If you can believe the "two people familiar with the matter" =cough= DOJ political hacks? =cough= who are being cited, the lawless regime is ramping up its efforts to smear the patriots who first initiated the probe into Putin puppet Donald "Tovarich" Trump's 2016 election collusion with Russia. What ... curious timing:
Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.
Do you notice something missing from the Times' sources' account? Like maybe the grounds for making it a criminal inquiry? They're not there because there are none. The leak of this dubious (at best) information is coming at a time when the impeachment inquiry is taking up all the media oxygen, polls are moving quickly in the direction of impeach and remove, and the involvement of corrupt theocrat AG William "Low" Barr up to his double chin in the Ukraine shakedown scandal is becoming more public.The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry, and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.
Is is just us, or do you smell a distraction?
Greg Sargent does:
I think it's plausible that William Barr might release his "review" of the origins of the Russia investigation as impeachment hits its climax, for maximum confusion/fog machine effect:https://t.co/2rjCJ4R9Lo pic.twitter.com/HwZaseTePi— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) October 23, 2019
The distraction may also be to divert the spotlight away from Barr's own skeevy role in the Ukraine shakedown, as Sargent points out here:
The testimony from Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, also contains a key revelation about Attorney General William P. Barr — one that provides an occasion to revisit his role in this scandal, and hints at how Barr will likely continue perverting the U.S. government machinery to help Trump get away with it.
Taylor’s key mention of Barr comes in a very damning passage. Taylor recounted that he’d learned that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had informed Ukraine that the frozen military aid would be conditioned on launching the “investigations” Trump wanted. [snip]
Looks like Barr is forging (yes) ahead on his "investigate the investigators" sham, regardless of Ukrainian/U.K./Italian/etc., cooperation. He's nothing if not a corrupt tool. His eagerness to undermine his own Justice Department's and intelligence community's findings are a profound attack on our institutions and the rule of law. But, as with all these vicious Trump lickspittles, the only thing that matters is power, and maintaining it, regardless of the damage done to our country. (Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler released a joint statement on the matter.)Taylor then adds:We also discussed the possibility that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, rather than President Zelenskyy, would make a statement about investigations, potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr’s probe into the investigation of interference in the 2016 elections.
We await the inevitable rush by the usual media suspects to "but her emails!" the shit out of this.
BONUS:
Senate Intel is wrapping up a three-year bipartisan investigation, and we've found nothing remotely justifying this.— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) October 25, 2019
Mr. Barr's "investigation" has already jeopardized key international intelligence partnerships.
He needs to come before Congress and explain himself. https://t.co/hl9qM86QrM
