BLUF[Red State] This morning some former FBI goon and current NBC News/MSNBC analyst named Frank Figliuzzi launched an attack on Bill Barr in NBC’s opinion section.
As we all have learned, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, acting on classified data, allied intelligence, human sources and conduct occurring in plain view, opened a counterintelligence investigation to explore Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The Russian efforts were later detailed in over two dozen federal grand jury indictments involving Russian intelligence officers and Russian nationals.Except that really isn’t the truth, even by the FBI’s own narrative. The FBI has claimed that a conversation between George Papadopoulos and Australian diplomat Alexander Downer started the investigation...or they did until that story stopped being tenable and then FBI insiders took to the pages of the New York Times to revise and extend that story. We know that candidate Trump was never briefed on any of the dodgey contacts by staff members and given the opportunity to fire them. Instead, inexplicably if one assumes the FBI was not operating as an adjunct of the Democrat Party and the Clinton campaign, they allowed the people they were targeting to have the activities remain hidden from candidate Trump. I think the reason for this is obvious. If they kept surveillance on these people they were able to use them as a gateway to carry out surveillance on the entire Trump campaign and, through them, the RNC. Essentially, this was Watergate but the burglars were the FBI.
The FBI inquiry also included connections between the Trump campaign and known or suspected Russian government affiliated individuals. Those connections are detailed in over 100 pages of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Mueller’s inquiry was predicated by the FBI’s initial Russia investigation. Now, President Donald Trump and Barr seek to undermine Mueller’s findings by fueling doubt about the FBI’s decision to open the initial Russian case that led to a special counsel appointment. Back at the Kremlin, the vodka is flowing.
As to the vodka flowing, if you think the Kremlin isn’t laughing about one of their information operations, by that I mean the Steele Dossier, being the cause of a special counsel investigation of a sitting president and an impeachment proceeding you really haven’t been paying attention.