Don's Tuesday Column

        THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   2/13/2018

They’d really get away with it?

Where we are now is a front row seat for a rolling circus of criminal, political surveillance and corruption from Barack Obama’s presidency, to Clinton’s actions (the HRC campaign, the DNC et al) during and after the election, to the upper echelons in the Obama Department of Justice and FBI, and the mainstream news media (MSN). To be sure, the MSN has performed normally when it comes to muckraking, investigative, confidential-sourced revelations of suspected perfidy—it’s just that they have turned their attention to one and only one side in the controversies. Spying, legal and illegal, has ceased being suspicious if done to Republicans.

For whatever reason—whether a top-down determination by network executives, leading editors and reporters to hew to the progressive Democratic side, or a migration of the most liberal among us to the towers of elite coastal, DC media environs—the end result is plain for all to see. The MSN doesn’t rely on elections or votes to maintain its position as the arbiter of truth, the author of the “first draft of history.” If a news story or “narrative” is deemed the equivalent of a 4-alarm fire, it leads the broadcast and rises to the top of the page; if not, it’s a quick, quiet burial.

This is not disputable as we now have balancing alternative voices and sources; the 3 networks and East Coast print monopoly have to contend, and compete for trust, with Fox News, conservative radio, bloggers and think tanks. Given the retractions, apologies, firings and reprimands over inaccurate, poorly-sourced, flat-out egregious misreporting—some would rightly call “fake” news—the MSN no longer has an unimpeachable claim to accuracy. Whatever illusion of veracity the MSN holds comes at the sacrifice of telling the “other side.”

Sharyl Attkisson is a reporter and investigative journalist (never forget the self-named “journolist” cabal of reporters that consulted and coordinated, via a chat room, their critical reporting of Pres. Bush, to advance the progressive narrative). She asserted, on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, “I’ve never seen journalists so uncurious about spying.” Her damning revelations on Obama’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal so offended CBS execs that they fired her rather than provide a platform for that very real scandal. In her extensive experience as a political and investigative reporter she has never seen reporters refuse to read or report on a government document. To Carlson, reporters seem to say: “tell me no more.”

Look up “Why FISA-gate is scarier than Watergate” by Victor Davis Hanson (Jewishworldreview.com), and at DonPolson.blogspot.com. Believe me—it is! Mollie Hemingway, at The Federalist.com, wrote: “How The Media Buried Two Huge FBI Stories Yesterday—Two explosive stories about the FBI’s handling of the probe into Russia and the Trump campaign were downplayed by a suddenly incurious press corps.”

“Now you may believe that (Republican Devin) Nunes is a dope, a stooge, a liar, crazy (or a Russian agent, in the fevered mind of Democrat Adam ‘full of’ Schiff,). But that sidesteps the real issue (that) our news rooms have never been so heavily populated with political operatives. I would add that too many reporters are so saturated with fear and loathing of Trump that commitment to their core principle, ‘Seek Truth and Report It’ (spj.org/ethicscode.asp), has been swept aside. Read the documents, evaluate them for their probity and then decide what is and isn’t reportable” (Charles Glasser, pjmedia/instapundit.com).

“The documents” refer to the Rep. Nunes, and the (Senators) Grassley/Graham, memos which are in the public domain, with minimal redactions. The Nunes memo is accurate regarding the deceptive, slanderous, “unverified and salacious” (per former FBI-head Comey) reports from ex-British spy, Christopher Steele. He literally colluded with Russian sources to provide thinly- and fraudulently-sourced mud on Trump and an unpaid adviser, Carter Page—whose reputation has been trashed without any due process, indictment or charges. That Steele was paid by Clinton, the DNC, etc. and also received dirt that was “laundered” through State Department Obama/Clinton apparatchiks, is damning.

The FISA warrants—authorizing spying on Page and, by extension, the entire Trump campaign and transition—were primarily based on that fraudulent dossier. That has—together with revealed texts of FBI officials conspiring to “resist” Trump and even hide their messages—resulted in a half dozen firings, transfers, demotions and retirements of FBI officials. Still no indictments, charges or guilty pleas for being “agents” of Russia, interfering in the election. However, Grassley/Graham requested a referral for criminal prosecution of Mr. Steele for lying to the FBI.

So, in the end, the FBI vouched for Steele and his information without verification and without fully grappling with the question of Steele’s honesty. Per Grassley/Graham: “The FBI relied on admittedly uncorroborated information, funded by and obtained for Secretary Clinton’s campaign, in order to conduct surveillance of an associate of the opposing candidate” based on Steele’s personal credibility. Top FBI officials wanted, needed and had to believe Steele if they were going to be a part of the biggest, most impactful investigation of their careers—to get Trump.

“From the moment it dawned on Hillary Clinton, late on election night, that she had managed to blow a fixed fight, and that there would, therefore, be hell to pay, the Democrat-Deep State-Media Complex suddenly had to conceal their own malfeasance by doing what the left does best—projecting its own sins onto others…As the Obama wall of silence begins to crumble, the FBI’s reputation is befouled by its own rash actions, a politicized Justice Department stands revealed as, well, politicized, and the Democrats furiously spin the facts outlined in the Nunes Memo and subsequent revelations, there’s only one overarching question left to ask: What made them think they could get away with it?” (M. Walsh)