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Bill Priestap, left, with Michael Horowitz, DoJ inspector general.
By Eric Felten, RealClearInvestigations
April 12, 2019
Attorney General William Barr shocked official Washington Wednesday by saying what previously couldn’t be said: That the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016 involved “spying.”
The recent release of transcripts of testimony by key players in the Trump-Russia probe suggests that the spying, which Barr vowed to investigate, is not the only significant possible violation of investigative rules and ethics committed by agents, lawyers, managers, and officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice.
A catalogue of those abuses can be found in testimony Edward William Priestap provided to Congress in a closed-door interview last summer. From the end of 2015 to the end of 2018 Bill Priestap was assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, which meant he oversaw the FBI’s global counterintelligence efforts.
In that role, he managed both of the bureau’s most politically sensitive investigations: the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information and the probe into whether Donald Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election. His testimony provides rare insight into the attitudes and thoughts of officials who launched the Russia probe and the probe of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the release of whose final report is imminent.
More important, his testimony contains extensive indications of wrongdoing, including that the FBI and DoJ targeted Trump and did so with information it made no effort to verify. It paints a portrait of the Obama-era bureau as one that was unconcerned with political interference in investigations and was willing to enlist the help of close foreign allies to bring down its target. And, perhaps presaging a defense to Barr’s claim that American officials had spied on the Trump campaign, it showcases the euphemisms that can be used to disguise “spying.”
Filling In the Blanks
Priestap’s testimony took place on June 5, 2018, in Room 2226 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The questioning, by congressmen and House committee staff, focused on whether the FBI had applied the same rigor to the Clinton investigation that it had to the Trump probe.
The transcript the public can read today contains not only those questions and Priestap’s responses, but also the tell-tale redactions of anxious bureaucrats. One thing that is very clear is that the Sharpie brigades at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice really, really didn’t want anyone to know where Bill Priestap was a week into May 2016.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Where in the world was Bill Priestap?
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Not long into the questioning that Tuesday morning last summer, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked, “Do you ever travel oversees?”
“Yes,” said Priestap.
“How often?”
“As little as possible.”
The seeming comedy routine notwithstanding, Jordan later asked how many times in his 2½ years running the counter-intelligence shop Priestap had traveled abroad.
“I want to say three times,” he said.
“And can you tell me where you went?” Jordan asked.
“The ones I’m remembering are the [REDACTED].”
Jordan drilled in: “All three times to [REDACTED]?
Priestap said the trips he remembered “off the top of my head were all [REDACTED].”
Jordan asked whether Priestap remembered when he went to this place. Priestap said “No.”
Jordan was back at it in later rounds of questioning, asking whether Priestap had traveled to a given location at a given time in 2016. Over and again, censors from the FBI and DoJ have redacted the location and the time.
What could this exotic destination be? How is the timing of Priestap’s trip there a matter of national security? What secrets were the redactors trying to protect?
Peter Strzok: “Bill” was in London.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
It turns out the Sharpie people weren’t nearly as thorough as they presumably thought. Newly released transcripts of congressional testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page – the paramours who worked on both the Clinton and Trump investigations – provide one answer. It’s right there on the page detailing text messages between the two on May 4, 2016. At around 9:31 that Wednesday evening, Strzok writes to say he is worried about getting a memo into shape that is expected that night or the next morning. He feels pressured even though “I don’t know that Bill will read it before he gets back from London next week.” Go to a text from the next Monday morning, May 9, and Strzok is wondering who will be receiving the daily report on the Clinton investigation, what “with Bill out.”
So there we have it. Bill Priestap was in London on or around May 9. Which strongly suggests that all three of the international trips taken by him during his tenure as FBI counterintelligence chief were to London.
Still, there is a reason the censors had out their Sharpies. It has to do with another question Jordan asked Priestap: “Okay. So what were you doing in [REDACTED] in the [REDACTED] of 2016?”
“So,” Priestap replied, “I went to meet with a foreign partner, foreign government partner.” In other words, almost certainly British intelligence. Not exposing our British partners has been the Justice Department’s justification for locking up secrets about the beginnings of the Trump investigation. The redactions try and fail to hide that Priestap met repeatedly with his British counterparts in 2016.
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was also in London. So was the FBI, around the same time.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File
Students of the Russia-collusion saga will recall that some of the earliest and most significant events cited as leading to the FBI’s investigation of Team Trump took place in a certain REDACTED country during a REDACTED season in 2016. It was over breakfast on April 26 in London that the mysterious Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud, told young Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Five days later, on May 1, Papadopoulos had drinks with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in a London bar where he shared this piece of gossip/intel. And, of course, London is home to the author of the anti-Trump “dossier,” Christopher Steele.
According to the official story laid out in the New York Times, Australian officials did not pass on this new information for two months. And while Steele was retained by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the spring to dig up dirt on Trump for the Clinton campaign, the official story is that he did not start working with U.S. officials until the summer.
And so it is more than passingly curious that Priestap kept going to London when these significant events were occurring. Jordan asked Priestap about his second trip there: “What did it have to do with?”
Priestap demurred: “I’m not at liberty to discuss that today.”
After some dodging and weaving, Jordan came back to the question, but this time with an uncomfortable specificity: “Was your second trip then concerning the Trump-Russia investigation?” he asked.
“Sir, again, I’m just not at liberty to go into the purpose of my second trip.”
Priestap could have answered “no” without perjuring himself, he could have quickly put this matter to bed. His “I’m not at liberty” answers strongly suggest that the Trump-Russia investigation was exactly what his second trip to London was about.
Spying, Redefined
Attorney General Barr’s statement that “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign makes another part of Priestap’s testimony – about why an FBI asset in London named Stefan Halper reached out to Papadopoulos and to another Trump foreign policy adviser, Carter Page — even more significant.
Stefan Halper: also in London.
Voanews.com/Wikimedia
Weeks before Priestap’s testimony was taken last summer, the efforts of Halper, an American scholar who works in Britain, had been exposed. Republicans had been spluttering with outrage that the FBI would deploy a spy against an American presidential campaign. Democrats had been countering that while the bureau used informants, only the ignorant and uninitiated would call them spies.
