Will the Spygate perpetrators ever be held accountable?
That’s the trillion dollar question, isn’t it?
I used to think I was rather cynical. And I was. But in recent years I’ve become more so. I’ve seen people get away with much more than I had thought they’d be able to get away with (Lois Lerner, call your office). And what’s more, I’ve seen more of my friends wink at it because it suits their political ends.
So the question of whether anyone will pay for what we have come to call Spygate is a real one, and how you answer it depends on how cynical you have become:
As a regular aspect of his reportage, Hannity asks of his truth-seekers a question inquiring minds want definitively answered. To paraphrase, “Will Deep State bad actors be held accountable for what they have done?”
The answer, from Fourth Estate constitutionalists like Gregg Jarrett and Sara Carter, is always couched in a context of cautionary advisement: “They should,” or, “If justice still exists in America, yes,” or, the best conditional condemnation of all, “Put it this way, if you or I had done what (Hillary, Comey, Strzok, etc.) had done, yes, we would likely be looking at serious jail time.”
Lying to a FISA court, destroying evidence, leaking classified information. These are but a minimal sampling of the alleged crimes and malefactions committed in the name of electing Clinton and usurping Trump’s ascendancy.
But…[d]ue to the labyrinthine depths, interconnectivity, and power inherent in a Deep State that has shocked a nation aghast at the reach of rogue bureaucracies, no one can say for certain whether any of those who concocted this conspiracy will ever be brought to justice.
…Across the cable news aisle, the partisan “legacy” media are scrambling to maintain on life support a narrative that pragmatic Democrats like Doug Schoen and Mark Penn are imploring them to abandon. CNN’s ratings have officially bottomed out. At MSNBC, Rachel Maddow and other conspiracy theorists still talk the talk, but the emptiness behind their rhetoric is apparent to anyone with five minutes of viewing time to waste.
Ah, but although Maddow’s rating have fallen, there is a substantial core still feeding on that sort of rhetoric and don’t find it empty at all. They have come to require it. They have become convinced it’s true, have been waiting for years for the big payoff, and cannot abandon it now because a mind is a difficult thing to change. Trump’s guilt is a given, and the people who tried to get him are heroes whatever method they used to accomplish it.
I don’t know what will happen; no one does. But it’s hard to be too cynical these days.
One of the central components of the mendacious Russiagate narrative over the last several years is that the Russians attempted to sow division and discord amongst Americans through the purchase of ads on Facebook and fake accounts on Twitter. Even were this true to the full extent which is claimed, the damage done to the fabric of this country by outsiders is as nothing when compared to what has been wrought by the many falsehoods within the disinformation and the misinformation disseminated by CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, and the NYT over the same period.
A lot depends on whether the Dems are successful in their push for impeachment. They seem to ramping up the rhetoric today. For thme, I think, it serves tow purposes: 1) they really do hate DJT and want him gone, and 2) it will distract from any turnaround that comes their way from Spygate.
Through our lawfare system? No. If the operators of that system are ever brought to justice, it will be a justice of the crude Gen. Yague sort, which incorporates oceans of collateral misery. You don’t want to go there.
I now think Barr will get some indictments, and that will be a slow cascade of more indictments (60% … before September). But my prior optimism is already reduced, had been hoping for something by June.
Where and when are the indictments?
Art Deco is certainly right that rough justice is best avoided but the Left is pushing us toward that eventuality. I continue to think that Trump’s ouster will directly lead to another Civil War.
As for indictments, I too am a bit skeptical but it is still IMO a possibility. Yet given how little time has passed since the release of the Mueller report, IMO indictments so soon would be premature and thus counter productive. I think indictments in September would be optimal. A bit over a year before the election and about 6 months after the Mueller report’s release. No rush to prosecute and plenty of time to amass evidence.
Declassify, declassify, declassify.
Horowitz and the two investigating US attorneys report.
Fight.
Let me offer a thought experiment which runs a bit against the grain of potentially immediate criminal investigations and resultant prosecutions, but turns instead toward the very counterintelligence investigations we see have been used on such flimsy grounds against the Trump campaign and beyond into the Trump administration once seated: what of the intimate coordination we now witness (thanks in part to recent revelations from the Kavalec memo) between Steele, together with his US based employers FusionGPS, the DNC, the Clinton campaign and others now retired from gov. (or even perhaps others sitting in Congress today) and bona fide Russia intelligence officials, as well as other foreign intelligence operatives (as for instance British, Italian, and Australian)?
