The Trump-Russia Accusations and the possible Silent Coup

[Crafty_Dog]

Beginning this thread -- previous posts on this are scattered in too many threads (Intel Matters, Cognitive Dissonance, Politics, etc:


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/03/mark-levin-obama-used-police-state-tactics-undermine-trump/

, , ,

Drawing on sources including the New York Times and the Washington Post, Levin described the case against Obama so far, based on what is already publicly known. The following is an expanded version of that case, including events that Levin did not mention specifically but are important to the overall timeline.

    1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

    2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.

    3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.

    4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

    5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.

    6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.

    7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information.

    8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was  part of routine spying on the ambassador, not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation. In the end, Flynn resigns over having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the content of the conversation.

    9. February: Times claims extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence leaks.

    10. March: the Washington Post targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.

In summary: the Obama administration sought, and eventually obtained, authorization to eavesdrop on the Trump campaign; continued monitoring the Trump team even when no evidence of wrongdoing was found; then relaxed the NSA rules to allow evidence to be shared widely within the government, virtually ensuring that the information, including the conversations of private citizens, would be leaked to the media.

Levin called the effort a “silent coup” by the Obama administration and demanded that it be investigated.

In addition, Levin castigated Republicans in Congress for focusing their attention on Trump and Attorney General Sessions rather than Obama.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.marklevinshow.com/audio-rewind/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443768/obama-fisa-trump-wiretap

Sorry for the awkward formatting below.  This seems an important piece to me, best to read it NRO's site; the text is here for posterity.

FISA and the Trump Team fullscreen President-elect Trump at a press conference in Trump Tower, January 11, 2017. (Reuters photo: Shannon Stapleton) Share article on Facebook share Tweet article tweet Plus one article on Google Plus +1 Print Article Adjust font size AA by Andrew C. McCarthy January 11, 2017 3:02 PM @AndrewCMcCarthy The idea that FISA could be used against political enemies always seemed far-fetched. Now it might not be. Remember the great debate over “the Wall” following the 9/11 attacks? “The Wall” was a set of internal guidelines that had been issued by the Clinton Justice Department in the mid 1990s. In a nutshell, the Wall made it legally difficult and practically impossible for agents in the FBI’s Foreign Counter-Intelligence Division (essentially, our domestic-security service, now known as the National Security Division) to share intelligence with the criminal-investigation side of the FBI’s house. Those of us who were critics of the Wall — and I was a strenuous one, beginning in my days as a terrorism prosecutor who personally experienced its suicidal applications — made several arguments against it. My favorite argument, which I have repeated countless times, centered on how preposterous were the underlying assumptions of the Wall. This was far easier for prosecutors than journalists, academics, and the public to grasp, because we dealt with the Justice Department’s different chains of command for criminal and national-security investigations. Alas, after 20 years, I may have to revise my thinking. The theory of the Clinton DOJ brass in imposing the Wall was the potential that a rogue criminal investigator, lacking sufficient evidence to obtain a traditional wiretap, would manufacture a national-security angle in order to get a wiretap under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). A traditional wiretap requires evidence amounting to probable cause of commission of a crime. A FISA wiretap requires no showing of a crime, just evidence amounting to probable cause that the target of the wiretap is an agent of a foreign power. (A foreign power can be another country or a foreign terrorist organization.) The reason the Wall theory was absurd was that a rogue agent would surely manufacture evidence of a crime before he’d manufacture a national-security angle. The process of getting a traditional wiretap is straightforward: FBI crim-div agents and a district assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) write the supporting affidavit; it gets approved by the AUSA’s supervisors; then it is submitted to the Justice Department’s electronic-surveillance unit; after that unit’s approval, the attorney general’s designee signs off; then the AUSA and the FBI present the application to a district judge. FISA wiretaps, by contrast, go through a completely different, more difficult and remote chain of command. In it, the district AUSA and FBI crim-div agents who started the investigation get cut out of the process, which is taken over by Main Justice’s National Security Division and the FBI’s national-security agents. In other words, if we assume an agent is inclined to be a rogue, it would be far easier (and less likely of detection) to trump up evidence of a crime in order to satisfy the probable-cause standard for a traditional wiretap than to manufacture a national-security threat in order to get a FISA wiretap. No rational rogue would do it. But now, let’s consider the press reports — excerpted in David French’s Corner post — that claim that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI sought FISA warrants against Trump insiders, and potentially against Donald Trump himself, during the last months and weeks of the presidential campaign. It’s an interesting revelation, particularly in light of last fall’s media consternation over “banana republic” tactics against political adversaries, triggered by Trump’s vow to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate serious allegations of criminal misconduct against Hillary Clinton — consternation echoed by Senate Democrats during Tuesday’s confirmation hearing for attorney-general nominee Jeff Sessions. From the three reports, from the Guardian, Heat Street, and the New York Times, it appears the FBI had concerns about a private server in Trump Tower that was connected to one or two Russian banks. Heat Street describes these concerns as centering on “possible financial and banking offenses.” I italicize the word “offenses” because it denotes crimes. Ordinarily, when crimes are suspected, there is a criminal investigation, not a national-security investigation. According to the New York Times (based on FBI sources), the FBI initially determined that the Trump Tower server did not have “any nefarious purpose.” But then, Heat Street says, “the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server.” Again, agents do not ordinarily draw FISA requests around possible crimes. Possible crimes prompt applications for regular criminal wiretaps because the objective is to prosecute any such crimes in court. (It is rare and controversial to use FISA wiretaps in criminal prosecutions.) FISA applications, to the contrary, are drawn around people suspected of being operatives of a (usually hostile) foreign power. The Heat Street report continues: The first [FISA] request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; [sic] SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons. (A “US person” is a citizen or lawful permanent resident alien. Such people normally may not be subjected to searches or electronic eavesdropping absent probable cause of a crime; an exception is FISA, which — to repeat — allows such investigative tactics if there is probable cause that they are agents of a foreign power.) Agents do not ordinarily draw FISA requests around possible crimes. Possible crimes prompt applications for regular criminal wiretaps, because the objective is to prosecute any such crimes in court. Obviously, we haven’t seen the FBI affidavits (assuming they actually exist), and we do not know lots of other relevant facts. What we have, however, suggests that someone at the FBI initially had concerns that banking laws were being violated, but when the Bureau looked into it, investigators found no crimes were being committed. Rather than drop the matter for lack of evidence of criminal offenses, the Justice Department and FBI pursued it as a national-security investigation. In June, an initial FISA affidavit (obviously prepared by the FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division) was submitted to the FISA court. It is said to have “named Trump” — but we don’t know whether that means (a) his name merely came up somewhere in the text of the affidavit or (b) he was an actual target whom the government wanted to investigate under FISA (meaning eavesdrop, read e-mail, and the like). Even though the FISA standard is generally thought to be less demanding than the traditional wiretap standard (it is easier to show that someone may be colluding in some way with a foreign government than that he has committed a crime), the FISA court rejected the application that “named Trump.” Five months later, the Justice Department and FBI submitted a second, more “narrowly” drawn affidavit to the FISA court. The way the Heat Street report is written intimates that Trump is not named in this October application for FISA surveillance. The tie to Trump also appears weak: Heat Street says the FISA court was presented with evidence of a server “possibly related” to the Trump campaign and its “alleged links” to two Russian banks. To summarize, it appears there were no grounds for a criminal investigation of banking violations against Trump. Presumably based on the fact that the bank or banks at issue were Russian, the Justice Department and the FBI decided to continue investigating on national-security grounds. A FISA application in which Trump was “named” was rejected by the FISA court as overbroad, notwithstanding that the FISA court usually looks kindly on government surveillance requests. A second, more narrow application, apparently not naming Trump, may have been granted five months later; the best the media can say about it, however, is that the server on which the application centers is “possibly” related to the Trump campaign’s “alleged” links to two Russian banks — under circumstances in which the FBI has previously found no “nefarious purpose” in some (undescribed) connection between Trump Tower and at least one Russian bank (whose connection to Putin’s regime is not described). More FBI Why Was the FBI Investigating General Flynn? Why Republicans Lose the Narrative Battle: The Inspector-General Gambit The Media/Liberal Obsession With Conclusions That is tissue-thin indeed. It’s a good example of why investigations properly proceed in secret and are not publicly announced unless and until the government is ready to put its money where its mouth is by charging someone. It’s a good example of why FISA surveillance is done in secret and its results are virtually never publicized — the problem is not just the possibility of tipping off the hostile foreign power; there is also the potential of tainting U.S. persons who may have done nothing wrong. While it’s too early to say for sure, it may also be an example of what I thought would never actually happen: the government pretextually using its national-security authority to continue a criminal investigation after determining it lacked evidence of crimes. — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443768/obama-fisa-trump-wiretap

