Intelligence pros morphed into partisan political activists in rush to defend Hunter Biden

 When Hunter Biden‘s laptop contents burst open in the conservative press in October, an influential Washington group rushed to the aid of his dad, now-presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden.

Retired U.S. intelligence officials became political activists, directly injecting their credentials into the presidential campaign. They signed an open letter asserting that text messages about Hunter Biden‘s cash flow from Ukraine and China, and how his father helped were a Russian plot.

There was no evidence of a Russia-laptop link, but the claim provided Democrats and the liberal media a counternarrative to ignore the entire scandalous storyline of Biden influence peddling.

“The politicization of the intelligence community, and IC retirees emboldened to pile on any anti-Trump movement, is a novel and dangerous development in American politics,” retired CIA clandestine officer Kent Clizbe told The Washington Times. “The genie’s out of the bottle.”

It was not the first time the intelligence community — retired and active members of the

The Attorney General cannot exonerate the CIA

 A little-known, little-discussed stepping stone on his journey to becoming President Trump’s Attorney General is the fact that Bill Barr worked for the CIA during his George Washington law school days......

The CIA is a large security-compartmented organization and by design often does not symbolically want the left hand to know what the right hand is doing.

For the AG to wander into that hall of mirrors and make a grand lasting statement about CIA staying in its lane and not “spying” on candidate and then-President Donald Trump is preposterous on the merits.

Before the historical record sets to concrete, for the AG to say that the CIA stayed in their lane, a penalty flag must be thrown that such a blanket denial by AG Barr is factually illogical, not supportable by even the recent the historic record, and should not be allowed to stand.

Documents don’t redact themselves.

Ever wonder how things get redacted?  

The  NSA is set up to basically gather every electronic message - whether it’s a phone call, a text message, email or a broadcast.  And it does that with every party clearly identified. 

So if General Flynn calls Kislyak his call is intercepted and recorded and at this point both parties are known.  So somebody sitting at a keyboard in an NSA installation knows the entire content of the phone call. 

But it’s a more complicated than that.  

There are literally thousands of individual with the proper security clearance within the Federal government – and it’s contractors – who have the actual ability to log on to the system that contains the information and read the communication in its raw form.  

To an amazingly large extent, the thing that keeps America’s spies honest is the honor system. 

  

But if procedures are followed, at some point, Flynn’s name is redacted, and he’s identified at American 1.  If that message gets sent to the top layers of the Federal government Flynn is still identified at American 1 until there’s a request to have his name unmasked. 

All anyone really needs to do is to task those guys who do the redacting to let them know when the target for your spying makes a call or sends a message.  If you have people who are less than honorable but have the proper security clearance those top Federal officials can be told what messages to unmask. 

The potential for abuse is breathtaking. Everything that political enemies said to each other, except in private in-person conversations or in snail mail letters, could have been spied upon.

And that’s how all the Flynn phone calls that were unmasked before he made the call to Kislyak.  It want’s the phone call, he was a target from the beginning.  He needed to be fired and ObamaGate was part of the conspiracy to get him out of the way. 

And you thought that spying on American citizens without a warrant was illegal?  It may be illegal, but it isn’t hard … at all.   

The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media

Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday’s issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds.

Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI’s gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.

If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that’s what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.

In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It’s brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.

Read the whole thing.

Of course the FBI spied on the Trump campaign

The way in which the enemies of Trump are torturing the language to deny their crimes is breathtaking.   And let there be no mistake, these are crimes by the Obama administration, not just the FBI.  The rot starts at the head but few people have the courage to tell the truth about Obama himself.

The great debate about whether the FBI spied on the Trump campaign continues. The question is why there is still any argument. The newly-released report from Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz shows that by any definition the FBI did indeed spy.

The proof is in the details of the report. In addition to the much-discussed wiretap of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Horowitz discussed the bureau's use of what is called a CHS -- a confidential human source, or, in more common terms, an informant, and a UCE -- an undercover employee, or a secret agent, to gather information from at least three targets in the Trump campaign. One was Page, another was George Papadopoulos, also a member of the advisory team, and the third was an unnamed "high-level Trump campaign official who was not a subject of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."

