During a Tuesday appearance on the View, no less than the former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper described what was done by the Obama administration to Donald’s Trump campaign as “spying.”

 

By John Nolte
Breitbart.com

Although Clapper said he does not like the word “spying” (considering how the disclosure of this spying has blown up in the Obama administration’s face, who can blame him?), he still used the word twice — because there is no other word.

Sounding rattled and defensive, even though he was among friends, Clapper, a left-wing partisan who served as DNI during the Obama administration, attempted to spin the “spying” into something that was for Trump’s own good and the good of the country.

“With the informant business, well, the point here is the Russians,” Clapper volunteered. “Not spying on the campaign but what are the Russians doing? And in a sense, unfortunately, what they were trying to do is protect our political system and protect the campaign.”

By Investigative Bureau
TruePundit.com

Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department and James Comey’s FBI worked together with the Hillary Clinton campaign to entrap Donald Trump and associates — including his eldest son — prior to the 2016 presidential election, according to records and testimony of federal law enforcement insiders.

One high ranking official in the Justice Department called it a sweeping “highly illegal” scheme to ensure Hillary Clinton’s election to the White House.

“This was clearly a scheme using Justice (Department) resources and State (Department) resources to get the Russian lawyer into the United States,” one Justice Department insider said. “Who has the power to do this? Only the people at the very top.”

Lynch. Comey. Andrew McCabe. Preet Bhahara. Sally Yates.

And according to high ranking FBI sources, the Bureau played a definitive role in plotting this sweeping privacy breach. But the FBI had much help from the NSA, CIA, the Office of of the Director of National Intelligence, Treasury financial crimes division under DHS, and the Justice Department, federal law enforcement sources confirmed.

John Brennan. James Clapper. Jeh Johnson.

That places the Barack Obama administration directly into this illegal soup, led by Lynch, Yates, Comey and the FBI’s McCabe and associates.

In fact, Hillary Clinton along with the DNC bankrolled Fusion GPS to set up Donald Trump Jr. in the large scheme to undercut his father’s path to the presidency, sources said.

The Russian lawyer who set up Donald Trump Jr. — Natalia Veselnitskaya — was paid by Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS was paid by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS worked together on another caper in 2014, two years before the Trump Jr. operation. In Russia.

Veselnitskaya was barred from entering the United States. Federal law enforcement sources said Lynch and Comey — using Preet Bhahara’s clout in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the southern district of New York — ensured she was granted a special visa for entry, just to set up the Trump inner circle.

A Justice Department official said Clinton likely never expected her campaign’s role and finances to be uncovered and broke a host of federal laws while trying to get elected in 2016, including bringing Veselnitskaya — who was previously barred from entering the United Stated — into Manhattan for the Trump sit down.

Using research firm Fusion GPS as a buffer, Clinton and associates are now linked to financing a scheme to set up the controversial Trump Jr. meeting at Trump Tower before the 2016 presidential election.

Fusion GPS is already on the legal hot seat for commissioning the Dodgy Dossier on Trump, hiring former British spy Christopher Steele to compile the bogus manifesto with the financial backing of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign, as well as the FBI.

But these new revelations — that Fusion GPS played a key role in setting up President Trump’s elder son to make it look like he was colluding with the Russians to beat Hillary — pushes this scandal into a new and more troubling orbit.

Soon after the meeting, Clinton and her campaign flunkies began slamming Trump for his links to Russia and Vladimir Putin, a chorus that continues to this day.

But it appears now this loud chorus was a manufactured arrangement of lies from a paid choir.

Especially since this scheme was backed by Hillary-Clinton dollars which implicates Clinton and her campaign in helping orchestrate the Russian sit down to entrap members of the Trump family.

Perhaps even more alarming, it is now alleged Barack Obama’s Justice Department and FBI helped sneak the Russian lawyer into the United States for the Trump Tower meeting, the insider said. She was previously banned from entering the country (more on that below).

If you are paying attention, this scandal is shaping up into a serious and disturbing criminal plot.

The Democrats and Clinton herself lambasted Trump Jr. for meeting with Russian lawyer   The Democrats alleged Trump Jr. was working a backroom and illegal deal at the behest of his father. The meeting has been part of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal investigation and Trump Jr. has testified at the Senate level to explain the meeting. Trump Jr., corroborated by evidence since the investigation began, met with the Russian delegation for anything but illegal reasons.

No collusion, as the Democrats have cried out for, has been proven on Trump Jr.’s part or that of his father. Nor does it appear it ever will be.