Wouldn’t these make a far better example of foreign intelligence penetration of US institutions (the FBI, CIA, DNI, Fusion, Congress, the DNC, etc) and persons (Clinton, Christopher Steele, et alia), hence a much more solid predicate to open FISA warrant procedures to monitor communications in order to ensure the FBI counterintelligence bureau has a handle on the extent of these penetrations, whether they are ongoing, who else may be involved, and so on? And if as it may happen other untoward doings, crimes, are discovered in the process and are exposed, then, well, that’s just the way the counterintelligence cookie crumbles, isn’t it?
Anyhow, just a thought experiment, as I said.
As always anyone they actually get will be the minor players.
The lethargy has source(s) other than faceless Deep State minions. I do not pretend to know what they are.
But let us await the Horowitz report, which I hear every day it will be released any day now. Plus the New York US Attorney’s investigatory findings and likely indictments.
I believe the molto agitato behavior of Schumer-Pelosi-Nadler-Schiff-Cummings et al. is fear-based. Rather like a surfer just ahead of a curling monstrous wave about to break over him and pound him to the bottom 50 feet below.
All in good time.
As to a mini-civil war if things don’t break correctly and justly, that is most unlikely. Even pro-Trumpers have lived under the Progressives so long as to be inculcated against the actual violence which yields the blood required to nourish the Tree of Liberty.
We are dominated by Progs regardless of declared party who have implanted wimpiness in us all since our kindergarten days with “Zero tolerance of violence”; except of course when said violence is wrought by social justice warriors, blacks, fags, females, hispanics and transgenders. How many of us here, save parker and me, actually own multiple guns and shoot regularly for sport and practice?
Did you see all those elite pedo rings still get away with it in the USa and Europe?
America has bigger problems than just traitors and Islamic jihadists.
Cicero,
“We are dominated by Progs regardless of declared party who have implanted wimpiness in us all since our kindergarten days with “Zero tolerance of violence”
Not quite so many of us as might be supposed. My generation grew up surrounded by WWII vets who’d seen the elephant. Many of us served in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars. Inherently violent sports like football and hockey are popular among the young. Aggression cannot be ‘indoctrinated’ out of humanity, it can only be positively or negatively channeled.
“How many of us here, save parker and me, actually own multiple guns and shoot regularly for sport and practice?
There are far more comfortable with guns on the right than on the left. But guns alone will not win an armed conflict. Ultimately, logistics and utilizing one’s logistics in a superior strategy wins wars. The Left is concentrated heavily in the cities and suburbs, ALL food, water, medicine, electrical supply and fuels have to be ‘imported’ and can be easily disrupted.
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot…” George Orwell
How many of us here, save parker and me, actually own multiple guns and shoot regularly for sport and practice?
Until you use those guns to kill evil and the people who matter, they might as well be non existent. They don’t matter. It’s not like the Deep State lacks weapons technology generations ahead of yours.
Ymarsakar:
Victor Davis Hanson’s “Carnage and Culture” —
Examining nine landmark battles from ancient to modern times — from Salamis, where outnumbered Greeks devastated the slave army of Xerxes, to Cortes’s conquest of Mexico to the Tet offensive — Victor Davis Hanson explains why the armies of the West have been the most lethal and effective of any fighting forces in the world.
Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or superior technology, Hanson argues that it is in fact Western culture and values – the tradition of dissent, the value placed on inventiveness and adaptation, the concept of citizenship – which have consistently produced superior arms and soldiers. Offering riveting battle narratives and a balanced perspective that avoids simple triumphalism, Carnage and Culture demonstrates how armies cannot be separated from the cultures that produce them and explains why an army produced by a free culture will always have the advantage.
I would submit that if our present situation results in a kinetic civil war, it is our side that will have the decisive advantage of fighting for Western culture and values. Our opponents do not believe anything is worth dying for.
If, big word, there are no orange jumpsuits for the treasonous, it will lead to a civil war. If there is CW2 it will not begin from the barrels of 300 million muzzels of privately held firearms. It will instead, begin with hammers, baseball bats, garrots, knives, etc. We are not stupid, start local, be quiet and careful. Firearms are for when local becomes regional. If you need a roadmap, stay home. If you are not armed you are a fool. If you are armed but do not train, see if you are not armed.
Geoffrey Britain on May 22, 2019 at 9:45 pm at 9:45 pm said:
…Aggression cannot be ‘indoctrinated’ out of humanity, it can only be positively or negatively channeled.
* * *
It might be more accurate to say that the expression of aggression can be indoctrinated into certain channels.
And the view of what is positive and negative depends on ideological affiliation.
“Orange Man bad; Antifa good” sort of thing.
CapnRusty on May 22, 2019 at 11:02 pm at 11:02 pm said:
… Our opponents do not believe anything is worth dying for.
