Dem House "Burying The Other Russia Story?" - There is NONE! And Why The CIA Gets More Restive With Each Trump Passing Day

The clueless imp, Devin Nunes, who led the Reeptard House down an endless conspiracy rabbit hole - which the WSJ editors now want resumed.

Once again, barely a week ago,, The Wall Street Journal disclosed the dichotomy between its regular reporting of news, and its FOXian Op-ed page.  This time in its editorial 'Burying the Other  Russia Story' (Nov. 10-11, p. A12), claiming:

"Adam Schiff will shut down the probe that found FBI abuses"

Of course, no such previous probe had a scintilla of validity. It was all invented and propelled by the odious little Reeptard imp, Devin Nunes. As I noted in a previous post on how the classless Trump toady leaked classified info, e.g

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/03/devin-nunes-leaks-classified-info.html

"Nunes by his feckless and reckless actions confirmed once and for all what many of us already believed: he is merely a Trump toady doing his master's work. After all, this turkey  served on Trump’s national security transition team, so why would he not seek to do all possible to cover for his Fuhrer?"


With the release of a redacted Democratic memorandum in February, we beheld just how deeply Nunes had sacrificed his honor, patriotism and veracity in the service of the Dotard traitor.  That memo, even with redaction, boldly countered Nunes'  claims that top F.B.I. and Justice Department officials had "abused their powers in spying on Carter Page" - the former Trump campaign aide.  Hence, we know who the real liars are:  Nunes and Trump -  the two traitors who have attempted to blow distracting smoke onto the Mueller probe. And now with Trump's appointment of Whitaker to knee cap the investigation, it's clear to even the Densan portion of the populace. 

It's certainly clear to the CIA, which agency's operatives are becoming ever more restive and alarmed - according to former JFK assassination researcher, Jefferson Morley, e.g.
What Happens When The Intelligence Community Decides That Trump Is Too Dangerous To Be President?

As Morley notes:

"At the halfway point in Trump’s first term, these formers see themselves as a bulwark of an endangered democracy. The president and his supporters see a cabal of “deep state” radicals out to overturn the will of the people. With the appointment of Matthew Whitaker, an unqualified political operative, as Attorney General, Brennan said a “constitutional crisis” is fast approaching. The clash between a willfully ignorant commander in chief and a politicized intelligence community seems sure to deepen."

Adding:

"The problem with Trump in the eyes of these CIA formers is almost pre-political. The president’s policy decisions matter less than his contempt for intelligence and the system that collects it.....

CIA operatives could trust both neoconservative George W. Bush and internationalist Barack Obama with that arsenal because they believed, whatever their politics, both presidents were rational actors. With Trump, they can have no such confidence.

Trump’s contempt for the intelligence profession, weaponized in his “deep state” conspiracy theories, has agency personnel feeling professionally vulnerable, perhaps for the first time. An irrational chief executive has shattered their apolitical pretensions and forced them to re-examine what their core beliefs require....

If there’s one thing to be learned from talking to former CIA personnel, it’s the sense that the CIA system—powerful, stealthy, and dangerous—is blinking red about the latest news of an authoritarian leader in an unstable nation."

What does "blinking red" mean?  Well, we will soon find out, but I'd wager it's nothing salutary. I am also fairly certain that the agency's operatives have had it with the cockeyed conspiracy crappola being spewed out by the Right's Trump-protecting trolls  -including the Wall Street Journal's Op-ed page.  They have to be because they know this produces a feedback loop that gets back to Trump who then expands his grievance set and acrimony at the intelligence community and "deep state"  - as the Right's denizens in Reddit, 4Chan, Info wars etc. cheer more loudly.

