Mark Penn
“…Had the Department of Justice (DOJ) released the newly disclosed documents related to Gen. Michael Flynn three years ago, instead of fired FBI Director James Comey improperly leaking his “memos” on President Trump, there definitely would have been a special counsel – only it would have been investigating the FBI for gross abuse of power, not the Trump administration.
The new documents are in effect the “smoking gun” proving that a cabal at the FBI acted above the law and with extreme political bias, targeting people for prosecution rather than investigating crimes.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found 17 violations of policy and procedure in the initiation of the investigation of Trump’s campaign. Former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report found no evidence of any Trump-Russia collusion. And yet much of the media coverage of all this has been so riddled with bias that, in a recent poll, 53 percent still believe Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election…
…Why were they desperate to get Flynn fired or prosecuted when there was no evidence whatsoever that he committed a crime? Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy suggests they needed to get him out of the way of their investigation. I think it is more likely that they simply wanted to get their targets at all costs and sustain their investigation to bring down the administration. Clear prosecutorial abuses were committed against all of the defendants, none of whom were ever charged with colluding with the Russians. Manafort was hit with tax evasion, Stone with lying to Congress about his contacts with a conspiracy theorist. Cohen pleaded to financial and election law crimes. Carter Page escaped prosecution, even after an FBI lawyer faked emails from the CIA to continue unconstitutional surveillance of him.
This was an investigation without foundation that systematically persecuted people at all costs. And the Mueller investigation was honorable only in the sense that the investigators had to admit there never was any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
It is all coming out now, but it is way too late. Attorney General William Barr seems to see this all very clearly, but the time to act with tough indictments is truly now, with the release of these explosive documents. The actions in the Flynn case provide the link between the Strzok-Lisa Page texts about “insurance policies” against Trump’s election and actions that were indefensible on every level; they show how the two of them acted in concert to extend their political prejudices to the department’s actions against people who were in no way colluding with Russia. It did not matter to these FBI officials, who acted as though they were above the law: They would get their targets and drag the country through years of a meritless investigation and a false political debate…”