Anon who made the graphic. Thank you.
We are all just Messengers, doing each other's work. Bringing forth the light.
Hive Mind.
Donald Trump faces such a decision: whether to declassify the documents showing what the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) really did to start and then sustain the Russia collusion investigation two years ago.
We also know the FBI agent and lawyer who drove the probe were Trump-haters too, who contemplated using the powers of their jobs to “stop” the Republican nominee and discussed an “insurance” policy to ensure such an outcome.
And, most importantly, those FBI employees acknowledged to Congress recently that, after nine months of using the intelligence community’s most potent tools, they couldn’t prove any collusion.
Finally, we know multiple FBI and DOJ officials — disgraced FBI Director James Comey and his fired deputy, Andrew McCabe, among them — engaged in media leaks to create a collusion narrative that exceeded the actual evidence. Some did so because they wanted to get a special prosecutor to extend the probe.
So far, that prosecutor, Robert Mueller, has secured just one prison sentence for a person whose conduct directly involved the Trump campaign. George Papadopoulos got a whopping 14 days in jail for lying in a case that offered no proof of collusion.
Mueller’s most impressive conviction so far — that of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — had nothing to do with the election and involved old lobbying crimes that the FBI knew about since 2014.
And Mueller’s most convincing indictments — those of the Russians who stole Clinton’s emails and used Facebook for psy ops — go out of their way to say no Americans were willingly involved.
Thus, today’s prevailing question is far less about a still unproven alliance between Moscow and Trump. Rather, it is whether Trump-hating bureaucrats inside the U.S. intelligence community abused their position to mislead the nation’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in an effort to negate Trump’s election victory.
As one senator who has read most of the classified documents told me last week, “the real question we must now answer is did U.S. intel conspire with a foreign spy, a Democratic campaign and a few foreign allies to attempt a soft coup against the man Americans chose as president?”
That’s a little provocative, but the question of FISA abuses is real.
So, Mr. President, as you weigh whether to go with your gut instinct or trust those allies and bureaucrats with heartburn, consider these facts
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — a member of Congress’s “Gang of Eight” that was briefed more than anyone else about the inadequacies of the Russia evidence — believes you should declassify. His office told me so today.
"Upon redaction of sources and methods, the speaker supports the president’s decision to declassify the documents to bring about more transparency regarding potential FISA abuses," he said.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), long a respected voice inside your party on issues of law enforcement and security, promises the documents will prove that the FBI and DOJ committed a fraud upon the FISA court.
“I urge the president to release them. I believe what it will show is that the FBI and the DOJ held back important information from the FISA court and that some of the information they gave turned out to be misleading,” King told Hill.TV’s Alison Spann. He added that “there is nothing there that would really hurt any foreign government.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) insists the documents will prove the FBI and the DOJ signed applications for FISA warrants to surveil the Trump campaign that omitted essential derogatory information about the sources and exculpatory information about the accused.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a lawmaker whom the president’s party has entrusted with high-profile investigations in the past and who has read much of the classified evidence present, goes further. He not only advocates releasing the documents, he provocatively suggests it may raise questions about former CIA Director John Brennan’s conduct.
Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), two more Republicans who are deep into the evidence, are certain that the evidence will prove the FBI used its “crushing” investigative powers just to further flimsy political opposition research.
A political opposition dossier bought by an opponent, submitted as evidence against a presidential candidate, hardly qualifies as credible on its own — and even less so when FBI agents, nine months later, have been unable to prove its allegation.
Sometimes, the American interest in resolving a domestic question as important as the integrity of our law enforcement and intelligence outweighs an ally’s discomfort.
Right now, the opposition to declassification feels more like a political Berlin Wall than legitimate national security risk. I say, tear it down.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He is The Hill’s executive vice president for video.
Tear down the wall. Release declassify FISA.
#DeclassFISA