James Clapper

Cockburn has awakened from his Russiagate slumber with the news that the Trump administration is seeking to file charges against former FBI director James Comey in federal court within the next few days. The statute of limitations on Comey’s September 30, 2020 testimony about ties between Russia and Trump’s second campaign for president is about to expire, meaning we’re set to re-litigate the Mueller Report. While we’re at it, why not take a look at Solyndra, yellowcake uranium, Whitewater, Iran-Contra, Watergate and Credit Mobilier?   Russiagate is a bit more current, though, and Trump is flinging his prosecutors all over the room.

It is said that the adage “he who hesitates is lost” is an adaptation of a line from Joseph Addison’s 1712 play Cato. I do not believe that Donald Trump is a student of the co-founder of The Spectator, but he has clearly absorbed that nugget of practical wisdom. Within hours of taking office on Monday, Trump issued some 200 executive orders and proclamations affecting the government’s conduct on everything from immigration to DEI, from energy policy to the 1,500 people incarcerated in Washington jails because they joined in the protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.   It is one thing to issue orders and proclamations. It is another thing to see them carried out successfully.

Well, well, well. That is to say, I told you so. Finally, at last, it was about time, scary-looking special counsel John Durham has delivered his report on the stinking, corrupt, lying, no-good partisan machine that is the FBI and the Department of Justice. Just as I and the rest of the non-Hillary commentariat told you, what he showed was that the Deep State’s investigation into possible collusion (remember that once-ubiquitous word?) between Donald Trump and the Russkies was a partisan witch hunt fabricated by Team Hillary.  The report is full of the antiseptic bureaucratese that specialists recommend to their insomniac patients. The FBI “failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law,” yada, yada, yada.

Former director of national intelligence James Clapper made a hamfisted attempt this week to tidy up statements he made in 2020. Allow Cockburn to guide you on a trip down memory lane: In October 2020, Clapper was one of more than fifty ex-intelligence officials who signed a "Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails" (see here). The statement said the emails published by the New York Post bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that the signatories of the letter were “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.” Clapper appeared on CNN, too, where he said, “To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work.” https://twitter.com/cnn/status/1317307227963678721?

Last week, the New York Times decided that now might be a good time, amid the cacophony of war abroad and soaring inflation at home, to come clean about the Hunter Biden laptop story. On March 16, the Times published a report on the junior Biden’s messy tax affairs in which, a full twenty-four paragraphs in, they acknowledged the authenticity of the emails and files contained on the now-infamous laptop.

Take Cockburn's hand and let him whisk you back to the halcyon days of fall 2020. The presidential campaign was in full swing and the New York Post had just gotten its hands on a scoop: Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, had left his laptop at a repair shop in Delaware. On its hard drive was a treasure trove of damning emails and pictures, including one that appeared to show Hunter passed out in bed with a crack pipe in his mouth. The Post published its story, the Biden campaign yelped, and the establishment duly lost its mind. The Post's Twitter account was suspended. And perhaps most damningly, fifty-one intelligence "experts" signed a letter warning that the laptop story could be Russian disinformation.