Mexican cartels subject to terrorist-level sanctions under new GOP-sponsored bill

The Mexican cartels are coming under increased pressure from U.S. lawmakers.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is expected to introduce on Wednesday a bill to subject certain foreign criminal organizations – namely the cartels – to the same level of sanctions as terror groups. It comes after President Trump last month announced that plans were in motion to designate the drug-trafficking enterprises south of the border as foreign terrorist organizations, or FTOs.
“Criminal organizations and drug cartels like the one responsible for last month’s attack in Mexico ought to be treated just like terrorist groups in the eyes of the U.S. government,” Cotton told Fox News in a statement, referring to the early November slaying of nine U.S. citizens from the Mormon community in the northern state of Sonora.
“This bill would help stop cartel violence by ensuring these groups, and anyone who helps them, face dire consequences for their actions,” he added.
Referred to as the Significant Transnational Criminal Organization Designation Act, the legislation – an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act – enables the federal government to impose on the most significant Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) the same sanctions that apply to FTOs.
The sanctions include prohibiting organization members and their immediate families admission to the United States, freezing assets, and seeking civil and criminal penalties against individuals providing material assistance or resources to the organization.
Moreover, the bill mandates that the president submit a report to Congress with the government’s findings on the Nov. 4, 2019 attack on U.S. citizens in northern Mexico once the investigation is completed, including whether the organization responsible should be designated a significant TCO.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., participates in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, on Jan. 25, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The bill is sponsored by GOP Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, John Cornyn of Texas, Ted Cruz of Texas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Josh Hawley of Missouri, David Perdue of Georgia, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
The act defines “membership in a significant transnational criminal organization” as direct members and/or their spouse and child. But it carves out an exemption for those “who did not know, or should not reasonably have known, that his or her spouse or parent was a member of a significant transnational criminal organization or whom the Attorney General has reasonable grounds to believe has renounced” to such membership.

Mexican national guardsmen patrol near Bavispe, at the Sonora-Chihuahua border, Mexico, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019.  (AP)

The bill comes at a time when cartel violence is spiking and the U.S. is battling unprecedented levels of drug-related deaths and overdoses. New Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has also vowed to go after cartels and other gangs fueling chaos at the border.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if and when Trump's FTO designation on the cartels will come to fruition, a move that has generated both praise and criticism. Terrorist designations are handled by the U.S. State Department. Once a group has been slapped with such a designation, known members are prohibited from entering the country, and it is then illegal for those in the U.S. to intentionally provide support to them. Financial institutions are also barred from doing any type of business with the organization or its members.
“The FTO designation is an important step in a positive direction for U.S. national security. Too many Americans have died as the ruthless cartels have made billions by terrorizing communities and killing at unprecedented levels. It's clear President Trump always places the safety of Americans first,” noted Derek Maltz, a former special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration Special Operations Division in New York. “Designating the cartels as terrorists and implementing a focused operational plan will save a tremendous amount of lives.”
The FTO tag could also mean that an American in an inner-city gang selling street drugs that originated from south of the border could be prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws – possibly being given a life sentence.

A boy pauses as he speaks next to the coffins of Dawna Ray Langford, 43, and her sons Trevor, 11, and Rogan, 2, who were killed by drug cartel gunmen, during the funeral at a family cemetery in La Mora, Sonora state, Mexico, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019.(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

According to the latest annual assessment from the DEA, Mexican drug trafficking organizations pose the greatest crime threat to the U.S. and are continuing to “expand their control of the opioids market” in conjunction with the deadly spike in overdoses in recent years. However, officials have also lamented that “the scope of violence generated by Mexican crime groups has been difficult to measure due to restricted reporting by the government and attempts by groups to mislead the public.”
Moreover, Mexico’s homicide rate – routinely driven by cartel-connected violence – is on the path to reaching record levels this year, even higher than the record numbers set in 2018 when more than 30,000 people were killed.

