If former President Barack Obama had trouble sleeping last night, it’s because of Attorney General William Barr.
Barr told Congress during his appearance on Tuesday that a team has been assembled by the Department of Justice to formally review the anti-Trump bias of Obama’s FBI and its actions during the 2016 presidential election.
“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr told Congress at the hearing.
Specifically, the Justice Department wants answers on why the Obama administration ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential election.
When the existence of the wiretap was first revealed, the FBI claimed that Trump was suspected of colluding with the Russians. The collusion narrative was disproven by special counsel Robert Mueller’s exhaustive two-year investigation last month.
Critics have pointed out that the FBI wiretap was launched by outspoken anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok. Strzok used opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — the so-called “Steele Dossier” written by foreign intelligent agent Christopher Steele — to obtain the warrant. Strzok was later fired from the FBI for his political bias and conduct during the 2016 campaign.
Strzok’s former lover, ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, told Congress in closed-door testimony that the FBI “knew so little” about whether the dossier was “true or not true” when they obtained the wiretaps and admitted Strzok had “a paucity of evidence because we are just starting down the path.”
During that same period of time, Strzok was regularly exchanging text messages with Page with messages promising to stop Trump from becoming president.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in [then-FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s] office – that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like a life insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok once wrote.
“He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page asked Strzok in another exchange.
“No,” Strzok replied. “No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
Barr confirms that he is "reviewing the conduct of the [Russia] investigation," and indicates he still takes Devin Nunes seriously pic.twitter.com/2L7Tk19ZqN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 9, 2019
The investigation into potential FBI misconduct under Obama has been long promised by Republican leadership.
“Once we put the Mueller report to bed, once Barr comes to the committee and takes questions about his findings and his actions, and we get to see the Mueller report, consistent with law, then we are going to turn to finding out how this got off the rails,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., promised Fox News in March.
In other words, now that the Mueller report has found there was no collusion by the Trump administration, the Justice Department has a new goal.
It took a few years, but investigators are now looking into how far up the Obama administration’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election really went.
Did it go all the way to the top?
America is finally going to get answers — and that could be very bad news for Obama.
The Horn editorial team