Free Republic

Federal surveillance laws put in place after Nixon were supposed to protect U.S. citizens. The Obama administration used them to spy on political opponents. The drip-drip-drip of newly declassified documents related to the Trump-Russia investigation, together with recent reports that a classified leak against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn might not have come from an unmasking request, leaves little doubt that the Obama administration weaponized federal surveillance laws to target Trump associates and undermine the incoming administration.The story thus far is complex, but it reveals a disturbing abuse of power by the Obama administration that suggests congressional reform of...

The FISA court's top judge wrote in a secret ruling on January 7 that at least two of the four spy warrants against Carter Page were invalid and not lawfully authorized. Authority granted to the federal government to secretly wiretap and spy on former Trump affiliate Carter Page was “not valid,” the nation’s top spy court noted in a secret ruling penned earlier this month. The order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which was created and authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), was initially signed and issued on January 7, 2020, but was not declassified and...

Subtitle: Americans deserve a stronger assurance than “hope” that their Fourth Amendment rights are being respected. The F.B.I.’s investigation of the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, we can now say with assurance, was a train wreck. In his report, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz cataloged a damning list of egregious errors, omissions or misrepresentations in filings to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approved nearly a year’s worth of wiretaps on Mr. Page. Many Republicans have taken this as proof that the investigation was hopelessly contaminated by anti-Trump political bias. That would be the optimistic scenario. Unfortunately,...

James Comey, ex-Director of the FBI, is still causing problems for America. President Trump fired Comey in 2017 for his handling of the Clinton email investigation. Comey has leaked classified information to the press illegally and abused the FISA court. His lies could be the sole reason for starting the phony Russia-collusion investigation To date, he has gone relatively unpunished for his actions, but that might change soon. James Comey might have broken the law when he wrote memos detailing his private meetings with the president. He then took those memos and leaked them to the press, in hopes of...

VIDEO Since James Comey already thinks he is on a higher moral plane than us mere mortals, he is going to ask God to make it official by declaring him to be Holier Than Thou. Expect to see him use the Holier Than Thou defense when he is charged with using obviously fraudulent evidence to sign off on a FISA warrant in order to illegally spy on the Donald Trump campaign.

cryptic – exchanges occurred when Rep. Jim Jordan fired off a series of heated questions about .. a Maltese professor invariably described as “mysterious,” Joseph Mifsud. Jordan began: The “FBI interviewed Joseph Mifsud on February 10th, 2017. In that interview, Mr. Mifsud lied. You point this out on page 193, Volume I. Three times, he lied to the FBI; yet, you didn't charge him with a crime. Why not?” Mueller was still looking for the page in his binder: “Did you say -- I'm sorry, did you say 193?” “Volume I, 193,” Jordan repeated impatiently. “He [Mifsud] lied three times,...

One session revealed this week involves Trisha Anderson, an FBI lawyer who signed off on the Carter Page warrants. She testified in August of 2018 on her role and what she knew regarding how the process went down. In her testimony, she alleges that the application process for the FISA warrant was handled in an “unusual” fashion and that numerous Obama era FBI officials were involved at the highest levels in pushing it through. But Anderson stressed “in this particular case, I’m drawing a distinction because my boss and my boss’ boss had already reviewed and approved this application.” She...

Considering the upcoming declassification window…between Trump’s state visit in Japan (5/25 – 5/28) and the state visit with the U.K (6/3 – 6/5). Bucket Five – Intelligence documents that were presented to the Gang of Eight in 2016 that pertain to the FISA application used against U.S. person Carter Page; including all exculpatory intelligence documents that may not have been presented to the FISA Court. Presumably this would include the recently revealed State Dept Kavalac email; and the FBI transcripts from wiretaps of George Papadopoulos (also listed in Carter Page FISA). Now that we have significant research files on the...

The U.S. attorney appointed to examine the origins of the Russia investigation has been working on his review “for weeks,” a person familiar with the process told Fox News on Tuesday. Fox News reported on Monday that Attorney General Bill Barr had assigned John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry into alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election, as well as whether Democrats were the ones who improperly colluded with foreign actors. Durham, known as a “hard-charging, bulldog” prosecutor, according to a source, will focus on the...

FULL TITLE: The debate used to be about whether spying on Trump campaign officials was justified, not whether it occurred Outrage by liberals and Democrats over Attorney General William Barr noting that "spying did occur" on the 2016 Trump campaign is a sorry example of moving the goal posts. Last year, the active debate was not over whether spying occurred — which it did by a reasonable use of the word — but whether it was justified. Barr was careful not to weigh in on that debate. Yet Democrats, spurred on by their liberal base and supported by the media,...