Previously, I'd cited and quoted the assorted efforts of pro-Dotard mudslingers Kimberley Strassel, and Holman Jenkins, in their concerted efforts to take the public's eyes off the Mueller probe and onto the specious faux conspiracy involving the FBI, Christopher Steele, and Fusion GPS.  All of their codswallop, including assorted WSJ editorials that I've skewered, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/wsj-editorial-again-spouts-balderdash.html

have essentially centered around one theme.  Briefly, the pseudo conspiracy as claimed in the recent WSJ  offering was that:

"Hillary Clinton and the DNC hired Fusion GPS which hired an intelligence gun for hire - Christopher Steele, to write a 'dossier' on Donald Trump on Trump's supposed links to Russia. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI probe that  Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo research firm, was also supplying its dossier to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion."

In other words, on this patchwork of incidentals the Rabid Right has crafted a whole cloth nutso conspiracy that rivals the one fantasized in the book , "Alien World Order",  which has Reptilian aliens taking over our politicos and government - which will soon institute a slave nation.   Now, let's catch our breath and examine the facts as we know them  - at least as the the sane contingent knows them:

1- FUSION was actually started by a group of Wall Street Journal reporters - notably investigative reporter Glenn R. Simpson.   The takeaway here is if the WSJ wants to go look for exotic political conspiracies it needs to start in its own back yard.

2- In 2015, Fusion began investigating Trump under a contract with the Washington Free Beacon - a conservative website supported by GOP mega-donor Paul Singer.  Singer, like many old guard GOP donors  didn't trust the Queens' grifter  and real estate con man - and certainly not as President of the United States.  So they wanted to learn as much as they could about a craven, narcissistic criminal who'd potentially  occupy the nation's highest seat of power - including access to the nuclear codes.

3-  Subsequently, after Trump won the Repub primary the material was handed off to the Clinton campaign. This was NOT unlawful as the WSJ tries to portray - or at least suggest - but in the full mold of regular oppo research on a political opponent. Especially one who on at least one occasion blabbed openly:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

4-  Christopher Steele, about whom I've written before, was no mere intel "gun for hire".  According to one Financial Times account (Feb. 16) , Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".  James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services".  

 The dossier itself is actually several memos, based on conversations with Russian sources, that were written between June and December of 2016.
The dossier is a frequent target of  the WSJ- FOX- Dotard Axis which seeks to heap incessant   derision upon it. But the probe into the Trump campaign originally was sparked by a separate matter that Steele never wrote about — a tip from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, appeared to know Russia had obtained damaging emails on the Democrats. (Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents.).

5-  As for Bruce Ohr, about whom the WSJ nabobs paint such a sinister picture, he's been a subject of "endless fascination for the Right" according to one WaPo piece by Glenn Kessler. In truth he was a medium level DOJ paper pusher and reader of material who lost his job in 2017  after DOJ learned of his contacts with Steele. (Steele, for his part, was desperate to get his dossier into into proper channels lest anything untoward befall him - and recall he did go into hiding at one point. This is also why he contacted the media because he didn't believe the FBI was acting expeditiously enough.)

As for the WSJ's claims of "unmasking" i.e. of Carter Page and other Trump campaign associates, this is done as a matter of course whenever any American has contact with hostile foreign agents - as Page did.  How do we KNOW this? We have foreign intercepts of meetings of Trump cronies, e.g. Carter Page, with Russian  (GRU) agents.  It was these intercepts and related documents - including  FISA warrants- that Devin Nunes threatened to release to expose a supposed "FBI-DOJ conspiracy"..   In fact the latter's involvement were called for given the U.S. had to enter the picture with its own FISA warrants, surveillance, etc.  after foreign  intercepts were received from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands. Not to do so would have violated agreements with foreign intel sources, assets.   I am sure the WSJ cognoscenti know this too, if they are worth anything.  So they also have to know  their whole insipid "other Russia story"  involving the FBI and DOJ, Hillary, Fusions GPS etc.  is just that, nonsense.  

Meanwhile, Mueller's July indictment revealed for the first time that a team of Russian Military Intelligence hackers- members of the GRU-  initiated their disruption efforts as early as March, 2016,  or 8 months before the election, and targeting 300 people. This was also around the same time Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos  learned from an Aussie diplomat the Russians possessed "dirt" on Clinton.