Bernie Sanders faced pushback from union members in Las Vegas

Bernie Sanders faced pushback from union members in Las Vegas on Tuesday over how the Democratic presidential candidate would fund a government-subsidized health care plan that would force union members to forfeit the benefits they’ve spent years bargaining for.
The 77-year-old independent U.S. senator from Vermont addressed a town hall meeting hosted by Culinary Union Local 226 and its parent union, Unite Here. Though union members in the crowd were widely supportive of Sanders – shouting “Bernie! Bernie!” as he wheeled out his stance on immigration, criminal justice and climate change – a group of about 12 people began to heckle the senator when he came to health care, according to the Washington Examiner.
“We have, in this country, a dysfunctional, broken and cruel health care system,” Sanders told the audience, according to the Las Vegas Sun. “We spend twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other country.”
Elodia Muñoz -- one of 550 Culinary members to strike against the Frontier hotel for more than six years between 1991 and 1998 – questioned why she should vote for a candidate who supports Medicare-for-All after all her effort, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Under the government plan, all Americans, including union members, would lose private insurance plans.
During Sanders’ response, the crowd began to chant: “Union health care! Union health care!" One man also shouted: "How are you gonna pay for it?"
The same union hosted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Monday and will host former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
In his bid for the party’s presidential nomination, Biden has called for allowing employees to keep their current health plans, positioning himself against Warren and Sanders who’ve both advocated for Medicare-for-All. The International Association of Firefighters, which has endorsed Biden, has called Medicare-for-All a non-starter, according to the Examiner.
"You'll be able to keep your negotiated plans," Biden told a group of union members in August. "You've worked like hell, you gave up wages for it."
Warren has recently backed away from her once-orthodox approach toward a government-run health care system after seeing her poll numbers deteriorate over the past month in national surveys and, more importantly, in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to hold contests in the primary and caucus presidential nominating calendar.
Speaking in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Sanders discussed his efforts to pass legislation throughout his career that aligns with union issues, including raising the minimum wage, forcing employers to recognize union elections and deterring corporate greed. He also cited his experience negotiating with companies that employ Unite Here workers, such as American Airlines. Still, union benefits remain the main factor that keeps membership high.
Culinary Union President Ted Pappageorge later chastised the crowd for heckling Sanders.
“We’re gonna let candidates speak without any kind of heckling. If you want to heckle, go outside and heckle. We want to learn. The town halls are to learn. Frankly, not to learn from the hecklers, but the candidates," Pappageorge told the crowd. "Second, I want to be very clear to everybody, this union stands very strongly that every American deserves to have good, quality health care. It’s a right, it should never be a privilege in this country.”
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser and Tara Prindiville contributed to this report.

Democrat Karen Bass says she's open to impeach Trump again if he gets reelected in 2020

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said Tuesday she's willing to impeach President Trump again if he wins reelection in 2020.
TMZ founder Harvey Levin presented Bass with a scenario in which Trump wins a second term but Democrats take over the Senate from the Republicans.
"There's no such thing, really, as double jeopardy in an impeachment trial because it's political," Levin said. "Suppose he gets reelected... and you win back the Senate in a big way. If you did that, would you be inclined to take a second bite at the apple and reintroduce the exact same impeachment articles and then send it through again a second if you have a Democratic Senate on your side?"
"So, you know, yes, but I don't think it would be exactly the same and here's why," Bass responded, "because even though we are impeaching him now, there's still a number of court cases, there's a ton of information that could come forward. For example, we could get his bank records and find out that he's owned 100 percent by the Russians."
She continued, "You are absolutely right in your scenario, but the only thing I would say slightly different is, it might not be the same articles of impeachment because the odds are we would have a ton more information, and then the odds of that, sadly enough, is that, you know, he probably has other examples of criminal behavior."
Earlier in the day, Bass spoke with Fox News' Neil Cavuto and expressed her "rock-solid" confidence that House Democrats had enough votes to pass articles of impeachment. The Democrats unveiled two impeachment articles earlier in the day: one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.
Trump, at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday night, decried their efforts as "impeachment lite."

