By Robert Romano
“Nothing has changed.”
That was House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) at a June 21 committee hearing taking testimony from Special Counsel John Durham, who in his final report exposed an effort by federal government intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, the State Department and the Hillary Clinton campaign to falsely accuse Clinton’s political opponent in 2016, former President Donald Trump and his campaign, of being Russian agents.
Despite the investigation going nowhere—former Special Counsel Robert Mueller found there was no Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia to hack the DNC and give the emails to Wikileaks—it carried on for close to three years, embroiling not only the Trump campaign, but also the transition after he won and the Trump administration in a top secret inquiry to kneecap the Trump presidency.
According to Mueller’s final report to the Attorney General, “the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.”
As Durham noted in his voluminous report, “it seems highly likely that, at a minimum, confirmation bias played a significant role in the FBI’s acceptance of extraordinarily serious allegations derived from uncorroborated information that had not been subjected to the typical exacting analysis employed by the FBI and other members of the Intelligence Community. In short, it is the Office’s assessment that the FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia. Similarly, the FBI Inspection Division Report says that the investigators ‘repeatedly ignore[ d] or explain[ ed] away evidence contrary to the theory the Trump campaign … had conspired with Russia …. It appeared that … there was a pattern of assuming nefarious intent.’ An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, it did not.”
And it wouldn’t end there. Now, the Justice Department is engaged in another top-down investigation of Trump, indicting him for documents he possessed when he left office that were effectively declassified his actions President under Article II of the Constitution, even as Trump stands for reelection in 2024 against sitting President Joe Biden.
That’s what dictatorships do. If one crime doesn’t stick, they just find another one with which to jail their political opponents over policy differences. Durham gave members of Congress a road map with how it all went wrong, citing what he called “personal bias” by members of the Justice Department who were determined to take Trump down at any cost.
The price has been public faith in the institution of justice. As Jordan noted, “60 percent of Americans now believe there’s a double standard at the Justice Department. You know why they believe that? Because there is.”
Jordan is right, there is a double standard. but he might be relatively alone in expressing a willingness to use actual legislative vehicles to take this on. There are too many invested in a system that seeks to control public officials through leverage and threats of disloyalty if they don’t toe the line, particularly on foreign policy issues.
It has become a French Revolution style Committee on Public Safety, with Robespierre-like led persecutions against opponents of the regime. But not for crimes against the state, but policy differences.
In fact, Trump’s policy proposals related to Russia were laced all throughout the original Oct. 2016 Carter Page FISA warrant as part of the justification for the surveillance, with allegations that Russia was attempting to convince the Trump campaign to not send weapons to Ukraine and to instead recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, telling the FISA Court that the Trump campaign, per the FISA application, “worked behind the scenes to make sure [the Republican] platform would not call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces” stating Trump “might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and lift punitive U.S. sanctions against Russia,” citing news reports.
The Justice Department also included an Aug. 2016 Politico story highlighting Trump’s positions on Ukraine, including his suggestion the people of Crimea preferred to live in Russia, and his doubts that the territories Russia had seized could be reclaimed suggested without World War III, which Trump was running against on the campaign trail as much as Hillary Clinton.
In other words, “We looked and looked and looked desperately for SOMETHING to exploit, but damned if that guy is squeaky, squeaky clean.” Despite that, Democrats STILL held out desperate hope they could make the exposure of Trump’s total innocence look like an indictment of guilt. Schiff discontinued his steady droning about having massive amounts of actual evidence proving Trump’s guilt. Turns out (big surprise) no such evidence ever existed and the evidence that it didn’t Schiff kept classified and buried. But, that’s just how Democrats behave and having the federal government to use as a political tool only makes them more bold.
But when we get to the point where citizens are forced to behave a certain way at the point of a bayonet, that “public faith” will no longer be required. For sure, though, Democrats need to be OUT of the loop regarding any reform measures. They are too invested in the status quo and using the power of the federal government to destroy their enemies and promote their agenda.