When G-Men Run Amok

Via WSJ:

Scarcely two weeks after the Mueller report dropped, it isn’t clear how the Russia collusion story ends. Will it be limited to the central finding of the report, confirming that Donald Trump and his campaign did not conspire with Russians? Or might it turn out to be something more ironic—for example, criminal prosecution of Justice Department and FBI officials who led us down the collusion path?

Nothing quite concentrates the Beltway mind like an indictment. But what we’ve already learned about the FBI and Justice ought to trouble us as well: The cavalier approach those at the top took to their police powers, which they invoked on the flimsiest of pretexts with almost no one among those who should have known better urging caution.

The latest concern about such abuse comes from a letter to William Barr from two Republican senators, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson. They ask the attorney general to investigate text messages between the FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in which they discussed the possibility of sending a counterintelligence officer to Mike Pence’s first transition briefing as vice president elect. The senators want to know whether this was an FBI attempt to infiltrate his office.

Think about that. It’s nine days after an election. Two senior FBI officials are talking about inserting a counterintelligence officer into a briefing for an incoming administration official. Neither gives any indication he or she appreciates how outrageous that would be.

This isn’t the only casual use of extraordinary power. In the most notorious instance, the FBI and Justice sought a Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act warrant on former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. As we know from then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, without the unverified dossier produced by the Trump-hating former British spy Christopher Steele, there’d be no warrant.

All those law degrees at Justice and the FBI. Yet in all the back-and-forth over a warrant that never should have been requested, only one man appears to have questioned it. According to the Strzok-Page texts, this was “Stu”from Justice, probably Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart Evans of the National Security Division, who had “continuing concerns”about Mr. Steele’s bias.

In recently released testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, former FBI general counsel James Baker said he didn’t usually review FISA applications but intervened in this case because he regarded himself a FISA expert. When asked if his review was “abnormal,”he answered yes but said he acted because the warrant was “sensitive”and he “wanted to make sure that we were filing something that would adhere to the law.” For all his expertise, Mr. Baker too saw nothing amiss.

Perhaps most astounding is Mr. Baker’s recounting of internal conversations about Mr. Trump’s motive for sacking FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Mr. Baker says top FBI brass discussed whether the firing had been done at the “behest” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He added that at the other “extreme” was the idea Mr. Trump might be innocent. Guess which “extreme” they acted on?

Ditto for Mr. Baker’s description of a conversation Mr. McCabe and Ms. Page had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. His colleagues, Mr. Baker says, reported that Mr. Rosenstein had discussed wearing a wire to tape President Trump. They also talked about using the 25th Amendment to remove him from power.

Mr. Baker says the proposal for a wire was serious, and it only died out because he thought it was a crazy idea that didn’t make any sense “from an investigative or operational sense.” But in contrast with Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Baker says this was no joke, and it was but one item on a list of steps FBI officials thought they might need to take after Mr. Comey was given the boot.

Most likely this was because they all assumed Mr. Trump was guilty. In August 2016, remember, Mr. Strzok had texted Ms. Page that Mr. Trump would never become President because “we’ll stop it.” Two days after the election, Ms. Page texted Mr. Strzok an article characterizing President-elect Trump as a “major” threat to national security.

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has written extensively on the Russia-Trump investigation, suggests one reason it unfolded the way it did is that, unlike regular FBI investigations, this one was confined to a few top people at bureau headquarters. These men and women all thought alike, and there was no one more senior to second-guess them. No wonder we had FBI agents speaking freely to each other about how they would keep Mr. Trump from becoming president.

Maybe there will be criminal prosecutions. But even without them, it’s disturbing to learn that not one of all the high-powered lawyers and professionals overseeing these extraordinary interventions saw fit to blow the whistle or at least warn his colleagues: “Guys, this is nuts. We shouldn’t even be having this conversation.”