The Name to Remember: Michael Horowitz

[C-Mag]

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, it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.

[C-Mag]

A professional review of the IG report

I have the best readers. Physicists, engineers, medical doctors, and even a woman who worked with Jim Comey many years ago. Then there is my general...

So when a reader who has issued similar reports in corporate life took issue with my dismissal of the Inspector's General report on the Department of Justice (I want indictments), I was intrigued.

And now I post his remarks. Please note that his opinions are his alone and not those of his employer.

By David Held.

The more I read about this, the more I admire IG Michael Horowitz. I have been involved in corporate governance and compliance for almost 20 years and I’ve never seen a better example of self-preservation than the OIG report. Please allow me to explain how much there is to learn from Horowitz.

Imagine that you are the head of compliance and audit for a publicly-traded corporation (Horowitz), and the CEO (Trump) hates the former head (Comey) of a once-successful business line that has fallen on hard times (the FBI). He was vainglorious and the CEO fired him for his well-documented incompetence. You have been tasked with writing an audit report about that major business line, which has had some issues in the past, and the CEO wants to make some big changes there which do not yet have the support of the board. Needless to say, the CEO ignored his general counsel and has already announced what he wants to do on Twitter. This report is going to be publicly reported, so there’s a lot of attention on what you do. Research analysts now know who you are. The CEO is not against you, but he’s not your friend either, and you cannot count on him to save you from your immediate boss (Rosenstein) who has made it very clear that he doesn’t support this change and your immediate boss is responsible for your compensation. He can and will hurt you. He is never going to agree to hire an outside auditing firm to handle this, so you’ll have to take a position on the future of this business line.

Rumors of this business line’s incompetence have gotten to the Wall Street Journal, which everyone reads every day. This business line’s issues weren’t a secret despite the fact that not everyone talks about it publicly. Your boss totally knows that there are problems but you cannot really tell just whose side he’s on because he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut. He might be with the CEO, or he might be in with the fired head and the other corporate raiders out there (Mueller) who are looking to change CEOs. Your boss is probably keeping his options open. If you dissatisfy the CEO and produce a report that exonerates the business line, the CEO may lose his job because he’s counting on this, but if he doesn’t, you’re dead and unlike your boss and the CEO, you do not have a golden parachute waiting for you. Because you publicly screwed this up, no other similar company will ever hire you again.

What do you do? You look to Michael Horowitz as the gold standard for political acumen. Horowitz knows about the bias, so does Rosenstein and Sessions, Mueller and Comey. They all know. They may not always consider it bias and could have ivory tower syndrome but they aren’t idiots. Whatever he does, Horowitz knows that he potentially angers someone who can hurt him. He has to worry about both Team Trump and Team Mueller and maybe even Team Rosenstein. Someone is going to be mad and that’s bad for his career. Who is the only person he doesn’t have to worry about? Obviously, James Comey.

Horowitz’s report looks like two reports in one – the summary and the body of the report. The summary is toned down and acknowledges only the appearance of bias and of weak policies. It’s “pareve” as we say in the mother language. The really bad criticism stops with Comey and allows Yates and Lynch to emerge relatively unscathed for a lack of supervision. As I said, no one cares about Comey anymore and his deputy will probably end up in jail. The body of the report, however, describes shocking outright bias in detail and how FBI agents basically accepted gifts from the media covering them. The body seems to be ignored in the summary and could support much stronger conclusions that condemn both the FBI and the DOJ. Because the same guy oversaw the writing of both the summary and the body, this is not an oversight – the disconnect is by design. Why?

Horowitz is perfectly well aware of what’s in the body and that the team covering the Clinton email investigation was biased. Those people moved onto Team Mueller, so Horowitz knows that those guys are biased, too. Horowitz knows that the odds of the public and MSM listening to a narrative that it doesn’t want to accept is zero, so he gives everyone a piece of what they want. He gives his CEO the body of the report, which is truthful and acknowledges that this business line has been very poorly run. No one will criticize the auditor for giving straight facts.

