Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Why Obama Really Spied on Trump. Obama had to spy on Trump to protect himself.
Front Page ^ | September 20, 2017 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 09/21/2017 3:10:57 AM PDT by billorites

Last week, CNN revealed (and excused) one phase of the Obama spying operation on Trump. After lying about it on MSNBC, Susan Rice admitted unmasking the identities of Trump officials to Congress.

Rice was unmasking the names of Trump officials a month before leaving office. The targets may have included her own successor, General Flynn, who was forced out of office using leaked surveillance.

While Rice’s targets weren’t named, the CNN story listed a meeting with Flynn, Bannon and Kushner.

Bannon was Trump’s former campaign chief executive and a senior adviser. Kushner is a senior adviser. Those are exactly the people you spy on to get an insight into what your political opponents plan to do.

Now the latest CNN spin piece informs us that secret FISA orders were used to spy on the conversations of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. The surveillance was discontinued for lack of evidence and then renewed under a new warrant. This is part of a pattern of FISA abuses by Obama Inc. which never allowed minor matters like lack of evidence to dissuade them from new FISA requests.

Desperate Obama cronies had figured out that they could bypass many of the limitations on the conventional investigations of their political opponents by ‘laundering’ them through national security.

If any of Trump’s people were talking to non-Americans, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) could be used to spy on them. And then the redacted names of the Americans could be unmasked by Susan Rice, Samantha Power and other Obama allies. It was a technically legal Watergate.

If both CNN stories hold up, then Obama Inc. had spied on two Trump campaign leaders.

Furthermore the Obama espionage operation closely tracked Trump’s political progress. The first FISA request targeting Trump happened the month after he received the GOP nomination. The second one came through in October: the traditional month of political surprises meant to upend an election.

The spying ramped up after Trump’s win when the results could no longer be used to engineer a Hillary victory, but would instead have to be used to cripple and bring down President Trump. Headed out the door, Rice was still unmasking the names of Trump’s people while Obama was making it easier to pass around raw eavesdropped data to other agencies.

Obama had switched from spying on a political opponent to win an election, to spying on his successor to undo the results of the election. Abuse of power by a sitting government had become subversion of the government by an outgoing administration. Domestic spying on opponents had become a coup.

The Democrat scandals of the past few administrations have hinged on gross violations of political norms, elementary ethics and the rule of law that, out of context, were not technically illegal.

But it’s the pattern that makes the crime. It’s the context that shows the motive.

Obama Inc. compartmentalized its espionage operation in individual acts of surveillance and unmasking, and general policies implemented to aid both, that may have been individually legal, in the purely technical sense, in order to commit the major crime of eavesdropping on the political opposition.

When the individual acts of surveillance are described as legal, that’s irrelevant. It’s the collective pattern of surveillance of the political opposition that exposes the criminal motive for them.

If Obama spied on two of Trump’s campaign leaders, that’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern.

A criminal motive can be spotted by a consistent pattern of actions disguised by different pretexts. A dirty cop may lose two pieces of evidence from the same defendant while giving two different excuses. A shady accountant may explain two otherwise identical losses in two different ways. Both excuses are technically plausible. But it’s the pattern that makes the crime.

Manafort was spied on under the Russia pretext. Bannon may have been spied on over the UAE. That’s two different countries, two different people and two different pretexts.

But one single target. President Trump.

It’s the pattern that exposes the motive.

When we learn the whole truth (if we ever do), we will likely discover that Obama Inc. assembled a motley collection of different technically legal pretexts to spy on Trump’s team.

Each individual pretext might be technically defensible. But together they add up to the crime of the century.

Obama’s gamble was that the illegal surveillance would justify itself. If you spy on a bunch of people long enough, especially people in politics and business, some sort of illegality, actual or technical, is bound to turn up. That’s the same gamble anyone engaged in illegal surveillance makes.

Businessmen illegally tape conversations with former partners hoping that they’ll say something damning enough to justify the risk. That was what Obama and his allies were doing with Trump.

It’s a crime. And you can’t justify committing a crime by discovering a crime.

If everyone were being spied on all the time, many crimes could be exposed every second. But that’s not how our system works. That’s why we have a Fourth Amendment.

