Now here is a collusion list that is sure to inspire massive
lying deflection with such beginning phrases as “But Trump did …”
Have you noticed that NOT one scintilla of corroborated
evidence has been produced to suggest that President Trump colluded with Russia
to win the 2016? My God! It’s 2018 and the Dems pulling all the stops and lies
to remove the President from Office.
AND YET, there is a huge (or YUGE) amount of public
information of not only collusion but also corruption within the Obama/Crooked
Hillary camp to steal the 2016 election or (in the blessed event that won Trump
won) impeach the President.
Willis L. Krumholz writing for The Federalist
illustrates a clear picture of actions that should lead to criminal
prosecution.
JRH 6/6/18
************************
8 Times Obama’s Intelligence Agencies Set People Up To
Fabricate The Russia Story
These events should anger any red-blooded American who
believes in representative democracy and the importance of the rule of law.
JUNE 6, 2018
The intelligence bureaucracies spied
on the Donald Trump campaign: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
warrants were granted because of a Hillary Clinton-funded and unverified
document, national-security letters were issued to allow warrantless spying,
and the unprecedented but not-illegal-per-se unmasking of Trump officials’
conversations with non-U.S. persons was shockingly routine.
Yet the news of a CIA-connected human source operating as
far back as April or May of 2016 is about more than just
spying. It is the latest example in what now looks to be a long
line of attempted setups by the Clinton team, many times aided and abetted by
our intelligence bureaucracies.
These events should anger any red blooded American who
believes in representative democracy and the importance of the rule of
law. Let’s review eight examples.
1. CIA And FBI ‘Human Intelligence’
We’ve just learned about Stefan
Halper, a CIA-connected Cambridge
professor who — working for the FBI — contacted Trump advisers Carter Page,
George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis during the 2016 election, to investigate
what they might know about suspicions of collusion with Russia. Former Trump
campaign aide Michael
Caputo has claimed that he was approached by an unknown second
U.S. intelligence community asset in early May of 2016.
The FBI says that the Russia investigation began in July,
because of something Papadopoulos said to an Australian diplomat in May.
Papadopoulos had supposedly
told the Australian diplomat something about Russia having information that
“could be damaging” to Clinton. Papadopoulos allegedly heard this from Joseph
Mifsud, a Maltese-born professor who allegedly claimed to have close ties with
Russia.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team charged Papadopoulos
— unconvincingly —
with lying to investigators, because Papadopoulos said his contacts with Mifsud
began before he was on the Trump campaign. Actually, the contacts started after
he “learned he would be a foreign policy advisor for the campaign,” but before
the campaign made a public announcement that he was to be an advisor.
Mifsud is strangely now in hiding, possibly fearing for his
life. Lee Smith details Mifsud’s
ties to Western intelligence agencies, and Margot Cleveland suspects Mifsud
may have been a U.S. intelligence plant along with Halper.
2. The Trump Tower Meeting
Whenever Democrats or David French types talk about Trump
and Russia collusion they look to the Trump Tower meeting as definitive proof.
There are several problems with that. First, no presidential campaign in
American history would pass up the chance of hearing evidence of crimes being
committed by their opponent, no matter the source. In fact, some would say
you’re doing the country a favor if you let everyone know that your opponent is
subject to blackmail from a not-so-friendly foreign power (just don’t have your
son and son-in-law sit in on the meeting).
More problematic is that Glenn Simpson — head of Fusion GPS,
the firm being paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to prove (or create)
ties between Trump and Russia — met with the two Russians who attended the
Trump Tower meeting both before and after the meeting. Simpson’s
excuse for doing so? Because he was working with the two Russians on a
different issue, the repeal of the anti-Kremlin Magnitsky Act.
In other words, at the very least, the firm that created the
dossier for Clinton and the DNC — using Russian intelligence sources — was the
same firm that was working with the Kremlin to repeal a law
passed by Congress because Putin’s thugs beat an innocent man to death in
Russian prison. At most, this was yet another setup.
3. Mike Flynn And The Logan Act
During the 2016 campaign, Democrats howled about the need to
prosecute Trump campaign officials under an obscure 1799 law called the Logan Act. Byron
York has documented that
this was the pretext Obama-appointed former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates
used to unmask former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s side of
highly-appropriate phone conversations with the Russian ambassador that
occurred during the transition period, and then send FBI agents to interview
Flynn about those conversations.
Although the FBI has
tried to cover this up, we now know that the agents who interviewed
Flynn — including the disgraced and hugely anti-Trump Peter Strzok — didn’t
believe that Flynn had lied. Nevertheless, Mueller’s team
charged Flynn with lying to the FBI. After Mueller’s charge had nearly
bankrupted Flynn, and after Mueller threatened to go after Flynn’s son, Flynn
pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
4. Andrew McCabe Sets Up Reince Priebus
After an intelligence briefing at the White House in early
2017, former FBI number two Andrew McCabe asked
to meet privately with former White House Chief of Staff
Reince Priebus. A story had just dropped — anonymously sourced from multiple
intelligence community officials — that Trump aides had multiple contacts with
Russian intelligence during the election.
McCabe wanted to tell Priebus that the FBI didn’t think the
story was true. Of course, Priebus asked McCabe if the FBI could publicly say
just that. McCabe said he would have to check. But former FBI Director James
Comey called Priebus to say that the FBI couldn’t publicly shoot down the
story.
Days later, the “breaking news” on CNN was that the White
House had tried to pressure the FBI into batting down the reports on supposed
ties between Trump and Russia. So not only was the White House supposedly
colluding, now there were allegations of obstruction of justice.
