RUTHFULLY YOURS

In his controversial tweet on Sunday, President Trump indicated that he would direct the Justice Department to investigate “whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes—and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Is the president hinting that he thinks Michael Flynn, a top campaign consultant who briefly served as Trump’s national security advisor, was the target of FISA-authorized surveillance during the campaign or presidential transition—or during both?

Recently released documents—the final House Intelligence Report and the trove of memos authored by former FBI Director James Comey—contain clues to support that suspicion. In his memo dated February 8, 2017, Comey relays this exchange at the White House with then Chief of Staff Reince Priebus:

He then said he wanted to ask me a question and I could decide whether it was appropriate to answer. He then asked, “Do you have a FISA order on Mike Flynn?” I paused for a few seconds and then said that I would answer here, but that this illustrated the kind of question that had to be asked and answered through established channels. I said the answer [redacted]. I then explained that the normal channel was from DOJ leadership to the WH counsel about such things.

The next sentence is redacted. Comey continues: “I explained that it was important that communications about any particular case go through that channel to protect us and to protect the WH from any accusations of improper influence.”

Flynn resigned on February 13 amid reports he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about phone conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. (Details about the call were illegally leaked to the Washington Post in January 2017. The leaker has not yet been identified or charged.)

So why did the Justice Department redact Comey’s answer? It’s fair to assume that if his answer was “No,” there would be no need to conceal it. Also, why would Comey instruct Priebus to follow proper “channels” of inquiry to avoid accusations of “improper influence” if the answer was no? And not just a regular “No.” More like an Are-you-fricking-kidding-me-of-course-not! kind of “No.”

The unredacted version of the House Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, released earlier this month, also dropped a little bombshell about Flynn.

It’s not improper political interference for the chief executive to direct that evidence of executive-branch misconduct be probed.

On Sunday, President Trump tweeted a “demand” that the Justice Department investigate political spying in the 2016 campaign. This replays the political-spying controversy that surfaced in late February. Right now, the issue involves the Obama administration’s use of at least one confidential informant — a spy — to snoop into the opposition party’s presidential campaign; back in February, the issue was the Obama administration’s electronic surveillance — by FISA eavesdropping warrants — for the same purpose.

Just as he did last time, Attorney General Jeff Sessions responded to the president’s agitation by referring the political-spying issue to Inspector General Michael Horowitz. This was the right thing — or, at least, a right thing — to do. Our editorial regarding the previous case explained the guiding principles:

When there are allegations of wrongdoing by Justice Department or FBI officials, federal law and Justice Department protocols require an internal investigation by the units that exist for that purpose — the Office of the Inspector General or the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Sessions was correct to comply with these standards. Arguably, a referral to OPR, rather than the IG, may be warranted. Under federal law, OPR has jurisdiction over allegations of misconduct involving “the exercise of authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice.” There is no doubt, though, that evidence of official malfeasance must be referred to one of these offices. Given that OPR reports directly to the attorney general, while the IG reports to both the attorney general and Congress, Sessions may well have calculated that the IG referral would have more credibility.

These same principles apply now, in the wake of last week’s disclosure that the FBI, under circumstances that remain obscure, used a longtime CIA informant to establish ties with and pry information from three Trump campaign officials, beginning in July 2016.

To elaborate, the president’s Sunday tweet demanded that the Justice Department “look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes,” including whether such monitoring was pushed by “people within the Obama administration!” Trump vowed to follow up this tweet with a more formal directive today.

It sounds harmless to suggest that the Mueller investigation be allowed more time to finish its work. But is it?

Let’s review some history.

Recall that the investigation was begun to learn whether the Trump campaign had gotten help unlawfully from Russia. Justice Department regulations permit appointment of a special counsel only if (i) there is reason to think that a federal crime has been committed, and (ii) investigating it would present a conflict of interest for the Justice Department or there is another overriding public reason to take the investigation outside DOJ.

Because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had worked on the Trump campaign, he recused himself from the matter, and so the deputy — Rod Rosenstein — took the decision to appoint a special counsel. The regulations require that such an appointment recite the facts justifying the conclusion that a federal crime was committed, and specify the crime. However, the initial appointment of Robert Mueller did neither, referring instead to a national security investigation that a special counsel has no authority to pursue.

Although Rosenstein apparently tried to correct his mistake in a new appointment memo, he has thus far refused to publicly disclose a complete copy of it. In other investigations supposedly implicating a president — Watergate and Whitewater come to mind — we were told what the crime was and what facts justified the investigation. Not here.

If the Justice Department and FBI are, as we’ve been told incessantly over the past year, not merely patriots but consummate professionals incapable of being distracted by partisanship or petty Washington intrigues, why are Donald Trump’s antagonists freaking out over the fact that an inspector general will assess whether political motivation tainted an investigation into the president’s campaign? The American people should get a full accounting of what transpired during 2016. Isn’t that what we’ve been hearing since the election?

You believe Trump is corrupt. I get it. But surely anyone who alleges to be concerned about the sanctity of our institutions and rule of law would have some cursory curiosity about whether an investigation by the administration of one major party into the presidential campaign of another major party was grounded in direct evidence rather than fabulist rumor-mongering. Otherwise, any administration, including Trump’s, could initiate an investigation for whatever cooked-up superficial reason it wanted.

