What You Need to Know About the 4 Page FISA Abuse Memo

Who is doing these Investigations?

There are so many investigations going on right now it is a bit like trying to keep up with the NCAA college basketball tournament, especially the first few rounds. Let me try to move the weeds out of the way for you to help you get a grip on the 4 page memo that was just declassified.

We have Senate Committee investigations, House Committee investigations, Inspector General investigations, Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating Russian Collusion, various groups and people like Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents from the government. And there are more.

What is being investigated?

There are a lot of troubling things and accusations being tossed around by both Democrats and Republicans. And the media. Among the more important ones we have the Russian Collusion story and claims that Donald Trump worked with (colluded with) the Russian Government to win the election. Normally, this would be investigated by the Department of Justice and the FBI. But because Trump appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke to a Russian at a party, he decided that in order to make sure the investigation was not tainted by politics and to ensure the results of the investigation could be trusted, he stepped down from the investigation, or recused himself. And a Special Counsel was appointed. That is Robert Mueller. It is important to understand that Mueller’s job is not the same as Ken Starr who was an Independent Counsel or Special Prosecutor. Starr had more power in his investigation. Mueller was appointed under a new law and is pretty much the equivalent of a US Attorney. He still has teeth, but they are not as sharp because Congress limited the power that Ken Starr had.

The important thing to note here is that the 4 page FISA Abuse Memo we are talking about here has little to do with Mueller at this point. The Memo could play an important role in Mueller’s investigation down the road because his investigation and the Memo overlap. But for now, you don’t need to consider Muller’s investigation in understanding the Memo.

Other investigations in progress include Hillary’s use of a Personal Email Server, her destruction of 33,000 emails, hard drives, servers, phones, etc. Various committees are also looking into Uranium One where Hillary gave a lot of Uranium to Putin and a lot of money was “donated” to the Clinton Foundation.

But the portion of the investigation the Memo deals with potential abuse of the FISA process.

What is FISA?

FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that protects Americans from “unreasonable search and seizure”. In Nazi Germany and the USSR, and many other places, the government can bug, wiretap, and spy on their citizens whenever they want. But our Constitution was intended to protect us from such abuse with the 4th Amendment. They can still spy on us, but they need to get permission from a court. They can listen in on phone calls from non US citizens, but they cannot spy on Americans without court approval. Because of the potential for harm and in an effort to keep us safe, they set up FISA Courts (or FISC). This streamlines the process and keeps the proceedings secret. It wouldn’t be good if a terrorist was plotting to kill Americans and the warrant was public. We wouldn’t want to let the bad guys know we were on to them.

But what about the person on the phone in America? Osama Bin Laden did not have Constitutional protections. But a person he may have talked to in the US does. So the government may have a legitimate reason to listen in to both sides of the conversation. So they take the information to the FISA Court and obtain permission to listen in to the whole conversation. Many of these conversations were recorded and stored. And the end of the conversation in the US is “scrambled” or “masked”.

And while the Memo has been declassified by the House Intelligence Committee, we are awaiting approval (or not) from President Trump. But there have been a lot of things “leaked” or divulged without actually giving the technically still classified details.

Here is what we know about the Memo

Trey Gowdy has dropped a lot of hints the last day or two about what is in the Memo:

So what he is saying is that the FBI used the “Dirty Dossier” to obtain a FISA warrant, that the dossier was never vetted, and it was paid for by Hillary Clinton as opposition research. So, whoever took this information to the FISC elevated this dossier full of lies to an acceptable document and proof that anyone on the Trump Campaign was a suspect in Russian Collusion. So Democrats simply trot down to the FISA Court, refer to the fact that the dossier is now the “golden ticket” to eavesdrop on the entire Trump campaign.

And it was a complete fraud.

Who is Andrew McCabe?

Andrew McCabe is was the Deputy Director of the FBI. (He was ‘removed’ yesterday.) McCabe was in charge of the Hillary email server investigation as well as the Trump Russian Collusion investigation. You may have heard that McCabe’s wife ran for the State Senate in Virginia (and lost). Terry McAuliffe donated $700,000 to McCabe’s wife and also met with McAuliffe who was under Federal Investigation for donation problems in his race for Virginia Governor.