Jerrold Nadler Cartoons

Wray: Report on Russia probe found “unacceptable” problems

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Justice Department inspector general report on the early days of the Russia investigation identified problems that are “unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution,” FBI Director Chris Wray says in detailing changes the bureau plans to make in response.

In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Wray said the FBI had cooperated fully with the inspector general — which concluded in its report that the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was legitimate but also cited serious flaws — and accepted all its recommendations.

Wray said the FBI would make changes to how it handles confidential informants, how it applies for warrants from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, how it conducts briefings on foreign influence for presidential nominees and how it structures sensitive investigations like the 2016 Russia probe. He said he has also reinstated ethics training.

“I am very committed to the FBI being agile in its tackling of foreign threats,” Wray said. “But I believe you can be agile and still scrupulously follow our rules, policies and processes.”

President Donald Trump challenged his FBI director in a tweet Tuesday, claiming the bureau is “badly broken” and incapable of being fixed.

“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”

Wray was not FBI director when the Russia investigation began and has so far avoided commenting in depth on the probe, one of the most politically sensitive inquiries in bureau history and one that President Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced as a “witch hunt.” Wray’s comments Monday underscore the balancing act of his job as he tries to embrace criticism of the Russia probe that he sees as legitimate while limiting public judgment of decisions made by his predecessors.

He said that though it was important to not lose sight of the fact that Inspector General Michael Horowitz found the investigation justified and did not find it to be tainted by political bias, “The American people rightly expect that the FBI, when it acts to protect the country, is going to do it right — each time, every time.

“And,” he added, “urgency is not an excuse for not following our procedures.”

The report found that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation in the summer of 2016 into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to tip the election in the president’s favor. But it also identified “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command, including 17 “significant inaccuracies or omissions” in applications for a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and subsequent warrant renewals.

The errors, the watchdog said, resulted in “applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.”

Wray declined to say if there was one problem or criticism that he found most troubling, but noted, “As a general matter, there are a number of things in the report that in my view are unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution.”

“This is a serious report,” he added, “and we take it serious.”

_____

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

Democrats poised to unveil 2 impeachment articles vs. Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are poised to unveil two articles of impeachment Tuesday against President Donald Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump, meanwhile, insisted he did “NOTHING” wrong and that impeaching a president with a record like his would be “sheer Political Madness!”

Democratic leaders say Trump put U.S. elections and national security at risk when he asked Ukraine to investigate his rivals, including Democrat Joe Biden.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined during an event Monday evening to discuss the articles or the coming announcement. Details were shared by multiple people familiar with the discussions but not authorized to discuss them and granted anonymity.

When asked if she has enough votes to impeach the Republican president, Pelosi leader said she would let House lawmakers vote their conscience.

“On an issue like this, we don’t count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it,” Pelosi said at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council. “I haven’t counted votes, nor will I.”

The outcome, though, appears increasingly set as the House prepares to vote, as it has only three times in history against a U.S. president. 

Trump, who has declined to mount a defense in the impeachment proceedings, tweeted Tuesday just as the five Democratic House committee chairmen prepared to make their announcement.

“To Impeach a President who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness! #2020Election,” he wrote on Twitter.

The president also spent part of Monday tweeting against the impeachment proceedings. He and his allies have called the process “absurd.”

Pelosi convened a meeting of the impeachment committee chairmen at her office in the Capitol late Monday following an acrimonious, nearly 10-hour hearing at the Judiciary Committee, which could vote as soon as this week.

“I think there’s a lot of agreement,” Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee, told reporters as he exited Pelosi’s office. “A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to.”

At the Judiciary hearing, Democrats said Trump’s push to have Ukraine investigate rival Joe Biden while withholding U.S. military aid ran counter to U.S. policy and benefited Russia as well as himself.

“President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security,” said Dan Goldman, the director of investigations at the House Intelligence Committee, presenting the finding of the panel’s 300-page report of the inquiry.

