Obama-era officials have until Friday to tell Congress what they knew about misuse of the Steele dossier

I'll tell you right now that this is going to be portrayed by the media as a partisan witchhunt by Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and by other congressional Republicans. The emphasis in coverage of the story will be on the notion that Republicans are seeking to distract from "collusion with Russia" and to turn a negative story for President Trump onto the Obama Administration instead. Do not believe that narrative. That is not what's happening here. Here's what is: There is a growing body of evidence that the Obama Administration and the Clinton campaign used a highly questionable dossier - much of it culled from Russian sources - to falsely portray Donald Trump as in collusion with the Russian government to turn the 2016 election in his favor. What's more, it also appears that after Trump won the election and the transition was underway, the outgoing Obama Administration used this same questionable dossier - which, remember, was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign - to inappropriately unmask Trump transition officials in wiretap transcripts and otherwise undermine the incoming administration.

If this is what actually happened, it is a very serious scandal. Because we're talking about congressional Republicans seeking these answers, with Democrats under suspicion of these malevolent deeds, the partisan breakdown of the players is the only thing that matters to the media. But it's completely irrelevant. It wouldn't be any more acceptable if a Republican administration and campaign did this to a Democrat campaign/incoming administration. It should never happen. And the House Intelligence Committee is absolutely trying to do its job in seeking to understand if it did happen. This week the committee is putting the heat on some of the Obama-era officials who would have been close to this action:

The House Intel letter asks when the officials became aware of the information in the dossier; how it was presented to them; who did the presenting; when they learned it had been funded by a political entity or the Clinton campaign or DNC; and what actions they took on the basis of the information, including outreach to law enforcement or media. One former State Department official, Jonathan Winer, has acknowledged serving as a conduit between Mr. Steele, his State Department colleagues and Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr was also in contact with Mr. Steele during the 2016 campaign, and his wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS. A spokesman for former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has publicly suggested that Mr. Reid had seen the dossier by October 2016. How many Washington Democrats were in the know, and how was the information used to feed the Trump-Russia collusion narrative? There’s also the question of whether the dossier explains the Obama Administration’s behavior during the post-election transition, as it embarked on the broad unmasking of U.S. citizens caught in surveillance of foreign officials, the widespread dissemination of intelligence across government departments, and media leaks. The House committee is giving the officials until Friday to respond. If they refuse, the committee will have to issue subpoenas. Mr. Nunes isn’t asking these individuals, who served at the heights of American power, to divulge privileged information. He’s asking whether they used an unverified and partisan campaign document to target political opponents and undermine a new Administration.

Obama officials who received the request from Nunes include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice. How they respond to the request will tell you a lot about their prospective culpability in this matter. If they really did nothing to misuse the Steele dossier, they should have no problem answering Nunes' inquiries in full, and showing up to testify if that is requested. If they stonewall, forcing Nunes to issue subpoenas, watch for the media to try to give them cover by claiming the whole thing is partisan harassment about nothing. Yet all of this is within the purview of the House Intelligence Committee, and there is no reason whatsoever Nunes should not be asking these questions or expecting answers. This is part of the fundamental oversight role Congress exercises over the executive branch. I'll say it again: If the party roles were reversed here, the media would be treating this as a Watergate-level scandal. As it stands, I believe it could be that, but we still need answers to all these questions before we can draw that conclusion. There is a very real possibility that the "Trump colluded with Russia" storyline is not only baseless, but intentionally manufactured by the Obama and Clinton teams with an assist from the Obama Justice Department and FBI. Yet the nation has been obsessed with it for well over a year. If it's all nonsense, and it was concocted for political purposes, we need to know that. If Brennan, Clapper, Rice and others won't answer these questions, why do you think that is?

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