‘I am so stressed about all the ways THIS has the potential to go fully off the rails…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) An FBI lawyer is facing a criminal referral for altering a document as part of an investigation into the agency’s alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Trump campaign officials, CNN reported.
The reporting, based on unnamed sources, did not indicate the suspect’s name, nor the specific document alleged to have been altered, but some recent indications point to Lisa Page.
The criminal referral is part of a major series of probes being conducted by the Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr.
One of those probes, an investigation by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, announced recently that it planned to conclude by Dec. 9, with Horowitz now scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Dec. 11.
A parallel criminal investigation, led by special prosecutor John Durham, remains ongoing, though it has been rumored to be in its final stages.
Horowitz already has wrapped several of his own investigations into FBI misconduct involving key Obama-era figures like Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and counter-espionage agent Peter Strzok, who oversaw the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the since-debunked allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.
While not all have been recommended for prosecution, Horowitz has reportedly found some previous violations of law involving the leaking of classified material. He has been in close contact with Durham, who was appointed in May, shortly after the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia probe.
Last month, it was revealed that FBI attorney Lisa Page, best known for being Strzok’s mistress, had admitted to altering the 302 summary filing of an interview Strzok had conducted with Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
BREAKING – new @SidneyPowell1 filing in the Flynn case.
Lisa Page edited the Flynn 302.
James Clapper told WaPo reporter Ignatius to basically “take the kill shot on Flynn”
THREAD
cc @KerriKupecDOJ pic.twitter.com/YqEIsMUAiu
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) October 25, 2019
Those edits mischaracterized the FBI conclusions to indicate that they believed Flynn was guilty of illicit communications with the Russian ambassador. Flynn ultimately was indicted as part of the Mueller investigation.
Although Page denied any recollection of the changes, text-messages between her and Strzok not only offered her admission, but also showed that she knew it was improper conduct.
“I can feel my heart beating harder,” she wrote. “I am so stressed about all the ways THIS has the potential to go fully off the rails.”
According to Fox News, the CNN reports on the criminal referral were confirmed by The Washington Post, but the paper later stealth-edited a portion indicating that the person had worked “beneath” Strzok.
The recent filings from Flynn’s attorney that implicated Page also indicated that Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, encouraged a Washington Post reporter to “take the kill shot on Flynn” as Democrats sought to frame the Trump campaign.
Clapper, who is also a focus of Durham’s investigation, has said he was following the direct orders of President Barack Obama.
The Horowitz and Durham investigations figure to play prominently in an anticipated Senate impeachment trial for President Donald Trump as Republicans put forward an alternative narrative to counter the Left’s allegations of corruption.
Central to their defense is that Trump was justified in pressuring Ukraine to pursue investigations into Democrats given the past evidence of election interference involving surrogates of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign.