Calling a Bluff

National Review’s Andrew McCarthy has been one of the two indispensible observers of Spygate, the other being WSJ’s Kim Strassel. Today McCarthy discourses on the ambiguous nature of law enforcement’s confidential informants. See his conclusion:

The Obama administration blatantly politicized the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus. Their Chicken Little shrieks that public disclosure of FISA warrants and texts between FBI agents would imperil security have proven overblown at best (and, in some instances, to be cynical attempts to hide embarrassing facts). “Trust us” is not cutting it anymore.

In the end, it is not about who the spies are. It is about why they were spying. In our democratic republic, there is an important norm against an incumbent administration’s use of government’s enormous intelligence-gathering capabilities to — if we may borrow a phrase — interfere in an election. To justify disregarding that norm would require strong evidence of egregious wrongdoing. Enough bobbing and weaving, and enough dueling tweets. Let’s see the evidence.

In poker terms, we’re “calling” the DOJ and FBI. If any Trump people were in cahoots with Russians, or if there was even credible reason to believe they might be, it’s time to turn over the cards and show us a winning hand.

The DOJ/FBI stalling tactics strongly imply they hold a busted flush, in other words, nothing. It appears they bluffed and lost. Note to non-poker players: Your bluff only works if nobody makes you show your cards. If you bet like you have a strong hand when you don’t - and another player matches your bet, forcing you to show your weak cards, you lose.

To continue with the poker analogy, it appears the Obamacrats had little but suspected much, and drew to an inside straight. Since they expected a Clinton win, they took what looked like a small risk and hoped to find enough dirt to to make their spying plausible. But Clinton lost and they came up with nothing. Bluff called, they lose.

The deep state’s strategy at this point seems to be to keep stalling until the 2018 elections and hope their illegal spying becomes “lost” in the “fog” of impeachment by a Democrat-dominated House. If that seems risky, it nevertheless may be their only path which avoids prison so they take it with fingers crossed and breath held.