UPDATE:  During the years when Republicans controlled the levers of power, Johnson worked for a law firm that represented the Guantanamo Bay detainees — very vigorously.  Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison attorneys went so far as to smuggle in materials to the detainees.  “If I’d gotten caught passing war news to detainees,” one former DOD official said, “my security clearance would have been pulled.”

This week has seen the release of many incriminating documents from the Democratic National Convention (DNC), via Wikileaks’ so-called “Guccifer 2.0.”  The authenticity of these documents is in some question, as they passed through the hands of an outfit which has alleged Russian ties.  Hackers are in the business of violating people’s expectations of privacy in unethical ways, and the interests of foreign powers are not necessarily aligned with the interests of the United States.  We cannot be sure that the hackers are ethical enough to pass the documents on unaltered, in other words, nor that the release of the documents is not chiefly aimed at some hostile foreign nation’s ends.  Thus, we have to analyze all of these documents with some care.

By the same token, however, it is worth analyzing these documents with that care.  America was founded with a system of checks and balances intended to prevent one branch of government from becoming too powerful.  That was true both within the Federal government, where the three branches are balanced against each other, and between the Federal government and the states.  Those systems of checks and balances have become increasingly compromised by unethical behavior within the Federal government, such as the IRS scandal.  It has been further compromised by the increased centralization of power that has tipped the balance away from the states and toward the central, Federal, government.  We are less likely to see our own system performing adequately to check centralized power, and thus might consider external checks such as that provided by a foreign power with opposing interests to our administration’s.

Likewise, credibility is the currency of “special war” — including information warfare of the type the Russians are using here.  If their outlets are not credible, they will be less effective.  We must always check to see whether they are trying to slip one past us, of course.  On the other hand, they have an interest in providing damaging information that is accurate and that will be found credible on investigation.  We can’t skip the investigation, but there is a prima facie reason to take the charges seriously pending an investigation.

In terms of the Counterjihad movement, the corruption of the American administration creates several problems.  If high posts are for sale, they might not be occupied by the best people.  Worse, though, they might be bought by the wrong people.  The sale of high offices allows a means of influence on our government that is not accountable to the people, especially given that it was handled secretly — and by a political party, not a formal branch of government.

For example, consider the case of Department of Homeland Security czar Jeh Johnson.  Johnson is a career public servant.  Yet he was able to come up with over half a million dollars in cash to donate to the DNC — and then “feigned disbelief” when he got the job of leading the Homeland Security agency.

How has he used this post?  Oddly enough, we were just talking about that the other day.  Johnson decided to appear at the conference of a known Muslim Brotherhood front organization, while “fully aware” of its terrorist ties.

As CJ first reported Sunday, ISNA had been considered off-limits to such high-level appearances since the U.S. Justice Department in 2008 designated the group as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist financing case in U.S. history and a front organization for the radical Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.

Johnson’s spokesman Neema Hakim told CJ that, despite ISNA’s terrorist ties and radical background, Johnson agreed to appear at the event because he considered it an “opportunity” to conduct outreach with the American Muslim community.

“DHS and the secretary are fully aware of past evidence and allegations concerning ISNA and carefully considered them before accepting ISNA’s invitation,” Hakim said.

While there, he shared a stage with a Holocaust denier and a known leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nor was this the only occasion on which he has made moves amenable to the Brotherhood. In June, he testified before Congress admitting that his agency had scrubbed references to Islam from counter-terror materials that they produced.  He claimed to have “no idea” how that happened.

Earlier in June, Johnson downplayed the role of a radical Islamist community in the Pulse nightclub shootings.  He said that shooter Omar Mateen “was ‘self-radicalized’ without any religious, ideological or operational support from friends, family or others in the Muslim community.”  Yet it turned out that Mateen had ties to a known radical imam, one who had served as a bodyguard for the “blind sheikh” who carried out the first World Trade Center attacks.  Perhaps it was worth considering that Mateen might have targeted the gay nightclub in part because of the harsh language his mentor used towards “f****ts” in America, and Islam’s duty towards them?

To be clear, we at CounterJihad have no idea where Jeh Johnson got all that money.  We have no evidence establishing a causal relationship between the inexplicably large donation from a career public servant and his subsequent support of Brotherhood outlets, or the Brotherhood’s agenda.  We cannot even be certain that the documents establishing the donation are themselves fully genuine.  We have to be suspicious of them at first face, given that they passed through the hands of pro-Russian actors.

Nevertheless, we do have questions.  Those questions seem like important questions to us.  We would like answers.  And in a free society, for now, we still have the right to ask those questions and to demand some answers.