The Washington Post finally published the name of the alleged “FBI embedded spy in the Trump campaign” (as Repubs always characterize it) and the source is farfrom the “embedded” campaign worker, but he’ll do for Republican purposes:
The source at issue is Stefan A. Halper, a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and an emeritus professor at Cambridge University in England, according to multiple people familiar with his role. […] Now that his name has been revealed by multiple news organizations, including the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine and Axios, The Post has decided to publish his name. Â […]
In the summer of 2016, Halper met with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis for coffee in Northern Virginia, offering to provide foreign policy expertise to the Trump team. In September of that year, he reached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper. He also had multiple contacts with foreign policy adviser Carter Page for talks about foreign policy.
That’s not a “member” of the campaign, that’s chatting-up some folks, including the co-campaign chairman, who – when the White House found out testified to the Grand Jury, sent the White House reeling. But, this is how one starts investigating troublesome allegations from Australians and others.
Now, the idiocy of all this is that neither DOJ or the FBI has confirmed the source, but Republican congressman are getting much better at getting DOJ to do its dirty work, and could leak from Congress anyway (probably how the NY Times and WaPo knew of him all along). The Republicans want poor Halper out there to be crucified as the “spy.”
This is what Republicans do, they take something just breathtaking in to behold: That the President of the United States has undeniable financial ties to the Russians impacting foreign policy, and by Republican jedi-mind tricks, convince their voters that the scandal is about Obama, or Hillary, or the Deep State. They say things like Hannity did on TV the other day, noting (like he did about the Nunes report) “This (“spying on the campaign”) blows Watergate right out of the water, this is about endangering America” and all the other Trump bullshit.
For godsake, we have revelations that Jared is making big money selling big “peace” in the Middle East (peace in payoffs), and somehow Republicans spend days and nights screaming about the fact that the FBI had the audacity, the sheer “balls,” to do its job, which is to find out if the campaign was committing the most serious of crimes, selling out the United States – the Repubs are lucky the FBI didn’t just shut down – had the FBI known about payments going through Cohen from Russia – never mind “investigating” – yet the FBI didn’t, they did all this “spying” for Obama, not to leak then as any sensible person trying to influence an election, but as an “insurance policy” in case Trump won. An insurance policy that makes Pence President?
Never mind, it doesn’t have to make any sense, or be true, it just has to be outrageous!
And, it is working, at least enough to keep Trump in office. Trump ordered an investigation of the investigation of Russia. That’s war! That is pissing on the constitution, that is someone above the law, inserting himself into the investigation of himself.
American policy is for sale around the world, Republicans will now hear just how awful this Halper guy is – by the time they’re done with him, Republicans will think he’s like Charles Manson. Now, when Mueller releases his report, full of just damning facts, the Republicans will have already convinced their voters that it’s all bullshit coming from a “spy” in an agency that was under Obama, and was out of control.
That is, unless Mueller has stuff that makes even Republican lawmakers very uneasy – that’s the hope.
Outing the source doesn’t help. Just a necessary step along the way.
Sigh. Republicans being Republicans. If they really are concerned about a possible spy on a campaign, are they not capable of holding two thoughts in their heads? That it might be problematic that Trump is bought and paid for?
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