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WSJ Columnist Notes The Peculiar Thing Being Left Out of Story About Former Obama DOJ Officials Attacking AG Barr

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  May 15, 2020 4:05 PM

Attorney General William Barr has been kicked in the teeth many times since he took over the Justice Department. He’s done an excellent job. For liberals, he’s a nightmare. He’s a political puppet. He’s a traitor. He’s usurping the rule of law. And all of these allegations are lobbed because Barr is exposing the bad behavior of Obama’s Department of Justice that was engulfed in Russian collusion delusion. Barr is currently investigating the investigators in how this Trump-Russia collusion clown show ever got started in the first place. This circus act, which has been completely debunked, was started thanks to a biased piece of political opposition research collected by a former British spy. It was an effort funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrats. We know this piece of fiction as the Trump dossier, which the FBI was cited as credible evidence to spy on the Trump campaign. It launched the counterintelligence probe that eventually ensnared ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in a perjury entrapment plot. Alas, the final chapter of this sad tale.

Flynn pleaded guilty to politically motivated “lying to the FBI” charges after the government threatened him and his family with total financial destruction. Now, with new documents exposing Flynn as a victim of a DOJ/FBI run amok, the Justice Department under Barr has filed to drop the charges. There is no case. The prosecutor is gone, having resigned as the motion outlining the history of the Obama DOJ’s malfeasance, overreach, and corruption in the effort to scalp Flynn was exposed. And yet, Flynn remains in a legal nightmare, with Judge Emmet Sullivan appointing a retired jurist, John Gleeson, to fight the motion to dismiss, which no party, in this case, has opposed, and possibly look for a way to file perjury charges against Flynn over his guilty plea. It’s a clown show. Oh, and now every anti-Trump lawyer nutjob under the sun can file an amicus brief. He’s allowed that. 

It’s part of a tantrum from the Left because these folks had such a lengthy outline in their heads about this White House. They just knew they colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election, right. Wrong. There is no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. If anything, there is more evidence to point to the FBI meddling more in the last presidential election than Moscow. There’s more evidence of Clinton-Russia collusion in the 2016 election, as Christopher Steele, the former MI6 operative tasked with finding dirt on Trump for the dossier, used Russian intelligence sources still active in the Kremlin for this work of fiction, one that is now exposed to being mostly Russian misinformation. The Left got played. 

Barr is now exposing the overreach from the past administration due to them believing in these elaborate lies of collusion—and the Left simply cannot cope. It’s part of liberal America’s insufferable disposition of entitlement. They’re the only ones who can win elections, coupled with their complete and total lack of instinct when it comes to the press. The Washington Post said the walls are closing in on Trump. Hillary has a 99 percent chance of winning. The latter was totally wrong. The former is said time and again and nothing happens because there is no there there. 

The collusion delusion broke the minds of many in liberal America. And now, when the evidence is clear that the Left got played by Russia and that the Obama administration and other anti-Trump elements within the DOJ went way off the reservation in order to inflict damage onto the incoming administration of the opposing party, cognitive function for these folks shuts down. Often times, liberals are unaware of their idiocy, but this case is rather jarring. We’re at a point where the level of absurdity from the Left is akin to arguing with someone who refuses to believe that Friday is a day of the week or that Friday is what comes after Thursday.

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In some ways, when presented with new documents about the abuse inflicted upon Gen. Flynn, you get this feeling from liberal journalists that they’re not interested in viewing what’s in the documents, that clearly points to the top brass at the FBI going after the former general despite zero evidence to do so, and pivoting to…whether the documents are actually made of paper. They zero in on the minutiae or the irrelevant. Case in point, the nearly 2,000 former Obama traitors, excuse me, former Obama DOJ officials who signed a letter calling for Barr to resign over the motion to drop the charges against Flynn because of political interference. That’s rich. It’s hilarious to think that for a second, Barr or anyone cares what these people think. Second, we all know you’re mad that all your dirty laundry and tricks are being exposed. You lost. We won. And now your bad behavior will be exposed in the fullness of time. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel had an excellent column on all of this while noting two things: one of which is that the media harping on the former Obama DOJ clowns is entertaining, given that there are tens of thousands of these guys and gals and none of them decide to latch onto this cry baby letter, exposing the minutiae of this fiasco. Second, these liberals still peddling the Russian collusion myth and the outrage over the DOJ moving to drop the Flynn case know that the folks who reviewed the case and made the recommendation are career prosecutors and former FBI employees, right? It’s not some partisan maneuver here. It’s a fact that Flynn was railroaded:

Thanks to acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, we also got a document this week showing the Obama political team was in on the Flynn sandbagging. The list of Obama partisans who “unmasked” Mr. Flynn—snooping on his phone conversations—include Vice President Joe Biden, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. The dates suggest the administration was listening in on Mr. Flynn from the start.

Yet instead of applauding Mr. Barr for divulging these facts, the Beltway has responded with ire. Mr. Barr’s transparency threatens to reveal further that the Russia-collusion narrative was pure fantasy, to puncture the self-righteousness of the likes of Mr. Comey and his scribes, to question the appropriateness of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, and to expose how hatred of Donald Trump drove people of power to break rules and destroy norms. Thus the vicious campaign to undermine Mr. Barr’s credibility, an operation that has now been joined not only by Democrats and the press, but also by Justice Department alumni and even the federal judge presiding over Mr. Flynn’s case.

The press spent all week flogging an open letter from 1,900 former Justice Department employees calling on Mr. Barr to resign for having “assaulted the rule of law” by withdrawing the charges against Mr. Flynn. Never mind that this crew is an insignificant fraction of the tens of thousands of former department employees who didn’t sign a letter. Many stories also conveniently neglected to mention that the letter was organized by Protect Democracy, a nonprofit formed in 2017 by former counsels for President Obama.

The proof of the skullduggery behind these attacks and press stories is in the name they don’t mention: U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen. He’s the man Mr. Barr tapped in January to review the Flynn case, and who made the recommendation to withdraw the charges. Career prosecutors worked on the withdrawal brief. No one has dared suggest Mr. Jensen is anything but a fine lawyer—because they can’t. He spent 10 years at the FBI and 10 as a career prosecutor. His involvement refutes the critics’ assertion that this was a “politicized” decision by Mr. Barr on behalf of Mr. Trump. So they’ve excised him—and the career prosecutors—from the story.

Then there’s Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to join the smear campaign against Mr. Barr. Rather than grant the prosecution’s request to withdraw the Flynn case, Judge Sullivan appointed a retired judge, John Gleeson, to oppose the effort and to investigate whether Mr. Flynn engaged in perjury—an offense with which he wasn’t charged—by changing his plea.

[…]

All this highlights the nakedly political nature of Judge Sullivan’s actions. From a purely legal perspective, this is an insignificant case; “lying to the feds” charges are a dime a dozen, and even Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors initially recommended little or no prison time for Mr. Flynn. The judge’s moves are simply over the top. More important, they are legally and ethically dubious.

Strassel added that a positive note about this sad story is that Barr is not going to cave. He won’t budge. He’ll push on to ensure law and order is maintained and honored. Yet, it still amazes me a little bit of how unwilling the Left is at admitting they were dead wrong about Russian collusion. Politically speaking, it’s a carcass, rotten to the core, and loaded with maggots. There’s no comeback here for this narrative. None. And yet, the Left still thinks is a vibrant lively creature that will soon get Trump. They’re just as delusional about this as thinking that Joe Biden could become the next president of the United States.

 Oh, wait…

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