547

The House GOP put on quite a show-a show trial actually-over Strozk’s texts last week. Trey Gowdy foamed at the mouth and told Strozk ‘I don’t give a damn what you think as you had unprecedented animus towards ‘President Trump.’

“I give a damn what you appreciate, agent Strzok” Gowdy replied. “I don’t appreciate having an FBI agent with an unprecedented level of animus working on two major investigations during 2016.”

And-of course-many in the MSM like Wolf Blitzer have bought this canard hook line and sinker.

He thinks those messages between Strozk and Page are ‘so damning.’ If he thinks it damning that a few leading FBI agents had negative views-much like the rest of the country-on faux ‘President Trump’ what would he say if he knew what many in the FBI were saying about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election-during the email probe that they leaked so much about?

What the GOP show trials and faux outrage over Strozk’s texts have managed to wholly obsucre is that in 2016 the FBI was Trumpland-not Clintonland. Yeah, we got your ‘unprecedented animus’ right here.

“Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.”

“Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.”

“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.

“This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.”

The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”

FN: This directly contradicts Horowitz’s presumption in his-very cursory-“summary” after he tabled the actual report into the leaks of the anti Clinton rogue FBI agents

“The agent called the bureau “Trumplandia”, with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected.”

A candidate whose campaign they also knew was under investigation for colluding with Russia.

Much has been made of Strozk’s private texts where he expressed strong anti Trump opinions. But this makes it clear that there were agents who openly-rather than privately-discussed their animus for Clinton and their intention to vote for Trump at work. So, based on Wolff’s outrage, how can all these folks have been trusted to run the email probe? Indeed that question remains as there is a strong sense that many in the NY FBI forced Comey’s hand into doing the Comey letter.

Much of Comey’s antics were an attempt to reassure these Clinton hating agents who made no secret of their animus.

Indeed, the anti Clinton bias and animus was so deep that they opened up an investigation into the Clinton Foundation based on little more than a discredited piece of Right wing oppo research like Clinton Cash. 

Back to the Guardian-this hardly mitigates the picture of anti Clinton animus and bias against her:

“At the same time, other sources dispute the depth of support for Trump within the bureau, though they uniformly stated that Clinton is viewed highly unfavorably.”

“There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt. What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician,” said a former FBI official.

Ok so maybe some didn’t like Trump-there were plenty of anti Trump Republicans during the primary-but there was widespread agreement in disdain for Clinton. But of course this is the definition of negative partisanship-maybe some agents agreed Trump is not qualified but in their mind this was still better than the faux ‘corruption’ of Hilary-no doubt many of these same agents are probably cool with the very real and extreme corruption of Trump rather than the faux, overblown ‘corruption’ of Hillary; there’s no basis of fact to argue she was any more corrupt than the average pol whereas Trump is off the charts relative to the median or mean.

All of which makes us recall that with all Trump’s alternative facts about  ’13 angry Democrats’ the FBI is a very Republican place. Comey is a Republican. The Deputy Director in 2016-Andy McCabe-is a Republican-though he was absurdly called a Democrat based on his wife running as a Democrat in 2016.

But it’s even worse than that as Comey didn’t allow him to sit in on his fateful decision of October 27, 2016 of doing the Comey Letter that would cinch the election for Trump based on the idea that McCabe’s wife being a Democrat made McCabe too partisan to sit in on this indefensible, damnable decision. If having your wife run as a Democrat was enough to force your recusal what about Comey’s own history as a GOPer pursuing the Clinton’s for 25 years and donating to both of President Obama’s Presidential opponents?

UPDATE: Trump now claims there are ’18 angry Democrats’ running the investigation.

Heck, Mueller himself is a Republican as is new Director Christopher Wray. With all the talk of 13 18 angry Democrats I can’t think of one Democrat  at the FBI off the top of my head. At a minimum they’re clearly in the minority. And I do think it’s legitimate to ask if the clear GOP tilt of the FBI and the very clear anti Clinton bias at the FBI had something to do with the outrageous discrepancy with how the email probe was handled-Comey’s ad hoc ‘extreme transparency’ and the Russia probe-that was handled the normal way-ie, no leaks, held very close to the vest.

Indeed, as part of the IG’s investigation into the Clinton email probe they are coming up with a sequel into the issue of leaks from the NY FBI office-aka Trumplandia. Judging even by the big report the IG already put out it seems clear that something like this happened: the NY FBI had Weiner’s laptop and ‘found’ all these emails between Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton on it.

I say ‘found’ because as discussed in Chapter A I strongly suspect that there were rogue agents at the NY office who took a rather active role in this ‘finding’-like maybe they ‘found’ the emails there as they actually placed it there themselves.

Yet we continue to hear how the Deep State is biased against Trump. Exactly. I mean that’s why they said nothing about Emailgate while constantly leaked about Russiagate. Oh wait…

Greg Sargent has discussed the ‘hardball gap’ between the parties and nowhere is this more clear than the way the two parties talk about the FBI. The Dems speak with great reverence for the agency while the GOP attacks it constantly and levies every absurd conspiracy theory against it. Yet the FBI rigged the election that allowed the GOP candidate to win.

Even now-as of February 21, 2019-the Democrats have failed to yet push for the IG report on the leaks of the anti Clinton pro Trump NY FBI agents while Lindsay Graham and friends call for McCabe to be in prison. Of course, they’ve failed to even ask for Trump’s tax returns-due to an ‘overabundance of caution.’