Spying Isn’t Spying If Democrats Do It

 They reacted with arrogance to the latest John Durham report.

Tony Branco

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics   "Democrats howled in protest when Richard Nixon absolved himself of wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal by saying, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” But today’s Democrats, caught out in a political dirty trick far greater than Watergate, adopt the same arrogant posture. Spying isn’t spying if Democrats do it, they have implicitly said in response to the investigation by Department of Justice special counsel John Durham. He is establishing that it was the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign, not the Trump campaign and Putin, that colluded during the 2016 election.

"It is laughable to hear all the villains in this saga — from Hillary Clinton to John Brennan to Christopher Steele — prattle on about the purity of democracy after they assaulted it so egregiously in 2016. The Obama administration’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion was a dirty trick from beginning to end. Its genesis traces to John Brennan, a virulent anti-Trump partisan who had no business running the CIA. He turned it into something approaching a branch office of Hillary’s campaign. It is no wonder, as Durham tells us in a recent legal filing, that one of her lawyers felt comfortable pitching anti-Trump propaganda to CIA officials.

"The FBI liaison to Brennan was Peter Strzok, the agent who infamously told his mistress that he was going to “stop” Trump. That Brennan and Strzok spearheaded the investigation into Trump-Russia collusion tells you all you need to know about its partisan origins. They would later solemnly spin their partisan fishing expedition as a “counterintelligence probe” into foreign interference in the election. Former FBI director James Comey even tried to spin it as an investigation into the campaign, not Trump — an obviously bogus explanation given that he never tipped Trump off to his alleged fears.

"Even at this late date, the media, to the extent that it acknowledges the Durham investigation, still casts the Obama administration’s blatant spying on the Trump campaign as proper and dutiful. The chutzpah of it all is breathtaking. Reporters continue to treat Trump as the villain, not the victim, in the story. Never mind that Durham’s findings show the spying on Trump to be even more extensive than anyone realized.

"Now we know why the denials of spying on Trump Tower were so lawyerly. Both the Obama administration and Hillary’s dirt-diggers targeted it for surveillance. Comey, who never directly denied Trump’s complaint, was able to intercept communications at Trump Tower through FISA warrants based on nothing more than Hillary’s campaign smears.

"Walter Duranty, the New York Times correspondent famous for his defense of Stalin, won prizes for overlooking the transgressions of Russian leaders. . ."