Posted by Tina
A “leaked” FBI FISA Warrant reveals that Trump Towers were indeed wiretapped and the tap dance, authorized by a court, began in 2014, targeting Paul Manafort. The early investigation involved suposition that work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine’s former ruling party involved illegal activity. The wiretap was discontinued for lack of evidence but a new warrant was issued that extended into early 2017.
Sundance of The Conservative Treehouse has the full story and concludes:
The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.
In summary: the Obama administration sought, and eventually obtained, authorization to eavesdrop on the Trump campaign; continued monitoring the Trump team even when no evidence of wrongdoing was found; then relaxed the NSA rules to allow evidence to be shared widely within the government just prior to the inauguration; virtually ensuring that the information, including the conversations of private citizens, would be leaked to the media.
A must read that includes a timeline of related events starting in June 2016.
And more Comey shenanigans . . . .
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/18/james-comey-tried-to-discredit-trumps-wiretapping-assertions-that-proved-true/
And for your further reading pleasure . . . . .
https://www.mediaite.com/columnists/remember-when-james-clapper-categorically-denied-any-wiretap-against-trump-campaign/
Day after day we learn a little more. The question is will anything ever be done about it?
Sessions is a disappointment thus far in the same manner that Trey Goudy became a disappointment in the Benghazi investigation.
The only explanation worthy of consideration for all of this is that something much bigger and deeper is being investigated and one day will be revealed…not holding my breath.
Funny though how we keep seeing Trump ultimately vindicated.
Tina, the headline is not true and Trump has not been vindicated. There is no evidence at this time that Trump Tower was wiretapped.
Chris I disagree. Clearly the left media will continue to spin this as relevant to their Russia collusion story rather than a political targeting but the facts indicate a FISA Warrant was issued. The Trump campaign was targeted. Trumps plain speaking accusation, that he had been tapped, is accurate.
Andrew McCarthy, National Review, “The Obama Camp’s Disingenuous Denials on FISA Surveillance of Trump”
Washington Post: “The FBI obtained a secret court order to monitor communications from former Trump adviser Carter Page in summer 2016, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials.”
The New American: “…House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was forced to recuse himself — again with calls for his resignation. His “crime”? He had informed the president of the fact that in the reports that were the result of its surveillance, the intelligence community had “unmasked” American citizens by naming them and including their communications in the report. Never mind that those names and communications should — by the normal rules — have been redacted. Never mind that those normal rules require that for an American citizen to be “unmasked” or named in a surveillance report, that American would need to be a suspect in a crime, in danger, or need to be named to explain the context of the report. Never mind that the president needs to know that the intelligence community has (for all intents and purposes) gone rogue. Never mind all of that. Nunes was offered up as tinder for the fire by which Trump’s enemies intend to burn him at the stake.
As this writer said in an article at the time:
Since none of the people in the Trump campaign was a suspect in any honest meaning of the word, were in danger (unless you consider being on the intelligence community’s radar as being in danger), or needed to be named to explain the context of the report (which context is simply that there was nothing going on that justified the surveillance in the first place), there is no justification for their names and communications to have been collected, much less included in the reports.
So while the liberal mainstream media act as apologists of the Deep State by pretending in their reports that President Trump has lost his mind when he accuses the Obama administration of targeting him and his campaign for surveillance, the truth is, that is exactly what happened. And this most recent revelation adds more to the pile of evidence than anything else has so far.
Because — following their trend — the intelligence community sought and received a FISA warrant to monitor the communications of Page regardless of the fact that he has not been accused of a crime. Page denies having done anything wrong, saying in an interview Tuesday, ‘This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance.’ He added, ‘I have nothing to hide.'”
USA Today: “Note that FISA surveillance is severely limited and requires information from surveillance to be kept very secret or, if not relevant, deleted. If those limits were exceeded, if Obama officials lied to the court, or if the information was — as it appears to have been — excessively shared within the government, or leaked to outsiders, those are all serious crimes, as First Amendment attorney Robert Barnes notes.”
