Fusion GPS - Part 2

The Democrats just might rue the day they ginned up a phony "collusion scandal" in their unhinged efforts to somehow delegitimize or impeach an duly elected president. Their actions have opened to door to more in-depth investigation of the Russian connection and as a consequence, their recent candidate, Hillary Clinton, may swept up in a bribery and corruption scandal that just might require defense attorneys and court appearances. In two recent blog posts (here and here) I recount the current status of the a scandal involving Russian bribes and corruption related to the acquisition of Uranium resources. But that's just the beginning.

A few years after the "Uranium One" activities occurred, the Dems were in bed with a smear shop, Fusion GPS, that manufactured a fake dossier in an attempt to impugne Hillary Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump. Worse, a partisan FBI director (James Comey) and Obama Justice Department used the dossier to justify surveillance of Trump campaign officials during the campaign itself..

Kim Strassel discusses Fusion GPS:

Fusion is known as a ruthless firm that excels in smear jobs, but few have noticed the operation it’s conducting against the lawmakers investigating it. The false accusations against Mr. Nunes—that he’s acting unethically and extralegally, that he’s sabotaging the Russia probe—are classic.

This is a firm that in 2012 was paid to dig through the divorce records of a Mitt Romney donor. It’s a firm that human-rights activist Thor Halvorssen testified was hired to spread malicious rumors about him. It’s a firm that financier Bill Browder testified worked to delegitimize his efforts to get justice for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer beaten to death in a Russian prison.

It’s the firm behind the infamous “dossier” accusing Donald Trump of not just unbecoming behavior but also colluding with Russia. Republicans are investigating whether the Fusion dossier was influenced by Russians, and whether American law enforcement relied on that disinformation for its own probe.

But Fusion’s secret weapon in its latest operation is the Democratic Party, whose most powerful members have made protecting Fusion’s secrets their highest priority. Senate Democrats invoked a parliamentary maneuver in July to block temporarily Mr. Browder’s public testimony. Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, has been engineering flaps to undercut and obstruct Mr. Nunes’s investigation. Democrats on the House Ethics Committee have deep-sixed what was meant to be a brief inquiry to clear Mr. Nunes so as to keep him sidelined.

Like all scumbag politicians, the Dems who have circled the wagons around Fusion GPS have done so to protect the party from yet another major scandal. They hyperventilate about phony "Russian collusion" but when potentially criminal activity swirls around their party and the Russians ...stonewalling and obfuscation are the words of the day.

After kicking and screaming for months, Fusion GPS was dragged before a House committee to testify. The spokesperson for Fusion took the Fifth. The trained hamsters in the media yawned and didn't even report on the events that followed. Strassel provides the details:

Florida Rep. Tom Rooney [Chair of the committee] put the Fusion attendees through a series of questions not out of spite but to clarify finally just what topics the firm is refusing to talk about. The Fifth Amendment doesn’t provide protection against answering all questions. It only protects against providing self-incriminating evidence. It is therefore revealing that Fusion took the Fifth on every topic—from its relationship with British spook Christopher Steele, to the history of its work, to its role in the dossier.

The untold story is the Democrats’ unprecedented behavior. Mr. Rooney had barely started when committee staffers for Mr. Schiff interrupted, accused him of badgering witnesses, and suggested he was acting unethically. Jaws dropped. Staff do not interrupt congressmen. They do not accuse them of misbehavior. And they certainly do not act as defense attorneys for witnesses. No Democratic lawmakers had bothered to come to the hearing to police this circus, and Mr. Rooney told me that he “won’t be doing any more interviews without a member from the minority present.”

Private-sector lawyers also tend not to accuse congressmen of unethical behavior, as Mr. Levy did in his letter to Mr. Nunes. But Fusion’s legal eagle must feel safe. He’s former general counsel to the Senate’s minority leader, Chuck Schumer. He has also, I’m told by people familiar with the committee’s activities, more than once possessed information that he would have had no earthly means of knowing, since it was secret committee business. Consider that: Democratic members of Congress or their staff providing sensitive details of an investigation to a company to which the committee has given subpoenas.

Gosh ... the Dems are being hyper-aggressive here, even for a party renowned for circling the wagons when dangerous information (about them) surfaces. Why is that? You'd almost think there's something just below the surface that they really, really don't want the public to learn. Stay tuned.