Doug Collins - The Clock and the Calendar: A Front-Row Look at the Democrats Obsession with Donald Trump

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-63758-088-2

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-089-9

The Clock and the Calendar:

A Front-Row Look at the Democrats Obsession with Donald Trump

2021 by Doug Collins

All Rights Reserved

Cover Photograph by Hassel Weems

This is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the authors memory.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

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Published in the United States of America

dedication

I have been able to do many things in my life and this book records a little bit of that journey. However, I am only able to do this because I have the best partner in life that anyone could ask for. Lisa is more than a wife. She is my confidante, sounding board, strength when I am weak, best friend, and most importantly, the love of my life. You are in everything that I do and that includes the words of this book. I also am blessed to be father to Jordan, Copelan, and Cameron. You are the reason that I pursued public service and the reason that I have hope for the future.

Table of Contents

A s a journalist, knowing whom to trust is critical. In 2017, Doug Collins was one of a small group of lawmakers who went against the grain and showed tremendous courage and a willingness to be ridiculed and attacked in his commitment to truth. This book will tell you how.

The Clock and the Calendar gives you a direct line into how President Trumps detractors tried to take him down any way they could. When I started covering Washington closely about eight years ago, I had no idea the amount of dirty tricks and corruption that existed. I had come from the worlds of business and media where cutthroat attacks certainly existed, and I did not think anything could compare to the backstabbing that I had seen firsthand. But I was wrong. I would never have imagined that one political campaign could come up with a completely made-up story against their political rival and be successful in rallying U.S. government agencies and the media to go along with it, and in doing so, convince the entire country of a lie. I had no clue about the level some might stoop to undo their political enemies. This is one reason I was so outraged to learn all about the made-up Steele Dossier in 2017 and 2018 and the hysteria that ensued across America about their so-called Trump-Russia collusion story. As a journalist for more than thirty years , I pride myself on my intuition and judgment, and once again it served me well here. I knew whom to listen to. While virtually the entire media landscape was reporting on President Trump colluding against America and some in the FBI, CIA, and State Department were selectively leaking whispers to the media to continue the lie, I knew whom to trust and whom not to trust.

I started talking more to then Georgia Congressman Doug Collins, who was a member of the Judiciary Committee. He is also an attorney and served as a chaplain at the U.S. Air Force Reserve with a rank of lieutenant colonel. He was among the few patriots pushing back against this extraordinary charge that Trump somehow worked with Russia to steal the 2016 election. He and his colleagues demanded evidence of the collusion story. They walked me through how Democrats were leading a charge against Trump and made sure I understood the hypocrisy of certain lawmakers saying one thing behind closed doors and a completely different story while on Trump-hating networks CNN and MSNBC. It was astounding. The made-up dossier, the muddying up and wiretapping of innocent Americans like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. The use of wiretaps, informants, and doctored evidence against Trump associates, while hiding the real exculpatory evidence the entire time. The leaks from government bureaucratsone leak a day in Presidents Trumps first days in office125 leaks in the first 126 days, 62 of those leaks actually threatened national security. A year earlier, in 2016, Hillary Clinton supporters started circulating a bogus dossier of smears alleging that Trump had been compromised by the Russian government. They got it in front of the FBI and CIA, among other agencies, which did not dispute it, nor did the leadership of those agencies report that the creation of the dossier was actually funded entirely by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee during a presidential election year. The campaign hired a law firm and political operatives to build the dossier against Trump. The author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, said his information came from primary sub sources, who by 2017 told the FBI , under oath, that many of the most sensational claims were simply made in jest. So the government agencies knew by the time Trump began his presidency that it was all made up. Yet they allowed the speculation to run wild for years to undermine his presidency. They went even further, employing the very surveillance tools usually reserved for terrorists and other foreign enemies against associates of Donald Trump. It would take until December 2019, almost three full years into Trumps presidency, for the Justice Departments inspector general to lay out Steeles connections to Russian oligarchsthe information had been sitting at the FBI the whole time. Not until April 2020 did the public actually see evidence that even before Trump took office, the FBI had been receiving reports saying not only was the dossier garbage, but it was made up by some in the Russian government. That the subsources were interviewed by FBI agents and on record admitting it was bar talk over beers.

Even though we eventually found out the truth, it was too late to undo the stain it had put on Trumps presidency. It was hard to undo the bad perception of a sitting president colluding against America, even though it was fiction. There were so many misleading and untruthful statements from sitting congressmen, who were Trump detractors, such as Representative Adam Schiff. He repeatedly went on television and said there was collusion in plain sight with no pushback at all from media, even though there was no evidence of this and during closed-door meetings in Congress, he said he did not have such evidence. This had a terrible impact on our country, dividing us, destroying the lives of people who were ensnarled in it, and creating an uncertain office of the presidency. Trump had a hard time recruiting some leading individuals to his administration because the story had left enough doubt in peoples minds about Donald Trumps loyalty to America. This was an embarrassment for the greatest country in the world. Our country owes a great debt to those people who had the courage to step up, to tell the truth despite the attacks that certainly followed. Doug Collins is one of them. He is a truth teller. A man of conviction and courage and I have witnessed this firsthand. He worked tirelessly throughout his time in Washington to try and seek out truth. He questioned witnesses over when they first learned the people behind the dossier admitted they made it up. He demanded documents to be public, witness testimony to be reported. This is no small matter. Our constitution protects our freedom and liberty. But if and when bad actors weaponize the intelligence agencies of the US government, those freedoms can be compromised, if not lost.