Letters

To Democrats, who no doubt are not getting much information, or, if mentioned at all, are getting it whitewashed by their favorite source of bias, The New York Times, I refer you to the campaign of misinformation referred to as “Russiagate.”

I can imagine your eyes rolling at its mention, but, to put it in perspective, its damage to the reputation of our democratic history of government dwarfs Watergate. It begins with revelations concerning improper and illegal handling of national security intelligence on private phones and computer servers by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This activity, when revealed, became criminally eligible for prosecution by the Department of Justice.

The then-secretary of state had her phones destroyed and her server wiped clean to prevent access to the evidence of her irresponsible handling of national security secrets. But the Clinton malicious behavior didn’t end there. To divert attention away from her 2015 presidential campaign, Clinton and the Democratic National Committee invested money in the creation of a fraudulent intelligence dossier that espoused that candidate Donald Trump was compromised and subject to Russian control.

This lie was prosecuted as Russiagate. The FBI was fed the fake dossier by the CIA’s John Brennan as the predicate to began its investigation in spite of the current revelations that Brennan was advised by his own people that it was untrustworthy. The FBI then got legal permission to surveil and wiretap innocent members of the Trump campaign.

This abuse of power led to the director of the FBI actually informing the president-elect that he was the subject of an investigation, which Donald Trump obviously knew was based on lies, and which led to the justifiable firing of the duped James Comey — who declined to indict Hillary Clinton for her crimes regarding classified information. In Director Comey’s decision, he delivered a confusing explanation arguing that Clinton was guilty but it didn’t rise to the level he would recommend for criminal prosecution.

In spite of Comey’s effort to protect Clinton’s candidacy, she would lose the election. On the other hand, the lie about a compromised President Trump would live on for two more years as the FBI continued to investigate, a special prosecutor was empowered, and the Democrat-led Congressional Intelligence Committee, led by Adam Schiff (who volunteered that he personally had seen the evidence proving Trump’s involvement with the Russians) held televised hearings.

To add injustice to injustice, The New York Times and reporter Michael Schmidt accepted a Pulitzer Prize for their incompetent reporting of the investigation. This made a mockery of our government, kneecapped a duly elected president and undermined the ability of the new administration to do the will of the people who elected it.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton