The media narrative on the pro-Trump side of things is that the RussiaGate investigation is on its last legs and that it is falling apart. The anti-Trump side of this matter says quite the opposite, and keeps promising that the damning evidence is ‘just around the corner’ and that the media sources involved are committed to ‘bringing the truth to the American people’, and so on.
The fact remains that the investigation and its counter-investigations are not over, and moreover, there is probably no REAL indication that they will ever actually end. This may sound like an incredibly bleak perspective but it really isn’t. It is probably much more realistic to understand the nature of this activity for what it is, and also to understand that it is precisely BY that nature that this now 16 month long “witch hunt” is not going to end with the demise of RussiaGate, if even that investigation is ever put into the grave where it belongs.
A recent salvo in this war against the President was launched by the New York Times on May 16, in a piece of “investigative” reporting entitled “Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation.” It starts out with the literary appeal of a good spy novel:
WASHINGTON — Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.
Their assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the Australian ambassador, who had evidence that one of Donald J. Trump’s advisers knew in advance about Russian election meddling. After tense deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander Downer, to sit for an F.B.I. interview to describe his meeting with the campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.
The agents summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to Washington on Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the investigation was opened. Their report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation. But at the time, a small group of F.B.I. officials knew it by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane.
This piece, a massive effort by the writers Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos, stands as a very skillfully written attempt to prove that there really is some sort of case here, that the intelligence agencies were too “tough” on Hillary Clinton with regards to the e-mail issue and too “soft” on Donald Trump. If a reader was to rely on this publication, it would truly seem that something sinister was afoot in the Trump camp while the government agencies perhaps, in an effort to be “fair” actually stepped all over themselves and ended up being more unfair to Hillary Clinton than they should have.
However, this narrative attempt was addressed by National Review’s Andrew McCarthy in his pieces run in that magazine on May 17th, and again with a different angle on May 19th.
The May 17th piece is essentially a rebuttal of the Times piece, and in it Mr. McCarthy wastes no time getting down to the brass tacks of his own view of this piece as a masterful attempt at spin:
The quick take on the 4,100-word opus is that the Gray Lady “buried the lede.” Fair enough: You have to dig pretty deep to find that the FBI ran “at least one government informant” against the Trump campaign — and to note that the Times learned this because “current and former officials” leaked to reporters the same classified information about which, just days ago, the Justice Department shrieked “Extortion!” when Congress asked about it.
But that’s not even the most important of the buried ledes. What the Times story makes explicit, with studious understatement, is that the Obama administration used its counterintelligence powers to investigate the opposition party’s presidential campaign.
That is, there was no criminal predicate to justify an investigation of any Trump-campaign official. So, the FBI did not open a criminal investigation. Instead, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation and hoped that evidence of crimes committed by Trump officials would emerge. But it is an abuse of power to use counterintelligence powers, including spying and electronic surveillance, to conduct what is actually a criminal investigation.
The Times barely mentions the word counterintelligence in its saga. That’s not an accident. The paper is crafting the media-Democrat narrative. Here is how things are to be spun: The FBI was very public about the Clinton-emails investigation, even making disclosures about it on the eve of the election. Yet it kept the Trump-Russia investigation tightly under wraps, despite intelligence showing that the Kremlin was sabotaging the election for Trump’s benefit. This effectively destroyed Clinton’s candidacy and handed the presidency to Trump.
Mr. McCarthy’s later piece made significant further points, as he finally approached what is probably one of the main questions about this whole matter – the question of “Why?” and “How was the RussiaGate investigation initially justified?”
As we contended in rebuttal on Thursday, the Times’ facts are selective and its narrative theme of disparate treatment is hogwash: Clinton’s bid was saved, not destroyed, by Obama’s law-enforcement agencies, which tanked a criminal case on which she should have been indicted. And the hush-hush approach taken to the counterintelligence case against Donald Trump was not intended to protect the Republican candidate; it was intended to protect the Obama administration from the specter of a Watergate-level scandal had its spying on the opposition party’s presidential campaign been revealed.