Mueller released the indictment one day before Trump's planned secret sit down with Putin, obviously as a warning shot over Trump's bow, to behave himself. Or else.  According to the indictment:

"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '

Most interesting, this happened on the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded with Russia to hack Hillary's email.

Former FBI agent Cliff Watts has observed:

“Without the Russian influence effort, I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day.” 

That is the inconvenient truth the Trump lapdogs and conspiracy- addled Right media stooges like FOX and the WSJ editors won’t admit.  But maybe in time we can at least get them to concede the "lady justice" effort now focused on Trump, his nefarious Russkie associates and campaign is not "one sided justice."  Yuh think?

As for Trump, he'd better hope to hell the CIA's "blinking red alarm" doesn't go to Defcon 1. 

Update-  Nov. 23: As I expected,  the Reeptardos -  given a pathetic lame duck session of barely 20 days-   have decided to try to pursue the bogus investigation into the FBI- Hillary- Steele "plot"  described in this post. Peter King, bloviating this morning on MSNBC, insisted to Kristin Welker it was "essential" the House Judiciary Committee (still under GOP  control until January) investigate and subpoena James Comey and "why he did what he did".  See e.g.

• James Comey's lawyer says they'll resist House Republican's subpoena and his statement is a doozy

 As former prosecutor Joyce Vance subsequently noted, this is nonsense given Comey and other GOP targets already had agreed to make themselves available for open hearings - which the GOOPs passed on.  So in the end, this is all a contrived, political stunt based on last minute grandstanding before they lose power early next year.

It is the proverbial "storm in a teacup" and these lame brains are merely trying a last ditch effort to  invoke a false narrative to distract from Mueller's investigation. (Which could also end in the same 20 day period yielding conclusions on DJT that no Reeptard wants.)  Good for James Comey for vowing to fight any closed door hearings of the soon to be interred GOP House Judiciary Committee.

See also:
'Mueller Is About To Pounce': Trump Officials And Allies Reportedly Fear The Worst As The President's Mood Darkens

And:

Barry Lando

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Human Rights | Peace & Justice

Trump’s Enablers: Appalling Parallels

Kim Strassel's Continued Humping Of Clinton Conspiracy Ideations Shows She's Gone 'Round the Bend'

With Robert Mueller's investigation rapidly tightening  the noose around Trump's
 fat neck it's understandable the traitor's boot and ass lickers would do everything in their power to provide him specious cover,  especially in the co-opted, i.e. Trump- tainted,  media. That media that gushes fake facts and distortions to prop up Doh-turd as easily as its denizens breathe.  That includes the likes of Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson et al at FOX News, but also the resident Clinton conspiracists at the WSJ, especially Kimberley Strassel (above left) and Holman Jenkins.

But as goofy as he was, Jenkins at least appears to have moved on to other subjects like trade, tariffs, and Elon Musk (Tesla).  Not so with Kimberley Strassel. She keeps relentlessly pounding the drum for a hidden Clinton conspiracy like a brain- jacked refugee from 4chan, or an op-ed columnist who's exhausted her store of significant topics.  

This came to the fore again in her latest effort ('When Justice Is Only Partial', WSJ, Aug. 24, p. A13) in which she fulminates that:

"The country has watched the FBI treat one presidential campaign with kid gloves, the other with informants, warrants and eavesdropping"

Earlier insisting Americans are "furious that Lady Justice seems to have it in for only one side"   adding:

"And they are now witnessing unequal treatment in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe."

Please, Kim, you need to lay off the MJ candy and wine, or maybe at least the wine. It's clear you're so brain-addled now you couldn't write beyond your pet conspiracy obsession if you tried.  What we really need is for this mistress of misinformation to chill out, take a deep breath and look at the facts, at reality and then ask herself: 'Why is it that only one campaign is under the microscope?'

