – Using Steele Dossier as basis for Carter Paige spying and Jim Comey leaking his girly notes to help trigger special counsel hoax investigation? Carter Paige and George S were useful idiots in eyes of intelligence community – used to back-door spy on Trump. Now please go and try to big foot somebody else’s truthful comments that you would like to suppress to soothe and fool yourself.

                1. NO, Bill. Obviously he should be thanking the FBI for not having Comey announce the Trump campaign investigation along with Hillary’s in October 2016.

                2. Carter Page attempted to negotiate the sale of Gazprom stock to an investment group the members of which remain just about anyone’s guess while serving as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who delivered two speeches in Russia denouncing U.S. sanctions against Russia. The only reason that Carter Page is not in jail is that the Russians refused Carter Page’s offer to them.

                  2. Late4Dinner says: May 14, 2019 at 8:27 AM

                    “Carter Page attempted to negotiate the sale of Gazprom stock . . .”

                    L4D says: On second thought, make that Rosneft stock.

                3. PS Bill, what is a “girly note”? Did war hero Mueller write any of these while investigating the campaign of girly man “bone spur” Donald. His a.. is bigger than KKs.

              2. Anonymous says: May 14, 2019 at 10:14 AM

                “Is “Late4Dinner” a 9-11 Truther too, Mr. Martin?”

                Consider that L4D’s reply to your comment was deleted. Add to that that L4D’s second reply to your comment was blocked. Now use your imagination and figure out the error that you made and the reason that Smith is protecting you from consequences of the error you made. Know thyself, Anonymous whose head is as thick and dense and hard as a hockey puck. Or just ask yourself a simple question: What sort of person would you never accuse of being a 9-11 Truther?

                1. BTW, How is your torrid love affair with Honor coming along, Smith?

  10. I think that you still do not fully understand the malfeasance of Brennan, Clapper, Yates, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Baker, Page, both Ohrs, Fusion GPS, DNC, Crowdstrike, Clinton Campaign, Halper, Mifsud, Downer, etc etc in this attempted Coup.

    1. Likewise you don’t realize how stupid you appear when you regurgitate zeus’ talking points.

  11. When you observe just the surface information about the Clinton’s actions and see that the only topic of discussion is Trump it does make these investigations, while made necessary because of a fake dossier, look like a dog and pony show that distracts us from really understanding what went on with emails, cash to the Clinton Foundation and that meeting on the tarmac, much less Comey’s investigations of such that were laughable .

  12. “That means Trump dropping his executive privilege arguments and the Justice Department fully investigating both sides of the matter.”

    You have to be kidding, right? Apparently whoever wrote this post for you has been absent from the planet for the past two years while one side has been investigated several times. It’s time now to find out the Who was behind the conspiracy (all of them), When the conspiracy was started and the Why the conspiracy was started and finally Will they face justice for an attempt to overturn a legitimate American Presidential Election. This crap can’t be allowed to go unpunished in our country by any political group.

    1. That’s why we Constitutional Centrists with the largest voting block voted to a. Dump Clinton, 2. Destroy the Socialist Party no matter what name they use and c. wipe out the RINOS. Any left over expose them.

      Being in the real center of political discourse instead of on the lunatic fringe is a real treat.

  13. Any comments about Huber’s and Horowitz’ investigations are premature as they haven’t completed their assignments, have they?

  15. I just watched an old Three Stooges show on my computer. All I can say in regard to this investigation is: “Moe!, Larry! Cheese!” And: Yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk.

  16. What do I think of the “Huber investigation” which Mr. Magoo (Jeff Sessions) started? A completely useless Mormon deep state whitewash!

    Sessions’ was as useful to Trump as the proverbial screen door in a submarine. Sessions and his Mormom (AKA Freemason) stooge Huber have absolutely no interest in busting their State Police friends who ran amok committing felonies like they were going out of style.

      1. Huber is the U. S. Attorney for Utah. Other than that, I refuse to delve any deeper into Her Royal Highness’s “thought” processes.

      2. Huber was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He’s a graduate of the University of Utah. I have not yet found any information about Huber’s religious affiliation. Frankly, I don’t really care. But Her Royal Highness seems to think it’s important–somehow. Beats me.

        P. S. What nationality is Trohar, anyhow? Warner Brothers? Or Hannah and Barbara?

            1. Yikes! It’s all in foreign language. And there’s more than one of them.

          1. L4D says, Thanks. But I think The Cartoon Princess was complaining about John W. Huber supposedly being a Mormon because he’s from Utah.

              1. L4D says, Thanks. So The Princess guessed correctly. [(Don’t tell her.) Make her figure it out on her own.]

  17. Clear and public statements regarding all findings, well prior to 2020 elections, should be paramount.

    1. I’m sure there will be statements! As the president has already said what he thinks should happen I’m sure, like Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report, they are already written!

      1. L4D says: Trump could have declassified all of the classified information on Carter Page a long time ago. He didn’t and still hasn’t. Why not? Because there’s nothing in that classified information on Carter Page that makes Trump’s case for the partisan witch hunt based on a hoax.

        1. Prove it. To make that statement you must have had access to a classified document. I don’t believe you. Nor your name nor that you exist as a human being. Ad Machina.

          1. L4D says: If there was anything useful to Trump in that classified information, then Trump would have used it. Trump hasn’t used it. Ergo, there’s nothing useful to Trump in that classified information. And nobody needs access to classified information to figure that out.

  18. I think you’ve lost your soul in pursuit of being a contrarian. What is it? What sleight led you to this sad place pandering for crumbs from
    a man who would destroy everything you taught us to cherish?

    1. Remember 3 months ago when every other word you ever typed was RUSSIA! or PUTIN! Hahahahahahaha……………………life was so much easier then for TDS victims like you.

      How’s goes your last two years trying to undo the 2016 election?

      Check insanity definition.

        1. Or one programmer with little imagination uses Anonymous to pretend to be several which means four to seven imitation humans. All unprovable.

    2. What would a robo clone have to do with ‘souls’ or any sort of philosophical morals and ethics. Prove it.

  19. One guess as to why the Horowitz/Huber investigation may not be seen as insufficient: the previous Horowitz report left a lot of unanswered questions… behind an entire classified Appendix. Perhaps the suspicion (not entirely unfounded) is Horowitz will largely defend the FBI publicly – again, while leaving key matters hidden from view – again.

    1. L4D says: IG Horowitz may be protecting the New York Office of the FBI. Or IG Horowitz may be using the evidence against the NYO FBI as leverage to protect the Justice Dep’t, the NSD and the FBI HQ. There’s an outside chance that Durham might stumble across the evidence against the NYO FBI. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Because the NYO FBI would have reported to Giuliani that the FBI HQ were investigating Carter Page and George Papadopoulos well before election day in 2016. And then we all would have heard about it on the TV.

  20. The Obama Coup D’etat in America is the most egregious abuse of power and the most prodigious scandal in American political history.

    The co-conspirators are:

    Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Kadzic, Yates, Baker,

    Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Sir Richard Dearlove, Steele,

    Simpson, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper, Azra Turk,

    Kerry, Hillary, Huma, Mills, Brennan, Clapper, Lerner, Farkas, Power, Lynch, Rice,

    Jarrett, Holder, Brazile, Sessions, Obama et al.

    3. George,

      Like I posted here about the day Mueller was appointed, they are bring in the Fixers. It’s still the movie The Departed.

      I like the movie, it’s basically a documentary. And here we are again, history Rhyming.

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