In the summer of 2016, a cascade of political maneuvers and covert operations began that would forever alter the landscape of American politics. At the epicenter of this storm was former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey, who launched an investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump, despite the absence of credible evidence.
This probe, labeled a “counterintelligence matter,” set the stage for a two-year saga involving the FBI, U.S. intelligence agencies, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party, all of whom were convinced that Trump’s victory could only have been achieved through a nefarious conspiracy with Russia.
Author Gregg Jarrett, in his book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump,” meticulously dissects this intricate web of events, revealing a story of abuse of power, misinformation and political machinations.
Jarrett argues that the investigation was not just a misguided effort but a deliberate attempt to undermine Trump’s presidency and protect Hillary Clinton from legal repercussions for her email scandal.
Central to Jarrett’s narrative is the role of the Clinton campaign in funding the Steele Dossier, a compilation of unverified and salacious allegations against Trump, which was used to justify the surveillance of a Trump campaign associate. The dossier, compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, became the linchpin of the FBI’s investigation. However, the FBI actively concealed the fact that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had underwritten this document, a revelation that Jarrett argues was crucial to the legitimacy of the probe.
“This dossier was the pretext for a covert operation that turned the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into a political witch hunt,” Jarrett writes. The FBI’s decision to use an undercover informant to infiltrate the Trump campaign, hoping to entrap associates, further underscores the lengths to which the agency was willing to go to find a crime that did not exist.
Hellbound and Down 