The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) is about to issue its report blowing the lid off the corrupt plan by James Comey’s  FBI and Obama’s Justice Department to save Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy by clearing her of criminal responsibility despite overwhelming evidence that she had been grossly negligent in transmitting national security secrets over her private, unsecured email server. It is expected that the OIG will also address to some extent the FBI and Justice Department’s equally corrupt efforts to frame Donald Trump for allegedly colluding with the Russians.

This latter area will most likely be covered more comprehensively in the report to be later produced pursuant to the OIG’s March 28, 2018 announcement that it will examine the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s “compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) relating to a certain U.S. person [Trump campaign associate Carter Page]. As part of this examination, the OIG also will review information that was known to the DOJ and the FBI at the time the applications were filed from or about an alleged FBI confidential source. Additionally, the OIG will review the DOJ’s and FBI’s relationship and communications with the alleged source as they relate to the FISC applications.”

So now, on the eve of destruction,  it comes as no surprise that the persons behind these outrageous, illegal and politically motivated endeavors would launch a preemptive strike to justify and spin away the stark truth of what they did. In doing so, it appears that they have leaked their sanitized version of events to the reliably compliant  The New York Times  which yesterday ran a story titled Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation. 

Though the  Times did its best to put a smiley face on the corrupt plot, the basic underlying facts spell out the biggest abuse of power by law enforcement and the intelligence community in our nation’s history. Watergate was a third rate burglary of the DNC’s headquarters. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was an all-out effort by the FBI, DOJ and the CIA to spy on the presidential campaign of a major political party which just happened not to be the party in control of the White House and the federal apparatus. This has never happened in our history and marks an all-time low and dangerous abuse of power.

The best analysis of the Times story and the damning facts recited therein is 10 Key Takeaways From The New York Times’ Error-Ridden Defense of FBI Spying On Trump Campaign written by Mollie Hemingway in The Federalist. She opens with this:

“The New York Times‘ story, headlined ‘Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation,’ is a dry and gentle account of the FBI’s launch of extensive surveillance of affiliates of the Trump campaign. Whereas FBI officials and media enablers had previously downplayed claims that the Trump campaign had been surveiled, in this story we learn that it was more widespread than previously acknowledged:

“The F.B.I. investigated four unidentified Trump campaign aides in those early months, congressional investigators revealed in February. The four men were Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said…

“The F.B.I. obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters — a secret type of subpoena — officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said.

“This is a stunning admission for those Americans worried that federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies might use their powers to surveil, leak against, and target Americans simply for their political views or affiliations. As Sean Davis wrote, ‘The most amazing aspect about this article is how blasé it is about the fact that the Obama admin was actively spying on four affiliates of a rival political campaign weeks before an election.'”

Good stuff and it gets better from there including the tidbit buried deep in the Times story that the investigation from 2016 to the present has yet to disclose any evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russians.

I am still trying to absorb and sort out the Times story. In the meantime, be sure to read and ponder Ms. Hemingway’s terrific and insightful article.