The main suspect in an investigation with no crime.

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review,

...The FBI and the Obama Justice Department launched an investigation of the Democrats’ political adversaries, and they used Clinton-campaign-generated, foreign-provided innuendo to do it. They strained to make a case on Donald Trump even as they were burying a daunting criminal case on Mrs. Clinton. As I have previously explained, moreover, the president was misled about his status: not only was he a suspect in the investigation, he was the main suspect.

The main suspect in an investigation with no crime.

...We’ve had a lot to say about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to comply with federal regulations that require showing a factual basis for a criminal investigation — i.e., reason to believe that a crime was committed — before appointing a special counsel, Robert Mueller. But Rosenstein was just riding the tide. The FISA warrants show that this practice of launching a criminal investigation in the absence of a crime long predated Rosenstein and Mueller. It was the modus operandi of the Trump-Russia investigation from Day One, when Obama’s Justice Department and the FBI first targeted the Trump campaign.

...FISA authorities are not criminal-law authorities. It is not just that FISA is not designed to ferret out evidence of crime; it is not permitted to be used for that purpose. FISA’s objective is the collection of foreign intelligence, the gathering of information about the actions and intentions of foreign powers that may threaten American interests.

...For Mueller, the Russia counterintelligence probe was cover to conduct a criminal investigation of Trump in the absence of grounds to believe a crime had occurred.

...After 9/11, The Wall came down. Its razing was endorsed by such experienced hands as your humble correspondent. We argued that it was ridiculous to believe the FBI would pretextually use FISA to conduct a criminal investigation. Many times I posited that, even if we assume a rogue agent, it would be far easier for the rogue to fabricate the evidence needed to get a criminal wiretap than to fabricate a national-security angle so he could use FISA. I insisted that if the rogue tried to go the FISA route, he’d never get away with it. FISA requires too many levels of scrutiny in the upper ranks of the FBI and the Justice Department — responsible superiors who would stop the rogue in his tracks.

I was wrong.

...But in the Trump investigation, headquarters became the investigator. And just as an investigator is tempted to keep his supervisors in the dark when he is doing something he shouldn’t do, the Obama Justice Department and FBI withheld information about the Trump investigation from Congress — even though the “Gang of Eight” was supposed to receive quarterly briefings on sensitive matters. They withheld essential information from the FISA court about the source of their information (the Clinton campaign), and about the apparent dishonesty and deep bias of their main witness (Christopher Steele), even as they presented unverified allegations to the FISA court, flouting FBI guidelines. Headquarters exists to prevent investigators, who sometimes get too invested in their cases, from cutting such corners. But here, headquarters was its own supervisor. Such arrangements tend not to end well.

...The FBI has been investigating for well over two years, and for nine months of that time it expressly told the FISA court it believed the Trump campaign was engaged in a corrupt conspiracy with Russia. No one, though, has ever been charged with such a heinous offense. Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein persists in his refusal to identify any crime for which there was such a strong basis to believe Trump could be guilty that a special counsel had to be appointed.

If there were such a crime, we would have been told about it by now. The “factual” basis for suspecting Trump of an espionage conspiracy with Russia was the uncorroborated, unverifiable Steele dossier. The Obama Justice Department and the FBI used the dossier to get FISA warrants, and in so doing told the court that “prosecutive authorities” would “evaluate” the “foreign intelligence” in a hunt for crimes.

The Justice Department and the FBI know they are not permitted to use FISA as a pretext. If I were a member of Congress, I’d be asking them whether this promise of “prosecutive” review in the Page warrant application (a) was unique to the Trump investigation or (b) is invoked whenever the FBI seeks a FISA warrant.

Either way, it’s a problem. Either way, it harms the country. If the public becomes convinced that national-security powers, such as those in FISA, are being employed to monitor Americans when there is insufficient evidence to justify a criminal investigation, there will be demands to strip these powers. And those of us who have insisted through the years that, with responsible supervision by the top tiers of the Justice Department and the Bureau, the government can be trusted not to abuse these powers, will have nothing to say.

Read more here.