Travesty

It began with an "insurance policy" initiated by law enforcement officials within the DoJ intended to ensure that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election. After her upset loss, it continued as a soft-coup attempt by Democrat partisans within the intelligence community and the DoJ. It was built on a web of lies concocted by the Clinton campaign and then used by deep state operators to justify lies to the FISA court that allowed them to impugn a duly-elected president. It involved a set-up by the partisan and dishonest Director of the FBI that lead to the appointment of a Special Counsel who looked for "Russian Collusion" for two years and found none. It was aided and abetted by senior leaders within the Democratic party who, driven by hatred of the president, blocked and/or impeded any investigation that might uncover the soft coup attempt. It involved Democrat smear shops that worked overtime to ruin the reputation of those who tried to uncover the soft coup. All the while, the Democrats' trained hamsters throughout the media acted as a blocking force, calling all of this a "conspiracy theory." And it culminated with a despicable and ultimately failed attempt to impeach the duly elected president. It is the story of dishonesty driven by extreme partisanship, unethical/criminal behavior driven by unjustified feelings of moral superiority, desperation driven by hatred, and illicit behavior driven by the belief that the supposed elites who did wrong would NEVER be held to account.

Finally, in the midst of the COVID-19 virus, it looks like that's about to change. Another 'virus' that arose inside our government was, in its own way, as insideous as COVID-19. And now, it looks like there's a path for defeating both of these viruses.

Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) writes:

“Travesty” is not a nice word. It usually is applied to gross perversions of justice, and that apparently is the context Attorney General William Barr desired when he dropped it into an interview answer the other day in the breezy courtyard of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

His composed, understated delivery almost disguised the weighty magnitude of that disturbing word and the loaded adjective that preceded it. “I think what happened to him,” he said, referring to the president and the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into his campaign, “was one of the greatest travesties in American history.”

Okay, it’s important to pause for a moment and absorb what the AG said. He just called an FBI investigation not just a travesty but one of the “greatest” travesties in the nation’s history. It was an unprecedented statement by an attorney general about his own department’s premier agency.

Over the past few years, I have blogged extensively (e.g., here, here, here, and here) on the "travesty" to which William Barr refers. From the very beginning, the accusations of Clapper and Brennan, Comey and McCabe and their defenders never rang true. The protestations of their defenders, Pelosi and Schiff, Schumer and Nadler are nothing but political sound bites with little content and even less honesty. The tower of lies that they all constructed accomplished nothing, except of course, in the fevered imagination of those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Brock continues:

The AG then ominously stated that he is not interested in simply receiving a “report” from [U.S. Attorney and Special DoJ Investigator John] Durham. He expects him to focus on possible criminal violations: “And if people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.”

These are incredibly hopeful words to many Americans who have come to believe — after the 2008 Wall Street-driven financial collapse, after the numerous Clinton family schemes and scandals, and after the wasteful Mueller “investigation” — that the powerful are never held accountable.

This is an attorney general projecting an air of confidence, not afraid to speak truth to slippery politicians even though the pushback will be fierce and personal. In light of that, it’s hard to imagine his confidence isn’t buttressed with mounting evidence of abusive government actions.

This is what the Durham investigation could well conclude: A group of people aligned with or sympathetic to one political party conspired to illicitly use the authorities of the FBI to besmirch the opposing party’s presidential candidate — and that every effort should be made to indict those who can be charged as a result.

And if that happens, the country and our democracy will be better for it.

UPDATE:
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At about the same time that AG Barr gave an indication that indictments are possible, the redacted footnotes from the FBI Independent Counsel's report were made public. The revelations are not good for the Dems. Roger Simon comments:

The substance of the multiple footnotes is that, as of July 2016, a minimum four months before [emphasis mine] the election, the FBI was well aware that the Steele Dossier was at least in substantial part the product of Russian disinformation, some of it emanating from a purported supporter of Hillary Clinton who was Christopher Steele’s so-called “sub-source.”

Was he KGB? FSB? Or, in FBI parlance, RIS (Russian intelligence sources)? Who knows?

As a one time mystery writer, I could take this in a lot of directions, none of them good, but I will resist speculating. A few things are evident, however.

First, one of the big lies promulgated by Mueller & Co. was that the Russians favored Trump. This was always dubious. The dossier makes Trump look terrible, and since we now have evidence some of it comes from a Russian source, that the Russians wanted him to win seems pretty idiotic. As always, the Russians wanted to sow dissension.

More importantly, these footnotes expand the investigation considerably beyond the “mere” fudging of FISA applications to surveil Carter Page—into areas of treason and sedition.

What in the Sam Hill was the FBI doing dealing with someone, Christopher Steele, they knew was being manipulated by Russian intelligence four months before a presidential election? In other words, they understood in July, or possibly even June 2016, that Steele was compromised, yet they continued with and expanded their investigation based on his information, knowing it was false.

Why, if not for seditious or treasonous purposes? Someone has to explain.

The Chinese communists apparently fudged the data on the CCP virus, commonly called the novel coronavirus, and lied to the world about it, but what’s becoming clear is that our FBI, at least part of it, is or was not all that much better.

One can only hope that senior members of the FBI and Intelligence communities—the ones who lied through their teeth repeated during this "travesty," are frog-marched a la Paul Manafort or Roger Stone (whose crimes are trivial when compared to the perpetrators of the soft coup) into a federal court and indicted for criminal behavior.