justinspoliticalcorner:

Jay Willis at GQ: 

Spygate, for those who do not regularly consume conservative media, is another right-wing conspiracy theory with Donald Trump as the central victim. Its adherents believe Clinton-friendly saboteurs within the American intelligence community illegally spied on the 2016 Trump campaign, and then, when that effort failed, fabricated a “Russian collusion” narrative to cover up their coup attempt.

It is a wild, nonsensical fantasy hawked relentlessly by Fox News and its ilk in order to create a narrative satisfactory to a paranoid, perpetually-aggrieved president. Spygate is what fuels all his calls for investigations of Robert Mueller and Mueller’s team of Deep State investigators: Someone wronged him, Trump believes, and they must be brought to justice.

On Wednesday, testifying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, attorney general William Barr gave Spygate its most authoritative endorsement yet.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” he told New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, explaining why he initiated a formal review of how the Justice Department and FBI handled their investigations of the Trump campaign.

When she pressed him on whether he believes any espionage actually took place, he stuttered for a moment before offering an answer. “I think spying did occur, yes,” he said. “I think spying did occur.” Somewhere, Sean Hannity—who assured his audience last night that Barr would soon unleash an “avalanche” of criminal indictments—smiled quietly and allowed himself a well-earned first-pump.

[…]

Again, consider all this against the backdrop of Spygate, which holds that malevolent Deep State bureaucrats are hiding evidence of a vast, shadowy plot to steal the election from Donald Trump. Barr understands perfectly well that Fox News’ primetime lineup will never accept any “spying” on the campaign as “adequately predicated,” because doing so would concede that the various law enforcement investigations of Donald Trump were justified by facts on the ground. (He also understands that their audience would never entertain such a notion.) Even Barr’s word choice is telling; when investigators “spy” on sources pursuant to legitimate investigations, we just called that “gathering information.” Leading with the ominous language of espionage, however, allows Barr to stoke conservative outrage while maintaining the appearance of political impartiality.

[…]

By retreating a few steps from his first bombshell, Barr delivers a strategic message that attempts to satisfy everyone. The headline—that the attorney general of the United States believes “spying” took place—confirms the worst fears of the president, his supporters, and the right-wing media apparatus that floated Spygate in the first place. The soft qualifiers he offered afterwards do little to mitigate the impact of his statement, because he knows no one in his intended audience will pay any attention to them. The most important task for any good conspiracy theorist is being able to plausibly deny that they are, in fact, a conspiracy theorist.