Clapper Disinformation Campaign

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I think Mr. Jenkins has it right when he labels the actions by the Obama NSA/FBI/DOJ leading up to the election as colossally stupid. 

 

By

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

The Wall Street Journal

•  
• BiographyHolman W. Jenkins, Jr.
• Holman.Jenkins@wsj.com

May 29, 2018 7:23 p.m. ET

 

James Clapper, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, gained a reputation among liberals as a liar for covering up the existence of secret data-collection programs.

Since becoming a private citizen, he has claimed that President Trump is a Russian “asset” and that Vladimir Putin is his “case officer,” then when pressed said he was speaking “figuratively.”

His latest assertion, in a book and interviews, that Mr. Putin elected Mr. Trump is based on non-reasoning that effectively puts defenders of U.S. democracy in a position of having to prove a negative. “It just exceeds logic and credulity that they didn’t affect the election,” he told PBS.

Mr. Clapper not only exaggerates Russia’s efforts, he crucially overlooks the fact that it’s the net effect that matters. Allegations and insinuations of Russian meddling clearly cost Mr. Trump some sizeable number of votes. Hillary Clinton made good use of this mallet, as would be clearer now if she had also made good use of her other assets to contest those states where the election would actually be decided.

Mr. Clapper misleads you (and possibly himself) by appealing to the hindsight fallacy: Because Mr. Trump’s victory was unexpected, Russia must have caused it. But why does he want you to believe that he believes what he can’t possibly know?

 

There’s been much talk about origins. Let’s understand how all this really began. James Comey knew it was unrealistic that Mrs. Clinton would be prosecuted for email mishandling but also knew it was the Obama Justice Department’s decision to make, own and defend. Why did he insert himself?

The first answer is that he expected Mrs. Clinton to win—and likely believed it was necessary that she win. Secondly he had a pretext for violating the normal and proper protocol for criminal investigations. He did so by turning it into a counterintelligence matter, seizing on a Democratic email supposedly in Russian hands that dubiously referred to a compromising conversation of Attorney General Loretta Lynch regarding the Hillary investigation.

Put aside whether this information really necessitated his intervention. (It didn’t. This is the great non sequitur of the Comey story.) Now adopted, Russia became the rationale for actions that should trouble Americans simply on account of their foolishness.

Think about it: The FBI’s original intervention in the Hillary matter was premised on apparent false information from the Russians. Its actions against the Trump campaign flowed from an implausible, unsupported document attributed to Russian sources and paid for by Mr. Trump’s political opponents.

In surveilling Carter Page, the FBI had every reason to know it was surveilling an inconsequential non-spy, and did so based on a warrant that falsely characterized a Yahoo news article. Its suspicions of George Papadopoulos were based on drunken gossip about Hillary’s emails when the whole world was gossiping about Hillary’s emails.

The FBI’s most consequential intervention of all, its last-minute reopening of the Clinton investigation, arose from “new” evidence that turned out to be a nothingburger.

There is a term for how all this looks in retrospect: colossally stupid. Democrats now have a strong if unprovable case that Mr. Comey changed the election outcome. Mr. Trump has a strong case his presidency has been hobbled by unwarranted accusations. Americans harbor new and serious doubts about the integrity of the FBI.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/clapper-disinformation-campaign-1527636194?cx_testId=0&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s