Then, when a constitutionally empowered oversight committee demanded information about that investigation, the DOJ could accuse it of “extortion” and stonewall for years.

When the Brits say “ that’s capital!” they’re not referring to a city, font or money. They mean that’s fantastic!”

I spent last weekend in America’s “capital”capital with a lovely and lively friend. She and I visited two museums:

The National Museum of the Marine Corps, located in Quantico, Virginia is the best military museum in the nation. From the Barbary Wars and Revolutionary wars, through the first and second World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the fire bursts of the Cold War to the recent Afghan, Iraq wars, battle scenes and dioramas with lifelike statues and excellent photographs and narratives, the heroic battles of the American “leathernecks” are displayed. We witnessed an unscheduled and remarkable rifle drill with synchrony, dexterity and discipline. After the drill, the marines relaxed and chatted with the visitors which included many venerable marine veterans. We were there for a full day and vowed to see it again.

The Museum of the Bible, which museum opened on November 17, 2017 documents the narrative, history and impact of the Old and New Testaments. It is a magnificent enterprise. The displays of artifacts and texts, and the narratives of the Bible’s impact on the founding fathers, scientists and philosophers are magnificent. A Galilean village is entirely reconstructed as it was in the time of Jesus. The dioramas and narratives of Jerusalem show the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people. It is still a work in progress and one we definitely plan to revisit.

P.S. It rained non stop but the hotel provided daily copies of the Washington Post which were handy to wipe rain soaked shoes….rsk

On Sunday a justifiably outraged President Trump called for the former Obama administration to be investigated for its unprecedented and profoundly un-American spying and sabotage operation against the 2016 Trump campaign.

“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the [Federal Bureau of Investigation/Department of Justice] infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!” Trump tweeted Sunday at 1:37 p.m.

Just the day before, President Trump had written on Twitter, “If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal.”

The presidential demand for action comes after days of dramatic, detailed revelations about the plot to undermine the Trump campaign, transition team, and presidency began surfacing in news accounts.

On Thursday it was revealed that the FBI illicitly put together a spy ring as part of something called Operation Crossfire Hurricane and that at least one informant was a member of the Trump campaign.

On Friday the New York Times reported the campaign-embedded snitch was an American teaching in the United Kingdom.

By Saturday, media reports indicated the rat-fink in question was Stefan Halper, who is currently Director of American Studies in Cambridge University’s Department of Politics and International Studies and a research professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. Halper served in the White House during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Halper hates Trump. How he got on Trump’s campaign staff is not clear.

The “deep state” is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector general’s report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming.

At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton “matter,” but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done. It is hard to see how a year-long investigation of this won’t come down hard on former FBI Director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasn’t playing mahjong in a secret “no aides allowed” meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.

With this report on the way and congressional investigators beginning to zero in on the lack of hard, verified evidence for starting the Trump probe, current and former intelligence and Justice Department officials are dumping everything they can think of to save their reputations.

But it is backfiring. They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? That’s left out of their narrative. Downer’s signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You don’t need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, which then called the FBI to complete the loop. This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start.

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department asked its internal watchdog to examine if there was any impropriety in the counterintelligence investigation of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, after the president demanded Sunday that the department investigate the motives behind the inquiry.

Earlier Sunday, in one of a series of tweets targeting the probe into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump wrote: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Mr. Trump was referring to a man who approached at least two Trump campaign aides in 2016 in connection with the counterintelligence investigation into the campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller took over that investigation last May when he was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The Wall Street Journal has identified the suspected informant as Stefan Halper, an American who was a foreign policy scholar at the University of Cambridge until 2015. Mr. Halper couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

The Journal made no agreements to withhold his name from publication and is one of several media outlets identifying him. Some lawmakers and law-enforcement officials have expressed concern about compromising sources for the investigation, saying it could put lives in danger, hurt investigations and damage international partnerships.

Once upon a time Western scholars of Middle Eastern culture and history were known as Orientalists. That label is now considered politically incorrect, like so much else, but we can safely say that the last of the great Orientalists was Bernard Lewis, who died Saturday at age 101.

Born in London, Lewis served in the British army in World War II. But he devoted most of his life to the study of Middle Eastern languages, religion and history, with a particular focus on the interaction of Islam and the West. He was arguably the Western world’s foremost scholar on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Well, what do you know. The Federal Bureau of Investigation really did task an “informant” to insinuate himself with Trump campaign advisers in 2016. Our Kimberley Strassel reported this two weeks ago without disclosing a name.

We now have all but official confirmation thanks to “current and former government officials” who contributed to apologias last week in the New York Times and Washington Post. And please don’t call the informant a “spy.” A headline on one of the Times’ stories says the “F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims.”

We’ll let readers parse that casuistic distinction, which is part of a campaign by the FBI and Justice Department to justify their refusal to turn over to the House Intelligence Committee documents related to the informant. Justice and the FBI claim this Capitol Hill oversight would blow the cover of this non-spy and even endanger his life. Yet these same stories have disclosed so many specific details about the informant whom we dare not call a spy that you can discover the name of the likeliest suspect in a single Google search.

We now know, for example, that the informant is “an American academic who teaches in Britain” who “served in previous Republican administrations.” He has worked as a “longtime U.S. intelligence source” for the FBI and the CIA.