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.
