— Published with Permission of ConservativeHQ.com —
The Wall Street Journal carried an interesting article outlining how President Trump was allegedly pressing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to also look at the Obama administration as it probes possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
In a tweet Wednesday, Mr. Trump wrote:
“If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama administration, right up to January 20th, why aren’t they the subject of the investigation? Why didn’t Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren’t Dem crimes under investigation? Ask Jeff Sessions!”
Why indeed.
As Wall Street Journal reporters Julie Bykowicz and Peter Nicholas noted, in his tweet Wednesday it wasn’t clear what “Dem crimes” Mr. Trump was alleging, but he has previously criticized the Justice Department for not pursuing a prosecution of his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, over her alleged mishandling of classified emails.
Bykowicz and Nicholas report that one former federal prosecutor said Mr. Trump is wrong to pressure Mr. Sessions on investigations.
Jimmy Gurulé, a University of Notre Dame law professor and former assistant attorney general in Republican President George H.W. Bush’s administration, said in an interview that the president shouldn’t look to determine who gets prosecuted.
“When the president sends out tweets like this—why aren’t the Democrats being prosecuted?—that sounds to me like a president from an authoritarian country, where the prosecutor is an arm and extension of the president and people are being politically persecuted.”
However, Robert Ray, who served as independent counsel in the investigation into the Bill Clinton-era Whitewater land deal, said he didn’t believe Mr. Trump’s actions in this instance are improper. As president, Mr. Trump establishes policy for the entire executive branch, with no exception carved out for the Justice Department, Mr. Ray said according to reporting by Bykowicz and Nicholas.
In an email to Bykowicz and Nicholas, Mr. Ray wrote that if Mr. Trump “wants to steer DOJ towards investigation of Russian meddling’ involving a prior administration, why not? That may have adverse political consequences, but in my judgment is not improper.”
The Wall Street Journal reporters went on to say that it wasn’t clear what Mr. Trump was suggesting the Obama administration didn’t do about Russian election meddling.
As Bykowicz and Nicholas noted, less than a month before he left office, then-President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia related to its work in 2016. The State Department expelled what it described as 35 intelligence operatives from the U.S., and the administration imposed asset freezes and travel bans on Russian officials.
However, from our perspective, this is all after the fact stuff that did nothing to prevent or stymie Russian active measures to affect American politics.
The point of counterintelligence and cybersecurity is not point fingers after the enemy has executed an intelligence operation – in this case an act of information warfare – it is to prevent it from happening.
While Democrats and the establishment media are all working overtime to cover for Obama and his team of crack counterintelligence operatives, such as the libidinous FBI couple Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, no one seems to be asking the most important question: What did they do to stop or prevent Russian information operations against America during and after the 2016 election campaign?
The answer as far as we can tell is that not only did Team Obama do nothing to stop the Russians, they facilitated them in sowing chaos in our society by promoting the Steele dossier and using it to undermine the peaceful transfer of power to President Trump.
If there has been an act of sedition worthier of investigation since the Burr conspiracy of 1804 – 1806 we haven’t heard of it.
Attorney General Jeff Session is a fine Christian gentleman, and as Attorney General he has done some great work on border security, the First Amendment and the right-to-life.
However, the Department of Justice and the FBI need a firm hand to direct their investigations into Russian information operations against our country. Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Trump – Russia investigation is understandable, but that doesn’t mean he is recused from any investigation of Russian intelligence operations against America.
President Trump is right, it is time to investigate why Obama did nothing about Russian meddling in American politics and Attorney General Sessions needs to be in a leadership role in driving that investigation forward.