Fusion GPS has been fighting Congress in federal court to keep its banking records private, battling a federal subpoena to turn over the details of money coming in and flowing out of the Virginia-based research firm.

Following the Trump Tower sit down with Russian lawyer  Natalia Veselnitskaya, investigators began digitally wiretapping Paul Manafort, Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner who were also at the meeting.

Federal agents previously disclosed to True Pundit that after the concocted Russian meeting, the British spy agency GCHQ could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK, federal sources said.

Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who spearheaded the Trump Tower meeting with the Trump campaign trio, was previously barred from entering the United Sates due to her alleged connections to the Russian FSB (the modern replacement of the cold-war-era KGB).

Yet mere days before the June meeting, Veselnitskaya was granted a rare visa to enter the United States from Preet Bharara, the then U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York. Bharara could not be reached for comment and did not respond the a Twitter inquiry on the Russian’s visa by True Pundit.

Now, according to new Intel gems from a White House insider, Fusion GPS may have played a role in paying Veselnitskaya’s way into the United States as well as a possible stipend, travel expenses and accommodations.

Veselnitskaya returned to Russia after the meeting, sources confirmed.

Federal law enforcement sources said Bharara was simply following the orders of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who lobbied the State Department to issue the disavowed Russian a B1/B2 non-immigrant visa. This permitted Veselnitskaya entry into the United States for the sole purpose of entrapping Trump associates to use as fuel to commission wiretaps, federal sources said.
Veselnitskaya may have been paid as well by the U.S. government, FBI sources said. It was reported previously by True Pundit that Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier was paid at least $100,000 from FBI funds as well. But that came later, after the wiretapping was well underway.

The illegal eavesdropping started long before Steele’s dossier. Federal sources said the wiretaps on Trump insiders began in late 2015, almost a year before the 2016 election. The targets then were Flynn and Page, sources confirmed. When no smoking gun was recovered from those initial taps, U.S. intelligence agencies moved to broaden the scope through their newly-formed alliance.

The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway is interviewed by FOX News' Tucker Carlson on surveillance of the Trump presidential campaign, the extent that former CIA director John Brennan was involved, and how far it goes.

 

Transcript:
 

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Well, on Twitter, you may read former CIA head John Brennan spouting off about the political news of the day, attacking the president's dishonesty, he says.

But it turns out Brennan himself is a liar. He's been caught lying, odd for a government official. Last year, for example, Brennan told Congress that the infamous Steele dossier had no influence at all on the intel community's claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Here's a selection.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TREY GOWDY (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Do you know who commissioned the Steele dossier?

JOHN BRENNAN, FORMER HEAD OF THE CIA: I don't.

GOWDY: Did the CIA rely on it?

BRENNAN: No.

GOWDY: Why not?

BRENNAN: Because it wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the intel community assessment that was done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Busted! Liar! By the way, Brennan, you should know this, is an NBC and MSNBC paid contributor now, needless to say.

Two top former intel officials, though, dispute his claim, the one you just heard that the dossier formed no part of the corpus of intelligence used by our government to spy on the Trump campaign.

Retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers and Former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper both admit now that the Steele dossier and its Clinton campaign-funded allegations did, in fact, influence the intel community assessment. We knew that, but it's nice to hear it confirmed.

Mollie Hemingway is senior editor of "The Federalist" and she joins us tonight.

Mollie, I know you've been following this carefully. A lot of these stories seem to lead back to this guy, John Brennan. And you would think, as the former head of the CIA, he is someone you'd be able to trust, but he seems not only a liar, but an inept one. Am I misreading this?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, "THE FEDERALIST" SENIOR EDITOR: We have a problem with multiple heads of intelligence agencies, and that does include Brennan, who has a history of lying, specifically about spying on American citizens.

So, it's difficult to hold him - take him seriously.

But we've also had problems with falsehoods being set also by James Clapper, who gave inconsistent testimony about his leaking to the media.

And we have also had problems with James Comey himself, whether he understands what a leak is and how he has been involved in it.

But one of the things that's interesting is Clapper and Comey have been so much a part of this story, and we've seen their names a great deal, but Brennan has been able to kind of stay out of the limelight until recently where people are starting to piece together just how integral he was to the entire Russia narrative.

So, for instance -

CARLSON: Please go ahead.

HEMINGWAY: Yes. He actually launched the investigation. He has bragged about how he was involved in launching the investigation.

He also was really key in briefing Harry Reid, which Harry Reid has said he understood that he was being briefed by Brennan specifically so he would leak that information and get it out to the media and also pressure James Comey.

