The workings of the federal behemoth in DC would make the tangle of Amazon tributaries seem as straightforward as a lonely highway on the North American plains. Case in point: the 2016 shenanigans of our topmost public servants in the FBI and DOJ. After the release of the October 2016 FISA warrant Saturday (7/22/2018), though, at least some of the mystery is beginning to lift. The pungent odor of a partisan campaign of federal officials against a candidate is wafting beyond the confines of DC. I’ll wait for the reports of the Inspector General and Mueller before any grand conclusion. But, as for now, the public should be getting the sense that a large mound of garbage is building nearby.
Of particular concern is the relationship of DOJ and FBI aparatchiks, the DNC, and the Hillary Clinton campaign to the Steele dossier and FISA warrant. Further, as for the warrant itself, was hiding the connections in the application’s footnotes, and under vague pseudonyms, sometimes requiring a jurist’s conjecture – if he or she was up to it – sufficient to render the thing legitimate? Look, the warrant’s defenders say, “All you have to do is dig a bit”. Are they serious? Calling it proper with a straight face requires the help of an intoxicant.
A year after the warrant’s approval, it is apparent even to the NY Times that the notorious Steel dossier was a DNC and Hillary campaign piece of naked oppo research. A NY Times article of October of 2017 laid out the connections. The line of descent goes something like this: $12.4 million from the Hillary and DNC war chests to Perkins Coie; from Perkins Coie and its lead election lawyer, Marc Elias, to Fusion GPS (managed by Glenn Simpson); from Fusion GPS to Christopher Steele; Steele’s oppo research product to the FBI and into the warrant – making up the bulk of the “probable cause” for the warrant. (1)
How did DNC oppo research get to the FBI and move the national security machinery of the federal government to operate for the benefit of the Hillary campaign? Two answers seems apparent: one of America’s power couples and an intense anti-Trump animus par excellence among some of the fed’s movers and shakers. A relevant example of a fed power couple is the Obama DOJ’s #4, Bruce Ohr, and his wife Nellie. Nellie worked for Fusion GPS as it was conducting the Dem commissioned oppo research. She would have access to the Steele memos that make up the “dossier”. From her it goes to her hubby and from him to salivating administrators in the DOJ and FBI. Sound reasonable?
Voilà, we are inundated with investigations, accusations of collusion, incessant calls for impeachment, and shouts for confrontation everywhere by Democrats in a fevered state of war. In addition, the media’s fixation on what is, in essence, good old fashioned campaign smears – the same stuff of politics going back to Socrates – keeps the hyper-active ginned up. Just click the remote over to the ladies of The View to get a dose of the hysteria, or stir up the wasp nests on Twitter with any kind sympathy for Trump.
Sure, Trump has done much to fuel the hysterics, though the extravagant hyperbole predates our current instigator-in-chief. Remember the references to Reagan as an “amiable dunce”, “cowboy”, or allusions to “Bonzo”; or the chant about Bush 42: “Bush lied and people died”? The term “truther” began life as a Bush conspiracy to foment war, akin to the second gunman on the grassy knoll. You see, to the unhinged, the mayhem of 9/11 couldn’t have been conducted by jihadis. The scent of meth-induced hyperventilating was much in the air.
And we have Obama ready to step into the mire. Not content with merely using the trusty technique of smearing your opponent, he went on to bash a broad swath of the electorate. He coolly dismissed his rural detractors by saying, “… they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”. Claptrap replaced engagement with the voters. Substituting the word “deplorables” for an entire opposing constituency is beginning to gestate.
Going full “deplorable”, Hillary blasted them with this comment (Sept. 9, 2016): ” … you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic — Islamophobic — you name it”.
So now we have Trump giving back – and indeed in some ways pushing the envelope – what the left has been dishing out for years. No excuses, the whole thing is disgusting. Well, few of us can no longer lay claim to be chaste in our slide to incivility. The genie is out of the bottle. The left likes to trumpet Joe McCarthy as the quintessence of evil. Borrowing the metaphor, the left has gone full McCarthy for quite some time, and some on the right have followed suit. Thanks Trump, Trump sycophants, the loud but minuscule alt-right, Code Pink, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, Michael Moore, the Resistance, campus social justice warriors, pc panderers (meaning the bulk of the Democratic Party base), lefty bankrollers, lefty celebrities ….
Not surprisingly, some of the frenzy penetrates conversation around the water coolers in the DC workplaces of the DOJ and FBI. It’s a habitat for creating insular, self-reinforcing political and social prejudices that could be lessened if we had something like court-ordered busing to coerce integration in thought and experience. Instead, de facto segregation exists and works to amplify the mania in the media and on the campaign trail. Some in influential positions may have acted on it.
It’s starting to appear that way. The progressive dream of a government of experts, inoculated from the mud of politics, is turning into the reality of an open septic tank. Prejudice and ignorance are still alive and well even among our allegedly disinterested “experts”.
RogerG
Sources and footnotes:
- “Clinton Campaign and Democratic Party Helped Pay for Russia Trump Dossier”, Kenneth P. Vogel, NY Times, Oct. 24, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/us/politics/clinton-dnc-russia-dossier.html
- “FISA warrant application supports Nunes memo”, Byron York, Washington Examiner, 7/22/2018, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fisa-warrant-application-supports-nunes-memo