"Deep State" by James Stewart

Above: "Deep State." Trump, The FBI, and the Rule of Law. 331 Pages.

Stewart's book is instructive either for the open minded conservative who wants to hear the other point of view (Mwah sic), or the liberal who wants to have his pro Comey views about the Trump/Comey set-to validated.

I completed reading this book today.

The book chronicles the FBI's investigations of Hillary Clinton and her private email server and Donald Trump and possible collusion of his campaign with Russian interests to influence the 2012 election.

The book draws from interviews of many FBI sources, including those vilified by Trump. Comey (fired by Trump), McCabe, Baker, Strzok, and Page (all fired or retired by new FBI management) are all characterized as loyal, patriotic, even if flawed, employees. For example, Stewart's writing seems sympathetic to the point made by Trump hating Strzok that he was able to compartmentalize his negative feelings for Trump away from the day to day professional way he performed his job.

To be sure, Stewart, justifiably, doesn't give Hillary a pass for her carelessness in using a private server for her emails. But, Stewart conveys Comey's rationale as to why Hillary wasn't prosecuted - she had no intent to commit wrong - as being a reasonable call.

The FBI's dilatory reaction to Hillary's emails found on sex pervert Anthony Weiner's server, after Comey had previously announced her exoneration, is explained away by Comey's declaration that FBI head office investigators were too busy working on the Trump/Russia collusion investigation and had forgotten about the Weiner computer. It was only due to a concerned New York office FBI special agent's "going nuclear" that Comey was forced to make public eight or so days before the election, the presence of one hundred thousand or so emails on the potentially compromised Weiner computer. Some of these emails were classified. A conspiracy theorist couldn't be faulted for speculating that the FBI had tried to deep six this information, which could have contradicted HRC's previous exoneration, until after the election. But, Stewart accepts Comey's explanation without comment.

Look. Stewart is a Pulitzer Prize winning author. The book is well organized, For the political junkie it gives a fascinating, readable chronology of the Clinton and the Trump investigations. But, the prism through which the reader views the information is very much skewed towards a sympathetic view of senior FBI officials, imperfect human beings as we all are, doing their jobs as professionally as they can in the face of an "illegitimate" President whose behavior was disruptive, dishonest, mercurial, and possibly venal. If that's what you believe about President Trump, you'll probably enjoy reading this book.

Attorney General Barr is currently looking into possible venality and law breaking of Comey et al at the time of my writing this blurb. Stewart's book is instructive either for the open minded conservative who wants to hear the other point of view (Mwah sic), or the liberal who wants to have his pro Comey views about the Trump/Comey set-to validated. Nothing I read in the book changed my mind about the venal presidential coup undertaken against Donald Trump by top levels of the nations' intelligence apparatus.