OBAMA AND HIS SENIOR STAFF
TARGETED AND TOOK DOWN A PATRIOT
Leaders and members
of the Democratic Party in the DNC, the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA,
and the directors of these federal agencies under Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton’s campaign, with allies in the media; sought to find something,
anything that would stick to him in order to either remove him from office by
impeachment, or force him to resign; a fight they started before Donald Trump
took office.
In what is the most horrendous scandal in US history, they
tried to make him a pawn of Russia, concocting a false story of Russian
collusion, that was hatched as “an
insurance policy” in case he won the elections, which he did then they went
all out.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s presidency,
these people had and continue to slander, libel, and attack the president on
virtually a daily basis. We have been
bombarded by the mass media with all sorts of negative reporting and personal
attacks against a sitting president; the likes of which the nation has never
seen before.
For those who would disagree I would ask when was the last
time they ever hear journalists or TV news anchors, reporters, pundits, editors,
and commentators refer to a sitting president as, ‘Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini? This is both appalling and seditious.
When was it that a sitting president was called a dictator
by the press? When have we seen a
sitting president so disrespected as this president has been and is by this
media mob? When have did we ever hear these
people question the president’s ability to lead? When have we seen a sitting president state
of health and mind repeatedly questioned as this one has?
Well, as to the last question, I remember the media did
question President Reagan’s cognitive abilities, and the Democrats of that era
used it to the hilt to defy him as today’s Democrats defy this president. Apart from that, I do not recall any
president being subjected to such negative and biased news reporting.
The mass media has been badgering US with every one of these
points, repeatedly brought up by the organs of the mass media against this
president for three and a half, soon to be four, years. Since when did we ever see a press corps
conduct themselves with the utmost disrespect and contempt against the nation’s
chief executive, continuously interrupting him, pelting him with “gotcha” questions designed specifically
to irk him and cause him to react and say something they could use later
against him as they worked feverishly to present him the worst possible light
in their daily reports. The media’s
contempt and personal animus against this president is not even hidden. It is there in plain sight for the nation to
see and hear each and every day.
The press has been the water
carrier of the Democratic Party and to that end they live to see that he is
presented to the public in the most unfavorable light. Is it any wonder why so many people dislike
him? Anyone subjected to the type of “news reporting” he has, would be a
pariah when they finished with him. The
press works for this to happen.
But equally, if not more horrendous were the activities of
the Obama Administration weaponizing the Justice Department against a sitting
president. When in our history have we
ever witnessed a president so abused in such a way as this one?
During the last days of the infamous Obama Administration,
under the direction of Barack Obama himself, several of his key official
requested that the Justice Department under the leadership of James Comey, have
the FBI investigate the incoming president and everyone associated with him to
find if the charges made against they created from fiction could stick –
presumably hoping among themselves that something would pop up that they could
use to incriminate him in some way and have him removed from office.
Problem was, as time and even their own Mueller
Investigation discovered; there was absolutely nothing they could find to
corroborate any type of Russian collusion either between the president and any
of his colleagues. It is amazing, but
every investigator in Mueller’s team were all partisan Democrats with strong
ties to the DNC. Of course, all but Fox
News failed to report this very revealing detail of those doing the
investigation.
As a matter of fact, as time and other investigations into
this matter would follow. As more
details about how high and how deep the corruption had been, it was discovered
by the Justice Department that all of the FISA warrants requested by Obama’s
senior administration officials and issued, which began the investigations were
all based upon a phony dossier containing falsified information. The premise for investigating the incoming
president and everyone connected to him, including his senior officials) was
based upon a fictitious story against Trump that was purchased and obtained
from Christopher Steele, a British MI6 operative who received it from an
organization called Fusion GPS, which obtained it from the Russians.
This phony investigation was leaked to CNN, MSNBC, and the
broadcast television news channels, who ran with it for the next three years in
order to besmirch the president and destroy public confidence in him and his
ability to lead the country.
It has been since discovered that when the Justice
Department examined the evidence they uncovered that none of the FISA Warrants
were legal, because the premise upon which they were requested and issued by
the FISA Court, was pure fiction, it had no basis on fact. There was no probable cause for the FISA to
be granted and any investigation conducted.
As a matter of fact, the record states that when tasked to look into the
allegations and conduct their investigation to see if there was probable cause
to obtain a FISA Warrant, they returned saying that they had found no evidence
that would justify the court issuing a FISA Warrant, because there was no
evidence of wrong doing by either the new president or any of his colleagues.
