Elder Patriot’s Opinion| Attorney General William Barr sat for questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee today.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wasted no time asking Attorney General William Barr questions about the direction his office was taking the investigation now that the Mueller Report has shown that there had been no collusion between candidate Trump, President Trump, or any member(s) of his team and the Russian government.
Barr’s answers went a long way towards comforting those who want to know that any wrongdoing that might’ve led to the actions of the DOJ, the FBI, the State Department, and the CIA will not go unpunished.
Remember Barr’s words; there’s no doubt there was spying, the question is whether a proper predicate existed for it.
Sen. Grassley began his time by asking if Barr planned to investigate whether the FBI used meetings intended as counterintelligence briefings to instead gather information on Trump.
Barr answered yes.
Following that Sen. Grassley immediately asked the attorney general whether he had already tasked and staffed to look into whether the FBI spying on the Trump campaign was properly predicated
Barr answered that he had.
Sen. Grassley: “The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research against candidate Trump.
Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, to compile what we all know as the Steele Dossier, that reportedly used Russian government sources for information.
The Steele Dossier was central to the now-debunked collusion narrative.
Now here’s the irony.
The Mueller Report spent millions investigating and found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
But the Democrats paid for a document created by a foreign national with reported foreign government sources. Not Trump. But, the Democrats.
That’s the definition of collusion.
Despite the central status of the Steele Dossier to the collusion narrative, the Mueller Report failed to analyze whether the dossier was filled with disinformation to mislead U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI.
My question. Mueller spent over two years and 30 million dollars investigating Russian interference in the election.
In order for a full accounting of Russian interference attempts, shouldn’t the special counsel have considered on whether the Steele Dossier was part of a Russian disinformation and interference campaign?
After a back and forth Attorney General Barr said he would be getting answers to that question.
Upon further questioning, Barr confirmed he was already looking into the origins of the FBI’s investigation to determine collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Sen. Grassley then moved on to asking the attorney general about Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s determination that the FBI had engaged in a series of leaks of advance the Russian collusion narrative.
Barr acknowledged that “we have multiple criminal leak investigations underway.”