Horowitz described "multiple CHS operations undertaken by the Crossfire Hurricane team." There were "numerous CHS interactions with Page and Papadopoulos." There was the CHS contact with the high-level campaign official. And then there were "additional CHSs" who attempted to contact Papadopoulos but did not succeed.

All the meetings and conversations were secretly recorded by the FBI. Some were also monitored live, as they happened, by agents and supervisors. The Horowitz report quoted liberally from transcripts of the recordings.

The Trump campaign was "clearly spied upon," attorney general Bill Barr said in an interview with NBC Tuesday. "I mean, that's what electronic surveillance is. I think wiring people up to go in and talk to people and make recordings of their conversations is spying."

Obama Successfully Hunted Trump Campaign Aides Instead of Terrorists

Obama spent his time spying on his political opponents including Donald Trump instead of going after terrorists.

But in 2016, rather than successfully hunting down terrorists including Mueller’s captors, Obama and his top national security officials hunted down Trump campaign aides. Baghdadi’s death should be a reminder—an infuriating one at that—of how the Obama administration, particularly the CIA and FBI, squandered vital resources in service to a politically motivated investigation into Trump and his presidential campaign rather than focusing their efforts on the legitimate threats facing the country.

Trump alluded to that malfeasance in his press conference on Sunday. “When we use our intelligence correctly, what we can do is incredible,” Trump said while commending intelligence operatives who helped locate the ISIS madman. “When we waste our time with intelligence that hurts our country because we had poor leadership at the top, that’s not good.”

Comey's Under DoJ Scrutiny for Leading Probe While Misleading Trump

It looks like the whole thing was a set-up from the start.

Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon file a report with evidence indicating that Comey was misleading the president. Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent.

Two U.S. officials briefed on the inspector general’s investigation of possible FBI misconduct said Comey was essentially “running a covert operation against” the president, starting with a private “defensive briefing” he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration. They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a “counterintelligence assessment” of Trump during that January 2017 meeting in New York.

In addition to adding notes of his meetings and phone calls with Trump to the official FBI case file, Comey had an agent inside the White House who reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides, according to other officials familiar with the matter.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) is a law professor:

If Comey lied to Trump — who is, after all, a federal official — it’s prosecutable as a False Statements Act violation. It would be lovely irony if Comey wound up facing one of those, after engineering them for others.

FISA Court Says FBI Lied to Them, Illegally Spied

With Mueller out of business, Trump is going after the crooks who tried to overturn the 2016 election ... big time!

According to diGenova, and here is the tremendous breaking news: The FISA court has been looking into abuses of the FISA system and has communicated with the Justice Department about its findings. Their chief judge has already determined that for more than four years before the election of Donald Trump, there was an illegal spying operation (yes, spying — and, yes, illegal) going on by four FBI contractors to break the law to steal personal electronic information about American citizens and to use it against the Republican Party.

It might be good to go back and read that last sentence again, slowly, and let it sink in.
Bombshell Reports

The people heading up the Justice Department at that time — including Attorney General (AG) Sally Yates and Assistant AG John Carlin — apparently knew about it and lied to the FISA court. It seems that by the time they withheld the political origins of Christopher Steele’s Trump “dossier” to the court, it was already business as usual to deceive those judges, who no doubt have steam coming out of their ears....

Comey: 'We Did Not Spy---We Just Observed And Reported Secretly Without The Subject's Knowledge Or Consent'

From the Babylon Bee. America's Paper of Record ...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—After Attorney General Barr suggested that the FBI and other agencies spied on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, former FBI director James Comey fired back.

"We did not spy," he told reporters as he stretched for his morning yoga class. "We just observed and reported secretly without the subject's knowledge or consent."

