With President Trump’s green light on the declassification of FISA documents, William Barr’s counter-investigation into Russiagate has finally begun in earnest.
And right on cue, the same people who spent the last few weeks screaming “cover-up!” over a report that has been public since mid-April are, ironically, rushing to suppress the attorney general’s investigation.
In panicked unison, the incestuous iron triangle of Democrats, the mainstream media, and Deep State officials like John Brennan and James Clapper are rushing to smear Barr’s probe as an attempt by Trump to legitimize a “conspiracy theory” that his campaign was spied on and attack his enemies with his very own “witch hunt.”
Brennan, Adam Schiff, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are all lashing out at the president in the same shrill rhetoric for this “unprecedented” attack on the hallowed intelligence “community.”
The media/DNC/Deep State freak-out over Barr’s review follows an effort across weeks, even years, to bury questions about the Russia probe. Ever since Barr told Congress that “spying occurred” — and even before that — the left has challenged any use of the term “spying” to describe the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign.
By attacking Barr’s integrity for weeks, the media–Democrat–Deep State complex primed the all-too-predictable narrative that they are now breathlessly repeating: the declassification order is a corrupt, political attack.
Brennan, one of the top players in the Russia hoax, called the declassification “outrageous.” Gee, who could have predicted that response?
Adam Schiff called it “un-American” and somehow spun the declassification as just the next stage of an elaborate “cover-up” by the Trump administration.
What’s that? Trump and Barr are engaging in a “cover-up” by declassifying information? How does that work, exactly?
What happened, Dems? Don’t you want transparency?
This is gaslighting at its very crudest. The Democrats have spent weeks accusing Trump and Barr of a “cover-up” because Mueller failed to deliver the result they wanted. They have demanded Mueller’s unredacted report, Trump’s tax returns, and Trump’s banking records, all in the name of “oversight” and letting the public know the truth.
But now that the investigation is turning on them, they’re insisting on secrecy. Yet Trump is still the one doing the “covering up” by investigating an investigation that targeted him using an unverified, political dossier as evidence. Right.
What a total shock that the same people who pushed the Russia hoax are now rushing to bury its origins. Democrats have spent weeks saying Trump wants to close the book on Russia, but the shoe is on the other foot. The White House isn’t done with the Russia investigation yet; they’re just getting started.
It is the Democrats who want to move on from the Mueller hit-job. The investigation already served its purpose. They have their “obstruction” sound byte and they’re ready to continue with their own show trials in Congress.
To this end, the liberal establishment wants everyone to know that any scrutiny of the Russia probe is very dangerous. President Trump is politicizing the Department of Justice, somehow, by questioning the almighty wisdom of the FBI and the CIA; Barr’s review is highly unusual and unprecedented.
How about the FBI spying on a political campaign? Isn’t that a little unusual? A little dangerous, maybe? What should we make of the finger-pointing between the FBI and CIA over whether James Comey or Brennan pushed the Russia dossier? Of Comey’s dossier briefing with Trump? Of the informants, the undercover agents disguised as researchers?
All totally normal stuff, right?
While accusing Trump and Barr of a “cover-up,” the left is attempting to cover up the politicization of the Justice Department — by accusing Trump and Barr of politicizing the Justice Department.
The declassification order has further revealed the depth of the incestuous relationship between mainstream media, the Democratic Party, and the national security establishment, a relationship that has deepened over two years of ceaseless frothing about Russia.
Now, the same media that gave a platform to Schiff and Brennan to conjecture about the president’s criminality for two years, the same media that breathlessly printed every whisper and rumor from deep state “leakers” about collusion, is running interference for the beleaguered “intelligence community.”
In a hit piece on Barr’s investigation, the New York Times describes the declassification order as a “highly unusual” step, little more than an escalation in Trump’s Twitter broadside against the “so-called deep state.”
The piece hits all the right notes: Barr is a corrupt lackey who is prosecuting Trump’s personal grievances; the Obama administration didn’t spy, they investigated; and Barr’s review is an attempt to “distract” from Mueller’s investigation and its damning conclusions.
How about the Washington Post? “Barr could expose secrets, politicize intelligence with review of Russia probe, current and former officials fear,” Washington’s paper of record fretted.
There’s some good old-fashioned journalism for you. Keeping the powerful in check by amplifying the “concerns” of shadowy intelligence bureaucrats: classic muckraking! Who was it again that said, “Democracy dies in darkness”?
As they never fail to remind the rabble, journalists, at least in theory, are supposed to be a check on the powerful. If the media cared about protecting democracy from unaccountable forces, then they would welcome — not attack — an investigation into whether the FBI spied on a political campaign.
But ironically, and rather sadly, the media now defends the intelligence “community” behaving like an arm of a political party because, at least in this instance, they spied on somebody they hate.
The same people attacking Barr and his investigation spent two years telling the American people that Russia had hijacked their government. Here is an actual threat to self-government that the posturing guardians of democracy in the media are sweeping under the rug.
To the media, “democracy dies in darkness” just means “orange man bad.” They don’t care about democracy; they want power.
The left will welcome the suppression of democracy by unaccountable bureaucrats, as long as it’s their enemies who are being targeted. And so the Democrats, with their friends in the media, are ready to send this scandal into the darkness.
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