On CNN, former NCI Director James Clapper defended the Obama administration’s spying on their political opposition during the election.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: The 2017 assessment that the President says he now agrees with, that was done while you and then NCI Director John Brennan were still in office. So, how can we reconcile the President attacking you, but apparently after a very long time finally, allegedly saying — or saying he allegedly agrees with the product of the intelligence community that you, yourself oversaw?
JAMES CLAPPER: Yes, well, this is — yes, as we’ve come to know the President, he is not a stalwart for
President Obama is responsible for that, and it was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place. I think it’s an important point when it comes to critiquing President Obama.
Brennan in 2016 reached out to foreign intel services (British & Australian) to surveil/entrap Trump aides and may well have also reverse-targeted Americans, under the guise of monitoring foreign nationals, in order to build a case of so-called collusion.”
Steele is a foreign national. So are many of the Russian sources he claims he had contacted to solicit dirt on Trump and his camp. The CIA, along with FBI, was used to facilitate surveillance of Trump’s camp through the use of foreign nationals during the 2016 campaign.
“If there is a crime of foreign collusion—a conspiracy of U.S. officials to use foreigners to interfere with an American election—then Brennan’s efforts are the textbook example.”
Deborah Bender says
Barack Obama is the only President in history that ever flew in air force all over the country campaigning for a candidate! He was a Pos joke of a President and I hope he gets whats coming to him!
Jack Trump says
The Enemy Within. There is no excuse for what these people have done, “IF appearances are accurate”. The information is coming out slowly because The Fake News Press is helping to keep it private. So many of the press previously believing the lies that smeared The Trump candidacy. Investigative Journalism being seduced by the easy misdirection of a false big scoop. All of “The Swamp’s Deep State” looking the other way because they didn’t want an outsider elected President. It certainly does appear that Our Intelligence Agencies were directed by the leaders of those agencies, to “discover a conspiracy” where none existed. The dossier, bought and paid for by Trump’s opposition. Purchased with illegally obtained Clinton Foundation money when she sold favors and access to the office of The Secretary of State. That dossier, used to mislead and misdirect judges of the FISA system to obtain warrants to further the entire illegal search of Mr. Trump and his associates. These bad actors all knew they were uncovering nothing and just continued with the process over and over and have misdirected the entire country for 3 years, smearing and destroying anyone in their path. All the while conspiring to overthrow The Office of The President with manufactured and false accusations; accusing him of treason, a crime punishable by death.
The Enemy within. The Deep State Swamp. Misusing their offices, the power of those offices, and the privileges of those offices, to misinform and misdirect, the entire population of these United States, and use their offices to attempt to kill the sitting President of The United States by abusing the most sacred laws of this country.
We are currently at a new low for the political process of this country. Personally, I do not see how these bad actors can be forgiven. I certainly hope their misdirections will not allow them to escape because of any statute of limitations laws. I believe their crimes need to be SERIOUSLY PUNISHED to try to assure this cannot and will not ever happen again.
A friend says
Excellent post Jack! You’ve defined the situation perfectly!
Boot Lamb says
What are We The People going to do about it?
It appears our elected officials are being neutered when they get to Washington, Richmond, Eastville, or Accomac. It has been going on for so long that we think it is normal behavior from elected officials.
anthony sacco says
you are absolutely right; so what do we do, take up arms against those that are over throwing our way of life, our Government, our liberties and have a gang of tugs like the Clintons run our country, I say “give me back my constitution or let me die fighting for it”.
I fought in World War 2 for just that and I’ll continue to fight at age 92 for what my America means to me.
Jack Trump says
Mr. Sacco, it is an honor Sir, to know that someone my Dad’s age ( if he were still with us) agrees with how he helped me learn to think. THANK YOU for that, and for your service.
I hear what you’re saying about Marching on Washington, but I don’t think we’re there yet. I think we got lucky and enough of us listened to Trump and checked the box for him. He may be flawed, but let he whom is w/o flaws cast the 1st stone, eh ?
You may have seen me write before telling folks to read the book “The Russian Hoax” by Greg Jarrett. I say it again. Just take your B.P. medicine before you do. Greg is a constitutional lawyer who lays all this out like a Thanksgiving Day Dinner. He knows who did what, and who in what position turned their back to keep the crime from being prosecuted, which of course is another crime. As you well know, in D.C. the bigger crime is often the coverup, rather than the original crime.
