{"id":12381,"date":"2020-05-20T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12381"},"modified":"2020-05-19T11:14:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T18:14:03","slug":"the-arts-of-government-criminality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-arts-of-government-criminality\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arts of Government Criminality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the entire 2016\u201319 efforts to derail the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, and other government bureaus have consistently sought to distort reality. Some of our best and brightest have destroyed evidence, altered documents, lied, leaked, and pled amnesia when questioned about their reprehensible conduct. At each stage, they were aided and abetted by a compliant media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dissimulation over the past four years has fallen into four rough categories. Here are a few examples of each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deletion of Evidence<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher Steele, who bragged for years of his meticulous research and whose work has been quoted chapter and verse as proof of Trump wrongdoing, recently testified under oath to a British court that he now has\u00a0no\u00a0<\/em>records of his supposed conversations with \u201csub source\u201d Russian informants. His lawyers previously had insisted that his sources were \u201cmeticulously documented and recorded.\u201d Now Steele sheepishly admits that such an assertion was a lie, given that he can produce\u00a0no\u00a0<\/em>evidence at all for his meticulous allegations. He admits that his emails and documents were wiped clean from his devices by January 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FBI operatives working with the Mueller investigation team admitted that thousands of undisclosed text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page simply disappeared. In addition, the phones of Strzok and Page apparently were wiped clean after Strzok was dismissed from the Mueller team. Most of these mysterious losses, according to the Mueller investigation, were supposedly a result of a software glitch or other computer malfunctions.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In the entire 2016\u201319 efforts to derail the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, and other government bureaus have consistently sought to distort reality. Some of our best and brightest have destroyed evidence, altered documents, lied, leaked, and pled amnesia […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3dH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12182,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-was-the-steele-dossier-not-dismissed-as-a-fake\/","url_meta":{"origin":12381,"position":0},"title":"Why Was The Steele Dossier Not Dismissed As A Fake?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Please\u00a0read\u00a0the\u00a0following\u00a0article\u00a0by\u00a0my\u00a0colleague\u00a0Paul\u00a0Gregory\u00a0in\u00a0Defining\u00a0Ideas A cursory examination of the Steele Dossier should have convinced the CIA or the FBI that it was fake news. Any residual doubt would have vanished after learning that its author, Christopher Steele, was an opposition researcher paid by the Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump. That our\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10696,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/steele-dossier-farce-shows-why-trump-relies-on-twitter\/","url_meta":{"origin":12381,"position":1},"title":"Steele dossier farce shows why Trump relies on Twitter","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 The Hill By Paul R. Gregory, opinion contributor \u2014 10\/27\/17 The media refrain on the Trump dossier has been that \u201cconsiderable amounts of it have been proven.\u201d No one had explained exactly what has been proven, however, until The Washington Post decided to answer the question itself. Per the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10926,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/did-the-fbi-vouch-for-the-crazy-russian-deal-from-the-steele-dossier\/","url_meta":{"origin":12381,"position":2},"title":"Did The FBI Vouch For The Crazy Russian Deal From The Steele Dossier?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Roderick Gregory \/\/ Forbes The media\u2019s promotion of an unverified dossier against Republican candidate, Donald Trump, failed to cement Hillary Clinton\u2019s expected victory in November. If that were the whole story, the dossier would have faded from public view, the new President Trump would not have spent his first\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":12554,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/steeles-dossier-clown-show-or-the-greatest-russian-coup\/","url_meta":{"origin":12381,"position":3},"title":"Steele’s dossier: ‘Clown show’ or the greatest Russian coup?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The following article is from my colleague, Paul Roderick Gregory, in The\u00a0Hill The known details of the so-called Steele dossier point to a peculiar ambiguity. To expert analysts, it always appeared to be low-quality political opposition research. Yet, it turned American against American, paralyzed our government \u2014 and may be\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11478,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/one-person-can-invalidate-the-steele-dossier-and-no-one-seems-to-bother\/","url_meta":{"origin":12381,"position":4},"title":"One Person can (In)validate the Steele Dossier and No One Seems to Bother","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in Ricochet Christopher Steele deliberately constructed his Trump dossier to be unverifiable. As long as it remains invalidated, it hangs over the Trump administration, even though the Clinton campaign was\u00a0identified\u00a0as its funder and Steele\u00a0refused to vouch\u00a0for it under oath. Apparently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12127,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-steele-dossier-bacillus\/","url_meta":{"origin":12381,"position":5},"title":"The Steele Dossier Bacillus","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In 2016, Hillary Clinton presidential candidate hired an ex-intelligence officer and foreign national, British subject Christopher Steele, to use Russian sources to find dirt (\u201copposition research\u201d) on her then political opponent Donald Trump. So much for the worry about \u201cforeign interference\u201d in U.S. elections.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12381"}],"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=12381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12382,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12381\/revisions\/12382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}