Kim Strassel - Unable To See The "Conspiracy Theorist" Staring Back At Her In The Mirrror

Kim Strassel in her latest WSJ column ('Mark Warner's Enablers', Jan. 25, p. A13) continues her all in balderdash that her conspiracy theory (actually ideation, since it isn't testable) is the reality and Sen, Mark Warner (and the rest of us) are pushing Trump-Russia "conspiracy theories."  As she puts it:

"Hand it to Sen. Mark Warner. Of the many Russia-collusion theorists, how many get to claim “bipartisan” credentials? That’s one question that accompanied Thursday’s supposedly big news that the Senate Intelligence Committee had subpoenaed former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to testify in February. If anything comes from this appearance—it would be surprising. Senate Intel is the committee Mr. Warner, as ranking Democrat, has turned into the black hole of the Russia investigation, with Republican signoff.."


What Kim means - in her blind consternation- is that committee Chairman Richard Burr has evidently suffered a "mugging" in allowing  Mark Warner's thesis to accumulate credibility - say instead of distorting it and burying it like the scumball Devin Nunes did with the House Intel investigation.   According to Kim, "Mr. Burr appears to have suffered a political mugging".  Then adopting the usual Rightie trick of trying to blame the "left" media for his taking a more principled and honest stand than Nunes.

After all, according to Kim, how could Burr not see the REAL conspiracy  (unearthed by Nunes and his sycophant Reep House cohort) staring him and the other GOP Senate Intel members in the face. As she puts it (ibid.):

"Thanks to House committees, we know the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted surveillance of the Trump team based on opposition research from Hillary Clinton's campaign. And Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee blew the lid off the FBI's feckless relationship with dossier author Christopher Steele."

Re: the House committees, we now know they were fronts set up to protect Trump by deflecting attention to the Steele dossier, the FBI and Hillary (via the 'Uranium One' and Clinton Foundation tropes). With the release of a redacted Democratic memorandum in February, we beheld just how deeply Nunes had embedded himself in Trump's orbit to become his top bootlicker and enabler. At least in the Repug House, by running interference for a traitor.  That Democratic House memo, even with redaction, boldly countered Nunes' claims that top FBI and Justice Department officials has "abused their powers in spying on Carter Page" the former Trump campaign aide. 

Kim - possibly in the throes of an MJ candy high,   vaping overdose or sporadic hormonal imbalance - also again appears not to recall the Fusion GPS oppo research was originally launched by 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 and lowlife 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 in any way sinister or illegal as Strassel tries to portray.  Nor in any way conspiratorial, certainly like seeking the help of a hostile foreign power to meddle in a presidential campaign.

What was illegal was the Trump team holding more than 100 meetings - that we now know of -  with Russians, including GRU intelligence agents.  Specifically in "Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration,"   The NY Times tracked down "more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter," all made by "at least 17 campaign officials and advisers [who] had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries."

Further, foreign intercepts of meetings of Trump cronies, e.g. Carter Page, with Russian  (GRU) agents meant that the U.S.  FBI  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, and would have amounted to dereliction of duty.   Hence, there was no evil conspiracy by the FBI, it only exists in Kim's mind.  Or perhaps in her fervid, MJ-laced dreams?

Why else spout such unhinged bollocks as:

"In recent weeks Mr. Warner has painted the lurid possibility of Trump-Russia collusion."

Well, it ain't just a "possibility",  Kim. Text messages, phone records, foreign intercepts, emails  - other documentation of the meetings-   point to clear conspiracy with the Russkies to alter  the 2016 election. And as former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah made clear Friday night ('All In'):

"There's just so many facts in this indictment about the coordination of the Trump campaign with Wikileaks, through Roger Stone. Remember that GRU indictment - if you go back to that- one of the objects of the conspiracy is not just hacking but hacking and disseminating.  You can't look at them alone, you have to go back to everything we know, the Trump Tower meeting, the calling out by Trump to Russia (to grab Hillary's emails)...there's just so many other things."

