obama wiretap, obama spying
Scandalous Media Bias: There have been two major ongoing investigations involving President Trump. One is looking into whether Trump colluded with Russia. It's borne no fruit. The other involves abuse of power at the highest levels of government to hurt Trump and is producing damning evidence by the bushel. Guess which one the press is ignoring?

National Review reporter John Fund relates an interesting story. He was waiting to go on the air and struck up a conversation with another prominent reporter in the network's green room.

Why, he asked, aren't reporters actively investigating the suspicious activities at the Justice Department and the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia and Hillary/email investigations?

Fund says the reporter "bluntly told me 'There's only room for one narrative on all this. And it's all about Trump.' "

You might think that reporters are chasing facts wherever they might lead, and "speaking truth to power," especially when that power involves the CIA, FBI and Justice Department.

Instead, it's all about the "narrative."

And when it comes to the Russia story, the only narrative the press will consider is that Trump somehow colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Or if not that, he did something illegal or improper that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ferret out.

Anything that doesn't fit this narrative gets dismissed as conspiracy talk, fueled by conservatives and Trump supporters, to distract attention from the "real" story.

Here's how Vox.com - a site putatively devoted to "explaining" the news - put it:
"Trump and his allies, most notably House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes as well as major conservative media outlets, have long sought to create a counternarrative to the Russia scandal."
But even Vox's attempt to dismiss this "counternarrative" shows why it's very real and troubling. As it says, the threads involve "criticism of the FBI's use of the Steele dossier, a focus on text messages exchanged between two key FBI officials, and the Nunes memo's argument that Carter Page was a victim of 'FISA abuse.' " Vox doesn't bother to mention the Clinton email scandal.

While Mueller has turned up no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, this "counternarrative" has led to:
  • former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe fired for lying to investigators;
  • Peter Strzok and Lisa Page booted off Mueller's team for virulently anti-Trump texts;
  • Deputy Assistant AG Bruce Ohr demoted after contacts with a Trump oppo-research firm came to light;
  • the quitting of former Deputy Assistant AG David Laufman, who played a key role in both the Russia and Clinton email investigations;
  • FBI general counsel James Baker reassigned after evidence emerged that he'd been in contact with leftist reporter David Corn.
In other words, while the Mueller investigation sputters along, the evidence of political abuse at the FBI and Justice is piling up.

This "counternarrative" also has uncovered the fact that the FBI had a spy in the Trump campaign, and that the FBI has not been entirely forthcoming about how the Trump investigation got started, or when.

Alan Dershowitz - by no means a Trump ally - said over the weekend that the revelation that the FBI had an informant in the Trump campaign is "worth investigation." (To which ABC News' George Stephanopoulos responded: "It sounds like you're in league with President Trump on impeaching the credibility at this point of the special counsel.")

The 'Counternarrative' Is Real

It's also worth pointing out that while Trump officials have been, by most accounts, reasonably forthcoming with the Mueller investigation, congressional inquiries into the FBI's handling of the Clinton email and Russia probes have been, and still are being, met with stonewalling by government officials.

Even some Democrats are starting to notice that the "counternarrative" deserves more attention that it's getting.

"The full origins of the (Trump/Russia) investigation and its lack of any real intelligence needs to come out in the open," wrote former Clinton administration pollster Mark Penn in an op-ed - titled "Stopping Robert Mueller to protect us all" - published by The Hill on Monday.

Yet the press still shows only grudging interest, at best, in any of this because it doesn't fit their anti-Trump narrative.

It reminds us of the story about the cub reporter who is sent to cover a routine meeting of the local town council. The reporter later returns to the newsroom without a story. When the editor asks why there's no story, the reporter responds: "I couldn't get to the government building because a massive train wreck blocked the street."

A good reporter, or at least one who isn't hopelessly biased, would be able to see that the real story isn't the go-nowhere Mueller investigation, but the more troubling story of abuse of power by Obama administration officials to protect Hillary Clinton and then derail the Trump presidency.