Fusion Collusion: Republicans Must Keep Up Pressure and Break the Democrats' Protection of Their Smear-Mill Ally

Here's the collusion that Jake Tapper as well as the "conservatives" of the Salon Hot 25 aren't interested in.

The article begins with a brief history of Fusion's ways as a professional smear-mill, and then reports on the Democrats playing Mob Lawyer for them:

Fusion's secret weapon in its latest operation is the Democratic Party, whose most powerful members have made protecting Fusion's secrets their highest priority. Senate Democrats invoked a parliamentary maneuver in July to block temporarily Mr. Browder's public testimony. Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, has been engineering flaps to undercut and obstruct Mr. Nunes’s investigation. Democrats on the House Ethics Committee have deep-sixed what was meant to be a brief inquiry to clear Mr. Nunes so as to keep him sidelined.

Then there is the intel committee's meeting this week. Despite the spin, forcing Fusion to appear was Republicans’ only recourse after months of stonewalling. Fusion's letter ludicrously claimed that Mr. Nunes's subpoenas were invalid, which essentially forced the committee to show otherwise. It was a question of authority.

Florida Rep. Tom Rooney put the Fusion attendees through a series of questions not out of spite but to clarify finally just what topics the firm is refusing to talk about. The Fifth Amendment doesn’t provide protection against answering all questions. It only protects against providing self-incriminating evidence. It is therefore revealing that Fusion took the Fifth on every topic--from its relationship with British spook Christopher Steele, to the history of its work, to its role in the dossier.

The untold story is the Democrats' unprecedented behavior. Mr. Rooney had barely started when committee staffers for Mr. Schiff interrupted, accused him of badgering witnesses, and suggested he was acting unethically. Jaws dropped. Staff do not interrupt congressmen. They do not accuse them of misbehavior. And they certainly do not act as defense attorneys for witnesses.

If the invocation of the Fifth Amendment is honest, it means Fusion is confessing they broke the law in their relation with Russia and/or in preparing the document.

If they broke no laws here, then their invocation of the Fifth Amendment is dishonest, and that they're lying to protect something that isn't illegal but is highly compromising.

Either/or. Take your choice, fellas.

Mollie Hemingway takes the pass from Kimberly Strassel and alleyoops it.

I can't really quote her piece because she includes a lot of tweets from journ0list's shocked, shocked that Trump suggested the FBI paid for the PeePeeParty Dossier - but then she includes old reportage, which the Journ0lists never got round to reading, about the FBI trying to pay for it (but claiming, ultimately, they did not- that claim of course being put forth by anonymous source with an interest in claiming the FBI did not pay for it).

Her point is simple: Why are the Journ0lists who are so au currant with the Russia Investigation, watchin' ol' shovelfaced Rachel Maddow every night, entirely uninterested in, and uninformed about, very basic information about Fusion's and the FBI's role in this whole cooked up political operation against the president?

She highlights the shifting narrative -- when it was reported the FBI did pay for the dossier, the media used this as evidence of the dossier's reliability and seriousness.

But now that it looks like the FBI was colluding with an unregistered agent of Russia to pump disinformation to the American public, The media claims that Trump's noting old news reports about the FBI paying for the dossier are "fake news" and entirely invented.

They also claim that Trump's quotation of their own stories about the FBI paying for the dossier are a species of treason, as he's implicating -- egad! -- a part of the American government in this dirty dossier dealing.

They literally change their narrative completely according to the day's political needs.

posted by Ace at 07:50 PM

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