RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Journal reports:

Attorney General William Barr will ask a team inside the Justice Department to examine the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia, he told Congress on Wednesday, responding to lingering Republican concerns about law enforcement decisions during the 2016 election.

Mr. Barr characterized the law-enforcement activities that were directed at people affiliated with the Trump campaign as “spying,” telling a Senate panel that he will examine the gamut of intelligence activities that were directed at members of the campaign in 2016, looking at how and why surveillance decisions were made.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Mr. Barr said in a hearing, invoking Vietnam-era intelligence abuses, such as the surveillance of antiwar activists as a reason to raise these questions. “Spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

It is a big deal, even if much of the press corps runs every development in this story through the filter of whether it is good news or bad news for Donald Trump. It is unconditionally bad news for the citizens of a free society if it becomes acceptable for the government to spy on domestic political opponents.

“I feel I have an obligation to make sure that government power is not abused. I mean I think that’s one of the principal roles of the attorney general,” Mr. Barr added. Indeed it is.

The Attorney General also did a public service in implicitly reminding lawmakers that they too have a responsibility to protect our liberties. Said Mr. Barr:

Congress is usually very concerned about intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane and I want to make sure that happened. We have a lot of rules about that.

Some lawmakers don’t seem to want to hear this message. Roughly three years after the government began looking for the evidence of Trump-Russia collusion which it has never found, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D., Va.) responded to the attorney general’s’ testimony by tweeting:

Mr. Barr knows how counter-intel investigations work. He knows there was ample evidence of Russian attempts to infiltrate the Trump campaign and that the FBI took lawful action to stop it. Giving a wink and a nod to this long-debunked “spying” conspiracy theory is irresponsible.

Mr. Warner seems to think it’s impolite to call surveillance of innocent political opponents “spying.” Is the intel vice chairman suggesting that all that is needed for the FBI to spy on American citizens is for these Americans to become the targets of a foreign influence campaign? This would suggest that Vladimir Putin effectively has the power to turn U.S. surveillance powers against our own citizens. A former senior government official observes via email:

An administration‘s use of its foreign intelligence investigative powers to spy on the opposing party‘s campaign is not a routine counterintelligence matter. Special care must be taken to mitigate the obvious risks of abuse.

Those risks are as high as Everest when combined with White House unmasking.

That last line refers to Obama administration officials requesting the names of people whose identities would normally not be revealed in intelligence reports.

Now it’s time for the most senior Obama administration officials to reveal the decision-making process that led to surveillance of the political opposition.

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