The real collusion? Investigate the swamp, right now

There have long been suspicions that, virtually from the day he swore his oath of office, President Trump has been subjected to a kind of rolling coup by the “deep state” aimed at levering him out of office by fair means or foul.

Now it has become alarmingly clear just how foul those tactics have been — and more alarming still, that the institutions of the state which exist to protect justice and uphold the US constitution are themselves either active participants in this attempted subversion or are paralysed by being politically compromised.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Gen Michael Flynn over his admission that he lied to the FBI over contacting the Russian ambassador in December 2016 has raised more questions than it answers. As President-elect Trump’s chosen National Security Adviser, Flynn was perfectly within his rights to make such an approach (which was apparently to try to head off a UN initiative hostile to Israel). There was nothing remotely illegal about it. So why would he lie about a perfectly legal, entirely normal activity? The word is that Flynn, an upright and morally conscientious man, threw Mueller a bone in order to protect his family who were being used (disgustingly) to pressurise him into compromising the President.

Whatever the explanation might be, indicting Flynn merely on a process charge rather than any illegal activity illustrated the fact that Mueller still had found zero evidence of unconstitutional collusion with the Russians by Trump’s campaign team. This exacerbated suspicions that Mueller was engaged upon an unconstitutional fishing expedition to turn up any information that might help lever Trump out of office.

Then came the bombshell revelation that Peter Strzok, the top FBI investigator on Mueller’s Russian-collusion probe, was fired this summer for exchanging anti-Trump and pro-Hillary texts with a bureau lawyer with whom he was having an affair.

Worse still, he altered the language used by then FBI chief James Comey about Hillary’s use of her private email server for classified information from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” in the final version. Since “gross negligence” in the handling of classified information is a crime, that got Hillary off the criminal hook.

As the New York Post has commented: “… it now looks like the fix was well and truly in on the Hillary probe. Far worse, it also looks like the ‘collusion’ probe was a partisan hit from the start”.

Worse yet again, as the Wall Street Journal has observed Mueller and the Justice Department kept this information from House investigators, despite Intelligence Committee subpoenas that would have exposed those texts. They also refused to answer questions about Mr. Strzok’s dismissal and refused to make him available for an interview.

The WSJ comments in its editorial: “While there is no evidence so far of Trump-Russia collusion, House investigators have turned up enough material to suggest that anti-Trump motives may have driven Mr. Comey’s FBI investigation… All of this reinforces our doubts about Mr. Mueller’s ability to conduct a fair and credible probe of the FBI’s considerable part in the Russia-Trump drama. Mr. Mueller ran the bureau for 12 years and is fast friends with Mr. Comey, whose firing by Mr. Trump triggered his appointment as special counsel. The reluctance to cooperate with a congressional inquiry compounds doubts related to this clear conflict of interest.”

Even more devastatingly, the WSJ goes on: “Yet none of this means the public shouldn’t also know if, and how, America’s most powerful law-enforcement agency was influenced by Russia or partisan U.S. actors. All the more so given Mr. Comey’s extraordinary intervention in the 2016 campaign, which Mrs. Clinton keeps saying turned the election against her. The history of the FBI is hardly without taint.”

And what about that reportedly chance meeting between Bill Clinton and then Attorney-General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac at Phoenix airport in June 2016? Apparently they merely made small talk; and yet only a few days later, then FBI director Comey announced he wouldn’t recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton.

At PJ Media, Roger Simon comments about documents the FBI have finally disclosed:

“Now we know why the FBI played shell games. The documents show that FBI officials were concerned solely about the leaking of details of the tarmac meeting… In one email, an FBI official writes ‘we need to find that guy.’ And in another we learn that the Phoenix FBI office was contacted ‘in an attempt to stem any further damage.’ An FBI official working on Lynch’s security detail even goes so far as to suggest non-disclosure agreements to keep the full facts from coming forth.

“No wonder the FBI didn’t turn these documents over until we caught it red-handed, hiding and lying about them. Simply put, the FBI appears to be fully complicit in a cover-up that attempted to influence a presidential election for a favored candidate – Hillary Clinton. And the truth was trampled on a Phoenix tarmac.”

In other words, the real Russia-collusion inquiry should be directing its attention at the Clintons ( the Hillary-brokered uranium deal, Russian payments to Bill for Moscow speeches) and the FBI, whose credibility as a law-enforcement agency is now shot to pieces.

Donald Trump came to power promising to drain the swamp. Not even he, though, could possibly have realised quite how fetid it is and what a threat is poses to the US constitution and the rule of law.