RUTHFULLY YOURS

It wasn’t so long ago that it seemed like a big deal if your shiny new personal computer could multitask: that is, it could run two or more programs simultaneously. It was then that we began to hear about “threads” and “background tasks.” It all seemed, and indeed was, pretty nifty.

Most of us, I believe, tend to ignore or forget about background tasks. We see the foreground process unfolding before us and focus on that. But in life as in computers, switching between is often but the work of a moment. The establishment news networks—those working against Donald Trump—would have us believe that the big story of the century is the impeachment of, or at least the impeachment inquiry directed at, Donald Trump.

But while Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) are busy pushing that narrative, there is a vibrant background task that is just now being promoted to foreground status. If we had the equivalent of a political “activity monitor” to assess what was happening, we would see that the process called “impeachment inquiry” is shedding resources and prominence as it heads toward idle status.

The process called “Quis custodes custodiet?” meanwhile—“Who will guard the guardians?”—is beginning to gobble up CPU resources and memory. I am not the only one to notice that Schiff and Nadler are more and more playing to suburban dinner theaters with tiny audiences while the names William Barr, John Durham, and Michael Horowitz are front-page news wherever there is news (as distinct from propaganda).

The latest flag announcing this realignment came Saturday morning, when James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence and now one of his spokesmen on CNN, was asked whether he was concerned that the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia hoax (my term, not the interlocutor’s) might implicate senior members of the so-called intelligence community, i.e., chaps like James Clapper.

Clapper’s response was revealing, not to say hilarious. Remember, the question is: Are you “concerned” (i.e., worried, anxious) about the investigation overseen by Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham.

Clapper’s multipart answer: I don’t think there was any wrongdoing; I was just trying to help the country; if there was wrongdoing, it was not my fault; I was just following orders.

Ipse dixit: “I don’t think there was any wrongdoing.”

“All of us were trying to navigate a very, very difficult, politically fraught highly charged situation.”

“For my part, my main concern was the Russians, and the threat posed by the Russians to our very political fabric.”

The “message” he is getting from the controversy is that we should “ignore the Russian interference and meddling and the threat that it poses.” (Read: “Don’t blame me,” he seems to say, “if the Russkie’s take over.”)

Big takeaway: it is “disconcerting” now to be “investigated for doing our duty, what we were told to do by the president.”

And exactly what were they doing? Investigating a candidate, President-elect Trump, with the end, said Clapper, of preparing a big, comprehensive report for Congress and “the next administration.”

You see that James Clapper, despite appearances to the contrary, does have a wry sense of humor. He can say with a straight face that the covert investigation aimed at destroying Donald Trump was actually an investigation intended at least in part for the incoming Trump administration.

Yuck, yuck, yuck. What a card!

But note that Clapper, funny though he was, was not himself laughing. I don’t blame him. The spook-turned-media-lap-dog is as much in the crosshairs as anyone, except perhaps another spook-turned-media-lap-dog, former CIA director and Gus Hall voter John Brennan, who now lends his authoritative anti-Trump commentary to MSNBC.

By the way, what is it with these new escalators that transport former senior intelligence and law enforcement personnel to lucrative posts in the anti-Trump media? Is it part of their severance packages? It’s not only Clapper and Brennan. The same happened to Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI. McCabe may be a trailblazer. He was the first of the gang whom federal prosecutors recommended be indicted for leaking. He won’t be the last.

It’s all happening so fast. Andrew McCarthy was early out of the gate in August with Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election a destroy a Presidency. Next week, we’ll see Lee Smith’s The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History roll off the press.

Meanwhile, William Barr and John Durham continue their efforts to get to the bottom of this complex, deep-state effort to destroy a duly elected president of the United States. Just Friday, it was announced that Durham’s investigation was not a full-fledged criminal investigation. Uh oh.

Representatives Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) are still singing their impeachment cantata. But a huge orchestra, with plenty of brass (not to mention subpoena and prosecutorial power) has assembled and is tuning up. We’re told that Michael Horowitz’s much-anticipated inspector general’s report on the origins of the FISA warrants against American citizens, after numerous delays, will be released imminently, perhaps as soon as next week. Horowitz was quoted as saying it will be “very detailed” and feature “limited redactions.”

You can see why James Clapper objects that he was just following orders. Expect the same song from John Brennan, James Comey, the disgraced former director of the FBI, and other anti-Trump activists in the “intelligence community.”