Nor was Obama Inc. trying to expose crimes for their own sake, but to bring down the opposition.

That’s why it doesn’t matter what results the Obama surveillance turned up. The surveillance was a crime. Anything turned up by it is the fruit of a poisonous tree. It’s inherently illegitimate.

The first and foremost agenda must be to assemble a list of Trump officials who were spied on and the pretexts under which they were spied upon. The pattern will show the crime. And that’s what Obama and his allies are terrified of. It’s why Flynn was forced out using illegal surveillance and leaks. It’s why McMaster is protecting Susan Rice and the Obama holdovers while purging Trump loyalists at the NSC.

The left’s gamble was that the Mueller investigation or some other illegitimate spawn of the Obama eavesdropping would produce an indictment and then the procedural questions wouldn’t matter.

It’s the dirty cop using illegal eavesdropping to generate leads for a “clean” case against his target while betting that no one will look too closely or care how the case was generated. If one of the Mueller targets is intimidated into making a deal, the question of how the case was generated won’t matter.

Mueller will have a cooperative witness. And the Democrats can begin their coup in earnest. It will eventually turn out that there is no “there” there. But by then, it’ll be time for President Booker.

There’s just one problem.

If the gamble fails, if no criminal case that amounts to anything more than the usual investigational gimmick charges like perjury (the Federal equivalent of ‘resisting arrest’ for a beat cop) develops, then Obama and his allies are on the hook for the domestic surveillance of their political opponents.

With nothing to show for it and no way to distract from it.

That’s the race against the clock that is happening right now. Either the investigation gets results. Or its perpetrators are left hanging in the wind. If McMaster is fired, which on purely statistical grounds he probably will be, and a Trump loyalist who wasn’t targeted by the surveillance operation becomes the next National Security Adviser and brings in Trump loyalists, as Flynn tried to do, then it’s over.

And the Dems finally get their Watergate. Except the star won’t be Trump, it will be Obama. Rice, Power, Lynch and the rest of the gang will be the new Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell.

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.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bho44; bhodoj; corruptdems; greenfield; obama2016election; obamacrimes; obamasurveillance; trump2016; trumpwiretapped; trumpwiretaps
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-86 next last

1 posted on 09/21/2017 3:10:57 AM PDT by billorites
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: billorites

Nixon was a piker.


2 posted on 09/21/2017 3:22:29 AM PDT by bagster
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: billorites

Wow! Does this mean that Jeff sessions fell into the trap?


3 posted on 09/21/2017 3:23:33 AM PDT by nikos1121 (Let's get Newt in there to help...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: billorites

This is it exactly.

Either Sessions is all over this or Sessions should be in jail for not upholding the constitution...

Likely Sessions at this point is a bla email victim of some poor decisions he made in his past.


4 posted on 09/21/2017 3:25:37 AM PDT by CincyRichieRich (We must never shut up. Covfefe: A great dish served piping hot!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: billorites

It is also why the RATs are keeping up the lame Collusion meme, even to this day. They have to or it’s game over.


5 posted on 09/21/2017 3:25:53 AM PDT by NonValueAdded (#DeplorableMe #BitterClinger #HillNO! #cishet #MyPresident #MAGA #Winning #covfefe)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HollyB

ping


6 posted on 09/21/2017 3:27:59 AM PDT by HollyB
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: billorites

Bttt.

5.56mm


7 posted on 09/21/2017 3:37:42 AM PDT by M Kehoe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CincyRichieRich

My own belief is that the totality of the entire Obama, Inc Espionage operation is 20 times what Jeff Sessions can comprehend in his wildest imagination.


8 posted on 09/21/2017 3:41:27 AM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (Apoplectic is where we want them!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: CincyRichieRich

My own belief is that the totality of the entire Obama, Inc Espionage operation is 20 times what Jeff Sessions can comprehend in his wildest imagination.


