Investor's
Business Daily Editorial
Trump Dossier: With each new revelation, a picture of the Russian scandal
emerges: Not only were Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National
Committee up to their necks in collusion with Russians to undermine
then-candidate Donald Trump, but President Obama was in on the action, too.
Is this where collusion becomes conspiracy?
See if this sounds familiar: Democratic presidential campaign pays international law firm Perkins Coie, which then turns around and pays left-wing opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on the campaign's political opponent.
Sounds just like what Hillary Clinton and the Democratic
National Committee did in 2016, right?
In fact, Hillary was a
Janey-come-lately to that ploy. Obama did it first in 2012. Using his Obama
for America campaign front, Obama paid Perkins Coie close to a
million dollars, which was reportedly used to pay — who
else — Fusion GPS to find salacious stuff about Obama's foe in the 2012
election, the ultra-square Mitt Romney.
But, according to a new book by
progressive journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn, "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of
Putin's War on America and Donald Trump's Election," not only
did Fusion do opposition research, something every campaign does, it also
did aggressively hostile opposition donor research.
"In 2012, then-President Obama
had an 'enemies list' on his campaign website with the names of Mitt Romney's
biggest donors," noted PJ Media's Debra Heine.
That enemies list was placed on the
Obama campaign's Orwellian "Truth Team" web site. The site called them a "group of wealthy individuals
with less-than-reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of
the law, others have made profits at the expense of so many Americans..."
That kind of vilification of decent,
law-abiding, successful Americans is bad enough. But to drive home the
intimidation, each of the names on the list was subsequently tweeted out from
the @TruthTeam2012 twitter feed, along with their supposed misdeeds, most of
which really amounted merely to tough or unpopular business decisions they had
to make.
Obama "relied on a vast
grassroots network to coerce, bully, boycott and vilify individuals lawfully
taking part in the political process, just as his own donors and supporter are
freely allowed to engage," wrote the Daily Signal back
in 2012.
Imagine for a moment the chilling
effect that would have on a political foe's campaign — calling those who
fund another campaign's candidate "enemies," with all that entails. The
IRS, the SEC, the FBI, the Justice Department, all with active prosecution
arms, all headed by Obama loyalists. To say it's an act of political and
personal intimidation is an understatement.
Obama's fingerprints go beyond that,
however.
The Isikoff-Corn book suggests that the infamous relationship between former
British spy Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS and the FBI was
forged by Obama officials at the State Department — in particular former
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland,
who gave permission to the FBI to talk to Steele in London, and former U.S.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan Winer, who "worked as
a middleman to bring Mr. Steele together with Sidney Blumenthal, a fierce
Hillary Clinton defender. Mr. Winer spoke with Ms. Nuland, who gave a heads up
to Secretary of State John Kerry."
How much do you want to bet that
Kerry, a cabinet member, reported all this to former President Obama?
By the way, both Nuland and Winer
worked for Clinton at the State Department, and both have since left.
And the
notorious Trump dossier that resulted from putting Steele together with the
FBI, Fusion and the Clinton campaign led to a wiretap of the Trump campaign and
also now serves as the centerpiece of a year-and-a-half long
Mueller investigation into Trump — one that has now spilled over its
boundaries, looking into things that have nothing to do with Russian meddling
in the 2016 election.
The genius of it all is that, at the
same time they were using spurious Russian contacts to smear Trump's name,
they were also launching the FBI investigation into phony allegations of
collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians in 2016.
The only
collusion, in short, was between the Clinton campaign,
Steele and the Russians.
But what we now see clearly is this
entire scheme wasn't just cooked up by a Nixonian Hillary Clinton, trying her
best to destroy her political foe.
No, it was part of a pattern set by
President Obama and copied by his able student, Hillary.
The Obama-adoring
media knew what Obama had done in 2012, but barely bothered to report at the
time.
This goes beyond mere creepy
political collusion, or dirty campaign capers. It suggests a broader
Democratic scheme to use government resources to hamstring opposition political
campaigns and, now, to destroy a presidency.
And this conspiracy spans two
presidential campaign cycles and two separate opposition presidential
candidates, using remarkably similar tactics and even the same law firm and
research operation. With a number of government officials knowingly involved,
this, in short, reeks of conspiracy to subvert the election process.