Obama State Dept Conspiracy against Trump? Judicial Watch Sues for Obama/Deep State Russia Hoax Docs How Did CNN Know Muller Special Counsel Would Raid Roger Stone’s House? Obama State Dept Conspiracy against Trump? Victoria Nuland, President Obama’s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs from September 2013 until January 2017 , has been linked to the notorious anti-Trump dossier fabricated by Hillary Clinton’s opposition research firm. The author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, reportedly had developed long-standing relationships with senior State Department officials, including Nuland. “Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on...

Official Washington and the media that feeds and sustains it went into overdrive following Attorney General William Barr issued a four-page summary of Robert Mueller’s report on Saturday stating that the special counsel found that the 2016 Trump campaign and the president specifically did not “collude” with Russia to “steal the election” from Hillary Clinton. That’s the only reasonable conclusion Mueller could have reached since the collusion narrative was a fabrication, to begin with. Nevertheless, one of the former Obama sycophants who helped perpetuate the hoax, fired FBI Director James Comey, tweeted a picture of himself looking up at tall...

Full title: Gregg Jarrett: Testimony in Russia probe shows FBI and Justice Department misconduct in effort to hurt TrumpNewly revealed testimony by a former top FBI counterintelligence lawyer shows that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe examined “line-by-line” the faulty warrant applications to spy on Trump presidential campaign adviser Carter Page. There is little question that senior officials at the FBI and Justice Department committed egregious abuses of power in obtaining the warrants and then moving forward on a baseless investigation of President Trump, now being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In...

The co-founder of the opposition research firm behind the Steele dossier, Glenn Simpson, will invoke his First and Fifth Amendment privileges to avoid testifying before Congress next week, his lawyer has told Congress. According to The Hill, Simpson’s attorney, Joshua Levy, told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte that Simpson will not appear for a deposition because the congressional investigation “is not designed to discover the truth.” The Virginia Republican subpoenaed Simpson on Sept. 29 after Levy said his client would not appear voluntarily for an interview before members of the House Judiciary and House Oversight & Government Reform...

Corrupt: As a showdown between the Deep State and POTUS Donald Trump over the declassification of FISA warrant documents sought during the Obama administration to spy on campaign adviser Carter Page appears in the offing, another bombshell development has been revealed. During an appearance on Sean Hannity’s nationally syndicated radio program Wednesday, investigative journalist Sara A. Carter and the host discussed details surrounding information that the FBI was keeping two sets of records regarding the Page warrant applications and other ‘Russia’-related documents. If true, that means the corruption within the FBI and Justice Department — at least during the Obama...

Unconstitutional: You can always tell how desperate and panicked Democrats are about the disclosure of certain information to the public by the level of authoritarianism they are willing to engage in. And boy, are they panicked over POTUS Donald Trump’s intent to order the Justice Department to declassify all documents related to FISA warrant applications used by the Obama Deep State to spy on the president’s 2016 campaign. On Tuesday we reported that the president had ordered the declassification of those documents and what to look for; there are a lot of people who, if (and it’s a big ‘if’)...

Light of Day: Late Monday POTUS Donald Trump ordered the release of unredacted FISA warrant applications “[a]t the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced after reports surfaced last month that POTUS was considering doing so. “The documents to be declassified also include 12 FBI reports on interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all other applications to surveil Carter Page,” as Fox News and other outlets reported. This was a long time coming. House Republicans, especially,...

An FBI special agent told Congress earlier in August that the bureau has used leaked news stories as justifications to obtain surveillance warrants against American citizens, a source familiar with the testimony tells The Daily Caller News Foundation. During a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees on Friday, Special Agent Jonathan Moffa told congressional investigators that the FBI and Justice Department have leaked stories to the press and then used them to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). “He more or less admitted that the FBI/DOJ have previously leaked info to the press...

FBI had actually paid Christopher Steele, the man who put together the infamous unverified dossier targeting President Donald Trump during the campaign, in 11 separate cash payments in 2016. This was despite being admonished in February 2016 and despite the fact that he was being paid with money from the Democrats that went through the law firm Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS to Steele for opposition research to gather against Trump... FBI was using taxpayer dollars to pay for opposition research and unverified smears on Trump. In the words of FBI official Peter Strzok, sounds like an “insurance policy.” ......

Big Victory: Judicial Watch Forces Disclosure of FISA Warrants Targeting Trump Team Judicial Watch asks FISA Court for Transcripts Tied to Targeting of Team Team The Open Borders Crime Crisis Big Victory: Judicial Watch Forces Disclosure of FISA Warrants Targeting Trump Team A year ago, on July 19, 2017, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Justice Department for copies of the applications it made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for warrants regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. As you might have expected, Justice didn’t comply – in fact, DOJ refused to...