Obama's team takes down a brilliant patriot

William Corbett writes in part in the Federalist,

...While malfeasance emerged from multiple institutions, no organization discredited itself more acutely than the Federal Bureau of Investigation I have been privileged to serve for 22 years. With conflagrations ravaging the 2016 electoral landscape, the FBI should have served as a rule-of-law firebreak. But that role was enthusiastically abandoned by FBI headquarters arsonists whose names we have come to learn and loathe.

The entire fiasco has been a gutshot to the thousands of former agents whose careers faithfully adhered to the Constitution. How did law enforcement’s premier investigative agency, steeped with expertise in quashing public corruption, become so thoroughly devoted to abetting it?

The full answer awaits the completion of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s formal investigation, and possibly the deliberations of a federal trial jury. But FBI veterans also seek to know, how on earth was this allowed to happen?

Former FBI Director Jim Comey’s conspicuous dissembling and the self-serving, cable-TV twaddle of Andy McCabe offer no insights, only evasions. Each new document trove reveals their pretentious “It’s possible, but I don’t know” suppositions about the Christopher Steele dossier to be nothing more than high-octane sham.

After mutilating the FBI’s legacy of trust, these deceivers seek to absolve themselves with allusions to subordinates’ bad judgment and systemic incompetency. But wisdom and experience recognize this as yet another masking maneuver aimed at covering a more awful reality of bad faith and abject moral failure.

...As a private citizen, when I regard how brazenly Flynn’s persecutors deprived him of his constitutional rights and reputation, I am shocked and alarmed, and you should be too. As a former colleague, when I imagine the good will Americans have for the FBI used to camouflage a scheme for entrapping him, I am deeply ashamed.

In ordering a review to evaluate the “FBI’s role in the Flynn investigation and determine whether any current employees engaged in misconduct,” FBI Director Christopher Wray has taken an important, albeit tentative, first step. The record depicts FBI employees lying to the FISA court, spurious source-handling, doctored reports, and evading federal records laws and oversite compliance. This must be confronted with an unblinking application of all pertinent regulations and laws.

I have to wonder, against all the fanaticism Flynn contended with in far-off hellscapes, could he ever have imagined that ideological extremism would threaten his security and the well-being of his family here in our country?

Read more here.

"Conclusion first, fact-gathering second"

Katie Pavlich reports at Town Hall,

According to new transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Thursday afternoon, former FBI Director James Comey made the decision not to refer then Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for prosecution long before ever interviewing key witnesses. Members of the Committee allege Comey made the decision months before FBI agents were finished with the criminal investigation of her mishandling classified information during her time as Secretary of State.

The transcripts were revealed in a letter sent to current FBI Director Christopher Wray, in which lawmakers are demanding an explanation and more documents surrounding the case.

"According to the unredacted portions of the transcripts, it appears that in April or early May of 2016, Mr. Comey had already decided he would issue a statement exonerating Secretary Clinton. That was long before FBI agents finished their work. Mr. Comey even circulated an early draft statement to select members of senior FBI leadership. The outcome of an investigation should not be prejudged while FBI agents are still hard at work trying to gather the facts," the letter, signed by Chairman Chuck Grassley and Committee member Lindsey Graham states. "Conclusion first, fact-gathering second—that’s no way to run an investigation. The FBI should be held to a higher standard than that, especially in a matter of such great public interest and controversy."

Read more here.