Tag Archives: Devin Nunes

House Republicans Boycott Intel Hearing

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by Daveda Gruber:

On Wednesday Republicans decided to finally not stand for Democrat biased agendas and they have boycotted a public hearing.

In a powerful move of rebellion Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee accused Chairman Adam Schiff of ignoring Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse.

A Justice Department inspector general report disclosed substantial misconduct of FISA applications brought about the boycotting by the GOP of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and Advance Research or STAR, as it is referred to, to refuse to attend the hearing.

Republicans did not attend and called it a “publicity” event.

It appears that Representatives Devin Nunes, R-Calif., ranking member of the committee and Chris Stewart, R-Utah, the ranking member of the subcommittee joined their Republican colleagues in collectively standing up to Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for not holding hearings on the FISA abuse.

Republicans claim that under Schiff’s chairmanship the House Intelligence Committee has strayed far from its mandate of overseeing the Intelligence Community.

They are saying that there have been months where there has been inadequate oversight and that numerous critical issues pertinent to the Committee’s jurisdiction were ignored.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued his FISA report on December 9th which identified seventeen serious shortcomings related to the conduct of the surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy aide Carter Page.

Republicans have argued that the committee is exclusively in the position to consider the serious legal and policy questions that arose from Horowitz’s report.

There is a letter, written by Nunes and Stewart stating their demands and was signed by Republican Representatives Michael Conaway, Michael Turner, Brad Wenstrup, Rick Crawford, Elise Stefanik, Will Hurd, and John Ratcliffe.

Until the committee gives priority to the important issues in the Horowitz report, Republican Members feel that they cannot support distractions from core responsibilities.

Horowitz had confirmed in his report that the FBI’s FISA applications to monitor Page heavily relied on the unverified Trump dossier and news reports rooted in dossier author Christopher Steele’s unverified research.

Still, under Schiff’s chairmanship these issues and errors have not been investigated although Schiff had acknowledged the misconduct at the time and stressed that bureau leadership was moving to implement the IG’s recommendations.

It has become evident that Democratic lawmakers are more interested in staying on their own agenda of investigating President Trump and his associates rather than dealing with more prevalent issues.

Laws have been broken by people in high positions in the FBI and DOJ and Democrats with Schiff at the helm are simply ignoring it.

I can always be reached on Twitter to discuss political views.

@DavedaGruber

What Did the FISA Report Show?

 
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by Daveda Gruber:

On Monday the inspector general for the Justice Department finally released the internal review concerning the origins of the Russia investigation.

The report concluded that there was no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding efforts to seek a highly controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant found by investigators. The warrant was, in fact, to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Page was observed during the months at the start of the Russia investigation dealing with election interference.

At least 17 significant errors were found by the IG probe and a new audit into the FISA process and procedures will be launched.

The report, which is nearly 500 pages, said, “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page.”

The unverified dossier that was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele was undoubtedly anti-Trump but former FBI bosses James Comey and Andrew McCabe were shown as not acting with political bias.

Even the overall surveillance efforts targeting Page to secure the original FISA warrant for him in October 2016, were shown to have no bias, as reported by IG Michael Horowitz and his investigators.

Representative Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and the Republicans have contested the FISA warrant and the subsequent renewal applications. They claim that the FBI misrepresented key evidence and omitted exculpatory information used to support the warrant application came from the dossier compiled by Steele, who the Horowitz team has questioned why the FBI considered him to be a credible source.

The question of why news reports were used to make Steele look more credible was also brought to the FBI.

The Inspector General claims that his team has reviewed over one million records and has conducted over 100 interviews, including several witnesses who agreed to be interviewed just recently.

Page, who has been investigated as a foreign agent, has been vocal about his belief that he was unjustly targeted and not interviewed for the Horowitz probe and never charged with a crime.

Horowitz is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning to answer questions about his probe.

This investigation is over as far as Horowitz is concerned but Barr has assigned the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, John Durham, to conduct an inquiry into alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance, which are criminal in nature, on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

At this time, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, has been criticized by Horowitz in a separate inquiry for statements that were made by McCabe during a Hillary Clinton related investigation of which he has maintained no wrong doing and has not been indicted but he is facing possible federal charges.