Time for the FBI to Disclose, Discharge, and Disinfect
This was supposed to be Christopher Wray's job. He utterly failed at it.
Read the rest at the link.When Christopher Wray was named director of the FBI in August 2017, he had two crucial tasks: clean the Augean Stables, which had been fouled by James Comey, and restore public confidence in the bureau. Comey presided over a carnival of misconduct. Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, supervised all of it and handpicked most of the other agents involved.
Wray’s job was to muck out this mess, disclose the wrongdoing, fire the bad guys, and win back public support. To put it bluntly: he has failed at the job. He has failed the country, the president, and his fellow agents.
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Wray shouldn’t be allowed to hide or slow-walk the evidence that American citizens have every right to see. Remember, it was the current FBI team, not Jim Comey, that said it couldn’t find Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s devastating text messages. It was the Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, not Wray’s agents, who discovered the “lost” messages and thousands more. They were released by Rod Rosenstein, who was effectively running DoJ at the time. The FBI brass were not happy.
They weren’t happy, either, when the House Intelligence Committee, led by Devin Nunes, finished its 2018 report showing how the FBI and Department of Justice abused the secret intelligence court. That court approves warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (aimed at terrorists and spies working against America). Under Comey and his Justice Department allies, the act was also aimed at the Republican Party. Targeting the Trump campaign without extremely strong justification is a grave violation of our constitutional norms. It jeopardizes the fairness of our elections and turns federal law enforcement into a partisan instrument. The Nunes report exposed it.
Director Wray strenuously opposed the report’s release, saying it would harm “national security.” What it really harmed was the FBI’s reputation for honesty, adherence to standard procedures, and lawful behavior. Rebuilding that reputation was precisely why Wray was appointed. Although he was unable to block the report, Democrats on the intelligence committee did everything they could to discredit it and smear Nunes personally. They were led by Adam Schiff, Nunes’ fellow Californian, who issued a partisan counter-report and appeared on television constantly, denouncing Nunes and defending the FBI investigation, including the FISA warrants.
The Democrats’ main line of attack was that Trump had colluded with the Russians (“The evidence is in plain sight,” Schiff said), that the FBI had every right to investigate this criminal and possibly treasonous behavior, and that the FBI and DoJ carried out their work “by the book,” as approved by the FISA court. The mainstream media adopted that version of events as its own. This shared narrative did more than defend the Obama administration and its top law enforcement and intelligence officials. It implied that Trump was not legitimately elected since he won only by working with a foreign enemy.
Now, after reams of evidence have come out, we know how groundless Schiff’s defense of the FBI and DoJ really was. He knew all along that there was no actual evidence to back up the “Russia collusion” smear. All Obama’s senior appointees in law enforcement and intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee they had no evidence the Trump campaign was colluding, cooperating, or coordinating with Russia. Yes, the Kremlin did try to meddle in the election, but not with Trump’s help. That testimony was given under oath, behind closed doors. When the doors were opened, the same officials and Schiff himself stood before the cameras and said the opposite.
It is also increasingly clear that the multi-pronged effort to spy on Trump’s campaign was riddled with irregularities and legal problems. Those began with the flimsy memo that authorized the spying to begin with. Newly revealed documents undermine the rationale for the investigation, the Schiff report, and two years of clueless media hype. Nunes’ report stands vindicated. It laid out a valuable roadmap to the improper surveillance.
How did Director Wray respond when the Nunes report became public?