Wednesday, May 23, 2018

National Review: How the Clinton-Emails Investigation Intertwined with the Russia Probe

We already know this. There is nothing new here. Still, it's interesting to read it rephrased and in a place different from the usual sources, and done rather well. It's a very good primer while a somewhat unusual take with some portions that a lot of people will take issue. Article by Andrew McCarthy.

Sample:

The race was set . . . between two major-party candidates who were both under investigation by the FBI.

In stunned response, Strzok wrote what may be the only words we need to know, the words that reflected the mindset of his agency’s leadership and of the Obama administration: “Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE.”

MYE. That’s Mid-Year Exam, the code-word the FBI had given to the Hillary Clinton emails probe.

“It sure does,” responded Page. Mind you, she was not just any FBI lawyer; she was counsel and confidant to the bureau’s No. 2 official, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

If the thousands of text messages between Ms. Page and Agent Strzok are clear on anything, they are clear on the thinking of the bureau’s top brass.

In its Trump antipathy, the media-Democrat complex has admonished us to ignore the Strzok-Page texts. FBI officials are as entitled as anyone else to their political opinions, we’re told; and if they found Trump loathsome, they were no different from half the country.

That’s the wrong way to look at it. Regardless of their politics (which, the texts show, are not as left-wing as some conservative-media hyperbole claims), these FBI officials are a window into how the Obama administration regarded the two investigations in which Strzok and Page were central players: Mid Year Exam and Trump-Russia — the latter eventually code-named “Crossfire Hurricane.”

The two investigations must not be compartmentalized. Manifestly, the FBI saw them as inseparably linked: Trump’s victory in the primaries, the opening of his path to the Oval Office, meant — first and foremost — that the Hillary investigation had to be brought to a close.

And that is because bringing it to a close was already known, by May 4, to mean closing it without charges — opening her path to the Oval Office. It was the calculation of the FBI, the Obama Justice Department, the Obama-led intelligence agencies, and the Obama White House that wrapping up MYE was essential to stopping Donald Trump.

Trump had won the nomination, so now the pressure was on to remove the cloud of felony suspicion hanging over Mrs. Clinton.

Each paragraph builds to high drama. Recommended. This right here is the stuff that very fine movies are made. And you get to see it happen in real time. That way, in the future, when the movies do come out, you can sit there and poke holes all they way through; they left out this and they left out that, they spun here and neglected there. It's very good writing.

And then it all suddenly ends.

 Far too soon. Just as it starts getting intensely interesting. All that is talked about happened way back then.

Andrew McCarthy needs time to grasp what is happening now. His thesis is simple; the two cases are inextricably linked. And that's all.

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