We'll give you one guess.

Why are congressional Democrats trying to protect the phony Trump dossier authors from having to answer questions?

The mainstream media wants you to think the Russia story is this: The Trump Administration colluded with Russia to influence the election in favor of Trump over Hillary. Now, you might have noticed that over the course of the past few weeks the media have been awfully silent about Russia Russia Russia. Why would this be? Is there nothing going on? Au contraire. There’s a lot going on. But none of it fits the media’s anti-Trump narrative, so there’s been almost no coverage of it.

Rob told you last week about the Russians routing millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation even as Hillary was handing control of U.S. uranium over to Vladimir Putin. Then the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel exposed how congressional Democrats, especially Adam Schiff, are protecting the oppo research firm Fusion GPS from answering questions under oath about the infamous fake Trump dossier. The lengths to which Democrats are going to keep Fusion GPS from having to answer questions is quite something: But Fusion’s secret weapon in its latest operation is the Democratic Party, whose most powerful members have made protecting Fusion’s secrets their highest priority. Senate Democrats invoked a parliamentary maneuver in July to block temporarily Mr. Browder’s public testimony. Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, has been engineering flaps to undercut and obstruct Mr. Nunes’s investigation. Democrats on the House Ethics Committee have deep-sixed what was meant to be a brief inquiry to clear Mr. Nunes so as to keep him sidelined. Then there is the intel committee’s meeting this week. Despite the spin, forcing Fusion to appear was Republicans’ only recourse after months of stonewalling. Fusion’s letter ludicrously claimed that Mr. Nunes’s subpoenas were invalid, which essentially forced the committee to show otherwise. It was a question of authority. Florida Rep. Tom Rooney put the Fusion attendees through a series of questions not out of spite but to clarify finally just what topics the firm is refusing to talk about. The Fifth Amendment doesn’t provide protection against answering all questions. It only protects against providing self-incriminating evidence. It is therefore revealing that Fusion took the Fifth on every topic—from its relationship with British spook Christopher Steele, to the history of its work, to its role in the dossier.

The untold story is the Democrats’ unprecedented behavior. Mr. Rooney had barely started when committee staffers for Mr. Schiff interrupted, accused him of badgering witnesses, and suggested he was acting unethically. Jaws dropped. Staff do not interrupt congressmen. They do not accuse them of misbehavior. And they certainly do not act as defense attorneys for witnesses. No Democratic lawmakers had bothered to come to the hearing to police this circus, and Mr. Rooney told me that he “won’t be doing any more interviews without a member from the minority present.” Private-sector lawyers also tend not to accuse congressmen of unethical behavior, as Mr. Levy did in his letter to Mr. Nunes. But Fusion’s legal eagle must feel safe. He’s former general counsel to the Senate’s minority leader, Chuck Schumer. He has also, I’m told by people familiar with the committee’s activities, more than once possessed information that he would have had no earthly means of knowing, since it was secret committee business. Consider that: Democratic members of Congress or their staff providing sensitive details of an investigation to a company to which the committee has given subpoenas. What are Democrats afraid of? This, to start with: If the Fusion GPS dossier was obtained and taken seriously by the FBI, and if it was used as the rationale for launching the Russia probe in the first place, then the legitimacy of the whole probe is called into question. What about the petition to the FISA court to approve wiretapping of Paul Manafort? Was the Fusion GPS dossier part of the case presented to support that request? Because if it was, then it looks more and more like the Obama Administration knowingly used disinformation as a rationale to wiretap a political opponent during a presidential election. That’s Watergate, with Fusion GPS playing the part of the plumbers.

But even more so, Fusion GPS and the Democratic Party have done a lot of business together in recent years. Manufacturing smear jobs against the opponents of Democrats is what Fusion GPS does, and this case is showing that they don’t put much of a premium on truth when they do their work. Exactly how many Democrats are in office today because they hired Fusion GPS to manufacture phony smears against their opponents? How many plan to run for re-election using the exact same tact? What will the public think of the party that is this much in bed with such a disreputable organization? You might say the public doesn’t care about stuff like this, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the more accurate statement is that the public doesn’t know about stuff like this, mainly because the media ignore it as they’re doing right now. Democrats are going to extraordinary lengths to prevent their friends from having to tell the truth under oath. Strassel, as usual, is on top of this because she’s the best at uncovering the rot that happens on Capitol Hill. But what she’s discovering is right there in the open for everyone to see. Why don’t they care? Is the Russia story only news until it stops hurting Trump and starts hurting the Democrats? It appears we have our answer.



Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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