Crossfire-Hurricane—Revisited

You remember Crossfire-Hurricane, don't you? It's the code name used by senior appojntees in intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies for an operation that had the FBI surveil the Trump campaign using "evidence" that was partially fabricated by Trump's political opponents in collusion with Russian sources and vouched for by the senior CIA officials. It abused the FISA court system and the political process—all because the previous administration and its many supporters in the intelligence community wanted be be 100 percent sure that Hillary Clinton prevailed in the election—by any means necessary. Funny how that worked out. Crossfire-Hurricane is also a scandal that is far bigger and far more dangerous than Watergate.

But if you were to believe the Democrats, it's nothing more than crazy conspiracy theory invented by right wing crazies. Forget irrefutable evidence of wrong doing, naming names, dates, places, monetary transactions, and documents. Forget the implication of that evidence—a true conspiracy to rig an election. The Dems's trained hamsters in the media are working as hard as they can to bury the story. In part, that's why we're experiencing the hysteria surrounding the Helsinki Summit. It's an extremely effective distraction from Crossfire Hurricane. Kudos to the Dems and the media hamsters for getting the job done.

But Crossfire Hurricane won't go away. Kim Strassel continues her outstanding reporting on the scandal focusing on John Brennan:

... the man who deserves a belated bit of scrutiny is former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan. He’s accused President Trump of “venality, moral turpitude and political corruption,” and berated GOP investigations of the FBI. This week he claimed on Twitter that Mr. Trump’s press conference in Helsinki was “nothing short of treasonous.” This is rough stuff, even for an Obama partisan.

That’s what Mr. Brennan is—a partisan—and it is why his role in the 2016 scandal is in some ways more concerning than the FBI’s. Mr. Comey stands accused of flouting the rules, breaking the chain of command, abusing investigatory powers. Yet it seems far likelier that the FBI’s Trump investigation was a function of arrogance and overconfidence than some partisan plot. No such case can be made for Mr. Brennan. Before his nomination as CIA director, he served as a close Obama adviser. And the record shows he went on to use his position—as head of the most powerful spy agency in the world—to assist Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and keep his job).

Mr. Brennan has taken credit for launching the Trump investigation. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing in May 2017, he explained that he became “aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons.” The CIA can’t investigate U.S. citizens, but he made sure that “every information and bit of intelligence” was “shared with the bureau,” meaning the FBI. This information, he said, “served as the basis for the FBI investigation.” My sources suggest Mr. Brennan was overstating his initial role, but either way, by his own testimony, he as an Obama-Clinton partisan was pushing information to the FBI and pressuring it to act.

More notable, Mr. Brennan then took the lead on shaping the narrative that Russia was interfering in the election specifically to help Mr. Trump—which quickly evolved into the Trump-collusion narrative. Team Clinton was eager to make the claim, especially in light of the Democratic National Committee server hack. Numerous reports show Mr. Brennan aggressively pushing the same line internally. Their problem was that as of July 2016 even then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn’t buy it. He publicly refused to say who was responsible for the hack, or ascribe motivation. Mr. Brennan also couldn’t get the FBI to sign on to the view; the bureau continued to believe Russian cyberattacks were aimed at disrupting the U.S. political system generally, not aiding Mr. Trump.

It's interesting to note that senior appojntees in intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies continue to subvert any investigation into this scandal. They have resisted congressional subpoenas, slow-walked disclosures, heavily redacted documents so they are unintelligible, and otherwise lobbied to make the investigators the villains. They must be hiding really bad stuff, otherwise why the massive resistance? They're hoping to delay and obfuscate until the Dems control the Congress in November. When and if that happens, the investigations will die. That's their goal and they may very well achieve it.