This is when Peter Strzok and his paramour, Lisa Page became
involved in the investigation. Strzok had
risen to post of Deputy Assistant Director (one of several) of the
Counterintelligence Division of the FBI, the second-highest position in that
division. He also led the FBI's
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. When the two agents conducting the Trump
campaign and returned with no reason for an investigation, he disregarded their findings and led the
FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.
Wikipedia has
called the rumors, now confirmed as fact by the Attorney General’s report, “a
conspiracy theory. This how Wikipedia
describes it using rather peculiar hard left codespeak to describe what
happened;
“The revelation of the
text messages led Republican congressmen
and right wing media to speculate that Strzok participated in a conspiracy
to undermine the Trump presidency.”[1]
After it barely gives a minimal and largely superficial
explanation of the facts surrounding Strzok investigation of the president, it
follows concluding, “A comprehensive
review in February 2018 of Strzok's messages by The Wall Street Journal concluded
that ‘texts critical of Mr. Trump
represent a fraction of the roughly 7,000 messages, which stretch across 384 pages and show no evidence of a conspiracy
against Mr. Trump"’[2]
Really? Either the
article’s writer, Wilber, Del Quentin (February 2, 2018) overlooked what Stzrok
and Page texted to one another, or he is deceiving purposely his readers with
this claim.[3] We are aware of the Wikipedia’s writer spin of this story, and as mentioned
previously, the Wikipedia writer’s mention Stzrok’s and Page’s activities is
barely mentioned and much detail is left out, which helps feed the writer’s
narrative that nothing happened. This
Wikipedia writer would like us to look away and leave this story alone, but
justice demands that the American electorate know what occurred right under
their noses in this nation’s capital.
For this I include in this report journalist Molly Hemingway’s well –
detailed excellent article which she wrote for the
Federalist website.
“Information released
in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt.
Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a January 5, 2017, meeting at
the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key
officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization
of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved
in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped
by the incoming administration.
‘“President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we
engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any
reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,”
National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote in an unusual email to herself about the meeting
that was also attended by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director
James Comey, and Vice President Joe Biden.
“A clearer picture is emerging of the drastic steps that
were taken to accomplish Obama’s goal in the following weeks and months.
Shortly thereafter, high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective
information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming
National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General was
forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump.
At each major point in the operation, explosive media leaks were a key strategy
in the operation to take down Trump.
“Not only was information on Russia not fully shared with
the incoming Trump team, as Obama directs, the leaks and ambushes made the
transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the
administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially
damaged national security. When Comey was finally fired on May 9, in part for
his duplicitousness regarding his handling of the Russia collusion theory, he
orchestrated the launch of a Special Counsel probe that continued his efforts
for another two years. That probe ended with Mueller finding no evidence of any
American colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, much less Trump or
anyone connected to him.
“An analysis of the timeline from early 2017 shows a clear
pattern of behavior from the federal officials running the collusion operation
against the Trump campaign. It also shows how essential media leaks were to
their strategy to sideline key law enforcement and intelligence officials and
cripple the ability of the incoming Trump administration to run the country.
“Here’s a timeline of the key moments and news articles of
the efforts, per Obama’s direction, to prevent the Trump administration from
learning about the FBI’s operation against it.
“January 4: Following the closure of a pretextually
dubious and politically motivated FBI investigation of Flynn at the beginning
of January, the leadership of the FBI scrambled to reopen a case against Flynn,
the man who in his role as National Security Advisor would have to review their
Russia collusion investigation. FBI officials openly discussed their concern
about briefing the veteran intelligence official on what they had done to the
Trump campaign and transition team and what they were planning to do to the
incoming Trump administration. Flynn had to be dealt with. The FBI’s top
counterintelligence official would later memorialize discussions about the
FBI’s attempts to “get [Flynn] fired.” No reopening was needed, they
determined, when they discovered they had failed to close the previous
investigation. They found this mistake “amazing” and “serendipitously good” and
said “our utter incompetence actually helps us.” Even more noteworthy were
texts from FBI’s #2 counterintelligence official Peter Strzok to FBI lawyer
Lisa Page noting that the “7th floor,” a reference to Comey and his deputy
director Andrew McCabe, was running the show.