The Hill, “Report: FBI granted FISA warrant to surveil ex-Trump aide Carter Page”
Slate, “FISA Court Granted FBI Surveillance Authority to Monitor Trump Adviser Carter Page During Campaign”
Trump and his advisors are no more connected to Russia than are many Democrats are. This has been a witch hunt from the start. The Obama administration, and likely, friends of Hillary within government, used and abused the power of government to smear individuals and undermine the Trump campaign.
This is much bigger than Watergate but of course the liberal media will never assume the cut throat posture they used to bring down Nixon and send the petty criminals in his administration to jail.
You should at least keep an open mind for the sake of the rule of law.
I stand by my headline.
Tina, whether the wiretap was justified is certainly something that we can reasonably disagree on. I did not object to that.
I objected to your claim that Trump Tower was wiretapped. As I said, there is no evidence of this, and you did not provide any evidence of this.
I meant to remind our readers that Obama officials and the media derided trump when he made the comment about being tapped.
Townhall, “That Time Susan Rice Said No Wiretapping Of Trump Tower Occurred Under Obama”
ABC:
You’ll find more headlines asserting Trump “lied” here
A Newsbusters audit found that over 90% of main stream media coverage of Trump was negative over a recent three month period. If that doesn’t tell you that they are not willing to pursue the truth about this very serious matter I don’t know what will.
Forget party politics. We are all endangered if the rule of law is compromised. This is important. NO PARTY should be allowed to abuse our legal system to further their cause and suppress free speech.
Trump did lie. He said “my phones” have been tapped. He said Trump Tower was wiretapped. There remains zero evidence for either of those charges.
Agree Sessions is a disappointment, like many others. It’s like there’s something being held over their heads or concerns for the nation that is preventing those of wrong doing being held accountable.
The evidence against Lois Lerner, Hillary and Comey is there in black and white for all to see, but no charges are filled. Many of us believe they never will be.
How corrupt is our government? Did the last administration turn it into a Banana Republic? It’s looking more and more like they did.
This also brings up the question about secret FISA activities and what constitutes a REAL reason for such surveillance. Rumor? Fake News? or just a fishing expedition for dirt on a candidate?
Couple this with Susan Rice’s “ummasking” activities and you have a REAL scandal to investigate instead of phony Russian rumors.
Oops! Should’ve been UNmasking. Old fingers on the keyboard . . . . .
Man, you got that right. I have to re-type so often to make corrections it doubles the amount of time I spend.
J, the lack of outrage on the left only serves to highlight the level of corruption and collusion. If the politics were reversed…I mean really! What liberal would assume such a ho hum attitude if even the hint of such activities were asserted?
We have evidence of real crimes…evidence of severe abuses of power…evidence of egregious incompetence and abuses of office…and the left just yawns.
It’s a good indication of two things, 1. The lack of morality and ethics of left media, leadership, and voter, and 2. The absolute failure of our educational system…it’s not much more than a propaganda arm for the far left radicals that have taken over the Democrat Party and it’s many fingers of power.
Two articles worth reading.
WHY OBAMA REALLY SPIED ON TRUMP:
Obama had to spy on Trump to protect himself.
September 20, 2017 Daniel Greenfield
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267923/why-obama-really-spied-trump-daniel-greenfield#.WcKrqADeSdh.facebook
It looks like Obama did spy on Trump, just as he apparently did to me:
http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/351495-it-looks-like-obama-did-spy-on-trump-just-as-he-did-to-me
“Once Obama and his allies launched their domestic surveillance operation, they crossed the Rubicon. And there was no way back. They had to destroy President Trump or risk going to jail.
The more crimes they committed by spying on the opposition, the more urgently they needed to bring down Trump. The consequences of each crime that they had committed spurred them on to commit worse crimes to save themselves from going to jail. It’s the same old story when it comes to criminals.
Each act of illegal surveillance became more blatant. And when illegal surveillance couldn’t stop Trump’s victory, they had to double down on the illegal surveillance for a coup.