[Crafty_Dog]

March 2, 2017 7:10 p.m. ET
942 COMMENTS

The story about the connection between Russia and the Donald Trump presidential campaign is either the most elaborate cover-up of all time, or the dumbest. More evidence for the dumb theory arrives with the news that during his confirmation hearings Attorney General Jeff Sessions didn’t tell Senators about two 2016 meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Mr. Sessions had two conversations with Sergei Kislyak last year, one a brief chat amid a gaggle of other ambassadors at a public event at the GOP convention in July, another in September at the then-Senator’s office.

Yet at his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing, Democrat Al Franken asked Mr. Sessions what he would do if he learned that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russian government. “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Mr. Sessions replied, adding that “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

In a written question, Democrat Pat Leahy asked, “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Mr. Sessions replied: “No.”

Democrats are calling this perjury and demanding that Mr. Sessions resign, but his only certain offense is ineptitude. A spokesman for Mr. Sessions late Wednesday defended the AG by saying, “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign—not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee.”

Mr. Sessions added at a press conference Thursday that he would recuse himself from any FBI investigation of the Trump campaign or Russian interference in 2016, adding that his answers in the Senate were “honest and correct as I understood the questions at the time.”

This may be technically true, but it won’t wash politically amid a Beltway feeding frenzy. Mr. Sessions knew Democrats were hunting for any Russian-Trump campaign ties, and meeting with the Russian ambassador is no offense for a Senator or campaign adviser. So why not admit the meetings up front? Give Democrats and the media nowhere to go.

If Mr. Sessions was trying to cover up some dark Russian secret, he’s the Jim Carrey of cover-up artists. Surely he knew someone would discover a meeting in his Senate office, which isn’t exactly a drop-site in the Virginia suburbs, and the meeting in Cleveland had multiple witnesses. Like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn not telling Vice President Mike Pence about his meeting with the ambassador, this is a case of dumb and dumber.

The most important fact so far about the larger Trump-Russia collusion story is that there are so few salient facts. The Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta were embarrassing but had little bearing on the election. The dossier of supposed contacts between Trumpians and Russians published by BuzzFeed has never been corroborated.

Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees investigating the ties have reported nothing of substance. What we have on the evidence so far is a hapless cover-up without an underlying scandal.

Meanwhile, news emerged Thursday that Obama Administration officials ran a government intel operation on the Trump campaign. The New York Times reports that political appointees signed off on surveillance of “associates” of the Trump campaign, though “the nature of these contacts remains unknown.” The officials then spread this raw intelligence throughout the government and to foreign counterparts, ensuring they’d be widely read and supposedly to prevent their Trump successors from covering up the truth.

Only days before the inauguration, President Obama also signed an executive order that allows the National Security Agency to share raw intercepts and data with the 16 other agencies in the intelligence community. NSA analysts used to filter out irrelevant information and minimize references to Americans. Now such material is being leaked anonymously.
***

This is far more troubling than a meeting with an ambassador, though Mr. Sessions acted properly Thursday in recusing himself. Democrats are also demanding a special prosecutor, but what the country needs to know is what happened, not another Patrick Fitzgerald on the political make. The intelligence committees need to finish their probes as soon as possible, and they should err on the side of making as much information available to the public without damaging innocent reputations.

President Trump could help by denouncing Russia’s election meddling and admitting that the Kremlin is acting against U.S. interests. He has already gone on record denying any personal campaign ties to Russia. If there really is nothing there, then the smart play isn’t to spar with the media and Democrats but to disarm them with transparency. A penchant for denial and obfuscation helped ruin Hillary Clinton, and we’d have thought that the people who defeated her would have figured that out.

[ccp]

Hat tip to Michael Savage's radio show today for this reminder:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/world/europe/corruption-ukraine-joe-biden-son-hunter-biden-ties.html?_r=0

Move along folks nothing to see HERE.  (its a a Democrat VP)   

[Crafty_Dog]

Let's stay on focus with this thread.  That (an excellent find btw) better belongs in the Corruption thread.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-of-nixonwatergate-plot-to-wire-tap-trump-tower/?utm_term=.887c85002e2d&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-politics%252Bnation

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.spartareport.com/2017/03/nixon-watergate-the-obama-administration-and-fisa-wire-taps-what-is-fisa/

[Crafty_Dog]

The world retains its ability to surprise-- a thoroughly sane piece from Vanity Fair on AG Sessions:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/the-dirty-secret-behind-the-jeff-sessions-mess

[Crafty_Dog]

McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor who took down the “Blind Sheik.”  He’s well versed in this area of law.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445504/obama-camp-disingenuous-denials-fisa-surveillance-trump=

[Crafty_Dog]

Third post

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/yes-obama-could-be-prosecuted-if-involved-with-illegal-surveillance/

[ccp]

No one will ever find a concrete smoking gun linking wiretapping to Obama. 

But it is not hard to imagine he would have somehow not casted a blind eye to it or looked the other way, or in some way set the wheels in motion for this to occur, or at least given a wink to it.

[G M]

No one will ever find a concrete smoking gun linking wiretapping to Obama. 

But it is not hard to imagine he would have somehow not casted a blind eye to it or looked the other way, or in some way set the wheels in motion for this to occur, or at least given a wink to it.

Just like he used to "joke" about using the IRS to punish his enemies.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/us/politics/trump-seeks-inquiry-into-allegations-that-obama-tapped-his-phones.html?emc=edit_na_20170305&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w80TIsyASjw

[Crafty_Dog]

This is quite curious!

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/intriguing-overlap-in-paths-of-russian-oligarch-trump-campaign-889979971765

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/17/louise-mensch-trump-russia-ties-media-scoop?CMP=share_btn_fb

[Crafty_Dog]

fourth post

Random question:

The first FISA request and the Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting were both in June 2016.  Which came first?

[ccp]

From the mysterious writer"PJ"

https://www.worldnewspolitics.com/2017/03/05/fisa-request-trump-came-secret-meeting/

Oh here is another with author's name says same thing:

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/03/flashback-first-fisa-request-trump-tower-came-clinton-ag-lynch-met-privately-tarmac/

[ccp]

Like Mark Levin says.  There are a lot of dots to connect. 

I  would also recall Shyster Schumer's comments  that could be interpreted as either a veiled threat or at the least a veiled warning that the intelligence community has many ways to even a score .

Now we keep hearing Chuck go on the talk shows and microphones seemingly with some collusion  going on behind the scenes . 

Seems like we can connect another dot that includes  Schumer. 

[Crafty_Dog]

Thanks for that.  Indeed, it was imprecision of the GatewayPundit piece that led me to ask the question-- beyond the headline's assertion, I saw no actual dates.

