Domestic Spying: Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says that the Obama administration surveilled Donald Trump's transition aides and possibly Trump himself following November's election. If true, it warrants a major investigation.
"I recently confirmed that on
numerous occasions the intelligence community ... collected information about
U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition," Nunes told reporters.
Nunes immediately came under intense
criticism from congressional Democrats for his revelations. What's both
hilarious and sad is that these are the very same Democrats who have been
nearly silent as a series of illegal leaks from the intelligence bureaucracy
have made their way into the mainstream media, in a transparent attempt by
unnamed intelligence officials to damage Trump's presidency.
Nunes, speaking Wednesday and citing
only "sources," was careful to note that the surveillance of Trump
aides appeared to be both legal and "incidental" — that is, not
part of a directed spying operation on Trump.
Of course, that appears to be
literally true. But it's also irrelevant. Democrats and the media keep
mentioning the word "incidental" as if it exonerates what now appears
to be a domestic spying operation against Trump directed from the Obama White
House.
"Incidental" doesn't mean
unintentional. Take as an example the leaks of former Trump National Security
Adviser Michael Flynn's conversations in late December with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak. Those talks have been treated as sinister, with the Washington
Post even suggesting that they were a violation of the Logan Act, a possible
serious crime.
But U.S. intelligence gatherers
could quite easily get an "incidental" trove of material on Flynn,
simply by getting a surveillance warrant on someone they knew he was likely to
talk to. Presto! The information on Flynn talking to the target becomes
"incidental," rather than targeted. Still, the intent was clear.
The fact is, as Nunes revealed, this
appears to be a pattern of surveillance put in place by the Obama
administration and possibly officials in the FBI, CIA or National Security
Agency to elude any appearance of a domestic spying operation on a political
foe, which would be a serious crime.
Some of President Trump's calls with
foreign leaders have likewise been leaked. By whom? For what purpose? This is
clearly illegal behavior, and calls into question the reliability and loyalty
of the entire intelligence community. Why are the Democrats not furious at
this, as they would be if it were one of their own who was targeted?
Nunes was careful to note that the
surveillance activities did not appear to be related to the FBI's investigation
of the Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia in the last election. So
the question remains: What were they doing?
We know that the investigation into
Trump's campaign and Russia is real, since it was confirmed earlier this week
by FBI Director James Comey himself. Comey, during his testimony, was clear and
emphatic in saying President Trump's explosive tweets of two weeks ago accusing
Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower had no basis in fact.
"I have no information that
supports those tweets," Comey told the committee. Besides, Comey added, no president could order a wiretapping
operation against a specific citizen. That takes a court order.
True enough. But again, wiretapping
is a term that to the government means one thing: The gathering of information
from a specific telephone. What about a warrant for surveillance of a third
party in order to catch a party unnamed in the warrant?
Back when they thought it might
destroy Trump, the New York Times, Britain's Guardian, the BBC and McClatchy
News Service all reported on President Obama's expanded use of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to investigate Trump's team.
This isn't far-fetched at all. As
John Nolte of the Daily Wire has noted, "In order to spy on James Rosen of Fox
News, Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder named him as a criminal
co-conspirator and, quite incredibly, a flight risk. This gave the Obama
administration 'legal' access not only to Rosen's emails but Rosen's parents'
phone records."
And the BBC's Paul Wood added a chilling note, reporting that a FISA
judge had approved surveillance of Trump in October, just three weeks
before the election: "A lawyer — outside the
Department of Justice but familiar with the case — told me that three of
Mr. Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry. 'But it's clear this is
about Trump,' he said."
Does anyone doubt, having done it
before, that the Obama administration wouldn't do it again? And did the
FBI's Comey, playing cute with his wording around the term "wiretapping,"
possibly commit perjury in his testimony to Congress?
Regardless, it warrants a deep
investigation. Who in the federal government was collecting information on
Trump's aides and why? Was it for political reasons? Or part of a plan to
undercut his presidency from the very beginning? Why haven't the leaks been
stopped?
No one right now has all the
answers. But the pattern suggests a surveillance program that would be a far
more serious breach of the law than Watergate ever was. It's time the American
people found out.
________________
The Wall Street Journal
Did Obama Abuse Raw Intelligence?
I
couldn’t have seen those transcripts when I led the House intel committee.
It was remarkable when Devin Nunes,
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, revealed Wednesday that Trump
campaign officials were caught up in the inadvertent collection of
intelligence. Read between the lines with a clear understanding of the
intelligence community, and it’s positively astonishing.
Starting with the premise of Mr.
Nunes’s announcement, there’s evidence to show that communications involving
people connected with the Trump transition were collected by America’s
intelligence apparatus. We don’t know the particulars, but it could include
conversations between Trump transition staff and foreign officials whose
conversations were subject to intelligence monitoring.
Things begin to get a little
frightening when we learn that this inadvertent collection of Trump staff
conversations was followed up with transcriptions of those conversations and
the disclosure (or unmasking) of the persons involved in the conversation.
These transcripts would be considered raw intelligence reports.
When I was chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, I was routinely involved in briefings as a member of
the “Gang of Eight”—both parties’ leaders in the House and Senate and on the
intelligence committees. I cannot recall how many times I asked to see raw
intelligence reporting and was refused because that stuff is just not made
available to policy makers.
But according to Mr. Nunes, such
information made its way to the Obama White House before Inauguration Day. Few
if any people working in the White House would ever need to see raw
intelligence. Like intelligence committee members, they are typically consumers
of intelligence products, not raw intelligence.
The raw transcripts of masked
persons—or unmasked persons, or U.S. persons who can be easily
identified—making their way to the White House is very likely unprecedented.
One can only imagine who, at that point, might be reading these reports.
Valerie Jarrett? Susan Rice? Ben Rhodes? The president himself? We don’t know,
and the people who do aren’t talking at the moment.
Then we have the testimony earlier
this week from FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director
Adm. Mike Rogers. Mr. Comey said there was no basis to support the tweet
from President Trump that his “wires” had been tapped by Barack Obama. What he
didn’t say—and wasn’t asked—was whether information was collected on Trump
staff by other means. Mr. Trump was a little inarticulate in the context of
Twitter’s
140-character limit, but it seems he got the general picture right.
Then there’s Mr. Comey’s testimony
that the FBI had been investigating Trump staff for eight months. It almost
certainly included surveillance; an investigation without surveillance would
approach farcical.
Adm. Rogers told the House
Intelligence Committee that there are strict controls in place for masking and
unmasking the identities of people caught up in the inadvertent collection of
information and the distribution of this kind of material. It now appears he
either misled the committee or doesn’t know what’s happening inside his own
agency. If Mr. Nunes is right, the rules either weren’t followed or were much
less stringent than Adm. Rogers let on.
Last, and rather damningly, I
believe that Mr. Comey and Adm. Rogers would have to have known that raw
transcripts of captured conversations that included members of the Trump team
were at the White House. It is inconceivable that people in those positions of
power would not know. While this may not be criminal, it is at least a cause
for them to be fired.
My greatest concern—the one that
keeps me awake at night—is that the awesome powers of our intelligence
community might have been corrupted for political purposes. While we’re not
witnessing broad, Stasi-style surveillance of citizens, it’s clear there have
been serious errors of judgment and action among our otherwise professional
intelligence community. This is truly scary. We have to learn the entire truth
before anyone, in or out of Congress, can again have confidence in our
intelligence community.
Mr. Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican,
was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, 2004-07.
