

Comeytose State
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on America
June 10, 2017\
[Snip] As everyone more sentient than an earthworm should know by now, "the Russia investigation" is Deep State dinner-theatre. I wrote a while back that, in today's Hollywood, what Hitchcock used to call "the MacGuffin" - the pretext that sets the caper afoot, the secret papers, the microfilm - has degenerated into a MacNuffin: there's no longer even a pretense that these stories are about anything. The "Russia investigation" is the ne plus ultra of MacNuffins, so smoothly transferred from Los Angeles to Washington that one vaguely suspects some studio vice-prez who bundled for Hillary came up with the idea as a reality-show pilot that accidentally bust out of the laboratory.
How do we know there's no there there? Well, consider Marco Rubio's question to Comey:
Rubio marveled at how many leaks have occurred during the Trump-Russia investigation, saying "we've learned more from the newspapers sometimes than we do from our open hearings."
"Do you ever wonder why, of all the things in this investigation, the only thing that's never been leaked is the fact that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans and the leadership of Congress knew that and have known that for weeks?" he asked.
It seems Comey doesn't ever "wonder" about it, being too busy - like everybody else - leaking stuff himself. The leaks, as have often been pointed out, are the only actual crimes here.
But Rubio's right: Trump is not "under investigation". That's a significant fact, and the only unleaked fact. Everything else leaks non-stop: Someone who met with someone who once worked for Trump in some hotel near Trump Tower two months before he launched his campaign once had business dealings with someone who knows a Kazakh oligarch who used to be close to someone close to Putin...



[SNIP]
As is now plain, it's a "Russia investigation" because Russia is the easiest MacNuffin. Anything else is too complicated: If Trump were alleged to be an agent of the ayatollahs or Kim Jong-Un, that would place it too close to the real world of actual geopolitical concerns. But "Russia" is just the generic Cold War bad guy from byzantine double-agent plots like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, New York Real Estate Developer.
The real scandal here is that the vast all-seeing permanent bureaucracy is investigating its political opponents - for no good reason, only for a general fishing expedition. The "Russia investigation" is a misnomer for what it really is: a domestic investigation of US citizens without any probable cause. They've come up empty, or you'd know it by now.
5) So what exactly has "the Russia investigation" been investigating for over a year now? Aside from arseholing around at taxpayer expense leaking the identities of US citizens they've improperly surveilled, what the hell do they do all day, every day, for months on end?
If that's not a crime, it ought to be. But we do know that, whether or not the surveillance is improper, the leaks therefrom are certainly a crime. Yet they're now such an ingrained habit at the FBI that the lads occasionally forget themselves and leak stuff that's nothing to do with "the Russia investigation" - like the Manchester bombing info shared by the Brits that Theresa May got so mad about. Being flattered by ideologically simpatico journalists as an "unnamed source" can become addictive. Nevertheless, it's damaging US credibility with allied intelligence services, and that will have consequences.
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