Let's begin by noting the Manafort jury found for 8 charges against this former Trump campaign chairman lowlife, including filing a false tax return in each of the years from 2010 through 2014  as well as two counts of bank fraud. The jury was deadlocked on the other ten counts, likely because one female member held out after watching a Trump "witch hunt" tweet on FOX News.  An even more impactful trial is coming up for Manafort on charges more directly linked to the Russian conspiracy case.

Then there were  the  8 charges on Michael Cohen, revealing a blatant effort by Trump to conceal his unsavory liaisons with a porn star and former Playboy model.  Cohen confirmed he was "directed" by Trump (ID'd as "individual-1") to hide those revelations which likely would have cost him the needed electoral votes to snatch victory from the jaws of certain defeat. In the charging documents filed last Tuesday Cohen claimed Trump directed him to make payments that violated campaign finance laws in an effort to stop Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress, and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, from going public about alleged extramarital affairs.

Ultimately, this is where Trump... our dear traitor...errr leader, faces gravest peril in that under federal law hush money payments made before an election are considered in-kind contributions to a campaign  and must be  disclosed. This is irrespective of whether the money came from the candidate's own paws or his campaign's. Conspiring to generate such a contribution in excess of $25,000 is an indictable offense and a felony.  While it is claimed "sitting presidents cannot be indicted" this is purely under DOJ current policy - not law. Bear that in mind as this whole sordid tableaux unfolds, and also the primary reason Trump would have used this ploy: to illegitimately snatch an election!

  Kim also appears to forget that it was her master Trump who - on July 26, 2016-  openly implored the Russians to hack Hillary's emails. In other words, openly pandering for the commission of the crime that occurred one day later.  In front of millions, the Orange Turd had baldly blurted:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

So Trump, in full public view, asked Russia to hack his political opponent.  Did this just come out of the blue as a brain fart blurt? Not at all, given we know Russia has been funding Trump since the late 1980s. Does Kim know any of that? Evidently not.  As per The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

Dotard also boasted:   “I love WikiLeaks” and mentioned its revelations 164 times in the last month of the campaign. “This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable,” Trump said on Oct. 12. Eight days later, he marveled, “Boy, that WikiLeaks has done a job on her, hasn’t it?"

And Kim has the absolute chutzpah, the sheer nerve,  to question why it's "all on one side".  Jeezus, talk about being divorced from reality!  Another hobby horse of hers has been to try to implicate the Clinton campaign with "illegal" use of Fusion GPS to rain on Trump's parade and justify surveillance. Not in the least aware of several things:

1)  The hysteria about the Fusion GPS oppo research was exposed once it was learned the original firm that hired them was The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The relevant  WSJ editorial at the time noted it was funded by big GOP donor Paul Singer.  Singer wanted oppo research done on a two bit Queens' chiseler he didn't trust. Singer and a group of old guard GOP donors hired Fusion GPS to do the job of digging up dirt on the Queens' grifter. Subsequently, after Trump won the Repub primary the material was handed off to the Clinton campaign. This was NOT unlawful as Strassel tries to portray - unlike her master who  (along with Don Jr., Manafort, Kushner etc.)  engaged Russian assets (e.g. Natalia Veselnitskaya)  to help him with oppo dirt  on Clinton. 

2) Foreign intercepts of meetings of Trump cronies, e.g. Carter Page, with Russian  (GRU) agents meant that the U.S. had to enter the picture with its own FISA warrants, surveillance, etc. Not to do so would have violated agreements with foreign intel sources, assets. 

3)Strassel's other favorite target has been Christopher Steele, about whom I've written before. He  is no clown or stooge or  likely to be "fooled"  as Kimberly Strassel claimed in an earlier hit job (WSJ, 'The Fusion Collusion').  According to one Financial Times account (Feb. 16) , Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".  It is, therefore, highly unlikely he'd be "fooled" by any kind of false intel or disinformation as Strassel seems to believe.  James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services".