Horowitz gives his immediate boss (Rosenstein) the option of using the summary to exonerate the incompetence of the business line (the FBI). It looked bad, sure, but things happen and we’ll clean this up in the future. If he wants, he isn’t yet forced to go through the total reorganization that the CEO had planned. The immediate boss is happy because he has something to hang his hat on, the summary, and he can save face in public. He can still urge the CEO to be prudent and take things slow. He didn’t give the CEO enough ammunition and the immediate boss knows that. The immediate boss can make his own decision about the reorganization because the research analysts are reading the summary anyway – they’re ignoring the facts in the body for now. Sure, the CEO will be citing the negative facts from the body of the report, but he had been talking about the reorganization for years and he’ll probably retire some day.

In our fact pattern, the CEO wanted you to make the decision for him, to make it obvious and you couldn’t do that because there are too many dangerous people out there. So your response to the company, in effect, this is a decision to be made at a higher pay grade than me. You have really issue no opinion, because the people who hate the business line will be angry at you no matter what you do. On the other hand, you can tell them that you gave them an abundance of facts, that some of them are damning, that there will be people who are subject to discipline and that the wheels of justice turn slowly. You didn’t hide anything but you cannot tell people which facts are important – they have to decide that for themselves. You didn’t hide anything because the question of prosecution is up to other people, not you. The CEO can always fire your boss if he really wanted to do so. And the CEO and your boss will work things out on their own without you, which is the best result possible for you.

***

OK, that was the report from a professional. Quite an insight. Diplomacy. Just the fact. Very good.

I still want prosecutions. Maybe the report leads to that.


http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2018/06/a ... eport.html

[pineapplemike]

apparently horowitz and fbi director wray gave a congressional testimony today, this is the only clip ive seen so far

[C-Mag]

apparently horowitz and fbi director wray gave a congressional testimony today, this is the only clip ive seen so far

Uh, Nothing to see here Citizen.
The government is working hard every single day to service the American people. You can have all the confidence in the world we will hold people accountable and protect your Constitutional Rights.

[C-Mag]

Update on Congressional review of IG Report

Horowitz and Wray testified.
Comey refused to appear
Lynch refused to appear
McCabe took the 5th.

Grassley sought to compel their testimony, Feinstein blocked the subpoena.
http://therightscoop.com/comey-refuses- ... -and-more/

[C-Mag]

I'm an hour and a half in to the Horowitz testimony today, and the IG will not and cannot back up his written summary of 'No Political Bias' , what he has said is there was no official documents that showed bias.

A big fucking difference. He should have specified that in his summary.

[Fife]

https://nypost.com/2019/07/17/when-to-e ... -election/

Thursday, Aug. 15. Mark this date on your calendar.


RealClearInvestigations:

Justice Dept. Watchdog Has Evidence Comey Probed Trump, on the Sly

Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon file a report with evidence indicating that Comey was misleading the president. Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent.

Two U.S. officials briefed on the inspector general’s investigation of possible FBI misconduct said Comey was essentially “running a covert operation against” the president, starting with a private “defensive briefing” he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration. They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a “counterintelligence assessment” of Trump during that January 2017 meeting in New York.

[C-Mag]

I'm extremely cynical on Horowitz after the Hillary email investigation.

My big hope is that Horowitz watched how the Mueller investigation, news conference and testimony went and he sees which way the political winds are turning and he actually does his fucking job and summarizes the crimes and recommends action.

[C-Mag]

Here's the optimists reason why Horowitz' IG Report is taking so long


Once Durham was appointed by Barr to do a legit investigation of the attempted coup. All these gov employees that had already given testimony to Horowitz, his report was nearly finished in January. Then with one look at Durham they all flooded back to Horowitz, pleading to correct their testimony or add things they had 'forgotten'.

[Fife]

Tig Ole Biddies Lady says get your popcorn ready:



Maria Bartiromo: IG Report on FISA “Will Be Released October 18th – As Thick as Telephone Book”…