“January 5: Yates, Comey, CIA Director John Brennan,
and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed Obama on
Russia-related matters in the Oval Office. Biden and Rice also attended. After
the Obama briefing, the intelligence chiefs who would be leaving at the end of
the term were dismissed and Yates and Comey, who would continue in the Trump
administration, were asked to stay. Not only did Obama give his guidance about
how to perpetuate the Russia collusion theory investigations, he also talked
about Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according
to both Comey and Yates. Interestingly, Clapper, Comey, and Yates all said that
they did not brief Obama about these phone calls. Clapper testified he did not
brief Obama on the calls, Yates learned about the calls from Obama himself
during that meeting, and Comey also testified he didn’t brief Obama about the
calls, even though the intelligence was an FBI product. Rice, who publicly lied
but later admitted under oath to her widespread use of unmasked intelligence at
the end of the Obama administration, likely briefed Obama on the calls and
would have had access to the intelligence. Comey mentions the Logan Act at this
meeting.
It was this meeting that Rice memorialized in a bizarre
inauguration-day email to herself that claimed Obama told the gathered to do
everything “by the book.” But Rice also noted in her email that the key point
of discussion in that meeting was whether
and how to withhold national security information, likely including details
of the investigation into Trump himself, from the incoming Trump national
security team.
“January 6: An ostensibly similar briefing about
Russian interference efforts during the 2016 campaign was given to
President-elect Trump. After that briefing, Comey privately briefed Trump on
the most salacious and absurd “pee tape” allegation in the Christopher Steele
dossier, a document the FBI had already used to obtain a warrant to spy on
Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page. Comey told Trump he was telling him
because CNN was looking for any reason it could find to publish a story about
Russia having compromising information on him, and he wanted to warn Trump
about it. He did not mention the dossier was completely unverified or that it
was the product of a secretly funded operation by the Clinton campaign and
Democratic National Committee.
“January 10: In an amazing coincidence, CNN found the excuse to publish the Russia claims
after a high-level Obama intelligence operative leaked that Comey had briefed
Trump about the dossier. This selective leak, which was credulously accepted by
CNN reporters Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, may have
been the most important step in the operation to harm the incoming Trump
administration. The leak of the briefing of Trump was used to legitimize a
ridiculous dossier full of allegations the FBI knew to be false that multiple
news organizations had previously refused to report on for lack of
substantiation, and created a cloud of suspicion over Trump’s campaign and
administration by insinuating he was being blackmailed by Russia.
“January 12: The next part of the strategy was the
explosive leak to David
Ignatius of the Washington Post to legitimize the use against Flynn of
the Logan Act, a likely unconstitutional 1799 law prohibiting private
individuals, not public incoming national security advisors, from discussing
foreign policy with foreign governments. Ignatius accepted the leak from the
Obama official. He wrote that Flynn had called Kislyak. “What did Flynn say,
and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced)
bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign
government about ‘disputes’ with the United States. Was its spirit violated?”
Flynn’s routine and appropriate phone call became fodder for a developing grand
conspiracy theory of Russia collusion. In discussions with investigators, both
DOJ’s Mary McCord and Comey conspicuously cite this Ignatius column as somehow
meaningful in the approach they would take with Flynn. “Nothing, to my mind,
happens until the 13th of January, when David Ignatius publishes a column that
contains a reference to communication Michael Flynn had with the Russians. That
was on the 13th of January,” Comey said of the column that ran online on
January 12. In fact, quite a bit had happened at the FBI prior to that leak,
with much conversation about how to utilize the Logan Act against Flynn. And
the leak-fueled Ignatius column would later be used by FBI officials to justify
an illegal ambush interview of Flynn in the White House.
“January 23: Another important criminal leak was
given to Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller of the Washington Post, also based on
criminal leaks. Their article, headlined “FBI reviewed Flynn’s calls with
Russian ambassador but found nothing illicit,” wasintended to make Flynn feel safe and
put him at ease about the FBI stance on those calls the day before they planned
to ambush him in an interview. The article was used to publicize false
information when it said, “Although Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak were listened to, Flynn himself is not the active target of an
investigation, U.S. officials said.” In fact, emails prior to this date confirm
Flynn was their prime target. This article was later cited by McCabe as the
reason why they were justified in concealing from Flynn the real purpose of
their interview. Flynn later asked McCabe if he knew how all the information
about his phone calls had been made public and whether it had been leaked. Any
potential response from McCabe to Flynn has been redacted from his own notes
about the conversation.
