Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness<\/p>\n
Sometimes the hysteria of crowds causes them to overlook the obvious. Here is a series of 12 questions that do not seem to trouble anyone, but the answers to these should expose why so many of the people today alleging scandals should themselves be considered scandalous.<\/p>\n
1)<\/strong>\u00a0Had Hillary Clinton won the election, would we now even know of a Fusion GPS dossier? Would assorted miscreants such as Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, or Peter Strzok now be under a cloud of suspicion? Or would they instead have been quietly lionized by a President Clinton grateful for noble services in the shadows rendered during the campaign?<\/p>\n 2)<\/strong>\u00a0If Clinton had won, would we now know of any\u00a0Russian-supplied<\/i>\u00a0smears against Donald Trump? Would a FISA judge now be complaining that he was misled in a warrant request? Would likely Attorney General Loretta Lynch be reassigning\u00a0Associate Deputy Attorney General\u00a0Bruce Ohr for his consultations with Fusion GPS operatives? Or would Russian operatives alone be likely, at an opportune moment, to threaten to leak to the media that they had given salacious material to Clinton operatives to ensure her election, and thus they were to be owed for their supposed help in ensuring a Clinton victory? Would anyone be now listening to a losing candidate Donald Trump making wild charges that he had been smeared in the closing days of his campaign by leaks of a Clinton cabal that drew on Russian help?<\/p>\n 3)<\/strong>\u00a0Are any Russian related interests currently still donating millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation? Why is Bill Clinton not being asked to speak by various groups\u2014including those with Russian-ties\u2014for $500,000 and above per talk? Is he now less persuasive than he was between 2009 and 2015?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4)<\/strong>\u00a0Why did Andrew McCabe believe that two Democratic political action funds, one controlled by Clinton \u201cbest friend\u201d Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, donated a total of\u00a0$675,288 to his wife\u2019s campaign for a rather obscure state senate post? What percentage of Jill McCabe\u2019s actual campaign budget did the $675,288 comprise? And why after her defeat would Andrew McCabe still not recuse himself from directing FBI inquiries into allegations of (likely next president and past generous benefactor) Hillary Clinton\u2019s prior improper use of an email server while Secretary of State?\u00a0Does quid pro quo refer really more often to simultaneous benefactions or rather sequential ones?<\/p>\n 5)<\/strong>\u00a0What is the qualification for lying or giving false information to FBI investigators, and did the information supplied to the FBI by Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin concerning their knowledge of the use of Hillary Clinton\u2019s private server qualify? Did Christopher\u2019s Steele\u2019s false pledges not to leak any information shared with the FBI to news sources qualify\u2014at least at the level by which the FBI charged Michael Flynn for allegedly lying to their own investigators? Did Andrew McCabe qualify when he told his FBI superiors that he had not been a background source for news stories? What is the FBI\u2019s own internal criminal bar of lying to or providing false information to Congress or government agencies or courts or leaking classified information? Did James Comey qualify when he testified that he had himself never given background interviews (a.k.a., anonymous leaks) to news organizations nor known other FBI agents to do so, or when he testified to Congress that he certainly did not draw up a memorandum exonerating Hillary Clinton from criminal indictment before he interviewed her or when he deliberately leaked several memoranda, possibly classified, taken from confidential conversations with the president?<\/p>\n 6)<\/strong>\u00a0What would have happened had the FISA court justices been apprised by the FBI and the Justice Department that the submitted Steele dossier was a) paid for by Hillary Clinton, b) impossible to verify by the FBI, and 3) the sole source for news stories that were being used in circular fashion to corroborate the dossier\u2019s veracity?<\/p>\n 7)<\/strong>\u00a0Why did\u00a0Bruce Ohr not disclose to his superiors that he had met with the compiler of the anti-Trump dossier, Christopher Steele, as well as Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, who had hired Steele? Why did not Ohr disclose on government-mandated ethics forms that his spouse, Nellie, had worked for Fusion GPS on the anti-Trump dossier during the election? What are the criminal and civil penalties for deliberately misleading auditors, if any? Why has Ohr not been put on notice by authorities that he violated such statutes and could face charges?<\/p>\n 8)<\/strong>\u00a0Why is Christopher Steele not under indictment and facing extradition as a foreign agent for a) interfering in a U.S. election, b) colluding with Russian interests to obtain information deemed damaging to a U.S. presidential candidate, c) lying to the FBI about his own disclosures of FBI sensitive material related to the dossier to news organizations? Did Steele\u2019s collusion efforts and interference in a U.S. campaign differ much from, or exceed, the attempts of Russians currently indicted by Robert Mueller?<\/p>\n 9)<\/strong>\u00a0Why did Mueller, at the beginning of his special counsel investigation\u2014to ensure against even the appearance of partisanship or conflicts of interests\u2014not insist of potential hires: a) that they had\u00a0not<\/i>donated to\u00a0either<\/i>\u00a02016 political campaign, b) that they had\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0represented past clients who were involved\u00a0either<\/i>\u00a0with the Clinton or Trump organizations or were even tangentially involved with ongoing scandals concerning either Clinton or Trump, c) that were not from his own law firm WilmerHale, which was currently representing, or had in the past, individuals who may well be caught up in future special counsel investigations?<\/p>\n 10)<\/strong>\u00a0Why did Samantha Power, in a non-intelligence affiliated job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, request classified surveillance of American citizens and others to be sent to her office with the names unmasked, eventually at a rate, on average, of one request per day in 2016? And why and how could she testify that some of those daily requests for unmaskings made in her name were not in fact made by her? If not, then by whom and for what purpose and why with such frequency? And why did the requests continue after the 2016 election and during the transition?