[Crafty_Dog]

I have misplaced the URL, but a site unknown to me asserts that NSA chief Admiral Rogers visited President-Elect Trump in the immediate aftermath of the election and that then this article appeared:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-and-intelligence-community-chiefs-have-urged-obama-to-remove-the-head-of-the-nsa/2016/11/19/44de6ea6-adff-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html?utm_term=.08a23ad19c51

[Crafty_Dog]

Second post

Is this something AG Lynch would know?

http://theblacksphere.net/2017/03/plot-thickens-guess-appointed-fisc-judges-authorized-wiretaps/

[Crafty_Dog]

Sometimes I listen to CNN in the morning and today I heard a point that I had not considered and which I must confess seems rather logical.

In that President Trump is the head of the executive branch, can't he just find out for himself what the FISA warrants were and were not?

[G M]

Sometimes I listen to CNN in the morning and today I heard a point that I had not considered and which I must confess seems rather logical.

In that President Trump is the head of the executive branch, can't he just find out for himself what the FISA warrants were and were not?

I would tend to think so, unless the intel community is being blatantly insubordinate. Waiting to see what evidence there is for this.

[Crafty_Dog]

This is the author of the NRO article I posted earlier in this thread

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_C._McCarthy

[G M]

https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/17155905_1449812015038234_5980515726633840896_n.jpg

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445522/russian-election-hacking-fbi-not-investigating-trump-campaign?utm_campaign=trueanthem

WOW 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-06/top-nsa-whistleblower-intelligence-agencies-did-spy-trump

WOW 

[objectivist1]

#OBAMAGATE: EXPOSING THE OBAMA DEEP STATE

Obama’s third term has begun. Our Republic is in danger.

March 7, 2017  Daniel Greenfield 

After Trump secured the nomination, Obama’s people filed a wiretapping request. As he was on the verge of winning, they did it again. After he won, they are doing everything they can to bring him down.

It was always going to come down to this.

One is the elected President of the United States. The other is the Anti-President who commands a vast network that encompasses the organizers of OFA, the official infrastructure of the DNC and Obama Anonymous, a shadow government of loyalists embedded in key positions across the government.

A few weeks after the election, I warned that Obama was planning to run the country from outside the White House. And that the “Obama Anonymous” network of staffers embedded in the government was the real threat. Since then Obama’s Kalorama mansion has become a shadow White House. And the Obama Anonymous network is doing everything it can to bring down an elected government.

Valerie Jarrett has moved into the shadow White House to plot operations against Trump. Meanwhile Tom Perez has given him control of the corpse of the DNC after fending off a Sandernista bid from Keith Ellison. Obama had hollowed out the Democrat Party by diverting money to his own Organizing for America. Then Hillary Clinton had cannibalized it for her presidential bid through Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Donna Brazile. Now Obama owns the activist, OFA, and organizational, DNC, infrastructure.

But that’s just half the picture.

Obama controls the opposition. He will have a great deal of power to choose future members of Congress and the 2020 candidate. But he could have done much of that from Chicago or New York. The reason he didn’t decide to move on from D.C. is that the nation’s capital contains the infrastructure of the national government. He doesn’t just want to run the Democrats. He wants to run America.

The other half of the picture is the Obama Deep State. This network of political appointees, bureaucrats and personnel scattered across numerous government agencies is known only as Obama Anonymous.

Obama Inc. had targeted Trump from the very beginning when it was clear he would be the nominee.

Trump had locked down the GOP nomination in May. Next month there was a FISA request targeting him. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court denied the request, and it is still unknown whether the request targeted Trump, or only his associates, but it’s silly to pretend that the submission of such a request a month after he became the presumptive GOP nominee was apolitical.

The second, narrower, FISA request came through in October.  This one was approved. The reason for getting a FISA request in October was even more obvious than June. October is the crucial month in presidential elections. It’s the month of the “October Surprise” when the worst hit pieces based on the keenest opposition research is unleashed. Obama’s opposition research on Trump involved eavesdropping on a server in Trump Tower. Nixon would have been very jealous.

After the election, Obama Inc. began to spread out its bets. Some of his people migrated into his network of political organizations. Others remained embedded in the government. While the former would organize the opposition, the latter would sabotage, undermine and try to bring down Trump.

An unprecedented campaign for full spectrum dominance was being waged in domestic politics.

Political opposition wasn’t a new phenomenon; even if a past president centralizing control of the organizational and activist arms of his party to wage war on his successor was unprecedented. But weaponizing unelected government officials to wage war on an elected government was a coup.

Obama Anonymous conducted its coup in layers. The first layer partnered congressional Democrats with OA personnel to retain control of as much of the government as possible by the Obama Deep State. They did it by blocking Trump’s nominees with endless hearings and protests. The second layer partnered congressional Democrats with the deeper layer of Obama operatives embedded in law enforcement and intelligence agencies who were continuing the Obama investigations of Trump. 

This second layer sought to use the investigation to force out Trump people who threatened their control over national security, law enforcement and intelligence. It is no coincidence that their targets, Flynn and Sessions, were in that arena. Or that their views on Islamic terror and immigration are outside the consensus making them easy targets for Obama Anonymous and its darker allies.

These darker allies predate Obama. The tactics being deployed against Trump were last used by them in a previous coup during President Bush’s second term. The targets back then had included Bush officials, an Iran skeptic, pro-Israel activists and a Democrat congresswoman. The tactics, eavesdropping, leaks, false investigations, dubious charges and smear campaigns against officials, were exactly the same.