Comey: 'We Did Not Spy---We Just Observed And Reported Secretly Without The Subject's Knowledge Or Consent'

Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—After Attorney General Barr suggested that the FBI and other agencies spied on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, former FBI director James Comey fired back.

"We did not spy," he told reporters as he stretched for his morning yoga class. "We just observed and reported secretly without the subject's knowledge or consent."

"See, I've never considered that spying," he added as he formed the "downward dog" pose. "That's just kind of secret watching. It's definitely not the same thing. When you spy, you watch someone without their knowledge. When you secret-watch, you just kind of secretly watch them."

Worse than Watergate

In a delicious irony, this week Attorney General William Barr implied that a new bar might have been set (pun intended) during the 2016 election cycle when he announced that he believes President Trump’s political campaign was spied upon by the federal government.

Just let that sink in for a moment and noodle around in your brain.

In 1972, Republicans were caught using former CIA operatives to spy on their political rivals. In 2016, Democrats have now been caught using active FBI and senior Department of Justice employees to spy on President Trump. It is no longer debatable whether or not it happened, because A. G. Barr just told us it happened. The only question that remains is whether or not they had any sort of justifiable reason for doing so, except that question seems to have already been resolved by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, because his report found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. In fact, the opposite appears to be true -- it looks as if federal agencies conspired with foreign governments to entrap peripheral members of the Trump campaign.

Heads need to roll. Maybe even literally. This appears to the crime of sedition, the act of conspiring to incite rebellion against the authority of our government. If it could be proved that a foreign government had been involved in the conspiracy, the crimes involved might even rise to the level of treason. Sedition is bad enough.

At the heart of the Watergate scandal was a bungled burglary. No one got hurt. If Nixon hadn’t tried to obstruct justice, his presidency might have survived the scandal. Watergate is about to become ancient history because it pales in comparison to what the Obama administration just did. Innocent American citizens have had their lives destroyed in a criminal attempt to topple the Trump administration.

Read the whole thing.

I said this earlier. As the world turns on the words of William Barr saying "Spy"

This matter will not be put behind us until the truth is told and the lawbreakers are punished.

Media Used to Call Government Surveillance of People -- Even Terrorists! -- "Spying" as a Routine Matter. Now That The Spying is Directed at ORANGEMANBAD, They're Freaking Out Over Semantics.

Government spying was government spying, until Trump called government spying "spying."

How embarrassing that the NYT used to call spying spying and will no longer ever be able to call spying spying, if they wish to remain consistent with their utterly ridiculous new standard that the use of wiretaps, overseas intelligence assets, other surveillance is not spying. pic.twitter.com/O4nwrHzbBM

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 12, 2019

So what did we learn from Bill Priestap’s compendious and revealing testimony?

• We learned that the FBI and Justice targeted and took action against Trump.
• We learned that the FBI, according to Priestap, is incapable of securing a FISA warrant with information that isn’t credible, although the judge’s approval of the warrant means by definition that the information is credible.
• We learned that the FBI believes political interference in an investigation can be proper as long as the bureau isn’t acting purely politically.
• We learned that the FBI did send at least one asset to do to the Trump campaign an activity that even the bureau would call “spying” — if it were done by foreign operatives.
• We learned that the origins of the Trump-Russia tale will never be fully understood until the part played by British intelligence is made clear.

That’s an awful lot to take away from one largely neglected transcript. But it suggests just how much remains unknown about the Trump-Russia investigation while providing a glimpse at the people that want to keep it that way.

FBI: if we tell lies to a FISA Judge and he approves it, it's the truth.

Shen followed with another broad, all-encompassing question about the propriety of the FBI and DoJ’s behavior: “Are you aware,” she asked Priestap, “of any instances where the FBI or DOJ did not present what constituted credible and sufficient evidence to justify a FISA warrant?”

Priestap’s response is a textbook case of circular logic: “If it's not justified, the court doesn't approve it. So, like, if we're not meeting the standard required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the requests are turned down.”

“So, in other words,” said the Democratic counsel, “by definition, if you presented information and a FISA court approved it, that would constitute credible sufficient information?”