The point is there was not a damned thing sinister or wrong about Hillary's campaign hiring Fusion GPS or Fusion recruiting Chris Steele to dig up material on a lowlife vermin who would soon control the nuclear codes - IF he became president.  

Why worry? After Trump's siding with Putin over the U.S.  in Helsinki, e.g.  "I think I have a very good relationship with President Putin.  I think we're being hurt very badly by this witch hunt, I would call it the rigged witch hunt. You know,  in the United States we have this pure stupidity but it makes it very hard to do something with Russia"

 The little degenerate even offered to dispatch American citizens to be interrogated by the KGB! Strassel ought to be worried, and to recognize the wrong person won the 2016 election.

According to Robert Mueller's latest indictment:

"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '

Most interesting, this happened on the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded with Russia to hack Hillary's emails. And after all, Hillary lost thanks to Trump's conspiracy with the Russians to leverage him into power. So who is really the victim here, Kim?  And who, pray tell, did the FBI Director Comey open up on 11 days before the freaking election? A Russian pawn leveraged into high office with the assistance of mobster cronies and foreign agents who hacked and lied (using bots on social media sites) or a woman whose campaign site was hacked by the same vermin? After Trump begged them to do so?  All this is why Ms. Strassel's plaintive whine of "Where is Mr.Mueller's case against Hillary for America?" rings hollow.  There is no case, Kim, because there's no "there" there.

FBI agent Cliff Watts has observed: 

“Without the Russian influence effort, I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day.” 

That is the inconvenient truth the Trump lapdogs and conspiracy addled media stooges like Kimberley  Strassel  won’t admit.  But maybe in time we can at least get her to concede the "lady justice" effort now focused on Trump, his nefarious Russkie associates and campaign is not "one sided justice."  Yuh think?

 See also:

Trumputin's Mob Masters Own the White House, but for How Long?

WSJ Editorial Again Spouts Balderdash About The Steele Dossier

"I believes it if  FOX News and WSJ  editorial agree! Doh!"

Once again, The Wall Street Journal disclosed the dichotomy between its regular reporting of news, and its FOXian editorial page. I say FOXian, because its editorials come over more like scripts from Fox & Friends than any serious opinions predicated on fact. (By contrast its news accounts on the Russian collusion with Trump almost read as if they came from the NY Times. Go figure!) And as I read the latest blather and bilge, 'More Doubts About Mr. Steele' (p. A16, Feb. 8th) I pondered how many hundreds of thousands of readers would be hoodwinked into  believing this artful codswallop.

I am not going to recycle all the dreck for counter attack, only to single out specific parts for condemnation and exposure. First is the claim the "Grassley--Graham referral letter confirms the House memo's finding that the FBI relied heavily on Mr. Steele's dossier claims....."

In fact, as  I pointed out in an earlier post,  this is horse manure.  The true fact is that  the FBI  had in hand foreign intel intercepts pointing to Trump campaign collusion with the Russkies  long before the Steele Dossier contents were known.   In addition, the FBI had in hand the communications from an Australian diplomat - who was informed by George Papadopoulos (in London)  about Russian meetings with the Trumpies- long before Steele's name popped up.

The Right's hysteria about the Fusion GPS oppo research was exposed once it was learned the original firm that hired them was The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The WSJ editorial at the time even noted it was funded by big GOP donor Paul Singer.  If  the Journal's editorial scribes want a real donkey to pin the tail on it should be Singer! Singer then was merely part of the old Repub order that respected norms and traditions and abhorred the idea of  a two bit Queens real estate chiseler and lowlife becoming  President. So he and the Beacon wanted "oppo" research on him. That is the hard fact.  Once Trump won the nomination, the research was continued by Democrats and HRC. So what?. That proves nothing more than Fusion GPS is a firm that is happy to be employed by either side.

If you want, call them a bipartisan oppo research outfit. But don't call them conspirators or "sleazy operators" as the WSJ editorial writers did then and continue to try to sell.

