Now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report has been published, we have a definite answer to the question of whether President Donald Trump colluded with Russia.
There are many questions that remain, however, about the origins of the investigation into Trump.
For example, why did the FBI investigate a presidential candidate, using false information paid for by the opposing political campaign?
And why was the British government spying on members of the Trump campaign and passing this information on—as unofficial intelligence—to the CIA director at the time, John Brennan, who then used it to push then-FBI Director James Comey to open the investigation of Trump?
But perhaps the most significant, yet largely unexplored, question is this: What was President Barack Obama’s involvement in the investigations?
We know that several senior members of Obama’s Cabinet either played an active role in the investigations, spied on the Trump campaign, or received the false information that he colluded with Russia.
Then, there was an Oval Office meeting between Obama, Rice, Comey, and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates on Jan. 5, 2017.
In the email, Rice wrote: “The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”
This raises the question of why Obama felt it was necessary to say those things, and why Rice felt it was necessary to recollect these statements to herself in an email on the day she was leaving the White House.
Rice’s email also states that Obama told the officials to be “mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia” with the incoming Trump administration. Does this mean that potentially vital national security information was withheld from the Trump transition team over the false Russia-collusion allegations?
These are serious questions that deserve to be investigated. For over two years, the American public has been sold a fake narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in his favor.
Getting to the bottom of how these investigations were started, what the exact actions were by officials entrusted with power—including the former president—and whether any of them were politically motivated is key to restoring public trust in our institutions.
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