5. Brennan Shops Dossier To Harry Reid
Former CIA Director John Brennan, who may have been the U.S.
intelligence official to first
push an investigation into the Trump campaign, briefed
then-Sen. Harry Reid on the Clinton-funded dossier in August 2016.
The briefing did two things: First, it lent some legitimacy
to the dossier, and second, it got Reid to pressure the FBI to not drop the
investigation. The briefing had the added bonus of allowing Reid to speak
publicly about Trump’s ties to Russia, as if he had just gained access to
groundbreaking proof of collusion, which was of course covered by the media.
6. Comey And Clapper Give CNN A Reason To Publish The
Dossier
Comey, at the behest of former Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, briefed Trump on one of the allegations in the
dossier, but not on the main allegation in the dossier, who had funded the
dossier, or how that dossier was being used by the FBI. Nevertheless, this
briefing looks like one more setup,
meant to allow CNN to report on the existence of the dossier as if it were
highly verified and being seriously examined by U.S. intelligence community
officials.
Clapper then leaked information
about the dossier and the briefings to CNN, and later looks to have lied about
those leaks to Congress. Amazingly, Clapper has previously lied to Congress.
Clapper now works for CNN.
7. The Jeff Sessions Recusal
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the
Russia investigation after anonymous intelligence community leaks about his
contacts with Russians. Specifically, Sessions — as a senator — met with former
Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak in his D.C. office. In another
meeting, Sessions gave a speech and a gaggle of diplomats — including Kislyak —
talked with him for several minutes as he was coming off the stage.
The idea behind the unnecessary recusal
was that somehow Sessions had misrepresented these contacts to former Sen. Al
Franken. Actually,
Franken — referring to one of many CNN stories sourced by anonymous officials
about supposed Trump and Russia collusion — had clearly asked about whether
Sessions had colluded with any Russians during the campaign, not whether
Sessions had ever met any Russians.
8. Rosenstein Recommends Comey Firing, Appoints Special
Counsel
But with Jeff Sessions out of the way, Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein became the acting attorney general for all things Russia-investigation-related.
Rosenstein then recommended Comey’s
firing, and then — overseeing the investigation that stemmed from that firing —
appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel. Mueller, a former FBI Director,
happened to be a close associate of Comey and Rosenstein, and would surely want
to protect the interests of the FBI and the Justice Department.
Taken together, these setups indicate a massive effort to
aid the Clinton campaign before the election.
After all, the entire theory of Trump-Russia collusion originated
with the Clinton campaign in the lead-up to the Democrat
National Convention, when it became clear that the DNC had experienced a
document theft. That document theft was highly embarrassing to Clinton and the
DNC, as it revealed that the DNC had been systematically stacking the deck
against Bernie Sanders. The immediate goal, then, was to both distract from the
mistreatment of Bernie, and completely peel the GOP national security
establishment away from Trump. The Clinton campaign was successful in both of
these efforts.
Later, during the general election, whenever Hillary’s
misdeeds came up, Clinton responded by pointing to Trump’s nefarious ties with
Russia. Distasteful as it may seem, this was Machiavellian politics 101. Any
focus group of voters would have told the Clinton people that Hillary was the
steady hand, but that they had ethical concerns about her, and also sought a
change from the status quo. The way to counteract this reluctance was to paint
Hillary’s opponent as ethically challenged, too, and paint his alternative to
the status quo as downright dangerous. (You might say that Trump was an easy
target here, but look what the Obama-campaign did to Romney.)
Dirty tricks are of course not new to American politics. But
the apparent involvement of the U.S. intelligence community in these setups is
deeply troubling. Democrats, intelligence bureaucrats, and the media have told
us that the investigation started with Page. When that fell apart, they said
the investigation started with Papadopoulos. Now,
the Papadopoulos origination story is falling
apart too.
It now looks like the corrupt and highly partisan
upper-echelon of the U.S. intelligence community started their preliminary
investigation as soon as the Clinton people — in the run-up to the Democratic
convention — began claiming
that there were ties between Trump and Russia. During this same
time, Clinton and the DNC paid Fusion GPS, which hired Chris Steele to dig
up ties between Trump and Russia.
This is nothing more than prosecutorial
point and shoot, where corrupt big-government politicians send the
corrupt and sympathetic federal bureaucracy after their political enemies. It’s
no different than what happened with Lois Lerner at the Internal Revenue
Service. Democrats gave speeches and sent official letters, Obama implied he
wanted action, and dutiful bureaucrats did the rest.
With the intelligence agencies on board, legitimacy was lent
to the Hillary Clinton campaign’s wild claims. All the media had to do in the
weeks before Election Day was to frantically report that Trump’s campaign was
being investigated, and that a document containing allegations of Trump-Russia
ties (the “dossier”) was being seriously looked into by intelligence officials.
That fed back to the voters, and certainly made many feel a little bit better
about voting for Clinton, or not voting for Trump.
After the election, it has been all about C.Y.A., because
these corrupt bureaucrats leading these intelligence bureaucracies never
imagined Trump would win. Here, ladies and gentleman, is your real election
interference and collusion: between the massive, all-powerful and unaccountable
intelligence bureaucracies, the media, the Obama administration, and the
Clinton campaign.
____________________
Willis L. Krumholz is a fellow
at Defense Priorities. He holds a JD and MBA degree from the University of St.
Thomas, and works in the financial services industry. The views expressed are
those of the author only. You can follow Willis on Twitter @WillKrumholz.
Copyright © 2018 The Federalist, a wholly
independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved.
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