Barr Hints At Adding Roadblocks In Future FBI Probes Into Presidential Campaigns

on January 29, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Attorney General William Barr arrives on Capitol Hill for a meeting on January 29, 2019. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
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Attorney General Bill Barr said on Monday that the Justice Department is considering establishing a rule requiring the FBI to obtain his permission before opening an investigation into a presidential campaign.

“[FBI Director] Chris Wray and I have discussed a number of possibilities,” Barr replied when a reporter asked if his department was planning on changing the FBI’s process of launching probes into political campaigns.

“One of the things that we have agreed on is that the opening of a counterintelligence investigation of a presidential campaign would be something that the director of the FBI would have to sign off on, and the attorney general would have to sign off on,” he said.

Barr has boosted President Donald Trump’s accusation that the FBI opened the Trump-Russia probe out of bias against him, even after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz thoroughly debunked that conspiracy theory in his report in December.

However, Wray backed Horowitz’s report when it was published, saying he and his agency “fully accept its findings and recommendations.”

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Notable Replies

  1. Just in time for election season.

    This is positioning Barr to receive a ‘heads up’ - if ANY shennanigans are detected on the Russian Infiltration Front.

    Shocked. I’m not.

  2. Not just a heads-up. Barr wants express veto power over any investigations of foreign election assistance.

  3. Meanwhile, on alternate Earth MJ719, in a fairly unremarkable dimension of the Multiverse, President Hillary Clinton has just commuted the sentence of convict Donald Trump from life-at-hard-labor to indefinite house arrest inside the janitorial closet of 53rd Street Women’s Health Clinic.

  4. “…assuming the Directory of the FBI is always a loyal Republican…”

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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