As the Russia Collusion Narrative Collapses, the Deep State Blame Game Begins

Attorney General Barr’s probe into misconduct by Deep State actors after the conclusion of Special Counsel Mueller’s inquiry, is now leading to a cannibalistic feeding frenzy. Former Obama Administration officials in the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Intel community are beginning to attack each other with the vim and vigor they formerly reserved for the Trump Administration. This appears to be a desperate move designed to escape blame and shift culpability to other actors. This move confirms the prediction offered earlier by ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow.

As the tables of justice have turned, participation in this ongoing blame game constitutes a preemptive move designed to avoid the inescapable consequence of a fresh investigation that will determine why American citizens were subjected to electronic surveillance, spying and unmasking, largely funded or directed by an opposition party. This DOJ/FBI orchestrated surveillance campaign was designed to prevent President Trump’s election campaign. After his election, this surveillance program continued in an effort to delegitimize President Trump’s election and impair the effectiveness of his Administration.

The termination of Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia investigation showed there was no collusion, no conspiracy, and no obstruction of justice. Encouragingly, the wheels of justice are turning in another direction placing former FBI director James Comey, former FBI general Counsel James Baker, former CIA director John Brennan, and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper in the crosshairs. Unsurprisingly, they are all scrambling to tell their side of the story to the public before they face the music from Attorney General Barr’s probe of the genesis of the whole Russia Collusion narrative and his examination of whether there was a sufficient legal predicate to spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign.

First up was James Comey who claimed President Donald Trump has eaten the soul of Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, writing in a New York Times op-ed published two weeks ago that the Justice Department’s top officials lack the moral character to stand up to the commander-in-chief. This attack was designed to compromise the Attorney General’s reputation before the bad news from Barr’s multiple investigations into the conduct of former Obama Administration officials hits the front pages of newspapers and possibly the front pages of a criminal indictment. This effort will not work.

Next up, after news broke that Attorney General Barr had appointed a U. S. attorney to investigate the unverified dossier amid efforts to surveil the Trump campaign, former FBI General Counsel Baker who defended the FBI’s handling of the Trump dossier saying “we took it seriously” but “we didn’t necessarily take it literally” and did not treat it as “literally true in every respect.” This claim makes little sense for two reasons: First, the FBI relied on an unverified and an unverifiable report to seek a FISA warrant against Carter Page, which means they took it to be literally true, and second they allowed the report to be corroborated by the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele, who briefed Yahoo News before the FISA warrant was issued. Then the DOJ cited Yahoo News as corroboration of the Steele Dossier. This means that an unverified report (the Steele Dossier) was allegedly verified on the basis of another unverified report. This represents incompetence on steroids and it may mean that the FBI broke the law.

Third, a dispute has now broken out over whether former CIA director John Brennan can truthfully place the blame for the DOJ’s reliance on the Steele Dossier squarely on James Comey asserting that he and then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper opposed Comey’s recommendation that the Steele Dossier be included in the intelligence community report. At the same time, Fox News has learned that a late-2016 email chain indicated then FBI Director James Comey told his staff that then CIA Director Brennan had insisted on the inclusion of the Steele Dossier in the Intel community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This blame shifting effort raises the question whether anyone is capable of telling the truth.

Taken together, this record of blame shifting and contradictions suggest that none of these Deep State actors should be trusted with the truth. They all seem prepared to not only contradict each other but the evidence available from the email-records. This raises the question whether they were telling the truth in the past or whether they are telling the truth now? The probable answer is that their current statements are likely to be an admixture of truth and falsehood.

This answer is consistent with the ACLJ’s view that (1) the American people ought to seek to hold these actors accountable, (2) Attorney General Barr’s investigation is highly warranted, and (3) a grand jury ought to be impaneled to separate truth from fiction.

The American people have waited long enough for the truth.