A Put-Up Job
Growing evidence that officials involved in the Russia collusion investigation knowingly acted without cause is undermining our governing institutions
https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/put-job
On July 17, we learned that the FBI knew, just as Donald Trump’s presidency was beginning, that there was no evidence his campaign had colluded with Russia. That’s the significance of a memo written by FBI agent Peter Strzok in mid-February 2017 and just released.
The news matters for three reasons. First, almost all the public investigation and damaging narrative about “Trump-Russia collusion” came after investigators knew how little supporting evidence there was.
Second, the more we learn about the ensuing investigations, the more they look like concerted abuses of government authority. We give law-enforcement and intelligence agencies tremendous power so they can protect us; when they abuse that power, they need to be held accountable and reined in. That seldom happens to anyone in Washington’s sprawling bureaucracies, which protect their own within the gurgling ecosystem of power, profit, regulation, and rent-seeking. Just ask Lois Lerner.
Third, when the FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies act in biased, partisan, and illicit ways, they cut to the very heart of our constitutional democracy, damage our institutions, and undermine trust in them. That is exactly what happened in 2016 and afterward. Public trust was undermined by these prolonged investigations and the narrative about them. It will be undermined further as we learn how the investigators themselves likely pursued partisan goals, ignored crucial evidence, and broke laws to do it. (The counter-charge, already being made, is that exposing these violations is itself partisan.)
Collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign enemy would be equally damaging. That’s why allegations of Trump-Russia collusion were so serious and why they needed to be investigated thoroughly, fairly, and impartially. The problem is that these probes continued for years and actually intensified after senior law enforcement officials knew there was little or no corroborating evidence. Instead of ending these investigations quickly and definitively, the investigators expanded, deepened, and continued their search despite the lack of evidence. As the investigations ground on, they took on a more sinister mien: to hobble and, if possible, actually remove a duly elected president.
This effort to take down the Trump administration went well beyond the normal bounds of standard FBI practice, prosecutorial diligence, and “loyal opposition” among elected officials. It extended far beyond law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It involved senior officials from the Obama administration (some of whom stayed on after Trump took office in 2017), their congressional allies, and a phalanx of reporters, editors, and anchors, who reported the leaks and crafted a damning narrative. They were aided by career officials across multiple agencies who stayed in close touch with their old bosses and did their best to oppose President Trump and his policies. They were led by one party and focused squarely on the leader of the opposition, first as candidate and then as president. If Trump and his campaign had actually committed serious crimes or had been credibly accused of them, that focus would have been fully justified. If not, not. If the investigations kept turning up incriminating evidence, they should have been continued. If not, not.