Democratic staff counsel Valerie Shen tried to use her questioning of Priestap to put the spying issue to bed. “Does the FBI use spies?” she asked the assistant director for counterintelligence (who would be in a position to know).
“What do you mean?” Priestap responded. “I guess, what is your definition of a spy?”
“Good question,” said Shen. “What is your definition of a spy?”
Before Priestap answered, his lawyer, Mitch Ettinger, intervened. “Just one second,” he said. Then Ettinger – who was one of President Bill Clinton’s attorneys during the Paula Jones/Monica Lewinsky scandal – conferred with his client.
Back on the record, Priestap presented what smacks of pre-approved testimony: “I’ve not heard of nor have I referred to FBI personnel or the people we engage with as – meaning who are working in assistance to us – as spies. We do evidence and intelligence collection in furtherance of our investigations.”
Shen was happy with the answer, and so she asked Priestap to confirm it: “So in your experience the FBI doesn’t use the term ‘spy’ in any of its investigative techniques?” Priestap assured her the word is never spoken by law-enforcement professionals – except, he said (wandering dangerously off-script), when referring to “foreign spies.”
“But in terms of one of its own techniques,” Shen said, determined to get Priestap back on track, “the FBI does not refer to one of its own techniques as spying?”
“That is correct, yes.”
“With that definition in mind, would the FBI internally ever describe themselves as spying on American citizens?”
“No.”
So there we have it with all the decisive logic of a Socratic dialogue: The FBI could not possibly have spied on the Trump campaign because bureau lingo includes neither the noun “spy” nor the verb “to spy.” Whatever informants may have been employed, whatever tools of surveillance may have been utilized, the FBI did not spy on the Trump campaign – didn’t spy by definition, as the bureau doesn’t use the term (except, of course, to describe the very same activities when undertaken by foreigners).
What’s telling about this line of questioning is that it inadvertently confirms Republican suspicions — and Attorney General Barr’s assertion. If House Democrats believed there had been no spying on the Trump campaign, they could have asked Priestap whether the FBI ever spies on Americans, given the common meaning of the verb “to spy.” They could have flat-out asked whether the FBI had spied on Trump World. Instead, Democratic counsel asked whether, given the FBI’s definition of spying, the bureau would “internally ever describe themselves as spying on American citizens.” It would seem that Democrats were every bit as convinced as Republicans that the FBI spied on Trump’s people.
Interpreting ‘Political Interference’
Later in the day, Democratic lawyer Shen seemed to be engaged in more damage control when she asked Priestap whether “political interference in the Department of Justice or FBI investigation [is] ever proper?”
Surprisingly, Priestap said it was: “In my opinion, I can imagine situations where it would be proper.” He explained that the political appointees in an administration might determine “that the national security interests of the country outweigh the law enforcement/prosecutive interest of the FBI and Department of Justice.”
Shen then appeared to push him to clean up his answer, suggesting that what Priestap was describing wasn’t “a political determination” but “a policy interpretation balancing national security and law enforcement.”
“Yeah. I guess,” Priestap said. “And maybe I misunderstood your question.” Then what does he do but repeat his belief that political appointees — and “by political, I could imagine, for example, the National Security Council” — might act on the notion that national security outweighs other considerations.”
“Right. Yeah. Right,” Shen said. “Let me rephrase.” She explained she wasn’t asking about decisions political officials make, but rather, decisions officials make for political reasons. Then came the rephrased question: “Is interference in a Department of Justice or FBI investigation ever proper when motivated by purely political considerations?” [Emphasis added]
“Not in my opinion,” responded Priestap.
What Shen was laboring to establish was that the only sort of investigative behavior that could be called political interference was when someone at DoJ or FBI acted out of “purely political considerations.” That’s a standard that leaves plenty of room for politics.
Targeting Trump?
But does it leave room enough for the “dossier”? The political abuse foremost in Republican minds was, and remains, that collection of howlers and hearsay allegedly compiled by Christopher Steele, who was sold to the public as a high-minded former British spy instead of a man being paid by the Clinton campaign to dirty up Trump. Steele’s efforts were lapped up by the FBI and DoJ even though the lawmen knew Steele was peddling political work-product — opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Carter Page: Was he the real quarry, or was Donald Trump?
Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP
In particular, Republicans have charged that Steele’s dossier was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court without full disclosure of its partisan origins, thus perpetrating a fraud on the FISA court. The accusation was formalized in May 2018, when Republicans demanded the appointment of a second special counsel because, they claimed, “the FBI and DOJ used politically biased, unverified sources to obtain warrants issued by the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISA Court) that aided in the surveillance of U.S. citizens, including Carter Page.”
Shen, the House Oversight Committee minority counsel, brushed that accusation aside with what appeared to be an unambiguous and definitive question: “Mr. Priestap,” she asked, “are you aware of any instances of the FBI and DOJ ever using politically biased, unverified sources in order to obtain a FISA warrant?”
Priestap gave the most unambiguous and definitive of answers: “No.” One might be tempted to think that was an endorsement of the dossier, a confirmation that the FISA warrant applications were largely based on information that was neither politically biased nor unverified. But that would be taking the question and the answer on face value, when something rather less straightforward was going on.
Shen followed with another broad, all-encompassing question about the propriety of the FBI and DoJ’s behavior: “Are you aware,” she asked Priestap, “of any instances where the FBI or DOJ did not present what constituted credible and sufficient evidence to justify a FISA warrant?”
Priestap’s response is a textbook case of circular logic: “If it’s not justified, the court doesn’t approve it. So, like, if we’re not meeting the standard required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the requests are turned down.”
“So, in other words,” said the Democratic counsel, “by definition, if you presented information and a FISA court approved it, that would constitute credible sufficient information?”
“In my opinion,” said Priestap, “yes.”
