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Worse Than Watergate?

Worse Than Watergate?

Last updated on: February 25, 2022 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Worse Than Watergate? 2022-02-21T14:43:30-05:00 Gene Veith

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In 1972, operatives with Richard Nixon’s campaign broke into Democratic offices at the Watergate office building in an attempt to electronically monitor communications in the hopes of connecting George McGovern’s campaign to Cuba. Police foiled the burglary, but investigative reporting uncovered the scandal, leading to articles of impeachment being drawn up against President Nixon and his resignation.

Beginning in 2016, operatives with Hillary Clinton’s campaign colluded with tech experts who had access to Donald Trump’s electronic communications in the hopes of connecting his campaign to Russia. This monitoring continued even after Trump was elected President, with the tech company having access not only to Trump Tower but to the Oval Office. The goal was not so much to find evidence of Russian involvement in Trump’s presidency but to create a “narrative” to that effect. This effort was part of the mix that would lead, along with other complaints, to the impeachment trial of President Trump.

The failure to impeach the president was accompanied by the failure of criminal investigations into the allegations about Russia’s involvement in the American election. That, in turn, uncovered misbehavior on the part of the FBI and other officials who worked with the Democratic Party and co-operative journalists to create a false Russia “narrative.” The Trump Justice Department appointed John Durham, a well-respected investigator, as a Special Counsel to look into the matter, and his probe has already resulted in several indictments.

Here is Durham’s latest filing, as recounted by the Federalist‘s Tristan Justice:

According to Durham’s filing in the criminal case of Michael Sussmann, a Clinton campaign attorney indicted in September on charges of lying to federal officials, the defendant and Rodney Joffe contracted tech researchers at Georgia Tech “to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.” The assignment aimed “to please certain ‘VIPs’ at the Clinton campaign and Sussmann’s law firm, Perkins Coie. Targets of surveillance included an unnamed health care provider, Trump Tower, Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and the Oval Office.”

The data, Durham alleged, was then manipulated and turned over to the CIA to frame Trump and the president’s associates with engaging in suspicious activity on Russian cell phones.

Read the court filing for yourself along with this analysis.

Some observers are saying that these charges, if true, would be worse than Watergate. As Tristan Justice points out,

Clinton’s political operatives didn’t just spy on low-level political opponents, as President Richard Nixon’s deputies did in the 1970s. The Clinton campaign successfully harvested data from its rivals, weaponized it with deep-state actors, and continued espionage operations well after the election to undermine the Trump presidency.

But there is a major difference between Watergate and what Durham has uncovered. Investigative reporters from the nation’s major news media dug relentlessly, tracing the dots, following the money, and uncovering the coverups, ultimately exposing the “dirty tricks” and the crimes committed by President Nixon and his administration.

In this case, though, the major media first refused to cover the Durham revelations. And then defended Sussman and the tech monitors, insisting that the evidence is being misconstrued.

As the Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noticed, that article in the New York Times echoed the talking points from Sussman defense attorneys in their response to Durham’s filings. She goes on to refute the claims of the Times, which have since been picked up and repeated throughout the mainstream media. So does Kimberley Strassel and the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal, who points out that if the tech firm hired to watch for security problems was on the up-and-up, as the Times says, why did they alert the Democratic Party instead of law enforcement agencies? Cleveland also asks, why was the head of the tech company expecting a big government job if Clinton were elected?

Here is a good summary of the complicated case, including a response to the media apologists, by Cleveland, the Federalist writer who is among the few journalists pursuing this story. Keep up with her coverage here.

Prediction: To complete the parallels to Watergate, President Biden will fire Special Prosecutor Durham, just like Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox for his subpoenas of the White House tapes. After all, the reasoning will go, Durham was appointed by the Trump administration, so his findings, by definition, must be invalid. And the mainstream media will agree.

Photo: The Watergate Complex, Washington, D.C. by Allen Lew from Berkeley, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hillary Clinton campaign

John Durham investigation

media bias

President Donald Trump

presidential election 2016

Watergate scandal

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