House Democrats have sought to impede committee investigations that have brought us the most important findings in the Russian hoax foisted on us by the Clinton campaign and its media adjunct. Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes deserves special recognition for standing in there while taking the slings and arrows of House Democrats and their media allies. If any current political figure deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom, it is Nunes. In its editorial yesterday (accessible here on Outline, obviously written by Kim Strassel) the Wall Street Journal paused to recall what we have learned so far now that House Democrats will shut these investigations down. Here is the heart of the editorial:
Credit for knowing anything at all goes to Intel Chairman Devin Nunes and more recently a joint investigation by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary) and Trey Gowdy (Oversight). Over 18 months of reviewing tens of thousands of documents and interviewing every relevant witness, no Senate or House Committee has unearthed evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the presidential election. If Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found more, he hasn’t made it public.
But House investigators have uncovered details of a Democratic scheme to prod the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign. We now know that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS, which hired an intelligence-gun-for-hire, Christopher Steele, to write a “dossier” on Donald Trump’s supposed links to Russia.
Mr. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI probe that Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo-research firm, was also supplying its dossier info to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion.
House investigators have also documented the FBI’s lack of judgment in using the dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page. The four FISA warrants against Mr. Page show that the FBI relied almost exclusively on the unproven Clinton-financed accusations, as well as a news story that was also ginned up by Mr. Steele.
The FBI told the FISA court that Mr. Steele was “credible,” despite Mr. Steele having admitted to Mr. Ohr that he passionately opposed a Trump Presidency. The FBI also failed to tell the FISA court about the Clinton campaign’s tie to the dossier.
This abuse of the FBI’s surveillance powers took place as part of a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign—which the FBI also hid from Congress. Such an investigation is unprecedented in post-J. Edgar Hoover American politics, and it included running informants into the Trump campaign, obtaining surveillance warrants, and using national security letters, which are secret subpoenas to obtain phone records and documents.
Mr. Nunes and his colleagues also found that officials in Barack Obama’s White House “unmasked” Trump campaign officials to learn about their conversations with foreigners; that FBI officials exhibited anti-Trump bias in text messages; and that the FBI team that interviewed then Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn reported that they did not think Mr. Flynn had lied about his Russian contacts. Mr. Mueller still squeezed Mr. Flynn to cop a guilty plea.
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