Steele

Since the very beginning, I have contended that the allegations of "Russian collusion" leveled at Donald Trump and his presidential campaign were a hit job that could be traced to the Hillary Clinton campaign and here rabid supporters. And yet, those phony allegations have been an enormous win for the Democrats who have succeeded in using them to stoke the fires of Trump Derangement Syndrome and to pressure the Congress (including many #NeverTrump members of the GOP) to establish a special counsel, Robert Mueller. Meuller's sole focus is to substantiate the phony claims or, when that fails, to indict Trump on some other legal technicality. All of this designed to destroy Trump's presidency and provide a road for evidence-free impeachment.

Most of this nonsense has been preciptated by one document—The Steele Dossier. The scandalous behavior of the FBI is now public knowledge as it used the document as "evidence" to encourage the FISA court to approve surveillance on Trump. Kim Strassel reports:

To the extent the U.S. press has focused on Mr. Steele, it has been to portray him in heroic epic style. A Washington Post profile told how Mr. Steele, a former MI6 agent who left in 2009 to start his own firm, felt “professional obligations” to take his dossier to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s how “worried” and “rattled” and “alarmed” he was about the Trump -Kremlin “plot.” The FBI welcomed this “well-trusted” source, who had provided information in the past, as a “peer”—only later to let our hero down.

This is the narrative put forward by Mr. Steele and his paymaster, Fusion GPS. They and their press friends have an obvious interest in propagating it. But the new facts about Mr. Steele’s behavior destroy this tale, and show how badly the FBI got snookered.

To be sure, the FBI should have known better. Even if Mr. Steele had previously been helpful, the bureau had every reason to be wary in 2016. This wasn’t like prior collaborations. He was coming to the FBI as a paid political operative, hired by Fusion, as a subcontractor for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Opposition researchers are not retained to present considered judgment. They are retained to slime an opponent and benefit a client.

The FBI also had reason to view his research with skepticism—on grounds of its tabloid-like allegations, and also on the near-fantastical claim of skill that underlay it. To wit, that a man who had been out of official spy rings for seven years was nonetheless able, in a matter of weeks and with just a few calls from London, where he lives, to unravel an international conspiracy that had eluded the CIA, FBI, MI6 and every other Western intelligence agency, all of which have access to the globe’s most sophisticated surveillance tools.

But rather than proceed with caution, the FBI swallowed the whole package. According to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s declassified criminal referral, former Director James Comey testified that the bureau couldn’t meaningfully corroborate the dossier, but used it in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court proceedings anyway because Mr. Steele had previously provided “reliable” information.

Contemporaneous text messages from senior FBI officials indicate that there was a covert effort inside the executive offices of the Obama administration, FBI, and DoJ to hurt Trump's campaign during the election season and then to destroy his presidency once he was elected.

The media, always the protectors of Democrats, has decided that there's no need to investigate any of this and has pulled their usual three-monkeys (see, hear and speak no evil when Dems are caught with their pants at their ankles). Vast abuse of government apparatus including the weaponization of the nation's law enforcement agency has occurred. Dishonesty and corruption is evident. But "journalists" have decided to look the other way. To quote a tweet by Jim Treacher:

Modern journalism is all about is deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might hurt the Democrats.

And yet, it appears this major scandal isn't going away. At least a few journalists are doing their job. Tick, Tick, Tick.