Via The Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board,
Congress needs to learn how the FBI meddled in the 2016 campaign.
When Donald Trump claimed in March that he’d had his “wires tapped” prior to the election, the press and Obama officials dismissed the accusation as a fantasy. We were among the skeptics, but with former director James Comey’s politicized FBI the story is getting more complicated.
CNN reported Monday that the FBI obtained a warrant last year to eavesdrop on Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager from May to August in 2016. The story claims the FBI first wiretapped Mr. Manafort in 2014 while investigating his work as a lobbyist for Ukraine’s ruling party. That warrant lapsed, but the FBI convinced the court that administers the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to issue a second order as part of its probe into Russian meddling in the election.
Guess who has lived in a condo in Trump Tower since 2006? Paul Manafort.
The story suggests the monitoring started in the summer or fall, and extended into early this year.
While Mr. Manafort resigned from the campaign in August, he continued to speak with Candidate Trump.
It is thus highly likely that the FBI was listening to the political and election-related conversations of a leading contender for the White House.
That’s extraordinary - and worrisome.
Mr. Comey told Congress in late March that he “had no information that supports those [Trump] tweets.”
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was even more specific that “there was no such wiretap activity mounted against—the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.”
He denied that any such FISA order existed.
Were they lying?
The warrant’s timing may also shed light on the FBI’s relationship to the infamous “ Steele dossier.” That widely discredited dossier claiming ties between Russians and the Trump campaign was commissioned by left-leaning research firm Fusion GPS and developed by former British spy Christopher Steele—who relied on Russian sources. But the Washington Post and others have reported that Mr. Steele was familiar to the FBI, had reached out to the agency about his work, and had even arranged a deal in 2016 to get paid by the FBI to continue his research.
The FISA court sets a high bar for warrants on U.S. citizens, and presumably even higher for wiretapping a presidential campaign. Did Mr. Comey’s FBI marshal the Steele dossier to persuade the court?
All of this is reason for House and Senate investigators to keep exploring how Mr. Comey’s FBI was investigating both presidential campaigns.
Russian meddling is a threat to democracy but so was the FBI if it relied on Russian disinformation to eavesdrop on a presidential campaign. The Justice Department and FBI have stonewalled Congressional requests for documents and interviews, citing the “integrity” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
But Mr. Mueller is not investigating the FBI, and in any event his ties to the bureau and Mr. Comey make him too conflicted for such a job. Congress is charged with providing oversight of law enforcement and the FISA courts, and it has an obligation to investigate their role in 2016. The intelligence committees have subpoena authority and the ability to hold those who don’t cooperate in contempt.
Mr. Comey investigated both leading presidential campaigns in an election year, playing the role of supposedly impartial legal authority. But his maneuvering to get Mr. Mueller appointed, and his leaks to the press, have shown that Mr. Comey is as political and self-serving as anyone in Washington.
No investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 campaign will be credible or complete without the facts about all Mr. Comey’s wiretaps.
bend over for the DEEP state
Feel it in your throat at this point.
Now, you're talkin'!
this is an attempt to further demoralize anyone who still cares
tick tock
Key word there is attempt..
How much evidence can they hide? with the arrest of the Awan's, things have changed.
Let's see....Putin allies maybe placed some social media vs. Watergate-turbo domestic spying and obstructing justice for the party in power's candidate.
Gee....hmmm.....so hard to discern the threat to the Republic in all this.....just....can't....critically.....think.....where's my opioids? Remote? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnvrmnd
I did a mental exercise concerning this general subject the other day, what did I actually knows vs what am I being told? I 'know' next to nothing. I have an honest acquaintance who lived near the Clintons in Little Rock when Bill was governor. She gives accounts from parties they attended that 1) Bill is a sleazy womanizer and 2) Hillary is the worst human being she's ever met. Other than that second hand info which I consider reliable I 'know' nothing. Every fact comes from someone else and I can't verify anything. Other than that I can only say the accounts don't add up. When I see a Trump press conference then read the MSM account about it that doesn't even seem to be about the same event I know I'm being lied to. So I know I'm being lied to but have no assurance of what the truth is. It leaves me guarding my wallet and a bit disconnected to the whole narrative. The good side of this is that I have virtually no say in how this kabuki theater plays out so I have no responsibility for its outcome.
Plus, you are dead.
Don't be surprised to see sudden suicides taking place...
schultz, awan bros et al
I been saying for months around here that the Madness of Investigations would spill over into focuses other than Trump/Russia.
Drag a hook through a swamp and lots of bad stuff thought lost when cast overboard comes retrieved from long ago.
Art of the Deal.
The WSJ has broken with the rest of the press.
This will serve to create a Schism in the Establishment, for you see, there's a limited amount of goodies to be divvied up by all the the Establishment members and if the Dems can be marginalized, the Repubs get a bigger share.
Doesn't stop the NWO's designs, but that primary standard bearers are left behind.
