https://tsukesthoughts.wordpress.com/2018/02/07/life-after-the-memo/
Life After the Memo
As many people know Republican congressman Nunes recently released a memo alleging that the FBI used bad information in order to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. The Nunes memo also alleges that certain actors in the FBI did this out of a political preference for Clinton as opposed to Trump.
While the memo does not allege this it is fairly easy to extrapolate a use out of these illegal wiretaps. Embarrassing things could be leaked to the press, campaign strategies could be given to the Clinton camp, and it could even be used to force people to plead guilty to charges of lying to the FBI as what they tell the FBI in their interviews may not match exactly what they said in communications they believed to be private.
Russiagate
Let us go to the issue everyone is most concerned about. The Russia investigation. I believe it should continue. While a decent lawyer may be able to make a case for invalidating the guilty pleas rendered thus far using fruit of the poisonous tree arguments the investigation has already moved past becoming a legal issue. The terms used in the investigation could be legal ones and there could be legal strategies involved but it has already transformed into a political investigation. It would cause too much trouble to have it stopped so we should just let it continue. After all it has gone on for about a year with very little to show for its efforts.
FBIgate
If you have been reading my blog before I and other writers on the right have already stated that Obama wiretapped Trump. That is of course the short form of what happened. In essence we believe that President Obama used the powers of his administration to collude with friendly figures in the various law enforcement agencies to help the Democrat candidate win the 2016 election. This should not even be that surprising in all honesty. The Obama administration already has a history of doing this. The IRS was weaponized to target conservative groups for one and various agencies gave generous settlements to progressive groups for another.
Now that the mainstream has begun to connect the dots that we have long ago connected the next step should be taken. We need a second independent investigation into any attempt to weaponize the FBI in the last election.
Benefits
I consider this investigation to be more important than the Russian one. Foreign actors are expected to act like foreign actors. Russia, China, and for that matter even Ukraine and the pope all work to put leaders in place in America that they think will be beneficial to their nations. People forget how many world leaders tried to condemn Trump in an effort to detract from his campaign before the election. The FBI is something else. We don’t expect them to favor Democrats over Republicans nor do we expect them to favor Republicans over Democrats for that matter.
The FBI itself needs this investigation more than anyone. They do not realize yet but they are in serious trouble as an institution. As a general rule Democrats are against the FBI and other law enforcement agencies while the Republicans support them. Support from Democrats will not last. Democrats have convinced one of their core constituencies that law enforcement agencies are fundamentally racist. Organizations that have traditionally supported Democrats such as the ACLU have always been at odds with the Democrats and when push comes to shove Democrats will support them over the FBI as they are more popular with their base.
The FBI needs Republicans to trust it again. An institution without any popular support is very vulnerable to the whims of politicians. A credible investigation would be the only way to do that at this point. If the bureau refuses then Republicans, a significant portion of which already believe that the FBI worked against the Trump campaign, will not be swayed.
Grounds
Liberals like to think that there are plenty of grounds for the special counsel investigation into President Trump. If you were to think that then you would also have to admit that there are plenty of grounds for an investigation into the conduct of the FBI during the election.
You initially had the infamous tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch in which they discussed grand babies or something while taking private jets to meet in an out-of-the-way location. Then you have the confirmed fact that the FBI changed the language of its reports to make it consistent with the language used by the Clinton campaign. Think about that. A political campaign and the FBI making sure that they were using the same language to send a consistent message. Lastly you have recent revelations showing that even before the investigation into her private servers were over leadership in the FBI had already decided to exonerate her.
These are just some of the verified things that have come out and does not even include the potential for FISA abuse. The FBI and Democrats do not help things either by hiding behind national security when documents like the memo clearly include nothing that compromises it.
Again if there are enough grounds for a special counsel to be called on the Trump Russia collusion there is certainly more than enough grounds for a special counsel to be called on the conduct of the FBI during the election. I would even argue that it is even a greater national security issue to have a FBI compromised by the Democrats than to have a foreign government attempt to interfere with our election (mostly because all foreign governments try to influence the US election).
Media
The media needs to be mentioned in this as well as their behavior has been appalling. In most civilized countries the role of the media is to demand greater government transparency. It is only in the US where the media condemns the government for being more transparent. In any situation it is usually the government asking a journalist not to release a story to protect national security. It is only in the US where the journalists ask the government not to release things for national security.
Grassley Memo
As I write this article it seems that a second document was released detailing further FISA abuses by the FBI. Good job to both Senators Grassley and Graham for having the courage to release the document. It should be available for everyone to read by now. The only thing I will highlight is that in that document the senators allege that the FBI stated to the FISA court that the Steele document was credible because Steele himself was credible.
This is amazing to me. In most cases the prosecution would have to verify the credibility of the actual source used by the agent as opposed to the agent himself. After all the information is coming from the source. In this case the it looks like the FBI did not even bother finding out who the source was and instead accepted everything lock, stock, and barrel because apparently Steele was just such an incredible agent.
If the standard the FISA court uses is simply the word of the agents involved then it is no wonder that the court has rejected less than 20 of the more than 35000 applications it has received.