“In my opinion,” said Priestap, “yes.”

Sit back and savor that exchange for a moment. One of the most senior officials in the Federal Bureau of Investigation – an organization that regularly refers for prosecution people who don’t tell the full truth – champions this peculiar standard of credibility: If you can snooker a FISA court judge, the information used to traduce the court is rendered by definition “credible sufficient information.” What is the condition of the FBI if its leaders think whatever you can get past a judge is good enough?

Does the FBI "spy?"

It's not spying if we do it.

Democratic staff counsel Valerie Shen tried to use her questioning of Priestap to put the spying issue to bed. “Does the FBI use spies?” she asked the assistant director for counterintelligence (who would be in a position to know).

“What do you mean?” Priestap responded. “I guess, what is your definition of a spy?”

“Good question,” said Shen. “What is your definition of a spy?”

Before Priestap answered, his lawyer, Mitch Ettinger, intervened. “Just one second,” he said. Then Ettinger – who was one of President Bill Clinton’s attorneys during the Paula Jones/Monica Lewinsky scandal – conferred with his client.

Back on the record, Priestap presented what smacks of pre-approved testimony: “I've not heard of nor have I referred to FBI personnel or the people we engage with as – meaning who are working in assistance to us – as spies. We do evidence and intelligence collection in furtherance of our investigations.”

Shen was happy with the answer, and so she asked Priestap to confirm it: “So in your experience the FBI doesn't use the term ‘spy’ in any of its investigative techniques?” Priestap assured her the word is never spoken by law-enforcement professionals – except, he said (wandering dangerously off-script), when referring to “foreign spies.”

“But in terms of one of its own techniques,” Shen said, determined to get Priestap back on track, “the FBI does not refer to one of its own techniques as spying?”

“That is correct, yes.”

“With that definition in mind, would the FBI internally ever describe themselves as spying on American citizens?”

“No.”

So there we have it with all the decisive logic of a Socratic dialogue: The FBI could not possibly have spied on the Trump campaign because bureau lingo includes neither the noun “spy” nor the verb “to spy.” Whatever informants may have been employed, whatever tools of surveillance may have been utilized, the FBI did not spy on the Trump campaign – didn’t spy by definition, as the bureau doesn’t use the term (except, of course, to describe the very same activities when undertaken by foreigners).

What’s telling about this line of questioning is that it inadvertently confirms Republican suspicions — and Attorney General Barr’s assertion. If House Democrats believed there had been no spying on the Trump campaign, they could have asked Priestap whether the FBI ever spies on Americans, given the common meaning of the verb “to spy.” They could have flat-out asked whether the FBI had spied on Trump World. Instead, Democratic counsel asked whether, given the FBI’s definition of spying, the bureau would “internally ever describe themselves as spying on American citizens.” It would seem that Democrats were every bit as convinced as Republicans that the FBI spied on Trump’s people.

Proof of spying

CNN Freaks Out Over Barr ‘Spying’ Testimony

What is it when you wiretap members of a campaign, send secret agents into a campaign and use the FBI, CIA, NSA, Treasury Department and DOJ to secretly collect data on a campaign?

Questioning Barr’s testimony appeared to be the theme for the network’s evening programming, with anchors and guests offering commentary that supported the position that there is no evidence that the Trump campaign was spied on.

The bizarre thing is that the media once proudly reported that the Trump campaign was spied on.

As the world turns on the words of William Barr saying "Spy"

As a reminder, Watergate started as an intelligence operation against the McGovern campaign. Using the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DOJ to spy on Trump is infinitely worse.

Imagine for a moment if the Washington Post had been in cover-up mode for Nixon.

Before this is over lots of people will be asking “what did Obama know and when did he know it.”

Just in time for the 2020 election cycle and it's Democrats and members of the Obama administration that are in the hot seat.  Timing is everything.

Expect Assange to be brought to the US as we near the election to answer questions about what he knew about the Russia hoax.