<\/p>\n 11)<\/strong>\u00a0Why were the major figures\u2014James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, and Peter Strzok\u2014who have in the past investigated, or are currently investigating or overseeing investigations of collusion charges against Donald Trump,\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0previously involved with investigations of Hillary Clinton? Have they exercised the same methods in the Trump collusion investigation that they used in the past in which Clinton was exonerated?<\/p>\n 12)<\/strong>\u00a0Which members of the Obama administration were aware of, or gave orders to, members of the Obama Justice Department and the FBI to use the Steele dossier to obtain FISA court orders to surveille American citizens? And who had access to transcripts of such surveillance, and why were the names of particular American surveilled then unmasked and how were they later disclosed to the media?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Sometimes the hysteria of crowds causes them to overlook the obvious. Here is a series of 12 questions that do not seem to trouble anyone, but the answers to these should expose why so many of the people today alleging scandals should themselves be considered scandalous. 1)\u00a0Had Hillary Clinton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1150,375,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2Sy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11170,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/if-only-hillary-had-won\/","url_meta":{"origin":11070,"position":0},"title":"If Only Hillary Had Won . . .","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Leakers and lawbreakers rewarded with Clinton-administration jobs \u2014 and the American public none the wiser about deep-state corruption There are lots of possible counterfactuals to think about had Hillary Clinton won the presidency as all the experts had predicted. The U.S. embassy would have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hillary Clinton"","block_context":{"text":"Hillary Clinton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/hillary-clinton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10921,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillarys-sure-victory-explains-most-everything\/","url_meta":{"origin":11070,"position":1},"title":"Hillary\u2019s \u2018Sure\u2019 Victory Explains Most Everything","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/\u00a0National Review \u00a0 What exactly were top officials in the FBI and DOJ doing during the election of 2016? The Page-Strzok text exchanges might offer a few answers. Or, as Lisa Page warned her paramour as early as February 2016, at the beginning of the campaign and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "FBI"","block_context":{"text":"FBI","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/fbi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10857,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nagging-questions-for-the-special-counselors\/","url_meta":{"origin":11070,"position":2},"title":"Nagging Questions for the Special Counselors","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner The one and only By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review \u00a0 1) If the FISA Court orders to explore the purported Trump-Russian collusion were predicated on phony Steele\/Fusion GPS documents and suppositions that prove largely untrue (Comey himself testified under oath that he could not verify their contents), then\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bill Clinton"","block_context":{"text":"Bill Clinton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/bill-clinton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9028,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillary-and-the-suspension-of-disbelief\/","url_meta":{"origin":11070,"position":3},"title":"Hillary and the Suspension of Disbelief","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Works and Days by PJMedia In a September 2007 congressional inquiry about the ongoing surge in Iraq, then Senator Hillary Clinton all but called Gen. David Petraeus a liar. After Petraeus gave a cautiously optimistic\u2014and prescient\u2014appraisal of the growing quiet in Iraq, Clinton curtly dismissed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2016"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2016","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/campaign-2016\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"hillary_stunned","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/hillary_stunned.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9572,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/no-reason-to-assume-hillarys-troubles-are-behind-her\/","url_meta":{"origin":11070,"position":4},"title":"No reason to assume Hillary’s troubles are behind her","author":"Megan Ring","date":"November 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ The Sumter Item Hillary Clinton was resting, running out the clock, sitting on a supposed large lead and hoping that the election was sooner than later. Now after the latest Weiner disclosures, she is crisscrossing the country, terrified of collapsing polls, and wishing that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Clintons"","block_context":{"text":"The Clintons","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-clintons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8506,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/8506\/","url_meta":{"origin":11070,"position":5},"title":"Hillary Gump","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 29, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Forrest Gump usually had a positive role to play at the hinges of fate; the equally ubiquitous Hillary Gump\u2019s cameos have made history far worse. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media The fictional and cinema hero Forrest Gump somehow always managed to turn up at historic moments in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJ Media","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/hillary_gump_6-28-15-1-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11070"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11072,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11070\/revisions\/11072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}