There had been talk for some time that the events leading up to the Comey letter involved unethical, and potentially criminal, behavior on the part of the FBI. It seemed hard to believe at first. That is, until HuffPo columnist, professor, and practicing attorney Seth Abramson connected the dots from earlier coverage and concluded that they pointed to rogue agents engaging in a deliberate effort to throw the election to Donald Trump.
Incredibly, no mainstream media outlet has seen fit to pick up Abramson’s explosive story. The only journalist who has really taken a dive into this is yours truly. On Thursday, I conducted what is, to date, the only interview of any sort with Abramson. Read the results at Liberal America.
Abramson was initially intrigued when it emerged that the agents who found the emails on Huma Abedin’s computer didn’t tell FBI director James Comey about them for 24 days, even though they couldn’t even read them without a warrant. What really set off alarm bells for him, though, was the discovery that two people with close ties to Trump knew about the emails before Comey did—Rudy Giuliani and Jim Kallstrom, both of whom are on record as having had contacts with active agents.
Abramson minced no words to me about what this meant.
“Any leaks to political operatives before the Director had been briefed would be not just illegal (any leak in this instance would be) but evidence of a conspiracy.”
It’s hard not to agree. These aren’t just political operatives, but veteran law enforcement officials who know damn well what they’re doing. You have a former Associate Attorney General and U. S. Attorney and a former FBI chief in New York City communicating with active agents, and passing on information about a politically explosive investigation—information that the director doesn’t even know about.
This is way, way beyond unprofessional behavior. This is a crime. And the evidence that this was a conspiracy became even greater when we learned that Abedin hadn’t even gotten a copy of the warrant—a serious breach of procedure. By itself, it’s grossly unprofessional conduct. But taken with everything else, it only adds to the rank odor surrounding this situation.
And it’s a crime that, in Abramson’s words, that led to “a discrete event (that) can be tracked in/by domestic polling.” We already know with mathematical certainty that after the Comey letter, enough late-deciding voters broke for Trump to cost Hillary the election. When Nate Silver and Sam Wang agree on something, that’s very telling.
So we have clear evidence that the events leading up to the Comey letter were almost certainly a criminal act—and yet, the mainstream media hasn’t been willing to, in Abramson’s words, “onnect the dots they themselves have drawn with such care.” If they had done so sooner, it’s more likely we wouldn’t be hurtling toward the abyss.
Abramson has, however, connected those dots—and for that, he is an American hero. Read more reasons why at Liberal America.