Analyze this

How to capture the miasma of the Trump/Russia investigation? Andrew McCarthy deserves a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in shedding light on dark corners. He has done it many times, but never more so than in his exercise in comparison and contrast: “In Politicized Justice, Desperate Times Call for Disparate Measures.”

The New York Times has given us three or more origin stories fabricated by its friends and allies in the intelligence community to explain the Trump/Russia investigation. In this column, McCarthy gives us an alternative version that has the merit of undisputed facts in its favor:

It has now been confirmed that the Trump campaign was subjected to spying tactics under counterintelligence law — FISA surveillance, national-security letters, and covert intelligence operatives who work with the CIA and allied intelligence services. It made no difference, apparently, that there was an ongoing election campaign, which the FBI is supposed to avoid affecting; nor did it matter that the spy targets were American citizens, as to whom there is supposed to be evidence of purposeful, clandestine, criminal activity on behalf of a foreign power before counterintelligence powers are invoked.

But what was the rationale for using these spying authorities?

The fons et origo of the counterintelligence investigation was the suspicion — which our intelligence agencies assure us is a fact — that the Democratic National Committee’s server was hacked by covert Russian operatives. Without this cyber-espionage attack, there would be no investigation. But how do we know it really happened? The Obama Justice Department never took custody of the server — no subpoena, no search warrant. The server was thus never subjected to analysis by the FBI’s renowned forensics lab, and its evidentiary integrity was never preserved for courtroom presentation to a jury.

How come?

No anonymous sources. No implications of wrongdoing declared “unclear.” Read the whole devastating thing here.

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