Rocah, in other words, has put her former federal prosecutor's finger on exactly why the reactionary Right media is able to peddle this balderdash there's "nothing there".  Because they count on massive amnesia of their readers, viewers concerning the reams of evidence that came before.  This is also what fuels The Wall Street Journal's lame editorials, e.g. 'Keystone Kops Collusion', p. A12,  Jan. 26-27)  as when this one claimed:

"Robert Mueller's indictment Friday of Roger Stone proves Donald Trump has awful judgment in political associations. What it doesn't show is Trump-Russia collusion."

Which take could have been right out of Andrew McCarthy's National Review piece, "Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy."
 
 But as blogger P.M. Carpenter has observed: "Mueller has never suggested that the Trump campaign's Russia collusion was smooth, slick or sophisticated. Stumblebums and poseurs are often at the center of political campaigns. "

So the WSJ editorial amounts to the classic red herring.

I have also pointed out repeatedly - and Ms. Rocah has also noted -  there is no federal statute for collusion, there is for conspiracy. And that case is nailed shut when the compendium of evidence is assembled from the Papadopolous' meeting onward - say to the Trump Tower meeting, and then Trump's invitation to the Russkies to hack Hillary's emails.

According to Robert Mueller's "GRU  indictments" cited by Rocah:

"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, e.g.

"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."

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?   National Security specialist and counterinsurgency expert Malcolm Nance also reaffirmed yesterday on MSNBC the peril facing Stone and how  he was the "bridge and link for that information" passed from the Trump campaign to Russian intelligence. Adding: "This is a critical,  critical indictment. They're saying they've identified the link.", i.e. in showing the bridge and coordination between Stone,  the Trump campaign, and the Russians.    Adding: "This indictment is based not just on the hearsay or the testimony of others. Robert Mueller brings documentation to the table....And believe me there's also other information in the special counsel's office we don't know about especially from other members of the Trump team including Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and others."

This was echoed by Georgetown Law professor Paul Butler, citing the "treasure trove" of documents, emails, phone messages, interdicted foreign wiretaps, etc. Mueller has on him.  Prof. Butler then stated Stone could "face twenty" years for his part in the conspiracy.

Strassel's other favorite target has been Christopher Steele and his dossier.  It's almost like Strassel goes to bed every night dreaming about it.  Well,  at least dreaming of novel ways to incorporate it into her conspiracy ideations.  But the facts are much less astounding. The dossier has been 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.) 

The dossier itself is actually several memos, based on conversations with Russian sources, that were written between June and December of 2016.   Further, in retrospect nearly all of the dossier has been substantiated or confirmed.

Strassel whines at the end of her piece that "we all want adult behavior"  and to that end "someone on the intelligence committee needs to step up and supervise Mr. Warner."  Actually, the only ones that need supervising - apart from Trump - are Kim Strassel and her coven of Wall Street Journal conspiracy spinners, "witch hunt" protesters and  Trump enablers  - especially as they seem unable to discern real conspiracies from fake ideations. 

See also:

• 
  
• Mueller's case against Roger Stone is open and shut

And:

Donald Trump | Robert Mueller

Hilariously Different Worlds

by P.M. Carpenter | January 28, 2019 - 6:26am | permalink

And:

‘Trump Is Very Worried’: Fears Reportedly Spread That Roger Stone Will Turn on the President — and That Don Jr. Could Be Next

The D.O.J. - One Step Closer To Being Like The Nazi Reich Justice System?

"To a frightening degree the masses themselves....showed a suicidal frenzy in breaking with their customary ideals, connections, parties, leaders. They looked on in silence as their political world fell into ruins, and tacitly acknowledged that a new, uncertain, but bold edifice was growing up. This was no sudden general flocking to National Socialism, but a cynical lack of resistance.." - Konrad Heiden, The Fuehrer, 1944,  p. 468.

