The "Sensitive Matters Team"

As more information surrounding the Crossfire Hurricane scandal is released, the hunters are becoming the hunted.

The "hunted" in 2016 were Donald Trump and his campaign team — so threatening the the Washington swamp, so abrasive in tone, and so menacing to Hillary Clinton's campaign and its effort to continue the debacle that was the Obama presidency, the hunters justified any action to bring Trump down, and if he did win, destroy his presidency.

The "hunters" in 2016 were: (1) a Democrat administration that either directly or indirectly, allowed rogue elements of the FBI and other intelligence agencies to surveil the opposition candidate; (2) senior executives of the FBI and other intelligence agencies who not only surveilled, but also actively worked to set up the incoming president after his upset victory, and (3) the Democrats whose hysteria at their collective loss drove them to pursue a patently ridiculous narrative of Russian collusion, leading ultimately to the disclosure of Crossfire Hurricane.

In their early days, the hunters of 2016 has many successes, including multiple leaks that damaged Trump and the appointment of a special counsel. Some of those successes continue to pay dirty dividends, but the halcyon days as the hunters are gone.

Today we learn that James Comey created a "Sensitive Matters Team" within the FBI. Sharyl Attikisson reports:

Newly-examined emails among high-ranking U.S. intel officials at the time—including then-Director James Comey and his chief of staff James Rybicki—reference a “sensitive matter team.”

Based on the context of the emails, the “sensitive matter” appears to be the Trump-Russia narrative, and political opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The research— known as the “Steele dossier”— was peddled to the press and secretly used, in part, to justify controversial FBI wiretaps against at least one Trump associate.

The emails were first obtained by the Justice Department Inspector General and recently turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray Monday asking for the identity of all members of the “sensitive matter team.”

According to Sen. Johnson’s letter, Comey chief of staff Rybicki emailed unidentified recipients on the morning of Jan. 6, 2017 stating, “[Director Comey] is coming to HQ briefly now for an update on the sensitive matter team.”

Later in the day, Comey briefed President-elect Trump on a few of the salacious, unverified allegations in the Steele dossier. The next day, Comey reported on his briefing in an email to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI General Counsel James Baker and Chief of Staff Rybicki. (All four men have since resigned or been fired from the FBI.)

“I said there was something [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper wanted me to speak to [President Elect Trump] about alone or in a very small group,” Comey wrote in the email. “I then executed the session exactly as I had planned…I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook.” (Clapper now works as a CNN contributor.)

The Comey-Trump meeting was a setup, allowing the hunters to leak the existence of the dossier to the trained hamsters in the mainstream media, who dutifully trumpeted the salacious and false details to the general public. Of course, the hunters never mentioned that Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid for the dossier, even though Comey et al knew about it. The hunters smiled and put a notch in their bow.

But the story doesn't end there. The Democrats, bitter at Trump's victory, thought they were bulletproof (arrow proof?) and allowed their trained hamsters in the media great latitude to create fake news in an effort to damage the new president. They lied, they fabricated, they insisted that evidence of collusion was forthcoming. They became desperate, using innocuous meetings as "proof" of collusion. Their special counsel indicted people close to Trump, but for nothing even remotely connected to collusion.

And now? The entire sordid affair is beginning to unravel ... and not in a good way for 2016's hunters. It's extremely satisfying to watch the hunters and their protectors in the media scramble to control the narrative and protect themselves from humiliation or worse, criminal indictment.

In John Steinbeck's literary classic, The Grapes of Wrath, Muley Graves said, “When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong."

The Democrats, along with all in the deep state who decided the would try to negate the results of a democratic election, thought they were strong — you know, the #Resistance and all that. But they confused dishonesty, stridency, venality, viciousness, and manipulation with strength. They may be "fierce," but they aren't "strong."

And maybe, just maybe, they're going to go down.