We Need Answers

THE HILL

We need answers to questions mainstream media won't ask about Democrats

One thing that has become painfully obvious to me since entering the public realm in 2010, is that the bias in the media is revealed far more in what they don’t report, than in the very real and overt bias in what they do report.

Most members of the mainstream media would vociferously deny this. To President Trump and his supporters, liberal media bias is an obvious fact. This bias, together with the media’s incuriosity about Democratic wrongdoing versus their tenacious investigations of Republicans, drives conservatives nuts.

The fact that Donald Trump fearlessly and pugnaciously challenged media bias helped him secure the Republican nomination and continues to deepen the support he enjoys among his base. His supporters also sympathize with what he has had to endure since the day he was elected.

I’m 64 years old. I have never seen a new president face such resistance. Until Trump, new presidents generally received some measure of best wishes as they assumed an almost impossible task - a honeymoon, if only a brief one. Instead, the day after Trump’s election, thousands of protestors took to the streets of Washington, New York, and other cities, calling for impeachment and burning him in effigy.

Far more troubling, is the mounting evidence of a possible coordinated effort to sabotage Trump’s administration. These efforts may have included the engineered appointment of a special counsel to investigate the false narrative of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Mainstream media’s lack of curiosity about these, and other efforts, speaks volumes.

I just want to know the truth. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which I chair, started investigating the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal in March 2015. Instead of holding show-trial hearings, we have opted to tenaciously gather facts and information — against significant resistance — to uncover that truth.

The information we have obtained only heightens my suspicions that there was corrupt behavior occurring within the Obama administration during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition.

Here are some of the most obvious unanswered or inadequately answered questions raised during our more than four-year inquiry: (I have excluded questions that I hope to have answered in soon to be released DoJ-IG reports.)

- Did President Obama see clintonemail.com (instead of an official government address) as Hillary Clinton’s email address when he communicated with her? 

- Why didn’t the FBI compel key witnesses to testify before the grand jury in its investigation of Clinton’s email scandal?

- Did the FBI require the preservation of evidence (computers and disk drives of Clinton and her associates)? If so, when? If not, why not?

- Why was no one charged with a crime after Clinton’s aides or employees used Bleachbit to permanently erase her emails and hammers to destroy two mobile devices?

- Why did the FBI allow fact witnesses Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson to join Clinton’s interview?

- What contact and involvement occurred between Ukrainian officials and members of the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and/or Obama administration regarding the 2016 election?

- Did the Trump campaign receive a defensive briefing as thorough as was provided to Clinton’s campaign and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)?

- What was the real reason James Comey briefed President-elect Trumpon Jan. 6, 2017 about the unverified Steele dossier?

- What was Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s role in engineering this part of the briefing?

- Who connected Joseph Mifsud with George Papadopoulos? How and why?

- Who connected Australia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Alexander Downer, with George Papadopoulos in London? How and why?

- Did Obama and/or members of his White House staff communicate with the Department of Justice, the FBI, or intelligence agencies regarding the investigation of Trump and his campaign?

- Was there cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies during the investigation of the Trump campaign?

- What was the role of CIA Director John Brennan and the intelligence community in that investigation?

- How many Americans were “unmasked” during FISA surveillance? Which members of the Obama administration ordered unmasking, and why?

- Why were high-level State Department officials meeting with Christopher Steele and funneling his dossier to the FBI?

- What did Peter Strzok really mean by an “insurance policy”?

- In Peter Strzok’s Dec. 15, 2016 text, what leaks by “our sisters” was he referring to, and what did he believe they were worried about?

- Why was Peter Strzok - the FBI’s lead investigator on the Trump/Russia probe - concerned “there’s no big there there” as he was considering joining the Special Counsel team?

As you can see, there is much we don’t know, and many questions the mainstream media seems unwilling to ask and investigate. With the special counsel probe concluded, it is past time for Congress and the American people to have access to all relevant information to determine what is true, and what isn’t true.

Johnson is chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.