Russian ‘Collusion’s’ Greatest Hits

From late 2015 until April 2019, the media, the Left, and the Obama administrative state hierarchy warned us nonstop that candidate, president-elect, and inaugurated President Trump “colluded” with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton, to assemble a suspect cabinet, and to rule in treasonous fashion in the interests of Vladimir Putin. The former head of the CIA and the director of national intelligence were birthed as permanent analysts at MSNBC and CNN to sermonize—with wink-and-nod assurances that their past billets and security clearances substantiated their authority—that the treasonous Trump would likely be impeached, indicted, or quit.

A mostly progressive team of lawyers, with an unlimited budget, no restrictions on time, and with enormous legal powers found all of that to be a lie.

Unable to find Trump likely guilty of either collusion or obstruction of investigating the non-crime of collusion, they instead salted their report with innuendo and rumor of what the enraged Trump was supposedly thinking about, raging about, and talking about among his closest confidants, including the insurrectionary statement of his press secretary who allegedly sinned by exaggerating the extent of FBI rank and file unhappiness over the firing of James Comey.

All that was a long, slow distraction over real culpability on the part of a number of our supposed best and brightest. And here are some of their most absurd moments from the Orwellian hunt for collusion.

Claptrap
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper swore under the oath to the House Intelligence Committee that he did not leak the contents of the Steele dossier to the media or disclose to them an intelligence briefing to the newly elected president of the dossier’s contents. When such news accounts were nevertheless reported in the media, a shocked-in-Casablanca Clapper expressed “profound dismay” at such leaks and expressed his regret to President-elect Trump. With furrowed brow and assurance that such unprofessionalism did not come from the “intelligence community,” Clapper elaborated that these unauthorized disclosures were “extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.”

Later Clapper admitted that he himself had been one of the sources—what James Comey called a “news hook”—of the very “extremely corrosive and damaging” leaks that he had so damned, through passing on information to CNN’s Jake Tapper, et al., Clapper mysteriously was later hired by CNN as a national security analyst.

Fox in the Henhouse
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein replaced Attorney General Jeff Sessions on all oversight of matters relating to “Russian collusion” on the theory that, unlike Sessions, the Obama-era Justice Department official was nonpartisan, not conflicted, and thus could decide whether to appoint a special counsel, and, if so, whom.

Yet Rosenstein himself had himself signed one of the FISA warrant extensions that continued surveillance of former Trump campaign Carter Page, a fact of some importance to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s subsequent investigation. Rosenstein, in fact, appointed Mueller, who was a longtime associate who had worked with him on prior investigations. Rosenstein had also drafted the memo justifying Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, which directly led to Mueller’s appointment.

Rosenstein would then meet with Comey’s replacement, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, allegedly, to discuss the possibility of removing the elected President Trump on grounds under the 25th Amendment that he was mentally unfit. Rosenstein’s angst, apparently, arose because Trump had taken Rosenstein’s own advice to fire Comey, which had in turn prompted McCabe to launch new investigations, which Rosenstein, again apparently, then sort of joined—in theory then to investigate in circular fashion himself?

A Higher Ego
Fired FBI Director James Comey wrote a book called A Higher Loyalty, with the theme that Comey had always put allegiance to “the Truth” over all careerist and partisan concerns.

Yet Comey signed off on a FISA warrant request without apprising the court that the chief evidence for such a writ was paid for by losing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Comey’s own sworn testimony about the dossier to a Senate Judiciary Committee was not consistent with the actual evidence in the dossier presented to the court. Comey also claimed he needed to brief Trump on the dossier because the media was going to publish its contents, when, in fact, it was only Comey’s staged meeting with Trump about the dossier that offered enough official sanction for the dossier to convince Buzzfeed finally to release it.

Yet Comey on FBI time and machines wrote memos memorializing his confidential meetings with President Trump, and then leaked seven of them to the media in order to create enough fury to lead to the appointment of a special counsel.

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