The more Obama spied on Trump, the more he had to keep doing it. This time it was bound to pay off.
Obama and his allies had violated the norms so often for their policy goals that they couldn’t afford to be replaced by anyone but one of their own. The more Obama relied on the imperial presidency of executive orders, the less he could afford to be replaced by anyone who would undo them. The more his staffers lied and broke the law on everything from the government shutdown to the Iran nuke sellout, the more desperately they needed to pull out all the stops to keep Trump out of office. And the more they did it, the more they couldn’t afford not to do it. Abuse of power locks you into the loop familiar to all dictators. You can’t stop riding the tiger. Once you start, you can’t afford to stop.
If you want to understand why Samantha Power was unmasking names, that’s why. The hysterical obsession with destroying Trump comes from the top down. It’s not just ideology. It’s wealthy and powerful men and women who ran the country and are terrified that their crimes will be exposed.
It’s why the media increasingly sounds like the propaganda organs of a Communist country. Why there are street riots and why the internet is being censored by Google and Facebook’s “fact checking” allies.
It’s not just ideology. It’s raw fear.
The left is sitting on the biggest crime committed by a sitting president. The only way to cover it up is to destroy his Republican successor.
A turning point in history is here.
If Obama goes down, the left will go down with him. If his coup succeeds, then America ends.”
Read the rest here—
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267923/why-obama-really-spied-trump-daniel-greenfield#.WcJnsPVvjNQ.twitter
Excellent points, RHT!!!!!
And today we have James Clapper (Flapper) claiming he knew nothing about the FISA-approved wiretapping.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
RHT – Seems that news story was a hoax. Sorry, it happens to all of us sooner or later. https://hoax-alert.leadstories.com/3468778-fake-news-susan-rice-housekeeper-not-found-dead-in-a-lake-after-fbi-interview.html
From the Great One, Mark Levin.
FREE LevinTV: ‘CNN lied, the gov’t spied’ & Mark Levin was right!:
https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/free-levintv-cnn-lied-the-govt-spied-and-mark-levin-was-right
I don’t think that any cheesy obfuscations on your part (Trump Tower = Manafort = Trump) are going to save Mr. Manafort from his felonious disgrace. But heaven forfend you should give up your hobby on that account.
Peggy the article in The Hill from Sharyl Attkisson is a MUST READ for anyone who doubts that Trump was accurate when he said he was tapped at Trump Towers:
The Obama administration severely abused it’s authority. I must be exposed and dealt with fully if the rule of law and the integrity of our survielance system is to be restored! Heads should roll!
According to media reports this week, the FBI did indeed “wiretap” the former head of Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort, both before and after Trump was elected. If Trump officials — or Trump himself — communicated with Manafort during the wiretaps, they would have been recorded, too.
This is some really pathetic reaching, Tina, but then, this is Sharyl Attkison. The fact remains that there is no proof Trump Tower was wiretapped, as you erroneously claimed.
Have you been keeping up with the Manafort story? He was offering private briefings to a Kremlin-linked Russian billionaire during the campaign. There should be little doubt at this point that the reason Manafort was tapped is because Manafort was thoroughly corrupt.
Chris what’s a blogger to do when there is disagreement among those who are in a position to know? The Hill and The Weekly Standard have been around for many decades.
Sharyl Attkisson deserves your respect but I’ll let go of that for now.
I’ll take what you call “pathetic reaching,” something that many highly respected journalists have engaged in, over the sloppy cover up reporting of the left media any day! At least they are engaged in getting to the bottom of what looks like a story much bigger than Watergate!
If it turns out their reaching uncovers accurate and damning information what will you say? Or will you continue to believe what the left feeds you?
You do realize you are making excuses in the face of overwhelming evidence of corruption and partisan politics, not only within the Obama administration, but within the institutions we depend on for our security and within the left media?
I’d say that by now you should at least have a healthy sense of skepticism leaning toward the probability that there are those in our government that have been acting criminally and that our media refuses to investigate…as they did without compunction or hesitation during Watergate.
