Letters to the editor for Tuesday, March 27, 2018

No apologies for correcting the facts

Otto Mark Tarvainen thinks I owe Fred LaSor an apology for debunking his conspiracy theories. I don’t think so. Otto claims that Eric Holder was found in contempt over Fast and Furious. House Republicans convinced themselves the AG had prior knowledge of the operation, and when Holder asserted executive privilege over thousands of internal DOJ documents, he was charged with criminal contempt on a party-line vote. That charge was thrown out of court, but all documents were provided, and they showed that the ill-fated operation had been planned and executed by an inept group of ATF agents in Phoenix, as Holder had testified.

The sale of Uranium One to Russian interests required approval of nine federal departments. State Department approval was the responsibility of Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez, who testified that Secretary Clinton “never intervened” in such matters. Also, 90 percent of the $145 million Clinton Foundation donations associated with Uranium One came from Frank Giustra, the company’s Canadian founder, who sold his stake in 2007.

Otto doubles down on Fred’s claim that the IRS targeted conservative groups in their investigation of tax-exempt advocacy groups. In reality they looked at all “dark money” groups, without political bias.

He writes that the FISA court was not told that the Steele Dossier was created as opposition research on behalf of both Republican and Democratic campaigns. Not that it mattered, as the FISA court is only interested in the credibility of the source, and nobody has more credibility on Russia than former MI-6 master spy Christopher Steele.

Rich Dunn

Carson City