Trump arose early Sunday morning and proceeded to Tweet to the world that all this “evidence” stuff is actually helping him, because if he didn’t, it would be too clear that his administration was in total meltdown.
Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018
“Congrats” is purely projection here because the FISA tapes clearly and decisively end all doubt that Carter Page was a Russian spy or “agent,” whichever you prefer. As to “misled the courts,” notice that it is not “court” but multiple “courts”? Yes, multiples of the very best, most experienced judges, ones with years of specialized training, and security clearances, ones that know what to watch for, and how not to be “fooled” by the FBI. Not a single one of those court(S) caught a whiff of any scam. They did, however, see the unredacted evidence, and made the decision to sign the warrants.
I guess in Trumpworld it is not even a consideration that all this happened because Carter Page happened to be a spy for Russia, and it is the FBI’s job to spy on “spies.” There is an easy way to keep the FBI from monitoring your campaign aides. Don’t hire Russian spies and/or don’t BE a Russian agent or plant. I’ve worked on plenty of campaigns with plenty of non-perfect people (including myself) whom the FBI never spied upon. Trump appears to want it such that his campaign should have been allowed to have spies from wherever he chooses because Deep State, that’s why.
And then it got worse because we’re talking about Trump and things always get worse.
Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out – she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018
It has always bewildered me that Trump focuses upon the legality of the FISA warrant and the illegal search. I once read a comment on a blog from one of his supporters noting that, if the search is illegal, none of the evidence can be used against him, “fruit of the poisonous tree.”
Well.
Yes, when an officer pulls a car over and without a warrant, arrest, emergency, or probable cause, searches the car, it is an illegal search and the evidence (the drugs) will be suppressed as “fruit of a poisoned tree.” That person has a “defense.”
When it is the President of the United States essentially making the same argument (I know the argument is wrong, I know the FISA warrants were not only legal, but justified and may someday be thought of as saving democracy in America), when Trump makes that argument, he is encouraging his supporters to focus upon the process, not the end result and certainly not the meta-meaning of the end result.
If the officer messes up and the drugs are suppressed, a person in possession of illegal drugs goes free and the officer learns a lesson. If the FISA process had a problem, but the evidence proved that the President of the United States is a Russian agent, there is no “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine that is going to save the Trumpophiles because of an illegal warrant.
You can let the drug addict go free and America lives on. We move on stronger, even, as a nation of laws. The country cannot move on, freer and stronger, if the President of the United States is still in office as a proven Russian agent.
One other thing that both Trump and his apologists seem to ignore in their meltdown and fixation upon FISA, the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine only suppresses evidence that would only have been found because of that illegal search. If, independently, other evidence indicated that the person had done something illegal, the suppression is not some get out of jail free card.
In other words, let’s pretend – and it is pretending – that there was a problem with the FISA process. If Robert Mueller got the exact same evidence out of an interview of one of the “flips” – Flynn, possibly Manafort someday, Cohen, at that point, the entire FISA process becomes irrelevant regarding its legality. Robert Mueller independently found the same evidence. That independently found evidence is “good” and would never be suppressed.
Trump’s meltdown at this point rests upon convincing his cult that the Democrats – all of us who were absolutely positive in May of 2016 that Hillary would win going away – decided to hatch a plot to entirely “make-up” a fake Russian-Trump connection story – but then not leak any of the evidence, not even Peter Strzok, until after Trump became president and started doing all the things we didn’t want, like appoint judges and upset NATO, only then did we Democrats really press our “insurance policy” to get rid of Trump.
They know this. Even Trump knows this. If he doesn’t he’s beyond too stupid to be president – actually, we pretty well already know that … never mind. They are simply in meltdown led by a man melting down, faster, as the evidence heats up.
After all, it’s not a coincidence that Trump’s Tweet-fest about FISA (again) happened right after the weekend in which the entire world could tell by simply looking at the pictures that the “summit” consisted of nothing more than a man reporting-in to his boss. Oh, also, there was no confusion as to which man was the boss, the one in control.
Sometimes I think the most fundamental difference between us and the hardcore Trump cultists, is that they’re not bothered by the idea of having Putin as “co-president.” After all, among Republicans, Putin’s ratings are very much on the rise.
