Like a never-ending Christmas Eve or upcoming root canal work (depending on your point of view), Washington anticipation is high pending the imminent release of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on FISA abuses by the Department of Justice and FBI during their investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
Republicans and the president see the forthcoming release not only as potential vindication for President Donald Trump — but as a Scooby Doo moment when the real culprits are outed.
Democrats see it through a very different prism — but they’re also nervous it will run their “Trump-is-guilty-of-everything-all-the-time” narrative right off the tracks.
A FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court is a federal government tribunal established in 1978 that decides whether surveillance warrants can be issued against foreign spies inside the United States.
In 2016, a FISA warrant was granted to the FBI to investigate alleged Trump campaign ties to Russia.
What the court wasn’t told was that it was based on the baseless and Dem-funded data in the Steele dossier.
That blatant infraction of law, and all of the subsequent corruption, such as the actions of FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, are at issue in the Horowitz report.
The release process is in the final stages of declassification and the report will be released soon, according to Fox News.
That rumor has been rampant for at least two months before today.
But wait — there’s more.
Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham has been tasked by Attorney General Bill Barr (shown above right) with conducting an investigation into intelligence agency activities related to the 2016 general election. From what we already know thanks to released data and leaks, the damage here to the Dems is potentially catastrophic.
Federal prosecutions could be brought against Obama-era figures such as John Brennan, former director of the CIA, not to mention the already disgraced James Comey of the FBI.
Related: ‘Terrible, Terrible Judgment by Jim Comey’ and His Team, Says Ari Fleischer
Those of us who once served in the intelligence community have always wondered how a person like Brennan, who admitted to voting for the communist candidate for U.S. president in 1976, ever got a clearance in the first place.
Durham, who is known as a “hard-charging bulldog” prosecutor, could explain that and other questions regarding the problematic moves of Obama’s intel apparatus in 2016.
Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber is leading another investigation — which may give Dems sleepless nights. This probe concerns surveillance abuses by the DOJ and the FBI, but also the way those agencies handled their investigations into the Clinton Foundation and other issues.
The likely target here?
Did Obama’s DOJ and FBI protect Democrat Hillary Clinton to aid and abet her 2016 presidential race?
Though this specific probe has generated less media attention than the Horowitz and Durham operations, it also has the potential to rewrite the Dems’ version of modern American political history — and with it the script and tenor of the 2020 presidential race.
Any day now, part of that revision should proceed apace.
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