Three Laws of FISAgate Evidence

In following the FISAgate scandal, I've sometimes wondered, when great rhetorical battles have raged over whether certain documents should be released to the public, why doesn't the DOJ just destroy all the incriminating evidence? Destruction of evidence is a lighter crime than the crime being concealed - seditious conspiracy - and it's not like anyone of importance is ever punished for it. So why not?

That mindset betrays an unhealthy lack of cynicism. I've found that, as grizzled as I am about things, I tend to miss more from a lack of cynicism rather than an excess. Regulars here may wonder if I missed it when I predicted that the fake bombs sent to Democrat politicians was the work of another liberal. (I haven't gotten around to addressing that yet.) I remain unconvinced of the storyline, given not just the cartoonish pro-Trump walking billboard that was the (recently converted) culprit, but more with how quickly the media dropped that gold mine of a story, before all political benefit had been wrong out. Still, that sticks out as an example where I may have been too cynical and got it wrong. Contrary to that, I could name several instances where I erred from a lack of cynicism and there is no uncertainty.

The correct mindset is not to ask why they aren't destroying evidence, but to assume they are. Consider the trends. Evidence disappears all the time. Hillary emails and phones. IRS hard drives. Wasserman-Schultz and Anthony Weiner laptops. No one is ever punished. And when evidence does make it out, it is heavily skewed by the media. The mainstream audience doesn't realize that Capitol Hill Democrats were heavily infiltrated by Chinese and Pakistani spies on their own paid staff, but everyone knows Trump paid off a hooker. (Which is only because the FBI raided his lawyer's office, because Russia.)

When it comes to FISAgate, there are three laws of evidence.

1. All evidence known to be withheld or destroyed is damaging to the deep state.
2. All evidence that harms Trump is leaked.
3. All evidence further substantiates our hypothesis or, at least, doesn't substantiate the mainstream narrative.

The first law is provably true, because it could be easily disproven by counterexample of it was false. I am aware of no example of evidence destroyed or withheld that would have been beneficial to the deep state. Meanwhile, virtually all the evidence damaging to the deep state makes it out under great outrage after protracted battles of subpoenas and lawsuits. Consider the tremendous effort it took to have the original FISA warrant published, under heavy redaction. Consider also that the New York Times held an unredacted copy the whole time thanks to a staff prostitute, which they presumably still hold. (And yet, liberals will argue that the corporate media is the "free press" and not a core component of the deep state, and disregarding old-guard progressive heroes like Noam Chomsky to do so.) The New York Times could have spoken up when Democrats were accusing Devin Nunez of misrepresenting the contents of the warrant application, but they remained silent.

The second law can't be proved, as it would amount to proving a negative, but a solid case can be made that the deep state is so eager to air Trump's dirty laundry that it is inconceivable they would withhold anything. They have twice - twice! - released damning evidence against Trump that supposedly solidified their case against Trump and which then turned out to be "evidence" against a completely unrelated Michael Cohen. Or consider that the FBI raided the Cohen office and then almost immediately dirt on Trump - having nothing to do with Russia - started leaking. This goes back to the lack of cynicism thing, because even I - having been following their dastardly deeds and predicting this kind of behavior for some time - did not expect them to be so brazen. You'd think they'd at least give it a few weeks, perhaps take effort to launder the intel. No, they're so eager that they don't even care much about optics or building layers of plausible deniability. So the second law must be true.

And the third law must be true because it could easily be proven by counterexample. There is still no evidence that substantiates the claim of treason against Trump, or that the DOJ had any such evidence when it spied-on & investigated him. Evidence that comes out always confirms our convictions of a deep-state coup against the elected president.

So recent revelations of missing evidence, as always, fit the 3 laws. On Friday, the special counsel failed to respond to a federal judge's subpoena for the original Flynn 302s, instead turning over 302s dated 6 moths later of an interview done on Peter Strzok, who lead the interview on Flynn. (Which, as the 302 that were released indicate, Flynn had been led to believe that he was participating in an informal conversation, rather than a formal interview. Counter that to Strzok's interview of Hillary Clinton, who had numerous lawyers present including at least one who would have been a co-conspirator!) It has been alleged by many on our side for over a year and a half now that the Flynn 302s were fraudulent. Mueller probably can't go so far as to deliberately disobey a subpoena, at risk of giving Trump political cover to end his witch hunt, which means that the 302s must no longer exist. They've been "lost".

It is also being reported that the Mueller Team destroyed over 19,000 texts between Strzok and Lisa Page, after deciding there was nothing of significance. Of course, if the texts were truly innocuous they would have been released. In fact, Mueller has a vested interest in releasing large batches of innocent texts between Strzok and Page because the ones released were so damaging to the credibility of his venture.

Let me make a couple more cynical predictions. No one will be punished for this missing evidence, or for any missing, destroyed, or otherwise mishandled evidence in this whole debacle (unless maybe someone happened to bungle some evidence against Trump.) I am confident of that, and even more certain that no one of significance will face significant punishment.