By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--April 7, 2018
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The Nunes letter says the FBI has provided only a “heavily redacted” version of the EC and indicated on March 23 that it would “refuse to further unredact” the document. The only plausible reason the FBI might have for denying House Intelligence access to an unredacted EC is that it contains intelligence from foreign sources. Intelligence-sharing agreements between allies sometimes include restrictions on dissemination. But it was precisely that intelligence that was already leaked to the press. We know the Papadopoulos story came via Australia, and we know what was said. The media only recently reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was fed up with the FBI’s spurning Congress and ordered it to be more cooperative. Yet here it is again inviting a contempt citation, and that says something about how badly the FBI wants this EC kept out of sight.
So what’s in it that matters so much? One possibility is that the EC also contains a reference to the dossier. A better theory is that the EC gets to the heart of the legitimacy—or illegitimacy—of the Papadopoulos investigation. The FBI would have needed solid intelligence to justify a full-blown counterintelligence probe—especially of a presidential candidate. Yet the Papadopoulos intelligence was thin gruel—a random comment by a drunk guy making a vague claim. So by what precise means, and via whom, did the details make their way to the FBI? Did it come from actual intelligence sources? Were Obama or Clinton friends or political operatives involved? Did the FBI play a role in plumping up the evidence to transform a political product into official intel?Let’s review once again why this matters. If the Obama Justice Department sought to wiretap a Trump campaign adviser based on a dossier full of unverified information, commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign, that is an abuse of the federal law enforcement apparatus for a political objective that makes the use of the Watergate burglars look like a misdemeanor. And if the same people who perpetrated this abuse are still running the DOJ and the FBI, we need to know that. If the people responsible are gone – looking at you, Loretta Lynch, James Comey and Andrew McCabe – we need to know how and why this was allowed to happen. Oh, and if Barack Obama directed the whole thing, we really need to know that. Yet Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray sure don’t seem to want us to. Keep pushing, Congressman Nunes.
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