Of course Trump is innocent until proven guilty, that's not even a question. The Special Counsel thread is there to discuss and debate the ongoing investigation. It's funny to me how Trump supporters accuse the media and liberals of being frenzied and hysterical, yet seem to ignore the fact Trump himself is constantly - and I mean 24/7 - completely submerged and infatuated with the investigation. Trump spends most of his waking hours lashing out at the free press, Mueller and the FBI/DOJ. The hysteria and anxiety is coming straight from Trump, not from the media or those of us who post factual updates of what's happening with the case, or simply want to discuss its ramifications.
from the WSJ
By
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Aug. 17, 2018 6:20 p.m. ET
The two biggest shoes are yet to drop in the 2016 investigations. We still don’t know the origins and back story of the intercepted Russian intelligence document that was pivotal in James Comey’s unprecedented, ill-advised and possibly decisive (according to numerous Democratic and independent election analysts) interventions in the presidential race.
Depending on what report you credit, the information was false, it was planted by the Russians, or it accurately indicated an illegal conspiracy to obstruct justice by the Clinton campaign and Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch. If it was a Russian fabrication, then Mr. Comey was spoofed by the Kremlin into his improper intervention in the race. If the parties to the incepted exchange were simply misinformed, it’s hard to understand Mr. Comey’s reason for intervening.
Presumably some of the questions are answered in a still-secret annex to the inspector general’s report that criticized Mr. Comey’s performance, but even that won’t tell us everything we need to know. What did fellow intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, tell the FBI about this intercept? What did they advise Mr. Comey to do?
The second shoe concerns the Steele dossier. Who were the alleged Russian sources behind it? What were their motives? Go back and read Robert Mueller’s indictment of the Russian hackers in the DNC email theft. It is not a remarkable account of hacking, but it is remarkable that it exists, with its detailed re-creation of specific actions by specific Russian officials sitting at their laptops. Your government could use the same resources to get to the bottom of an episode that has had exponentially more influence on our political life than even Russia’s trafficking in DNC emails.
After all, a foreign citizen produces a catalog of unverifiable, scandalous accusations against a U.S. presidential candidate, attributed to unnamed Russian officials. Paying for this “opposition research” is the candidate of the party in power. Her confederates, including elected Democrats, conspire to use the FBI’s possession of this document to get U.S. media outlets to report allegations from sources who won’t identify themselves, who offer no support for their claims, passed along by an operator whose political motives are manifest.
George Smiley, the careful, methodical, skeptical spy of the John le Carré novels, would have considered it a matter of good housekeeping for any spy agency to learn how it might have been misled or manipulated into ill-advised actions. Both subjects fit into Robert Mueller’s remit. Both involve Russian influence on our election and include prima facie evidence of crimes by U.S. persons.
Unfortunately, our most prominent ex-spies bear no resemblance to George Smiley. If you are not by now open to the suspicion that the blowhardism of former Obama intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper is aimed at keeping the focus away from their actions during the election, then you haven’t been paying attention. In his New York Times op-ed this week after being stripped of his courtesy, postretirement security clearance, the CIA’s Mr. Brennan finally put his collusion cards on the table: Mr. Trump’s ill-advised remark during the campaign inviting Russia to find the missing Hillary Clinton emails.
Really? This is it? Mr. Trump’s behavior was typically unpresidential in the fashion that we have now become used to, such as referring to a fired White House employee as a dog. But his jibe was at least as much aimed at the media, which he correctly noted would eagerly traffic in the stolen emails even as it deplored Russian meddling.
When Mr. Trump tweets and blurts out so many offhand things, are you really going to build a “treason” case (a term Mr. Brennan has used) out of just another free-form Trump campaign riff of 2016? If that’s all he’s got, the secret knowledge Mr. Brennan keeps hinting at is a fabulous fraud.
Which brings us to the press. The two stories outlined above are of legitimate, pressing interest, but editors and reporters say to themselves: “Might not looking into these matters be construed as pro-Trump? We can’t have that.” Not one U.S. paper, despite lavish coverage of the DOJ inspector general’s report, even noted the existence of a secret appendix. According to reports in his own Washington Post, Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book will be an upmarket “Fire and Fury” looking into the known knowns of Mr. Trump’s chaotic first year in office. Meanwhile, history is screaming at Mr. Woodward to dig into the known unknowns of U.S. intelligence activities in the campaign that elected Mr. Trump.
In fact, these stories cut both ways. They suggest foolish if not corrupt meddling in the U.S. election by our own intelligence agencies, but also that Mr. Trump may occupy the White House because their malign intervention inadvertently pushed him over the top.
