A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News, May 30, 2018
https://www.skyhinews.com/news/muftic-why-spygate-became-liegate/www.skyhinews.com
Update: June 8, 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/us/politics/ryan-trump-spygate-spy.html
agrees: no spies...per Paul Ryan.
Last week
Donald Trump lit a firecracker in the media, claiming the FBI had planted a spy
in his campaign during the 2016 campaign and called it "Spygate, a scandal
worse than Watergate". Spygate became Trump's lie- gate, Democrats charged,
with good reason.
The challenge was for the Trumpsters to
prove there was a spy embedded in the campaign..just as they were challenged to
prove that Trump Tower was wired by the FBI (still waiting) for political
reasons. For that reason the White House called a meeting of its most devoted
Congressional partisans, Rep. Devin Nunes and Rep. Trey Gowdy,
to meet with the FBI and Department of Justice to get the evidence they thought
would justify Pres. Trump's inflammatory claims and to unmask the
informant. After a great deal of feathers flying, eventually an established
select group, "the gang of eight" security cleared bi-partisan
Congressional members, were invited for a second sit-down.
Spygate has turned out to be a farce after the
bi-partisan group listened to the details of the FBI' s use of an informant, an
American professor in England, to have conversations in England with Americans about whom they already had evidence of connections
to both Russians and the Trump campaign
during 2016. There was no FBI embed in the Trump campaign headquarters or
staff. The purpose of the informant's use was part of the then ongoing
investigation into the Russians' activities. The use of clandestine informants is a fundamental, common practice of our intelligence services and in the case part of an authorized investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.
The President tied this accusation about a spy in his midst
to his rhetoric that it was being
undertaken by "a criminal deep state" and his charges
were quickly embraced and promoted by his loyal one-sided media
brigades. However, even those he appointed in
the position to know, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State and recently director of
the CIA, said there is no such thing as deep
state in the State Department or the CIA in testimony before Congress
last week.
That such a charge can
be easily believed by the public without any evidence is not surprising. A large bipartisan majority feels that national policy is being
manipulated or directed by a “Deep State” of unelected government officials, a
recent Monmouth poll concluded. There is always been a wariness of the power of
the federal government among citizens in
this country, as that same poll found.
But now we have reached the
unhealthy stage of paranoia with many ready to believe the
slightest bit of unproved evidence to confirm our worst fears or
support Donald Trump. This is thanks to Donald Trump's demagogic
playing on these fears to protect himself when he is the subject of
a criminal investigation. He had demanded unmasking of the
informant and the disclosure of evidence uncovered in Mueller’s investigation
of the investigators of him, the investigation’s subject. This is the mother of
all mothers of conflict of interests, because it could be used to
get his supporters' stories in sync in testimony before a
grand jury, or to prepare his defense. These demands took place in the
midst of an ongoing investigation that flies in the face of every norm
and rule in criminal cases. Such "disclosure" takes place after an
indictment, not before. As a sop to put off Trump’s threats of firing Mueller and
his boss, Assistant Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein, critics charge Rosenstein agreed to the White House demands for the
meeting and to order an inspector general’s
investigation of whether Department of
Justice improperly surveilled the Trump campaign in 2016 for political reasons..
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