“January 24: Comey later admitted he broke every protocol
to send agents to interview Flynn and try to catch him in a lie. FBI officials
strategized how to keep Flynn from knowing he was a target of the investigation
or asking for an attorney to represent him in the interview. The January 23
Washington Post article, which falsely stated that Flynn was not an FBI target,
was key to that strategy. Though the interviewing agents said they could detect
no “tells” indicating he lied, and he carefully phrased everything in the
interview, he later was induced to plead guilty to lying in this interview.
Ostensibly because White House officials downplayed the Kislyak phone calls,
presumably in light of what Flynn had told them about the calls, Yates would go
to the White House the next day and insinuate Flynn should probably be fired.
“February 9: The strategy to get Flynn fired didn’t
immediately work so another leak was
deployed to Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington
Post. That article, headline “National security adviser Flynn discussed
sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say,” was sourced
to people who happened to share senior FBI leadership’s views on the Logan Act.
This article was also based on criminal leaks of top secret information of
phone call intercepts and laid out the FBI’s case for why Flynn’s contacts with
a foreign adversary were a problem. The fact that such phone calls are routine,
not to mention Flynn’s case that improved relations with Russia in a world where
China, North Korea, and Iran were posing increasing threats, never made it into
these articles for context.
“February 13: The operation finally succeeded in
getting Flynn fired and rendering him unable to review the operations against
the Trump campaign, Trump transition team, and Trump administration.
“March 1: Flynn was the first obstacle who had to be
overcome. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the next. The Trump loyalist with
a strong Department of Justice background would also need to be briefed on the
anti-Trump efforts unless he could be sidelined. Comey admitted that early in
Sessions’ tenure, he deliberately hid Russia-related information from Sessions
because, “it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who
we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in Russia-related
investigations.” To secure that recusal, yet another leak was deployed to the
Washington Post’s Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller. The
leak was intended to tar Sessions as a secret Russian agent and was
dramatically spun as “Sessions Spoke Twice To Russian Envoy: Revelation
contradicts his testimony at confirmation hearing.” One meeting was in passing
and the other was in his function as a United States Senator, but the hysteria
was such that the Post authors could get away with suggesting Sessions
was too compromised to oversee the Department of Justice’s counterintelligence
operations involving Russia. It is perhaps worth noting that the Special
Counsel idea was pushed in this article.
“March 2: Sessions recused himself from oversight of
the FBI’s anti-Trump operation, providing no meaningful oversight to an
operation that would be spun into a Special Counsel by mid-May. With the
removal of Trump’s National Security Advisor and his Attorney General, there was
no longer any chance of Trump loyalists discovering what Obama holdovers at the
FBI were actually doing to get Trump thrown out of office. After Trump fired
Comey for managerial incompetence on May 9, deceptively edited and
misleading leaks
to the New York Times ordered by Comey himself were used to gin up a
Special Counsel run exclusively by left-wing anti-Trump partisans who continued
the operation without any meaningful oversight for another two years.
“This stunning operation was not just a typical battle
between political foes, nor merely an example of media bias against political
enemies. Instead, this entire operation was a deliberate and direct attack on
the foundation of American governance. In light of the newly declassified
documents released in recent days, it is clear that understanding what happened
in that January 5 Oval Office meeting is essential to understanding the full
scope and breadth of the corrupt operation against the Trump administration. It
is long past time for lawmakers in Congress who are actually interested in
oversight of the federal government and the media to demand answers about what
really happened in that meeting from every single participant, including Obama
and Biden.”
MY OPINION
In another article released by Nation Review, this one written by Andrew McCarthy, we are
providing with additional detail, and for this reason I include it here in its
entirety, because this is the first time in my lifetime that I witnessed organs
of our government work towards unseating a sitting president using accusations
against him without his knowledge, and bringing bear every arsenal in its power
to accomplish this before his reelection.
The acts committed by these people are the most blatant corrupt acts of
treason and sedition this nation has ever witnessed in its history. Anyone outside of the Washington elite who
would dare to attempt this would be incarcerated period. They would face some serious jail time.
But because many of these swamp dwellers in Washington and
New York are so connected and powerful, they believe themselves to be above the
law, and it appears that they may very well be, for at this late date, after so
much evidence against them has been uncovered with more yet to come; no
indictment has been handed down by the Department of Justice, and no arrests
have been made against those who perpetrated this heinous act against our
country.
