Thread by @JewhadiTM

The Most Successful Coverup, via @jedbabbin

Democrats get away with a much worse crime than Watergate.

spectator.org/the-most-succe…

ince Watergate, the Washington wisdom has always held that it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup that sinks a politician. But that’s only the case when the coverup fails.

But what if the coverup succeeds?

It’s horribly simple. The crimes are never uncovered and the perpetrators are never brought to justice no matter how serious their crimes may be. That is precisely what has happened because of the FBI and DOJ’s coverup of their 2016 election abuses of power and illegal actions.

In this case, the FBI and the Justice Department have succeeded in the most significant coverup in American political history. The abuses of power and crimes they have succeeded in covering up are not only against the law: they are crimes against our system of law and government.

They were perpetrated by employees of the government, under color of law, with the intention of affecting the outcome of an election.

For almost two years an investigation into the abuses of power — and probable crimes — committed by the FBI and Justice Department during the election has been conducted.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes, Rep. Bob Goodlatte — chairman of the Judiciary Committee investigated — and Trey Gowdy — chairman of the Oversight and government reform committee — tried to investigate other aspects of FBI and DoJ actions

These investigations have been stonewalled by the refusal of the FBI and Justice Department to produce the documents and provide access to witnesses that would, in all likelihood, prove that the major abuses of power and crimes had been committed.

Nunes investigated possible crimes and abuses of power under FISA .

Goodlatte & Gowdy jointly investigated the FBI’s mishandling and improper actions in its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private, insecure email system for conversations with taff — and Obama — on top secret info, including special access programs & satellite intel.

The two important products of those investigations were the 18 January 2017 memo declassified by Trump and released by Nunes and the newly released 28 December 2018 letter from Goodlatte and Gowdy addressed to Mitch McConnell, Acting AG Whitaker, and DoJ IG Michael Horowitz.

If this is the first you’ve heard of the 28 December letter, that’s because it’s been studiously ignored by the media.

The key facts revealed by the Nunes memo were:

(1) that the FBI used, as the factual basis for the FISA Court warrant applications, information from the Steele dossier, a compilation of anti-Trump information that the FBI had not verified.

The FBI nevertheless swore to the truth of that information to obtain surveillance warrants on Carter Page; and

(2) that in the process of obtaining search warrants the FBI failed to inform the FISA Court the Steele dossier was bought/paid for by the @DNC and Hillary's campaign.

The Nunes memo showed that the actions of the FBI and Justice Department, sometimes in conjunction with the Obama White House, were worse than Watergate.

The Nunes investigation is over, but myriad questions remain. Among them:

What other FISA warrants were obtained to surveil the communications of Americans, particularly those of the Trump campaign advisors and Trump himself?

.@AmbassadorRice was asking for and obtaining hundreds of “unmaskings,” revealing of U.S. citizens’ identities when their communications were intercepted by the FBI and NSA as part of intel operations.

Whose names were unmasked, was this information used to Trump’s disadvantage in the campaign, why did the unmaskings occur, and what information was shared by Rice with Obama and/or Clinton?

What direction did the FBI, the NSA, and other intelligence agencies receive from Obama, Rice, and Obama’s CIA director, @JohnBrennan, with respect to the monitoring of Trump-related communications?

The stain on our system of justice and the 2016 election created by the abuses of power and probable crimes committed by FBI and DoJ officials during and after the 2016 presidential campaign will not be erased. Their coverup has succeeded.