Posted on 01/15/2019 10:05:16 AM PST by springwater13
Nice take.......didnt leave out a thing.
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. So, they designed the investigation 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.
After Trump was elected, the FBI realized that Trump was soon going to have access to government intelligence files. If they honestly told the president-elect that they had been investigating his campaign in hope of making a case on him, they had to be concerned that he would shut the investigation down and clean house at the FBI and DOJ. So, they misleadingly told him the investigation was about Russia and a few stray people in his campaign, but they assured him he personally was not under investigation.
Because the FBI did not have solid evidence of a crime, they did it under counterintelligence authority rather than criminal authority – calculating that the cover of probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election would enable them to keep investigating while they tried to tighten up the obstruction case or find some other criminal offense.
This was not true. The investigation was always hoping to find something on Trump. That is why, for example, when director Comey briefed then-President-elect Trump about the Steele dossier, he told Trump only about the salacious allegation involving prostitutes in a Moscow hotel; he did not tell the president-elect either that the main thrust of the dossier was Trump’s purported espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin, nor that the FBI had gone to the FISC to get surveillance warrants based on the dossier. The FBI was telling the president-elect that the allegations were salacious and unverified, yet at that very moment they were presenting them to a federal court as information the judges could rely on to authorize spying.
Later, though Comey repeatedly told President Trump he was not a suspect, he gave House testimony patently geared to lead the public and the media to believe Trump was a suspect – which is exactly how the media reported it.
In so doing, the FBI (and the Obama holdovers in the Justice Department who authorized Comey’s testimony) violated DOJ rules about publicly confirming the existence of an investigation, and publicly identifying a subject of an investigation: the Trump campaign, which Comey publicly announced was suspected of “coordinating” in the Kremlin’s widely reported cyberespionage interference in the 2016 campaign.
Comey’s firing on May 9, 2017, was not the start of an investigation of Trump. It was the point when the FBI and Justice Department rashly determined that they finally had a crime to pin on Trump — obstruction.
In their haste and overconfidence, they rationalized that (a) Comey’s firing must have been intended to impede the Russia investigation, and that they could couple this with; (b) the claim that Trump may have impeded the Flynn investigation – based on a memo Comey leaked to the New York Times a few days after his firing.
Legally, none of this was obstruction. Yet, the FBI and Justice Department settled on this novel and flawed legal theory: Even though the president has constitutional authority to fire subordinates and weigh in on investigations, he may somehow still be prosecuted for obstruction if a prosecutor concludes that his motive was improper.
Of course, even though he could have, Trump never actually took any steps to interfere in the investigations of Russia (which is still continuing) or Flynn (who later was indicted and pled guilty). Yet the FBI, hot-headed over the director’s dismissal, concluded that this obstruction theory was a sound enough basis to go overt with the case on Trump they had actually been trying to make for many months.
On Friday night, the New York Times published what was clearly intended to be a blockbuster report that, following the firing of FBI director James Comey on May 9, 2017, the bureau formally opened an investigation of President Trump. But in truth, 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.
We have to remember: The FBI believed the Steele dossier – the collection of faux intelligence reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was ultimately working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Justice Department on four occasions brought surveillance applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), in which the FBI swore that it believed the dossier allegations.
Ostensibly, the surveillance application targeted Carter Page. But Page was just a side issue. The dossier was principally about Trump – not Page, not Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or other Trump associates referred to by Steele. The dossier’s main allegation was that Trump was in an espionage conspiracy with Russia to swing the election to Trump, after which Trump would do Putin’s bidding from the White House. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department could not verify the dossier, but they undeniably believed it.
---SNIP---
REST AT www.citizenfreepress.com/column-1/drip-by-drip-here-comes-the-truth/
There is no denying that that is the track record over the last two years.
Great post.
“This guy was Comey’s right hand man..”
His consigliere as it were.
“When did the American Revolutionairies state this as the goal of the government they wanted?”
The South saw it coming too.
“I wonder what he will say about Comey to get a deal?”
He won’t have to. The DOJ won’t do jack to the previous administration. Only Mueller is doing anything and that’s all against Trump era people.
I don’t know, but I worry that he was leaking information damaging to Comey.
Ahhhh.....it’s all becoming clearer now. Trumps plan that is. Pull out of Muslim countries and let them continue on killing them selves off and to drain the swamp let them kill each other.
Would someone please tell my why Trump appointed Wray? He’s been as obstructionist as was Sessions. I love Trump, but I am very concerned with his poor quality appointments. Sessions, Tillerson, Kelly, Rancid Penis, Rosenschmeckel, Wray, Tom Price, Sad Dog Mattis, all have proven to be trying to undermine his Presidency. From my vantage point, it looks as though Trump is fighting with one hand tied behind his back due to his poor quality appointments.
“who said they needed to investigate Trump for firing Comey”
Maybe I’m naïve, but I though Rosenstein sent a written recommendation to Trump that Comey should be fired.
All those FBI/DOJ/CIA/DNI officials leaked to the press. They should all be under criminal investigation.
HE’S a DEMOCRAT!!! NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO HIM!!!
Thad Corcoran....he is very mentally ill.
Janet Reno started that lame excuse, and the stupid Republicans BOUGHT it ever since!
THE SNAKES CRAWL AT NIGHT by CHARLEY PRIDE
It just popped into my brain upon reading it so I'm posting it.
Yeah, I know. I'm weird.
Would someone please tell my why Trump appointed Wray?
It seems POTUS is being advised to only pick those who are deep state approved because he doesn’t have the votes in the Senate for MAGA appointees.
Baker has been a publicly suspected leaker for over a year. Jordan is just sending some red meat to the Trump base here. The Mueller Coup had perjury traps, indictments and guilty pleas in months. The idea an “investigation” into the coup plotters is significant is silly.
Any chance he still has a top secret clearance?
And works for the media or is a lobbyist?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.