A key revelation in the report released last week by the Justice Department’s inspector general raises questions about the roles played by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Susan Rice and other senior members of the Obama administration in disgraced former FBI Director James Comey’s infamous classified briefing to then President-elect Donald Trump about “salacious” material inside the anti-Trump dossier.

As Breitbart News reported, the IG report relates that prior to the briefing, FBI members on Comey’s team discussed the need to memorialize the exchanges between Comey and Trump during the private January 6, 2017 briefing in Trump Tower just in case Trump made statements relevant to the agency’s controversial Russia probe. In other words, they plotted to stealthily use statements Trump said to Comey in a private briefing to inform their Russia collusion investigation.

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The IG further relates that Comey went on to do just that. He had a laptop waiting for him in the car, where he immediately began memorializing his private talk with Trump. He also immediately provided a “quick download” of the Trump briefing to members of “Crossfire Hurricane” – the FBI’s compartmentalized Russia collusion team — via a secured video conference.

The revelation that Comey immediately fed the details of his private meeting with Trump to the FBI team investigation unsubstantiated Russia collusion raises questions about what Obama, Biden, Rice and other Obama-era officials knew about the intent to use the planned briefing to fuel the questionable Russia investigation and surreptitiously pass the contents of the private talk to the FBI.

In his book, A Higher Loyalty, Comey writes that he told Obama, Biden and Rice about his plans to have the private briefing with Trump.  He did this on January 5, 2017 in a White House briefing with Obama one day before he met Trump and underhandedly sent the details of their one-on-one to the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” team handling the Russia collusion claims. . . .

Comey writes that Obama specifically asked about the details of the “plan” to brief Trump:

Obama did not appear to have any reaction to any of this—at least none he would share with us. In a level voice, he asked, “What’s the plan for that briefing?” With just the briefest of sidelong glances at me, Clapper took a breath, then said, “We have decided that Director Comey will meet alone with the president-elect to brief him on this material following the completion of the full ICA briefing.” The president did not say a word. Instead he turned his head to his left and looked directly at me. He raised and lowered both of his eyebrows with emphasis, and then looked away. I suppose you can read whatever you want into a wordless expression, but to my mind his Groucho Marx eyebrow raise was both subtle humor and an expression of concern. It was almost as if he were saying, “Good luck with that.” I began to feel a lump in my stomach…

That same day, Comey writes, he received a call from Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, further inquiring about the plan to brief Trump. Johnson was present at Comey’s White House meeting with Obama earlier in the day. . . .

Biden, Rice Involved in Early Stages of Russia Probe 

Biden and Rice were reportedly involved in the Russia probe since the early inception of the investigation. Attorney General William Barr  made a series of public comments that the U.S. administration’s early handling of the Russia investigation may itself raise questions. He noted that it was first handled at a “very senior level” and then by a “small group.” Barr recently appointed a U.S. attorney to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion claims. . . .

Grassley, in a letter to Rice, commented: “It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation.”. . .

Grassley wrote that “despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the
book.’”. . .

Comey Passed Private Conversation with Trump to FBI Team Investigating Russia Hoax

Meanwhile, addressing the revelation in the IG report that Comey immediately fed the details of his private briefing with Trump to the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif) charged on Fox News that what Comey was “really doing” was “interrogating the president and then using that information and feeding it right back into the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ team at a time when … [Neither] Congress nor the president-elect knew he was under investigation.”

Until now, Comey and other former Obama administration officials presented the unusual briefing as a courtesy to Trump to warn him about the news media possibly publically releasing embarrassing claims about the newly elected president.  Questions have been raised on the need to include the dossier’s wild and unsubstantiated charges in the classified briefings. It is not the usual job of the intelligence community to warn politicians about possible pending negative publicity.

The IG report, based on interviews with Comey and other FBI “witnesses”, documents that prior to Comey’s briefing the FBI discussed utilizing Comey’s classified private talk with Trump to inform the controversial Russia collusion probe. . . .

Another reason Comey provided for taking notes on his conversation with Trump was to “capture his…contemporaneous recollection” because there were “millions of ways that [the FBI] could get follow-up questions, or criticism…and [Comey] wanted to recollect exactly, from his perspective, how it had taken place.”

Right after his briefing with Trump, Comey immediately updated the FBI team probing Russia collusion claims about his private talk with the incoming president, the IG documented:

Comey told the OIG he began writing Memo 1 immediately following his meeting with Trump on January 6, 2017. Comey said he had a secure FBI laptop waiting for him in his FBI vehicle and that when he got into the vehicle, he was handed the laptop and “began typing [Memo 1] as the vehicle moved.” He said he continued working on Memo 1 until he arrived at the FBI’s New York field office, where Comey gave a “quick download” of his conversation with President-elect Trump to Rybicki, McCabe, Baker, and supervisors of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigative team via secure video teleconference (SVTC). Comey said he probably told the SVTC participants that he would send them his “detailed notes” of the interaction.

James Rybicki was Comey’s chief of staff; Andrew McCabe was FBI deputy director; and James Baker was FBI counsel.

A footnote in the report further relates:

On January 7, 2017, Comey wrote a classified email to the other Intelligence Community Directors to let them know that his “follow-up session with [the President-elect] went well” and provided them a brief summary of the conversation that was less detailed than Memo 1).

Besides failing to inform Trump that he would be taking notes on his private briefing or that he would pass those notes to the FBI team investigating the Russia claims, Comey also used the briefing to assure Trump that he was not a subject of the FBI probe.

In previous testimony, Comey admitted that he did not inform the incoming president about who financed the dossier.  He also admitted in testimony that he was aware at the time that the dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele was financed by Democrats who opposed Trump.  The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Comey also previously stated that he pushed back against a request from Trump to possibly investigate the origins of “salacious material” – meaning the dossier — that the agency possessed in the course of its investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.  This even though Comey admitted to knowing it was financed by Trump’s political opponents. . . .

(Excerpted from Breitbart, article by Aaron Klein.)