The deep state is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector generals report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming.
At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton matter but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done. It is hard to see how a year-long investigation of this wont come down hard on former FBI director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasnt playing mahjong in a secret, no-aides-allowed meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.
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But it is backfiring. They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump presidential campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? Thats left out of their narrative.
Downers signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You dont need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, who then called the FBI to complete the loop. No, it wasnt intelligence it was likely opposition research from the start.
In no way would a fourth-hand report from a Maltese professor justify wholesale targeting of four or five members of the Trump campaign. It took Christopher Steele, with his funding concealed through false campaign filings, to be incredibly successful at creating a vast echo chamber around his unverified, fanciful dossier, bouncing it back and forth between the press and the FBI so it appeared that there were multiple sources all coming to the same conclusion.
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Stopping Mueller isnt about one president or one party. Its about all presidents and all parties. Its about cleaning out and reforming the deep state so our intelligence operations are never again used against opposing campaigns without the firmest of evidence. Its about letting people work for campaigns and administrations without needing legal defense funds. Its about relying on our elections to decide our differences.