Year End Reflections, Part III (The Scandal of the Century)

It's a story which the mainstream media has little interest in reporting. It's a story that the Democrats claim is merely a distraction from the real story about Trump collusion with Russia. As a year has passed without any evidence of such collusion, the focus of the media and the Dems is now on getting Trump out of office based on allegations of sexual harassment. If that does not work, they will come up with something else. But, I digress.

Almost nobody expected Donald Trump to capture the Republican nomination for President. To make matters worse for the Dems and the mainstream media, it looked as if Hillary Clinton's email scandal might derail her path to the Presidency. The only question is, how high up in the Obama Administration did the "fix" originate. At the end of June, 2016, Bill Clinton "coincidentally" ran into Loretta Lynch, the Attorney General of the United States, on the tarmac in Phoenix, while Lynch was "coincidentally" investigating Hillary Clinton and her private email server. "Coincidentally," days later FBI Director James Comey publicly exonerated Hillary Clinton.

Now, we find out that Peter Strzok, then head of the FBI's Counter-intelligence Division, had a hand in changing Director Comey's draft speech regarding Hillary Clinton. The Comey speech originally said that Hillary Clinton was "grossly negligent" in the handling of classified emails, which would be a federal felony. However, Mr. Strzok changed that language to "excessively careless." If the media were interested in this story, they would be investigating why Comey allowed that change to be made. This "coincidentally" occurred after Loretta Lynch told Comey to refer to the Clinton email investigation as a "matter" - not an "investigation."

Now, it turns out that Mr. Strzok and Lisa Page, an attorney at the FBI, had a personal relationship. Some of their text message exchanges have now been released and they are rather interesting. Aside from the references to Trump as an "idiot" and "loathsome," we have this: "She (obviously referring to Clinton) just has to win now." Did I mention that Mr. Strzok "coincidentally" headed up the Russia investigation shortly after Comey/Strzok exonerated Clinton? Here is a text message by Strzok that the media might refer to as a smoking gun, if it had come from a Republican: "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's (likely Andrew McCabe, Deputy Director of the FBI) office - that there's no way he (undoubtedly Trump) gets elected - but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." EXCUSE ME? They can't take the risk that the people of the United States might elect someone of whom they disapprove?

Mr. Strzok continued: "It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40." As in the unlikely event Trump gets elected? What insurance policy? A phony Russian collusion story? Page: "And maybe you're meant to stay where you are because you're meant to protect us from that menace." Strzok: "Thanks. And of course I'll try and approach it that way. I can protect our country at many levels." If you think that if any of this were really true you would know all about it from the mainstream media, keep deceiving yourself. For example, one of the lead stories on the front page above the fold of the 12/13/17 New York Times was "SALVOS BY TRUMP ESCALATE DISPUTE ON HARASSMENT," referring to the exchange between Trump and Senator Gillibrand. In a tiny box below the fold, we are advised that we can turn to page 15 for a story about FBI officials who felt Clinton "just has to win."

On page 15, we learn from the Times that "F.B.I. officials who worked directly with Mr. Strzok on the Clinton and Trump investigations said they never detected any bias in his investigative work." Well isn't that special? The esteemed New York Times takes the word of the agency that appears to be involved in possible illegal activity. Of course, none of the juicier quotes are to be found in this page 15 article. And the Times makes it sound as if Strzok and Page were equally concerned about a Clinton Presidency.

Then, we have Bruce Ohr, a senior staffer at the DOJ. He apparently neglected to talk about meetings he had with people who put together the Trump dossier. The dossier was supposed to be opposition research on Trump, and was funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The firm hired to put together the dossier was Fusion GPS, which, "coincidentally" has as an employee Mr. Ohr's wife. Aside from all the obvious conflicts of interest noted above, the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, is close friends with a key witness - James Comey. That is actually a disqualifying conflict. However, Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, just testified before Congress that he sees no issue with the Trump-Russia investigation.

Bottom Line? Trump is crude. He's crass. He says things that I wish he would not say. But do not be distracted by that. Trump went to Washington to "drain the swamp." To change things. To upset the proverbial apple cart. That could not and would not be tolerated by the Democrats, who feared he would overturn much of what Obama accomplished. Neither was Trump accepted by the Washington insider Republicans. As noted before, if you threaten to drain the swamp, the swamp will fight back. But here is the most important issue for all of us - is it acceptable to have people high up in the government plotting to prevent someone they oppose from becoming President? Having failed in the prevention, is it acceptable for those people to create a false Russian collusion story in an effort to get Trump removed from office? In other words, do you agree with what is nothing less than an attempted coup because you hate Trump so much? Do the ends justify the means? If you do, what does that say about the future for democracy in the USA? And what of future Presidents? Will they bow to the will of the deep state simply to stay in office? What kind of government, and media, do you want?