ALAN DERSHOWITZ:

“…House Democrats have announced the grounds of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on which they plan to seek the impeachment of President Trump. Neither of these proposed articles satisfy the express constitutional criteria for an impeachment, which are limited to “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Neither are high or low crimes or misdemeanors. Neither are mentioned within the Constitution.

Both are so vague and open ended that they could be applied in partisan fashion by a majority of the House against almost any president from the opposing party. Both are precisely what the Framers had rejected at their Constitutional Convention. Both raise the “greatest danger,” in the words of Alexander Hamilton, that the decision to impeach will be based on the “comparative strength of parties,” rather than on “innocence or guilt.”

That danger is now coming to pass, as House Democrats seek for the first time in American history to impeach a president without having at least some bipartisan support in Congress. Nor can they find any support in the words of the Constitution, or in the history of its adoption. A majority of the House is simply making it up as they go along in the process, thus placing themselves not only above the law but above the Constitution.

In doing this, they follow the view of Representative Maxine Waters who infamously declared that, when it comes to impeachment, “there is no law.” From her view, shared by some others, the criteria for impeaching a president is whatever a majority of the House says it is, regardless of what the Constitution mandates. This reductionistic and lawless view confuses what a majority of the House could get away with, if there is no judicial review, and what the mandated duty of all House members is, which is to support, defend, and apply the Constitution as written, not as it can be stretched to fit the actions of an opposition or controversial president…”

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Byron York:

“…The proof is in the details of the report. In addition to the much-discussed wiretap of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Horowitz discussed the bureau’s use of what is called a CHS — a confidential human source, or, in more common terms, an informant, and a UCE — an undercover employee, or a secret agent, to gather information from at least three targets in the Trump campaign. One was Page, another was George Papadopoulos, also a member of the advisory team, and the third was an unnamed “high-level Trump campaign official who was not a subject of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

Horowitz described “multiple CHS operations undertaken by the Crossfire Hurricane team.” There were “numerous CHS interactions with Page and Papadopoulos.” There was the CHS contact with the high-level campaign official. And then there were “additional CHSs” who attempted to contact Papadopoulos but did not succeed.

All the meetings and conversations were secretly recorded by the FBI. Some were also monitored live, as they happened, by agents and supervisors. The Horowitz report quoted liberally from transcripts of the recordings…

…In short, the FBI, acting under false pretenses, spied on Trump and Flynn in plain sight.

The Horowitz report noted the potentially corrosive effect of what the FBI did. “We concluded that the FBI’s use of this briefing for investigative reasons could potentially interfere with the expectation of trust and good faith among participants in strategic intelligence briefings, thereby frustrating their purpose,” the report said.

Put it all together, and there was a lot of spying on the Trump campaign — by confidential informants, in a wiretap, even in a supposed intelligence briefing. Yet defenders of the Trump-Russia probe still maintain that no spying took place and that the FBI followed proper procedures. After Horowitz, that’s a difficult case to make. The fact is, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it did it in the worst way…”

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Miranda Devine:

“…It took five hours of questioning about the FBI’s motivations but Horowitz, prudent and impartial as he is, finally delivered the money shot.

Asked by Republican Sen. Mike Crapo if the 17 “significant errors or omissions” he found in the FBI’s surveillance operation could possibly be “accidental,” Horowitz said: “I would be skeptical.”

He went on to explain “the answers we got were not satisfactory [so] we’re left trying to understand how could all these errors have occurred over a nine-month period on three teams hand-picked, on . . . the highest-profile case of the FBI, going to the very top of the organization, involving a presidential campaign.”

Horowitz described the conduct of the FBI as “inexplicable” when its operatives bent the rules to try to prove Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia.

But sadly the FBI’s conduct is all too explicable. It can be explained by the proven anti-Trump bias of its personnel, hand-picked to run Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI operation to spy on the Trump campaign using salacious opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Horowitz’s testimony confirms suspicions that the Russia-collusion hoax amounted to an attempted coup against Trump and laid the groundwork for impeachment…”

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The Person Of The Year Is Not Greta Thunberg. It’s The Hong Kong Protester

Quinnipiac: Opposition To Impeachment And Removal Reaches 51%, Highest Number Since September

Related:

Liberal Media are Fearing Democrats Might Have Blown Up Their Impeachment Circus

Charles Hurt:

“…When President Trump first blew the whistle — in a now-famous 2017 tweet that misspelled the word “tapp” — on the previous administration’s spying operation against his presidential campaign at the height of the election, Swamp creatures laughed. They ridiculed. They mocked.