Sit back and savor that exchange for a moment. One of the most senior officials in the Federal Bureau of Investigation – an organization that regularly refers for prosecution people who don’t tell the full truth – champions this peculiar standard of credibility: If you can snooker a FISA court judge, the information used to traduce the court is rendered by definition “credible sufficient information.” What is the condition of the FBI if its leaders think whatever you can get past a judge is good enough?
This strange concept of legal alchemy aside, the question remains whether the dossier was used merely as a vehicle to get information on Carter Page, or whether the real quarry was Donald Trump himself. As before, Shen was unintentionally helpful at winkling inadvertent truths out of her cooperative witness. It started with the softest of softballs: “Are you aware of any FBI investigations motivated by political bias?”
“I am not.”
“Are you aware of any Justice Department investigations motivated by political bias?”
“No.”
“Are you aware of any actions ever taken to damage the Trump campaign at the highest levels of the Department of Justice or the FBI?”
“No.”
And there Shen might have left it, having elicited basic denials that the FBI and Justice had abused their power. But then she pushed her luck, asking a question that wasn’t worded quite carefully enough: “Are you aware of any actions ever taken to personally target Donald Trump at the highest levels of the Department of Justice or the FBI?”
Priestap must have pulled quite the face because Shen immediately declared, “I’ll rephrase.” Here’s how she tried it the second time: “Are you aware of any actions ever taken against Donald Trump at the highest levels of the Department of Justice or the FBI?”
Before Priestap can answer, his lawyer, Mitch Ettinger, interjected: “I think you need to rephrase your question.”
At which point Shen’s Democratic colleague Janet Kim jumped in to help: “Are you aware of any actions ever taken against Donald Trump at the highest levels of the Department of Justice or the FBI for the purpose of politically undercutting him?”
At last, Priestap was able to say, “No.”
That long road to “no” strong suggests that the highest levels of Justice and the FBI personally targeted Trump and took action against him. The only caveat is that Priestap believes none of that targeted action was done to undercut Trump politically. That may be so (however much the savvy observer may think otherwise). But it doesn’t blunt the main takeaway — that the bureau and DoJ targeted Trump.
In Summary…
So what did we learn from Bill Priestap’s compendious and revealing testimony?
- We learned that the FBI and Justice targeted and took action against Trump.
- We learned that the FBI, according to Priestap, is incapable of securing a FISA warrant with information that isn’t credible, although the judge’s approval of the warrant means by definition that the information is credible.
- We learned that the FBI believes political interference in an investigation can be proper as long as the bureau isn’t acting purely politically.
- We learned that the FBI did send at least one asset to do to the Trump campaign an activity that even the bureau would call “spying” — if it were done by foreign operatives.
- We learned that the origins of the Trump-Russia tale will never be fully understood until the part played by British intelligence is made clear.
That’s an awful lot to take away from one largely neglected transcript. But it suggests just how much remains unknown about the Trump-Russia investigation while providing a glimpse at the people that want to keep it that way.
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By Tom Kuntz, Editor, RealClearInvestigations
April 11, 2019
What a difference a year makes. With the announcement of the 2019 Pulitzer Prizes set for next Monday, last year’s award to the New York Times and Washington Post for Trump-Russia coverage is already looking like a crumpled first draft of history lofting in a high arc to the dustbin. It’s eclipsed by the double-whammy of the Special Counsel’s finding of no collusion with the Kremlin and Attorney General William Barr’s disclosure this week that he’ll investigate spying by federal authorities on the Trump campaign.
Eclipsed and how. But the deep flaws in this honored coverage, instrumental in pushing the collusion narrative, shouldn’t be overlooked because it’s been overtaken by events, or many journalists would prefer to move on, or because President Trump calls it “fake news.” The flaws reveal broader problems in reporting this continuing story and journalism in general.
The prize went jointly to the two publications for 10 articles apiece reporting on Trump-Russia developments throughout most of 2017, the chaotic first year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron: basking in acclaim last year.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Their heavy investment in shaping and advancing the collusion story is telegraphed by some of the headlines alone. Imagine them with exclamation points and they could easily have appeared in the sensational sheets published by Joseph Pulitzer himself: Sessions Spoke Twice to Russian Envoy! (Washington Post); Emails Disclose Trump Son’s Glee at Russian Offer! (New York Times); Trump Reveals Secret Intelligence to Russians! (Post).
This work is not comparable to earlier Pulitzer scandals that still haunt the Times and Post. But in a way, a lot of it is worse. The Walter Duranty and Janet Cooke embarrassments mainly involved individual fraud or malpractice – outlier transgressions. These articles generally reflect a standard practice that is ripe for abuse but which the profession is unlikely to abandon: anonymous sourcing.
Anonymous sources are a necessary evil. They often allow journalists to report information they could not gather otherwise. But because their identities are shielded from readers who have no independent means of assessing their credibility or motivations, news organizations must vet these sources rigorously, especially to convey that they are not being used by them or even in league with them at the expense of a faithful presentation of facts.
In the case of much of the Pulitzer-winning Trump-Russia work, anonymous sources were used with insufficient skepticism and a lack of caveats in the service of a credulous and disingenuous journalism of innuendo. The journalistic failures these articles reflect would be problematic even if Special Counsel Robert Mueller had made a case for collusion. His findings just make them all the more obvious.
In the main, the 20 honored, mostly multi-bylined articles are sourced to “current and former officials,” “people with knowledge of …” or similar formulations. Sometimes a specific number of sources is given, but with few exceptions there is little insight into who these people were beyond the adjectives “senior” or “foreign” to describe officials here and there.
Rereading the stories, I searched mostly in vain for answers to these questions: Which government departments did the sources work for? What were their motivations? Were any of them seeking to deflect attention from their own failure to prevent Russian meddling in the 2016 election? How many were current and how many former (i.e. Obama administration) officials? Were any of them connected to former high-ranking officials who publicly – and profitably — turned against Trump? (Men such as James Comey of the FBI, John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.) For that matter, were those high-profile men also serving as anonymous sources? And – a problem little discussed in journalism – could the same people have been sources for multiple stories, creating a distorted, snowballing impression of major wrongdoing?
