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President Donald Trump has ordered his Department of Justice to investigate the claim advanced by his political allies that Barack Obama’s FBI introduced a “spy” into his campaign in 2016. The COMMENTARY Podcast explores this claim and lays out the timelines, which so often get confused. Who was talking to the Russians and why, and what do we know about how the FBI responded to those revelations? Give a listen and find out.
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The New York Times and the Washington Post are Trump’s “political allies”?
Politics makes strange bed-fellows.
I think that Trump is an idiot who was far too chummy with the Russians and that the Obama Justice Dept. was far too chummy with the Clinton campaign and the Democrats. Everything sucks. That much is certain.
Time to start casting the movie. Rowan Atkinson for Chris Steele.
Never show Obamas face. Just focus on the neat crisp crease in the pants. And people get pleasant electrical charges in the leg when they enter the room,
Liam Neeson for Comey (since Leslie Nielsen is dead.
Neeson should play it in straight action hero mode, should be hilarious.
I think the Democrats actually broke the law …. and after months(going on years?) of multiple investigations operating at warp speed to try like hell to nail Trump for anything (… and in an attempt to exonerate themselves in the process …) the FBI/DOJ/Intel community appear to be sinking deeper and deeper into their own excrement.
Yes Trump is an idiot, however the Obama(and the careerist bureaucrat holdovers) in the FBI/DOJ/Intel community have abused their counterintelligence authority at levels never seen in US history.
The problem is the abundance of Russian connections with the Clintons and the DNC that seems to be ignored.
“I don’t know how you’re connected to Russia. I don’t know what stroganoff is. If you are looking for evidence, I can tell you I don’t have any. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career of failing upwards. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you, who aren’t part of the swamp. If you resign now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not make up bogus connections to Russia, I will not spy on you, I will not lie to the FISA court, I will not perjure myself in front of Congress. But if you don’t, I will break the law, I will conspire against you, and I will write a boring book about you.”
Yes, we have a script writer. Just need about $100 million to get started. Rob Long, this is your chance to be the big player in town. A blockbuster with numberless blockbuster sequels. The investigations may never end!
Struk and Page: brad Pitt and anjolina jolie
hilary Clinton: Meryl Streep
doanald Trump plays himself
Surely all of Hollywood was doing this during Watergate.
Perhaps the first installment could have a Limey flavor: mr. Bean goes to Russia sort of thing. The possibilities are maddeningly endless. John Gooden (?) (Roseanne’s husband) as Stephan Halper.
Near the end of this discussion, they talked around a big elephant in the room without realizing it was there. On the subject of the probe and its opponents both starting with strong accusations which dissipate into a kind of muddy reality that is not nearly so damning, there’s still this: the probe seems not have uncovered anything that the FBI didn’t already know prior to the election. All of the indictments have been related to known activities from before the campaign, except for Flynn, who was indicted for a conversation that was known to the DOJ at least six months before the Special Counsel was appointed. All of these issues could have been addressed without a Special Counsel — many could have been addressed in 2016, prior to the election — leading one to reasonably assume that the Special Counsel was created solely to drag on indefinitely and wound the President politically. That should be a scandal.
The boys got a little soft on this one. They practically let Obama off the hook. It was his DOJ, his FBI up until the inauguration. He didn’t know what they were up to? C’mon! They mentioned, but skipped over unmasking by Powers and Rice. No mention of McCabe, Strzok and his mistress. And Comey was non-political – sure.
Where is it written that the Australian official was under an obligation to report his conversation with his drinking buddy Papodopolis to the CIA? And speaking of the CIA, Brennan and Clapper are pretty suspicious hombres.
A snoop is not a spy. You can only spy from the inside. A fine legal distinction w/o any basis in law. Halper, in addition to the meeting with Page as referred to in the podcast, offered Papodopolis $3000 for research. Halper a CIA contractor, was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election. Call Halper a snoop or informant, he still was a very busy boy around the Trump campaign.
The Commentary guys can accurately make the distinction that Halper was not spying from inside the Trump campaign. However, if Halper were paid by one of the agencies to gather information from individuals associated with the Trump campaign, then call it what you like, and if you like the word “spying”, that would not be an inaccurate characterization of Halper’s actions.
Noah Rothman especially is convinced Papadopoulos is up to his ears in Russian collusion. Honestly, does it appear Papadopoulos could be involved in any type of serious espionage. It appears to me he was a naive guy who was being invited to ‘important” international events with “important” international people and he was more the willing to enjoy the gravy train of pretending to be a Trump campaign international big shot.
Another thing, is why do the Commentary guys and others conflate the hacking and release of the DNC’s and Podesta’s e-mails with the alleged Russian hacking of Hillary’s “lost” e-mails. So Papadopoulos claims he knows the Russians have the lost Hillary e-mails, then the DNC/Podesta e-mails are released, and that somehow equals Papadopoulos knew about the DNC/Podesta e-mails??? From there does one infer Papadopoulos must know about all Russian hacking of anybody’s e-mails??? …. Kinda of a big inference for the FBI to start spying (FISA Warrant) on US citizens.
Powerline blog links to an article in American Spectator that describes Brennan overseeing an unofficial unified effort to find something on Trump. The article treats it like something that everyone knows about.
I really did apreciate the careful and slow walk through the known aspects of the situation by this podcast. My question: is the Brennan working group a settled matte of common knowledge?