The elephant in the room right now is the Inspector General’s Report on the surveillance of the Trump campaign during 2016. As we await the report, many people named in the report are attempting to blunt the impact of the report, and others are reiterating its importance.
The Washington Times posted an article yesterday with its views on the report. The headline of the article is, “‘Dirty cops’: FBI leaves trail of lies, leaks, lapses in Trump era.”
The article reports:
The FBI already has amassed a record of misconduct by top officials leading up to Monday, when the Justice Department inspector general is scheduled to release conclusions on whether agents also abused the bureau’s intrusive wiretapping powers.
To date, four inspector general reports and internal Justice Department documents have found senior FBI officials guilty of lying, insubordination, security violations, mishandling confidential material and personal biases against President Trump.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the California Republican who discovered that the FBI had used a Democratic Party-financed dossier as evidence, often refers to bureau leaders as “dirty cops.”
Lisa Page, a former FBI senior counsel and one of those singled out, portrayed herself this week as an innocent victim of FBI betrayal.
Meanwhile, news media stories have downplayed the significance of the upcoming inspector general’s report on how the FBI spied on the Trump campaign through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other means.
There will be a lot of charges and counter-charges when the report comes out, but there are two basic facts to remember. First, it is illegal to conduct surveillance on a political opponent using government agencies and foreign sources (there is some question as to whether the FBI farmed out some of the surveillance to the CIA and foreign sources to avoid American laws). Second of all, the FBI did not inform the Trump campaign that they were concerned about Russian interference (as they are required to do and as they did in the case of Diane Feinstein and her Chinese driver).
What was done to President Trump was a government Watergate burglary. It was unacceptable, and unless those responsible are held accountable, it will happen again.