Just as important, apart from White House denials of allegations, I usually searched in vain for voices both inside and outside the government who dissented from the dark interpretations that were offered.
Michael Flynn: a treason story?
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
The work’s shortcomings become clear in Pulitzer-winning articles on two members of Team Trump: two published by the Post at the beginning of 2017 on the president’s first national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn; and one published by the Times at the end of the year on campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
Both men pleaded guilty, under pressure, to so-called process crimes of lying to investigators – not for conspiring with Russians.
The Posts’ two February 2017 articles on Flynn, totaling more than 3,300 words, read, then as now, as though the paper were drawing a bead on a treason story for the ages. They quote anonymous sources (“current and former U.S. officials,” “some senior U.S. officials”) inviting the worst possible interpretations from Flynn’s contacts with Russians and his misstatements about them.
A central premise of the stories – that acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates felt the 1799 Logan Act was a good reason to raise alarms about Flynn – should have provided a strong tipoff that the sources might have been politically driven. Democratic Party partisans had long had the knives out for the maverick ex-general, whom President Obama had forced to resign as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. But that context is missing as the Post presents at length, with grave seriousness and little skepticism, deep official suspicion seemingly of Flynn’s every recent move. He’s flouting the Logan Act! That the Logan Act is a moldering, never-used statute against private diplomacy routinely honored in the breach – and almost certainly not applicable to members of an incoming administration — is referred to only as a challenge to be overcome in nailing the guy.
A similar lack of skepticism drove much of the Trump-Russia coverage, in which the president’s allies were cast as nefarious operatives and the president’s enemies as high-minded protectors of the nation. This mindset led the Post, Times, and other outlets to push the collusion narrative while ignoring or downplaying unprecedented scandals that led to the removal or demotion of top officials at the Justice Department and FBI who led the Russia investigation.
Emailed with an interview request, Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron sent back a stock defense of the Post’s Trump-Russia work through a spokesperson (full text here). “Our reporting never presupposed what the special counsel would conclude with regard to obstruction of justice or an actual conspiracy with the Russians,” the statement reads. The Times, where I worked for a long time, did not respond to emailed interview requests.
Doubling Down on Collusion
One might chalk up the failures of the Flynn coverage as a one-off in the fast-moving early days of the Trump administration – before major questions had emerged. But, as doubts grew about the papers’ coverage – and what their anonymous sources were telling them – the Post and Times just doubled down on the collusion narrative. This is another peril of using anonymous sources, especially for a major ongoing story: Reporters can come to identify with and feel they are working with those sources. Now, without betraying sources they have promised to protect, unless the sources release them from their pacts of confidentiality, the Times and Post will be hard-pressed to explain how and why they misrepresented a story of historic import.
With such misrepresentation in mind, consider the brand-new origin story for the Trump-Russia probe that the Times broke on Dec. 31, 2017 – coincidentally the publication cutoff date for 2018 Pulitzer consideration.
The timing is key for another, more important reason. Until then, it was widely believed that the main impetus behind the Trump-Russia probe had been the so-called Steele dossier – a series of memos supposedly from a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, that suggested Trump was in cahoots with the Kremlin. The FBI had used it to secure a warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
George Papadopoulos with his wife, Simona Mangiante. He says the FBI set him up.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Revelations in late October that the Clinton campaign had funded the dossier, whose main claims had never been verified, raised new questions about the probe. Cue the new origin story, starring George Papadopoulos. Right at this time of doubt, “four current and former American and foreign officials” were suddenly telling the Times that the collusion probe was sparked not by the dossier, but by the loose lips of the junior Trump campaign foreign affairs adviser, during “a night of heavy drinking” in London with a senior Australian diplomat.
Papadopoulos told the diplomat, Alexander Downer, in May 2016 that Russia, as the Times put it, “had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.” And in the next paragraph the Times article connected that to her missing emails.
But the powers of deduction at the paper went only so far – and in only one direction. The Times reporters’ email insight did not prompt them to raise in their story the issue of Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a private server. If the government believed Russia or other foreign countries had access to Clinton’s unsecured emails while she served as secretary of state, why didn’t the Times story address whether the “dirt on Hillary Clinton” compromised national security or opened her up to blackmail? Similarly, the “dirt” revelation did not lead the paper to question FBI’s Director Comey’s public exoneration of Clinton in July 2016 over the email affair.
Instead, the Times article left the very strong impression that the man who supposedly tipped off Papadopoulos about the emails, the Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud, was working for the Russians – even though his ties to Western intelligence were well-known. Cryptically, the Times suggested that Downer might have been “fishing” for information from Papadopoulos, without asking why, or for whom. It also did not report that Downer had long ties to the Clinton Foundation.
These details were important then and remain so now, not least because Attorney General Barr is looking into federal authorities’ spying on the Trump campaign and because Papadopoulos suggests he was set up by the FBI. Whatever the truth, the point is that the newspaper’s coverage demonstrated little interest in pursuing legitimate avenues of inquiry that conflicted with the collusion narrative.
President Obama scoring points against Mitt Romney in 2012 over the latter’s Russia warning. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” Obama said.
AP Photo/David Goldman
Clinton’s insecure email server also does not merit a mention in another honored article: the Post’s 8,000-word ticktock, “Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault,” a largely sympathetic piece with spy-potboiler overtones sourced to Obama aides on a legacy-cleanup mission. Despite all the space granted to this lengthy takeout with mega-graphics, there was evidently no room for a mention of the possible cues for anti-American mischief that Vladimir Putin might have picked up from Secretary Clinton’s mistranslated “reset” button; Obama’s assurance into an open mic to President Dmitri Medvedev of post-reelection “flexibility” on missile defense; Obama’s belittling of Mitt Romney’s warning of the Russian threat in a presidential debate; or Russia’s land grabs on the Obama administration’s watch.