 
Anyone who remembers the cases of Larry Franklin, Jane Harman and some others will recognize them. Before that they were used to protect the CIA underestimates of Soviet capabilities that were broken through by Rumsfeld’s Halloween Massacre and Team B which helped clear the way for Reagan’s defeat of the Soviet Union.

Under Bush, the Deep State was fighting against any effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program. It did so by eliminating and silencing opposition within the national security establishment and Congress through investigations of supposed foreign agents. That left the field clear for it to force a false National Intelligence Estimate on President Bush which claimed that Iran had halted its nuclear program.

Obama broke out the same tactics when he went after Iran Deal opponents. Once again members of Congress were spied on and the results were leaked to friendly media outlets. Before the wiretapping of Trump’s people, the NSA was passing along conversations of Iran Deal opponents to the White House which were used to coordinate strategy in defense of the illegal arrangement with Islamic terrorists.

The same wall between government and factional political agendas that Nixon’s “White House Plumbers” had broken through on the way to Watergate had been torn down. NSA eavesdropping was just another way to win domestic political battles. All it took was accusing the other side of treason.

And worse was to come.

During the Iran Deal battle, the NSA was supposedly filtering the eavesdropped data it passed along.

In its last days, Obama Inc. made it easier to pass along unfiltered personal information to the other agencies where Obama loyalists were working on their investigation targeting Trump. The NSA pipeline now makes it possible for the shadow White House to still gain intelligence on its domestic enemies.

And the target of the shadow White House is the President of the United States.

There is now a President and an Anti-President. A government and a shadow government. The anti-President controls more of the government through his shadow government than the real President.

The Obama network is an illegal shadow government. Even its “light side” as an opposition group is very legally dubious. Its “shadow side” is not only illegal, but a criminal attack on our democracy.

When he was in power, Obama hacked reporters like FOX News’ James Rosen and CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson. He eavesdropped on members of Congress opposed to the Iran Deal. Two men who made movies he disliked ended up in jail. But what he is doing now is even more deeply disturbing.

Obama no longer legally holds power. His Deep State network is attempting to overturn the results of a presidential election using government employees whose allegiance is to a shadow White House. Tactics that were illegal when he was in office are no longer just unconstitutional, they are treasonous.

Obama Inc. has become a state within a state. It is a compartmentalized network of organizations, inside and outside the government, that claim that they are doing nothing illegal as individual groups because they are technically following the rules within each compartment, but the sheer scope of the illegality lies in the covert coordination between these “revolutionary cells” infecting our country.

It is a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope. Above all else, it is the most direct attack yet on a country in which governments are elected by the people, not by powerful forces within the government.

"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” President Lincoln declared at Gettysburg.  “That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Obama’s shadow government is not just a war on President Trump. It is a war on that government of the people, by the people and for the people. If he succeeds, then at his touch, it will perish from the earth.

Obama’s third term has begun. Our Republic is in danger.

[ccp]

About author of above post Daniel Greenfield.
Seems to associated with David Horowitz who I normally agree with:


http://freedomoutpost.com/author/danielgreenfield/

[objectivist1]

This is a transcript from today's radio show:

CALLER:  The point I wanted to make, you were talking earlier about what’s going on with President Trump and the possible wiretapping of Trump Tower. And I’ve also read online that supposedly there’s a possibility that Jeff Sessions’ office was being tapped also, at least that’s what Corey Lewandowski said, but my point I wanted to make was I think that Trump should take this opportunity to turn the tables on the Dems and the libs. I don’t like their tactics, but they are effective.  And one of the things you’ve talked about in the past many times is the idea that investigations need to be done because of the seriousness of the charge.

RUSH:  Right.

CALLER:  I can’t think of anything more serious than the possibility that the presidential campaign was being wiretapped, and I would use that argument and just push the Democrats back on their heels and say, “The seriousness of the charge, we have to look.”  I mean, you could run with this for months.  That’s what I would do.

RUSH:  Trump is doing that.  So far, he doesn’t have anybody willing to join him in the investigation, ’cause most people’s reaction — can I share this with you?

CALLER:  Of course.

RUSH: The first Trump tweet was on Saturday, and I’m on the golf course Sunday, and it’s a mother-in-law convention out there.  The winds are like 35 miles an hour.  It’s just impossible.  So we started talking about things to try to distract from how poorly we were playing, and these guys — and these are, you know, my age, 50 to 55, 60, successful people, and they’re shocked at what Trump said. They think, “Oh, no, the guy’s going off his rocker, oh, my God, oh, my God.”

I tried to bring ’em back down.  I said, “No,” that’s when I hit them.  “Wait a minute, now.  What do you mean?  Is it more reasonable to think that it could be or that it isn’t?”  And so they started thinking about it the way I was thinking about it.  So I think the initial reaction of even some people on Trump’s team, “Oh, my God, you don’t say that, oh, gee.”  Because in their minds, you never win accusing Obama or the Democrats of anything.  The media’s gonna come out and destroy you.

But Trump is not everybody.  Trump doubled down on it today.  You better be applauding Donald Trump. If what you just said you want, you better be applauding Donald Trump.  Because he’s taking it — this is exactly what he’s doing out there, Pete.  He’s doing exactly what they have been doing to him.  This whole Russia-rigged-the election thing is a bogus charge and he decided to pick the grenade up and throw it right back at the media-Democrat complex.