A Schism in the Establishment
Terrific comment!
Thank you
What this all means is that the R's will next support (Feigning Indignity and patriotism, throughout, loudly) a Special Investigation into the DNC/Democrats, etc., under the guise of broadening the investigation. Or establishing a new one.
Must find those crafty Russians!
C'est la vie.
PS This don't make your life any safer or happier.
Well... it was Obama and Hillary’s DOJ after all.
Come to think of it… it still is.
How? With the help of WSJ of course. Enjoy your subscription cancellations.
If this surveillance of Trump's associates was not political in nature why were the names leaked, why were the conversations with foreign leaders leaked, why all the leaks? Why were these reports shared between sixteen other agencies? Who ordered the surveillance and when? We are now learning that surveillance, at least in Manaford's case, started much earlier than that of others -- and, as it relates to Susan Rice's unmasking, it had no direct Russia collusion angle no matter how it is made to appear that a meeting with an UAE crown prince was tainted with a possible drop of Russian dressing, nonetheless does not make it Russian collusion and most certainly had no intelligence value thereof.
Can someone revive Jeff Sessions, convince Trey Gowdy to start some investigations for, at the very least, there is strong suspicion and anxiety that a government is able to go to secret courts, with virtually no checks and balances, and request for surveillance of its citizens with apparently weak or suspect reasons for doing so, but to cloak its more sinister self-interest as the key objective?
We know that Susan Rice lied in a public NPR interview:
Woodruff: We’ve been following a disclosure by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, that in essence, during the final days of the Obama administration, during the transition, after President Trump had been elected, that he and the people around him may have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals in that their identities may have been disclosed. Do you know anything about this?
Rice: I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/09/14/reminder-susan-rice-lied-role-obama-...
She later changed her tune in front of a closed session -- not to be confused with Jeff Sessions -- of a House committee
Rice: Former national security adviser Susan Rice privately told House investigators that she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late last year, multiple sources told CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/susan-rice-house-investigators-un...
Here is a interesting read on the subject, albeit months ago and one coming from a intelligence officer and a Army Colonel:
(His Bio)
Jim Waurishuk is a retired USAF Colonel, serving nearly 30-years as a career senior intelligence and political-military affairs officer and special mission intelligence officer with expertise in strategic intelligence, international strategic studies and policy, and asymmetric warfare. He served combat and combat-support tours in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as on numerous special operations and special mission intelligence contingencies in Central America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He served as a special mission intelligence officer assigned to multiple Joint Special Operations units, and with the CIA’s Asymmetric Warfare Task Force, as well as in international and foreign advisory positions. He served as Deputy Director for Intelligence for U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) during the peak years of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Global War on Terrorism. He is a former White House National Security Council staffer and a former Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C. He served as a senior advisor to the Commander U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and is Vice President of the Special Ops-OPSEC -- which provides strategic and operational security analysis and assessments to governmental and private entities, as well as media organizations on national security issues, policy, and processes. He currently provides advisory and consulting services on national security, international strategic policy, and strategy assessments for the U.S. and foreign private sector and governments entities, media groups and outlets, and to political groups, forums, and political candidates. He is an author and writer providing regular commentary and opinion to national and local TV, radio networks, and for both print and online publications, as well as speaking engagements to business, political, civic and private groups on national security matters – focusing on international strategic policy and engagement, and strategic intelligence, and subject matter expertise on special mission intelligence and operations, counter-terrorism, and asymmetric warfare and conflict.
http://americaoutloud.com/obama-administrations-unmasking-americans-leak...
Everybody knows Comey was Hillary's tool. They started shrieking like Sen Joe McCarthy once they realized all their crooked efforts weren't going to get their broad over the finish line.
So then they tried to take down an elected, sitting president before the truth could come out.
LOSERS!!!
> Don't be surprised to see sudden suicides taking place...
... in the media.
(One could easily replace 'sudden' with 'fake' in the above quote.)
Nothing happens the way it's told. There are two complete societies at work - us ... and them. And, everything of any import - including the media - belongs to them.
and you are poor
Dem's, FBI, CIA, Obama, Hillary et al thought the election of Hillary was in the bag...then sweep all the dirt and dishonesty under the rug.
But they lost.
Comey was just trying to cover his Ass.
Comey has been a reliable Clinton fixer since the 90s. He wasn't just covering his own ass, he was trying to cover everyone else's ass as well.
When Trump entered the White House panic set in. He would have access to way too many secrets and deep state tools. Every effort has been applied to find a way to ensure he sucumbs to the swamp. Mueller is one of their key tools, something anything to blackmail him must be found.
Trump needs to hire a team of special prosecutors from the middle of the country with no ties to the swamp and set them free to expose the dirt. He will find it impossible to get his agenda passed but exposing and draining the swamp is more important. Drain the swamp then move the agenda, if he doesn't move faster on draining the swamp it will eat him.
