The Trump Dossier Dam Is Breaking

November 1 | Posted by mrossol | American Thought, Jenkins, Liberal Press, Party Politics, Russia, Trump

WSJ- 10/28/2017

’Tis the season of tossing out nondisclosure agreements. Victims and employees of Harvey Weinstein clamor to be released from their NDAs so they can talk about his abuse. Perkins Coie, the Washington law firm for the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign, showed the way by voluntarily releasing Fusion GPS from its duty to remain mum on Democrats who funded the notorious Trump dossier.

May the example catch on.

Journalists who investigated the Trump dossier now say their Democratic sources lied to them. That’s already a start. Please, Democrats, release journalists from their confidentiality agreements so they can tell us more about your lying.

The revelations provide new context for Harry Reid’s “October surprise,” his attempt 10 days before Election Day to lever the dossier’s allegations into the press with a public letter to then-FBI Director James Comey accusing him of withholding “explosive information.”

Mr. Reid knows how the responsible press works. Implausible, scurrilous and unsupported allegations are not reportable, but a government official making public reference to such allegations is reportable.

Mr. Reid, though, failed to mention his party’s role in concocting the allegations, much less that the manner of its doing so left him no reason to suppose the charges were anything but tall tales spun by Russian intelligence officials in response to danglings of Democratic money.

This is a completely novel tactic in U.S. politics, applying to a hostile foreign power for lurid stories about a domestic opponent. Mr. Reid, please tell us more about your role.

Let’s also hear from Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

He claimed on TV to have “circumstantial” and “more than circumstantial” evidence of Trump collusion with Russia. In the event, what he delivered in a committee hearing was a litany of routine, innocuous business and diplomatic contacts between Trump associates and Russian citizens, interspersed with claims from the Trump dossier. He failed to mention, though, that the Trump dossier was manufactured by Democrats paying a D.C. law firm to pay a D.C. “research” firm to pay a retired British spook to pay unknown, unidentified Russians to tell stories about Mr. Trump, in reckless disregard for whether the stories were true.

Mr. Schiff, a Harvard Law graduate, will know the phrase is not our coinage. “Reckless disregard” is the standard by which the Supreme Court says, even in a country that bends over backward to protect the press at the expense of public figures, the press can be held liable for defamatory untruths about a public figure.

Even so, journalists are presumed to know their sources, not to have paid a long chain of surrogates to elicit sensational claims from perfect strangers, let alone anonymous agents of a foreign regime with a known habit of disinformation. It is impossible to exaggerate how reckless Democrats have been under this standard. If they found the Trump dossier on the sidewalk, they’d be in a better ethical position now. Let’s hear what Mr. Schiff knew and when he knew it.

Finally, let us hear from James Comey.

The Trump dossier was reckless and irresponsible in the extreme, but only consequential after Election Day. It didn’t prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president.

In the new spirit of non- non-disclosure, it’s time for Mr. Comey to tell us about the Russian intelligence scam that may really have changed the election outcome.

In closed hearings, he reportedly acknowledged that his intervention in the Hillary Clinton email case was prompted by what is now understood to have been planted, fake Russian intelligence. The fake Russian intelligence purported to discuss a nonexistent email between then-DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz and George Soros-employed activist Leonard Benardo.

This led directly to Mr. Comey’s second intervention, reopening the case 11 days before Election Day, a shocking development that appears now to have moved enough votes into Mr. Trump’s column to account for his win.

At the time, the press was all too happy to blame Bill Clinton for his wife’s loss when Mr. Comey, for nonclassified consumption, cited Mr. Clinton’s tarmac meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch as the reason for his intervention.

The press is silent now. The new story satisfies nobody’s agenda, and only makes the FBI look foolish. Mr. Trump is not eager to hear his victory portrayed as an FBI-precipitated accident. Democrats cling to their increasingly washed-out theory of Trump-Russia collusion.

And yet, if Mr. Comey’s antic intervention in response to Russian disinformation inadvertently led to Mr. Trump becoming president, this was the most consequential outcome by far.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

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