And it’s working.  They’re now running around like stuck pigs.  “What investigation?  He wasn’t under investigation.”  He wasn’t under investigation?  I thought the last six months — “No, no, no, there are no wiretaps on Trump.  That’s absurd.”  Well, then how do people get hold of his phone calls to these foreign leaders?  “Well, I don’t know, but he’s not under investigation.  Nobody ever said he’s under investigation.”

Katy Tur, infobabe NBC, was on Meet the Press Sunday saying there hasn’t even been a single report alleging that Trump was working with the Russians.  I looked at that.  I didn’t watch it live, I was on the way to the golf course.  I looked at it later.  I said, “Are you kidding me?”  This is the same reporter who had not heard that Obama had told the Russians to tell Vladimir to wait, he’ll be more flexible after the election.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My point yesterday about is it reasonable to think that Obama could indeed have wiretapped Trump and his campaign, given other aspects of the investigation we’ve been hearing. We know that Trump’s under investigation. We know that some of his peeps are under investigation supposedly ’cause of collusion with the Russians. So we know there was an investigation going on.

Is it unreasonable or reasonable to think that Trump could have been wiretapped too? People were saying, “That’s outrageous! Trump’s off his rocker.” No, no. It’s entirely reasonable if everybody — and Trump’s phone calls have been transcribed and broadcast and reported in the media. So they played that segment — in fact, here it is — and they asked Newt to react to it.

RUSH ARCHIVE: There has been a sabotage effort to undermine Trump and his administration since the election. … t’s totally reasonable to believe that something like this could be happening. It would be unreasonable to think that this is crazy, unreasonable to think that this is absurd, unreasonable to think that this is nothing more than a big batch of conspiracy theories stitched together for whatever purpose.

RUSH: Bill Hemmer played that for Newt Gingrich today on America’s Newsroom, and he said, “Okay, flip Limbaugh’s logic around. Is it reasonable to think that actually this is crazy?”

GINGRICH: I think if you’re a left-winger and you believe that everything Trump does is wrong, you can believe that. But if you look at the unending process of leaks — by the way, all of them breaking the law. You have a New York Times columnist actively calling on IRS agents to break the law and leak President Trump’s taxes. The left has gone crazy since the election. There’s this whole model right now that anything goes on the left, and then they want the rest of us to believe that they’re reasonable.

RUSH: Right. And then here’s Mike Pence. He was on Brian Kilmeade’s Fox News Radio show this morning, and they were talking about Trump’s tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower, and Pence said this…

PENCE: I think the president’s tweet speaks for itself. He’s expressed himself on it, and, you know, we’re very pleased that the congressional committees have made it clear that they will look into that matter just as they’re looking into every aspect it.

RUSH: See, this is why it’s a brilliant thing that Trump did, whether he knew it or not, ’cause it’s gonna come back and bite them. We just had a caller saying, “Look, why don’t we play the game the way they do? They say, no evidence. That means we have to investigate it. The seriousness of the charge.”

Well, you know what? You can’t get a more serious charge than a sitting president wiretapped a presidential campaign. You can’t get a more serious charge. And by the Democrats’ own definition that mandates an investigation. And Congress said they’ll do it. They’re gonna fold Trump’s allegation into the rest of this. And now the Democrats are walking it back, “There wasn’t any investigation, there wasn’t any investigation, what do you mean? Where are you getting this?”

It’s like Katy Tur, the infobabe on NBC. She’s on Meet the Press Sunday. She said she’s not aware of any news agency alleging that there was collusion between Trump and the Russians. I saw that, and I said, “What is it, does she really not know,” which is the entirely possible. I think journalists are some of the most ill-educated people. I don’t even think they’re educated. They’re indoctrinated. They know one side of things and they have no curiosity about anything else.

She’s also the infobabe who did not know that Obama was overheard on an open mic telling Dmitry Medvedev in 2012, Putin’s second in command; he’s the president of the Russian Federation, said (paraphrasing), “You tell Vladimir that I’ll have much more flexibility in getting rid of our nukes here after I’m reelected.” She didn’t know that had happened. How do you not know that? Well, NBC didn’t report it. CBS didn’t report it. ABC didn’t report it. The New York Times didn’t report it.

There’s no way she would know it. Yet it happened, and they don’t know it. And now she’s out there saying there’s no new organization that’s ever alleged collusion between Trump and the Russians. She was dead serious. And her own network is reporting that. Everybody else in the Drive-Bys is reporting that.

[objectivist1]

NYT Reporter Who Said Trump was Wiretapped Now Says Trump's Wiretapping Claims Are Unfounded

Because "the truth is more important now than it was in January."

3.7.2017  News   M.J. Randolph


Well, this is awkward. 

This weekend, President Donald Trump made a claim (via Twitter, natch) that President Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower during the Presidential election. Though Obama administration officials emphatically deny this surveillance happened, the controversy has once again divided the nation down partisan lines.

On Saturday, New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt helped write a story called, “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.”  This piece echoed the common liberal mantra that attempted to paint the new President as unhinged and unnecessarily alarming. However, Jeff Dunetz on LidBlog points out a rather inconvenient truth for the NYT reporter: on January 19 and 20, the same Michael S. Schmidt helped write an article that claimed members of the Trump team were being wiretapped and passed on the President.

