FBI appears mired in politics by trying to use Democrat opposition research to spy on Trump campaign

NY Times:

Trump’s Verbal Lashings Halt Progress for F.B.I. Director

• Five months since Christopher Wray started the job, President Trump’s verbal assaults have put Mr. Wray and his team in a difficult position.
• Mr. Wray is trying to ensure that politics stay out of the bureau, yet Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress are making that task much harder.

The FBI is in a difficult position because some at the top of the agency thought it was their job to either stop Trump's election or participate in a Democrat coup attempt to try to overturn the will of the voters using a bogus "dossier" which was the product of Democrat collusion with Russian intelligence agencies.

That is an aspect of the problem that many in the media have been desperately trying to avoid talking about because it is inconsistent with their preferred narrative of "Trump collusion with the Russians."

It is now indisputable that the Democrats and their candidate hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Trump, which in turn hired a former Brit spy (Steele) to collude with Russians to produce a "salacious dossier" of unsubstantiated allegations against the Republican nominee.  The Democrats tried to hide the expenditure by using their lawyer as a cutout in the operation to pay Fusion GPS, which paid Steele who in turn gave money to the Russians.  None of this aspect of the opposition research was done during the time Fusion was working for the Washington Free Beacon.

When FBI Assistant Director McCade testified before Congress this week he could provide no aspect of the dossier for which there was any proof over than the fact that Carter Page took a trip to Russia.  He could not show any proof that Page actually met with or engaged in the conversations alleged in the dossier.

For some reason, the FBI won't say whether the unsubstantiated dossier was used as a basis for getting a FISA warrant to spy on members of the Trump campaign.  I suspect that they did.

And that is the reason Wray is having a tough job.  It is what was done by others in the FBI that is the problem, not what Trump or other Republicans are saying that is the problem.

At this point, it looks like some in the FBI and DOJ conspired with Democrats or those working for the Democrats in what can be described as a coup attempt against the incoming administration.  The Democrats don't like that description of their conduct, but it appears to be fair based on the current state of the record.