“One of the most incompetent and corrupt investigations in the history of the FBI and the US Department of Justice” – this is how Senator Lindsay Graham commented on the publication of classified documents related to Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. As they leave, the old administration is trying to loudly slam the door and show the true face of the Democrats. They lie under oath, commit illegal acts, send innocent people to trial. RIA Novosti analyzed the materials of the investigation and its findings.
System failure
“They lied to the court. From those who were accused, they concealed evidence that justified them. Investigators, with some exceptions, were biased and used power for political purposes,” said the congressman. Lindsay Graham is a Trump supporter who has distanced himself from him lately.
The public was presented with transcripts of interrogations, which were conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Graham from March 3 to October 29, 2020. The published documents have yet to be studied by interested parties.
According to Graham, the collusion investigation is “a massive failure of the system by senior officials.” Former FBI chief James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, were either “extremely incompetent” or “deliberately committed colossal violations.” “They turned a blind eye to any explanation other than the fact that Trump was in cahoots with foreign authorities,” the senator explained.
“It’s hard to believe that this could happen in America,” concluded Graham. The system needs to be reformed, and more checks and balances are needed when it comes to political investigations. Otherwise, justice will lose public trust.
Investigation investigation
There will be even more sensations. In October, Trump announced that he would declassify all documents in the case without cuts.
The Ministry of Justice then said that Mr. President got something wrong, and the White House asked the department to ignore the posts of the leader on Twitter, which was then still available to him.
Trump’s statement was linked to his calls to arrest political opponents – Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton for “conspiracy plans” – accusing the president of collusion with the Kremlin. Trump called this investigation a “witch hunt” and demanded to find out who and why actually needed it.
Since 2019, Attorney John Durham has been doing this. Attorney General William Barr asked him to “dig” into the Russian case. Soon he reported that not everything was clean there, it was necessary to find out whether federal employees violated the law and whether they exceeded their powers.
It turned out that the former FBI officer Kevin Klinsmith forged an email, on the basis of which the court in 2016 approved the surveillance of one of the Trump team members. Cleansmith admitted that.
In December 2020, Barr made Durham a special adviser to make it harder for Barr’s successor in the new administration to hush up the revelations.
Collusion without evidence
For several years, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller tried to reveal Trump’s special relationship with Moscow, to prove that the Russians helped him win the elections. They spent $ 32 million on it, but they didn’t prove anything.
In the midst of the presidential race in May 2020, Republicans launched a counter-attack. Lindsay Graham urged to find out whether the Democrats tried to “conspiracy case” to sabotage the coming to power of a leader they did not like. The so-called Obamagate began.
They recalled the disgraced former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who at the end of 2016 allegedly asked Moscow through the ambassador to Washington Sergei Kislyak not to react harshly to the Obama administration’s farewell sanctions – they say, a new government will come soon and everything will be settled. Flynn twice confessed that he lied to the FBI because he testified under pressure.
His case was closed. Shortly before this, the public was presented with a list of officials – the chiefs of the FBI, intelligence, the attorney general, involved, as the Republican Party believes, in a politically motivated investigation into collusion with the Kremlin. They were four years ago and exposed Flynn’s identity, discrediting the new administration that had not yet begun work.
In May, it seemed that a sensational exposure would affect the outcome of the presidential race, but this did not happen.
With an eye to the future
Against the background of losing the election, the second impeachment in the presidential term and the storming of the Capitol, Trump is trying to somehow improve his reputation before leaving the White House, RIA Novosti interlocutors believe.
“He understands: even if leaflets are posted on every corner stating that he is innocent, it will not change anything,” says American political scientist Dmitry Drobnitsky. “But there is also“ sweet revenge, ”besides, the publication will help the Trumpists of tomorrow.”
The expert points out that a lot of materials have already been made public on the “rushagate”, and everything on which the accusations against Trump were based has been destroyed. This also applies to testimony that was given at closed hearings in Congress. “In particular, it turned out that in fact the contractor who maintained the servers of the Democratic Party does not have convincing evidence of involvement in the hacking of the CosyBear hacker group, as the US intelligence services claimed,” recalls Drobnitsky. “. That is, the intelligence referred to a contractor who, under oath, stated that there was no evidence.
“The game is not over. Documents tend to lie down, lie down, and then appear from under the cloth,” says Dmitry Drobnitsky. “There is an ace – it’s good, the question is when he will play. Perhaps not right now, but this game is long Some things are revealed not when something becomes known, but when circumstances are favorable”.
Pavel Koshkin also believes that the documents will be made public selectively, in portions, and the publications will have some kind of logic. “First of all, they will release information beneficial to Trump,” he says.
It’s too early to write off Trump. He had great support. But it is impossible to make predictions – events in the United States are developing unpredictably. And what effect the disclosures will have remains to be seen.
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