The Democrats are popping bottles after the latest report that Donald Trump, Jr. met with a Russian lawyer.
Only there are two problems: (1) nobody disputes that no information was exchanged, and (2) meeting with a foreign actor is not a crime.
While the left conjures up new ways to rehash this story all the way until the 2018 midterms, Hillary Clinton’s ties to foreign agents are being completely ignored.
The Clinton campaign met with Ukrainian government officials for dirt on Donald Trump.
From Lifezette:
While Democrats and Trump critics wax indignant about Donald Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian attorney last June, they often forget to mention that the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign colluded with a variety of foreign operatives to dig up dirt on Donald Trump.
The anti-Trump Left went ballistic on Sunday when Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, admitted he took a meeting with Natalia Poklonskaya, a Russian attorney interested in lifting certain sanctions on Russian citizens.
For media critics seeking for months to prove “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, the news was all they needed to cry scandal.
Perhaps no criticism was more colored by purple rage than that from Richard Painter, a former ethics attorney for President George W. Bush, who is now the vice chairman of the left-wing Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Yet at the same time, Painter demonstrated the off-the-chart knack for hypocrisy in which Clinton supporters and anti-Trump activists often engage.
“We do not get our opposition research from spies. We do not collaborate with Russian spies, unless we want to be accused of treason,” said Painter Sunday on MSNBC.
Painter went even further over the top, saying that had this meeting occurred during the Bush administration, Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner would already be “in custody by now.”
Painter’s comments are ludicrous because gathering intel from foreign actors is commonplace.
Hillary did plenty of it. And again, no information was proffered.
The article continued:
But such critics seem to forget that Clinton allies made extensive use of foreign agents as opposition researchers.
On Jan. 11, Politico reported that Ukrainians were in league with some Americans to sabotage Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
“Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office,” according to the Politico story by Kenneth Vogel and David Stern. “They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”
After the election, Politico reported Ukrainian officials were scrambling to get back into Trump’s good graces after months of trying to boost Clinton.
But it wasn’t the Ukrainians who did the real dirt-digging on Trump. That was a retired British spy who was hired by Fusion GPS, a campaign-research firm hired to examine Trump. Initially, the firm worked for a Republican rival of Trump. But then Clinton used the research.
Fusion GPS and Steele ultimately produced the “dossier,” a dubious document alleging Trump was compromised by the Russian government and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document made its way to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) before the election. Reid accused the FBI of sitting on the document before Election Day.
When the document was finally released in January, and published on BuzzFeed, it touched off a firestorm.
Trump and Sean Spicer, then the transition press secretary, denounced BuzzFeed for running it and slammed CNN for reporting on aspects of the document. Steele, once a British spy in Russia, went into hiding.
Painter did not respond to an email inquiry from LifeZette about the use of foreign agents by Democrats.
But Michael Mukasey, Bush’s attorney general from 2007 to 2009, told CNN on Feb. 27 that it is not a crime to discuss politics or policy with Russian operatives, or any government.
“I haven’t heard anybody identify a crime that has been committed,” said Mukasey.
“Where is the crime? We haven’t even named a crime let alone suggested that charges are going to be brought.”
Left-wing outlets can breathe a sigh of relief because they have a lump of coal to keep the dying Trump-Russia fire flickering.
But like the other collusion stories, this is much ado about nothing.
Otherwise, their journalistic integrity would call for them to excoriate Hillary Clinton for her actions.
Anybody holding their breath?