For those who missed my Sunday update of the May 17th  post let me re-reference the key part here, as it is germane to the content of the current post:

As per a NY Times front page article ('Trump Demands Inquiry Into Whether Justice Dept. Infiltrated or Surveilled His Campaign') Trump tweeted earlier today:

"I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes,  and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

This is a confirmation not only of Trump's obstruction of justice ("on steroids" as I put it- by using an investigation to stop an investigation - of him)  but also of Trump's declaration in 2017, in a NY Times interview:

"I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department"

Making clear in no uncertain terms that he is a despot, much like Adolf Hitler (when he took over the German Judiciary - which I will get to) and hence telegraphing that he doesn't believe in any independent judiciary. Now, while it is true that the Department of Justice is included in the Executive Branch of government, it is also true that laws passed since Watergate establish the D.O.J. as an independent entity within that branch. It cannot be otherwise, else the executive can manipulate the judiciary and defile the rule of law - as Hitler did. Trump's Sunday tweet and his earlier declaration disclose he is not of any different mindset from Hitler.

As many of us know, in the film 'Judgement at Nuremberg' the defendants standing trial  were all members of the German Judiciary who had been co-opted by Hitler and made to act on behalf of the deformed laws of the Third Reich.  As the Wikipedia entry for the film notes:

"The film centers on a military tribunal led by Chief Trial Judge Dan Haywood (Tracy), before which four German judges and prosecutors (as compared to 16 defendants in the actual Judges' Trial) stand accused of crimes against humanity for their involvement in atrocities committed under the Nazi regime. The film deals with non-combatant war crimes against a civilian population, the Holocaust, and examines the post-World War II geopolitical complexity of the actual Nuremberg Trials."

In the film, the judges on trial for their crimes against humanity argue strenuously that they were only "following the law" as it pertained to the Third Reich. But as the prosecutors made clear, this law was a deformation of the actual rule of proper law, based on a foundational grasp of morality.

This elicits the question: What happend that changed the proper German law to the debased form?  To answer that one can do no better than to get hold of the superb book, The Fuehrer (1944) by then German journalist Konrad Heiden.  We learn for example (p. 566) that the first step the Nazis made was to convert the existing judiciary into their own handmaidens.  This was done by "enlisting all the officials entrusted with the administration of justice - including the judges- into the National Socialist organization, e.g. The National Socialist Jurists"  which Hans Frank (Hitler's favorite lawyer) had founded.

Effectively then, the initial judiciary of the Weimar Republic became Nazi judges, i.e. National Socialist jurists, if they succumbed to the change and agreed to it. (One of the prosecutor's witnesses in the film was challenged by the defendants' lawyer how he could act so morally superior when he never refused to join the Nazi Jurists).   Heiden, for his part, observed (p. 567) "at least for a time some German judges tried to oppose the rape of the law by the National Socialists"  - for example declaring part of their mission was to "protect the weak". To which Herr Frank responded contemptuously (ibid.): "yes, previous justice did protect the weak and created a morality for slaves."

Ultimately, all this rhetoric and manipulation was to create the deviant judicial path by which Hitler could flout all the original laws and thereby destroy the rule of law in Germany. For example, Hans Frank echoed Hitler when he said (ibid.): "Law should not protect the weakling but make the strong even stronger."  This echoes Hitler's words (p. 257):

"If Germany should get a million children each year and eliminate seven to eight hundred thousand  of the weakest, in the end the result would be an increase in power."

The key point made by Heiden regarding the  Nazis' assault on German justice was:

"The German judges' backbone was broken down when the Government broke down the security of their existence."

This meant that the original tenure for life was abolished. In Heiden's words (ibid.):

"The privilege, designed to ensure the independence of the courts, was eliminated by the National Socialists."

This is important to note in order to make the analogous comparison to what is now happening here in this time, in the U.S. - under Trump.  While the judicial authorities of the DOJ lack lifetime tenure - there is still the expectation that they will exercise their authority independent of the executive and not become its political pawns.  As law professor Paul Butler put it on 'All In' last night: "If Trump can get away with ordering documents, or an investigation for an FBI source, he can do it for anyone, even a sitting Senator."