Prosecution for lying to Congress (Clapper) should result in a lot of Democrats going to prison if the law is upheld evenly whether you supported Trump or Hillary.

By attacking Barr, we are witnessing a clear attempt to obstruct the DOJ investigation into illegal spying. It’s called obstruction of justice. Neither Barr nor Trump will back off or be buffaloed.

By accusing Trump of colluding with Russia Democrats have made one of the greatest political miscalculations in American history. Just in time for the 2020 election.

The only campaign that we know for sure to have colluded with a foreign agent is Hillary’s payment to a foreign spy – Steele – to get dirt on Trump from Russian agents.

Democrats and their allies in the media have spent two years trying and failing to tie Trump to Russia. Now they will spend the next two years under investigation for attempting to overturn a legitimate election. You’ll hear the word “treason” a lot in the next year.

Vioctor Davis Hanson: "All the Progressive Plotters"

Right after the 2016 election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein—cheered on by Hillary Clinton dead-enders—sued in three states to recount votes and thereby overturn Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. Before the quixotic effort imploded, Stein was praised as an iconic progressive social justice warrior who might stop the hated Trump from even entering the White House.

When that did not work, B-list Hollywood celebrities mobilized, with television and radio commercials, to shame electors in Trump-won states into not voting for the president-elect during the official Electoral College balloting in December 2016. Their idea was that select morally superior electors should reject their constitutional directives and throw the election into the House of Representatives where even more morally superior NeverTrump Republicans might join with even much more morally superior Democrats to find the perfect morally superior NeverTrump alternative.

When that did not work, more than 60 Democratic House members voted to bring up Trump’s impeachment for vote. Trump had only been in office a few weeks. Then San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer toured the country and lavished millions on advertisements demanding Trump’s removal by impeachment—and was sorely disappointed when he discovered that billion-dollar-fueled virtue-signaling proved utterly bankrupt virtue-signaling.

When that did not work, ...

No reporter seems to care that Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to work with other foreign nationals to sabotage, first, her opponent’s campaign, then his transition and his presidency, along with the wink and nod help from key Obama officials at the Department of Justice, State Department, National Security Council, FBI and CIA.

The final irony? If the CIA, FBI, and DOJ have gone the banana republic way of Lois Lerner’s IRS and shredded the Constitution, they still failed to remove Donald Trump.

Trump still stands. In Nietzschean fashion what did not kill him apparently only made him stronger.

Read the whole thing.

Does the FBI and the DOJ need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

After the end of Apartheid, the South African government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa (TRC), a court-like body to help heal the country and bring about a reconciliation of its people by uncovering the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid.   

Its emphasis was on gathering evidence and uncovering information—from both victims and perpetrators rather than prosecuting individuals for past crimes.

Perhaps we need a TRC to allow people in the Justice Department and the FBI to come forward and admit the abuse of civil rights that occurred during the Obama Administration as officials in the FBI and the Justice Department conspired to prevent the election of Donald Trump and, following the election, to engineer a slow-motion coup against a duly elected president. 

  

It appears that naming a new FBI director, Christopher Wray has done nothing to end the cover-up that continues unabated.   

The FBI just sent 29 armed and armored agents to arrest a 66-year-old man with no criminal record for the purpose of a televised “perp walk” designed to inflame the public.   

The DOJ refuses to reveal why, on the morning of November 19th, sixteen FBI agents raided the Maryland home of a DOJ whistleblower who was in possession of Clinton Foundation and Uranium One documents implicating Robert Mueller who now heads a group aimed at removing President Trump from office.

The DOJ has empowered a two-year investigation of any links between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin with the result of zero findings of collusion but the creation of process crimes created by the investigator.  

We are told that there are honest people in the FBI and DOJ who are angry about the cloud that now hovers over their departments.  If these people could come forward without fear of losing their jobs or going to prison, would that allow the truth to be revealed?  Would Truth and Reconciliation prevail, or are the battle lines now so sharply drawn between the sides that one side must destroy the other?