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David Corn: Inspector General's Report Shows Trump's "Spygate" Conspiracy Theory Was the Real Hoax
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/inspector-generals-report-shows-trumps-spygate-conspiracy-theory-was-the-real-hoax/December 9, 2019
Inspector General’s Report Shows Trump’s “Spygate” Conspiracy Theory Was the Real Hoax
But this won’t stop the Deep State-truthers from denying Trump’s complicity.
David Corn
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But the new 476-page IG report released on Monday blows up all the conspiracies that Trump and his handmaids have been slinging. It states unequivocally that the FBI investigation of the Russian attack and interactions between Trump associates and Russia was justified and appropriate. Period. The report, based on a review of over 1 million documents and interviews with more than 100 witnesses, states that the FBI had an “authorized purpose” to initiate the probe. The IG noted that the FBI also was fully justified in initiating investigations of four Trump campaign associates: George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort. “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations,” the report says.
There was no funny business, no FBI or Deep State vendetta against Trump. (This was obvious, given that the FBI kept the existence of this investigation a secret during the 2016 campaign.) The official account has been that the FBI kicked off the Russia investigation after it was informed in late July 2016 that Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, had been told by a suspected Russian agent months earlier—before it was public knowledge that Russian cyber-operatives had attacked the Democrats—that Moscow possessed Hillary Clinton’s emails. This, of course, caused the FBI to wonder about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, which was trying to undermine an American election, and the bureau did what it should do: cautiously investigate. Trump’s cult, though, has refused to accept this, with some insisting the Steele dossier triggered the investigation and with Papadopoulos (who is now running for Congress) and others contending that he was somehow set up by shadowy US intelligence operators. No, the IG says, that’s all bunk. The Steele memos, the IG notes, “played no role” in the launching of the investigation, and the FBI officials who opened the investigation “did not become aware of Steele’s election reporting until weeks later.” The report also stated there was no evidence that the FBI had entrapped Papadopoulos.
This is the big picture: Trump and the other conspiracy nutters—which includes Attorney General Bill Barr, who has been looking for evidence to back up the Papadopoulos-was-set-up claim—are flat-out wrong. They have obsessively promoted unfounded allegations about the origin of the Russia investigation and the role of the Steele memos in the inquiry, and they have excessively fixated on technical points regarding a surveillance warrant used by the FBI during the probe to mount a false flag operation. And this underhanded maneuver worked, to a degree, with these garbage talking points shaping the national conversation and media coverage of the Russia scandal. The IG report shows that Trump and his crew perverted and polluted the nation’s consideration of what happened in 2016—and that they have served, wittingly or not, as useful idiots for Russia.
snip//
The IG report should kill and bury all the conspiracy hogwash that Trump and his acolytes have used to poison the political environment and prevent a real and thorough discussion of what occurred in 2016: the Russian attack and Trump’s collaboration with it. But it won’t. As soon as the report was released, Barr started a disinformation campaign with a disingenuous statement: “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” That’s the opposite of the report’s findings. And Jordan similarly chimed in: “The Inspector Generals report confirms what many of us feared: James Comey’s FBI ignored guidelines and rules in spying on President Trump’s campaign in 2016. We now know that within one week of the investigation opening, the FBI was surveilling the campaign and four specific individuals associated with it.” Yet the report states these investigations were appropriately triggered.
So the BS won’t stop. Trump, Barr, Jordan and the rest are too invested in it. Now they and their minions will turn to John Durham, the federal prosecutor whom Barr assigned to conduct a separate review of the FBI’s Russia investigation, to carry on their crusade. And Durham, in this hour of need, provided them great comfort. In an unusual move, Durham issued a statement noting that he did not “agree with some of the [IG] report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” This means Trump and his crew will be able to continue their scorched-earth campaign against the truth they cannot handle: Russia attacked the United States and Trump helped. That full equation can never, ever, ever be acknowledged by Trump and his henchmen. They are fighting this battle as if the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency depends upon it. And in that they are correct.
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