The prize-winning articles appeared at a time when both publications, only recently flirting with extinction in the digital age, were enjoying anti-Trump surges in online clicks, subscriptions, and circulation. In the runup to the 2016 election the Times’s newsroom, not opinion, editors — that is, people who would oversee Trump-Russia coverage — had given premier front-page display to its media columnist articulating a rationale for anti-Trump media bias. In this charged atmosphere, and no doubt with an eye to posterity, the Times let cameras follow its journalists into their work spaces and personal lives in real time for a brand-extending documentary series on left-leaning Showtime.
‘Deeply Sourced’
In its announcement, the Pulitzer Board praised the papers, probably Washington’s biggest recipients of unauthorized government leaks, for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage.” I asked Dana Canedy, the Pulitzer Prize administrator, how the board knew enough about the unnamed sources and the relentlessness of the work to say this, and she said it concluded this from the work itself, and the papers’ prize applications.
But if anything was “deeply” demonstrated, it was the deeply embedded Washington Post and New York Times DNA on last year’s Pulitzer Board, a third of whose 18 members were current or former Times or Post journalists. In addition, two board members, ex-Timesman Stephen Engelberg of ProPublica and Emily Ramshaw of the Texas Tribune, head nonprofit newsrooms that share coverage with the Times and the Post.
Canedy, a Times alumnus, declined to comment on its deliberations for this prize, but she said that as a general rule board members who presently work for an outfit with submissions under prize consideration have to recuse themselves. Presumably, that meant recusals from the National Reporting deliberations by Pulitzer board Chairman Eugene Robinson, an ardent anti-Trump Post columnist, and member Gail Collins, an ardent anti-Trump columnist for the Times. Canedy says she remains a party to final prize decisions as part of her present job.
Still, The Federalist this week noted numerous coincidences of Pulitzers going to news organizations with journalists on the board. Whether the apparent conflicts are benign or problematic, news organizations risk coming off as clubby, back-scratching pots alleging that the kettle has the world’s darkest hue when exposing self-dealing in corporate, government or even industry prize-awarding contexts.
That’s a long way of coming around to what the board ultimately did, after jurors got through with their evaluations of entries: jointly award the National Reporting prize, making not one, but two news powerhouses happy. “The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize,” it said in its announcement.
And the rest, as they say, was history. Until the special counsel delivered his report.
RealClearInvestigations Editor Tom Kuntz helped edit the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize submissions in several years of his 28-year tenure as an editor at the paper ending in 2016. RealClearInvestigations, which aims to fill gaps in Trump-Russia coverage, also relies on anonymous sources. Examples can be read here, here, here and here.
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For nearly two years, Democrats and the left-leaning media have been like a dog with a bone when it comes to Russia collusion conspiracies and President Trump. They have postulated, with exasperated insistence, that the president could only have won the 2016 election with the help of Russian hacks. To their disappointment, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has concluded that there is no evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign. Russia-gaters are dumbfounded: How can this be?
Take a moment to consider the facts. The entire investigation was based on the unverified Steele dossier — paid for by the Clinton campaign — that the FBI then used to obtain a FISA warrant (despite its unverified contents) to monitor Trump campaign aide Carter Page. James Comey, the FBI director at the time, later admitted to Congress that the initial allegations of Russian collusion remained unverified even after months of surveilling Page.
Here we are, almost two years later, at the conclusion of an expansive investigation with over 25 million taxpayer dollars spent, 2,800 subpoenas issued, over 500 witnesses, and millions of documents reviewed, all of which points to zero evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. This is good news by any measure. So, why did the outcome of the Mueller probe send half of America into mourning?
Americans have become consumed with the narratives that they are bombarded with on their television screens each day. In 2017, one study found that 55% of broadcast news coverage focused on the Russia probe. In 2018, the Russia collusion investigation maintained that top slot for the most airtime on ABC, CBS, and NBC, even clocking in ahead of immigration issues, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and North Korea. And with 92% of the coverage of President Trump being negative, it is no wonder that half of Americans believed he was guilty, though no tangible evidence for such a conclusion was present.
Now we know that the evidence was never there and the conviction was not to be. The discredited narrative was unfounded and the irresponsible outrage and divisive rhetoric that flooded our airwaves as a result was a monumental failure for media outlets that pushed the narrative. It also served as a distraction from the real story.
Those in the media disappointed by the outcome of the Mueller report should not continue to insist that Mueller must have missed something and therefore more investigations are warranted. Instead of wasting more time and resources, it is time we pause as a nation to reflect on how we got to this point.
The mainstream media are at a unique crossroads. They have an opportunity to redeem their record of negligence. Focusing on further taxpayer-funded fishing expeditions in the hopes of finding an impeachable offense simply because of dislike for the president is not the answer here. The Watergate story of this generation lies in how former and current government officials orchestrated the most extraordinary witch hunt of all time and escaped unscathed.
There are plenty of legitimate questions journalists could ask as they search for accountability. Here are a few suggestions:
Why was Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr never charged for filing a false federal disclosure affidavit, having neglected to disclose his wife was employed by Fusion GPS to assist with the Steele dossier? Why was he never investigated for his offer of assistance to Christopher Steele after the 2016 election?
Why was James Comey never charged for leaking classified memos? Or John Brennan for lying to Congress under oath?
And what about that bizarre email former National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent herself documenting an Oval Office meeting with President Obama and James Comey about the Russia collusion investigation? What part of the investigation did Obama know about or authorize, and exactly when?
Democratic lawmakers all but promised that the Mueller report would produce undeniable evidence of foul play by the Trump campaign. It now appears the foul play could be rooted in abuse of power by the government before Donald J. Trump was elected president.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.” Now more than ever, we are counting on a diligent press to find these truths.
President Trump, in an exclusive wide-ranging interview Wednesday night with Fox News’ “Hannity,” vowed to release the full and unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and related documents used by the FBI to probe his campaign, saying he wants to “get to the bottom” of how the long-running Russia collusion narrative began.
Trump told anchor Sean Hannity that his lawyers previously had advised him not to take that dramatic step out of fear that it could be considered obstruction of justice.
