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2019-11-20 Home Front: Politix
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Book Review: 'The Plot Against the President'
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 [The Federalist] The Inside Story Of How America’s Intelligence Agencies Tried To Undo Trump’s Election.
Lee Smith’s new book, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History, lays out a compelling case of abuse against the United States’ major intelligence agencies. In great detail, he explains how the FBI and the Department of Justice not only abused their power in going after Donald Trump, his campaign, and later his administration, but how they sought to cover it up.
Unlike some of the other recent books on this topic, Smith’s epic has a hero. Smith makes a compelling case that California Rep. Devin Nunes and his steadfast team stood up to an army of Goliaths. This small team of committed truth-seekers took on the most powerful intelligence apparatus in the world, a hostile media, and a dishonest opposition party to hold them accountable for violating American citizens’ constitutional rights.
Continued from Page 4
The Plot Against the President almost reads like a spy thriller. It’s hard to put down as it follows the Russia investigation and the ensuing investigation of the investigators ‐ and it’s all told through Nunes’s eyes.
’CROSSFIRE HURRICANE’
Nunes knew early on that the Russia-Trump collusion narrative was nonsense. As chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Nunes was in a unique position to push against the media and Democrats’ obsession with discrediting Trump and the 2016 election results. Nunes’ work to uncover abuse within the intelligence apparatus meant the HPSCI was getting back to its roots. The committee had been founded in the 1970s specifically to keep an out-of-control intelligence bureaucracy in line.
Smith’s account of what Nunes, his family, and his team went through to expose the covert operation to destroy Trump’s presidency is an emotional roller coaster. Nunes and his team suffered smear campaigns, violent threats, and even a vindictive ethics investigation as a result of their battle to uncover the truth.
Nunes knew he was getting close to the truth when Democrats spent millions in an attempt to unseat him during the midterm elections. When asked whether he ever thought of walking away from the investigation, Nunes replies, "Never. Not once. I knew the more times they came after me, the more they hit me, I knew that I was right over the target."
Rumors about Trump and his campaign team’s interactions with Russia began circling early in the 2016 election. We know now that these rumors had no validity, but for three years this was anything but common knowledge. Even on the right, few stood by Trump. Only a handful of journalists remained skeptical.
The rumors were fueled by a now infamous report compiled by Fusion GPS, a research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, compiled his infamous and discredited "dossier" accusing Trump and several of his campaign officials of colluding with Russia to change the results of the 2016 election. All of Steele’s information was second- or third-hand or in the public record. Nonetheless, the dossier was used to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant on Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor.
The FBI team investigating Trump and his campaign called their investigation "Crossfire Hurricane." FISA applications are only supposed to obtain verified information, as judges do not have an investigative arm to verify the facts themselves. Knowing that the dossier was not only unverified, but unverifiable, the Crossfire Hurricane team submitted it as evidence anyway.
They thought that since Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, they’d never be caught. Well, she didn’t and they were. And they were caught thanks to the work of Nunes and his team. They not only uncovered abuse of the FISA process, but rampant leaking, unmasking, and obstructionist behavior throughout intelligence agencies. It is their investigation that Smith unfolds in this book.
’OBJECTIVE MEDUSA’ BEGINS
After Nunes stepped down from heading the Russia investigation, he began to investigate intelligence abuse. One of Nunes’ first steps was to hire Kashyap Patel, a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, as his lead investigator. Patel is credited with being the first to recognize the extent of the corruption in the FBI and DOJ.
In an interview, Patel tells Smith that a significant part of the problem is that there was no accountability in the Obama Justice Department. Patel is the one who urged the Nunes team to go after documents first, instead of witnesses. He knew that documents that detailed the department’s own evidence were the key to unmasking DOJ abuse.
Patel started with the Steele dossier and the FISA warrant on Page. Patel explains that a FISA warrant is the biggest tool for counterintelligence investigations and the best way to get one is to pick an easy target, even if it’s not the ultimate target. Patel attempted to gather all the investigative documents surrounding Crossfire Hurricane. "I wanted to know what the government knew, when they knew it, and if there were any material omissions in the FISA application," he said.
Nunes’s committee interviewed officials from the Obama administration and the intelligence communities. They asked each the same question, "Do you have any evidence of collusion, conspiracy, or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia?" Patel said not a single person interviewed answered in the affirmative. Patel believed that top intelligence officials such as former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe had tailored their investigation to reflect their personal or political agenda.
Patel remembers telling Nunes in reference to Crossfire Hurricane, "There are so many parts to this thing. There are so many snakes on one head. We need to cut off the head like Medusa." Thus Objective Medusa, an investigation of the investigators, began.
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Posted by Besoeker 2019-11-20 00:31||
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