Barr investigation strikes fear at the CIA

Jed Babbin:

Last Wednesday the intelligence community launched its first attack on Attorney General William Barr’s investigation into its illegal acts and abuses of power during the 2016 election. In a New York Times article entitled “Justice Department Seeks to Question CIA in its Own Russia Investigation,” the IC makes clear its fear of the results of Barr’s investigation of their spy operation on candidate Trump in 2016 that continued through his early presidency.

The article, obviously written at the behest of its intelligence community sources — “current and former American officials” — is the first of many concerted attacks on Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the joint CIA/FBI spy operation. Many other articles, based on carefully crafted leaks to the media and Congress, are sure to follow because current and former high-ranking officials of those agencies (and probably the NSA as well) have a lot to lose.

John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, is running the investigation under Barr’s direction. From the Times report, we can easily deduce the fact that those who ran the spy op — including CIA Director Gina Haspel — are running scared from the Durham investigation.

Start with the sourcing: “current and former American officials.” That includes all of the people who were in the Obama White House, Comey’s FBI, Brennan’s CIA, and everyone else who’s ever held a government job in, for example, the Obama White House.
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The reason the CIA’s “analytical work” is being subjected to a federal prosecutor’s scrutiny is that there is a lot of evidence of criminal conduct by the CIA and FBI. That’s one of the fundamental differences between the Barr/Durham investigation and the Mueller investigation into the imaginary conspiracy between candidate Trump and his campaign and the Russians.

Mueller & Co. had no evidence that a crime had been committed before their investigation began. (Or after, for that matter.) The Mueller investigation was, as I’ve noted elsewhere, consistent with the method used by Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrenti Beria: show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.

In the Barr/Durham investigation, it’s pretty damned clear that in their abuse of power under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the FBI, and possibly the CIA, made false statements to the FISA court, under oath, to justify surveillance warrants on Carter Page and others. Those false statements — sworn affidavits in support of the FISA warrants — are, at least, violations of 18 U.S. Code Section 1001 which bars such false statements. Those are real crimes, not imaginary ones. Whatever other crimes are discovered while investigating them will come out as well.
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I agree that these are real crims.  However, I think we should not ignore the underlying cause for these crimes which was an attempt to justify a coup against President Trump.  That is no small detail, but a fundamental crime aimed at overthrowing the results of an election.