The guess here is you know a die-hard Democrat that believes eight years of Obama bliss have been followed by three years of ruin. You know the person: convinced Roger Stone’s sentence length is a matter of grave national interest – because his or her opinions are solely informed by MSNBC and The Guardian. Do your friend a favor: tell them the Stone kerfuffle is just a partisan smoke screen
Democrats and their media allies are trying to divert attention from what multiple investigations might uncover: a crooked Obama presidency. Just last Sunday, former Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told Maria Bartiromo about three areas where he suspects the DOJ’s John Durham is looking:
- The factual predicate “for this Russia investigation, and I’m not talking about the summer of 2016. I’m talking about the stuff that happened in late 2015.”
- The alleged government surveillance abuses. “[Durham is] also looking at the FISA process and misrepresentations made to the FISA court.”
- The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that was prepared for the president-elect. There are questions over what “John Brennan got done towards the end of the Barack Obama tenure…[if] that was thoroughly investigated and [if] all the right information made its way into that ICA.”
Gowdy is focused on what Democrats fear: what if a sitting president tried to influence the election of his successor, targeted citizens working for the opposition party, and undermined his successor’s formation of a new government? This is, in a nutshell, the Watergate crime and what J. Edgar Hoover was doing when he spied on Martin Luther King; i.e. weaponizing federal agencies for political purposes.
Starting with late 2015, what had Donald Trump said or done – other than promise to “drain the swamp” – to warrant an investigation? The answer is not much. Yet, a group inside the Obama administration singled out one Republican campaign to approach under false pretenses (Papadopoulos) and spy on (Page). No campaign – regardless of political stripe – should be alleged a national security threat, because THAT IS ANATHEMA to America’s ideals of freedom and justice.
No American is free when Big Brother can spy on any of us. How the DOJ and FBI obtained FISA warrants (false claims to mislead FISC judges) is a red flag. Because a few Obama apparatchiks were the perpetrators is an even bigger red flag. Maybe the Sanders campaign was a legitimate target: at least he had publicly sympathized with Cubans and Russians. But no – they spied on an anti-establishment Republican.
In the best light, the final Brennan-Comey ICA was executive-branch malpractice. They already knew Steele was a sketchy source, and that his “intelligence” was a partisan smear. Still, they cleared the pee tape with Obama, presented it to Trump, and leaked the Steele dossier to the press. After Obama shared the unmasked names of Republican surveillance targets across 17 federal agencies, everything possible had been done to undermine Trump’s legitimacy.
Remind the so-called liberal that Gerald Ford, the ultimate Washington insider, did not spy on or undermine Jimmy Carter, a Washington outsider and steward of four years of malaise. In turn, Jimmy Carter did not spy on or undermine Ronald Reagan, the ultimate change candidate. Attorney General Barr senses Obama-era crimes that dwarf Watergate. Wisely, all three Russia-gate investigations are being conducted far away from Washington.