The Patriot Post® · Gagging on Gowdy

I bit my tongue when I heard Rep. Trey Gowdy essentially give the bad actors at the top of the FBI a pass during a recent Fox interview. Here’s what Gowdy said: 

“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got…”

My instinctive reaction is how does he know that? Yes, I know he had a classified briefing.

But there are multiple reports that when members of Congress went over to the Department of Justice last week to see the original documents that began the investigation they were still denied access to those documents.

And if it is so clear to Mr. Gowdy that the FBI did the right thing, why is the FBI still unwilling to show the American people why it acted in such an extreme manner? People don’t usually fall back on secrecy to hide their good deeds.

Gowdy also said this:

“Chris Wray and Rod Rosenstein have at least made it clear to us Donald Trump was never the target of the investigation. He’s not the current target of the investigation.”

Once again, Andrew McCarthy is asking the salient questions: Are Mr. Gowdy and any of the FBI’s other defenders paying attention to “what the FBI said it was doing?” [Emphasis in original.]

McCarthy quotes then-FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before Congress:

“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts…”

Let’s be clear — Donald Trump was the campaign. So, according to James Comey, the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign and by extension Donald Trump.

Yet now Gowdy is telling us that what Comey said is not true, that the FBI was never investigating the Trump campaign. James Clapper said this recently, too. But none of it adds up.

Here’s something else that jumped out at me from Gowdy’s interview, which almost seemed as if Gowdy was trying to deceive his Fox interviewer and the rest of us. He said this:

“It was Trump himself who said, ‘I didn’t collude with Russia but if anyone did, I want the FBI to find that out.’”

The problem with Gowdy’s statement is that Trump did not say that during the campaign. Trump made those remarks in a phone call to James Comey on March 30, 2017 — more than two months after his inauguration. The president was venting his frustration over the “cloud” of the Russia investigation hanging over his administration.

But the way Gowdy presents it lacks all context. Trump did not ask or invite the FBI to investigate his campaign or individuals who worked on his campaign. He was never afforded the opportunity to do so.

Instead, the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign, in violation of FBI guidelines, not to mention every norm and tradition. Now that Trump won the election and the collusion narrative is falling apart, the Deep State is furiously trying to cover its tracks.

The government of one party wiretapping or trying to entrap the campaign of the opposition party is a huge danger to our constitutional republic. The bar should be extremely high for any such effort.

If you’re going to do that, the most obvious step is to go directly to the candidate and explain the urgent concern. The Obama administration did not do that.

If the FBI had so much factual information to justify crossing such a high bar, then why won’t it share it?

As for Mr. Gowdy, would he have us ignore all the clouds now hanging over the Deep State? What about all the anti-Trump texts from FBI agents? What about the senior officials fired or demoted for misconduct? What about the inspector general’s various investigations, including the FBI’s likely abuse of the secret FISA court?

Speaking of Strange Republicans…

Mitt Romney recently disclosed that he did not vote for either major party nominee in 2016. Instead, he wrote in his wife’s name.

By the way, he’s also refusing to endorse President Trump for reelection even though the president has endorsed his Senate campaign.

Clearly, “Senator Romney” is going to be as much of a team player as Jeff Flake has been.

The Useless UN

Ambassador Nikki Haley called the United Nations Security Council into an emergency session Wednesday. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the global body’s response to the massive barrage of rockets and mortars launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad against Israeli communities this week.

According to Israeli media reports, at least 180 rockets and mortars were fired from the Gaza Strip in the largest barrage since the 2014 Gaza War. At least one mortar round hit an Israeli kindergarten.

Haley pressed the Security Council to condemn the terrorists who attempted to massacre innocent Israelis, but it refused to do so. As a result, Haley ended up condemning the council itself. Here’s what she said:

“The United States drafted a Security Council statement that would have condemned Hamas for launching rockets and endangering civilians… You would think no one would want to side with Hamas when it comes to condemning rocket launches. But the statement was blocked…

"Apparently, some council members did not think Hamas launching rockets qualified as terrorism. The United States begs to differ… Hamas openly claims responsibility for this attack… The Security Council has always been quick to pounce on Israel, regardless of the facts and the circumstances…

"It is outrageous for the Security Council to fail to condemn Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, while the Human Rights Council approves sending a team to investigate Israeli actions taken in self-defense.

"I urge the members of the Security Council to exercise at least as much scrutiny of the actions of the Hamas terrorist group as it does to Israel’s legitimate right of self-defense.

"To allow Hamas to continue to get away with its terrorist acts, and to somehow expect Israel to sit on its hands when it is attacked, is the height of hypocrisy. To continue to condemn Israel without even acknowledging what is actually coming from the leaders of Gaza makes me question who actually cares about the welfare of the Palestinian people.”

In the fight against radical Islamic terrorism the UN is useless. It should not get one dime of U.S. taxpayer money.