Former FBA Director fo Counterintelligence
Peter Strzok (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Justice Department officials are saying that a lawyer for
the FBI altered a key document that was then used in the application for a FISA
warrant to initiate surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign.
DOJ Inspector General David Horowitz is expected to
release his report on FISA warrant abuses by the Obama administration on
December 9. No doubt, this incident will figure prominently in that report.
Interestingly, the Washington Post originally
reported that the lawyer worked for Peter Strzok, the FBI's disgraced former
head of counterintelligence and notorious anti-Trump investigator who, along
with his mistress Lisa Page, played a key role in the bureau's Russian
collusion investigation.
According to Fox News, the Post later dropped
references to Strzok.
The Post, hours after publishing its story,
conspicuously removed the portion of its reporting that the FBI
employee involved was underneath Peter Strzok, the FBI's since-fired head of
counterintelligence. The Post did not offer an explanation for the change,
which occurred shortly after midnight. Earlier this week, the DOJ highlighted a slew of anti-Trump text messages sent by
Strzok when he was leading the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the
probe into the Trump campaign.
While the exact nature of the alteration isn't
known, PJ
Media reported earlier that U.S. Attorney for the Southern
District of New York Preet Bharara said, "If there was an FBI agent, who
has sworn to uphold the Constitution, who can be proven to have altered a
document in connection to a legal proceeding including the attaining of a FISA
warrant, that's really serious. It doesn't get much more serious than
that."
Horowitz reportedly found that the FBI employee who
modified the FISA document falsely stated that he had "documentation to
back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about
the factual basis" for the FISA warrant application, the Post reported.
Then, the FBI employee allegedly "altered an email" to substantiate
his inaccurate version of events. The employee has since been forced
out of the bureau.
In its initial 2016 FISA warrant application, the
FBI flatly called Page "an agent of a foreign power."
The Post tried to downplay the
alteration as "not central to the legality of the FISA warrant obtained
against Page." Without knowing the exact substance of the alteration, how
the hell do they know?
There is no doubt now that Attorney General Willian
Barr's concerns that the investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016 was
tainted by politics were legitimate. Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page
has never been charged with a crime despite the secret surveillance, and he and
other members of the Trump campaign have filed several lawsuits looking to
clear their names.
The document in question wasn't the only piece of
evidence that was altered.
Newly released text messages involving text messages
between Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page revealed that Page -- who
was not present for the Flynn interview -- had apparently made
"edits" to the so-called "302" witness report in the
case, which was key to Flynn's prosecution on a false statements charge. Page
told Strzok on February 10, 2017 that she “gave my edits to
Bill to put on your desk.”
The myth that the FBI and other federal law enforcement
officials could put aside their personal anti-Trump biases and conduct an
honest, "professional" investigation has been shattered. The lot of
them should have recused themselves from any investigation involving Trump and
the campaign. The problem is that the bias infected the entire upper echelon of
the FBI and Justice Department.
It would be hard to conduct an investigation when the
bosses are the corrupt ones.
