The death spasms of the 'Russian collusion' investigation
Julie Kelly:
What at best looks like mass paranoia at the top of the FBI is no excuse for their unethical and unlawful attempt to reverse the 2016 election. The media appears to be co-conspirators in this coup attempt because of their own animus toward Trump and his policies.
Their allegations that Trump was a Russian agent are absurd on their face. It is much easier to make the case that Obama was than Trump. My own impression of Obama and his Russian screw-ups is that he was acting like a naive leftist. Media mass paranoia about Trump and his policy toward Russia survives without any factual basis and by ignoring Trump policies which have been much tougher on Putin than Obama's.
...The coup attempt against the President was not based on any evidence. The Steele dossier was a collection of third hand hearsay that the FBI nor Mueller could never verify, because nothing in made much sense to begin with.
But the reality is that the Times article and resulting hysteria are the death spasms for Trump-Russia election collusion. The public now is being told not to expect any earth shattering surprises out of Team Mueller. ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl admitted over the weekend that Mueller confidants warned the final report, due shortly, will be “anticlimactic.” If that happens, the media will be further discredited as reliable, skeptical, and honest brokers of the truth and instead will be mocked as the hostile, reactionary propagandists that they are. They are not just accomplices in the biggest political scandal in U.S. history: they are co-conspirators.
In fact, the Times story is just another example of the media’s Trump-Russia spin machine; it was alarming not for what it did report but for the key details it twisted, misrepresented and/or omitted. In the nearly 2,000-word account, one name does not appear: Andrew McCabe.
The Times failed to mention that when the FBI initiated its probe of the president, the agency was being led by former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a crucial point that can only be explained as an intentional oversight by the reporters. Not only is McCabe a known partisan, text messages between his counterintelligence chief, Peter Strzok, and his agency counsel, Lisa Page, indicate McCabe was instrumental in orchestrating the “insurance policy” if Trump won the presidency.
Trump fired the deputy director shortly after an internal investigation concluded McCabe leaked unauthorized information to the news media and lied about it to federal officials. The disgraced G-Man is now being investigated by a grand jury and could soon face criminal charges. Seems like relevant information to include in the Times’ “bombshell,” correct? The only reason is was omitted was to conceal the highly-political nature of the FBI investigation.
The Times also gives short shrift to Christopher Steele, the infamous dossier author. He is described as a former British spy who “compiled memos in mid-2016” about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. But that doesn’t even begin to fully inform the reader about Steele, the political hired gun who was retained by Fusion GPS and paid by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to dig up dirt on Trump in 2016. His “memos” comprised the “dossier,” which included wild allegations that remain unverified. Steele met with American news outlets in the weeks before the election, planting negative stories about the Trump campaign. He was fired by the FBI right before Election Day for those unauthorized disclosures and for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the media.
There were other misrepresentations in the Times piece. No, Trump did not call on the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails and no, the Republican Party did not soften its platform on the Ukraine to please the Russians. Not only are these well-worn myths in the media, even if true, they hardly rise to the level of treasonous offenses.
And while The Resistance views the Times piece as the next big thing that will surely take out Donald Trump, it actually was a way to spin the pending release of damning congressional testimony by Lisa Page and James Baker, a former top official at the Justice Department.
Leaked testimony of both confirm not just the FBI investigation but other shocking news, such as the involvement of former CIA director John Brennan, tension between Obama’s Justice Department and the FBI as the Trump-Russia collusion plot took shape, and how the agency was considering investigating Trump before he fired Comey.
“We need to open the case we’ve been waiting on now while Andy is acting,” Strzok texted to page after McCabe was appointed interim director.
...
What at best looks like mass paranoia at the top of the FBI is no excuse for their unethical and unlawful attempt to reverse the 2016 election. The media appears to be co-conspirators in this coup attempt because of their own animus toward Trump and his policies.
Their allegations that Trump was a Russian agent are absurd on their face. It is much easier to make the case that Obama was than Trump. My own impression of Obama and his Russian screw-ups is that he was acting like a naive leftist. Media mass paranoia about Trump and his policy toward Russia survives without any factual basis and by ignoring Trump policies which have been much tougher on Putin than Obama's.
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