* * *
No, no…
They firmly believe that THEIR goals are worth YOU dying for.
“How many of us here, save parker and me, actually own multiple guns and shoot regularly for sport and practice?”
I’m in. And there are a lot more.
Or on another front of hostile foreign penetration of our government as well as our political foreign policy discourse potentially warranting close surveillance, see Adam Credo today:
*** “It gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Iran echo chamber’—these Democratic operatives and members are truly echoing Iranian propaganda at the possible expense of American lives,” a third source who is also involved in the Iran issue told the Free Beacon. “What is happening to the Democratic Party when its leaders will side with terrorists over their own country? The new scandal everyone should be talking about is the Iran Collusion Scandal—because that’s what’s happening.” ***
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/dems-tied-to-obamas-pro-iran-echo-chamber-amplify-top-iranian-officials-talking-points/
Turnabout, it’s said, is fair play.
“The fact is, in plain sight, in the public domain,. . . ” says Nancy Pelosi!
Well yes, yes it is, says I.
Your party members are playing footsie with an avowed enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and doing this right out in the open, Missy. What about that?
“…Iran collusion scandal…”
Not sure that’s going to get much traction, frankly.
After all, the Obama administration essentially allied itself with the Mullahs….and Hillary almost became POTUS.
But who knows? Maybe more Americans will begin to object to the Obama administration’s alliance—and continued alliance—with those who hate America.
Isn’t political traction I’m getting at though Barry. I’m talking about the instruments of government surveillance put to use spying on these foreign influences within our government and borders. The operators in the FBI have a positive duty to maintain silence regarding their surveillance activities. At least, that is, up until Federal charges are filed in a court.
All the Trump investigation is is just politics. The high echelon people who instigated this will not see a day in prison.
harleycowboy : Humans won’t be able to hold evil to account.
That’s the job of the Divine and their human channels and servants/kenzoku/family.
If everybody involved were to be held accountable, including HRC, we would see a purge the like of which has never been seen in our country’s history. Except for beheadings in the Tower of London, it would look like the aftermath of one of the many dynastic English succession wars. It can be argued in good faith that we don’t want this in our history, however just it may be. My guess, though not my preference, is that we will have a lot of small fish and one large one (Comey) prosecuted, with the rest (Brennan, Clapper, HRC) being embarrassed. Just enough to discourage such behavior in the future, though many will die believing themselves to be patriots of the highest order.
“…fish…” (fry?)
Compared to Obama and Clinton, and perhaps Lynch, Brennan, Clapper and Comey might well be considered “small fish” (everything being relative). Foot soldiers of the consigliere, as it were….
You may well be right, though…. And if things start to heat up a bit too much, you can bet that the Democrats, with their MSM running dogs out in force, will cacophonously denounce Trump’s “vindictiveness”, “vengefulness” and his insane desire to “destroy the country at any cost in pursuit of a personal vendetta!….”
(Those guys are always good for laughs….)
Whether they are held to account will depend on whether they were (a) complicit, i.e., knowingly participated in the creation of the hoax, (b) negligent, (c) incompetent (i.e., good faith but stupid) and/or (d) blinded by confirmation bias. These are not mutually exclusive categories. Remember, to bring criminal charges requires proof of evil intent beyond a reasonable doubt. I have great confidence in Durham and Barr to sort this all out. My prediction is that they will prosecute the leakers because that’s easy to prove. The “errors of judgment” (“I thought we told the FISA court that the Steele affidavit was funky, maybe we should have expanded on that a bit”) are a lot harder to prosecute. A lot will depend on material that is still classified so who knows?
Ymar:
The cities, Dem.-controlled, are easily surrounded by the Middle Earth Deplorables, as you point out, and brought to heel.
Sieging nazis is all well and good, but if leadership is protected, the war will nit end. Hitler did Germany a favor by exiting first.
Here we go: https://mobile.twitter.com/PressSec/status/1131716788192993280
“Statement on Presidential Memorandum signed tonight”
Go. Read.
Declassification begins.
Shannon Bream publishes the Executive order: https://mobile.twitter.com/ShannonBream/status/1131716332066623489
Ymarsakar and others:
Stop with the personal infighting in the comments.
I am going to delete all comments in this thread that I can see that are part of it.
I don’t have time to get to the bottom of it at the moment, and I’m asking everyone involved to cease and desist. Disagreement is fine; just stop the personal stuff.
And Ymar, I don’t mind the airing of a conspiracy theory now and then. But comment after comment after comment on something like flat earth theory—use your own blog for that, please. I’ve been hosting your comments for many years here, but recently the flat earth stuff has become very dominant and I’m requesting that you go to another blog (or your own) if you want to concentrate on that.