Matthew Whitaker - Above the Law: The Inside Story of How the Justice Department Tried to Subvert President Trump

Copyright 2020 by Matthew Whitaker

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ISBN 978-1-68451-049-8

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LCCN: 2020931895

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To Calvin, Alison, and Lincoln, may your success be on your terms

M att Whitakers story looks very familiar to me, though I saw it from a different perspective.

In this book, Whitaker relates how he was suddenly thrust into the top position at the Department of Justice during the hysteria of the Russia collusion hoax. From there he had an insiders view of the bizarre scheming of the Mueller team, Rod Rosenstein, and elements of the Intelligence Community (IC) who had essentially declared war on the government they were supposed to be serving.

I witnessed all this from outside the executive branch, as Chairman and then Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee. Republicans on the Committee saw very soon after President Trumps election that IC officials were gearing up for some kind of attack on the incoming Trump administration. The compilation of the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russias election meddling, ordered by President Obama in early December 2016, was the first tip-off. Intelligence agency leaders were reluctant to brief the Committee on their work on the report. Then in mid-December, they suddenly revised their work and assessed that Putin was trying to help Trump win the election. This was a major change to what was then a highly classified assessment, but they refused to inform my committee about it. Instead, they leaked the new assessment to the media in order to help spread to the public the narrative that Trump was a tool of Putin.

What followed was the most egregious attempt to oust a President in American history. As Whitaker explains, when he took charge of the Department of Justice more than two years later, the Russia collusion hoax was still being perpetuated in full force. In Congress I witnessed all the main elements Whitaker describes:

• Unending leaks of classified information
• The mainstream medias abandoning all pretense of objectivity, transforming into an arm of the Resistance, and becoming a leading perpetuator of the collusion hoax
• Demands from Democrats and the entire media that any official who appeared to be interfering with the hoax recuse or resign
• The outlandish conduct of the FBIs Russia investigation, including its murky origins, the FBIs reliance on the bogus Steele dossier, the inexplicable role played by Bruce Ohr, the chief investigators and lawyers showing a fanatical hatred of Trump, the appointment of the Special Counsel as a calculated result of a leak by Jim Comey, and conflicts of interest among the Mueller team
• The zealous prosecution of Trump associates for process crimes while Democrats, who actually were colluding with Russians to produce and spread the Steele dossier, faced no such repercussions

I can only imagine the challenges facing Whitaker as the top official at the DOJ as he tried to lead that department while being surrounded by Resistance operatives trying to sabotage both his leadership and the Presidents. I had my share of interactions with these types before Whitaker took over. As Committee Republicans were investigating the conduct of the Russia investigation, and in particular the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant used to spy on Trump associate Carter Page, we were blocked, stonewalled, and obstructed at every turn. Meanwhile, the DOJ and FBI were obviously planting all kinds of fake news stories warning that our oversight efforts were endangering national security and putting lives at risk.

A good example is the memo Whitaker describes that Intelligence Committee Republicans published in February 2018. The memo explained some of the major problems wed found with the FISA warrant on Carter Pagenamely, that the FBI relied on unverified accusations from the Steele dossier. The memo was denounced by the entire mainstream media, fueled by the DOJs publication of a letter to me claiming they were unaware of any wrongdoing related to the Page FISA, that it would be extraordinarily reckless of us to publish the memo without letting the DOJ and FBI see it first, and warning me of the damaging impact the memos publication could have on our national security and our intelligence sharing with allies.

Of course, the only thing damaged by these revelations was the reputation of the DOJ and FBI officials who exploited the ridiculous Steele dossier as an excuse to spy on an American citizen. As Whitaker notes, in late 2019 the DOJ Inspector General published a report on the Carter Page FISA that found a stunning degree of malfeasance, especially involving their use of the Steele dossier. One FBI lawyer even doctored an email to disguise the fact that Carter Page had cooperated with another U.S. intelligence agency. The FISA Court then banned numerous agents involved in the Page FISA from making any further submissions to the court.

Remember, these agents work had been championed by the media for nearly three years while their innocent victim, Carter Page, was widely portrayed as a treasonous Russian asset. In fact, the collusion hoax birthed a whole strange, neo-McCarthyite atmosphere among the left where anyone who wouldnt go along with the hoax was ritually denounced as a Russian puppet.

I was not immune to the attacks. I had publicly advocated a stronger response to Russian aggression since 2014, and in April 2016 I argued on national television that our biggest intelligence failure since 9/11 was our failure to predict Putins plans and intentions. My hawkish position on Russia has never changed, yet when I began arguing that the Steele dossier was absurd and that there was no evidence of Trump officials colluding with Putin, I suddenly began getting attacked as a Russian asset by Democrats, left-wing groups, the media, and an army of Twitter bots.

After we voted to publish our FISA abuse memo, NBC News and MSNBC analyst John Heilemann asked an Intelligence Committee Democrat on television, Congressman Nunes, your chairmanit is suggested not by me but by people who follow these matters closelycould possibly be someone whos been compromised by the Russians. Is that something you consider a possibility? Being denounced as a Russian stooge for revealing abuses of the FISA process was one of the many surreal elements of this whole episode.

The collusion hoax revealed the total corruption of the mainstream media. They were all-in on the hoax from the beginning, and they freely abandoned basic journalistic standards and ethics to perpetuate the collusion narrative. Whitaker experienced this firsthand. I was well aware of the partisan politics and the ideological bias of the press, he writes, but I had no idea the extent to which they would go to damage this president, me, and anyone who supported him or was willing to serve in his administration. I still thought there were some fundamental rules of fairness that almost everyone in positions of power and responsibility followed. I freely confess now: I was wrong.