In July of 2016, Donald Trump
boasted “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you will be
able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be
rewarded mightily by our press.” Trump was probably most likely referring to
Fox News and other right-wing conspiracy outlets, but otherwise it is clear
that the only person who benefitted from such a release was Trump and his
election chances. Roger Stone also actively sought information on impending WikiLeaks
releases damaging to Hillary Clinton, reportedly with the help of far-right
conspiracy commentator Jerome Corsi, who served as a “back channel” contact
with Julian Assange. Steve Bannon testified that he had tried to work with
Stone on the release of damaging information against Clinton, and Rick Gates
testified that he overheard a conversation between Trump and Stone in regard to
an imminent release of material. Stone was also accused of contacts with
Guccifer 2.0, which was revealed to be a Russian military intelligence hacking
operation. We also have evidence that Paul Manafort had contacts with a suspected
Russian intelligence operative working in his Kiev office, and supplied “secret”
polling data to Russian intelligence in order to tailor their activities to
specific audiences in the U.S.
I bring this all up again because
there was evidence that the Trump
campaign was illegally seeking foreign
interference in the 2016 election to aid Trump. It is interesting to note that
even Trump himself did not actually believe he would win the election, but
wanted to make it “close” so that he wouldn’t be “embarrassed” by a landslide
loss. If he had lost the election, there might have been some major publication
investigations, but it would just be a side note to a failed campaign of one of
the worst and most unqualified major party presidential candidates in the
history of this country. But Trump actually won the election, and that elevated
the misdeeds of his campaign to the level of national relevancy.
And now yet again Attorney
General William Barr is threatening to sic his attack dog, John Durham, on the
world—and just in time for the election; we all know by now that Barr’s
all-consuming interest in this in not the seeking of “justice,” but advancing
Republican partisan politics and the survival of Trump, just as he worked
nearly 30 years ago to prevent damaging information about George H.W. Bush’s
role in the Iran-Contra scandal from being heard (Bush still lost the 1992
election). Barr keeps referring to the so-called “slender reed” of evidence used
to initiate first the FBI and then the Mueller investigations, and how alleged “crimes”
were committed to obtain FISA warrants, but this is for the sole purpose of creating
a lot of white noise that blocks out recollections of the real crimes that the
investigations uncovered.
Barr has told us that he doesn’t yet
expect any criminal indictments from the Durham investigation; why would he
want to further alienate the FBI and the intelligence community against the
Trump administration? Obviously Trump only supports law enforcement so long as
it supports his interests. But with Trump’s poll numbers getting worse, Barr
is conspiratorially repeating his claims that there are sinister, “troubling”
aspects to the initiation of the investigations of the Trump campaign
perpetrated by “familiar” names; but we already know those names and what they
allegedly did. There is nothing “new” here, and if “crimes” had actually been
committed, we would already know if they were actual prosecutable “crimes” and
not simply vengeance-seeking blather. The Durham probe is just a partisan
political grab bag that questions the veracity of the evidence used for FISA
warrants to begin the probes; Barr’s claim that there was nothing to
investigate is, however, demonstrably false and misleading, and that is what we
should remember here.
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