They've been getting away with it for years. One more time should have been easy, but screwing around with democracy is too serious to let go.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/fred-barnes/three-leaders-are-better-than-one
Democrats have tried to block the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the FBI and its probe of the Trump presidential campaign. They have failed. And the Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the actions of the FBI on its own.
Democrats made a fatal mistake. In their eagerness to quash scrutiny of the FBI, they embraced a dossier of unverified claims about President Trump put together by British ex-spy Christopher Steele. It blew up in their laps—and in the FBI’s even more so—after it was used improperly to justify the wiretap of a minor Trump adviser, Carter Page. It was a partisan document, having been financed by Democrats.
The dossier was heavily relied on in the FBI’s wiretap application. Only a part of that application has been released publicly, the rest redacted. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House committee, has asked the Justice Department to unmask the redacted sections, or at least two dozen specific pages.
There are bigger questions that the full application cannot answer. Yet these are on the minds of Nunes and other Republicans on both committees. Who in the Obama administration authorized the request for the wiretap during the final months of the 2016 campaign? (It was approved on October 21.) Which officials were involved? How did they intend to use the material they might obtain? What laws might have been violated?
At a committee meeting on March 17, 2017, ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), cited the dossier as if it were unquestionably true. He described Steele as “a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S intelligence.”
https://www.weeklystandard.com/fred-barnes/three-leaders-are-better-than-one
Democrats have tried to block the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the FBI and its probe of the Trump presidential campaign. They have failed. And the Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the actions of the FBI on its own.
Democrats made a fatal mistake. In their eagerness to quash scrutiny of the FBI, they embraced a dossier of unverified claims about President Trump put together by British ex-spy Christopher Steele. It blew up in their laps—and in the FBI’s even more so—after it was used improperly to justify the wiretap of a minor Trump adviser, Carter Page. It was a partisan document, having been financed by Democrats.
The dossier was heavily relied on in the FBI’s wiretap application. Only a part of that application has been released publicly, the rest redacted. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House committee, has asked the Justice Department to unmask the redacted sections, or at least two dozen specific pages.
There are bigger questions that the full application cannot answer. Yet these are on the minds of Nunes and other Republicans on both committees. Who in the Obama administration authorized the request for the wiretap during the final months of the 2016 campaign? (It was approved on October 21.) Which officials were involved? How did they intend to use the material they might obtain? What laws might have been violated?
At a committee meeting on March 17, 2017, ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), cited the dossier as if it were unquestionably true. He described Steele as “a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S intelligence.”
