Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Senator Feinstein Unilaterally Releases Fusion GPS Transcript
Fusion GPS is the consultancy that paid for the infamous Trump-Russia Dossier compiled by former MI-6 officer Christopher Steele. Back in August, its founder Glenn Simpson testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Since then, there have been countless appeals to release the testimony to the public, include by Mr. Simpson himself. Instead, bits and pieces of it were leaked over the months in a Republican effort to make it appear that the dossier itself was a fraud. So, yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released the whole thing unilaterally. It turns out to be far more serious than the GOP has suggested.
The most significant part of the whole thing is the intervention of Mr. Simpson's lawyer, Josuha Levy. When the committee asked about the sourcing of Mr. Steele's information, Mr. Simpson merely said he had assessed the credibility of the MI-6 man and that he would not go into the sourcing. The logical question was asked, why not? Mr. Levy at that stage stopped his client and said, "Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier, and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work." This is most certainly true because it would be such a ridiculous lie and because if it were untrue, Mr. Levy would face disbarment and criminal charges for lying to Congress.
Moreover, Mr. Simpson said later on that he wouldn't reveal a source. "I just don't feel comfortable sharing because obviously it's been in the news a lot lately that people who get in the way of the Russians tend to get hurt," he testified.
Next, the testimony makes clear that Mr. Steele, a British subject, went of his own volition to the FBI to warn the Americans about Russian tampering with the 2016 US presidential election. The FBI believed him because he confirmed many points that the FBI had from other sources. Thus, the Republican talking point that the dossier was the thing that kick-started the investigation (and was fake, so the whole investigation was nonsense) is refuted.
More importantly, the FBI “believed Chris's information might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing, and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source inside the Trump organization.” In other words, there was someone in the Trump camp who was concerned enough to call the Feds.
Out of this, Republican Senators Grassley and Graham have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation – into Mr. Steele. His crime is allegedly lying to the FBI. It appears that he spoke to the agency in July and again in August and some dates he has given elsewhere don't mesh.
At this stage, one has to ask whether anyone in the Republican party has any sense of shame left. A foreign adversary has interfered in a US election, and the response is to attack a man who has spent his career helping America and brought evidence of the interference to the FBI of his own volition. One sincerely hopes that this cover-up comes to an end, but in the cleaning up of the mess, everyone who has acted to thwart the investigation (including members of Congress) should face a jury to answer for their behavior.
That American legislators should be put on trial for any such actions is a horrible, Third World dictatorship sort of behavior. However, they are acting like the fake legislators of such a dictatorship. If a person has been killed, and if they are acting to inhibit the investigation, accessory after the fact seems suitable as an opening charge.
© Copyright 2018 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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