RATCLIFFE: STRZOK “PARTICIPATED IN DEFENSIVE BRIEFING” TO TRUMP CAMPAIGN WHILE INVESTIGATING IT
by Sharon Rondeau
(May 30, 2019) — In an interview with Fox News’s Sandra Smith just after 9:30 a.m. EDT, former federal prosecutor and member of the House Judiciary Committee John Ratcliffe (R-TX4) said that in his nine-minute address from the Justice Department on Wednesday morning, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller confirmed that the “Russia collusion” narrative pursued by the FBI and Mueller’s ensuing 22-month investigation was without merit.
That issue, Ratcliffe said, was “put to rest.”
Late Wednesday morning, Mueller announced he was “resigning” and closing the Office of the Special Counsel. He also stated he will not testify to Congress, publicly or privately. While largely reiterating points from his 448-page report turned in to the attorney general in March and made public in April, Mueller is believed by many to have signaled to congressional Democrats that on the point of “obstruction of justice,” his team was unable to reach a conclusion only because of an existing Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion recommending that a sitting president not be indicted.
Ratcliffe described Mueller as “very clearly wrong on every level with regard to ‘obstruction.'”
Mueller’s statement as to the role of the OLC opinion in his team’s failure to reach a clear-cut finding on “obstruction,” differed from Attorney General William Barr’s public statement that Mueller assured him and then-Deputy attorney General Rod Rosenstein that the opinion did not figure in Mueller’s lack of a conclusion on the issue.
He then said that Mueller “turned American jurisprudence upside-down” when he said, “If we had confidence that President Trump did not clearly commit a crime, we would have said so.” “I don’t know if that’s what he wanted the last chapter of his public service to be, but that’s what he said, and that’s a bad ending,” Ratcliffe told Smith.
In breaking news, Ratcliffe later said that Mueller was “warned” about bringing former Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, whose text messages to his former mistress, Lisa Page, discovered by the Justice Department’s inspector general, showed bias against Trump and spoke of an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump won the election.
Once found and communicated to Mueller, he and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly discussed the text messages, which McCabe testified in December 2017 prompted him to remove Strzok from the “Crossfire Hurricane” team (p. 92).
Ratcliffe said that despite Mueller’s declination to do so, he would like to see him testify to the committee. “The origins of the ‘obstruction’ investigation” should be addressed,” he told Smith, then said, “He needs to answer questions about why people like Peter Strzok were on his team when he was warned not to have Peter Strzok on his team.”
McCabe was fired in March 2018; Strzok was fired in August; and Lisa Page, who was FBI counsel to McCabe, resigned in May last year.
The year prior, FBI Director James Comey was fired, a move former FBI General Counsel James Baker testified was the catalyst to McCabe’s opening of an investigation focusing on Trump and “obstruction.”
Appearing to confirm that Trump campaign aides other than Carter Page were “under investigation” during the 2016 campaign, Smith said that based on research her colleague, Catherine Herridge, is currently conducting as to a “defensive briefing” the Trump campaign was provided in August 2016, Smith asked, “Was there adequate warning about Russia’s outreach to the campaign at that time and that Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos were already under FBI investigation?”
In the transcript of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch from last December, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH4) confirmed that “four Americans” were under FBI investigation, although he did not name anyone other than Carter Page, whose FISA warrant was already in the public domain. Papadopoulos has long claimed he was under investigation, which was stated as fact in Mueller’s report.
Ratcliffe said that although the answer encompassed “classified” information that he has reviewed, he was able to say that “There was a defensive briefing of Candidate Trump on August 18, 2016. He wasn’t told about a Russia investigation that Peter Strzok had opened 18 days earlier. There are a lot of questions there that go to the origins of that matter, and that’s one of the reasons I’m excited that Bill Barr has said he’s going to get to the bottom of questions like that.”
The FBI has said that the official opening of “Crossfire Hurricane” was July 31, 2016.
In response to Smith’s quoting of Trump’s remarks to reporters Thursday morning, including “What about Peter Strzok? Why didn’t Robert Mueller dig in there?” Ratcliffe responded, “Great questions, fair questions. Why would Peter Strzok, who would participate at Jim Comey’s direction in a defensive briefing designed to protect and warn a candidate, be the same person who is in fact at that time already investigating the candidate’s campaign? That shouldn’t happen, and there should be answers to those questions…There has to be accountability at the end of the day.”
While Trump tweeted a quote from Ratcliffe’s interview, many on Twitter were critical of Ratcliffe’s observations.
