Is trying to dig up dirt on one’s political opponent a crime? If so, it is a crime that has been committed by thousands of political candidates in American history. Even colluding with the Russians to impact the outcome a presidential election is not unique. Yet, despite continuing unproven accusations against the Trump campaign that they did exactly that, it appears that colluding with the Russians is something that can better describe the actions of prominent Democrats, past and present.
For example, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, did collude in March 2017 with a Russian oligarch to obtain dirt on President Donald Trump. While many Republicans did seize upon this information to demonstrate Democrat hypocrisy, one Republican, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) instead rose to Warner’s defense. Rubio claimed in a tweet that Warner had “disclosed this to the committee four months ago,” and besides that, the collusion “had zero impact on our work.”
The problem is, Warner did not disclose the collusion until seven months later.
Collusion with the Russians has been going on for decades. For example, prominent Democrat Alger Hiss not only colluded with the Russians back in the 1930s and 1940s, he spied for Joseph Stalin. More recently, one of the Left’s biggest “champions” was implicated in directly negotiating with the Russians to undermine the Reagan administration’s tough stance against the Soviet Union. The Daily Signal reported that in 1983, there was actual collusion to influence a presidential race, which occurred when then Senator Edward Kennedy offered to work with the KGB to defeat Reagan in his 1984 reelection bid.
As Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, recalled in a recent column, “In a secret letter written to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, Kennedy said he was eager to ‘counter the militaristic policies’ of Reagan and ‘undermine his prospects for re-election’ in 1984.” Kennedy even told the Soviets that he would do what he could to get the three American news networks to “engineer positive new coverage for Andropov.” (The networks probably were going to that anyway, Teddy.)
When KGB files were briefly revealed to the rest of the world following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kennedy’s attempt to undermine an American presidential election was discovered.
Michael Reagan added, “The one element the presidencies of my father and Donald Trump have in common is that when the left says it will stop at nothing to prevent them from succeeding, they aren’t speaking metaphorically.”
Apparently not. For example, we now know that Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was made to look foolish when he conversed with some Russian pranksters posing as Ukrainian officials who offered to give him some compromising materials on Trump. The comedians said they had some pictures of a “naked Trump,” with a woman, that they could get to Schiff. They even assured Schiff that Russian President Vladimir Putin had viewed the material.
And, of course, we also now know that the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS to put together a “dossier” full of what then-FBI Director James Comey called “salacious” material focused on then-Republican candidate Trump. Fusion GPS then hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to compile the phony dossier. In putting together the document, full of falsehoods, Steele is reported to have worked with officials inside the Russian government. After compiling the dossier, Steele then leaked the document to the American media, hoping to affect the outcome of the 2016 election. Steele was also on the payroll of the FBI. The FBI then used those fabrications to trick judges on the FISA court to issue warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials.
In short, while accusing the Trump campaign of colluding with “the Russians” to affect the outcome of the presidential election, it was the Clinton campaign that really was “colluding” with the Russians.
While one may not be surprised that the Democrat leadership would be so devoid of scruples, it is now known that even U.S. government agencies, supposedly nonpartisan, have also colluded with the Russians. The New York Times has reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) even tried to purchase from Russian sources allegedly compromising material on President Trump! One would think the Central Intelligence Agency would be somewhat intelligent, but they were scammed out of $100,000 of taxpayer money. They were told they were going to obtain images of Trump urinating on prostitutes in Moscow, but all they received were grainy pictures of some unidentified man talking to some women.
In the end, it appears that instead of investigating Trump and his associates, perhaps someone other than Robert Mueller (a good friend of fired and disgraced FBI Director Comey) should be named to investigate the Clinton campaign, the DNC, Schiff, Warner, the CIA, and the FBI. It is too late to investigate Teddy Kennedy for his collusion with the Russians, but with the 50th anniversary of Chappaquiddick coming up next year, perhaps the time has come to bury his reputation, too, once and for all.
