Watergate by Any Other Name: A Blistering Take on Obama's Minions -- Clapper, Brennan, Comey, Lynch, Yates, McCabe, Etc. -- Breaking the Law to Target a Rival Presidential Candidate With an FBI Criminal Investigation That They Pretended Was Not a Criminal

They pretended it wasn't a criminal investigation because the law forbade them from conducting a criminal investigation, given that they had no actual crime to investigate.

So they falsely -- illegally -- framed it as a "counterintelligence" investigation, but this was always a sham; the entire project was to find a crime that they could then launch a criminal investigation over.

The liberal media is portraying this admission that the FBI broke the law as some kind of vindication that their conspiracy theories must be true, because, hey, why would people break so many laws to investigate someone for a crime unless they were rilly rilly sure they'd find a crime eventually?

The Times breathlessly frames its story as the revelation that Trump might have been "secretly working on behalf of Russia." Right on cue, the anti-Trump fraternity went into full-swivet mode. Probably the most comical contribution to this almanack of rhetorical incontinence was written by Max Boot, who offered "18 Reasons Why Trump Could Be a Russian Asset." Reason number one: that Trump, the head of a multi-billion dollar real-estate development company with interests all over the world, had business dealings with Russia. Excellent, Max!

In fact, though, what the Times story revealed was simply that, pace repeated assurances by James Comey, Trump was the target of the investigation from the beginning. As McCarthy notes, "the only thing the story shows is that the FBI, after over a year of investigation, simply went overt about something that had been true from the first. The investigation commenced during the 2016 campaign by the Obama administration--the Justice Department and the FBI--was always about Donald Trump." Moreover,

The FBI and DOJ knew this would be controversial--the incumbent administration spying on the opposition campaign in the absence of corroborated evidence of a crime.

Let's pause to ponder that last bit: "spying on the opposition campaign in the absence of corroborated evidence of a crime." "Controversial? You think? How about nefarious and probably criminal? Richard Nixon is unavailable for comment.

In a way, you have to admire the cunning of the Obama minions. Faced with exposure of their "controversial" tactic, they went to work. "[T]hey designed the investigation," McCarthy explains,

in a way that allowed them to focus on Trump without saying they were doing so. Before Trump was elected, they papered the files to indicate that they were focusing on the Trump campaign or people connected to it, like Page and Papadopoulos. This way, they could try to collect evidence about Trump without formally documenting that Trump was the target.

In other words, we are staring into the bowels of the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States. Americans pride themselves on living in a republic in which the peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of our political life. But what we have here is an effort by one administration to thwart that process. Remember: there was no crime. There was always only the Steele Dossier, that rancid pile of slander that was paid for by Trump’s political opponents. That was the stated basis for the FISA warrants: uncorroborated rumor instigated and circulated by the Clinton campaign.

In other words, they broke the law, and they deliberately broke the law, and they concealed the truth of what they were doing (pro-tip: righteous men do not have to scheme to "frame" their actions in a light that appears to be legal; they can simply state what they are doing without pretense) and now the left, and David French obviously, are praising them for having been cunning criminals and coupists.

Update: Oh, here's a surprise. The FBI continues refusing to release coupist James A Baker's Congressional testimony while, get this, leaking helpful-sounding parts of it to their media friends who they know will give it the right spin.

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:47 PM

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