Further, this should not ne a left-right issue, but of decent citizens supporting an independence of the DOJ from the executive.  It is emphatically not a case of the left trying to grab control of the DOJ against Trump! (Though FOX's brainwashed minions might believe this.)

Carrying on with  the rough analogy, did Rosenstein give Trump what he wanted? In one way, yes, and in other, no. In the former, Rod Rosenstein went through the motions and just tossed Dotard a bone by agreeing (in a way) by having Trump's twitter frets turned over to the Inspector General for parsing.  This would be roughly like the Weimar judges agreeing (in a way) to do Hans Frank's bidding but not joining the National Socialist Jurists.  Rosenstein absolutely did not give Trump what he really wanted - which was for Rosenstein to resign so Trump could them appoint a new deputy AG - as his personal puppet- to then fire Mueller. 

As former assistant Watergate special prosecutor Jill Wine -Banks put it on 'The Last Word' last night:

"I think Rod Rosenstein   played this exactly right. It's not an ideal world, because in an ideal world the president would not be demanding this.  In the ideal world the answer would be 'we only do this if there is probable cause and there is no probable cause here.'  In this case, we have to play chess with the president - who doesn't know how to play chess- and the fact that Rod Rosenstein is still the deputy attorney general is still a good thing.

I am still outraged the president is asking for this, and I don't believe the president or his base will like the answer when it comes out."

Which latter point makes it even more of an atrocity that The Wall Street Journal yesterday (p. A1) openly published the identity of the FBI source who acted as an informant on the de facto Russian agents, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos et al.  All this while also defending the rights of traitors like Devin Nunes to get their paws on further documents related to the FBI source (see editorial p. A16,) and eliding the Snowden affair with this.(To remind readers, Snowden never disclosed actual source names, but rather the extraordinary utilities, e.g. XKeyscore,  MUSCULAR, PRISM etc. that the NSA used to grab citizens' data without their knowledge and in violation of the 4th amendment.)

On the other hand, David Frum diverged  from Wine-Banks take, pointing out:

"Rachel (Maddow) said a very good thing, you respond to the lizard brain, you treat this as a confrontation with a dangerous predator. And you show it what you have. And maybe we're into constitutional crisis territory..  But this slow moving dissolution of normal expectations - maybe crisis is the wrong word - is a corrosion and a corruption,  We're all worse off than we were. At some point, someone is going to have to fight, and maybe today was that day."

I tend to concur with this - in the sense I believe we're at a critical inflection point- not too different in kind from when the Weimar jurists had to make the choice to become National Socialist, aka Nazi, jurists, or be rebuked and lose their positions. Once that 'Rubicon' was crossed - as Heiden notes - and the principle of equality was violated, then "homicide was no longer homicide and murder no longer murder."  In other words, when sanctioned by Hitler or the state, radical differences in kind emerged, and no punishments necessary if committed for the Reich.   This difference was punctuated when amnesty was declared for previous Nationalist Socialist murderers, e.g. who slaughtered trade unionists, Marxists, others.  Thus, the five murderers of Potempa were summarily released from prison, no questions asked.

Perhaps then, Jill Wine-Banks response to Frum is most germane here:

"David definitely made a very compelling case. This is something that concerned me since the election, And I think we saw in Hitler's day - people don't like that analogy - but he didn't change everything all at once, he ate away at the fabric of the society. A little at a time.  First it was one thing, then another extension, then another. So David's point is that's what we're seeing, one step at a time."

The key difference, as Ms. Wine-Banks noted, is that even if Rosenstein is fired - Mueller as well - the DOJ staff  plausibly remain and can continue their work. But up to now we don't know if that will happen or not. (During Watergate, after the 'Saturday Night Massacre', public outcry spared the staff of Archibald Cox) So far, history's negative drumbeat marches on, and no one seems willing or able to turn back the Trump Despot Tide. If we don't, one way or other, we shall rue what transpires even as we cogitate on George Santayana's words: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."