[“Americans deserve a full accounting of the missteps of Comey and the FBI.” So argues WSJ’s Washington columnist Kimberley Strassel in the paper’s 25mar19 edition (here). The real scandal has been a burr under my blanket for a very long time, and I was going to compose some pithy rhetoric on the injustice that has cloaked that entire sordid affair. Then I read Strassel’s piece, and that lady puts it together better than I could, and most certainly in a more civil format. So I’m doing a first for RR here, and filching the entire piece for your reading pleasure. But lest you mistake my editorial retreat, I am pissed and will remain so until I see some semblance of an appropriately transparent and vigorous investigatorial draining of that swampy part of the Deep State. gjr]
Mueller Is Done, Now Probe the Real Scandal
Kimberely A. Strassel
Attorney General William Barr has reported to Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller has cleared President Trump and his campaign team of claims of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election. This is more than an exoneration. It’s a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau’s corrosive investigation.
Mr. Mueller’s report likely doesn’t put it that way, but it’s the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal—surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants.
The wreckage is everywhere. The nation has been engulfed in conspiracy theories for years. A presidency was hemmed in by the threat of a special counsel. Citizens have gone to jail not for conspiracy, but for after-the-fact interactions with Mr. Mueller’s team. Dozens more have spent enormous amounts of money and time defending their reputations.
None of this should ever have happened absent highly compelling evidence—from the start—of wrongdoing. Yet from what we know, the FBI operated on the basis of an overheard conversation of third-tier campaign aide George Papadopoulos, as well as a wild “dossier” financed by the rival presidential campaign. Mr. Mueller’s no-collusion finding amounts to a judgment that there never was any evidence. The Papadopoulos claim was thin, the dossier a fabrication.
Which is all the more reason Americans now deserve a full accounting of the missteps of former FBI Director James Comey and his team—in part so that this never happens again. That includes the following: What “evidence” did the FBI have in totality? What efforts did the bureau take to verify it? Did it corroborate anything before launching its probe? What role did political players play? How aware was the FBI that it was being gulled into a dirty-trick operation, and if so, how did it justify proceeding? How intrusive were the FBI methods? And who was harmed?
If Mr. Mueller has done his job properly, his report will address some of this. His team would have had to look into the sources of the allegations as part of determining the documents’ (lack of) veracity. A Mueller report that doesn’t mention the dossier and its political provenance, or questionable news stories used to justify surveillance warrants, for instance, is a report that is playing politics.
The fuller accounting will come only through total disclosure of FBI and Justice Department probe documents. Mr. Trump promised that disclosure in September but has yet to follow through. That transparency is now a necessity. The Mueller report is only half the story. With the special-counsel probe at an end, it’s time to go back the beginning—to the documents that explain its origin. Only then will Americans have the full story of the Russia-collusion narrative.
[26mar19 update] While the clueless Left is attempting to find solace from hopeful claims that “the last 2 years have uncovered multiple other potential instances of corruption investigating allegations that are equally as egregious as those Mueller was investigating” (emphasis mine), the country, save the alt-Left, is taking stock of what all this really means, and how to put into some perspective the mountains of horrible lies that the Dem leadership blanketed the country with over the last 2+ years. Here is a small sampling of them.
To date only ex-CIA head Brennan has cracked the lid on a bit of contrition, stating that “I may have relied on bad information.” (here) What about the rest of the leftwing schmucks who for months claimed they had “incontrovertible evidence” evidence of collusion, conspiracy, and traitorous behavior on the part of the president? Well, let’s bend over backwards and be fair to these sleazebags. Starting with Rep Schiff, why not publicly ask them to describe the nature of the evidence on which they based their streams of rabid accusations in the public press. Have them tell us the evidence and the reasoning which led them to conclude that the president was a corrupt enemy of America and a Russian operative.
After their performance since the 2016 campaign, this is not an idle request. We ask you to give the public enough detail to allow us to evaluate your ethics, reasoning prowess, and even IQ; after all, your constituents want to know whether you’re still qualified to remain in office after what to most Americans looked like you badly blew a tire somewhere along the way to the impeachment proceedings. Who can tell, maybe you all were given bum steers from previously reliable sources, and anyone in a similar position of blind hate could have made the same mistake. Please vindicate yourselves, or let your continued silence confirm the obvious.
[27mar19 update] Here is the dirt on the 50+ journalist scumbags who kept the Big Lie about the Russia collusion going for over two years. These are the very same people that our Left, especially the local loonies, revere as their source of truth and light.
rebanesruminations.com 
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