Republicans rejected not just Goldman’s conclusion of the Ukraine matter; they also questioned his very appearance before the Judiciary panel. In a series of heated exchanges, they said Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, should appear rather than sending his lawyer.

From the White House, Trump tweeted repeatedly, assailing the “Witch Hunt!” and “Do Nothing Democrats.”

In drafting the articles of impeachment, Pelosi is facing a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Some liberal lawmakers wanted more expansive charges encompassing the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Centrist Democrats preferred to keep the impeachment articles more focused on Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., was blunt as he opened Monday’s hearing, saying, “President Trump put himself before country.”

Trump’s conduct, Nadler said at the end of the daylong hearing, “is clearly impeachable.”

Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the committee, said Democrats are racing to jam impeachment through on a “clock and a calendar” ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

“They can’t get over the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and they don’t have a candidate that can beat him,” Collins said.

In one testy exchange, Republican attorney Stephen Castor dismissed the transcript of Trump’s crucial call with Ukraine as “eight ambiguous lines” that did not amount to the president seeking a personal political favor.

Democrats argued vigorously that Trump’s meaning could not have been clearer in seeking political dirt on Biden, his possible opponent in the 2020 election.

The Republicans tried numerous times to halt or slow the proceedings, and the hearing was briefly interrupted early on by a protester shouting, “We voted for Donald Trump!” The protester was escorted from the House hearing room by Capitol Police.

The White House is refusing to participate in the impeachment process. Trump and and his allies acknowledge he likely will be impeached in the Democratic-controlled House, but they also expect acquittal next year in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority.

The president was focused instead on Monday’s long-awaited release of the Justice Department report into the 2016 Russia investigation. The inspector general found that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and that the FBI did not act with political bias, despite “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command.

Democrats say Trump abused his power in a July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor in investigating Democrats. That was bribery, they say, since Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid that Ukraine depended on to counter Russian aggression.

Pelosi and Democrats point to what they call a pattern of misconduct by Trump in seeking foreign interference in elections from Mueller’s inquiry of the Russia probe to Ukraine.

In his report, Mueller said he could not determine that Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election. But Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe and left it for Congress to determine.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

