New Information on Obama-Russiagate Setup Surfaces

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’d like to talk about the ongoing melodrama of what former President Barack Obama knew or did not know in his involvement with Russian collusion, the hoax that plagued the Donald Trump 2016 campaign, tried to undermine his transition in 2016 and 2017, and ate up the first 22 months of his presidency in 2017 and 2018, and was found to be completely bogus.

There are three blind mice involved in this tale: John Brennan, the former CIA director; James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence; and James Comey, the former FBI director. And they all have new manifestations of their untruthfulness.

Let’s start with John Brennan. He’s very angry right now because the trove that was released by National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard of new documents and investigations may or may not have criminal referrals come out of them, and Attorney General Pam Bondi may file new charges.

The problem that Brennan has is that he went to a meeting and he presented a false picture of CIA assessments.

The so-called CIA heads of various divisions found no Russian collusion. They said to John Brennan, “There’s nothing there that we can see that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.” He rejected that, cherry-picked four or five other analysts, and then presented a false picture to Barack Obama. Or did he? Or did Barack Obama request that he do that? It’ll be “he said, he said,” but it’s more likely that Barack Obama asked John Brennan to come up with the correct CIA assessments.

Sort of like Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the Soviet secret police during the Cold War and at the end of World War II. He said, “I have the criminal. You find me the crime.” So: “I have the criminal, Donald Trump. All I need is Russian collusion.” And that was the methodology that they proceeded by.

The problem with Brennan, though, is, in the process of preparing this false assessment, he said again and again, both publicly but also under testimony, he didn’t know anything about the Steele dossier. Didn’t know anything about it. He didn’t read it. It didn’t compute into CIA assessment. That was a lie.

We know now from other testimonies, especially from the trove, that he did draw on the fake Steele dossier. He referenced it to other people.

And the problem with John Brennan is this isn’t the first time he’s misled us. He lied about the Senate staffer computers. That was under oath. He lied, remember, about Predator drones, when he said there was no collateral damage. And remember he lied also as one of the 51 intelligence authorities who tried to float that bogus idea that Hunter Biden’s laptop was cooked up in Russia.

Then we come to James Clapper. He was sitting at this meeting in December of 2016, where he gave a false assessment and he misrepresented what the 18 intelligence agencies under his direction had found.

They had not found Russian collusion, and yet he participated in this. He went so far as later to thanking and giving credit to Barack Obama for demanding that they find Russian collusion. He said, “If he hadn’t have ordered us to do this, we wouldn’t have found it.” I.e., the subtext is, “There was no evidence in our intelligence agency for it, so we concocted it on the directive of Barack Obama.”

But remember, he lied too. He swore under oath to the U.S. Congress that the National Security Agency had never spied on Americans. That was an abject lie. And he was part of the 51 intelligent authorities who also lied to the American people in 2020 on the eve of the second debate when Joe Biden denied that Hunter lied, Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic. He quoted the 51 authorities. The FBI, remember, at that time, had it in its possession and had already authenticated it as genuine.

Then we come to James Comey. He also says that he had really nothing to do with the Steele dossier. The fact is, he was completely acquainted with it. He offered, his FBI offered a million dollars. They were so desperate to validate it. They said to Christopher Steele, “Just give us some proof. We can use this. We’ll give you a million dollars.” He couldn’t even come up with the substantive arguments to corroborate his own dossier, so he didn’t get the million dollars.

More importantly, James Comey has a problem. He leaked, on an FBI device, a conversation he had memorialized to The New York Times via a third party.

James Comey, remember, went before the House Oversight Committee, as I said earlier, and lied 245 times. If you say, “I don’t remember, I don’t recall, I don’t know,”—can you imagine an FBI director with all that knowledge at his fingertips saying, “I don’t remember, I don’t know,” about the most important investigation in recent history?

Let’s sum up these three blind mice. There’s new evidence that Barack Obama asked intelligence, investigatory heads—like John Brennan, like James Clapper and James Comey—to “find me evidence that you haven’t found yet so that we can continue the Russian collusion hoax after it was ineffective in the campaign, Hillary Clinton lost the election. Now we want to sabotage.” This is the subtext of the transition and his presidency. “You go back—we only have a few weeks left, I’m a lame-duck president—and bring me the right assessments.”

And that’s exactly what they did, and that’s why they’re terrified that new information is coming forth that suggests to the American people what they did and how they were culpable.

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