9 posted on 09/21/2017 3:41:33 AM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (Apoplectic is where we want them!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: CincyRichieRich

We here at free republic had all of this figured out approximately 10 months ago. Everything is exactly as we said it was. Once it was clear that Trump might actually win, they had to cover their asses with some kind of phony justification for their illegal deeds and “Russia hacked the election” was it. Heads need to roll. If Sessions doesn’t pursue this, he needs to be replaced with someone that isn’t afraid to what needs to be done.


10 posted on 09/21/2017 3:42:07 AM PDT by RC one (The 2nd Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: CincyRichieRich

Greenfield is a pretty well respected writer, no? This really puts it out there in plain language. Amazing that there are no other young Bernstein-Woodwards out there.

Message to Trump, don’t tweet anything bad about Megyn Kelly. Let her have her fifteen minutes.


11 posted on 09/21/2017 3:42:42 AM PDT by nikos1121 (Let's get Newt in there to help...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: billorites

Much bigger than Watergate.

Cat got your tongue, Bob Woodward?


12 posted on 09/21/2017 3:42:45 AM PDT by exit82 (The opposition has already been Trumped!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: billorites

Please REPOST this to FRONT PAGE news!!!!!!!!!


13 posted on 09/21/2017 3:43:52 AM PDT by nikos1121 (Let's get Newt in there to help...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: billorites
Great article. Pretty much what was being said here on FR for the past year or so. This article pretty much brings it all together. Now, where is bozo keeping all the money he stole?
14 posted on 09/21/2017 3:49:52 AM PDT by deweyfrank (Nobody's Perfect)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: billorites

After his firing, Comey acted out of pure fear and desperation to cover all this up, and his testimony pretty much admitted that: “I couldn’t sleep and decided I better leak this in a hurry to get a special counsel appointed”.


15 posted on 09/21/2017 3:56:15 AM PDT by Williams (Stop tolerating the intolerant.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nikos1121

Bttt


16 posted on 09/21/2017 3:57:35 AM PDT by thinden
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: billorites

I’m picturing that whoever Mueller indicts, they are going to demand that his conversations (plotting ) with Comey be an issue at trial, to expose the ilegal political motives. And I think Mueller is arrogant enough he doesn’t see this coming.


17 posted on 09/21/2017 3:59:05 AM PDT by Williams (Stop tolerating the intolerant.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GOPJ; Jane Long; MinuteGal; jsanders2001; V K Lee; HarleyLady27; stephenjohnbanker; ...
Obama knee-padder, Susan Rice, couldn't unmask fast enough for the desperate Obama. One can only imagine the sheer paranoia Obama was experiencing. Trump was about to take over---Obama's political spying apparat would be exposed.

Trump HAD to be taken down.

So it appears Obama inveigled the UN Ambassador (The UN Ambassador?) into his sinister scheme. Read on.

US Amb to the UN, Samantha Power, unmasked Americans on an almost daily basis, sources say
Fox News | September 20 2017 | Bret Baier, Catherine Herridge / FR Posted by knighthawk

US Amb to the UN Samantha Power unmasked Americans on an almost daily basis, sources say
Fox News | September 20 2017 | Bret Baier, Catherine Herridge / FR Posted by knighthawk

Obama admin's political spying, sought 'unmaskings' right up to Trump's inauguration, sources say. One unlikely unmasker was UN Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power.

Power was 'unmasking' at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016 – and even sought information in the days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, multiple sources close to the matter told Fox News.

Two sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting, known as "unmasking," exceeded 260 last year. One source indicated this occurred in the final days of the Obama White House. (Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

18 posted on 09/21/2017 4:01:08 AM PDT by Liz (Four boxes to defend liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo; used in that order.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: billorites
Bump!!!!! 🐀🐀🐀🐀⚖🏛👮🏼
19 posted on 09/21/2017 4:04:32 AM PDT by 4Liberty (MSM: Democrat's PR firm)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Williams
.......whoever Mueller indicts, that individual is likely to demand that Mueller's conversations (including plotting, collusion and conspiracy with ex-FBI'er Comey) be an issue at trial.... to expose the illegal political motives and to get it on the official record. Mueller is arrogant enough he doesn’t see this coming.........

N-i-c-e insight.

20 posted on 09/21/2017 4:06:34 AM PDT by Liz (Four boxes to defend liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo; used in that order.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-86 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson