Landmines left behind by the
Obama administration and the Clinton campaign might soon start detonating—on
Democrats.
The publication
yesterday by the House Intelligence Committee, under the leadership of chairman
Devin Nunes, of a four-page summary memo regarding FBI surveillance of a Trump
campaign advisor in 2016 is the long-awaited opening act of an extended drama about
the Obama administration’s abuse of power—which, when all is revealed, might
yet outdo that of the Nixon administration.
Obama concealed his
sharp-edged, Chicago-style machine politics under the rhetorical cover of
progressivism. He was protected by a press corps that first enlisted in his
administration and then fought to stop Donald Trump. But now that Obama is out
of office, his ability to intimidate is much diminished. This past week, a 2005
picture of a beaming Obama next to a bright-eyed Louis Farrakhan surfaced,
after having been held back for more than a decade at the behest of a member of
the Congressional Black Caucus. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who had
been tried for corruption by Obama’s Justice Department after he refused to toe
the party line about the “peace-loving” mullahs of Iran, has now seen the
charges against him dropped. Z Street, a hawkish nonprofit supporter of
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel, had been tied up with IRS matters
since 2009; it has just been released from its legal chains. Democrats are
holding to the line that the prophet of hope and change ran a pure
administration, virtually free of scandal. But the memo is probably just the
beginning; we’re likely to see many more revelations come out.
Obama isn’t directly
mentioned in the memo. But he’s nonetheless implicated through his appointees’
apparent efforts to clear Hillary Clinton in her State Department email scandal
while undermining her opponent, Trump, through the veneer of legality provided
by FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Security Act) warrants, justified solely by
the so-called Steele Dossier. The dossier was paid for by Clinton’s campaign
and the Democratic National Committee; it was created by former MI6 agent
Christopher Steele, who despised Trump, and the “research” firm Fusion GPS. The
FISA Court, supervised by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, was never
told about the unverified dossier’s origins.
As for matters of
Russian collusion: Fusion GPS was tied to Vladimir Putin’s associates in the
Kremlin, who wanted to undermine the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law that sanctions
Russian officials believed to be connected with the murder of anti-Kremlin
lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The “journalists” at CNN made much of Donald Trump
Jr.’s 20-minute meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump
Tower in 2016, while ignoring her meeting, before and after that one, with
Fusion’s cofounder, former Wall Street Journal reporter Glen Simpson, who was working to
overturn the Magnitsky Act. Simpson slimed Hermitage Capital’s Willian Browder,
who had helped pass the Magnitsky legislation and authored the important
book Red Notice.
Wonder of wonders,
the liberal press, long opposed to prior restraint when it comes to publishing
material on American intelligence, is howling about the release of the
Intelligence Committee memo. They’re suddenly concerned, we’re supposed to
believe, about damage to national security and the institutional well-being of
the FBI. Democrats and their media allies, notes Roger Simon, have pushed
themselves into a corner. They can’t decide whether the best approach is to
insist that the memo is a “nothing-burger” or a mortal danger to the country.
So far, not one
Democrat has broken ranks. They will surely find procedural problems with the
House memo. They will continue to wage their fight, a la Hollywood congressman
Adam Schiff, on behalf of “the resistance.” But a resistance is not an
opposition. The numerous landmines Obama and Clinton left behind them,
intending to waylay the initially awkward Trump administration, are starting to
detonate—on Democrats.
The vulgar Trump isn’t
constrained by convention. He won’t go soft on politicians who saw no problem
in issuing FISA warrants in the midst of a presidential campaign and then
keeping them operational into his first term in office. As the information comes
out, the Democrats’ FISA subterfuge will be seen by much of the country as a
soft coup attempt. There’s no other way to put it.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/nunes-memo-just-opening-act-15704.html
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