…….and we know not only was Carter Page illegally wire tapped...all his communications with other campaign staff or personal electronics was illegally surveilled.
The FISA court is not being supervised by Chief Justice Roberts-another GOP mistake made by Bush 43-it should be abolished and replaced by a system that actually has hearings to establish justification to conduct surveillance on foreign bad actors. The FISA Court process is corrupt.
Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 12 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests. This does not include the number of warrants that were modified by the FISA court. The FISA Court was advised in 2012 that 4 FBI contractors were illegally spying on GOPers and no action was taken by Chief Justice who is supposed to supervise these judges.
We also know Susan Rice was involved in numerous illegal unmasking of political opposition members: She used an email to herself to cover illegal action by Obama’s FBI and other intelligence agencies.
Ambassador Rice appears to have used this email to document a January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting between President Obama, former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates regarding Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. In particular, Ambassador Rice wrote:
“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book’. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”
Grassley and Graham were struck by the context and timing of this email, and sent a follow up letter to Ambassador Rice. The letter reads in part:
“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation. In addition, despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book.’”
Grassley and Graham have asked Ambassador Rice to answer a set of questions by February 22, 2018 so the committee may further assess the situation. The full text of their letter is below. https://www.judiciary.senate.
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FISA Database
There’s another piece I’d like to give you for the weekend that’s quite long and even farther into the weeds, but it really tells the story of what Admiral Rogers was dealing with. Here’s just a sample:
There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 to April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition. Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of intelligence abuse that was taking place.
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter makes sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.
Everything after March 9, 2016, was done to cover up the weaponizing of the FISA database. Spygate, Russia-gate, the Steele dossier…were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI director when this began.
If this sample is intriguing to you, I encourage you to read the whole thing, or at least the last part, under the subhead “How this all comes together in 2019.” This really is looking more and more like the scandal of our time — perhaps the greatest abuse of power in our history — so even if our country had to go through this farce of an “investigation” into Trump in order to find out about it, I’m actually tempted to say it was worth it.
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While the media was doing cartwheels to avoid contemplating just how awful Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report was for the FBI and the Obama administration, Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee was making his concern known. Actually having read the report (unlike the Democratic Party spokesmen masquerading as journalists), the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee said that the FBI had committed multiple abuses of power that endangered the rights of every American.
“Anyone who values fundamental civil liberties in the United States should be disgusted and terrified by what the inspector general uncovered in today’s report on the FBI’s spying on an American citizen,” Grassley said Tuesday. “That such abuse was carried out against a citizen working on a political campaign is just that much more disturbing. Not only did the FBI use highly-invasive surveillance tools that undermined the Fourth Amendment rights of an American, it also used a counterintelligence briefing with the campaign as an intelligence gathering operation without coordinating with other intelligence community officials.”
Hey, that sounds like the kind of stuff liberal Democrats used to say. Remember that? Remember when to be a liberal meant, yes, you were in favor of big government, but you were also highly skeptical of federal law enforcement, the tools of U.S. intelligence, and the potential for abusing those powers for the purpose of partisan gain? Gee, we wonder what happened to THAT sector of liberalism.
Apparently these beliefs are easily thrown overboard as long as the target is someone like Donald Trump.
“I began raising questions about the FBI’s reliance on Christopher Steele immediately after revelations of his involvement with the FBI’s Russia probe,” Grassley continued. “We now know that the FBI failed to disclose Steele’s credibility problems and political motivations when pushing the FISA Court to grant surveillance authority based largely on his research.
“On at least 17 separate instances, the FBI botched the FISA applications by neglecting to share exculpatory information with the officials who vetted the applications, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and simply presenting inaccurate information,” he continued. “The FBI’s job is to protect Americans, our democracy and our rights. Its actions have done great harm to the public trust and jeopardize the important work that rank-and-file agents do every day for our nation.”
It is extremely unfortunate that only Republicans can look at this report and see it for the damning indictment of the FBI that it is. Democrats are so busy latching on to the “no political bias” finding (which is the most dubious part of the whole report) that they’ve missed the important stuff.
We’re not surprised, of course. Just exasperated.
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