And then, these other things that are interesting that are coming out now about how he claimed that the dossier wasn't used, which made no sense already because we know the dossier was used to secure a wiretap against someone in the Russia investigation.

And also, it just stands to reason that it would have been included, but now we actually have people who do have a little bit more integrity, particularly Mike Rogers saying that, of course, it was used in the intelligence community assessment.

CARLSON: It's becoming clear that a lot of the secrecy surrounding these activities is designed not to protect the United States from foreign threats, but to protect the misdeeds of the people gathering the intelligence. It's CYA.

HEMINGWAY: Yes. It does seem that that has become a big part of the operation. Whether people got in over their heads, whether they were led astray by Brennan and they did things that maybe they shouldn't have done, it does seem that a lot of what we've seen in the last few months is about attempting to keep people from finding out the full extent of what was happening.

Today, "The New York Times" did report based on just a widespread leaking from people who were involved in the investigation that, yes, people are now admitting they were spying on the Trump campaign in a fairly widespread fashion.

It wasn't just Carter Page. It was four top officials. They weren't just using FISA wiretaps. They were also using national security letters and human intelligence. At least one human intelligence source.

So, this is busting wide open and I think people will start demanding a little bit more in terms of just what the FBI and other intelligence agencies were thinking when they began spying on the political campaign of a major party.

CARLSON: Liberals used to be worried about things like this. Not anymore.

Mollie Hemingway, thank you. Thanks for that.

By Paul Sperry
RealClearInvestigations

Former CIA Director John Brennan’s insistence that the salacious and unverified Steele dossier was not part of the official Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election is being contradicted by two top former officials.

Recently retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers stated in a classified letter to Congress that the Clinton campaign-funded memos did factor into the ICA. And James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, conceded in a recent CNN interview that the assessment was based on “some of the substantive content of the dossier.” Without elaborating, he maintained that “we were able to corroborate” certain allegations.

These accounts are at odds with Brennan’s May 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that the Steele dossier  was "not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community's assessment" that Russia interfered in the election to help elect Donald Trump. Brennan has repeated this claim numerous times, including in February on “Meet the Press.”

In a March 5, 2018, letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Adm. Rogers informed the committee that a two-page summary of the dossier — described as “the Christopher Steele information” — was “added” as an “appendix to the ICA draft,” and that consideration of that appendix was “part of the overall ICA review/approval process.”

His skepticism of the dossier may explain why the NSA parted company with other intelligence agencies and cast doubt on one of its crucial conclusions: that Vladimir Putin personally ordered a cyberattack on Hillary Clinton’s campaign to help Donald Trump win the White House. 

Rogers has testified that while he was sure the Russians wanted to hurt Clinton, he wasn't as confident as CIA and FBI officials that their actions were designed to help Trump, explaining that such as assessment "didn't have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources.”

The whole thing was a premeditated plan to take down Trump, apparently originating with Clapper, then head of the CIA.  The latest releases of Comey's memos indicate that James Clapper asked then FBI Director James Comey to brief Donald Trump on the now-infamous Russia dossier so that CNN would have a reason to report on it. Is the Deep State losing its grip?

 

“The deep state is the intelligence agencies that do not have oversight”
 

By Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com

During an appearance on The Laura Ingraham Show this week, Senator Rand Paul warned that “Absolutely, there is a deep state” and that it is actively working to “try to bring Trump down.”

“The deep state is the intelligence agencies that do not have oversight,” Paul said, adding “Only eight people in Congress know what they’re doing, and traditionally, those eight people have been a rubber stamp to let the intelligence communities do whatever they want.”

The Senator was referring to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate, in addition to the chairmen and ranking members of the two intelligence committees.

“There is no skeptic among the eight people that are supposedly overseeing the intelligence community.” Paul warned.

 

Former CIA analyst and founder of 'Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity' Ray McGovern, in this tongue-in-cheek article, outlines steps he would take on Day One as CIA Director to get to the bottom of Russiagate.

Via ConsortiumNews.com

Now that I have been nominated again – this time by author Paul Craig Roberts – to be CIA director, I am preparing to hit the ground running.

Last time my name was offered in nomination for the position – by The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel – I did not hold my breath waiting for a call from the White House. Her nomination came in the afterglow of my fortuitous, four-minute debate with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when I confronted him on his lies about the attack on Iraq, on May 4, 2006 on national TV. Since it was abundantly clear that Rumsfeld and I would not get along, I felt confident I had royally disqualified myself.

This time around, on the off-chance I do get the nod, I have taken the time to prepare the agenda for my first few days as CIA director.