It is a crying shame that the modern Democratic Party is so
corrupt that its members, just like a cult, have closed ranks to protect these
people, and have for over three years, projected what these people have done to
the president to make the public believe their lies about him in order to
destroy public opinion so they can drive him from the White House and prevent
his reelection.
For almost four years, the Democratic Party has conducted
themselves in the most horrendous manner, conducting an appalling political
civil war against President Donald Trump.
They have created one national crisis after another, and have sought and
continue to seek this country’s failure so they can regain the presidency. This is treason. But here in its entirety is Andrew McCarthy’s
excellent article.
“Assertions that the
focus was ‘the Trump campaign’ are now known to be ludicrous
Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S.
intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of
providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an
opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.
“I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.
“As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the
Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI —
but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice
Department and U.S. intelligence agencies — was Donald Trump. Not the Trump
campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as
they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its
apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of
no interest to them were it not for Trump.
“Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth,
surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their
tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail .
. . George Papadopoulos?
“My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then
known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton
campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who
transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the
FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics
(e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and
lawless classified leaks — the latter publicized by dependable journalists who
were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump.
“Now the paper trail is finally catching up with what some
of us analysts long ago surmised based on the limited information previously
available.
“You don’t like Donald Trump? Fine. The investigation here
was indeed about Donald Trump. But the scandal is about how abusive officials
can exploit their awesome powers against any political opponent.
And the people who authorized this political spying will be right back in
business if, come November, Obama’s vice-president is elected president —
notwithstanding that he’s yet to be asked serious questions about it.
How to Conceal a Politicized Investigation
“It seems mind-boggling that, for so long, the FBI and
Justice Department were able to keep a lid on the documents now being released.
President Trump could have directed their disclosure at any time over the last
four years. But when you think about it, concealing the paper trail was the
easy part. The real challenge was: How to continue the probe even after Trump
had taken office and was, at least nominally, in a position to shut it down?
“The Obama officials, including holdovers who transitioned
into the Trump administration, pulled that off by intimidation: not-so-subtle
suggestions that they could disclose damaging allegations at any time (e.g.,
the notorious “pee tape”), and that White House efforts to inquire into the
scope of the investigation would be portrayed as criminal obstruction.
“Prior to the 2016 election, the FBI intentionally concealed
the existence of the Trump-Russia probe from the congressional “Gang of Eight”
(the bipartisan leadership of both houses and their intelligence committees).
Senior Republicans were thus kept in the dark regarding purported suspicions
that the Republican presidential campaign was a Russian front, unable to pose
tough questions about the probe’s gossamer predication.
“Crucially, the Trump-Russia fabulists managed to sideline
two Trump loyalists who would have been positioned to thwart the effort:
national-security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
That left in place Obama holdovers and Trump-appointed placeholders. They were
indifferent to Trump himself and cowed by the prospect of being framed as
complicit in a Trump–Russia conspiracy, or a cover-up.
“The paper record is profoundly embarrassing, so it is only
natural that the FBI and Justice Department resisted its disclosure. But
documents about the investigation were demanded by congressional investigators
starting years ago — particularly by the investigation led in the House by
then–Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.).
“Congress’s investigation was stonewalled. The more
revelation we get, the more obvious it is that there was no bona fide
national-security rationale for concealment. Documents were withheld to hide
official and unofficial executive activity that was abusive, embarrassing, and,
at least in some instances, illegal (e.g., tampering with a document that was
critical to the FBI’s presentation of “facts” to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court).
“Democrats wanted this information suppressed all along. So
of course, once Democrats took control of the House in 2019, there was no
possibility of pressing the question of why the Justice Department and FBI
failed to comply with House information demands back in 2017–18, when
Republicans led the relevant committees.
“
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“
One wonders, though, why the GOP-controlled Senate had so
little interest in finding out why this paper trail stayed hidden despite
repeated inquiries. Ditto the House Republican leadership in the first two years
of Trump’s term. It is hard to draw any conclusion other than that the GOP
establishment bought the “Russian interference in our democracy” hysteria.
