Barnett even goes so far as to make his contempt for Rhee plain to Rhee and others. This is pretty damning, IMO. Most Agents have attorneys they’d never work with. And other Agents too. We don’t normally tell them to their face. It’s not politically smart.

By that I mean office politics. Your ability to get stuff done depends on your reputation and ability to get others to help you. It’s a small community and the path of least resistance is to simply say a courteous “sure, I look forward to it).

But Barnett was so contemptuous of Rhee and the investigation that he straight up tells Rhee “yeah, that’s not happening.” It’s at this point I really like Barnett, LOL.

So Barnett lays out an environment where FBI superiors and the SCO were pushing all of this despite any evidence. It’s casts everything in a very bad light but stops short of any directly damning info.

Also “check the box” is common vernacular across federal agencies. Sometimes it literally means checking the box on some stupid form. Doesn’t matter if that thing isn’t relevant or needed, it’s on the form. Government is replete with them.

In other situations it’s basically going through steps to fulfill an informal checklist management has created so they can say they did everything they could before doing something (like closing a sensitive case.)

So this explains why Barnett didn’t think anything was too amiss. He just assumed it was part of typical management bureaucracy. At least till the SCO investigation.

This does cast the Flynn investigation in another light and I don’t know how Sullivan doesn’t dismiss now. Honestly this stuff paints the entire investigation as a politically motivated hit job over the protestations of a line Agent.

That’s it. I’ll answer legit questions but I’m not going to dox myself. Anybody trying to get me to do so will be blocked without warning.