Here’s how Day One looks so far:

Get former National Security Agency Technical Director William Binney back to CIA to join me and the “handpicked” CIA analysts who, with other “handpicked” analysts (as described by former National Intelligence Director James Clapper on May 8, 2017) from the FBI and NSA, prepared the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017. That evidence-impoverished assessment argued the case that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his minions “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.”

When my predecessor, CIA Director Mike Pompeo invited Binney to his office on Oct. 24, 2017 to discuss cyber-attacks, he told Pompeo that he had been fed a pack of lies on “Russian hacking” and that he could prove it. Why Pompeo left that hanging is puzzling, but I believe this is the kind of low-hanging fruit we should pick pronto.

The low-calorie Jan. 6 ICA was clumsily cobbled together:

“We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence … used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.”

Binney and other highly experienced NSA alumni, as well as other members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), drawing on their intimate familiarity with how the technical systems and hacking work, have been saying for a year and a half that this CIA/FBI/NSA conclusion is a red herring, so to speak. Last summer, the results of forensic investigation enabled VIPS to apply the principles of physics and the known capacity of the internet to confirm that conclusion.

Oddly, the FBI chose not to do forensics on the so-called “Russian hack” of the Democratic National Committee computers and, by all appearances, neither did the drafters of the ICA.

Again, Binney says that the main conclusions he and his VIPS colleagues reached are based largely on principles of physics – simple ones like fluid dynamics. I want to hear what that’s all about, how that applies to the “Russian hack,” and hear what my own CIA analysts have to say about that.

I will have Binney’s clearances updated to remove any unnecessary barriers to a no-holds-barred discussion at a highly classified level. After which I shall have a transcript prepared, sanitized to protect sources and methods, and promptly released to the media.

Like Sisyphus Up the Media Mountain

At that point things are bound to get very interesting. Far too few people realize that they get a very warped view on such issues from the New York Times. And, no doubt, it would take some time, for the Times and other outlets to get used to some candor from the CIA, instead of the far more common tendentious leaks.  In any event, we will try to speak truth to the media – as well as to power.

I happen to share the view of the handful of my predecessor directors who believed we have an important secondary obligation to do what we possibly can to inform/educate the public as well as the rest of the government – especially on such volatile and contentious issues like “Russian hacking.”

What troubles me greatly is that the NYT and other mainstream print and TV media seem to be bloated with the thin gruel-cum-Kool-Aid they have been slurping at our CIA trough for a year and a half; and then treating the meager fare consumed as some sort of holy sacrament. That goes in spades for media handling of the celebrated ICA of Jan. 6, 2017 cobbled together by those “handpicked” analysts from CIA, FBI, and NSA.  It is, in all candor, an embarrassment to the profession of intelligence analysis and yet, for political reasons, it has attained the status of Holy Writ.

The Paper of (Dubious) Record

I recall the banner headline spanning the top of the entire front page of the NYT on Jan. 7, 2017: “Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says;” and the electronic version headed “Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds.”  I said to myself sarcastically, “Well there you go!  That’s exactly what Mrs. Clinton – not to mention the NY Times, the Washington Post and The Establishment – have been saying for many months.”

Did the Obama administration spy on Republican Senators and Supreme Court Justices? Judge Napolitano just weighed in on what Justice Scalia told him. Senator Rand Paul also accused the Obama administration of spying on him and others…

“The use of intelligence data for political purposes is a felony … Unmasking is illegal if done for any reason other than national security.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox Business Monday that the late Justice Antonin Scalia told him “that he often thought that the court was being surveilled” roughly four or five years ago.

Napolitano appeared on the program to discuss the claim made by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., accusing the Obama administration of spying on him and another senator.

When asked about Paul’s claim, Napolitano said, “Well, they’re most likely true. Think of this as a three-step process: Surveillance, which is acquisition in a digital version of every keystroke on every computer, and every communication on every cell phone phone and landline phone; storage, which is the maintenance of the digital versions of these communications; and then unmasking, which is accessing this data and finding out the names of the people who are actually surveilled.”

 

This is not the 4-page memo from the Congressional Intel Committee this is a full court memorandum and order.  It has been reported that this was declassified by Trump and released by the Director of National Intelligence.

William Binney, former tech head of the NSA contacted us this morning to send us the link to the reportedly classified memo that lawmakers said was a blueprint of how the Obama administration and the Deep State spied on President Trump:

 

2016 Cert FISC Memo Opin Order Apr 2017 by kitdaniels on Scribd