“Moscow always meddles in U.S. elections. The 2016
interference was par for the course and, as always, utterly ineffective. This
time, though, Democrats were perceived as the victims, rather than the
beneficiaries. For once, they and their media megaphone demanded that the
political class treat Russia as a serious threat. On cue, Washington
Republicans genuflected, lest they be portrayed as covering up for Trump, or as
soft on Putin. Meanwhile Democrats, the party of appeasement (very much
including appeasement of Moscow through the Obama years), were transmogrified
into Russia hawks. And Russia hawks they’ll remain . . . right up until the
moment Joe Biden takes the oath of office.
Exploiting Politics to Surveil the Opposition
“Among the most significant of the newly declassified
documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the
case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBI’s New York City
headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign
surrogates — the aforementioned General Flynn and then–New Jersey governor
Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won.
“In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not
as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to
interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did
that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that
he’d blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia.
“The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they
who were meddling in a presidential campaign — using executive intelligence
powers to monitor the president’s political opposition. This, they also knew,
would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became
public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that
Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he’d had any role in
Russian intelligence’s suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.
You didn’t have to believe Trump was a savory man to know
that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a
former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy
Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who’d
rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a
longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe
Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a
perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take — though an
irrelevant one, since it’s up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to
claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin
was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama
officials well knew was an abuse of power.
“So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on
the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and
the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was
that Trump himself was acting on Russia’s behalf, either
willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the
campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor
the candidate.
“Just two weeks before Pientka’s August 17 “briefing” of
Trump, the FBI formally opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” the codename for the
Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles,
related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George
Papadopoulos and Flynn.
“There was no case file called “Donald Trump” because
Trump was “Crossfire Hurricane.” The theory of Crossfire
Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which
it could use to extort Trump into doing Putin’s bidding
if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had
been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trump’s election
bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had
recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and
pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to
use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications betweenTrump and
the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer
American policy in Russia’s favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was
already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture.
Get Them Talking
“Besides obtaining FISA surveillance warrants against Page,
the Bureau’s favored tactic — a common one in criminal investigations — was to
create or exploit situations in which the suspects would be at ease. Either the
settings would not seem investigative or, in Trump’s case, repeated assurances
were provided that he was not under investigation. With no notice that the FBI
was trying to catch them and even prompt them into making incriminating
statements, Trump and his campaign advisers would be invited to talk about
Russia. Agents parsed their statements and scrutinized their demeanor,
searching for any indication of pro-Russia sentiment or uneasiness about the
topic — anything that could be portrayed as incriminating. If the Bureau’s
contacts with Trump officials were not covertly recorded (as they were, for
example, when informants interacted with Papadopoulos), agents would generate
written reports about them, the kind of reports the FBI routinely writes when
building a criminal case.
“This is exactly what Pientka did in connection with the
August 17 “briefing,” under the supervision of Kevin Clinesmith, the rabidly
anti-Trump FBI lawyer later found by the Justice Department’s inspector general
to have tampered with a key email, and Peter Strzok, the rabidly anti-Trump
counterintelligence agent who was later fired.
“Pientka’s significantly redacted seven-page memo is worth
reading. The point of it is not the national-security information provided to
the candidate; that is just context for the Bureau’s documenting of statements
made by Trump in response. For example, when the topic is differences in
methodology between Russian and Chinese espionage, Pientka carefully notes that
Trump asked, “Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers [of FBI
cases] are they worse than the Chinese?” After all, maybe we’ll find
out he was reporting back to the Kremlin. When the topic turned to
signals intelligence, Pientka notes that Trump interjected, “Yes I understand
it’s a dark time. Nothing is safe on computers anymore,” and elaborated that
his then-ten-year-old son had broken the code for access to a computer — you
know, just the kind of badinage you’d expect from a co-conspirator in a Russian
hacking scheme.
“Pientka then recounts that when other intelligence-agency
briefers took over to continue the briefing on other topics, Pientka did not
leave; he stayed in the room “actively listen[ing] for topics or questions
regarding the Russian Federation.” Here, in a classified report they figure no
one will ever see, there is no pretense: FBI agents are monitoring Trump.
Pientka notes that when one briefer said the U.S. was the world’s leader in
counterterrorism, Trump interjected, “Russia too?” And when the discussion
turned to cheating by Russia and China on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, “Trump
asked, ‘Who’s worse?’” When the briefer replied, “They are both bad, but Russia
is worse,” Pientka took pains to relate, “Trump and Christie turned toward each
other and Christie commented, ‘Im shocked’” [sic].