The Federalist position makes sense to me:
The Federalist asks 13 questions that speak to the healthy skepticism they have…you should read them. And if you give the slightest damn about our country you’ll shift your position and take an interest in something that is vitally important and not just another partisan distraction.
Chris what’s a blogger to do when there is disagreement among those who are in a position to know?
You cannot disagree over a fact. There remains no evidence that Trump Tower was wiretapped. You’ve provided no evidence that Trump Tower was wiretapped, which is why you’re now shifting to “It doesn’t matter whether Trump Tower was wiretapped.”
What that means is that you should change the headline and first sentence of this article.
I’ll take what you call “pathetic reaching,” something that many highly respected journalists have engaged in, over the sloppy cover up reporting of the left media any day! At least they are engaged in getting to the bottom of what looks like a story much bigger than Watergate!
If you ask me, the “story much bigger than Watergate” is the Trump campaign’s likely collusion with the Russian government. Manafort’s dealings are just the latest evidence that there is a fire under all that smoke. I am not proclaiming Manafort guilty. But I think conservatives will have a hard time proving that there was not enough suspicion for the wiretap of Manafort to be legal and justified.
Chris, you are aware Manafort lived at Trump Tower, right? As did Trump.
Even CNN has covered these facts with a timeline of when the “wiretapping” began, ended and began again.
Red flags should go up for everyone from Susan Rice’s lies saying she knew nothing about the surveillance to admitting she did know. Also, wworth seeing are the contradicting remarks by Clapper the Brennan questioning by Gowdy. Note his response about the unmasking by a UN ambassador.
Clapper: “Possible” That Trump Was Recorded On Manafort Wiretap, “Conceivable”:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/09/21/clapper_possible_that_trump_was_recorded_on_manafort_wiretap_conceivable.html
Rep. Gowdy questions Brennan on Unmasking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC1oxYGSk7o
“Washington (CNN)US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe.
The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.
The FBI then restarted the surveillance after obtaining a new FISA warrant that extended at least into early this year.
Sources say the second warrant was part of the FBI’s efforts to investigate ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives. Such warrants require the approval of top Justice Department and FBI officials, and the FBI must provide the court with information showing suspicion that the subject of the warrant may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.
Last year, Justice Department prosecutors concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges against Manafort or anyone of the other US subjects in the probe, according to sources briefed on the investigation.
The FBI and Justice Department have to periodically seek renewed FISA authorization to continue their surveillance.
As Manafort took the reins as Trump campaign chairman in May, the FBI surveillance technicians were no longer listening. The fact he was part of the campaign didn’t play a role in the discontinued monitoring, sources told CNN. It was the lack of evidence relating to the Ukraine investigation that prompted the FBI to pull back.
Renewed surveillance
Manafort was ousted from the campaign in August. By then the FBI had noticed what counterintelligence agents thought was a series of odd connections between Trump associates and Russia. The CIA also had developed information, including from human intelligence sources, that they believed showed Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered his intelligence services to conduct a broad operation to meddle with the US election, according to current and former US officials.
The FBI surveillance teams, under a new FISA warrant, began monitoring Manafort again, sources tell CNN.
or that reason, speculation has run rampant about whether Manafort or others associated with Trump were under surveillance. The President himself fueled the speculation when in March he used his Twitter account to accuse former President Barack Obama of having his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower.
The Justice Department and the FBI have denied that Trump’s own “wires” were tapped.
While Manafort has a residence in Trump Tower, it’s unclear whether FBI surveillance of him took place there.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort-government-wiretapped-fisa-russians/index.html
You are definitely a hard case Libby. It may take years but one day you will have to admit, even if only to yourself, that you were absolutely duped and rolled by your party and their media protectors.
Thank God most in America are not so thick headed!
Chris are you aware that Manafort lived at Trump Towers? Do you really buy that his conversations with Trump during the campaign were excluded or missed somehow during the surveillance?
The “Russia collusion story” is based on a discredited dossier invented by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and funded by “a political ally of Hillary Clinton,” according to FOX News and World Tribune:
Democrats were really pushing the dossier until Senator Grassley said the interviews with Trump and Manafort wouldn’t be public.
