It doesn’t have to make any sense at all.
“Hillary, Obama and Comey worried that Trump could win, they saw internal polls no one else did, thus they started to spy on the Trump campaign, and justified it by making up a story about Russia that is not true, none of it. Now, the Mueller investigation is part of that political attack started by Hillary and Obama and Comey and (fill in whoever’s needed later, James Clapper? John Brennan?) as an “insurance plan” in case Trump won. They would destroy Trump by making ….Mike Pence president?”
Absolutely none of this makes sense at all. Oh let us count the ways.
The only reason to spy on a campaign is to get information, dirt, out. They are saying that the “dirt” is this quid pro quo with Russia – the hoax. Except, during the campaign, no one said a thing about Russia. It was one of the deepest held secrets in government. Hillary likely even knew about the Russian investigation, she has enough contacts, and she chose not to use the very real activity happening, because you don’t do that in a democracy. The only reason to spy is to get “useful” stuff in order to win. So, why didn’t they?
IF the FBI had “spies” (they didn’t) in the Trump campaign, then the FBI damn sure did in the Hillary campaign, because the news was emails all day every day. Rudy Guiliani knew of the “Weiner laptop” a week before the announcement, because of his contacts inside the NY FBI – notoriously anti-Hillary – and said on Fox there was an October surprise coming. Whose spies used what?
Speaking of Weiner, if all of this was to oppress the Trump campaign and ensure he didn’t win, how was it that Comey released the single worst-timed letter in all of electoral history? The Comey letter came out roughly 10 days before the election, too little time to really get the story that nothing new was found, time perfectly for maximum devastation, and in direct contradiction of FBI rules concerning publication of details of an investigation within 60 days of an election. Trump’s premise is the FBI worked for Obama and Hillary, how did the head of the FBI destroy the Hillary campaign if he was under Obama’s influence?
If Obama and Hillary were spying on the campaign, why did Obama not immediately fire Comey and tell the country that it was nothing but the NY FBI attempting to swing the election, and he could prove it by releasing a ton of information regarding Trump’s ties to Russia? They had the info already, why not use it?
If it is all an “insurance policy to get rid of Trump” what good does that do Obama and Hillary to leave Mike Pence as president, someone even more conservative than Trump. At this point, with Pence awaiting in the wings, why even use it?
Fox is running this 24 hours a day, the “spying” that is so illegal. It is working. Trump’s approval rating is 45% or about as high as he can get.
John Meachum, as respected Washington journalist as exists, says the primary problem in attempting to hold Trump accountable is that Trump cannot be shamed. One can point out that his speech contained 16 lies, and Trump will ignore it and talk about Hillary.
This is where we stand today, amidst a shift into dictatorship.
We simply must end on a good point, a ray of hope, because it exists. Charlie Pierce, who lived through Watergate as a journalist, knowing many of the journalists involved, and hearing of the process, wrote a necessary piece yesterday. Pierce noted that Watergate investigators went through a similar period of near panic, that the investigation was taking too long, people were tuning out, the investigators had to present something, lest people believe they were merely fishing for anything:
That seems to be where we’re at with Robert Mueller’s investigation now. Mueller’s people are still grinding away and nobody knows what they have, except that they have a lot more than anyone anywhere thinks they have. Outside those offices, the president* and his ever-expanding crew of acolytes, enablers, and otherwise unemployable suckfish are beating whatever tin drums are handy, especially on the topic of what the president* is insisting on calling SpyGate, as though he weren’t his own Gordon Liddy.
From a portion of a book published in 1974, about discussions that drifted into panic that something had to be done:
“They’re taking too much time,” [Celler] said. “They’re trying to get it bipartisan. That can’t be done. The other side is only going to make it a partisan issue at the end anyway. So you might as well call them on it.”
And Pierce’s summation:
This was a terrible idea in 1974 and it would be a terrible idea in 2018, even though the partisanship in our politics now is even worse than it was then ….As long as Mueller has a job, he will keep working and he will force an increasingly impatient nation with a decreasing attention span to sit quietly while he finishes his work—on Russian ratfcking, on money-laundering, on influence peddling, and on god alone knows what else. As long as he has a job, nothing that is being said outside his offices is any more than the evening breeze.
I am a little more prone to excitability and panic than most. And, I sure don’t have the experience Pierce does. But, I worry that he is underplaying the extent to which the “spygate” conviction is setting in among the deplorables. And, I worry that today is a pretense to instigate an investigation into the investigation, part of which will involve firing Rosenstein.
Mueller is surely going to come out with devastating reports, much more devastating than we ever imagined, in the level of detail and actions unknown to us. But, only if he still has a job (Pierce premises his article on Mueller still having the job), and it may not matter because that 45% will not care, having already made up its mind that the investigation is nothing more than a Hillary and Obama conspiracy. It damn sure doesn’t have to make sense.
I am worried, in large part because John Meachum is worried. So much evidence is already out in the open, and the “spygate” stuff is STILL the outrage to almost half the country.
Adam Schiff is sitting in the Gang of 8 meeting right now – along with one of Trump’s lawyers who doesn’t have security clearance to be there, which Trump can and must have waived. Our hopes lie in people like Adam Schiff. We must cling to that hope.
