RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/doggedness-william-barr/

I am embarrassed to admit that when William Barr became Donald Trump’s Attorney General a couple of months ago, I did not remember that he had been here, done that as George H. W. Bush’s Attorney General back in the previous century.

They did have television back then, however, and students of history, as well as students of politics, can profit from watching Barr’s original confirmation hearings, presided over – drum roll, please – by a younger, much more acute Joe Biden, who, like the poor, we seem to have always with us. It’s a long clip, but very much worth sampling, especially for the adroit, no-nonsense performance of William Barr and mildly challenging but still respectful performance of Joe Biden.

What a difference a few decades make! William Barr, though he has gained a few pounds, is still the razor sharp and amusingly unflappable character he was in 1991. Joe Biden – well, charity requires that we draw a veil over that subject. Let’s just say that President Trump’s epithet of ‘Sleepy Joe’ (or ‘SleepyCreepy Joe’) is generous.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-why-was-fbi-so-wrong-in-trump-russia-wiretap-warrant

A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI’s secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Defenders and critics of the president argued over whether the October 2016 warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier, which was a collection of anti-Trump allegations compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They also argued over whether the warrant adequately informed the court that the dossier was, in fact, a work of political opposition research, rather than legitimate intelligence gathering.

The arguments ended in impasse, with defenders and detractors set in their positions.

Now, however, we have new evidence, in the form of the Mueller report, to evaluate the Page FISA application. We can ask: Was the information the FBI relied on true? Were the FBI’s representations to the court accurate? The answers do not bode well for the bureau.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/11/who_were_the_mueller_reports_hired_guns_140289.html

Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it’s not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile “investigative reports” and other “information.”

The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel’s office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion dossier for the Clinton campaign.

They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller’s operation – and even had a hand in his final report – because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017. Also, Mueller’s lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from Fusion with the media.