All eyes on Durham after rebuke of IG Horowitz's findings

In the hours after U.S. Attorney John Durham announced Monday that he did not "agree" with key findings by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, speculation swirled over what Durham has uncovered in his ongoing review into potential surveillance abuses against President Trump's team.
Durham's inquiry has had a broader scope than Horowitz's, including a focus on foreign actors as well as the CIA, while Horowitz concentrated his attention on the DOJ and FBI.
Additionally, Durham's criminal review has had additional investigative resources not available to Horowitz.
"Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened," Durham said in his statement, adding that his "investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department" and "has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S."
Still, Horowitz's report offered several clues as to potential avenues that Durham may be pursuing. For example, Horowitz noted that the FBI omitted exculpatory statements by former Trump aide George Papadopoulos in its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant application to surveil another ex-Trump aide, Carter Page.
Horowitz noted that the bureau, in its FISA application and subsequent renewals, completely failed to mention that Page had been "approved as an operational contact" and served as a valuable asset, presumably for the CIA, from 2008 to 2013.
Papadopoulos previously told Fox News he was convinced the CIA was behind an "operation" in which he met intelligence community informants in London in late 2016 who tried to probe whether the Trump campaign had ties to Russia. He later said he would head to Greece to obtain money in a safe from the FBI or CIA that he said was intended to entrap him.
Even though Papadopoulos told a confidential FBI source that "to his knowledge, no one associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like Wikileaks in the release of [Clinton/DNC] emails," the FISA application conspicuously "did not include the statements Papadopoulos made to this [confidential source] that were in conflict with information included in the FISA application," Horowitz found.
The FISA application also omitted "Page's consensually monitored statements" to an FBI confidential informant in August 2016 that Page had 'literally never met' or 'said one word' to Paul Manafort," contrary to the FBI's claims that Page was conspiring with Russia by "acting as an intermediary for Manafort." And, the FISA documents omitted key statements by Maltese Professor Joseph Mifsud to the FBI, including Mifsud's assertion that he had "no advance knowledge" that Russia had any hacked emails, and therefore "did not make any offers or proffer any information to Papadopoulos" when the two met.
Additionally, according to Horowitz's report, the CIA viewed the now-discredited dossier from British ex-spy Christopher Steele as an "internet rumor," even though key bureau officials including former FBI Director James Comey sought to include the dossier in its highly sensitive intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, known as the ICA.
Sources previously told Fox News that a late-2016 email chain indicated Comey told bureau subordinates that then-CIA Director John Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the ICA. A Brennan representative pointed the finger back at Comey.
The FBI also relied on the dossier to obtain its secret surveillance warrant to surveil Page, and an FBI lawyer told Horowitz that probable cause against Page was "probably 50/50" without the dossier. Horowitz found that the FISA application's basis to argue that there was probable cause to surveil Page "drew almost entirely" from Steele's dossier.
It has long been reported that the ultimately successful Page application relied heavily on information from Steele – whose anti-Trump views have been well-documented – and cited Page’s suspected Russia ties. In its warrant application, the FBI inaccurately assured the FISA court on numerous occasions that a Yahoo News article independently corroborated Steele's claims about Page's Russian contacts, and did not clearly state that Steele worked for a firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The FBI told the FISA court it did "not believe that [Steele] directly provided ... to the press" information concerning Page. However, Horowitz wrote that he found "no documentation demonstrating that Steele was asked by the FBI whether he was the source of the Yahoo News article disclosure or told the FBI he was not."
And, even after the FBI obtained information that "more strongly indicated that Steele had directly provided information to Yahoo News around the time of the Sept. 23 article," Horowitz found, "no revisions were made to the FBI's assessment, contained in Renewal Application No. 3, that Steele had not directly provided the information to the press."
Contrary to repeated on-air assurances by CNN analyst Asha Rangappa, who prominently bills herself as a "former FBI special agent" even though she worked as a university admissions officer for most of her career after serving only a brief time in the bureau, Horowitz found that the FBI did not verify several key facts in subsequent renewal applications for the Page FISA warrant. In some cases, evidence available to the FBI actually contradicted claims in the FISA application.
"The agents ... also did not follow, or appear to even know, the requirements in the Woods Procedures to re-verify the factual assertions from previous [FISA] applications," Horowitz wrote. For example, Horowitz found, the FBI inaccurately asserted to the FISA court that Page "did not provide any specific details" to refute or clarify media reporting about his activities with Russian agents. Additionally, the FBI inaccurately told the court that Page made "vague statements" to minimize his Russian contacts.
Separately, Horowitz found that the FBI offered to pay Steele "significantly" for information pertaining to Michael Flynn, Trump's ex-national security advisor who is fighting to overturn his guilty plea on one count of making false statements to the FBI. Flynn, who suffered financial pressures leading up to the guilty plea, has accused the FBI of hiding exculpatory evidence, doctoring key witness reports, and seeking to create a process crime for political reasons.
Much of the Steele dossier has been proved discredited or unsubstantiated, including the dossier's claims that the Trump campaign was paying hackers in the United States out of a non-existent Russian consulate in Miami, or that ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to conspire with Russians.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller also was unable to substantiate the dossier's claims that Page had received a promise of a large payment relating to the sale of a 19-percent share of Rosneft, a Russian oil giant, or that a lurid blackmail tape involving the president existed.
Horowitz's report similarly found no evidence to support that bribery claim, even after a review of text messages from a source cited by the FBI.
Horowitz's report Monday said his investigators found no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding efforts to launch that 2016 probe and to seek a highly controversial FISA warrant to surveil Page in the early months of the investigation. Still, it found "significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised."
Fox News' Alex Pappas contributed to this report.

