William Barr and Rand Paul may be more evil than Trump

William Barr -- or, as I call him, Old Spook-Face -- has argued that there can be no obstruction of justice without proof of an underlying crime. Is he mad?

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose the authorities have reason to believe that evidence on your hard drive connects you to a crime. Perhaps a kidnapping. (Really, any crime will do.) Let us further suppose that you are actually guilty of this crime, and you know that the hard drive contains damning information. You suspect that the cops will soon arrive at your door. What to do?

You smash the hard drive with a hammer and toss the remains into the fireplace. With any luck, that should take care of the evidence. You are now free and clear...

...according to William Barr.

He thinks you should walk. After all, without that hard drive, there isn't enough evidence to secure a conviction. You destroyed the evidence; therefore, you cannot be found guilty of participation in a kidnapping plot. Since the underlying crime cannot be proven,you also cannot be found guilty of obstruction.

Of course, every law enforcement official not named William Barr has a different view.

Barr. Fucking Barr. I've always hated that guy.

I wish I could spit in the eyes of everyone who spoke of him as an "institutionalist" who would rein in Donald Trump. When Barr was nominated, I was derided as a conspiracy theorist because I brought up his long, long career as a CIA cover-up artist. Remember, this is the same William Barr who helped BCCI take over an American bank. This is the same William Barr who covered up Iran Contra. This is the same William Barr who helped Poppy Bush impede congressional oversight of the Agency.

Rand Paul. In the meantime, Rand Paul is using the Steele Dossier as his excuse for blocking a resolution calling for the release of Mueller's report.

"What we don't know is was President Obama told that the evidence to get this investigation started was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign? We need to know that," Paul continued.

Paul has warned that he would block the resolution backing the Mueller report's release unless information about the opposition research dossier compiled against Trump was also released.

What a piece of work is Rand! How ignoble in hypocrisy! How infinite in guile! In form and moving, how cunning and contemptible! In action, how like a demon! In deceit, how like the Devil himself!  

The dossier was not the basis for the counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump.

Simple chronology disproves Rand's assertion. The inquiry began, very secretly, in July of 2016. From Wikipedia:

The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier,[1] is a private intelligence report comprising 17 memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele...

Contrary to repeated assertions by President Donald Trump and many of his supporters, the dossier was not the impetus for the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaign.

To back up this statement, Wikipedia links to many sources. One of those links goes to this Vox article:

Fox News has normalized a lie about the origins of the Russia investigation
They want you to believe it began with the Steele dossier. It didn’t.

We’ve known since December 2017 that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began in July 2016 — months before the FBI was even alerted to the existence of the Steele dossier.

The inciting incident, according to Sharon LaFraniere, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo at the New York Times, had to do with WikiLeaks, which published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in July 2016. Those emails prompted Australia’s top diplomat in Britain to inform his American counterparts about a conversation he had two months earlier with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

Papadopoulos was not the only justification for a probe. Although nobody likes to talk about it (mostly because the lady in question is litigious), Michael Flynn was sacked as head of the DIA because he fell prey to an obvious Russian honeytrap. And then there were those statements by Trump's own kids linking the Trump organization to Russia. One must also recall Trump's many links to Russian oligarchs and mobsters (as if one could draw a distinction between those two categories).

And then there's the most obvious reason: The Russians had targeted Trump's enemies. That, in and of itself, is all you need. Helping one party and hacking the other justified the FBI's opening of a counterintelligence investigation. The mere fact that the Russians chose sides in an American election suggests a backchannel link.

Rand Paul suggests that Obama directed the Bureau to do what it did. Not one scintilla of evidence supports that notion. One again, we must ask yet again a question which many have asked -- a question which no Republican has tried to answer:

If the FBI hoped to smear Trump, why did the Bureau keep quiet about the investigation of Trump during the election? Comey openly discussed the Clinton email probe!

If, before November of 2016, Comey had told the world that Donald Trump was the subject of an investigation, Trump probably would not be president today.

Back to Steele. Rand Paul and other Trump toadies don't want to talk about the truth of the matter. They want to talk about the Steele dossier -- which, I must repeat, was not compiled until AFTER the FBI opened its investigation.

You really want to talk Steele? Fine. Let's.

Although many now believe that the reports compiled by Orbis contain disinformation, the question must still be asked: Why shouldn't the Bureau have taken the reports seriously? Christopher Steele is a respected intelligence professional whose work had proven invaluable previously. If his reports on Trump had been a deliberate smear, he would have gone to the media instead of privately making those reports available to the Bureau and John McCain.

Steele's sources made some startling claims, and some of those claims were demonstrably true. Steele did precisely what a pro ought to do: He took his findings to people with more power and resources, and he said "Please check this out." Keep in mind that he did so on the QT.

He did not take things into the public realm, as a Roger Stonian smear merchant would have done. If anything, Steele was too cautious.

As we have seen, other factors had already led to the opening of a probe. But even if that were not the case, the FBI damn well should have started an investigation based purely on the Orbis material, regardless of who paid Fusion. Investigation is not mud-slinging or rumor-mongering or public defamation. Investigation is investigation. A quiet investigation could not do harm to Trump unless and until it uncovered actual evidence.

I must repeat yet again: The opening of the FBI probe preceded Steele's dossier. So why is Rand Paul using this bullshit rationale as his excuse for blocking release of the Mueller report?

Incidentally, the fact that Steele's Russian sources spread disinformation indicates that the Trump/Russia connection is real. You don't concoct disinformation unless you want to confuse and/or discredit an opponent who has gotten a glimpse of something genuine. Disinformation isn't something you do just for the hell of it.