By David Harsanyi
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
If we found out that Donald Trump’s campaign and the
Republican National Committee had paid a firm working for the Russians to
create a file of fabricated attacks on Hillary Clinton during the election,
would the media treat it as an impeachable offense? Would such efforts be
considered an attack on the foundations of our democracy? Would liberal
columnists make sensationalistic claims that the Russians had “carried out a
successful plan to pick the government of the United States”? Would they argue
that the election had been rigged? Would they demand that Republicans pick
their country over their party?
Of course they would.
What if a major media organization had taken that
ginned-up dossier, one that included a number of unsubstantiated stories about
Hillary’s supposed sexual fetishes and shady business dealings with foreign
powers, and put it online so millions of readers could judge the content for
themselves? What if the firm that helped disseminate that file was also feeding
a number of reporters alleged scoops that helped shape post-election coverage?
Would we now be engaged in a national conversation about the responsibility
journalists have to avoid broadcasting questionable information about
candidates? Would the outlets that ran with those stories apologize for
regurgitating items that might have been concocted by the Russians themselves?
Because all of that sure sounds like fake news to me.
According to The
Washington Post’s reporting,
much of this likely happened, but in reverse. The Post claims that Marc
E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the Democratic
National Committee, had hired Fusion GPS, a DC firm that was working on behalf
of Russians to undermine American sanctions, to do opposition work for them.
And it is likely that Russian sources were in part responsible for some of
their bogus assertions.
And if The Post
is correct, those involved in hiring the firm lied about it for a year. Yes, we
knew that Democrats had contracted the opposition research, but we didn’t know
that it had been the national party and presidential candidate who did so. (One
unknown Republican was also involved with Fusion GPS before the firm hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to
author the dossier.)
How often did the FBI use the dossier as a pretext for
FISA warrants? Seems like a reasonable question. According to CNN, at least,
the dossier was used in part to justify at least one FISA warrant on Trump
advisor Carter Page. CNN has also reported that the FBI paid Steele for some of
his efforts. The Washington Post
reported that Steele had reached an agreement with the FBI only a few weeks
before the election to continue his work, before pulling the plug. Did they pay
him for other work?
The dossier reached the highest levels of the
intelligence community. Then-FBI director James Comey briefed President Obama
and President-elect Trump about the dossier after the election. Information
leaked from the dossier was what really revved up the Russia collusion scare in
January.
No doubt there is much more to this story. For now,
though, Fusion GPS officials have taken the Fifth (despite what you may have
heard from some reporters) and have asked a federal judge block a request for
the House Intelligence Committee to grant them access to bank records. Maybe
another Robert Mueller is needed to get to the truth, since independent
counsels doesn’t seem to function under these strictures — or any, for that
matter.
This is all old news, they tell us. While Clinton’s plans
for the presidency did indeed fail, I’ve been informed on numerous occasions
that a foreign attack on our democratic process is tantamount to a declaration
of war. I mean, we know that Clinton has been tied to Russian uranium interests
going back to 2009, but this all happened just last year. Surely those who
are ready to condemn Attorney General Jeff Sessions for attending the same
party as a Russian diplomat are somewhat
concerned about the DNC hiring a firm that was actively attempting to
weaken the Magnitsky Act during a national election?
Now, some of us believe much of the Russia scare is a
politically motivated effort to undermine the legitimacy of an election. Voting
totals were never “hacked.” Not one vote was manipulated. Americans still
possess free will. On the other hand, there’s no doubt Russia would love to
instigate unrest in the United States. Democrats have been telling us this for
a year. So those who automatically dismiss this inconvenient Fusion GPS story
as irrelevant only reveal that they were never very serious about the Russian
interference to begin with.
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