“I do, I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release,” Trump said. “I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, they really didn’t want me to do it early on.”
Trump also accused FBI officials of committing “treason” — slamming former FBI Director James Comey as a “terrible guy,” former CIA Director John Brennan as potentially mentally ill, and Democrat House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as a criminal.
Redacted versions of FISA documents already released have revealed that the FBI extensively relied on documents produced by Christopher Steele, an anti-Trump British ex-spy working for a firm funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, to surveil Trump aide Carter Page. At least one senior DOJ official had apparent concerns Steele was unreliable, according to text messages exclusively obtained last week by Fox News.
The leaked dossier, and related FBI surveillance, kickstarted a media frenzy on alleged Russia-Trump collusion that ended with a whimper on Sunday, when it was revealed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe concluded finding no evidence of such a conspiracy, despite several offers by Russians to help the Trump campaign. Page was never charged with wrongdoing.
Citing a high-level source, Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul late Wednesday tweeted that anti-Trump ex-CIA Director John Brennan had internally pushed the dossier. Fox News has not independently verified Paul’s source.
“I think Brennan’s a sick person, really I do,” Trump said, sharply criticizing Brennan’s “horrible” claims in recent weeks that Trump had committed treason himself. “I think there’s something wrong with him.”
Brennan was one of the loudest and most virulent voices to trumpet the Russian collusion theory over the past two years, asserting falsely just weeks ago that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was likely planning to indict members of the Trump administration’s family in a scene reminiscent of the “ides of March” and the assassination of Julius Caesar. He since implied he had “bad information.”
“When I said there could be somebody spying on my campaign, it went wild out there,” Trump told Hannity. “They couldn’t believe I could say such a thing. As it turned out, that was small potatoes compared to what went on. … Millions and millions [spent] on the phony dossier, and then they used the dossier to start things. It was a fraud, paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.”
Just hours earlier Wednesday, Trump made clear he was enthusiastic about the idea of appointing a second special counsel to review the origins of the Russia investigation when it came up during a meeting Tuesday with Republican senators, a source familiar with the discussions told Fox News.
In an apparent shot at former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump also told Hannity “this all would not have happened” if Attorney General William Barr had been with his administration from the beginning.
“If you wrote this as a novel, nobody would buy it; it would be a failure, because it would be too unbelievable,” Trump said. “We’re getting to the bottom of it. This can never, ever happen to a president again. That was a disgrace and an embarrassment to our country. … Hopefully they won’t get away with it.”
“We’ll have to see how it all started, but I’m going to leave that to other people, including the attorney general and others, to make that determination,” Trump continued. “Fifty years, 100 years from now — if someone tries the same thing, they have to know the penalty will be very very great if and when they get caught.”
Trump also lashed out at Schiff, D-Calif., who has pushed strongly for investigations into possible Trump-Russia links. “Schiff is a bad guy, he knew he was lying — he’s not a dummy. For a year and a half he would just leak and call up CNN and others. You know, I watch him, so sanctimonious … He knew it was a lie, and he’d get in the back room with his friends in the Democrat Party, and they would laugh like hell. In one way, you could say it’s a crime what he did — he was making statements he knew were false. He’s a disgrace to our country.”
The president insisted the U.S. should have a “great relationship” with Russia and China, but that the “fake news” and “nonsense” distorted his intentions into something more sinister.
(Win McNamee / Getty)
Trump also criticized Comey, whom he’d fired in 2017, as a “terrible guy.” He insisted he did not fire him to obstruct justice, telling Hannity he knew that firing Comey would only increase scrutiny on the White House.
“It was treason, it was really treason,” Trump said, referring to texts between former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page that discussed an “insurance policy” in the event of Trump’s election.
“You had dirty cops, you had people who are bad FBI folks … At the top, they were not clean, to put it mildly.” He said later, “We can never allow these treasonous acts to happen to another president.”
Separately, Trump also said he hopes Democrats continue pushing the Green New Deal, which flamed out in a test vote on Tuesday, as most Democrats voted “present” instead of going on record supporting the sweeping transformation of the entire U.S. economy.
Trump’s interview came as multiple GOP lawmakers have claimed the president trampled all over what may have been the best week of his presidency by backing the complete overturn of ObamaCare.
On Monday, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans to affirm last year’s ruling by a Texas federal judge stating that the Affordable Care Act was no longer constitutional because the 2017 tax reform legislation eliminated the health care law’s penalty for not having health insurance.
Multiple congressional Republicans told Fox News they were bothered by the timing of the Trump administration’s intervention in the matter, which came on the heels of the Mueller report findings, the House sustaining the president’s veto of a bill to halt the national emergency for the border wall and a Senate vote that shined a spotlight on what conservatives described as problems with the Green New Deal, championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
A flashback look at the Deep State and establishment media hype over the now “debunked” Trump, Russia collusion narrative.
Source: InfoWars
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Wednesday dismissed critics of his support for President Donald Trump despite Trump’s harsh remarks about Graham’s best friend, the late Sen. John McCain.
In a blunt interview on CNN's “At This Hour With Kate Bolduan,” Graham trashed “those people who bring up this narrative.”
“You just hate Trump,” Graham told Bolduan. “You don’t really care about McCain and me. I know this. This is a game. You’re not offended about me and McCain, you’re trying to use me to get to Trump. I’m not playing that game.”
“If you think the only way to honor John McCain is to tell this president, ‘I won’t work with you, I won’t ever help you,’ that’s your agenda, not mine,” he continued.
“My agenda is two-fold, to honor my friend for the rest of my life in any way I can, and help this president be successful, and I’m not into this idea that the the only way to honor John McCain is to trash out Trump.”
“I’m the senator of South Carolina and I’m going to do what the people of South Carolina want me to do: help make this president successful,” Graham declared.
Bolduan also brought up that Trump and his supporters are saying that John McCain “shopped” the unverified anti-Trump dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele “all over town” — but Graham clarified someone from the McCain Institute may have done so but that John McCain acted responsibly.