It was a lie, they said. Never happened.

And the gaslight media backed them up. They whitewashed the whole thing for their friends in the Obama administration. And for their friends in the federal administrative state.

Today, after enduring two years of spinning, counter-leaks and relentless lies, we know officially what any sensible person knew from the beginning.

The FBI spied on an official they believed — or pretended to believe — was working inside the 2016 Trump presidential campaign on behalf of the Russian government to hijack the election and install a Manchurian candidate who would give America away to Moscow.

The FBI never alerted the Trump campaign to this grave inside threat, obviously, because the Department of Justice believed that the Trump campaign — including Mr. Trump, himself — was in on the giant con.

And therein lies the plotted coup.

Whatever you think of former President Barack Obama or Mr. Trump or Carter Page or James B. Comey or anybody’s foreign policy opinion regarding Russia or NATO or Mexico, only one thing matters in this situation. At the moment these decisions were being made to spy on the Trump campaign, Mr. Obama was president. His administration was at the controls of one of the most sprawling and sophisticated espionage apparatuses ever assembled on this planet.

At that time, Mr. Trump was an avowed political opponent. Any decision made by the Obama administration to spy on officials inside the Trump campaign was of massive, profound constitutional import. It is in these moments where a country is either a nation of laws or a banana republic.

It is either “equal justice under law” or a police state.

So, FBI agents — operating at the highest levels of DOJ authority — sought secret warrant applications normally reserved for our worst enemies such as active terrorists plotting to kill as many innocent Americans as possible.

They cobbled those secret warrant applications together with bad information supplied by — among others — Mr. Trump’s political opponents during the 2016 election. Much of that information was gathered abroad from America’s enemies seeking to sow discord in our elections.

The inspector general found specifically at least 17 “significant errors or omissions” in the FBI’s secret warrant applications.

Again, do not forget, the Obama administration took all these drastic and sloppy steps against a political opponent at the height of a presidential race — without ever alerting the campaign of this dastardly threat inside its campaign.

This is, literally, worse than Watergate. This is worse than the most egregious abuses of power by J. Edgar Hoover in his campaign of spying on political opponents.

The Obama administration officials responsible for this miscarriage of justice and trampling of the Constitution now step forward and admit they spied on political opponents at the height of an election — though they scramble to find softer-sounding terms for it.

And they bleat about how the inspector general found no evidence of “political bias” in their espionage campaign against the Trump campaign.

Give me a break.

First, there is plenty of evidence of deep-seeded hatred of Mr. Trump spewed these biased jackboots. Second, what on earth is “political bias,” anyway? Wearing an “I’m With Her” T-shirt while applying for a secret warrant to spy on the administration’s political opponents?

Yeah, well, I am sure John Wilkes Booth was not motivated by “political bias,” either.

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?…”

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I don’t agree with Matt Taibbi about much, but he is a straight shooter. This is just a little taste. Click over for the whole thing. It is worth it.

MATT TAIBBI:

“…The report throws water on one “deep state” conspiracy theory of the Russia investigation, but validates complaints about “fake news”…

…If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a “clearing” of the FBI, never clear me of anything. Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was…”

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Daniel McCarthy:

“…The impeachment fiasco is just the latest symptom. After weeks of testimony, Democrats have not been able to come up with any charges more concrete than ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of Congress.’ Abuse of power is certainly a serious thing — but only if it’s real. Partisans think that almost anything a president from the opposing party does amounts to an abuse of power. For impeachment to amount to anything more than partisan harassment, an actual crime ought to be found somewhere along the line: an act of wrongdoing objectively contrary to the law. Otherwise, any procedural or policy disagreement — or any pretext whatsoever — can be construed by a party out to get an enemy president as an ‘abuse of power.’…

…Democrats fell so far short of the mark of proving that bribery took place in President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine that they dared not even make the accusation in their articles of impeachment. Instead, they used abuse of power simply to refer to actions they didn’t like, and they whipped up a new non-crime, ‘obstruction of Congress,’ in an act of desperation. But Trump’s refusal to let administration officials play along with the Democrats’ pantomime impeachment proceedings is simply a bold assertion of the Constitution’s separation of powers….”

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Impeachment Boomerang: Trump Beats Dems in Three States That Shattered Democrats in 2016

Related:

Report: Moderate House Dems Grow Increasingly Concerned About 2020 Reelection Chances Due to Impeachment Push

1) Key findings of Horowitz report:  Yup, IG said FBI hit threshold for opening an investigation. But also goes out of its way to note what a “low threshold” this is. Durham’s statement made clear he will provide more info for Americans to make a judgment on reasonableness.