“You’re thinking, “So what?” Yeah, well, that’s the point.
They had nothing, but the agents were exploiting the U.S. political process to
try to turn nothing into a federal case. And would any public official
voluntarily attend a security briefing, ostensibly meant to help him perform
his public-safety mission, if he thought the FBI might be spying on him and
writing reports with an eye toward portraying him as a hostile power’s mole?
“Just as we’ve seen in the Flynn investigation, Pientka’s
official FBI report is marked in bold capital letters: “DRAFT
DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL.” Why deliberate over a draft when the
purpose is to document a suspect’s statements? After all, he said whatever he
said; there shouldn’t be a need to edit it. Drafts and deliberations are
necessary only if a report is being massaged to fit the perceived needs of the
investigation. Observe that, although the briefing wasAugust 17, the
memo is dated August 30. Nearly two weeks later, and it’s still in
the form of a deliberative draft, meaning they’re not done yet.
“This is not materially different from the Obama
administration’s plan on January 6, 2017. That is when the FBI’s then-director,
James Comey, “briefed” Trump in New York City. This briefing came just a day
after Comey met with his Obama-administration superiors — the president, Vice
President Biden, national-security adviser Susan Rice, and Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates. They discussed withholding information about the Russia
investigation from President-elect Trump and his incoming team.
“Consistent with this White House strategy session, Comey
did not actually brief Trump about the Russia investigation;
he buzzed Trump with an allegation that the Putin regime might be in possession
of blackmail material — the pee tape — that it could hold over Trump’s head in
order to get him to do the Kremlin’s bidding.
“The point was not to give information. It
was to get information: to provoke Trump into making
incriminating or false statements, or statements evincing consciousness of
guilt. Outside Trump Tower was an FBI car equipped with a laptop so Comey could
immediately write an investigative report. The director and his team treated
this as an investigative event, not a briefing. Comey memorialized Trump’s
statements, as well as his physical and emotional reaction to the suggestion
that Moscow might have video of the soon-to-be president cavorting with
prostitutes. If a case had ever been made on Trump, Comey could then have been
a witness, with his investigative report available to refresh his recollection
about Trump’s comments and comportment.
“That is one of the main reasons such reports are done.
“The FBI did the same thing with Flynn: a sandbag interview,
against Justice Department and White House protocols, conducted after extensive
planning about how to put him at ease, how to make sure he doesn’t think he’s a
suspect, how to refrain from advising him of his rights. Then, knock him back
on his heels by portraying a legitimate conversation between the incoming
national-security adviser and the Russian ambassador as if it were nefarious.
Don’t play him the recording or show him the transcript; just grill him and
hope he says something incriminating or redolent of guilty knowledge. And then,
instead of following the FBI rules for promptly completing interview reports,
generate another “deliberative draft” that can be kneaded for a few weeks . . .
with the help of a former prosecutor (Lisa Page) who serves as counsel to the
second-highest-ranking FBI official (then–deputy director Andrew McCabe).
“There is still plenty of paper trail to uncover. I haven’t
even referred here to the Steele dossier, which investigators knew was bogus
but relied on to seek — and obtain — court-authorized eavesdropping. I haven’t
mentioned the unmasking of Trump officials indirectly targeted in
foreign-intelligence collection. We haven’t considered the collaboration of
American and foreign intelligence agencies in the scrutiny of Trump, or the
collaboration of Obama officials and congressional Democrats, as well as the
media, to promote the narrative that Trump was a Russian operative. There is
much still to learn and to weigh.
“But this much we know: In the stretch run of the 2016
campaign, President Obama authorized his administration’s investigative
agencies to monitor his party’s opponent in the presidential election, on the
pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was
a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient
predication, administration officials kept Trump’s name off the investigative
files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they
did it . . . and denied it.[4]
[1]
Wikipedia the Online Encyclopedia, Peter Strzok
– JB
[2]
As quoted by the writer to Wikipedia’s article on Strzok.
[3]
Wilber, Del Quentin (February 2, 2018) "Inside
the FBI Life of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as Told in Their Text
Messages". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660.
Retrieved February 2, 2018
[4]
Andrew McCarthy POLITICS
& POLICY
New
Disclosures Confirm: Trump Himself Was the Target of Obama Administration’s
Russia Probe, National Review article dated August 1, 2020 6:30 AM
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