Tom Cotton Lays the Blame for the Collusion Hoax at the Door of One Man

As the Mueller investigation goes into rigor mortis, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Nearly none of them, however, are things we need to know about the Trump campaign. Those have all been answered in exhaustive detail and found to be, to use the technical legal jargon, nothingburgers. We know that the dossier used to kickstart the investigation of the Trump campaign was false in all but some very general points. We know that the FBI used this dossier for at least three FISA warrants. We know that there are idiots out there who still believe the George Papadopoulos-Andrew Downer story (looking at you, Chris Wallace). We know that this dossier was introduced into the media and into the highest levels of government by trusted intermediaries. We know that the people pushing the story had a personal animus towards Trump and a lot of people who worked for him. What we don’t know on that side of the equation is why? Did they do it, anticipating a Clinton win, so they could discredit the GOP? Were they afraid Clinton would lose and wanted, in the famous words of disgraced FBI counterintelligence official and notorious adulterer, Peter Strzok, an “insurance policy?”

On the other side of the equation, that would be the “how could this happen in a society under the rule of law” side, is mostly unanswered.

Earlier in the week, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton was on Hugh Hewitt’s show (note–Hugh Hewitt’s show is syndicated by Salem Media which owns RedState) and he offered some thoughts on this. Full Audio.

HEWITT: Do you agree with Lindsey Graham and me, for that matter, that we need a special counsel, though not necessarily one appointed pursuant to the regulations which do not govern this, to look into the conduct of the FBI and the intelligence community in 2016 concerning the FISA process? I believe…

COTTON: I think we need more scrutiny for sure, Hugh, now that this investigation is behind us, into exactly how it is that so many Obama officials and senior officials in the FBI came to believe that an American presidential campaign was colluding with a foreign intelligence service to include some potential instances of intelligence laws and the FBI’s investigatory power. Now look, the vast majority, 95-99% of all FBI agents and all intelligence officers had nothing to do with these matters. They’re out every day trying to keep the streets of Little Rock safe, or trying to protect us from Russia’s very many real malign activities, trying to intercept fentanyl coming across our border. But at the top, in Washington, at the leadership level, it appears that there is a serious cultural problem in some of these organizations like the FBI, like the National Security Division, like the State Department from the last months of the Obama era, in what they did not only to put a thumb on the scales of the campaign, but then tried to sabotage the transition of power to the Trump administration. There needs to be an accounting of that.

HEWITT: Let’s pause there. Do you think they tried, do you think they tried to sabotage the transition?

COTTON: I do, Hugh. I think that they rushed out an ill-considered document that was again built on a fake dossier that is actually the only source of collusion with foreign intelligence, namely Christopher Steele, a discredited former British intelligence officer who no doubt built most of the allegations in that dossier based on, yes, Russian intelligence services.

HEWITT: So senior Obama administration officials attempted to sabotage the transition? That’s your working premise?

COTTON: I don’t think based on what we’ve seen over the last three years you can have any other working premise.

Hewitt: I agree.

COTTON: And I think further inquiry will reveal exactly who they are. Some of them are well known, some of them are not well known. But further inquiry is needed.

I think he’s exactly right. This kind of activity–launching a counterintelligence probe of a presidential campaign and never briefing the candidate on any concerns the FBI had about his staff–is not only unprecedented, but it could not have taken place unless it was cleared by the White House. Now it seems irrefutable that the FBI aimed informants, like Stephen Halper, at various members of the Trump campaign and had them act as agents provocateurs. When California Republican Devin Nunes was carrying out his fight to declassify and release the Carter Page FISA warrant, there was an outcry from part of the so-called Five Eyes, the intelligence communities of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, who share intelligence:

British intelligence chiefs are reportedly desperate to convince the White House not to declassify more of the FBI wiretap application on former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, because it would expose intelligence-gathering sources and methods.

According to a piece published late Wednesday in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, U.S. intelligence officials are also against the idea, as are those in Australia, another member of the intelligence-gathering club known as the Five Eyes (the group also includes Canada and New Zealand.)

Now it seems that the Brits were not only up to their eyeballs in this mess, by way of Christopher Steele and Stephen Halper, but the Australians seemed to have used Andrew Downer as an agent, too. In is nearly certain that Joseph Mifsud, the guy who hired George Papadopoulos, was being run by a friendly foreign intelligence service. If so, this means that John Brennan was in on the operation from the earliest point in time and it explains why the CIA was so adamant about the collusion hoax being real.

All of this points to a collective and concentrated effort within the Obama administration to create the illusion that the Russians were involved in the Trump campaign. We don’t know why and we must find out.

Everybody is asking how the phony and fraudulent investigation of the No Collusion, No Obstruction Trump Campaign began. We need to know for future generations to understand. This Hoax should never be allowed to happen to another President or Administration again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2019