Trump slams Wray’s response to FISA report, says he’ll ‘never be able to fix the FBI’

President Trump blasted FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday morning over his response to the Justice Department inspector general's report on the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation and use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The IG report found that while there were a significant number of concerns regarding the FBI's practices in obtaining the FISA warrant and other aspects of the probe, there was no evidence of political bias or impropriety regarding their motives in the investigation. Wray has accepted these findings, but Trump signaled Tuesday he doesn't think Wray is taking the concerns seriously enough.
"I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!" he tweeted.
In an ABC interview, Wray highlighted the IG report's conclusion that there was no political bias or improper motive behind the FBI's launching of the Russia probe, stating, "I think it's important that the inspector general found that in this particular instance the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization."
When asked if he had any evidence that the FBI unfairly targeted Trump's campaign, Wray said, "I don't," and appeared to take offense to the notion that the FBI is part of a "deep state."
"I think that's the kind of label that is a disservice to the 37,000 men and women who work at the FBI who I think tackle their jobs with professionalism, with rigor, with objectivity, with courage ... so that's not a term I would ever use to describe our workforce and I think it's an affront to them,” he said.
At the same time, Wray acknowledged the bureau errors cited in the IG report.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Wray said the report identified problems that are "unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution." He said the FBI would make changes to how it handles confidential informants, how it applies for warrants from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, how it conducts briefings on foreign influence for presidential nominees and how it structures sensitive investigations like the 2016 Russia probe. He said he has also reinstated ethics training.
"I am very committed to the FBI being agile in its tackling of foreign threats," Wray said. "But I believe you can be agile and still scrupulously follow our rules, policies and processes."
This followed a letter to Inspector General Horowitz, in which Wray said, "the FBI accepts the Report’s findings and embraces the need for thoughtful, meaningful remedial action."
While the IG report went into great detail regarding the FBI's failures during the Russia probe, the conclusion that there was no political bias runs contrary to Trump's theory that Obama administration officials were unfairly targeting his campaign.
Attorney General Bill Barr, meanwhile, issued a lengthy statement in which he heavily criticized the FBI's conduct during the investigation, but made a point to note that "most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials."
Barr specifically praised Wray for his cooperation with the IG investigation, and said he has "full confidence in Director Wray and his team at the FBI, as well as the thousands of dedicated line agents who work tirelessly to protect our country."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Warren 2019 Cartoons

Reporter's Notebook: House votes on impeachment articles would be monumental decisions