I am also PRAYING that our new Attorney General really is a no B.S. kinda guy, and he is going to look into many, or all of these problems. He is not going to be swayed or distracted by the filth coming out of the democrat leadership. I believe Barr will follow the rule of law with this Mueller report. He will release what info he can, and he will hold back what he has to by law.
THAT is his first step. I believe, and I pray, that A.G. Barr has given us his assurances that any broken laws he uncovers, he plans to pursue. As I like to say, I could be wrong for the first time in my life, but I think I am reading into Barr, and he is a man of few words. His actions are everything, and they are based in his upbringing and visible in his opinions. He does not hide them. He speaks his mind. His Wikipedia bio is interesting to say the least. After all, how many international bagpipe competitors do we know ?
In closing, there are several small committees in Congress that are looking into the validity of claims that The Clinton Campaign, Foundation, and democrat collusion with Russians and “The Dossier”, and those findings are planned to be handed over to Mr. Barr. We hear very little of this as The Fake News Press has a different agenda. As A.G. Barr will be the one to decide whether or not unsecured servers, thousands of bleached out e mails, in that server, everyone in the White House knowing it the server was being used and they illegally piled right in, the hammered blackberries, deliberate leaks of confidential and secure info to the press, meetings in planes on the tarmac, all of the upper levels of the democrat party KNOWING how the dossier was produced AND that it was all a farce, AND that it contained nothing, and they all still all signed off of the lying by omission and obtaining illegally FISA warrants; and on and on and on………I think the democrat party is about to face a really teed off A.G, and the full strength and weight of Lady Justice. I pray that I am correct, and I am glad we are not Venezuela. It appears as though those “regular folks” are not allowed to own guns.
Paul Plante says
The real enemy, anthony sacco, is stupidity and abject ignorance.
How do you fight either when they now are so entrenched in American society as they are?
You have a young generation in this country who are being promised a free ride, and they won’t settle for less as we see from this excerpt from the MSNBC Town Hall on 03/29/19:
BOB INGLIS, FRM. CONGRESSMAN, (R-SC): You can’t do in a single congress the entire Green New Deal, it is literally impossible with the number of committee references that you would have in the course of that.
Can we come back maybe to universal basic income a little bit later?
CROWD: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moron!.
end quotes
There is the future staring you in the face, anthony sacco.
How do you fight that?
Ray Otton says
It’s worse than ignorance.
The problem is, people have been educated just enough to believe what they’ve been taught but not enough to question what they’ve been taught.
Paul Plante says
I think, Mr. Otton, that they are being taught to not question.
Consider this following language being beamed out to and carried by the youth of America from something that calls itself the Sunrise Movement, to wit:
If we stop wasting billions in taxpayer money giving handouts to oil and gas CEOs, we can halt climate change and create tens of millions of jobs by upgrading America’s outdated infrastructure.
We could enter a new age of prosperity and health and bring forward the people this country has left behind.
But a greedy few are driving us toward catastrophe.
This brighter future is being held hostage by a handful of wealthy oil and gas executives who will stop at nothing to squeeze the last bit of money out of the earth.
They’ve gotten away with it by lying to the public and buying off politicians of both parties to stall progress and secure massive giveaways for themselves.
Their incredible wealth means their families will be fine, but the rest of us won’t.
end quotes
Is that a message which encourages one to think?
Or does it demand blind, unthinking acceptance?
Because if you think about it, it is bull****, especially the part about them “halting” climate change, which implies they are vested with the power and authority over nature to literally, halt it in its tracks, given that it is nature that provides climate, not some misguided cult like the Sunrise Movement, and yet, outside of the CCM, despite that being a public position, that premise that the Sunrise Movement cult can halt climate change, is not being questioned, and to the contrary, is being taken as fact.
So it seems to me that what they want is blind acceptance – do not question the voice of authority!
Ray Otton says
I’ll rest easy if I can get my grand kids to question their government with the same alacrity that they question me.
Stuart Bell says
When Obama, or whatever his real name is, loses the protection of the National Security Letter that has protected him from background investigations, he’ll find himself in front of a military court, facing a life in prison.
Yes, Barry Soetoro will find himself in a prison’s general population, and there he’ll live Happily Ever After!