"That’s right, the same NY Times reporter who was one of the sources for the President’s claim, said that there was no evidence for the claim," wrote .

He continued:

This is the ultimate in liberal media bias.  In January Michael S. Schmidt perpetuated the rumor that team Trump had Russian connections, and to support his point he said that Trump’s people were wiretapped. However when President Trump claimed his people were wiretapped, the same guy,  Michael S. Schmidt said there was no evidence.

Either the Times editors and Mr. Schmidt are trying to skew the story, or they are all suffering from a form of dementia and have no memory.

And the New York Times wonders why no one trusts them? Just for kicks, let's remember their Academy Award ceremony commercial called -- ahem -- "The Truth is More Important Now than Ever."


Maybe they should've called it "The Truth is More Important Now than in January."

[Crafty_Dog]

Sorry to nit pick, but Trump said HE was tapped, and the 1/19-20 article said his associates were.

=============================

Anyway, here is this-- the site is not always reliable, so caveat lector:

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/03/draft-report-attorney-general-lynch-signed-off-on-fisa-applications-to-wiretap-president-trump/

[ccp]

Yup .  This describes it is a nutshell:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/video/fmr-fbi-asst-director-wiretap-165708894.html

[Crafty_Dog]

Democrats Are Descending
Into a Kind of Madness
Amid Frenzy Over Trump
By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun | March 7, 2017
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The frenzy of the Never Trump movement becomes more demented every week. This last weekend, former national-intelligence director James Clapper (no friend of Donald Trump) said that there had been no evidence of any collusion between Trump people and any Russians when, after months of investigating, he left office with the old administration 45 days ago.
Click Image to Enlarge

When asked by Chuck Todd of NBC at what point the absence of fire would establish that there was no fire and only smoke, he acknowledged that that was a “good question.” Republican members of the congressional intelligence committees repeatedly confirm that there is “no evidence” that has been brought forward of any such collusion.

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Delaware, may have signaled the next retreat for the Democratic elected and press character-assassination squads by telling Chris Wallace on the weekend that, while nothing has turned up so far, he thought it would in Mr. Trump’s tax returns. This is what the Democrats are reduced to: a confident assertion that conclusive evidence of pre-election collusion between Messrs. Trump and Putin will be clear in the president’s tax returns.

They are mad. This is the madness that caused Elizabeth Warren to promise personal vengeance on every one of her 52 colleagues who confirmed Jeff Sessions as attorney general; that caused Chuck Schumer to burst into tears and claim that the Statue of Liberty was weeping, too, over the migrant order.

And it was this same lunacy, of which the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States is the only known cause, that made Mr. Schumer demand that Mr. Sessions resign (even though Mr. Sessions’s explanation of his answer about meeting the Russian ambassador is perfectly plausible) and that caused Nancy Pelosi to go the distance and demand that TMr. rump resign.

I have a better idea: Why don’t they resign? They are malignant, shopworn, hyper-partisan blowhards, embarrassments to their surroundings and instrumental in dragging respect for the Congress into single figures in the polls. (It has risen a bit under Republican leadership.)

There is absolutely nothing to the Russian story. It began with Wolf Blitzer’s indulgence in the Golden Shower affair, in which he had Carl Bernstein and CNN higher-ups confirm what a diligently enterprising bit of journalism it was to pick up what no other press outlet would — the fatuous story from BuzzFeed that Mr. Trump had arranged for a group of prostitutes to urinate in a hotel bed in Moscow because the Obamas once slept there.

A couple of Trump aides had had some dealings in Russia years ago, when U.S.–Russian commercial contacts were officially encouraged under the Great Obama-Biden Reset. Onetime Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had worked with Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, before he became the Putin entry in Ukraine politics and before Mr. Manafort knew Mr. Trump.

[Crafty_Dog]

second post:

Internet tech stuff is not my forte, but as best as I can tell, with the Vault 7 Wikileaks we learn that the CIA has the hacking programs that the Russians use and can use them to imitate the Russians-- and how is it that we are told that the CIA knows it was the Russians who hacked Podesta and the DNC? By the programs that were used.

What a curious coincidence!

[DougMacG]

Internet tech stuff is not my forte, but as best as I can tell, with the Vault 7 Wikileaks we learn that the CIA has the hacking programs that the Russians use and can use them to imitate the Russians-- and how is it that we are told that the CIA knows it was the Russians who hacked Podesta and the DNC? By the programs that were used.
What a curious coincidence!

What we really know about all this is - nothing.  Could be the Russians.  Could be others trying to implicate the Russians.

Podesta technically was not hacked; he was tricked.  He gave up his log in information voluntary.  That could have been committed by a Russian intelligence mastermind - or a 5th grader here.

The election itself was not hacked in the sense of voting machines and tabulations.  Much of what is said and written about Russian involvement is aimed at making it sound bigger than it was.

Content learned was mostly, already under subpoena.  What was supposed to come to light, came to light.

We got a few extra tidbits from hackers, such as the 'journalists' and DNC rigging the debates in favor of Hillary.  The biggest lesson is stop cheating.  Your emails are never secure.

Wikileaks denies that leaks came from the Kremlin.  Strangely, they have more credibility than the CIA, the DNI and those leaking inside our agencies, never-Trumpers on the right and left.

