This is the only known photo of Joseph Pientka found in the Washingtonian and dated in 2007. (Credit: Vincent Ricard)
“Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s long-awaited report this week on FBI and Justice Department surveillance abuses does not provide the name of an unidentified FBI supervisory special agent (SSA) who made a series of apparent oversights in the bureau’s so-called “Crossfire Hurricane” probe into the Trump campaign.
However, a review of Horowitz’s findings leaves little doubt that the unnamed SSA is Joe Pientka — someone who could soon play a prominent role in the ongoing prosecution of Michael Flynn, as the former Trump national security adviser fights to overturn his guilty plea on a single charge of making false statements.
Specifically, Horowitz’s report states that “SSA 1” was one of the FBI agents to interview Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017, in a seemingly casual conversation that would later form the basis for his criminal prosecution.
It was previously reported that the interviewing agents were Peter Strzok, who was later fired by the FBI for misconduct and anti-Trump bias, and Pientka, whom Strzok previously identified as his notetaker for the Flynn interview. Flynn’s attorney has also mentioned Pientka’s role during past court proceedings. Of the two agents, only Strzok is openly named in the Horowitz report, which strongly indicates that the other is Pientka.
“SSA 1,” Horowitz’s report states, may have helped mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) about material facts concerning former Trump adviser Carter Page and British ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose unverified dossier played a central role in the FBI’s warrant to surveil Page.
Page has not been charged with any wrongdoing, even though the FBI flatly called him a foreign “agent” in its surveillance warrant application. And former Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia investigation, which concluded earlier this year, found no evidence that the Trump campaign had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russians to influence the 2016 election, despite multiple outreach efforts by Russian actors. (Read more: Fox News, 12/14/2019) (Archive)