Paul Plante says
How the horse**** does flow both profusely and freely in here, referring to the contents of the original post, not the replies.
“Clappy” Clapper, in word, lacks credibility.
Who believes a word that political hack dude says?
And that takes us to an article in the Washington Post entitled “Attorney general says he believes ‘spying did occur’ in campaign probe of Trump associates” by Devlin Barrett and Karoun Demirjian on 10 April 2019, as follows:
Attorney General William P. Barr said Wednesday he thought “spying” on a political campaign occurred in the course of intelligence agencies’ investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election — a startling assertion by the nation’s top law enforcement official.
end quotes
Now, why would that be a “startling” (very surprising, astonishing, or remarkable; synonyms: astonishing, amazing, unexpected, unforeseen, staggering, shocking, stunning) assertion?
Are we pretending here that Hussein Obama would not use his “intelligence” services, whose heads seemed more loyal to the Democratic Party than the United States of America, to spy on someone challenging his hand-picked successor to carry on his legacy, as we see from the NBC News article “President Obama Heaps Praise on Hillary Clinton at DNC” by Alexandra Jaffe on July 27, 2016, to wit:
President Barack Obama offered an optimistic vision of the country and a strong indictment of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Wednesday night in a speech that also cast Hillary Clinton as the best candidate to carry on his legacy and complete his unfinished business.
end quotes
How does that old saying go – means, motive, opportunity?
Getting back to that NBC News article, which forms the backdrop for all that came after, including any and all spying on Trump, we have:
It was a speech aimed at both defending his legacy and “passing the baton” to Clinton, while unifying Democrats by acknowledging liberal followers of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the party’s presidential runner-up, were correct in their frustrations that there was more work to be done.
Obama vouched for Clinton in personal terms, telling a cheering crowd that because of his work with her as secretary of state “I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”
end quotes
Thus, at any cost, it is essential to keep Trump out, and besides, who is going to know, which takes us back to NBC News, as follows:
In contrast, Obama challenged many of Trump’s key campaign pitches.
The GOP nominee, Obama said, is “not really a plans guy.”
“Not really a facts guy, either.”
“He calls himself a business guy, which is true, but I have to say, I know plenty of businessmen and women who’ve achieved success without leaving a trail of lawsuits, and unpaid workers, and people feeling like they got cheated.”
end quotes
And my goodness, boys, we have to do everything we can possibly do to keep him out of the White House, which takes us back to the Washington Post article as follows:
Barr’s surprising comments echo attacks President Trump has made against the FBI, and though the attorney general later made clear he was concerned about the legal basis for surveilling political figures, his words provide fresh ammunition to those who have branded the Russia investigation an illegitimate attempt to derail Trump’s presidency.
At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Barr was asked about his statement a day earlier that he would review how the FBI launched the counterintelligence investigation that sought to determine whether Trump’s associates were interacting with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”
“It’s a big deal,” said Barr, noting that there are long-held rules to prevent intelligence agencies from collecting information on domestic political figures.
end quotes
Yes, people, there are so-called rules, because we have been down this road before, which takes us back to the Washington Post, as follows:
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) asked: “You’re not suggesting that spying occurred?”
Barr answered: “I think spying did occur, yes.”
“I think spying did occur.”
He added, though, that the key question is whether law enforcement officials had a proper legal justification to open such an investigation and conduct intelligence-gathering.
“I need to explore that.”
“. . . I want to say that I am reviewing this.”
“I haven’t set up a team yet,” Barr added.
“I also want to make clear this is not launching an investigation of the FBI.”
“Frankly, to the extent that there were any issues at the FBI, I do not view it as a problem that’s endemic to the FBI.”
“I think there was probably a failure among a group of leaders there in the upper echelon.”
end quotes
And there is a good place to pause for the moment, while concluding this segment of REAL WEIRD TALES FROM WASHINGTON, D.C., by borrowing from John Lennon, as follows:
We’re playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla
Chanting the Mantra peace on earth
We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil
Doing the mind guerrilla
So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future out of the now
You just can’t beat on those mind guerrillas
Absolute elsewhere in the stones of your mind
Yeah we’re playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time
Yes is the answer and you know that for sure
Yes is surrender
You got to let it, you gotta let it go
So keep on playing those mind games together
Millions of mind guerrillas
Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel
Keep on playing those mind games forever
Raising the spirit of peace and love