“Well I told [Trump] yeah,” he responded when asked if he told that to Trump.
“I mean, I don’t care – I’m not out to please the president about John McCain. He’s my friend, John McCain. I loved the guy to death. He’s an American hero,” said Graham. “I want to help the president and I like him.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO – U.S. President Donald Trump listens as he meets with Fabiana Rosales, wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
March 27, 2019
By David Morgan and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A second U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday sought to examine the motives of federal agents and investigators who launched the Trump-Russia probe as a Republican effort gathered momentum to seek retribution on behalf of President Donald Trump.
Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson told Reuters he planned to join Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a fellow Republican, in a review of what motivated an investigation that led to U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
“How was this pushed by members of the FBI, Department of Justice and the intelligence community? We’re fully aware of the bias that existed in those agencies under the Obama administration,” Johnson said, referring to Democratic President Barack Obama, who preceded Trump.
“I’ve been talking to Senator Graham. I want to work hand-in-glove, our two committees, to try and get that information and make it public for the American people,” he told Reuters.
Trump, whose political stature has surged with the disclosure that Mueller did not find his campaign conspired with Russia to meddle in the election, has been calling for investigations into how the probe got started.
“He is on fire. Anybody who thinks this is going to go by the wayside does not understand the issue of retribution,” said a Trump confidant who speaks to the president regularly. “Hell hath no fury like a president scorned.”
Trump advisers predict Trump will make much of the matter at a rally for supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday, his first major appearance since the Mueller investigation concluded.
A Trump ally, Graham laid out plans for his own investigation this week and urged U.S. Attorney General William Barr to name a special counsel to look into the matter separately.
Trump still faces congressional investigations into his personal and business affairs. But Republicans are hoping Mueller’s findings will help Trump’s 2020 re-election prospects and rebound against his Democratic accusers.
A focus of Republican inquiries is a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.
Page, a foreign policy adviser during Trump’s campaign, drew scrutiny from the FBI, which said in legal filings in 2016 that it believed he had been “collaborating and conspiring” with the Kremlin. Page met with several Russian government officials during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. He was not charged.
Johnson also hopes to unearth facts about alleged discussions at the Justice Department both to surreptitiously record conversations with Trump and to approach Cabinet members about replacing him under the U.S. Constitution’s 25th amendment.
Johnson said federal law enforcement officials would have done better to approach Trump quietly about concerns they had involving members of his campaign.
Democrats have been calling for the release of Mueller’s full report, submitted on Friday to Barr, who issued a summary. Trump said he had been completely exonerated even though the report did not clear him on the question of obstructing justice.
During his investigation Mueller brought charges against 34 people, including Russian agents and former key Trump allies.
Asked about the Republican push to investigate the investigators, Democrat Jamie Raskin of the House Judiciary Committee said:
“There is a scramble to obscure the reality that nobody has seen the Mueller report yet. So, it was perfectly predictable that once they declared the president completely and totally exonerated by a report no one has read, they would turn in vindictive fashion to try to go after the people whoever raised questions about the president’s conduct.”
(Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller)
Source: OANN
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, took offense with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff's insistence there was collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, saying Attorney General William Barr's summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's findings proved the point.
"Did he not read Bill Barr's letter?" Rep. Jordan told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "The attorney general said there was no collusion and points out in his letter that there were multiple opportunities for Trump campaign officials to work with Russians, but they didn't do it. Russia dangled the forbidden fruit in front of people all the time and they didn't bite."
Barr's statement could not be stronger, as it meant "total vindication" for Trump, and that means "good news" for the United States as well, Jordan said.
He also slammed Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., for saying in an interview he believes the Christopher Steele discredited dossier on Trump and Russia.
"The dossier, don't take my word for it, take Jim Comey's: He said it was salacious and unverified," Jordan said. "Jim Comey said this dossier was not accurate."
"We all know it's National Enquirer garbage," he added. "The scary thing is . . . they took this document, paid for by the Clinton campaign, dressed it all up and took it to the secret court to get the warrant to go and spy on the Trump campaign."
Source: NewsMax Politics
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pauses while speaking at AIPAC in Washington, U.S., March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
March 26, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top Republican in the U.S. Senate said on Tuesday he supported a push by a Republican colleague for an inquiry into potential law enforcement missteps in a probe of possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.
“I think Senator (Lindsey) Graham has raised a legitimate question,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. “I think it’s not inappropriate for the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, with jurisdiction over the Justice Department, to investigate possible misbehaviors.”
Graham, who heads the panel, said on Monday he wanted to see a special counsel appointed to look into the origins of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page.
The warrant was based in part on information in a dossier on Trump compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.
Graham said he would use the panel’s subpoena power if necessary, whether or not a special counsel is appointed, to look into the matter.
Graham’s call for an investigation came one day after Attorney General William Barr said a report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that Trump’s campaign did not conspire with Moscow.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Writing by Makini Brice and Tim Ahmann; Editing by Susan Thomas)
Source: OANN
In a must see segment Monday night, Rudy Giuliani demanded an apology from CNN anchor Chris Cuomo regarding two plus years of misinformation broadcast by the network regarding the Russia collusion hoax.
“It’s not very clever. You guys have tortured this man for two years with collusion and nobody has apologized for it. Before we talk about obstruction, apologize!” Giuliani, one of Trump’s most trusted legal advisors, demanded.
Cuomo refused to apologize saying “Not a chance.”
“Of course you’re not because you’re not being fair,” Giuliani shot back, adding “I’m outraged by the behavior of these networks. Collusion, collusion, collusion… No collusion, Chris.”
Giuliani would not back down, adding “How about this network should apologize? I ask you to apologize,” he further demanded.
“The Washington Post should apologize and Adam Schiff should apologize.” Giuliani continued.
“Before we start jamming him up in obstruction, couldn’t we take a day off and say the man was falsely accused?” Giuliani said of the President.
Cuomo attempted to argue that the report doesn’t totally exonerate Trump and that ‘attempts to obstruct’ should be looked into.
