There may have been an FBI conspiracy involving the 2016 election. But not the one you think.
By Paul Waldman
June 18
This afternoon, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will testify on Capitol Hill about the lengthy report he issued last week on the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email, but what may be the most important part of the story of the FBI and Clinton in 2016 has gotten almost no attention.
The blizzard of lies and innuendo that President Trump has thrown up around this issue has succeeded in narrowing the questions that get asked to exactly the ones he wants. Was there a “deep state” conspiracy against Trump? Was the FBI unspeakably biased against him? Was the investigation into Russia illegitimate from the beginning? Even if you answer “no” to all of those questions, you’re still talking about what Trump wants you to talk about.
But here’s what we ought to be asking: Did FBI agents in the bureau’s New York office effectively make Donald Trump the president of the United States?
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, you probably aren’t alone. But let’s look at it this way: You’ve no doubt heard of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI officials who were having an affair and exchanged text messages in which they expressed their mutual distaste for the future president. You’ve heard of them because the Justice Department showed reporters their texts, then conservative media and Trump proceeded to make them famous, despite the fact that there is precisely zero evidence that their personal feelings about Trump biased the investigations they were involved in. The inspector general’s report concludes that whatever Strzok and Page may have said to each other in private, they didn’t do anything about it.
In contrast, a group of FBI agents in the bureau’s New York office seems to have been doing everything it could in the fall of 2016 to make sure Clinton wouldn’t become president. We don’t know their names. We haven’t read their texts. We may eventually learn the full extent of the actions they took, since the inspector general is conducting a separate investigation that involves them. But to this point, it has been something only the most dedicated aficionados of the story of how James B. Comey all but handed Trump the election knew anything about.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/06/18/there-may-have-been-an-fbi-conspiracy-involving-the-2016-election-but-not-the-one-you-think/?utm_term=.be0a3ec9a0e3
DO SOMETHING!
| 
