Scandal

The four constituencies, lead by a smarmy collection of Democratic politicians and supported by their trained hamsters in the media, keep telling us that "impeachment" is just around the corner, that Donald Trump "colluded" with the Russians in unspecified (and evidence-free) ways, that meetings with Russian business people, lawyers and government officials are prima facie evidence of "treason," that a special counsel and his a team of predominantly Democrat lawyers are absolutely, positively, unquestionably unbiased in their interminable "investigation." And because very few in the media ask any questions, their work is having a profound effect on Donald Trump's presidency (even as he succeeds in accomplishing significant things). This is the ultimate smear, and it will become the template for dirty politics going further into the 21st century.

But it turns out the the biggest scandal in American history has nothing to do with what Donald Trump did. Rather it has to do with a rouge FBI investigation of Trump the candidate and Trump the president. Kimberly Stassel has been one of the few investigative journalists who has the intelligence and courage to uncover it. She writes:

Everybody knew. Everybody of consequence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department understood fully in the middle of 2016—as the FBI embarked on its counterintelligence probe of Donald Trump—that it was doing so based on disinformation provided by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That’s the big revelation from the transcript of the testimony Justice Department official Bruce Ohr gave Congress in August. The transcripts haven’t been released, but parts were confirmed for me by congressional sources.

Mr. Ohr testified that he sat down with dossier author Christopher Steele on July 30, 2016, and received salacious information the opposition researcher had compiled on Mr. Trump. Mr. Ohr immediately took that to the FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andy McCabe and lawyer Lisa Page. In August he took it to Peter Strzok, the bureau’s lead investigator. In the same month, Mr. Ohr believes, he briefed senior personnel in the Justice Department’s criminal division: Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz, lawyer Zainab Ahmad and fraud unit head Andrew Weissman. The last two now work for special counsel Robert Mueller.

More important, Mr. Ohr told this team the information came from the Clinton camp and warned that it was likely biased, certainly unproven. “When I provided [the Steele information] to the FBI, I tried to be clear that this is source information,” he testified. “I don’t know how reliable it is. You’re going to have to check it out and be aware. These guys were hired by somebody relating to—who’s related to the Clinton campaign, and be aware.”

He said he told them that Mr. Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected,” and that his own wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier. He confirmed sounding all these warnings before the FBI filed its October application for a surveillance warrant against Carter Page. We broke some of this in August, though the transcript provides new detail.

The FBI and Justice Department have gone to extraordinary lengths to muddy these details, with cover from Democrats and friendly journalists.

To be honest, I think there's a higher likelihood that the Dems will succeed in impeaching a sitting president (because he won an election they were certain he would lose) than there is that anyone will pay a price for the FBI scandal. The deep state protects it own, and with the help of the Democrats, is doing everything possible to sweep this entire scandal under the rug. This precedent is awful, and the country will not be better for it.

UPDATE:
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Investors' Business Daily comments of the scandal:

[The FBI and the intelligence agencies] started a dirty campaign operation against Trump, used it to spy on him, then opened a special investigation that probed virtually all areas of his life and business affairs, not just his supposed collusion with Russia. It [the dossier created by information Democratic operatives obtained from the Russians! Collusion, anyone?] originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Yes, but it found more-than-willing participants in the remnants of Obama's national security and intelligence Deep State.

None of this behavior is legal, of course. The politicization of the FBI and Justice are crimes, plain and simple. As Roger Kimball recently noted, this is not on a par with Watergate — it's far worse. Our system is tragically broken when government officials can lie and deceive in an effort to thwart an American election.

This is the stuff of Banana Republics, where rule of law means nothing. That's not America, where rule of law is everything. But if these crimes go unpunished, we will surely become a Banana Republic, too.

Look ... at the end of the day, there's a wing of the Democratic party that wants nothing more than a socialist state. One of the core strengths of such a state is a weaponized federal police force that does the bidding of those in power. This scandal indicates that has already come to pass.