Dennis Michael Lynch (home page looks like a Drudge wannabe) comments on the WSJ report:
After watching the Clinton Machine for decades I can say without any hesitation at all that this fits their MO to a tee!
Trump had no reason to play political games. He has no political ambitions beyond turning the great ship, America, around and making her great again. Hillary? Obama? Another story all together! Hillary was desperate to be president and both she and Obama had a lot to protect…or perhaps, hide.
Chris are you aware that Manafort lived at Trump Towers?
Yes.
Do you really buy that his conversations with Trump during the campaign were excluded or missed somehow during the surveillance?
I don’t know. If Manafort was tapped at Trump Tower, that would still not validate Trump’s claim that “Obama had my wires tapped” at Trump Tower. He later claimed that Obama was “tapping my phones.” He repeated that allegation later. There is no evidence of this. It hasn’t even been confirmed whether Manafort was tapped at Trump Tower. Your headline remains in error.
The Russia dossier might not be accurate but Trump and his people have done nothing but add fuel to the fire ever since then. To say that the entire Russia investigation is based on that dossier is, at this point, ridiculous. The various members of Trump’s campaign and administration who lied about meeting with Russians was a bigger story than the dossier. Eric Trump attempting to take dirt on Hillary from the Russian government was a bigger story. Kushner trying to set up a secret backchannel to Russia was a bigger story. And now Manafort’s associations and the wiretap on him for being a suspected Russian agent is a bigger story. All of these and more have suggested something improper here. The investigation is necessary, and if it were a Democrat in this situation, I have no doubt you’d see it that way.
Trump had no reason to play political games. He has no political ambitions beyond turning the great ship, America, around and making her great again.
This is really embarrassingly naive. Anyone who has run for president has had political ambitions. The notion that Trump just decided to run out of the goodness of his own heart is…well, it’s at least as cultish as any Obama supporter ever was. Trump ran for attention and press. That’s why he does everything. That’s what he’s obsessed with. How can you not see that?
I meant to post the link to the WSJ article referenced in the above, Who Paid for the ‘Trump Dossier’?
I also ran across an article in the Daily Wire referencing an editorial by the WSJ, WSJ Openly Calls Mueller Probe A Sham Unless Wiretapping Investigated:
Good question, a question that deserves a clear answer.
To tap the phone of a resident of trump tower is not a tap of trump tower. To assert they are the same is a blatant lie.
I’m not sure a court would look at it that way, Pete. Trump tower is owned by Trump and, if NY law is anything like CA law, the phone wiring inside the building is the owner’s responsibility. If NY is like CA, Trump owns the phone system and his statement could be considered correct.
In addition, once Trump was a candidate he received security briefings. The second warrant was a security warrant. Was he made aware of the wiretapping of his building in briefings? According to some sources, the names of over 260 people were illegally unmasked. Was Trump made aware of some or all of those?
Journalist Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, had this to say about it back in March before the numbers were revealed and before it was known that members of the Trump campaign were likely among them:
In July House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said his committee had learned “that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama Administration.”
The “official” he was referring to is UN ambassador Samantha Power, a person who would not normally be advised of the contents of the warrants.
There’s enough smoke here to rival all of the fires we’ve experienced out West of late. It’s a shame you aren’t more interested in getting to the truth.
And Chris, if it turns out the wiretapping wasn’t targeted at Trump tower (highly unlikely IMHO) but still collected calls made to and from Trump tower does it really matter? Isn’t the wiretapping and unmasking more troublesome than the “where” in this case?
Honestly you focus on a pebble when a bolder is right in front of you.
The nation’s media and Congress investigated Nixon for “what he knew and when” for months. This story deserves the same hard line investigation and daily pressure and exposure.
That Russia collusion story says more about corrupt Democrats than it does Trump or his associates. AIM:
Also, Carter Page has filed a slander suit over the phony dossier that led to the so-called Russian collusion story: