Issues & Insights
President Obama in the Oval Office. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Will Obamagate End With Prosecutions? It Should

I&I Editorial

With the media’s relentless focus on COVID-19 lockdowns and the George Floyd demonstrations, it’s easy to forget other things worthy of seizing our attention. Among those are possible criminal referrals emerging this week from the Russia-collusion investigations by Congress and the Justice Department. Soon, some in deep-state D.C. will be worrying about an entirely different kind of lockdown.

With little fanfare, investigators are readying the release of names of those deep-state minions and leaders who broke the law in pursuing a bogus, politicized investigation of President Donald Trump for “colluding” with Russia during the 2016 election campaign. If the early reporting is accurate, it could be bigger than Watergate.

Emmy-winning journalist Adam Housley tweeted this out on Monday:

“Criminal referrals have already been sent to the Justice Department and the overall number may reach as many as 16-17 by the end of next week. Investigators are working on additional ones as we speak and some are targeting the Mueller probe and how @GenFlynn investigated.”

That follows comments last week by Ranking House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Devin Nunes who said that, in addition to eight referrals he sent in April to Attorney General William Barr, more evidence had been found to send prosecution referrals for “at least another five, possibly as many as 10.”

“We now are looking at the overall Gen. Flynn investigation and how that was conducted and the rest of the Mueller team,” Nunes said. “And then, of course, as new information has come to light from the information that was declassified by acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, that information has also shown that there are other people who have lied or misled Congress or have, I think in some cases maybe, lied by omission, documents that were kept from Congress.”

In recent weeks, with the nation distracted by other things, you might not know that a number of revelations from the ongoing investigations into the phony Russian-collusion scandal show that the Mueller investigation was bogus from the beginning, and that key Obama administration officials, including President Barack Obama himself, had a hand in keeping the spying on Trump going.

The idea that the investigation had been driven by a few Department of Justice and FBI underlings now lies in tatters. So do the reputations of former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA chief John Brennan, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and many others who took part in this sordid political spying affair.

Recently declassified memos and other documents show that the FBI tried to entrap former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, that Mueller investigators knew early on they had no evidence of Trump-Russian collusion, and that even Brennan hid intelligence showing that Russia’s Vladimir Putin favored Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016.

Yet, the FBI opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation in July 2016 on a false premise that never held up to even the most rudimentary scrutiny of the evidence. Instead of shutting it down, it only grew, as deep-state partisans became ever-more desperate to sink Trump.

“By August 16, 2016, the FBI had opened four subsidiary investigations on individuals connected to the campaign, claiming their connections to Russian businesses, pro-Russian factions, or Russian-owned entities ‘reasonably indicated’ they ‘may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security,’ ” as The Federalist recently noted.

The efforts continued into Trump’s presidency, with the disgraceful partisan attempt by House Democrats to impeach Trump.

These are just a handful of the recent revelations indicating the “investigation” of Trump for alleged collusion with the Russians was in fact an illegal, sub rosa effort to undermine both his presidential campaign and, after he won, his presidency.

And contrary to the shrill denials emanating from the media, Obama knew all about it and hid the investigation from Trump during the transition.

The whole affair was a massive effort on many levels across at least three major agencies to subvert a presidential election, a presidency and our democratic republic. It is criminal, and one of the most shameful episodes in America’s long history.

With the likelihood of indictments and prosecutions growing, we’ll soon see just how far the criminality and treachery went. Eleven people did time for the Watergate burglary and subsequent cover-up, a two-bit operation compared to Obamagate.

No wrist slaps here. Those who are found guilty must do hard time.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board.

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I & I Editorial Board

The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

22 comments

  • Yes, this should end not only with indictments and prosecutions, but sentencing. Good long terms. But that will never happen because corrupt politicians run this country and look out for their own.

  • I am not holding my breath, after seeing what the Clinton’s got away with and continue to get away with, I do not hold out much hope that justice is applied equally

  • My bet is that there will be some prosecutions, but few. Those prosecuted will NOT be the Ringmasters but rather the pissants, the ninth level down attorney working in a closet at the FBI. 0bama, Biden, Clinton, Kerry, et al, all TOO BIG to JAIL, so they all get off scot free! But, the pissants, the nobody’s….they go down!

  • You’ve got 4 more years to get ‘er done, Republicans, then I’m pulling the plug on you. The last Democrat I voted for was Jimmy Carter, in my stupid youth. After I saw what a f’king mess he made of the country, I’ve voted Republican since. But now we’re in the same position, not because of the President, who keeps fighting against the Swamp, but because of spineless Republican senators and Representatives who will not support him.

    From 2016 to 2018 we had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. What did we get? The Mueller investigation. Hillary was not prosecuted for her numerous, widely known crimes. Nor Brennan, Comey, McCabe, Holder, Power, Biden, etc. So what good did it do to have control of all 3 branches?

    You’ve got 4 years, Republicans. I’ll vote R in 2020 and 2022, but if I don’t see at least some of Obama’s criminals IN JAIL — not just fired and disbarred — I’ll be voting D from then on. And America will deserve what follows.

  • The law is dead. We have a two tier system.
    These criminals will never do a day.

  • The only hope I have for justice in America is if and when God intervenes. The Republicans have no fight in them at all. They seem willing to turn the country over…totally to the left. Trump fights….the media. Thats nice but what about fighting those in power? Deep state? Globalists? We need a leader.

    Typical of Republicans they will wait till after the election to do anything. Then if Trump loses they will put him in prison and arrest all the “investigators”. Case closed.

  • We don’t have nearly enough jails for all the conspirators and collaborators, which include nearly the entire Obama administration, the MSM, Hollyweird, the Universities, and the DNC.

  • As slow as things work if Trump loses, then the coup has become a success and the next Republican or democrat prez would be a fool not to use it as a standard campaign too. After all it’s all about power, not ethics, not honesty, nothing else but power to spend your money their way.

  • I&E editors gingerly avoid mentioning AG Barr’s preemptive announcement that Obama-era elected officials won’t be prosecuted. Making this the 2nd election cycle in a row that the DOJ has — for wholly political reasons — pretzeled itself to excuse the Dems’ presumptive nominee from criminal jeopardy.

    And a successive election in which Dem primary voters have callously jettisoned pesky principle, disregarding their nominee’s ineffable corruption. Did Biden commit sexual assault decades ago? Did he use his diplomatic post to shield the Ukrainian company employing his son in a six-figure no-work/no-show job? What was his role in subverting our democratic processes (Crossfire Hurricane)? Is Joe 25th Amendment-eligible (i.e., waxing senile) prior to the general election? These are questions Dems don’t want asked, say nothing of answered.

    The 2020 election is an existential crisis for Dems, explaining (in part) why the Party has given progressives (& their media cheerleaders) free rein to change the subject (“Defund the police!”). AG Barr can indict whomever he likes, but a Biden victory in November will render any charges every bit as moot as special prosecutor Mueller’s indictment of Russian nationals.

  • LOL. Yeah right.
    Like “Lock her up” and all the other conspiracy theories where you going to lock up your political enemies for crimes that some how never seem to be able to provide any evidence that will stand up in court.

    This is just another political rally cry for your Trump base to rally them up when you know there is no case to answer.
    Just like all the other times.

  • If the rule of law and the responsibility of authority are to mean anything at all in our society, all four of the DoJ attorneys that signed the now discredited FISA applications need to be indicted.

    They were the ones that certified under oath that the submissions were complete, accurate and VERIFIED. That they weren’t makes them, wittingly or un-, co-conspirators in a felony and guilty of the same charges leveled at all of the other conspirators.

  • So far, nobody from Bill Barr down, has presented enough evidence to bring charges. Mistakes, yes, crimes no.

  • At one time we were promised and reassured that Obamagate would end in prosecutions. Now we’re being acclimated to the “maybe” and soon to the “better luck next time.” You can’t have prosecutions without indictments…and Barr doesn’t seem interested in those.

  • When does someone make Barack Obama answer for expelling Russian Diplomats in the last 3 weeks of his Presidency, for Russian Hacking of the DNC server, when it has now been revealed that Crowdstrike, the only entity to investigate the server told the Schiff committee that it had no evidence that Russians had hacked the server, or any evidence that anything had been downloaded from the server?

    Why did Obama make a public claim that Russians were behind the hacking when he lacked evidence?

  • After watching a sitting FBI Director methodically lay out an iron-clad case against Hillary Clinton in that infamous press conference — like 9-11, I recall exactly where I was when I heard it — only to then read into the federal statutes a completely non-existent criminal element of premeditated “intent” and unilaterally exonerate her, I learned that we have a two-tiered justice system so firmly entrenched that we are a banana republic in all but name.
    There will be no prosecutions of anyone other than a few low-level sacrificial sheep.
    To paraphrase Dean Koontz, the wind cries requiem for our country.

  • Not a single prosecution will occur. In fact, if Biden is elected, almost all those involved will get jobs in his administration.

  • Well, swampland, just off he coast, should only cost $5.00/acre in Florida, too. AND it’s far more likely that you can find it vs arrests of the obabamauts.

  • Prosecutions? Not a chance.
    “Mistakes were made. No one made them.”
    This is Swamp stuff

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