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Washington Post: Barr's 'unmasking' investigation concludes without charges


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apple-touch-icon.png Washington Post: Barr's 'unmasking' investigation concludes without charges

WWW.CNN.COM

The US attorney tasked by Attorney General William Barr to review instances of "unmasking" done around the 2016 election has completed the probe without bringing any charges, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

 

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The US attorney tasked by Attorney General William Barr to review instances of "unmasking" done around the 2016 election has completed the probe without bringing any charges, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

 

John Bash found no evidence of substantive wrongdoing in his investigation, which has concluded without a public report, the Post said. Bash left his role with the Justice Department last week.

 

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The quiet end to the probe caps a months-long effort that added the weight of a senior federal prosecutor behind an issue that President Donald Trump had seized on to underpin unfounded allegations about former President Barack Obama.

The investigation was announced in May after then-acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified a list of names of former Obama administration officials who allegedly had requested the "unmasking" of the identify of Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.


Senate Republicans later released the list, which named Obama administration officials who "may have received" Flynn's identity in National Security Agency intelligence reports after requests to unmask Americans.

 

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Despite Trump's repeated efforts to cite unmasking as evidence of wrongdoing by Obama and his administration, the level of unmasking has increased under the Trump administration.


There were more than 10,000 unmaskings last year and nearly 17,000 in 2018, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Statistical Transparency reports. There were 9,529 in 2017, Trump's first year in office.

 

Anyone know what QAnon reactions are?

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27 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

So real talk for a second.  De we assume that it’s this way because there wasn’t even a straw to grasp on, because they know it’s not even worth the effort as his re-election is a lost cause regardless, or because they’re comfortably confident in a different rat fuck?

 

 

I would lean more to the first option, with a smidgen of the second one thrown in.

 

I think they went fishing and came up empty handed. No charges is one thing, but no public report considering how small of a molehill the rightwing can spin into a mountain speaks volumes about just how much they didn't find.

 

I wouldn't put too much stock in the idea that there is a line Barr is not willing to cross, but actually charging someone with a crime is a big difference from doing an investigation. My guess is that at a different time and place he might have been willing to do it, but he's looking down the barrel of a likely president Biden in a few monthes and being a top 3 target of investigations himself in maybe the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.

 

We talk about it around here that the GOP likes to install heads of agencies whose goal is to destroy those agencies. But as shitty as that is, it just tends to happen now. The head of the EPA and CPA is expected to be a corporate hack that sabotages the agency. That's what people are voting for when they vote Republican.

 

AG's are different. AG's have went to jail for this shit. The next head of DoJ doesn't need to be Kamala Harris on the warpath to want Barr's head on a platter. A totally non-partisan DoJ head will probably be taking a long look at Barr just to try to repair some of the damage he has done to whatever image of impartiality they have left.

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9 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

No October Surprise for this case

 

9 hours ago, Jason said:

 

They can always "reopen" it a couple of days before the election.

 

Unlike Hillary's emails, I've been leaning toward the idea that people aren't going to fall for it. It's easy to go, "But the average American blah blah to the blah," but anecdotally, I know plenty of "low-information" voters who pay attention to more things than you'd realize, and something from Bill Barr is seen as partisan and a way to try to shake up the polls.

 

It's different from the FBI, which an average person would consider an independent organization going into Hillary's emails in 2016 and play into Hillary's long-sunk trustworthiness numbers.

 

Can't say that with 100% certainty, but if you asked me point-blank, I'd say I don't think Bill Barr launching a long-feared surprise investigation/probe is actually going to do what people fear it would do.

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10 hours ago, osxmatt said:

How exactly does this differ from the Durham investigation?

 

The primary focus of the Durham investigation involves ascertaining the origins of the Russia investigation of the Trump campaign within the DoJ and whether they were "politically-motivated".  This investigation attempted to determine if the Obama administration illegally requested the "unmasking" of the redacted names of Trump allies contained in intelligence reports.

 

It's possible that the two investigations do intersect at some points.

 

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5 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

The story has gotten no traction considering it's riddled with holes and comes from Sloppy Steve Bannon and Giuliani and conveniently dropped after Trump's phony investigation showed nothing. Best not to give it any oxygen.

 

Too late, the GOP's already wheeled out the oxygen tank.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

Too late, the GOP's already wheeled out the oxygen tank.

 

 

 

True, but I'm seeing WaPo and Business Insider dismantling the story, not really sharing it as legitimate. Between that and social media (remember how fake news was huge then), this is going about as well as a one-cheek sneak gone awry.

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I was so confused yesterday. I read this story when I first woke up and I got pretty much all the details right except that I thought it was the Washington Post reporting it instead of the New York Post(which I blame partially on being half asleep, but also some of the articles about it just talked about how "the Post" was reporting....).

 

I put the story down for most of the day, and was confused by how WaPo was standing by a story that was so obviously getting shredded. Wasn't until I came here late last night and realized it was a New York Post story all along and I was like, "Ohhhh, that makes sense."

 

 

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1 minute ago, SaysWho? said:

Giuliani, since the unmasking investigation failed, is trying to make the NYP story make sense and is fucking up.

 

 

 

 

 

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WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM

U.S. intelligence agencies believed Russian agents were ‘working’ Trump’s personal lawyer to disseminate misinformation about the Bidens.

 

rudy giuliani wow GIF

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