Republican congressional investigators say...
In other words, partisans who can't even convince their counterparts in the other party on committees that have traditionally been non-partisan.
Newly discovered text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page “strongly suggest” that there was an effort of coordination, including members of the White House, CIA, FBI, and Justice Department, according to Fox News.
Here's the direct link:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...arly-in-trump-russia-probe-investigators.html
It's true that the FBI and Justice Department are supposed to operate independently as far as prosecuting crimes and taking civil actions, neither asking the White House for permission, nor keeping them advised of their actions. However, on many subjects, particularly the FBI's role in intelligence, it is expected that they will communicate freely with the White House, the CIA, and other departments responsible for intelligence and national security.
It's also entirely reasonable for members of Congress to make requests of the FBI for investigations. But the decision-making process within the Justice Department on how to respond to those is supposed to be independent.
Names brought up in the report include former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, and former CIA Director John Brennan.
And you just hate all those guys so, so much, they shouldn't be talking to each other ever.
The investigators argue this would “contradict” what the Obama administration has publicly maintained concerning their role in the investigation, which is seeking to determine if the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 election. However, they cautioned that they had not yet reached a conclusion and said they were only raising concern at the timeline of events.
Obama was directly responsible for the national security implications of Russia intervening in the US election. And that investigation provides a unique set of challenges to the fair and impartial administration of justice. On the one hand, there's an element of it that's a criminal investigation, and that part should ideally remain sequestered within the Justice Department. But then, the foreign espionage is a matter of urgent concern for really the whole national security apparatus, including the President. Ultimately, the FBI has to make the call what to share up the chain and what to keep to themselves.
“We are not making conclusions. What we are saying is that the timeline is concerning enough to warrant the appointment of an independent investigator to look at whether or not the Obama White House was involved [in the Trump-Russia investigation],” a GOP congressional source told Fox News.
What the Republicans want here is their own Mueller, who can serve as an endless supply of scandals to run on Fox News primetime programming, to reinforce their viewers' well-trained belief that Obama was secretly corrupt and the whole Russia investigation was tainted. But it's really not going to be that simple. Robert Mueller is a Republican. He's not doing any of the things he's doing out of a partisan loyalty, and, really, Mueller himself has been pretty quiet. It's some of the people Mueller has been talking to that are leaking. He's simply finding more and more criminality the more he digs. And any special counsel that could be appointed to look into this is unlikely to find anything nearly as shocking because Barack Obama was not a Russia agent, and didn't surround himself with foreign gangsters, crooks, and spies. It's going to be pretty hard to find anyone who actually could, in good faith, conduct the investigation in a way that would satisfy what the Republicans want, unless they appointed an outright partisan, which, I'm sure, is what they really want to do.
Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Muller’s team, which is leading the Russia probe,
Removed
by Mueller. If they were doing bad things on his behalf, why would he have had them removed?
