By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--February 28, 2018
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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.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.
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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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