Respectfully Disagreeing with David French on FISA Abuse

With undiminished esteem for my friend David French’s legal acumen, I confess to being underwhelmed by his defense of the Schiff memo. I am going to explain why, but I first want to apologize for the length of this column, which owes to the fact that David’s observations provide an opportunity to address the political context of the congressional investigation, which I have not done much of. . . snip

I am at a loss to understand how that could be thought a sufficient description of bias. Bear in mind that, unlike an ordinary federal criminal case, in which the judge knows that counsel for the defendant will eventually be able to examine and challenge the government’s warrant application, this was a counterintelligence case, meaning: The FISA court knows its searching review of the DOJ’s warrant application is the only due process an American alleged to be a foreign agent will ever get. The FISA judge thus justifiably expects the Justice Department to be appropriately transparent. It is, after all, a top-secret proceeding. Why would the DOJ restrict its disclosure of bias from a tribunal with which it is sharing the nation’s most closely guarded defense secrets?

So, I guess the question I’d ask David is this: If you were the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department unit that presents surveillance warrants to the FISA court, and you were thus responsible for maintaining the Justice Department’s reputation for integrity with the FISA court, would you have approved the decision not to disclose the role of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, as well as Steele’s profession that he was “desperate” that Trump not become president?

I would suggest taking this knowledge, and fitting it into various timelines and such to give it meaningful context.

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I would highly recommend checking out the Dan Bongino website, specifically, if you want to catch up on this, go to this link: Dan Bongino Web Page with Episode 628-scroll almost all the way to the bottom

Beginning at Episode 628 on January 8th, he begins to reveal in well explained detail what is going on with this fraudlent dossier.

The podcasts are entertaining and informative, but the links he provides for each show are invaluable.

He has been talking in great detail about this. Dan Bongino worked in the NYPD for about four years before joining the Secret Service, and worked on the Presidential Protection detail.

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The reason I think context is highly important is that it is easy to view a particular situation(s) in a silo or through a straw, and when that is done, it becomes far easier to argue a point in defense, which is what Andrew has done (deliberately) on behalf of David French.

Obviously it is done this way deliberately (and Andrew McCarthy is a very, very bright and sharp guy) to buttress the validity of the very important points McCarthy makes, to great effect. And I know that from a legal perspective you MUST argue things in this very narrow and focused fashion.

The problem is, when you look at things like this out of context of everything else around it, it begins to seem like nothing really happened overall, and you feel as if the discussion is more about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, as opposed to a discussion about the most egregious abuse in US History of the instruments of government power being brought to bear by a ruling party against an opposing party during a campaign.

Without that overall context which places these points of discussion directly into the wild river-rush of related events, it is somewhat bland and uninspiring. But place it into that context, that rushing river, and overall, it becomes overwhelmingly damning.

Don't get me wrong...this lawyerly analysis is both valuable AND necessary (and very interesting, I might add!) but it is like looking at these things in a sharp cone of bright light in a darkened room. Without placing it all in context, it is easy to look up bleary eyed after a long time in that dark room under that cone of inquisition, expecting to see a raging torrent of events, but instead, finding yourself floating placidly on a log down a black still water stream in absolute quiet with no sound, and nobody else around.

Dan Bongino has linked to this detailed timeline by Sheryl Attkisson in his shownotes yesterday, which is very detailed and well done (but long): Sheryl Attkisson's "Collusion against Trump" Timeline.

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