Rebutting Feinstein

This is a doozy of a statement. It perfectly encapsulates each logical flaw defenders of Crossfire Hurricane invoke to justify the investigation. Each point is easily refuted with just a little logic.

We’ve never been told what George Papadopoulos supposedly said to the Australians that made it “appear” the campaign had advance knowledge of the Wikileaks release. But given that conservative commentators on Fox News and in Forbes magazine were openly theorizing that Russia had Hillary’s emails from her time as Secretary of State, anyone simply repeating that rumor could have given the impression, mistakenly, when viewed in retrospect, after the releases, that they had known they were coming. This should have been an obvious possibility to the top detectives at the FBI. Feinstein says this report from the Aussies created the “possibility” that the campaign had advance knowledge. But of course anything is possible, including repeating rumors from Fox News. The timeline for when George made this statement doesn’t help either, as it was months before the DNC emails were hacked. Given the totality of circumstances, the possibility that George’s statement reflected advance knowledge was highly improbable.

Incompetence was the main negative influence on opening such a whacky investigation on such flimsy evidence. However, implicit bias against Trump, combined with incompetence, seems to have been the real problem. When she says here there was no evidence of bias, she means no one explicitly put in writing that they were only pursuing the investigation to get Trump. In fact, I think the evidence does show that they really believed what they were investigating could be real. Which speaks to their incompetence, given the far fetched nature of the allegations and the lack of applied logic.

Flynn was the incoming National Security Advisor and even James Comey said his talking to the Russians was legitimate.

Flynn had a professional disagreement with the ICA conclusions. Flynn’s telling Kislyak to not retaliate actually improved the US’s security.

This is likely true, but as discussed on point one, the decision to open the investigation based on the Australian hearsay was fatally flawed on its own.

Here’s where they like to conflate Obstruction, Collusion, and Russian Interference. By the time Trump fired Comey the FBI had known for months there was no Collusion, but were keeping the investigation open in hopes he might lash out in anger, which he did, so they could then morph it into an Obstruction investigation, given their lack of evidence for Collusion. Regardless of what Russia did or didn’t do, contacts do not Collusion make, and we hardly needed a Special Counsel to investigate Russian Facebook ads and the like.

The Senate Investigation made a lot of to due about Konstantin Kilimnick, but it didn’t prove Collusion any more than Mueller did. Because Collusion didn’t happen. You’d think everyone could agree on that by now.

Given that it didn’t happen, and the investigation was opened on flimsy grounds, by people who’s personal text messages reveal they hated Trump and wanted him to lose desperately, it was certainly not justified.

The FISA was a major scandal. The flimsy opening hasn’t received the same scrutiny. If it did, if for instance we knew what George is supposed to have said verbatim, it would quickly become clear that the investigation should have never been opened, much less carried on for years.