https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/15/bill_barr_dirty_cops_and_the_oj_simpson_trial_140053.html
When Attorney General Bill Barr testified last week that, yes, “spying did occur” in the government’s Trump-Russia investigation and that spying on a political campaign is a “big deal,” the Democrats were apoplectic. How could he dare say such a thing? The saintly James Comey went even further. He told an audience that he didn’t even know what spying meant. No, siree, he had no idea.
Barr’s candor is what Michael Kinsley famously called a “Washington gaffe,” where the naked truth somehow slips out. Naturally, it set off a firestorm.
Democrats demanded an immediate retraction but got only an anodyne rewording. Use a synonym and call it “surveillance.” The real question, Barr explained, was not whether there was spying—there obviously was—but whether it was legally justified. That is precisely what he intends to find out, he told Congress. He will also find out if the spymasters lied to Congress, about which he has now received criminal referrals.
The Democrats’ ferocious pushback confirms the gravity of the issue. Their fears are well-founded. The Obama administration politicized the Department of Justice, FBI, and intelligence agencies, and a serious investigation is very likely to find criminal wrong-doing. The response of top Democrats is to smear Barr as a partisan hack.