The Cover Story
Trump Tweets – 3/15/19
More “New evidence that the Obama era team of the FBI, DOJ & CIA were working together to Spy on (and take out) President Trump, all the way back in 2015.” A transcript of Peter Strzok’s testimony is devastating. Hopefully the Mueller Report will be covering this. More So, if there was knowingly & acknowledged to be “zero” crime when the Special Counsel was appointed, and if the appointment was made based on the Fake Dossier (paid for by Crooked Hillary) and now disgraced Andrew McCabe (he & all stated no crime), then the Special Counsel…should never have been appointed and there should be no Mueller Report. This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime. Russian Collusion was nothing more than an excuse by the Democrats for losing an Election that they thought they were going to win…THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!
Let’s get this clear. The story the President wants us to believe, is that the FBI and Department of Justice were aligned against him in the election of 2016. He wants us to think that an FBI “cabal,” led by Director James Comey, plotted to stop Trump from being elected, and keep him from serving as President. He needs us to accept his assertion that the evidence that began the “Russia” investigation in the summer of 2016 was the “Fake Dossier,” (or “Dodgy Dossier” as Carter Page would say) developed by former British intelligence operative Michael Steele. In fact, he really wants us to believe that the only Russian collusion that occurred was the Clinton campaign colluding with the Russians through Steele.
If we accept all of this, then the President concludes that all of the crimes that have occurred since; all of the obstruction, perjury, witness tampering, and bribery; were done to protect themselves from a false premise, and therefore are “process” crimes, and, according to the President and his supporters, not important. As we grow closer to the climax of the Russia investigation; the final Mueller Report and what are likely to be a series of indictments of those closest to the President, the din of Trump produced “fake news” will grow even louder.
In June of 2018, the Republican led House Judiciary Committee had a series of closed hearings with those that they considered “the leaders” of the “Plot to Stop Trump” movement. Peter Strzok, former Deputy Director of Counter-Intelligence; Bruce Ohr, former Associate Deputy Attorney General and leading expert on Russian organized crime; and Lisa Page, Justice Department Attorney; each were brought before the committee and questioned for several hours. The transcripts were kept sealed at the time, and the minority Democrats were bound by secrecy from revealing them. Republicans “cherry-picked” a few key sentences to try to make their points, but Democrats characterized the testimony as debunking the conspiracy theory.
When the Democrats gained control of the House, this same Committee brought Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen in to testify in open and closed sessions. The impact of the Cohen testimony was dramatic; he accused the President of the United States of multiple crimes. His testimony was telling, and came across as truthful, particularly as much of it was backed with documentation.
To counter the Cohen testimony’s impact, Republican Congressman Doug Collins, the Ranking Minority Member on the Judiciary Committee, took it upon himself to change the discussion. In the past two weeks, he has leaked the full transcripts of Strzok, Ohr and Page; each hundred of pages. Unlike the Democrats who respected the Committee rules, Collins did so without the permission from the Chairman or the majority.
Obfuscation is defined as making something obscure, unclear, and unintelligible. By dropping hundreds of pages of testimony, Ranking Member Collins tried to bury the Cohen testimony. The problem is that in all of that testimony, the Republican Committee members were unable to prove their key assertions.
The most important for them, was that the FBI, CIA, DOJ and the Obama Administration were trying to “take out” Trump from 2015. The FBI opened their investigation into members of the Trump campaign because they were informed that Trump campaign members had contact with Russian intelligence regarding the hacked DNC emails. Their first source was the Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, who reported a conversation with Trump Foreign Policy Advisor George Papadoupolos, when Papadoupolos bragged about knowing about the emails. This was long before public knowledge that the DNC was hacked, and long before the Steele Dossier was available.
Once the FBI began to look at Trump personnel, they realized that there were multiple contacts with multiple Russian Intelligence sources. Papadoupolos, foreign policy advisor Carter Page, Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, and chief foreign policy advisor General Michael Flynn all had documented interactions with Russian sources. We know now that in addition to these, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner met with representatives of the Russian government, as well as campaign surrogate Senator Jeff Sessions.
The President has a fundamental (and intentional) misunderstanding of the role of the FBI. They don’t have to “know” that there’s a crime to investigate. The agency, particularly when acting as the counter-intelligence arm of the United States, investigates to see IF a crime has been committed. They begin with “probable cause” that a crime may have occurred, then dig in to see whether there was an actual crime. When the evidence led to the possibility that the President of the United States might be involved, a Special Counsel was appointed. We now await his results.
While we wait, we can examine the fundamental flaw in the President’s “FBI conspiracy” theory. If there was a plot to stop Trump, the obvious way to do so would be to leak the existence of the Russia investigation before the election. Just as the Comey announcement of the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation impacted the election, certainly information that Trump was under investigation would have done the same. If Comey, McCabe, Ohr, Strzok, Page and the others were plotting to stop Trump, why didn’t the investigation leak? Thanks to Mr. Collins, we can hear Ms. Page’s answer to that question.
Ms. Jackson – Lee: If someone at the FBI was trying to stop Donald Trump from being elected President, yourself or Mr. Strzok or others, do you think they could have publicly disclosed that his campaign was under investigation for potentially colluding with Russian Government actors?
Ms. Page – That’s why you would think.
Ms. Jackson-Lee: But to your knowledge, no one at the FBI did disclose this fact publicly, correct?
Ms. Page: No, ma’am.
Ms. Jackson-Lee: Would you consider this strong evidence that there was not a deep state conspiracy at the FBI to stop Donald Trump from being selected-elected?
Ms. Page: Yes, ma’am. That and the fact that this is an extraordinary (sic) conservative organization. So the notion that there’s a deep state conspiracy about anything is laughable.
The conspiracy wasn’t in the FBI or Department of Justice. The conspiracy today is among the Republicans, from Doug Collins to Donald Trump, trying to undercut the Mueller investigation. It isn’t a “crime” to conspire to undermine an investigation (though crimes may be committed in doing so) but it is wrong. Americans need to know the truth, even though that truth may do the opposite of setting the President and his friends free.
