John Ratcliffe can find ‘systemic failures’ in origins of Russia investigation as spy chief

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Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker sees great promise in Rep. John Ratcliffe as President Trump’s spy chief, particularly in what he can bring to the so-called “investigation into the investigators.”

During an interview Fox News, Whitaker talked up his former colleague, who over the weekend was picked to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence.



“I think he’s perfectly qualified to do this role. I think he’s a smart and talented individual and he cut his teeth at the Department of Justice,” Whitaker said of Ratcliffe on Monday. “I think he’s perfect for that — straight out of central casting for that role.”

Ratcliffe, a three-term Republican congressman from Texas, served as U.S. attorney at the same time as Whitaker during the George W. Bush administration. His nomination to the role of overseeing the intelligence community has rattled Democrats, who believe he is too inexperienced and blindly loyal to the president. There is uncertainty in whether the nomination will pass the GOP-controlled Senate, where some lawmakers only got their first glimpse of Ratcliffe during his tense grilling of former special counsel Robert Mueller last week.

But Trump allies keenly focused on Attorney General William Barr’s review of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation have high hopes in Ratcliffe, who has put his prosecutorial skills to good use as a member of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

Whitaker, who briefly oversaw Mueller’s Russia investigation before Barr took the reins at DOJ, said Barr “is the perfect person to turn over every rock” and explained what Ratcliffe could bring to the table as DNI, even if he does not have prosecutorial power.

“What Ratcliffe can do at DNI is he can look at the entire intelligence community and see if there were systemic failures for how these investigations were kicked off and some of the issues with [former Trump campaign adviser George] Papadopoulos and others and how other countries were interacted with,” Whitaker said. “With Barr and Ratcliffe both working these angles, they’re the perfect team.”

Barr’s review is being led by Connecticut’s U.S. Attorney John Durham, and it is examining, in part, the conduct of the Justice Department and the FBI in the run-up to the 2016 election and afterwards.

Over the weekend, hours before it was revealed he was Trump’s pick to replace Coast as DNI, Ratcliffe said during a Fox News interview he believed Obama administration officials committed crimes and expressed confidence in Barr bringing them to justice.

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Ratcliffe said during a Fox News interview he believed Obama administration officials committed crimes and expressed confidence in Barr bringing them to justice.

THERE’S your extreme left wing concern: looking into the deep state.

The Democratic National Committee had their lawsuit against Donald Trump’s campaign over Russian collusion dismissed for being “entirely divorced from the facts.”

Not only did the DNC not provide any evidence of collusion, the sharing of DNC e-mails after their publication is covered by the First Amendment, Judge John Koetl ruled.

OOPS.
You mean even President Trump and his family and his campaign associates have 1st Amendment rights?
Ouch.
That must burn the Dems.

Part of this judge’s 81 page decision:

“The DNC argues that the various meetings and conversations between the defendants in this case and with persons connected to the Russian government during the time that Russian GRU agents were stealing the DNC’s information show that the defendants conspired with the Russian Federation to steal and disseminate the DNC’s materials,” Koeltl wrote. “That argument is entirely divorced from the facts actually alleged in the Second Amended complaint.”

The DNC relied on an argument that the Trump campaign’s sharing of the information post-hack was evidence of the conspiracy pre-hack, which as Koetle concluded is simply nonsense.

Heh.

A civil suit has a lower standard of proof than a criminal prosecution, and the DNC couldn’t even muster enough to keep the judge from dismissing the civil complaint.

Oh, well, two + years of doing nothing down the drain for Dems.

Now Ratcliff can finish the job.

@Nan G: The one and only thing the Democrats are good at is wasting time and money in the judicial system.

during the time that Russian GRU agents were stealing the DNC’s information

That is making a vast assumption. That premise is in extreme doubt.