This column will explain the impeachment farce in two minutes. By the end, you will thank the media for demanding the release of Trump’s phone calls with the presidents of Ukraine and Australia.
What the phone transcripts demonstrate is that -- unlike the typical Republican -- Trump is not a let-bygones-be-bygones sort. He intends to find out who turned the FBI into a Hillary super PAC, using the powers of the nation’s “premiere law enforcement agency” (according to them) to take out a presidential candidate, and then a president.
The whole picture becomes clear when you have the timeline.
Instead of the FBI just admitting that it launched the Russia probe to help elect Hillary, the agency has given us a scrolling series of excuses for this partisan attack.
The FBI’s first claim was that it was merely investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers. As part of that effort, it was, naturally, obligated to spy on the Trump campaign.
Then we found out that the John le Carre theory of Hillary’s defeat was based exclusively on the word of a single cybersecurity firm. Yes, the FBI was SO frantic about the DNC’s servers ... that it didn’t bother examining them itself. I repeat: The FBI never touched the DNC's servers.
And who did? CrowdStrike. Who was CrowdStrike? A Ukrainian-backed cybersecurity firm.
That’s why Trump asked the Ukrainian president about CrowdStrike –- the company behind the first of the FBI’s many excuses for spying on Trump.
On Jan. 10, 2017 -- before Trump was even inaugurated -- FBI Director James Comey breathed new life into the Russian collusion story by leaking news about the infamous Russian “dossier.”
Hurray! The media were ecstatic. For the next 10 months, we got breathless reports about how this very important, totally credible, deeply concerning dossier might force Trump out of the White House! <
E.g.:
-- “I remember pretty distinctly that you supported President Trump’s criticism of this dossier ... Do you want to dial back that criticism now?” -- CNN’s Kate Bolduan to former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, April 19, 2017
-- “If the dossier is now about to be publicly defended and explained and backed up, I mean, that’s conceivably the whole ball game.” -- MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Aug. 23, 2017
After carrying on about the dossier for nearly all of 2017, on Oct. 24 of that year, we finally found out who had paid for it: the Hillary Clinton campaign. (And you wonder why they don’t want to give us the whistleblower’s name.)
This rather important datum was coughed up not by the media, but only in response to a court order. Good work, “watchdog media”! Nothing gets past you guys.
Suddenly the dossier wasn’t important at all. Where did Republicans get that idea?
At this point, the FBI had to scramble to come up with an all-new explanation for why the bureau had put more than 100 agents -- according to NBC News’ Ken Dilanian –- on an investigation of a presidential candidate. (Luckily, the bureau had lots of time, having already vanquished international terrorism.)
Within a matter of days, on Oct. 30, the media was bristling with the news that the real reason the FBI put G-Men on the Trump campaign was: George Papadopoulos.
(Don’t stop reading! The sun is about come out and all will be clear.)
Up until Oct. 24, the media had barely mentioned the young campaign aide. But starting on Oct. 30, Papadopoulos became the lynchpin of the whole Trump-Russia conspiracy.
It was a heavy lift. Papadopoulos had only met Trump once and, as The New York Times admitted, was “so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications.”
A few months later, in December 2017, the Russian collusion fairy tale took a hit when texts from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page showed FBI operatives at the heart of the so-called “investigation” vowing to use federal law enforcement resources to “stop” Trump.
The FBI began frantically pumping up the Papadopoulos angle, telling the Times that it was their gob-smacking discovery in the summer of 2016 that Papadopoulos may have had “inside information” about Russia “hacking” the DNC’s email that was a “driving factor” in the bureau’s opening of the Russia-Trump investigation.
So THAT’S why the nation’s No. 1 law enforcement agency had 100 agents investigating the Trump campaign! It sure took them a long time to come up with a reason.
Pending results from Trump’s phone call with the Australian president, Papadopoulos remains the FBI’s current excuse for an “investigation” that wasted four years, millions of dollars and, in the end, turned up nada.
The story was, in the summer of 2016, Australian high commissioner to the United Kingdom Alexander Downer contacted the FBI claiming that Papadopoulos had admitted to him during a night of drinking that he knew the Russians had Hillary’s emails. Two months later, Wikileaks began posting the DNC's emails!
HOW ELSE CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT, UNLESS TRUMP WAS COLLUDING WITH RUSSIA?
I can explain it.
When Papadopoulos was blabbing to the Australian about the Russians having Hillary’s emails, everyone was talking about the Russians having Hillary’s emails -- CNN, The Guardian, even ABC’s “The View.” (See Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.) Papadopoulos’ “source” probably read it in The New York Times.
Perhaps Downer is always completely oblivious to international news. Perhaps he spends too much time drinking with 28-year-olds.
Trump’s phone call with the president of Australia, released this week, suggests that we just might get to the bottom of the big Alexander Downer tipoff -- the FBI’s latest cover story.
Now you know why all of official Washington, D.C., is screaming: IMPEACH! They don’t want you to find out that America’s “premiere law enforcement agency” tried to throw a presidential election and destroy a presidency.