2) The report is triumph for former House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, who first blew the whistle on FISA abuse. The report confirms all the elements of the February 2018 Nunes memo, which said dossier was as an “essential” part of applications, and FBI withheld info from FISA court.

3) Conversely, report is an excoriation of Adam Schiff and his “memo” of Feb 2018. That doc stated that “FBI and DOJ officials did NOT abuse the [FISA] process” or “omit material information.” Also claimed FBI didn’t much rely on dossier.

4) In fact, IG report says dossier played “central and essential role” in getting FISA warrants. Schiff had access to same documents as Nunes, yet chose to misinform the public. This is the guy who just ran impeachment proceedings.

5) Report is a devastating indictment of Steele, Fusion GPS and the “dossier.” Report finds that about the only thing FBI ever corroborated in that doc were publicly available times, places, title names. Ouch.

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More at link. Best summary I have seen.

“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration. In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source. The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory. While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.”

I anticipate criminal charges against multiple individuals resulting from the Durham Investigation.

JEFF CARLSON:

“…The focus of the IG Report was abuse of the FISA process and the findings of the IG show numerous problems with the actions by FBI agents in obtaining the FISA warrant used to spy on Trump 2016 presidential campaign adviser Carter Page.

All told, the IG identified “at least 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications, and many additional errors in the Woods Procedures.”

Although many media organizations are trying to focus on the IG’s finding that the FBI was within its rights in opening the initial July 31, 2016, counterintelligence investigation, it should be noted that this was not the focus of the IG’s investigation. This matter was addressed by the IG on the very first page of his report:

“Our role in this review was not to second-guess discretionary judgments by Department personnel about whether to open an investigation.”

However, Horowitz did note that he had material concerns about the FBI’s legal ability to open an investigation into the campaign of a presidential candidate: “We were concerned to find that neither the AG [attorney general] Guidelines nor the DIOG [FBI’s Domestic Investigations Operations Guide] contain a provision requiring Department consultation before opening an investigation such as the one here involving the alleged conduct of individuals associated with a major party presidential campaign.”

The IG report highlighted several different areas of misconduct and identified a number of errors and findings…

…The Inspector General’s report stated that it concluded that the failures described in the report “represent serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications.”…

…“That so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI and that FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process.”

“We concluded that the information that was known to the managers, supervisors, and senior officials should have resulted in questions being raised regarding the reliability of the Steele reporting and the probable cause supporting the FISA applications, but did not.”

The IG report noted that “this was a failure of not only the operational team, but also of the managers and supervisors, including senior officials, in the chain of command.”…”

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I anticipate criminal charges from the Durham Investigation. That is when the action starts. The Horowitz Report is weak soup.

JONATHAN TURLEY:

“…The analysis of the report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz greatly depends, as is often the case, on which cable news channel you watch. Indeed, many people might be excused for concluding that Horowitz spent 476 pages to primarily conclude one thing, which is that the Justice Department acted within its guidelines in starting its investigation into the 2016 campaign of President Trump.

Horowitz did say that the original decision to investigate was within the discretionary standard of the Justice Department. That standard for the predication of an investigation is low, simply requiring “articulable facts.” He said that, since this is a low discretionary standard, he cannot say it was inappropriate to start. United States Attorney John Durham, who is heading the parallel investigation at the Justice Department, took the usual step of issuing a statement that he did not believe the evidence supported that conclusion at the beginning of the investigation.

Attorney General William Barr also issued a statement disagreeing with the threshold statement. Nevertheless, the Justice Department has a standard requiring the least intrusive means of investigating such entities as presidential campaigns, particularly when it is the campaign of the opposing party. That threshold finding is then followed by the remainder of the report, which is highly damaging and unsettling. Horowitz finds a litany of false and even falsified representations used to continue the secret investigation targeting the Trump campaign and its associates.

This is akin to reviewing the Titanic and saying that the captain was not unreasonable in starting the voyage. The question is what occurred when icebergs began appearing. Horowitz says that investigative icebergs appeared very early on, and the Justice Department not only failed to report that to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court but also removed evidence that its investigation was on a collision course…

…Despite this shockingly damning report, much of the media is reporting only that Horowitz did not find it unreasonable to start the investigation, and ignoring a litany of false representations and falsifications of evidence to keep the secret investigation going. Nothing was found to support any of those allegations, and special counsel Robert Mueller also confirmed there was no support for collusion and conspiracy allegations repeated continuously for two years by many experts and members of Congress…”

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