The leaks on Flynn were felonies committed by dozens of high level intelligence 'professionals' who were acting illegally, also unprofessionally.  Does that weaken their credibility or reputation for accuracy or non-bias?  Yes.

Dems called the best American intelligence worthless and political when it suited their purposes to say that, cf. Iraq WMD.  If true, why is it outrageous to question anonymous assertions of the intelligence community now.

On FISA, Clapper offered us the non-denial denial.  No one at Trump Tower was the "target" of an investigation.  That tells us nothing about whether Trump's wires were tapped by the Obama administration.  

For context, former AG Eric Holder was "exonerated" for Fast and Furious because he 'credibly' had no idea what was happening in his own department.  What Clapper or Obama had no knowledge of has no positive correlation with truth.  Clapper and Obama also famously found no connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and Islam.  After Benghazi, the same administration intentionally chose the official who knew the least to tell [the opposite of] what they knew.

Add to all that, Trump has his own loose association with the truth.  He owns Trump Tower, so to him, wire tapping of his campaign or administration is a wire tap of him.  He makes some statements out of ignorance and some out of clever gamesmanship and strategery.  It is not easy (or possible) to know which is happening at any particular time.  

For my money, this is a shiny object on both sides.  Yes, Pres Obama might have committed the most cynical political crime in our nation's history with the wiretap of a political opponent.  If not in this case, he still holds that title for IRS targeting of his political opponents.  And no one cared.

[G M]

"Add to all that, Trump has his own loose association with the truth.  He owns Trump Tower, so to him, wire tapping of his campaign or administration is a wire tap of him.  He makes some statements out of ignorance and some out of clever gamesmanship and strategery.  It is not easy (or possible) to know which is happening at any particular time. 

For my money, this is a shiny object on both sides.  Yes, Pres Obama might have committed the most cynical political crime in our nation's history with the wiretap of a political opponent.  If not in this case, he still holds that title for IRS targeting of his political opponents.  And no one cared."

Very well said.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://spectator.org/all-roads-lead-back-to-brennan/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/senate-intel-leaders-feinstein-and-grassley-grim-and-silent-after-trump-russia-briefings-with-comey/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/europe/trump-britain-obama-wiretap-gchq.html?emc=edit_na_20170317&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta

[Crafty_Dog]

Second post of day

This is deserving of headline coverage. It should be the final nail in the coffin of Clinonista-Pravda libels about Trump collusion with the Russians:

http://www.nbcnews.com/…/clinton-ally-says-smoke-no-fire-no…

For those of imperfect memory, remember that Morrell was the CIA interface with Hillary and the State Department on the lying "talking points" in the immediate aftermath of Benghazi.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/324322-flynn-worked-for-multiple-russian-firms

[ccp]

Flynn was bribed by multiple Russian firms but for exactly what purpose(s) is unclear .   May be just to open some doors to other influential people or to have him introduce them to business connections for networking purposes but here is where it gets murky.

 I don't see any other way to interpret Crafty's post above but as bribes (for whatever reasons).  This does not mean that Flynn was doing anything other then taking some quick cash for easy speaking engagements or anything more then just that but

what's worse he appeared to lie about it. 

My nephew in the army had misgivings about him.  I  can see why now.


This seems different then Russians investing in a Trump golf course or building.   Their oligarchs have more money then they can dream about spending..  So they invest with a winning American business man.  For me that is not a big deal.

[Crafty_Dog]

Concur.

[Crafty_Dog]

From three days ago:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/03/16/andrew-napolitano-did-obama-spy-on-trump.html

[ccp]

The Judge has taken heat for this theory.

I like him a lot and his opinions are always quite good in my HO.

I was a bit surprised when he came out with this theory similar to Mark Levin's conclusion that all the events we have been witnessing appear to be quite consistent with a pattern  that makes one wonder VERY reasonably that something is going on and it is also hard to believe Brock is not privy.

That said no one expects there to ever be found a smoking gun that would link Brock to this.  Therefore we have the hysteria from the LEFT turning this into another "crazy" theory like "birther "

and getting away with it and the useful idiots like McCain who go along with the LEft making it worse

[ccp]

Whether or not Trump was eavesdropped on by OBama or his warriors we will NEVER know.   The only way we could would be if someone directly involved came forward and admitted it AND offered up some hard core evidence to back it up (lest he/she be tarred and feathered by the entire LEFT.  And we know that would not happen.  At that high level there is not going to be any hardcore evidence, everyone would deny it (and get rewarded with jobs, board appointments , get their kids into Columbia, their spouse get a nice juicy grant, etc.

The normally very careful Judge went out on a limb and the entire apparatus of the LEFT and now thanks to Trump's bashing of our intelligence divisions and thus the wrath of them too Fox is forced to make the Judge eat his words.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/fox-pulls-napolitano-air-trump-report-023807823--politics.html

That's a $400K/yr gig the Judge now lost.

And the worst part of it is, I believe the Judge and  Not everyone else who is denying it.
 Obama could absolutely be part of and eaves dropping conspiracy that obviously exists to get rid of Trump.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/new-documents-say-trump-aide-hid-payments-from-pro-moscow-ukraine-party/2017/03/21/92ec85f2-0e11-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?utm_term=.f58361f099e9&wpisrc=nl_&wpmm=1

[Crafty_Dog]

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/325346-fbi-has-info-suggesting-coordination-between-trump-aides-russia