Posted on 08/02/2017 6:12:28 AM PDT by pgkdan
A big story broke in the last 24 hours. This story it has far greater implications than anything else the left-wing pundits are talking about, but you won’t hear about it from the mainstream media. It goes straight to the question of whether Barack Obama weaponized America’s intelligence agencies against Congress and perhaps even the Supreme Court.
The story revolves around the Obama administration’s monitoring of conversations by his political opponents combined with strategic “unmasking” of individuals and leaking of those conversations to damage his political opposition.
Just to refresh your memory, “unmasking” is Washington jargon that refers to the process of exposing an American citizen’s identity in intelligence reports. As you know, the government has the authority to monitor conversations of foreign citizens for national security reasons. But, in the process, it routinely picks up conversations of U.S. citizens.
Constitutional protections demand that the names of U.S. citizens incidentally intercepted not be disclosed except under the most extraordinary circumstances. That disclosure is referred to as “unmasking.”
Now to the bombshell development that big media are ignoring.
It has already been widely reported that the Obama administration relaxed rules governing the sharing of classified information during its final days in power. This rules change made it easier for members of the intelligence community to leak sensitive information to the media.
You may recall the Evelyn Farkas interview in which the former Obama official admitted that she and her colleagues were trying to get intelligence information regarding Donald Trump out to as many places as possible before he took office.
We are now learning that in March of 2013, James Clapper, Obama’s director of National Intelligence, dramatically changed the rules governing surveillance to make it easier to unmask members of Congress and their staff.
The implications are obvious, particularly as a web of facts begin to take shape — facts which strongly suggest that the Obama administration, which had already politicized the IRS, was in the process of weaponizing the national security apparatus of the United States against its political opponents.
One intelligence official with knowledge of Clapper’s rules change said, “We understood we were more than doubling the universe of those who could make special requests outside the [normal] process.”
Why would Obama want to make it easier to spy on Congress?
March of 2013 just happens to be the same month that the Obama administration began secret meetings with the Islamic Republic of Iran, meetings that ultimately led to Obama’s nuclear deal with the ayatollah.
Obama knew his nuclear deal with an avowed enemy of America — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, an enemy with the blood of American soldiers and citizens on its hands, an enemy that has repeatedly promised to wipe Israel off the map — would be extremely controversial. It seems he wanted to stay one step ahead of his political opponents. And that is exactly what happened.
Think about that. Obama submitted the deal to the United Nations, while doing everything he could to prevent a vote in the U.S. Senate.
This deal has had only two “successes” that we know of: It successfully eliminated many of the strongest sanctions against Iran that had been painstakingly developed over many years by our allies and us. And it successfully provided billions of dollars to a rogue regime. The Islamic Republic won big.
In a world so concerned about foreign governments interfering in our politics, how does one meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer rise to the level of “treason” and impeachable offenses compared to Obama’s Iranian sellout?
“A Grave Threat”
Since 9/11, the greatest advocates for robust monitoring of communications in a world of Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc., have been strong national security conservatives. I proudly count myself among them.
We have argued with our libertarian brethren about this issue because they felt that the risk of abuse by an overpowering federal government was greater than the risk we face from radical Islam. With each new disclosure of what the Obama administration was up to, the libertarian argument becomes more compelling.
Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The path the Obama administration was on is the path often traveled by authoritarian regimes. A good example is Venezuela, where a republic is being fundamentally transformed into a socialist dictatorship. All the power of the government is being brought to bear against the political opponents of the Maduro regime.
On Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, Judge Andrew Napolitano warned that this abuse of our intelligence community is “one of the gravest threats to democracy in the modern era.” Judge Napolitano also said that Justice Antonin Scalia once told him that he believed the private deliberations of the Supreme Court justices were also being monitored.
Scalia was a brilliant man. If he had reason to be suspicious, I am concerned. This news is likely to set off another round of speculation regarding Chief Justice John Roberts’ inexplicable Obamacare ruling.
We know the Obama administration unmasked members of Congress. We know it spied on journalists. We know it unmasked members of the Trump campaign. Months ago I asked, “Why should we believe that only Donald Trump was monitored?” Sens. Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham believe they have been monitored. Was Mitt Romney’s campaign monitored?
Were Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton aware of these tactics? What was the role of former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, former Attorney General Eric Holder and other top Obama officials? Who in the intelligence community cooperated with this scheme and is still there?
Attorney General Sessions should appoint a second special counsel to conduct an open-ended investigation of the political abuse of our national security agencies. Such an appointment is desperately needed and would level the playing field that exists right now.
The Seth Rich Murder
Clapper and Unmasking
Brennan and Unmasking
Rice and Unmasking
The Awan brothers
DWS and her assorted misdeeds
Democrat collusion with the Russians
If I tried hard enough I could do this for hours...
Bttt.
5.56mm
Attorney General Sessions needs to go.
Yesterday.
He, and he alone, is responsible for the appointment of Mueller and the mischief that is causing.
So far it looks like all of the Obama administration are felons and Hillary doing some book cooking on the side.
Tells what the drive-by media is worth and how much they can be trusted.
Klapper, along with Comey, McCabe, Mueller, RosenKrantz and Brennan, among others, all need to go to Gitmo as treasonous Seditioners,
To those who can pick a man for who he is, we knew there were no boundaries for obama... he was capable of doing anything to save his narcissist hide and to destroy anything he did not like... which included the United States of America.
The media worshiped him, which shows who they are.
Does anyone really believe anything will happen to these people?
That’s going to be very very powerful and whoever…and that database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that.
They’re going to have to go down with that database and the concerns of those people are because they can’t get around it and he’s been very smart and it’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”
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Obama is so corrupt---he cant fathom that gathering info on citizens is a despicable tactic of a totalitarian dictator---NOT DONE in a constitutional republic.
The IC has totally become against the Constitution.
Dirty, strong armed Chicago style politics are as American as apple pie. The technological revolution has put the methodologies on steroids. You bring the abusers to justice but how do you put the tech genie back in the bottle?
BUMP!
The Claude Cooper Copper Clapper Caper?
ONLY if the people revolt and not stop till they are brought before the court. The powers that be in congress and the justice... would rather not go after obama or his minions.
It was because they attacked President Trump, non stop, that enough out here kept calling for investigation of hillary and such, that it finally is coming to pass... it would not have if we had let it go. And paul ryan is getting nervous also, so he is going to back the wall now... They all need to be nervous at the prospect of obama gathering info and we out here are as angry at them all as we have ever been.. some of them come up for re election soon...
Nice link pointing to total prosecutorial overreach.
Nice link pointing to total prosecutorial overreach.
Darn, missed double posting perfection by one second....
I wouldn’t be surprised if that Marxist Bastard didn’t bug the whole White House, Capitol Building, and Supreme Court before he left.
You haven't gotten the message from many Deplorables and those conservative US Senate members who support and respect AG Sessions (and fought so hard for his confirmation). AG Sessions needs to stay. It is unacceptable to imagine that President Trump's most loyal and earliest DC supporter even has had to endure these criticisms. By recusing himself, he's been able to do a lot of important work under the radar.
Those of you who want to have him out of that office need to get a dose of reality. Enough Deplorables would stop supporting President Trump if this ever happened that he would not be able to move the nation forward or even govern. We Deplorables don't have many "lines in the sand" when it comes to President Trump. This is one of them.
(end of daily pro-Sessions rant)
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