Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an exclusive interview aired Tuesday that Americans will be able to recognize “some” of the names under investigation as part of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s ongoing probe into federal surveillance abuses — and that he is “very troubled” by “what has been called to” his attention so far.
Barr asserted that despite the coronavirus pandemic, the Durham team “has been working very aggressively to move forward,” and that there “will be public disclosure” of his findings. Part One of Baier’s interview with Barr aired on Monday.
“I think before the election, I think we’re concerned about the motive force behind the very aggressive investigation that was launched into the Trump campaign without, you know, with a very thin, slender reed as a basis for it,” Barr told Baier. “t seemed that the bureau was sort of spring loaded at the end of July to drive in there and investigate a campaign.”
The DOJ’s watchdog has identified critical errors in every FBI wiretap application that it audited as part of the fallout from the bureau’s heavily flawed investigation into former Trump advisor Carter Page, who was surveilled during the campaign in part because of a largely discredited dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Additionally, an FBI lawyer in that case even falsified a CIA email submitted to the FISA court in order to make Page’s communications with Russians appear nefarious, the DOJ inspector general found; and the DOJ has concluded that the Page warrant was legally improper.
Barr said he couldn’t comment on whether criminal charges were coming, including concerning the FBI lawyer — and that he found the questions somewhat concerning.
Carter Page, one-time adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, addresses the audience during a presentation in Moscow, Russia, December 12, 2016.
(Reuters)
“We can’t discuss future charges. But I have to say that I do find a little irritating,” Barr said. “You know, the propensity in the American public on all sides of the political spectrum when they see something they think could be a criminal violation, I say, why hasn’t this person been indicted again? And, you know, there’s the old saying that that the wheels of justice grind slow and they do run slow because we have due process and we follow the process. But people should not draw from the fact that no action has been taken that taken yet, that that means that people or people are going to get away with wrongdoing.”
The attorney general emphasized, however, that he wasn’t concerned about criticisms of the Durham probe in an election year.
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“For the first time in American history, the police organizations and the national security organizations were used to spy on a campaign and there was no basis for it,” Barr said. “The media largely drove all kinds of sensational claims were being made about the president. That could have affected the election. And then and then later on in his administration, there were actions taken that really appear to be efforts to sabotage his campaign. And that has to be looked at. And if people want to say that I’m political because I am looking at those potential abuses of power, so be it. But that’s the job of the attorney general.”
Internal FBI documents unsealed in April indicate that Peter Strzok — the now-disgraced anti-Trump former head of FBI counterintelligence — ordered the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn to remain open even after it was slated to be closed due to a lack of so-called “derogatory” information.
The materials surfaced just a day after explosive FBI communications revealed that top bureau officials discussed their motivations for interviewing Flynn in the White House on January 24, 2017 — and openly questioned if their “goal” was “to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”
DOJ PROSECUTOR APPARENTLY DIDN’T COMPLY WITH COURT ORDER TO TURN OVER KEY DOCS
FILE – In this June 27, 2018, file photo, Peter Strzok, the FBI agent facing criticism following a series of anti-Trump text messages, walks to gives a deposition before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
“They seem to have ignored all the exculpatory evidence that was building up and continued pell-mell to push it forward,” Barr said. “So that’s one area of concern.”
Barr also slammed Judge Emmet Sullivan for trying to become an “alternative prosecutor” in the Flynn case. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the case this week, after Flynn’s lawyers said it was unconstitutional for Sullivan to keep the case alive even though both the prosecution and defense want it dismissed.
Brandon Van Grack, a top Justice Department prosecutor and former member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, withdrew from the Flynn case in May. Just minutes after that news surfaced, Justice Department sources told Fox News that the DOJ was seeking to drop the Flynn case entirely. That move came on the recommendation of U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who served as an FBI agent for more than a decade and had been evaluating the Flynn case.
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Van Grack’s removal from the cases came just days after Fox News reported that explosive, newly unsealed evidence documenting the FBI’s efforts to target Flynn called into question whether Van Grack complied with a court order to produce favorable evidence to Flynn.
“The other area of concern is that after the election, even though they were closing down some of that, as we’ve seen in the Flynn case, and say there’s nothing here, for some reason, they went right back at it, even at a time where the evidentiary support or claim support like the dossier was falling apart,” Barr said. “And it’s very hard to understand why they continued to push and even make public testimony that they had an investigation going when it was becoming painfully obvious or should have been obvious to anyone that there was nothing there.”
FILE – In this Dec. 1, 2017, file photo, Michael Flynn, center, arrives at federal court in Washington. A judge set a sentencing hearing for Michael Flynn after rejecting arguments from the former Trump administration national security adviser that prosecutors had withheld evidence favorable to his case. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Barr said that the DOJ was “looking at” names that some might recognize — although not at the level of Joe Biden or Barack Obama.
The DOJ, Barr added, was also taking a look at requests by several Obama administration officials — including Biden and Obama’s chief of staff — to obtain the identity of an individual who turned out to be Flynn.
“You know, unmasking is not by itself illegal, but the patterns of unmasking can tell us something about people’s motivations at any given point of time,” Barr said. “So we’re trying to take a look at the whole waterfront on unmasking what was done, especially in 2016.”
OBAMA KNEW DETAILS OF WIRETAPPED FLYNN CALLS, STUNNING DOJ
Obama was aware of the details of Flynn’s intercepted December 2016 phone calls with Kislyak, apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, according to documents released as exhibits to the government’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case.
Obama’s unexpectedly intimate knowledge of the details of Flynn’s calls, which the FBI acknowledged at the time were not criminal or even improper, raised eyebrows because of his own history with Flynn — and because top FBI officials secretly discussed whether their goal was to “get [Flynn] fired” when they interviewed him in the White House on January 24, 2017.
Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, and made clear he was “not a fan,” according to multiple officials. Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014; Obama cited insubordination, while Flynn asserted he was pushed out for his aggressive stance on combating lslamic extremism.
“I mean, for example, let’s say suppose for a period in the spring, there was a lot of heavy unmasking done on people involved with the Trump campaign,” Barr added. “That would be very relevant as to what people were thinking at that time and what their motivations were.”
