The Biden administration is vigorously pursuing key figures from the phony Trump\/Russia collusion scandal that roiled the nation for four years. But instead of trying to punish the liars who perpetrated that fraud, it is targeting the truth-tellers who challenged and exposed the conspiracy to negate the 2016 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Working from the same playbook used to smear dozens of Trump associates, the administration and its allies are planting stories based on blind quotes in friendly media outlets to seek revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On April 16, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius<\/a> reported that the Justice Department is investigating Kash Patel \u2013 who had worked with Rep. Devin Nunes and later the Trump administration to reveal the Russiagate hoax \u2013 for the \u201cpossible improper disclosure of classified information.\u201d Ignatius said he received the tip from \u201ctwo knowledgeable sources\u201d who \u201cwouldn\u2019t provide additional details.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Violating the bedrock principles of American justice and journalism, this article is an exercise in thuggery as the government uses a powerful media outlet to intimidate and besmirch a citizen without evidence. With nothing to respond to, how can Patel defend himself? If Patel is lucky, the federal government has only placed a sharp sword over his head that may not fall. If not, he might be dragged into a lengthy court battle that could drain his finances and also cost him his freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t know if Patel broke the law, but note that the administration has shown no interest in pursuing former FBI leaders such as James Comey<\/a> and Andrew McCabe<\/a>, who improperly disclosed information regarding Russiagate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s former lawyer Rudolph Giuliani is also in the \u201ccross hairs of a federal criminal investigation,\u201d according to an April 29 article in New York Times<\/a> that relied on \u201cpeople with knowledge of the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At issue, those anonymous sources say, is whether Giuliani was serving two masters when he counseled Trump to remove Marie L. Yovanovitch as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2019. \u201cDid Mr. Giuliani go after Ms. Yovanovitch solely on behalf of Mr. Trump, who was his client at the time?\u201d the Times reports. \u201cOr was he also doing so on behalf of the Ukrainian officials, who wanted her removed for their own reasons?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll leave it to the lawyers to determine the wisdom of bringing a case based on the parsing of tangled motives. What is clear is that the FBI is taking a thumb-screws page from the playbook of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who deployed the little-used Foreign Agents Registration Act to pursue the white whale of collusion. As Lee Smith reported for RealClearInvestigations<\/a>, just three people had pleaded guilty to FARA violations in the half-century before Mueller deployed it to pressure and punish Trump allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And note, the FBI\u2019s zeal to crack down on unregistered foreign agents does not extend to the president\u2019s son Hunter Biden, who, Paul Sperry reported for RCI, \u201cfailed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials.\u201d It appears that we have two tiers of justice: one for Biden administration enemies, another for its family and friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The targeting of Giuliani looks especially suspect and politically motivated after three main news outlets that have driven much of the false Russiagate coverage \u2013 the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News \u2013 were forced to correct a recent story<\/a>, once again based on anonymous sources, claiming the FBI had warned Giuliani in 2019 \u201cthat he was a target of a Russian disinformation campaign during his efforts to dig up unflattering information about then-candidate Joe Biden in 2019.\u201d Giuliani was never given such a briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Considering the numerous instances in which the press published bogus information from \u201cinformed sources\u201d during Russiagate, one has to ask why they continue to serve as vehicles for falsehoods. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a dozen times and you\u2019re not fooling me \u2013 we\u2019re acting in concert. As RCI editor Tom Kuntz<\/a> has argued, journalistic integrity demands, at the very least, that these organizations tell their audience who exactly had misled them. Confidentiality agreements should not protect liars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n