Opposition Research (Oppo): All Political Sides Do It to Harm or Smear Opponents

Chapter in Every Political Playbook 

Meanwhile in the Kremlin (Putin's La-La land)

Steele Dossier excellent rundown here from the National Review.

My Note: Keep in mind what we are talking about is opposition research in politics – also referred to as Oppo – and that is very common from all sides. See this related fine article on that subject and Hillary Clinton’s explanation of Oppo on the Daily Show.

Key Question Asked: What were (may still be) the “allegations of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia” that the FBI decided to “aggressively investigate?”

For example, is there positive proof about any of the allegations of collusion in the Steele dossier?

As explained in this article, that question is critical for three reasons:

(1) The Steele dossier was a Clinton campaign product. If it was used by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to obtain a FISA warrant that would mean law-enforcement agencies controlled by a Democratic president fed the FISA court political campaign material produced by the Democratic candidate whom the president had endorsed to succeed him.

Partisan claims of egregious scheming with an adversarial foreign power would have been presented to the court with the FBI’s imprimatur, as if they were drawn from refined U.S. intelligence reporting. Thus, the objective would have been to spy on the opposition Republican campaign of Trump.

(2) Former FBI director James Comey testified that the dossier was “salacious and unverified.” While still director, Comey described the dossier the same way when he briefed then President-elect Trump about it in January 2017.

Key Note: If the dossier was still unverified as late as mid-2017, its allegations could not possibly have been verified months earlier, in the late summer or early autumn of 2016, when it appears that the FBI and DOJ used them in an application to the FISA court.

(3) The dossier appears to contain misinformation. Knowing Steele was a spy-for-hire trusted by Americans, his Russian-regime sources had reason to believe that misinformation could be passed into the stream of U.S. intelligence and that it would be acted on and then leaked, as if it were true and result: Be to America’s detriment and it would sow discord in our entire political system.

If the FBI and DOJ relied on the dossier, it likely means they were played by the Putin regime. How Could Something Like This Happen?

Key Note: There is no public confirmation that the dossier was used by the FBI or DOJ to obtain the Trump FISA warrant. Publicly, FBI and DOJ officials have thwarted the Congress with twaddle about protecting both intelligence sources and an internal inspector-general probe.

Continue reading at the National Review link above.

And thanks for stopping by, and of course: Happy New Year – truly