McCabe also failed to report his wife’s salary (she is a doctor) or the donations to her campaign on his financial disclosure forms:

A top FBI official who came under scrutiny last year over his wife’s campaign contributions from a Hillary Clinton ally did not list those 2015 donations or his wife’s salary in financial disclosure forms, according to records reviewed by Fox News.

The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe left the box blank for wife Dr. Jill McCabe’s salary, as a doctor with Commonwealth Emergency Physicians. And there is no documentation of the hundreds of thousands of campaign funds she received in her unsuccessful 2015 Virginia state Senate race.

And even more troubling, McCabe is reported to have asked FBI Agents to change their 302’s. When an agent interviews someone, they report the interview on a Form 302. And often, these 302’s are compared to other testimony. If they are different, perjury charges can be the result. Keep in mind, General Flynn was charged with perjury. We do not know if any 302’s were altered after the fact (yet), but any time a boss tells a subordinate to alter documentation, it can’t be good. And if this happens at the FBI, it can’t be tolerated.

Last night, Tucker Carlson on his Fox News Show revealed that Andrew McCabe is under investigation by the Justice Department:

“We have exclusive new information tonight about one of the most perplexing mysteries in Washington,” Tucker said at the start of his Monday show. “As you may have heard, Andrew McCabe, he’s the deputy director of the FBI, announced today he is leaving his job, and the most obvious question is–why is he doing that? Was he pushed or did he decide to leave himself? Well you may know McCabe’s name because he’s been in the news repeatedly over the past several years. In 2016, it emerged that McCabe’s wife had taken a large sum of money collected by one of Hillary Clinton’s closest friends.”

The Daily Caller co-founder continued,”This is significant because McCabe himself helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, you know the one, the investigation in which Clinton was exonerated before she was even interviewed. McCabe never recused himself from that investigation. So was Andrew McCabe fired today, and was that firing a result of information contained in the still famous but still mysterious House Intelligence Committee memo? The one everybody is talking about, but nobody outside of Congress has actually read?”

Some of this information may have come from the Inspector General’s ongoing investigation at the FBI and Justice. The IG has a report scheduled to come out in March that promises to be a bombshell.

Yesterday, after McCabe’s boss Christopher Wray read the meme (yes, on Sunday!) he called McCabe on Monday morning and told him he has been relieved of duty and was not to come into the office any more. Depending on the outcome of the investigations, McCabe could be cleared and still receive his pension, or he could possibly be fired. And he may lose his pension.

The Democrats Say this is All Fake

This is pretty damning for the Democrats and the slow pace these things drag out, they know that their chances of retaking the House and Senate will drop with every arrest and perp walk of a Democrat Deep State Operative. It is NOT in their best interest for any of this to come out. This will be the October Surprise  that starts in January.

The Memo – according to leaks – named at least 3 names of people that will be in severe jeopardy when the Memo is released. They are FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. These names would not be in the Memo if they did not have significant evidence of wrongdoing.

Andrew McCabe is already gone. We are waiting for the other shoes to drop after the release.

And if you consider demotion of Bruce G. Ohr at DOJ who met with the British spy Christopher Steele who wrote the dossier, that head is on the platter too. It probably didn’t help that Ohr’ wife works for Fusion GPS the company that Hillary hired to write the dossier.

But the Democrats are going around telling everyone that will listen that this is all a lie. And while that may play well on CNN and the other fake news outlets, the Dems know that the documents and testimony used to write the Memo are classified and will most likely never see the light of day. And of they do, they will be so heavily redacted as to be useless.

But… as these people are cuffed and hauled away to jail, the Democrat’s will be exposed. They already are. McCabe’s dismissal was a huge blow to their lies.

Many will remain free. But they will be part of plea deals that will go all the way to the top.

And as this plays out, bolstered by the Inspector General’s report in a few weeks, keep in mind that this is just the first of as many as 10 investigations that will stun the world.