What You Can Unsee

Those of us who have been reporting on the soft coup attempt against Donald Trump for the past two years were hopeful that irrefutable evidence that identified the hard facts and the perpetrators within the FBI, the intelligence community, and the deep state would be identified. That evidence is now available, not as hearsay, but in government documents containing the written words of the perpetrators. U.S. Attorney John Durham is said to be preparing indictments. Good.

The Democrats' trained hamsters in the media have done their best to avoid the story, to call it a "hoax" or a "conspiracy theory" and to deride anyone who has expressed concern that it represented an unprecedented political scandal and a weaponization of federal government against the Democrats' opponents. Even worse, a trail of bread crumbs leads back to the Obama presidency—something that the hamsters will protect at all cost—lying, omitting and obfuscating continuously until the story folds.

The same people who use the phrase "a threat to Democracy" when Donald Trump acts to protect a federal court house from a leftist mob that wants to burn it down are eerily silent when clear evidence that senior members of the Obama administration (who were holdovers into the Trump presidency) acted to undermine a newly-elected president. That's a "threat to democracy," but hey, the Democrats sit at the pinnacle of morality, so somehow a soft coup was justified. After all, it's perfectly okay to negate the vote of 60-plus million people when you're on the side of the angels.

Jonathan Turley comments:

The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring facts, following the release of yet another declassified document that directly refutes past statements about the Russia collusion investigation. The document shows the FBI used a security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.

What is astonishing is that the media has refused to see what should be one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media endlessly covered former Obama administration officials ridiculing suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign or of  improper conduct in the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.

Turley, a law professor, goes on the lay out the copious evidence of the soft coup attempt and then writes:

Documents also show [former FBI-Director James Comey] briefed President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on the investigation shortly before the inauguration of Trump. When Comey admitted the communications between Flynn and Russian officials appeared legitimate, Biden reportedly suggested using the Logan Act, widely viewed as unconstitutional and never used to successfully convict a single person, as an alternative charge against Flynn. The memo of that meeting contradicts claims that Biden he did not know about the Flynn investigation. Let us detail some proven but mostly unseen facts.

First, the Russia collusion allegations were based in significant part on the dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign repeatedly denied paying for the dossier until long after the election, when it was confronted with irrefutable evidence that the money had been buried among legal expenditures. New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman wrote, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it and with sanctimony for a year.”

Second, FBI agents warned that dossier author Christopher Steele may have been used by Russian intelligence to plant false information to disrupt the election. His source for the most serious allegations claims that Steele misrepresented what he had said and that it was little more than rumors recast by Steele as reliable intelligence.

Third, the Obama administration was told that the basis for the FISA application was highly dubious and likely false. Yet it continued the investigation as someone leaked its existence to the media ...

Fourth, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and inspectors general found no evidence of collusion or knowing contact between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. What inspectors general did find were false statements or possible criminal conduct by Comey and others ... 

Finally, Obama and Biden were aware of the investigation, as were the administration officials who publicly ridiculed Trump when he said there was spying on his campaign. Others, like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, declared they had evidence of collusion but never produced it. Countless reporters, columnists, and analysts have continued to deride, as writer Max Boot said it, the spinning of “absurd conspiracy theories” about how the FBI “supposedly spied on the Trump campaign.”

It is not hyperbole to state that the soft coup is the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States, and yet, a biased, dishonest, lazy, and  and incompetent media refuses to report on it.

Turley concludes:

Willful blindness has its advantages. The media eagerly covered the original leak and the false narrative of collusion, despite mounting evidence that it was false. They filled hours of cable news coverage and pages of print on a collusion story discredited by the FBI. Virtually none of these journalists or experts have acknowledged that the collusion leaks were proven false, let alone pursue the troubling implications of national security powers being used to target the political opponents of an administration. But then, in Washington, success often depends not on what you see but what you can unsee.

The soft coup is yet another example of what this country will encounter should the Democrats achieve victory in November. During the Trump era, the Dems have demonstrated again and again that they will do anything—anything—to regain power. Their viciousness and dishonesty resulted in the Russian collusion hoax, false accusations of collusion, phony whistleblower stories, copious leaks that were invarably false, the Mueller investigation, the Kavanaugh hearings, and the impeachment travesty to name only a few. 

They're hoping that they and their trained hamsters can convince voters to "unsee" a scandal that truly does represent a "threat to democracy." 

The Dems have no boundaries. They do NOT deserve to lead.

UPDATE - 1:

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The soft coup scandal just gets worse for the Democrats and for members of the Obama administration (although you'd never know it even existed if you watched the Dems' allies in the mainstream media). John Solomon reports:

The revelation that Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source for his dossier was an American resident tied to a liberal think tank close to the Obama administration has triggered new investigative interest.

The identification of Igor Danchenko as Steele’s subsource — reported by Real Clear Politics and then confirmed by Danchenko's lawyer to the New York Times — means Steele’s dossier relied on someone who wasn't based in Russia despite claims to the contrary by the FBI.

In at least two of the applications for its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting Trump adviser Carter Page, the FBI referred to the primary sub-source of the document as "truthful and cooperative" and "Russian-based," according to Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's report last December.

Danchenko also worked for several years until 2010 at the Brookings Institution, a think tank familiar to many in the Obama administration and to one key witness in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the National Security Council and an impeachment witness against Trump, worked at the Brookings Institution in 2016 and co-authored a paper with Danchenko prior to the dossier being assembled, according to Real Clear Politics.

In addition, the president of the Brookings Institution — former Clinton administration figure Strobe Talbott — contacted Steele early in the Russia collusion probe and requested a copy of his dossier to share with Obama administration officials, according to Steele's recent testimony in a British lawsuit.

So ... it looks like the Democrat elites and their think tank buddies were involved in this travesty and that the Obama administration was at the very least aware of the smear and at worst, was complicit in its evolution. 

The Dems and their trained hamsters have tried oh-so-hard to bury this. They didn't succeed, but they'll keep trying.

UPDATE - 2 (7-29-2020):

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Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. comments:

The surface scandal here is the FBI’s knowing use of the bogus Steele dossier to spy on an extraordinarily minor Trump campaign associate.

The deeper scandal, of course, is the Obama administration’s promotion of the myth that Mr. Trump was a Kremlin agent.

So how did the New York Times handle the outing of Mr. Danchenko this week? As if somebody definitely did something wrong, and it was whoever brought Mr. Danchenko’s identity to light.

“Trump Allies Help Expose Identity of F.B.I. Informant,” went a headline over a 2,200-word story, exuding disapproval that Congress and members of the public were holding a previous administration to account when the Times had chosen not to.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. The paper’s coverage of the Danchenko outing is everything a Freudian slip should be—a full-blown Technicolor revelation of neurosis. But that doesn’t mean the newsroom is not full of curious, persistent and hardheaded people who are trying to find out things. You can see it in much of their reporting. But in the perfumed ranks of senior editors, where this story was likely reshaped to meet institutional and political needs, something else prevails: fear. Fear of the loss of status, fear of being thrown to the wolves in the next social-media eruption.

I might even be tempted to say that everyone involved in the paper’s pathologically revealing treatment of the Danchenko story should be frog-marched out of journalism on principle. Except for one thing: At least the Times reported the story, and even confirmed Mr. Danchenko’s identity after it was exposed by diligent volunteers on the web. Other news outlets almost uniformly ignored the latest revelation despite its centrality to the melodrama that engulfed the country for three years. If you think something is wrong with American journalism, you’re right.

"Enemy of the American people," you wonder? 

"The mainstream media?" you ask.

Yep.