June 3, 2020
Former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today in a hearing dubbed “Oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: day 1”. Rosenstein is the first of many witnesses who will be called to testify in the Senate’s probe of the origins of the FBI Trump-Russian collusion investigation, otherwise known as “Crossfire Hurricane.” Rosenstein made several stunning admissions.
Rosenstein admitted that he didn’t thoroughly read before he signed the FISA warrant application renewal to spy on Trump campaign aide, Carter Page. Further, he conceded that he would never have signed off on the warrant if he was aware of the inaccuracies and omissions in the application. When asked by Senator Lindsey Graham, “If you knew then what you know now, would you have signed the warrant application?” Rosenstein replied, “No I would not”.
Last year the Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, revealed 17 serious problems, and even the altering of evidence in the four Page FISA applications prepared by the FBI. Incredibly, information from the Steele dossier, opposition research commissioned and funded by the Clinton campaign, was submitted as evidence to the FISA court to obtain the surveillance warrants. In addition to knowing that the dossier was discredited, at the time of the final two FISA applications, the FBI also had evidence that the dossier was Russian disinformation.
When asked what he did to verify the information in the FISA warrants he signed, Rosenstein stated that he relied upon the FBI, implying that the FBI lied to him and the FISA court.
“Four federal judges signed off on this…Like me, they believed the information had been verified and was accurate.” He added, “The agents had a duty to make sure the information was accurate.”
In August 2017 Rosenstein prepared a “Scope memo” which expanded Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s authority to probe into members of the Trump team. Trump’s former national security advisor, Lt. General Mike Flynn, was among those included in the memo. Rosenstein was asked if he knew, at the time he prepared this memo, that the FBI field office had recommended in early January 2017 to end the investigation into Flynn. Flynn’s response, “I did not.” When asked if that would have mattered, he replied, “Yes”.
The biggest bombshell occurred when Senator Graham asked Rosenstein if at the time he prepared the Mueller scope memo- “the whole concept, that the campaign was colluding with Russians, there was no ‘there there’ in August of 2017, do you agree or not agree?”
“I agree with the general statement,” Rosenstein replied.
This is an incredible admission. Remember, the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation in July 2016. So, after more than a year of probing Trump and his associates, according to Rosenstein there was no evidence of Russian collusion. Yet, he still expanded Mueller’s authority and widened the probe into four Americans associated with President Trump to search for Russian collusion.
Tomorrow the Senate will vote on a subpoena authorization to review documents and communications and solicit testimony from Obama officials who had a role in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Future witnesses include Former FBI Director, James Comey, former FBI deeply director Andrew McCabe, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former CIA Director John Brennan.
Sadly, Obama’s DOJ/FBI did far more harm to our country, trying to prove that Trump was a Russian agent than Russia could ever dream of doing.
