Thursday, May 9, 2019

Compromised



In 2015 the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG), Mr. Charles McCullough, met with two FBI agents and the then FBI Executive Assistant Director for National Security, Mr. John Giacalone. The purpose of the meeting was to pass along the fact that there were anomalies in the metadata on Mrs. Clinton’s email server, which indicated that a foreign actor had indeed accessed said server.

The FBI went ahead and opened a ticket based on that information. A ticket, meaning that an investigation was about to be opened. One of the agents present at that meeting was none other than Peter Strzok. Fast forward to January 2016 and there’s a new counterintelligence boss, Bill Priestap. Apparently Mr. Priestap was never informed by the two supervisory agents running the investigation about the breach of the server. Again, Peter Strzok was one of those supervisory agents.

This is significant, due to the fact that Mr. Priestap indicated during a closed door interview with a joint congressional committee that the Mid Year Exam (MYE), which was the code name for the investigation, revolved around two basic tenets. The first being retention of classified information on the server, the second being disclosure of said information, either intentional or unintentional. To the best of his knowledge, no information had been disclosed from the server. It came as a surprise when he was informed by one of the committee members (Rep Meadows) that the server had in fact been compromised.

The decision to absolve Mrs. Clinton of any wrong-doing was based on retention being the only issue. Had the disclosure portion entered into the discussion, it would have changed the tone of the investigation as evidenced by a May 15, 2016 text between Strzok and Lisa Page where she inquired about being able to close out the MYE, as long as retention was all they were looking at. Strzok never informed her of the breach of the server (which, ironically, was the genesis of the investigation).

On the 5th of July, 2016, then FBI Director James Comey, held a press conference where he made it known that they were closing out the MYE and would not be proffering charges against Mrs. Clinton, clearing the way for her to continue her campaign for the presidency. Peter Strzok, within ten minutes of the conclusion of the aforementioned press conference, went ahead and contacted the office of the IC IG, to let them know that the FBI would be closing out the ticket used to start the investigation. At no time did he ever let the individual he was a direct report to for the MYE (Mr. Priestap) know what he was doing. It would be interesting to discover what else Agent Strzok failed to notify Mr. Priestap about.

Despite his protestations before previous congressional committees, Agent Strzok appears to have exhibited a lot more bias than he was willing to admit. In fact, it appears that he withheld material evidence/ information in an ongoing  FBI investigation. Can anyone say obstruction?