You have to wonder how dishonest the media can get. The media now twist what Attorney General William Barr is actually investigating with respect to the 2016 election and feign shock that there may be crimes involved.
As you can see in the videos below, Barr told Congress he would review all the investigations into the American intelligence agencies being used to spy on the Trump campaign and determine if there was a legit predicate for it. Later, he told Senators that he’d opened “multiple” criminals investigations into damaging leaks. But now, the media report that the review has morphed into a criminal investigation because, shockingly, there apparently wasn’t a legit predicate for spying on Trump.
Only the media are surprised, dazed and confused. To wit:
Yesterday the @NYT ‘reported’ the leak that:
“Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation”
Not exactly, NYT. … as if the Obama and Trump Justice Departments are the same. Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Ohr, and many others have been dumped or demoted. I don’t call that being the ‘same’ department.
Here’s how the Lyin’ Ted Lieu characterized the probe, which was slavishly transcribed in all caps by Newsweek:
“CRIMINAL INQUIRY INTO MUELLER’S RUSSIA PROBE IS ‘DEEPLY TROUBLING,’ SAYS DEMOCRATIC REP. TED LIEU”
Maybe the probe is looking into the Mueller investigation. Barr wants to know the predicate of why Obama spied on Trump using Hillary’s phony Russian (and, now we learn, Ukrainian) fake news; whether the FISA court was duped, willingly or not, to issue multiple wiretaps to spy on Trump aparatchiks. If Mueller’s investigation didn’t look into those things, and he didn’t, then that’s something that needs to nailed down.
Vanity Fair issues an all caps scare headline and sub headline explicitly saying the Barr investigation is a political vendetta:
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OPENS CRIMINAL PROBE INTO ITS RUSSIA INVESTIGATION.William Barr is essentially doing Trump’s bidding by investigating the investigators—now with subpoena power.
Who was carrying out a political vendetta again? And are they really investigating the investigation? Maybe. Seem there were a lot of corners cut in the Mueller probe. But if this is doing “Trump’s bidding,” then it stands to reason that the initial spying was done at Obama’s bidding.
Shockingly, CNN does best with framing the actual investigation:
“Origins of Russia probe now a criminal investigation”
That’s right. The origins, the underpinnings, the predicate, of the Russia hoax are being looked at; not necessarily, or only, the Mueller probe.
The New York Times headline invites you to mock this farcical bit of fancy as an “Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation,” like a dog chasing his own tail.
Here’s part of what Barr said when asked by Senators about the scope of his investigations and why he was conducting it:
“I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016…I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It’s a big deal.”
And now the New York Times trumpets that this has miraculously morphed into a criminal investigation. But last May, Barr told Senate Intelligence Committee member, and former chairman, Charles Grassley, that there were criminal investigations – multiple – going on:
We have multiple criminal leak investigations underway.
Not much of a mystery here, folks, except to the media.
The media are now circling the wagons around their tribe, the Democrats, and former Obama Administration officials. Flak is being released to distract the public, the smoke grenade that is the ‘impeachment inquiry’ is allowing wisps of anti-Trump ‘testimony’ to escape their secret panic room, and the Obama acolytes who weaponized multiple government agencies against one man – Trump – have now elevated their concern to Defcon 1.
Stay tuned.
