Comey, Ohr, Kramer, Simpson, Clinton were sweating bullets, right?
What should also temper expectations, however, is a hard look at history. When it comes to the Swamp’s subversion of the Republic, issuing subpoenas to bring witnesses before a grand jury means nothing more than issuing subpoenas to bring witnesses before a grand jury. Indictments, trials, and convictions have always been exceedingly rare.
Consider the grand jury convened in the spring of 1947 to hear sensational charges of subversion inside the federal government by Elizabeth Bentley, a key U.S. defector from Soviet intelligence. Ex-KGB courier Bentley would offer testimony against numerous federal government officials, bureaucrats, and others from those early days of the Swamp in connection with espionage rings run inside the U.S. government by Soviet intelligence.
Although the names were completely unknown to the public at the time, the Bentley grand jury witness roster was, as Evans and Romerstein write, “a spectacular line-up, an all-star team of Soviet agents, Communists, and close-in fellow travelers.”
The most stunning thing about the Bentley grand jury witness list, however, is that no one on it, not even the later-notorious Hiss or White, was indicted for anything.
Why were there no indictments? The reason is quite simple. The government failed to call a witness who could corroborate any of Bentley’s grave charges, even though such a witness was already well known to it. That witness was Whittaker Chambers. His testimony about Hiss and White alone would have been crucial to the federal case.
“Yet though the FBI was well aware of what Chambers knew and could have told the grand jury,” the authors write, “for over a year prosecutors refused to call him. Hence no second witness in the case—hence no indictments.”
Why didn’t prosecutors call Chambers? FBI records, Evans and Romerstein write, “provide a suggestive picture of attitudes at the Justice Department that guided the grand jury process.”
For example, federal prosecutor Thomas Donegan “was of the opinion Chambers testimony would not be helpful.” Helpful to what? Given the FBI’s interview with Chambers to date, it would have been clear that Chambers’s testimony would have been exceedingly “helpful” in pursuit of indictments. Even after Chambers and Hiss sensationally battled in Congress in August 1948, however, prosecutors refused to call “the former Soviet courier who would become the most famous witness in the Cold War.”
“A recurring theme in the FBI reports is the notion, adopted by Justice at the outset, that the grand jury wouldn’t hand down indictments in the Bentley cases, but would, as in the Amerasia case [an earlier espionage-related grand jury travesty], ‘no bill’ the suspects, letting them walk free from legal sanctions.
“Thus an FBI memo from early 1947 says Justice wanted the Bureau to interview various Bentley people but with a proviso: ‘ ... that subsequently consideration might be given to presenting the evidence to a grand jury with the idea of letting them no-bill the case. Further that in the event Congressman [J. Parnell] Thomas [R-N.J.] of the Un-American Committee should ever raise a question it would be possible to answer by saying that the grand jury had considered the evidence and it had not deemed it sufficient to justify criminal action.’
The hourglass is running out.
