Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency

394 Pages·2019·3.018 MB·English

by  Andrew C. McCarthy

BALL OF COLLUSION
ALSO BY ANDREW C. McCARTHY
Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad
The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America
Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy
Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case
for Obama’s Impeachment
ANDREW C. McCARTHY
BALL OF COLLUSION
THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND
DESTROY A PRESIDENCY
© 2019 by Andrew C. McCarthy
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
The Collusion Fable
CHAPTER TWO
What Investigation … and What Started It?
CHAPTER THREE
An Old Story: Beltway Consultants as Agents of the Kremlin
CHAPTER FOUR
Intel … the Obama Way
CHAPTER FIVE
‘An Institutional Lack of Candor’
CHAPTER SIX
Collusion: Foreign Governments, the Obama Administration, and the
Clinton Campaign
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Maltese Professor, an Australian Diplomat, and a Sap … in London
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Brennan Clearinghouse
CHAPTER NINE
Narrative as ‘Intelligence’ as Disinformation:The Steele Dossier
CHAPTER TEN
There’s No Collusion Case … Just Ask Julian Assange
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Crossfire Hurricane
CHAPTER TWELVE
I Spy
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Amateur Hour
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Insurance Policy
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FISA Warrants: Targeting Trump, Not Page
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Flood Is Coming’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Not a Suspect?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nine Days in May
NOTES
INDEX
Introduction
T
his a story about hubris. Sure, there’s plenty of collusion. But hubris is
the more fitting word. This is a story about what happens when those we
trust to be the guardians of our system anoint themselves the masters of our
system. For our own good, of course.
As for collusion, that word we’ve heard so incessantly from pundits and
leaky government officials, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has rendered
his judgment that there was none—at least, not the collusion he was hunting
for. There really was a collusion plot, though. And it really did target our
election system. It absolutely sought to usurp our capacity for self-
determination. It was just not the collusion you’ve been told about. It was
not “Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia.”
Here is the real collusion scheme: in 2016, the incumbent Democratic
administration of President Barack Obama put the awesome powers of the
United States government’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in
the service of the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, the
Democratic party, and the progressive Beltway establishment. This scheme
had two parts: Plan A, the objective; and Plan B, a fail-safe strategy in case
Plan A imploded—which all the smartest people were supremely confident
would never, ever happen … which is why you could bet the ranch that it
would.
Plan A was to get Mrs. Clinton elected president of the United States.
This required exonerating her, at least ostensibly, from well-founded
allegations that were both felonious and politically disqualifying.
Plan B was the insurance policy: An investigation that Donald Trump, in
the highly unlikely event he were elected, would be powerless to shut down.
An investigation that would simultaneously monitor and taint him. An
investigation that internalized Clinton campaign–generated opposition
research, limning Trump and his campaign as complicit in Russian
espionage. An investigation that would hunt for a crime under the guise of
counterintelligence, build an impeachment case under the guise of hunting
for a crime, and seek to make Trump un-re-electable under the guise of
building an impeachment case.
The Clinton Emails Caper
Upon becoming President Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton improperly
set up a private, non-secure system for email communications. It featured