Another reason this is all offal and claptrap was noted in The Washington Post:

"It's strange is that Grassley and Graham are alleging that Steele may have lied using information the Justice Department already has and had shared with them. It's not clear why Grassley and Graham believe they see potential lies in Steele's interviews that the investigators haven't noticed."

Try now to process this, because it truly reaches the heights (pits?)  of bullshit and propaganda: these two clowns  - Grassley and Graham  - are claiming the DOJ's experts missed the info on Steele they already had - before they gave the material to the two clowns.  This beggars the imagination even as it engenders incredulity on  a scale unseen since the "Pizza gate" horse shit was spread around by Right media back in the fall of 2016. (To refresh readers' memories: In this conspiracy Hillary was alleged to be  keeping child sex slaves in the basement of a pizza parlor in D.C. and exploiting them,)

So no wonder this inspired one former federal prosecutor, Peter Zeidenberg, to outright call it “nonsense.” He suggested  (and I agree) it is a political effort intended to impact the Russia investigation — in which Steele's dossier has become the focus of GOP allegations of improper conduct by federal law enforcement — rather than a serious letter.

But to the WSJ's  anti-Steele troglodytes it's as if they found a gold cache of hidden "info" no one had a  clue about .  Their regular news contributors failed to notify them it was bull shit like Pizzagate.  Every other paragraph in the WSJ  editorial hangs on what this or that other person (including James Comey) said about Steele or his dossier, in particular claiming Steele "wrote it at the direction of the Clinton campaign".  Which is a flat out lie. Steele had already been hired by Fusion GPS  before any Clinton campaign connection and became alarmed at what his sources relayed to him about Trump - Russian contacts. (Which included the Carter Page meets with FSB personnel) We also know many of Steele's sources were from foreign intel intercepts that would have captured meetings of Carter Page with the Russians at various venues.

Because James Comey did not reveal these intercept sources when asked about the Steele dossier's relevance at his hearing, does not mean -  as the WSJ infers - that the FBI "based their wiretap on a single source"   only that Comey wasn't at liberty to reveal all the sources at that time. Indeed, he demurred in elaborating a number of times, "I'm sorry but I can't disclose that.".

The hit job on Christopher Steele - impugning him as a liar e.g.

"whether Mr. Steele lied to the FBI or the FBI was too incompetent to verify that he was the source of a Yahoo News story the result is the same - the FISA court issued a surveillance order on the basis of false information about the credibility of the FBI's main source"

is mind boggling on its own. Truth be told, it was Steele who alerted the FBI to a possible crime in progress, based on his sources and the potential for a hostile foreign power blackmailing an American presidential candidate. Loopy? Lies? Baloney? Not on your life! Steele himself has impeccable character and would be exactly the person you'd want testifying on your behalf in a high profile criminal case - or testifying against the bad guys. As per a Financial  Times account (Feb. 16):

Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".   James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services".

In other words 100 percent legit.  Thus, the efforts of the WSJ editorial nabobs and the two Repuke Senator clowns to tar and incriminate him are pure propaganda ploys.  But to be expected from a media-political  axis that peddles lies and unsupported conspiracy bunkum 99 percent of the time.

As the WaPo piece puts it:

"There is an increasing effort among Republicans and the conservative-leaning media to question the legitimacy of the Russia investigation. Increasingly prominent in that effort are attempts to use the Steele dossier as the basis for a deep-state conspiracy against the president. The argument is basically that the dossier was used as the pretext for investigating the Trump campaign — despite The Washington Post and others reporting that "other things also factored into that decision."   But in today's fractured and polarized news environment, too many only see and hear what they want to see and hear.  If they are obsessive FOX News watchers then their confirmation bias will have them only seeing Steele as a "Killary" puppet.

