EXCELLENT OBSERVATION!! and you beat me too it:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/crossfire-hurricane-new-york-times-report-buries-lede/
the Trump FBI case is a counterintelligence investigation. Unlike criminal cases, counterintelligence matters are classified. If agents had made public disclosures about them, they would have been committing crimes and violating solemn agreements with foreign intelligence services — agreements without which those services would not share information that U.S. national-security officials need in order to protect our country.
In the scheme of things, though, the problem is not that the FBI honored its confidentiality obligations in the Trump case while violating them in the Clinton case.
The scandal is that the FBI, lacking the incriminating evidence needed to justify opening a criminal investigation of the Trump campaign, decided to open a counterintelligence investigation. With the blessing of the Obama White House, they took the powers that enable our government to spy on foreign adversaries and used them to spy on Americans — Americans who just happened to be their political adversaries.
The Times averts its eyes from this point — although if a Republican administration tried this sort of thing on a Democratic candidate, it would be the only point.
Like the Justice Department and the FBI, the paper is banking on Russia to muddy the waters.
Obviously, Russia was trying to meddle in the election, mainly through cyber-espionage — hacking.
There would, then, have been nothing inappropriate about the FBI’s opening up a counterintelligence investigation against Russia. Indeed, it would have been irresponsible not to do so. That’s what counterintelligence powers are for.
But opening up a counterintelligence investigation against Russia is not the same thing as opening up a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign.
The
media-Democrat complex has tried from the start to conflate these two things. That explains the desperation to convince the public that Putin wanted Trump to win. It explains the stress on contacts, no matter how slight, between Trump campaign figures and Russians. They are trying to fill a gaping void they hope you don’t notice: Even if Putin did want Trump to win, and even if Trump-campaign advisers did have contacts with Kremlin-tied figures,
there is no evidence of participation by the Trump campaign in Russia’s espionage.
At the height of the 2016 presidential race,
the FBI collaborated with the CIA to probe an American political campaign.
That is the proof that would have been needed to justify investigating Americans.
Under federal law,
to establish that an American is acting as an agent of a foreign power, the government must show that the American is purposefully engaging in clandestine activities on behalf of a foreign power, and that it is probable that these activities violate federal criminal law. (See FISA, Title 50, U.S. Code, Section 1801(b)(2), further explained in the last six paragraphs of my Dec. 17 column.)
But of course, if the FBI had had that kind of evidence, they would not have had to open a counterintelligence investigation. They would not have had to use the Clinton campaign’s opposition research — the Steele dossier — to get FISA-court warrants.
They would instead have opened a criminal investigation, just as they did on Clinton when there was evidence that she committed felonies.
To the contrary, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation
in the absence of any (a) incriminating evidence, or (b) evidence implicating the Trump campaign in Russian espionage. At the height of the 2016 presidential race, the FBI collaborated with the CIA to probe an American political campaign. They used foreign-intelligence surveillance and informants.
That’s your crossfire hurricane.
