Yesterday, I wrote about the revelations with which Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, electrified the world. 

We had all grown up chewing on the Russia Collusion Delusion, and most of us were happy to have that political enormity pass through the usual emunctory processes and be deposited in some far off midden or compost heap.  

But Tulsi showed that, however expert we thought ourselves about the subject, that great precautionary motto – “things are always worse than they seem”– was pertinent even here.  For it turned out that, after Trump’s victory in 2016, Barack Obama, in the waning weeks of his presidency, was not only involved in the conspiracy to upend the peaceful transfer of power and destroy Trump, he was something like the prime mover. 

There was great excitement on both sides of the political divide over Gabbard’s revelations.  Pro-Trump conservatives celebrated the news, predicting that now, finally, at last, there would be some measure of accountability in response to what the commentator Don Surber rightly called the “story of the century.”  

For their part, leftists oscillated amusingly between their best imitations of an ostrich, ignoring the whole thing, and wildly denouncing the revelations as a plot to distract the world from Trump’s supposed relationship with Jeffrey Epstein or some other made up tort. 

Towards the end of my column, I speculated that “The mood of country seems to favor accountability” and suggested that “the odds favor some high-profile prosecutions.” I even indulged in a pleasant reverie according to which “those wishing to measure people like John Brennan [Obama’s Director of the CIA] for an orange suit… will not be disappointed.” 

The prosecutions will depend on the DOJ. Since it is now led by the stalwart Pam Bondi, Trump’s Attorney General, I believe that there is a good chance we will see some notable prosecutions. 

But the orange suits? Prison sentences, alas, are much less likely. As a friend reminded me, “The jury pool in DC will never convict a Dem of jaywalking, let alone treason.” This is probably true, and it got me thinking about James Boasberg, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Boasberg has been in the public eye lately for his chest-thumping efforts to interpose himself between the Constitution and Donald Trump. 

Article II of the Constitution may vest all executive authority in “a president of the United States” (my emphasis). But that hasn’t prevented hubris-saturated jurists like Boasberg from pretending that they, not the President, actually wield a large slice of that executive power. Thus, when Donald Trump decided to send some violent Venezuelan criminals to EL Salvador for safe keeping, Boasberg began yapping like a rabid cur and said (I paraphrase) “No you don’t.  Turn the planes around. Bring them back.”

If there ever is a skit called “Judicial Follies,” Boasberg is almost guaranteed a starring role. 

But then I remembered that Boasberg has been a left-wing activist for years and, in fact, had played an important if largely undiscussed role in the beginning chapters of the Russia Collusion Delusion. 

Remember Kevin Clinesmith? He was the FBI lawyer who, in 2017, helped get the Russia Collusion Delusion going by altering a CIA email regarding Carter Page, one of the many pro-Trump figures who was harassed by the DOJ. (How do you spell “tampering with evidence”?) 

The CIA, I wrote at the time:

“had identified Page as a CIA source.  Clinesmith, part of the anti-Trump team that staffs the upper reaches of the FBI, changed the email to say that Page was not a CIA asset. This gave the green light for the Bureau to obtain a warrant from the FISA Court to spy on Page and, through him, on the entire Trump administration.”

So what happened to Clinesmith?  In 2020, he pleaded guilty to doctoring the email and was sentenced to – are you ready? – 12 months probation. And who was the judge that delivered that tiny rap on the knuckles? Why, James Boasberg, of course.

As I noted at the time, “What Clinesmith did – altering an official document in order to get a warrant to spy on an American citizen so that the FBI could secretly surveil the Trump administration – is a felony. Usually, a lawyer who is convicted of a felony is disbarred. Clinesmith got probation.” Compare that leniency to the harsh punishments meted out to Trump allies, including those engaged on that famous self-guided tour of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  

It is all a miscarriage of justice, but business as usual in the swamp.  The question is, are there mechanisms in place to remedy these egregious violations of the spirit of the law?  I do not know the answer to that question, which doesn’t prevent me from hoping that the answer is “Yes, there are, and the people who tried to subvert the 2016 election will finally be called to account.”