The Department of Justice lost its latest battle with Congress Thursday when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications.
Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation. In a Thursday press conference, Speaker Paul Ryan bluntly noted that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret source was “wholly appropriate,” “completely within the scope” of the committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and “something that probably should have been answered a while ago.” Translation: The department knew full well it should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year, but instead deliberately concealed it.
House investigators nonetheless sniffed out a name, and Mr. Nunes in recent weeks issued a letter and a subpoena demanding more details. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s response was to double down—accusing the House of “extortion” and delivering a speech in which he claimed that “declining to open the FBI’s files to review” is a constitutional “duty.” Justice asked the White House to back its stonewall. And it even began spinning that daddy of all superspook arguments—that revealing any detail about this particular asset could result in “loss of human lives.”
This is desperation, and it strongly suggests that whatever is in these files is going to prove very uncomfortable to the FBI.
The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a “top secret intelligence source” of the FBI and CIA, who is a U.S. citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe. When government agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign.
This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting. It would also be a major escalation from the electronic surveillance we already knew about, which was bad enough. Obama political appointees rampantly “unmasked” Trump campaign officials to monitor their conversations, while the FBI played dirty with its surveillance warrant against Carter Page, failing to tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that its supporting information came from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now we find it may have also been rolling out human intelligence, John Le Carré style, to infiltrate the Trump campaign.
I hate when I have to sign in or subscribe to read my propaganda, disable popup or ad blocker, ok cookies, change my browsers privacy settings ect…the internet has gone all gestapo. We knew there had to be moles along with the electronic spook stuff. With all that and the questions to the debate Hillary still couldnt win. But what other campaigns did they spook? Bernie, Cruz? How far did the Obama admin go to push an crazy woman into the White House. I think we know whos butt they are really protecting.
Not if they put the Clinton’s in jail before they have a chance to “suicide” them.
@kitt:
Well, she was “the most supremely qualified in history”.
If Rosenstein won’t turn over all the requested documentation, he should be fired and prosecuted. If his successor refuses to cooperate, they should be fired. And so on and so on. It seems “getting to the bottom of things” only goes one way. That crap has gone on long enough.
@Deplorable Me:Reagans biggest mistake was choosing Bush, that little deal with the devil ushered our big troubles with spooks. Now they think they are the most powerful branch of government.
The mole contacted Trump campaign officials to find out if Trump had access to Clinton’s deleted emails from Russia. Trump teased about it in his speeches. That would have been a crime, the insurance policy. But it would have also exposed all of the crimes during the Obama administration. Trump was smart enough to know not to get them even if they were offered. So when the Clinton emails did not appear, they kept the narrative going anyway.