Later on during the appearance, Giuliani described the infamous Steele dossier, upon which the investigation was founded, as “a cheap National Enquirer story”.
“Christopher Steele had been fired by the FBI, was paid $1.1 million by Hillary Clinton. Certain things they corroborate. If you read that dossier, you get past the second page and you think it’s an intelligence report you’re reading and it is a National Enquirer story. It is a cheap National Enquirer story. I’ve had four or five retired CIA agents read it,” Giuliani exclaimed.
After two plus years of crying ‘collusion’, CNN cannot back down, and is now parroting the mantra that the Mueller report ‘does not exonerate’ Trump, when that is EXACTLY what it does.
The Attorney General determined that the President was not guilty of collusion based on the Mueller report. The report exonerated Trump.
How much more fake can this fake news get? We’re at the point now where CNN is saying the exact opposite of the truth in a desperate attempt to save face.
Source: InfoWars
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Footwear aplenty will fall as more details from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report are disclosed. The reckoning will come in several baskets and will fall on Democrats and Republicans alike, with major ramifications for 2020.
Basket No. 1: More information about the Mueller Report and the basis for its conclusions.
The public wants that information and deserves it. Democrats will cry “coverup” if they don’t get everything. While Republicans emphasize “no collusion,” Democrats will concentrate their attention on Mueller’s indecision regarding President Trump’s possible obstruction of justice. Democrats will press Attorney General William Barr about the special counsel’s ambiguous conclusion—and Barr’s own definitive one–about the obstruction issue. Other Trump critics, who heretofore have described Bob Mueller as a modern-day Eliot Ness, will start crying, “Whitewash!”
There are four potential obstacles to releasing the entire report and underlying evidence. Some of it may be classified, some protected by grand jury secrecy, and some may reflect badly on people Mueller declined to charge. The president could also claim executive privilege, but probably won’t because doing so is perilous politically.
Perilous, too, is the Democrats’ insistent demand for transparency. The investigation was thorough – and lasted more than the first half of Trump’s four-year term. More evidence might only reinforce Trump’s claim he’s entirely innocent. He’ll pound that home.
Basket No. 2: Will House Democrats push ahead with other investigations of Trump?
The short answer is: Yes. The big decision is how long they will keep it up. The liberal donor base loves it, but most voters do not. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows that and wants to protect her majority, which depends on swing districts. But she can’t control the party’s vocal left wing or its independent committee chairs, particularly Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff.
Basket No. 3: Expect serious backlash as voters ask, “Who led us down this rabbit hole?”
Average voters—not on the extremes in either party—are bound to ask that question. The Democrats and their media allies have made “Russia Collusion” their top story line for two years. If they persist on that course instead of focusing on health care, income inequality, and foreign enemies, they look like Inspector Javert, or, worse, Inspector Clouseau.
The mainstream media are already badly damaged. They followed the same path and, in the process, obliterated the once-sacred line between reporting and opinion.
Basket No. 4: Did the FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies commit their own wrongdoing?
This final basket overflows with shoes that could drop. The cascade may well begin with three upcoming reports from DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz likely to result in grand jury investigations. So will the documents that Trump could declassify and release. (He’s been waiting for the Mueller investigation to end.) To restore faith in the rule of law, prosecutions cannot be seen as political retaliation. Accountability for law enforcement and intelligence agencies should be pursued by apolitical career prosecutors and made as transparent as possible.
The slap-dash investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email shenanigans must be thoroughly reviewed. Her aides received unprecedented immunity without giving evidence; their computers and cellphones were destroyed; and the principal herself was cleared before an interview with her was conducted. Who really made the decision not to prosecute? James Comey says he did. But FBI lawyer Lisa Page testified under oath that the order came from the Department of Justice. This discrepancy must be resolved, along with the obvious questions raised by the original decision. How high up did it go? Did it reach the Obama White House?
Who unmasked the countless U.S. citizens whose names came up during foreign surveillance operations? Who illegally leaked them? Expect to learn about FBI and intelligence agencies’ efforts to penetrate the Trump campaign. Who was behind it? On what evidence did they base it?
We also need to know a lot more about the warrant to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. He is a U.S. citizen, entitled to those protections, and had cooperated freely with our intelligence community. But the FBI decided on secret surveillance. It came up empty.
Was the surveillance warrant against Page obtained on false pretenses? This would be the case if the foreign intelligence court (FISA) was given inaccurate, incomplete, and unverified information. That is almost certainly what happened, and the evidence needs to be fleshed out. How important was the “Russian dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele at the direction of Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS? Why wasn’t its funding by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee disclosed to the courts? Why didn’t the warrant-seekers disclose Steele’s bias, which was known to the FBI? Why did top law-enforcement officials certify the dossier as verified when it was not? To compound this mess, why wasn’t the court given exculpatory evidence, as required?
While the court was being told one thing, Donald Trump was being told another. Comey specifically told Trump the dossier was not verified. That’s not in dispute. Nor is the leak that immediately followed the briefing. Until then, media outlets had declined to mention the dossier because it looked so unreliable. A presidential briefing made it newsworthy. The story was bound to damage Trump, which was apparently the reason for the briefing. This matters not only because the leak was illegal but because it appears to have been part of a coordinated effort by law-enforcement agencies to undermine a presidential candidate and duly-elected president. We need to know what happened—all of it—and then hold people accountable. If laws need to be changed to prevent its repetition, pass them.
After all this time, the FBI still refuses to say what started the Trump investigations. It won’t say if agents tried to entrap people associated with the campaign. It won’t say why it did not warn Trump that Russians might be trying to penetrate his campaign. Contrast that with the kid-glove treatment of Dianne Feinstein, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, when her driver was found to be a Chinese spy. She was privately informed and the staffer quietly removed.
Those are major, unanswered questions. They are central to the rule of law, and there are far too many of them. The answers are likely to pose serious problems for top officials in President Obama’s DoJ, FBI, and intelligence agencies.
A boatload of shoes is about to drop.
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