Crossfire Hurricane | The Underground Newswire

Rowan Scarborough
– The Washington Times –
Friday, July 17, 2020

FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his FBI Crossfire Hurricane unit were focused on the White House during President Trump’s inauguration celebration, so much so that the “angry” agent complained he was kept out of the loop on a bureau counter-intelligence briefing there.

Mr. Strzok, who would later be fired for his anti-Trump messages to FBI lawyer Lisa Page, erupted the day after Mr. Trump became president, according to newly released emails obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog in Washington.

Mr. Strzok said in an email to his boss, counter-intelligence chief Bill Priestap, he could have folded the FBI briefing into his strategy for investigating Trump associates.

“I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted],” Mr. Strzok said. “I am angry that Jen [colleague Jennifer Boone] did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction.”

The afternoon and night before the inauguration, a bevy of heavily redacted emails were exchanged by Mr. Strzok and other high-ranking counter intelligence officials.

“These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the [then-director James] Comey FBI as soon as he stepped foot in the Oval Office,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

By inauguration day, the FBI had reversed its decision to close a case on retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. Agents were examining his phone calls during the transition with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Three days later, Mr. Strzok would travel to the White House to interview Mr. Flynn, who would pled guilty in December 2017 to lying. The Trump Justice Department moved in May to drop the case, citing undisclosed FBI files that would have helped Mr. Flynn’s case.

Judicial Watch said the Strzok conversation was among 136 pages of emails–––some heavily redacted––– released by the FBI based on an original December 2017 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submission for all Strzok-Page messages.

The release contains other Strzok missives.

He disputed a story in January 2017 in the British Independent that said Christopher Steele, author of the influential and ultimately discredited dossier, suspected there was an FBI “cabal” which prioritized the Hillary Clinton email probe over the Trump-Russia matter.

“Of course not accurate (the coverup/cabal nonsense),” Mr. Strzok wrote to agent Michael Kortan, assistant director for public affairs, and Ms. Page. “Is that question gaining traction anywhere else.”

Mr. Strzok headed the probe into Mrs. Clinton’s email abuses, then switched to directing Crossfire

IVAN PENTCHOUKOV,
June 4th, 2020

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs voted on June 4 to authorize its chairman to issue subpoenas as part of an inquiry into the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, which eventually evolved into the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which was scheduled to voted on a separate set of subpoenas as part of its own inquiry into the matter, delayed its vote until next week.

The subpoena authorizations cover an extensive list of people connected to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s codename for the investigation of the Trump campaign. Prior to the vote, the committee struck out authorizations to subpoena the Department of Justice Inspector General (DOJ IG). Sen. Ron Johnson, the committee’s chairman, explained that the subpoenas were pulled to ensure that inspectors general can carry out their investigations without concern from witnesses that their testimony may eventually be obtained by Congress.

The judiciary committee will lead the way in the dual effort, while the oversight committee will call witnesses for follow-up questioning and further inquiries, Johnson has said. The oversight committee will focus on the the transition period between the election and inauguration of President Donald Trump.

The judiciary committee kicked off its inquiry a day earlier with the interview of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who played a crucial role in the events that led up to the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. Rosenstein told lawmakers that he was not aware of a number exculpatory details about the targets of Crossfire Hurricane at the time he authorized the renewal of an application for a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign associate.

Rosenstein also revealed that then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe kept him in the dark for a week about a series of consequential memoranda drafted by then-recently-fired FBI Director James Comey. Rosenstein said that McCabe also failed to brief him about internal FBI discussions regarding the investigation of high-profile officials, an apparent reference to McCabe’s opening a formal investigation into the president himself.

Democrats on both committees opposed the inquiries, arguing that the efforts are a political errand for Trump. The Democrats say the efforts are redundant considering the extensive inquiry completed by the DOJ IG, Michael Horowitz.

The IG found that the FBI’s applications to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page contained 17 significant errors or omissions. Horowitz detailed extensive evidence of bias among the key officials who conducted the investigation but found insufficient evidence to establish that the bias played a role in any of the investigative decisions.

Horowitz has said that it is inexplicable that such a large volume of errors or omissions could have been made by three separate, handpicked FBI teams conducting the highest-profile FBI investigation in years.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants on Page are one part of a broader pattern of questionable activities by senior law enforcement and intelligence officials. The committees will also look into the rampant unmasking requests targeting people affiliated with the Trump campaign. The Director of National Intelligence recently declassified a list of dozens of unmasking requests targeting then-incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn during the transition period.

Those making the requests included top law enforcement and intelligence officials in the Obama administration, including CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, DNI James Clapper, and Vice President Joe Biden.

Lawmakers will also look into the FBI investigation of Flynn. Recently declassified documents show that Comey authorized the closing of the case against Flynn days before the FBI intervened to keep the case open. The intervention took place one day before President Barack Obama personally discussed the Flynn case with key officials in the White House.

“I want to find out why they kept going after Flynn when everybody who’d looked at Flynn said he shouldn’t be part of Crossfire Hurricane,” Lindsey Graham (R), the chairman of the judiciary committee, said.

“We’re going to go where the evidence takes us and I’m going to try to answer some basic questions about how it got so off the rails and try to explain to the public why the FISA court was so upset,” Graham added. “I don’t know if anybody is going to go to jail. People went to jail in the Mueller investigation. Well, I think there are some people who are really good candidates for going to jail for manipulating the FISA application process and abusing the rule of law.”

Follow Ivan on Twitter: @ivanpentchoukov