But the point is those "other things" may not be up for debate or exposure, given they are linked to intercepts by other (foreign) intelligence agencies which do not want their sources, personnel and methods revealed. Hence, the WSJ editorial's last sentence:

"The best way to learn what's true and false in the Russian influence story is radical transparency, and the Trump administration should declassify all four FISA applications on Mr. Page and all of the documents behind them."

is total insanity,  masquerading as a rational proposal.   Why? Because there is no way in Hell or on God's green earth that any foreign intelligence service - say that provided info for FISA warrants on Carter Page- would agree to such compromising disclosure. In effect, if such a reckless action was taken, by Trump or anyone in his administration, you can kiss further cooperation with foreign intel agencies goodbye. That ain't gonna happen, and no amount of goading by the WSJ's editors or FOX news will make it happen.

Last but not least, the day after the cited WSJ editorial appeared there was harridan hack Kimberley Strassel, e.g.


once more recycling her scattered attacks on Christopher Steele's character, e. g. 'Who Is Christopher Steele?', WSJ, Feb. 9th, p. A13):

"Watch for the House Democrats to continue defending Mr. Steele despite all this"

What's "all this"? According to Strassel, "Steele was fired for defying FBI orders, meeting with the press, undercutting a probe, and lying about it."

Which is total nonsense especially the part about undercutting a probe when Steele provided many of the key elements germane to it. The lying claim is also baffling but figures into the conspiracy theories Strassel has been nursing and pushing for the past year. In other words, any one who doesn't conform to her pet conspiracy meme, i.e. that Steele was a creature of Hillary and the DNC,  is lying - so that includes Steele too.

As for "defying FBI orders" as my friend Rolf (former Swiss Spezialdienst)  noted, that's ridiculous given Steele isn't a U.S. citizen and isn't bound to obey any "orders" from a foreign intelligence or law agency.  That also means he can give interviews if he desires. This may not apply if he was specifically hired as a contract agent, but we don't know that. We don't have the exact details of the FBI-Steele arrangement, only that he was an "asset".   That's enough semantic latitude to drive a metaphorical Mack truck through. So all Strassel has done is to inflate ordinary differences between UK and U.S nationals into some huge, festering sinister operation. 

What we DO know, as a sensible and intelligent WSJ letter writer  (Albion Urdank) makes clear in today's paper is that: "The FBI long regarded Mr. Steele as a valuable asset.  He was fired after speaking to the press because of the public relations fallout, not because the FBI had lost confidence in him. He did so to prod authorities into moving faster on the information he provided. Mr. Steele was no Clinton partisan but seemed genuinely alarmed at the prospect of a Trump presidency for obvious security reasons."

And most to the point, in rebuttal of Strassel's idiocy:

"America owes him a debt of gratitude instead of the calumny being heaped upon him."

 As for Kimberley, she needs to cool it, along with the WSJ's editors, maybe take her Zoloft and chill.

Leave out the WSJ editorial and op-ed pages' conspiracy mongering, as well as the FOX News campaign to undermine Mueller.  What we do know is that there is now hard evidence of attempted Russian hacks into the election systems of 21 states. Given this,  we ought to cease this phony debate and be ready to protect our voting system now  as the midterms approach. 

If the WSJ's op- ed team - including its stable of  ardent Mueller probe opponents (William McGurn, Kimberley Strassel,  Dan Henninger,  Holman Jenkins) -  are truly the defenders of freedom they so often profess,  then  they ought to drop this BS campaign to attack the FBI, and honorable persons like Christopher Steele  -  the guy who warned us about this perfidy. That,  instead of portraying him as a liar, Hillary-DNC shill  and all purpose bogeyman. So long as they refuse, I will be ignoring the op-ed pages as I would ordinary commercial fishwrap like the National Enquirer.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/christopher-brauchli/77665/a-message-to-the-wall-street-journal-give-voice-to-accuracy-instead-of-partisanship


Excerpt:

The editorial entitled: “A Reckoning for the FBI” appeared three days after a lengthy report by WSJ reporters, Rebecca Ballhaus and Byron Tau had been published. The reporting of those two individuals contradicted much of the “Reckoning for the FBI” editorial.