And McCarthy doesn’t stop here. He continues, later:
It has now been confirmed that the Trump campaign was subjected to spying tactics under counterintelligence law — FISA surveillance, national-security letters, and covert intelligence operatives who work with the CIA and allied intelligence services. It made no difference, apparently, that there was an ongoing election campaign, which the FBI is supposed to avoid affecting; nor did it matter that the spy targets were American citizens, as to whom there is supposed to be evidence of purposeful, clandestine, criminal activity on behalf of a foreign power before counterintelligence powers are invoked.
But what was the rationale for using these spying authorities?
The fons et origo of the counterintelligence investigation was the suspicion — which our intelligence agencies assure us is a fact — that the Democratic National Committee’s server was hacked by covert Russian operatives. Without this cyber-espionage attack, there would be no investigation. But how do we know it really happened? The Obama Justice Department never took custody of the server — no subpoena, no search warrant. The server was thus never subjected to analysis by the FBI’s renowned forensics lab, and its evidentiary integrity was never preserved for courtroom presentation to a jury.How come? Well, you see, there was an ongoing election campaign, so the Obama Justice Department figured it would be a terrible imposition to pry into the Democrats’ communications. So, yes, the entire “Russia hacked the election” narrative the nation has endured for nearly two years hinges on the say-so of CrowdStrike, a private DNC contractor with significant financial ties to the Clinton campaign.
In Investigations 101, using foreign-intelligence authorities to spy on Americans is extraordinary, while taking custody of essential physical evidence is basic. By the way, the government’s failure to ensure the evidentiary integrity of the DNC server by taking possession of it and performing its own rigorous testing on it makes it practically impossible to prosecute anyone for “colluding” in Russia’s cyber-espionage. It’s tough to prove that anyone conspired in something unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the something actually happened the way you say it happened. To do that in a courtroom, you need evidence — a confident probability analysis by your intelligence agencies won’t do.
This above information was extensively reported by Rush Limbaugh on his radio program during the following week, as the radio pundit noted that Andrew McCarthy had found his way to the basic question of “What document or source was presented to the authorities to get them to begin this series of investigations?” And to date, there is no answer to this question.
The situation is shaping up to be a massive political scandal, indeed, if properly and honestly viewed, one that would make Watergate look like a simple theft of an ice cream cone by some headstrong kid on the street. But even here, the presence of the Deep State and its power through the mainstream press blunts the efforts to expose this unconstitutional and illegal behavior by the Deep State establishment for what it is.
However, it is not being ignored. FoxNews.com reported late Sunday, May 27, that President Trump had several things to say about the Deep State and its attempts to disrupt his candidacy and to destroy his presidency.
Why didn’t President Obama do something about the so-called Russian Meddling when he was told about it by the FBI before the Election? Because he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win, and he didn’t want to upset the apple cart! He was in charge, not me, and did nothing.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2018
These remarks came several hours after he lashed out at special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on the social media platform.
Why didn’t the 13 Angry Democrats investigate the campaign of Crooked Hillary Clinton, many crimes, much Collusion with Russia? Why didn’t the FBI take the Server from the DNC? Rigged Investigation!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2018
Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt? They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation…They went back home in tatters!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2018
In the review of facts, it is apparent that the Trump campaign was clean of any collusion with Russia or any other foreign power. It is surprising that the idea of Russian interference even is worth mentioning by President Trump himself, because there has been found no evidence at all that operatives in the Russian Government in any way worked with Trump’s campaign to fool the American people and get Trump elected. In the now immortalized words of this Florida lady:
The frustration this woman shows with the simply amazing effort of the CNN reporter to force her to swallow the propaganda is something shared by a great many Americans. Simultaneously, there is a significantly sized group who does believe the MSM narrative, and the Deep State is doing a pretty good job of keeping its RussiaGate case alive.
Despite the hopes that “soon all this will explode and it will be finally over!”, the reality is that it will not be over. The Deep State has its reasons for not letting go of this matter, and so this problem will not be allowed to go away.
In the next piece in the series, the motivation of this group will be examined in an attempt to find the reasons this is happening.
There has not been such a significantly virulent power struggle in American politics for a very long time. This situation is far more blatant than Watergate, and far more successful. There is a reason for this.
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