Power Line links to a story by John Solomon of The Hill, who reports there is now evidence to support the Republican contention of a dishonest coverup.
Consider Footnote 43 on Page 57 of Chapter 3 of the House Intelligence Committee’s report earlier this year on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.Neither FBI nor DOJ, as an organization, had a stake in the outcome of the 2016 election. Individual members of either may have had such a stake, but if so the stake was personal, not governmental.
Until this past week, the footnote really had garnered no public intrigue, in part because the U.S. intelligence community blacked out the vast majority of its verbiage in the name of national security before the report was made public.
From the heavy redactions, all one could tell is that FBI general counsel James Baker met with an unnamed person who provided some information in September 2016 about Russia, email hacking and a possible link to the Trump campaign.
Last Wednesday, I broke the story that Baker admitted to Congress in an unclassified setting — repeat, in an unclassified setting — that he had met with a top lawyer at the firm representing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and received allegations from that lawyer about Russia, Trump and possible hacking.
The FBI and the DOJ would have Americans believe that a contact with a lawyer for a political party during the middle of the election is somehow a matter of national security that should be hidden from the public.
We can now say with some authority that the earlier redaction in Footnote 43 was done in the name of a national security concern that did not exist. (emphasis added)
The FBI allowed itself to take political opposition research created by one party to defeat another in an election, treated it like actionable intelligence, presented it to the court as substantiated, and then used it to justify spying on an adviser for the campaign of that party's duly chosen nominee for president in the final days of a presidential election.
When, nine months later, the FBI could not prove the allegation of collusion between Trump and Russia, unverified evidence was leaked to the media to try to sustain public support for a continued investigation.
That means the redaction of Footnote 43 had more to do with political embarrassment than with national security.
Some number of government officials stand in need of prosecution for misusing government resources for personal ends, thus politicizing their agencies ... a felony.