Mueller and Team have been in for quite awhile now. Plenty of time for incriminating evidence to be 'lost', 'destroyed' or 'wiped'.
Can you imagine a bunch of 'media' oligarchs wanting to know what the 'government' oligarchs are up to? How was this not shared at any of a multitude of high-level tribe meetings?
Can you imagine? Because it's all bullshit. These 'articles' are made for your befuddlement. They are otherwise meaningless. Not even worth the read (so I don't).
How can a population go on decade after decade, getting the bullshit end of the stick and not even notice?
That is some powerful bullshit right there, I tell ya.
Isn't the FISA court supposed to protect us from terrorists? If so, sould not the jurisdiction of their warrants be limited to activities with some direct nexus to terrorism?
How much is Mueller's army costing taxpayers this week? And they're going so far back into Manifort's financial records that the statutes of limitation for most tax and financial crimes are long expired.
Maybe they should just issue a report that says Paul Manifort is a creepy guy, up to his neck in deep state financial sewage, so keep your daughters away from his progeny.
I was talking with my girlfriend (black conservative) about this... I think what infuriates me the most about this is how fucking stupid they think we are. It's insulting beyond words.
They don't care how stupid we are, they care how stupid the MOB is (and pounce on that).
As to the 2016 election spying:
>>> Ears was all over it
>>> Ears had nuttin to do with it
I wonder if they invented some kind of clever basketball-based verbal code to maintain plausible deniability.
"Mr. President: Swish."
POTUS: "Ally oop? Shaq down?"
"No sir but using all fouls left to give."
If they can do anything they want, I can do anything I want.
They won't like the things I want to do.
What the hell happened to fake news?
I can't handle the truth!
I await the official MSM narrative.
Wait, weren't the MSM feverishly telling us the FBI was investigating the-rest-of-the-world for influencing the election? Not *selling* influence of course. That would be some other people ....
And that Morgan Freeman's Justice Hero Posse were investigating international news organisations for insufficient compliance to the NWO party line?
Now it's supposed to be the FBI themselves? Suuu-uuuure.
Does that mean FBI is a Russian department or what, the WSJ need to get their current narrative straight. Amateurs.
Put down the crack pipe, lousy hacks!
"I wonder if they invented some kind of clever basketball-based verbal code to maintain plausible deniability."
They seem to talk a lot about colored handkerchiefs, hot dogs, cheese pizza and walnut sauce.
well, since they "demand" to know.... the elecronic vote machines are NOT adding machines. And, they are controlled from distance by short wave signals. There you go. That is all you need to know.
Is Muller as crooked as Comey?
Its a requirement for FBI chief, starting with the first.
Yes. He is financed by the swamp and loyal to them and only them. Trump needs to appoint a special prosecutor from middle America with zero ties to the swamp to expose the swamp monsters for who they are. No President could have a greater legacy than being the one to slay the swamp monsters.
Wake me up when the Deep State perp walks start. Jeff Sessions is useless.
How is Clapper not in prison? Everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. He's almost as good of an indicator as Gartman!
If Clapper denies that it happened - especially in front of Congress or under oath - you can be damn sure that not only did it happen, but it's probably happening while he's speaking.
Cocksucking Clapper. Throw him in the pit with Corzine. oh, wait.
Evidently when you take your "oath" you can commit just about any crime imaginable with no repercussions as long as you are protecting the right people and their covert operations.
@ Kill,
How?
You still have t accepted have you?
Tyrannical Lawlessness.
That's how.
Sorry. The older I get, the harder it is to adjust to this Brave New World.
Habits die hard, I guess.
I'm 47.
And, refuse to adjust to a Dystopian out in the open Criminal Reality we currently find ourselves in.
Clapper cannot lie without the tell of his eyes repeatedly blinking.
I wish I could play poker with him.
NO.... Its not the DEEP state. The deep state is innocent as usual.
It is Russian technology, political connections, and then Hacking the FBI to make it look like the FBI was involved.
RUSSIA DID IT, again..............Oh sure, bet on it.
congress? they want congress to investigate? lolololol
did they just arrive here on planet earth?
Right outta Total Recall, Buzz.
;-)
Indeed.
Straight from Uranus. Destination: Black Hole.
Everything about Obama was worrisome from the start. And extraordinary in a negative way.
Yes, but like many in USA and worldwide,
fell for the hype.
It was a new spin on an old story. Half black wonder boy (though evidence looks now that he is 100% Muslim Arab sold to us as half black) in Congress ONE TERM, as if there was no other male Democratic Party candidate worthy.
No birth certificate (lady who presents the phony computer copy dies in shallow water off Molokai next to a mysterious frogman, after she presents phony certificate.) No baby pictures. Pics of foster mom dressed as a hooker. Communist mentors. Several different last names. Several of his supposed fathers die in mysterious accidents.
School records sealed !!! Gay but married?
The list of questions and concealed data about him are endless.
Don't you just love the outrage?