Second special counsel? Finally, AG Sessions appears to be leaning towards it
(National Sentinel) Obama Corruption: Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeared to lay the groundwork for the appointment of a second special counsel to look into allegations of serial abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the FBI and Justice Department during the Obama administration.
In an interview with Fox News‘ Shannon Bream, Sessions said he “will consider” the appointment of a second special counsel.
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“Well, I have great respect for Mr. Gowdy and Chairman Goodlatte, and we are going to consider seriously their recommendations,” Sessions told Bream in an interview that ran late Wednesday night. “I have appointed a person outside of Washington — many years at the Department of Justice — to look at all of the allegations that the House Judiciary Committee members sent to us and we are conducting that investigation.”
In addition, Sessions said he is “well aware that we have a responsibility to ensure the integrity of the FISA process.”
“We are not afraid to look at that,” the AG, and former Alabama senator, explained. “The inspector general, some think that our inspector general is not very strong, but he has almost 500 employees, most of which are lawyers and prosecutors, and they are looking at the FISA process.”
“We must make sure it is done properly, and we are going to do that, and I will consider the request.”
President Donald J. Trump criticized Sessions on Twitter for handing the matter to IG Michael Horowitz because he has no prosecutorial authority.
Sessions is said to be considering a number of options moving forward, but that any action “must be done properly.” He also said he wants to “get as much out to the American people as possible” about what happened to the Trump campaign.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a “FISA memo” last month detailing serial abuses of the secretive court. Specifically, the memo noted that the unsubstantiated “Trump dossier” was used multiple times to secure surveillance warrants against Carter Page, a member of the Trump campaign, without informing the court that the document was political opposition research, not genuine intelligence.
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“The ‘dossier’ compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application,” the memo states.
“Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia,” it continued.
As Fox News reported, the four-page memo [which you can read here] also “includes testimony from a high-ranking government official who says without the infamous Trump dossier, the FBI and DOJ would not have secured surveillance warrants to spy on at least one member of the Trump team.”
The memo pointed out that in December 2017, then-FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe testified that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought” from the FISA court “without the Steele dossier information.”
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