1/ Today’s bipartisan SSCI report - and each Republican Senator signatory - conclusively debunk Barr’s mendacious assertions that the FBI’s investigations were based on “a very thin, slender reed,” which “should have been obvious to anyone, that there was nothing there.”
2/ These senators describe at enormous length the counterintelligence nightmare we at the FBI confronted in the @realDonaldTrump campaign in 2016. In so doing, they validate the premise.
3/ While criticizing some of the FBI’s investigation, the report overwhelmingly verifies on a bipartisan basis that this was no witch hunt; it was not, as Barr has called it, “political spying”; and it was in no sense a hoax.
4/ I was concerned the legal scope of the SC’s work wouldn't address the purely CI aspects of what occurred. In fact, the Mueller report notes it didn't, but returned them to the FBI.
The Senate report, by contrast, makes clear those CI concerns were significant and pervasive.
The Senate report, by contrast, makes clear those CI concerns were significant and pervasive.
5/ Were the CI aspects of the investigation ever seriously examined by the executive branch? This actually remains unclear. The report does not say whether the FBI ever engaged in a wide, comprehensive effort like the Senate’s to understand the CI aspects of Mueller’s work.
6/ It actually raises a far more troubling question: whether the FBI did enough to understand Russia’s actions and whether ongoing efforts have been chilled or even quashed in a climate in which the attorney general is denying the premise that investigation was even warranted.
7/ As Trump RTs @GovernmentRF propaganda and suggests meeting @KremlinRussia_E before the election, it begs one last question: whether the USIC is now positioned to understand the dire consequences of a president whose behavior poses a mountain of still-unanswered CI concerns.
8/ I talk much more about how I thought - and think - about @realDonaldTrump's CI vulnerabilities in my book hmhbooks.com/shop/books/Com…