CAPITOL HILL – There are important roll call votes on Capitol Hill -- but votes on articles of impeachment against President Trump would be monumental.
Think about votes cast in 2009 and and 2010 for or against ObamaCare. A failed effort to undo ObamaCare in 2017. Votes in 2008 to salvage the economy with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Votes last Congress on tax reform. Various votes to fund the government and hike the debt ceiling. And, in the Senate, votes to confirm Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
News organizations and political firms have traved major votes on the floors of the House and Senate each year. Some of those votes may define a career. Look at the nay vote cast by the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to end Republican efforts to unwind ObamaCare. Separately, voters in Maine and Colorado respectively took note of the votes by Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Cory Gardner to confirm Kavanaugh last fall. That vote is sure to resonate in the reelection bids for Collins and Gardner next year.
All of those votes have been major, reverberating throughout a given Congress – and even for decades to come. Despite multiple efforts to gut ObamaCare, it has remained the law of the land. Still, “aye” ballots for ObamaCare proved to help end the congressional careers of  many House and Senate Democrats. Republicans weaponized that vote against those Democrats. Some paid with their political lives in 2010 and beyond. Lots of House Republicans lost the House for the same reason last year because of their votes for the tax bill and for trying to repeal ObamaCare.
We won’t know if the votes by Collins and Gardner for Kavanaugh will sway the outcomes of their Senate contests next year. But, barring illness, the 54-year-old Kavanaugh could serve on the high court for decades. The decisions by Collins and Gardner to confirm Kavanaugh are likely to echo in American jurisprudence for years.
These are all high-profile roll call votes, as weighty as can be. But, there is yet one more, hyper-elite classification of House and Senate votes, more consequential than the rest. These are votes to go to war and to impeach a president.
These momentous votes have filtered through the decades. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., is still known as the only House member to oppose the war resolution following Sept. 11, 2001. The late Rep. Jeannette Rankin, R-Mont., was the first woman ever elected to Congress, but in addition to her trailblazing for women, historians have recalled her votes opposing U.S. involvement in World War I and World War II.
“I cannot vote for war,” said Rankin when she opposed the U.S. declaring war against Germany in World War I. Rankin’s words about war were emblazoned on the base of her statue in the U.S. Capitol Visitor’s Center. It’s one of two statues from Montana in the official congressional collection.
Other lawmakers voted against the U.S. entering World War I. But, Rankin was the only member of either body to vote “nay” after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Many prominent members, including future Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., then a congressman, tried to persuade Rankin to vote “aye” so the tally would be unanimous. But, Rankin resisted. Her position was so unpopular that she abstained from voting on future war declarations against Germany and Italy. Her political career ended soon afterwards.
This brings us to present day.
The House Judiciary Committee is likely to entertain three to five articles of impeachment for Trump. The House would not simply throw a broad resolution on the floor with members voting up or down to impeach. These articles would be honed and massaged, narrow and concrete. Members would focus on what they accused the president of doing, such as an indictment. It’s then up to the Judiciary Committee to actually approve the articles and send them to the House floor. The House must then vote to adopt or reject those articles.
Without question, these votes on articles of impeachment would be the most critical ballots cast in the 116th Congress. They could be the cardinal votes many lawmakers would make during their congressional tenures. That said, 55 House members who voted on the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton in 1998 have remained in the House.
In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee considered five articles of impeachment and approved three for then-President Richard Nixon. Nixon resigned before the articles went to the House floor. In 1998, the Judiciary Committee prepared four articles of impeachment but the full House okayed only two of them.
Details of the articles would paramount, so members of Congress from both parties would want to evaluate the articles -- study them, ponder them, and then, with a deep sigh, decide how to vote.
We always hear an array of TV commercials from upstarts and political neophytes just before each congressional election, boasting about how if you elect them, they’ll head to Washington and have the courage “to take the tough votes.”
Well, congratulations, members of the 116th Congress. You won the lottery.
Americans are likely to remember how all current 431 members of the House voted, yea or nay, on each article of impeachment.
Think of the vulnerable, freshmen Democrats who helped propel their party to the majority in 2018, representing districts Trump won in 2016. There are 31 such Democrats. Look closely at how freshmen Democrats like Reps. Kendra Horn of Oklahoma, Anthony Brindisi of New York and Joe Cunningham of South Carolina vote.
Republicans wouldn’t be out of the woods yet, either. Consider the challenges of an impeachment vote for swing-district Republicans including Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Don Bacon of Nebraska.
Potential articles of impeachment have centered on “bribery” -- specifically mentioned in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution -- abuse of power, contempt of Congress and obstruction of justice. All such potential articles would be fissionable enough to incinerate many a political career if a lawmaker were to vote the wrong way.
But, one potential article of impeachment would be practically thermonuclear: treason.
Again, Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution mentions “treason” as a defined transgression worthy of impeachment. One could see how House Democrats might try to make a case for treason with President Trump.
The House essentially accused Sen. William Blount of Tennessee of treason in the republic’s first impeachment in 1797. The House argued Blount covertly worked with Britain to acquire territory in the south. The House impeached Federal Judge West Hughes Humphreys in 1862 for supporting the Confederacy. No other House impeachments have ever wandered into treason as possible grounds for impeachment.
This speaks to why the House may impeach President Trump on some articles and not others. That’s why members are so curious to learn what the articles may be and decide how to vote on each individual.
It’s just a simple question, right? Binary. Yea or nay? Members do this all day long.
But, votes on the impeachment of Trump are likely to be the most momentous of a lawmaker’s career. And, the decisions lawmakers make will pulsate through the American experience like no other ballot they cast before.