The big news, of course, is the release of new Strzok/Lisa Page texts, and especially one dated Septermber 2, 2016, in which Lisa Page says Comey will be briefing Obama, adding "potus wants to know everything we're doing."
According to Fox News "this text raises questions about Obama’s personal involvement in the Clinton email investigation." However, I'm a bit skeptical. Of course, "everything" means "everything," so if the FBI did something on the Clinton email investigation then Obama would want to know that. But that investigation had supposedly been disposed of, with Hillary exonerated, back on July 5, 2016--two months before the text, and close two months before Comey's decision to take a New Look at that "matter."
So, in context, my guess is that Rep. Louis Gohmert is correct in saying that this means "the President [Obama] wants to know what they [the FBI] are doing to try to stop Trump.” "Stop" might be a bit, but only a bit, strong. Perhaps "undermine" would be a better description of the FBI's role.
All in all, this is Very Big. I think it's been more or less assumed all along, but to have it confirmed in black and white ...
ADDENDUM: While not strictly related to the above, this blog linked below makes an excellent point. Everyone is talking FISA these days, but another investigative instrument in the national security field is the National Security Letter (NSL). NSLs are the National Security version of subpoenas. If you're wondering what takes Congressional committees so long to investigate these matters and why reports in unedited form can be so voluminous, this is one reason. Thorough investigators will want to know about all NSLs that were issued around any given investigation:
Where the bodies are buried
By Joe Herring
UPDATE: In an article dated yesterday, February 8, 2016, How The Media Buried Two Huge FBI Stories Yesterday, Mollie Hemingway dwells at length on the news we examined above--including the "potus wants to know everything we're doing" text. In doing so she cites a WSJ article dated February 7, 2016, which I had ignored because of the absurd "understatement" of the title: Text From 2016 Shows Obama’s Interest in FBI Employees’ Work. The article is detailed and confirms that "associates" of Obama confirm that he was not at that point interested in updates on Clinton's emails but rather on "Russia." Which is to say, Trump.
I didn't think that made any sense either- connecting it to the Clinton case. The text seems to refer to the Trump case, which isn't surprising. It has been pretty obvious for some time that the details of the Trump investigation were being put in the President's Daily Briefing which was getting larger and larger circulations as the Obama presidency wound down. Indeed, the first indication of this appears to have been Nunes viewing of the briefings arranged by Dan Coates early last year. After that viewing, Nunes mentioned that none of the material he had seen seemed to relate to an investigation of Russian meddling. I will guess that the material was all standard Trump Campaign/Transition intercepts and unmaskings- in other words, nothing criminal or treasonous, but full evidence that the campaign was under almost total surveillance the last half of 2016.
ReplyDeleteHere's an aspect that hasn't got much attention. You may recall Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Obama, who publicly stated:
ReplyDelete“I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration,” Farkas, who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said.
This clearly points toward coordination of these efforts with Democrat legislators--presumably members of the Gang of Eight. I'm not sure how this would work, but I'm guessing that these select legislators and/or staff might have acces to the PDB and might be able to request searches that required unmasking. What she says doesn't make sense to me unless something of this sort was going on. Scary.