Kimberley Strassel: Mr. Trump, end DOJ’s campaign of secrecy -- Declassify everything possible
By Kimberley A. Strassel | The Wall Street Journal
The Real Constitutional Crisis
The FBI and Justice Department continue evading congressional oversight. Government 'officials' acknowledged in the New York Times that the FBI had used at least one informant to spy on both Trump aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel says the press has ignored this story because they still want the Russian collusion narrative to be true.
We are told that Mr. Trump cannot be allowed to have any say over the Justice Department’s actions, since this might make him privy to sensitive details about an investigation into himself. We are also told that Congress—a separate branch of government, a primary duty of which is oversight—cannot be allowed to access Justice Department material. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes can’t be trusted to view classified information—something every intelligence chairman has done—since he might blow a source or method, or tip off the president.
That’s a political judgment, but it holds no authority.
The Constitution set up Congress to act as a check on the executive branch—and it’s got more than enough cause to do some checking here.
Yet the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have spent a year disrespecting Congress—flouting subpoenas, ignoring requests, hiding witnesses, blacking out information, and leaking accusations.
The DOJ and FBI have ignored FOIA and subpoenas for documents for over a year.
On every occasion that Justice or the FBI has claimed material must be withheld for the sake of national security or continuing investigations, it has later come out that the only thing at stake were those institutions’ reputations. Think the Comey memos, which showed the former director had little basis for claiming obstruction. Or Sen. Chuck Grassley’s criminal referral of dossier author Christopher Steele, the FBI’s so-called reliable source, whom we now know it had to fire for talking to the press and possibly lying.
Remember when Devin Nunes decided to publicly release his notes concerning the Steele dossier and the FISA application that relied on its to get wiretap approval against Carter Page? Rosenstein and FBI director Christopher Wray warned darkly that the release of the documents would endanger national security.
The documents did no such thing. They revealed no sources or methods, but did reveal that the FBI had done the very thing it had denied doing – relied almost exclusively on a partisan-funded smear to justify listening in on someone connected to the Trump campaign.
Every single time the FBI and the DOJ has resisted the release of a document, only to see the document released anyway, the only consequence of the release was to show that the DOJ and the FBI had acted irresponsibly in their conduct of these investigations.
Rod Rosenstein is a power unto himself, and no one can touch him. He can protect the FBI all he wants, and the Beltway class treats him as sacrosanct. Even supposed conservatives like David French treat him as some sort of hero because he’s a thorn in Trump’s side.
The congressional threat to impeach him is the only thing left to hold Rosenstein accountable even as he blatantly thumbs his nose at the law.
After reading the lovebird's text messages, they are demanding the release of the Page and Strozk emails. What is wrong with that? We already know the lovebird's hatred for Trump from the texts but what else might those emails reveal?? What are they trying to hide?
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