National Review and The Wall Steet Journal Both Reject Trump’s ‘Treason’ Charge Against Obama

Both National Review and The Wall Street Journal have new editorials out rejecting President Donald Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s assertion that former President Barack Obama and senior officials within his administration were part of a “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump/

In its editorial, the long-running conservative magazine acknowledged that “Trump was the victim of one of the most insidious dirty tricks in American political history. The Clinton campaign used the bogus ‘Steele dossier’ to manufacture the Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ narrative. Obama administration officials picked up this story and ran with it.”

But that wasn’t to endorse the theory being peddled by Trump and Co.. The editorial continued:

But Trump and Gabbard go further, treating the accurate portion of the Democratic narrative as though it too were a fiction. Russia did indeed try, however ineffectively, to interfere in the election. Trump CIA Director John Ratcliffe has attested to it. Just days before Gabbard’s release of emails, the CIA issued a report finding that the 2016 ICA had been on solid footing when it concluded “with high confidence” that Russia had meddled in the hope of undermining Clinton as president.

Gabbard nevertheless seeks to discredit the conclusion of Russian meddling by pointing to 2016 emails from Obama DNI James Clapper to the effect that the Russians did not conduct cyberattacks. But Clapper was referring to Russian cyber operations against election infrastructure. Russia probed that infrastructure for weaknesses but did not ultimately engage in any operation that undermined vote-counting. The ICA was focused on something else: Russian cyber operations along the lines of hacking the DNC and churning out anti-Clinton campaign messaging.

…

The faux suspicions of Trump-Russia collusion were thus tucked neatly into an overarching probe of Russian cyberespionage against the United States. The Obama administration had not only the authority but the obligation to investigate that. Exploiting it to taint Trump was an appalling abuse of power.

Those who would argue that this abuse of power constitutes a crime should remember that Trump and his team have avidly proclaimed that presidents must have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts within the broad ambit of executive power.

“We have had enough, more than enough, lawfare,”  it concluded.

The Journal made similar points in its own editorial:

While the files uploaded by Ms. Gabbard add to the known facts, they don’t live up to her press release. Much of her summary document is focused on the lack of evidence that U.S. adversaries in 2016 hacked election infrastructure or manipulated vote totals. She also seeks to cast doubt on the notion that Vladimir Putin preferred Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton, though that idea didn’t come from Mr. Obama’s spy chiefs alone.

“Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party,” the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a 2020 report, released by acting Chairman Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State. “Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.”

“By calling to ‘go after people,’ Mr. Trump is demanding more partisan lawfare, identifying targets and urging prosecutors to find crimes to charge them with. It’s the same thing that was done to him by Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Mr. Biden, whose White House leaked that he supported prosecuting Mr. Trump,” argued the Journal. “Now Mr. Trump is back in power, after telling voters he would end the ‘weaponization’ of law enforcement. That lawfare backfired on Democrats, and our guess is that it would do the same on Republicans and Mr. Trump.”

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