Free Republic

President Trump might be openly hostile to the mainstream media, but it was the Obama administration that was engaged in a widespread effort to thwart the media. Which do you think is more harmful to a free press? The full extent of Obama’s actions against the press are only now coming to light. The Columbia Journalism Review reports on a newly released government document showing that the Obama Justice Department engaged in a far more sweeping effort to spy on the Associated Press than previously believed. “In 2013, the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom,” the CJR...

President Trump might be openly hostile to the mainstream media, but it was the Obama administration that was engaged in a widespread effort to thwart the media. Which do you think is more harmful to a free press? The full extent of Obama’s actions against the press are only now coming to light. The Columbia Journalism Review reports on a newly released government document showing that the Obama Justice Department engaged in a far more sweeping effort to spy on the Associated Press than previously believed. “In 2013, the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom,” the CJR...

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...

Never underestimate a sneaky rat or a Democrat. Obama knowing he and his Administration abused their own surveillance powers by spying on President Trump and his Team, anticipating trouble ahead, expanded surveillance powers days before Trump took office. He tried to make the blow a little easier when Fisagate would become public knowledge. Poor thing, he never anticipated a Trump win, so he had to act quickly. I have to refer now to an interview by Kaveh Waddell of “The Atlantic” with Susan Hennessey, a Brookings fellow and the managing editor of “Lawfare.” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/obama-expanding-nsa-powers/513041/ One part of the interview is...

The big explosive scandal is the one that hardly anyone talks about. It's not Russia collusion. It's not even Uranium One. It's the eavesdropping on Trump staffers by Obama staffers. This eavesdropping was partially legitimized by the Steele dossier. It was accidentally uncovered and since then it's cost multiple people their jobs, not the people responsible, but those who learned about it. Now the reckoning may finally be here. #ReleaseTheMemo has begun trending on Twitter. The document also apparently outlines “several problematic” issues with how FISA warrants were “packaged, and used” state several sources with knowledge of the report. That's...

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper apparently lent some credibility Wednesday to President Donald Trump’s theory that the Obama administration wiretapped him, telling CNN “it’s possible” the president was in fact recorded during the administration’s investigation of the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

The number is so large that it explodes everything we were led to believe about how tightly-controlled our government’s surveillance programs are. The number is 260, and that’s how many times Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama, reportedly requested the names of American citizens who were included in intelligence reports covering foreign officials. The story, by respected Fox News’ journalists Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge, said Power made the requests to “unmask” the 260 names in one year alone, including the period between the presidential election and the inauguration. The first obvious question is this:...

FULL Title - Obama’s Watergate - Six months later, CNN confirms what was widely reported — and ignored on the left — last March. Vladimir Putin did not hack the election. Barack Obama did. Donald Trump said earlier this year that the Obama Administration wiretapped his campaign. “Like I’d want to hear more from that fool?” President Obama scoffed. But CNN reported on Monday, “US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election…. The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to...

  This is easily the read of the day.  Sharyl Attkisson is the bravest reporter of her generation, so much of a threat to people with access to the capabilities of our intel agencies that she was spied upon and worse.  Today she faces the ugly truth about what recent reports (if true) reveal: Nobody wants our intel agencies to be used like the Stasi in East Germany; the secret police spying on its own citizens for political purposes. The prospect of our own NSA, CIA and FBI becoming politically weaponized has been shrouded by untruths, accusations and justifications. She...

Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 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.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017 Did Obama Spy on America to Protect Islamists? Posted by Daniel Greenfield After months of denials, the pretext for Susan Rice’s eavesdropping on Trump officials has finally been made public. It had been widely known that Obama’s former National Security Adviser had contrived to unmask the names of top Trump officials who had been spied on by the administration. And the same media that still treats Watergate as the Great American Scandal had claimed that there was nothing “improper” in an Obama loyalist eavesdropping on members of the opposition party. Every time Obama Inc. was caught...

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...

Sara Carter at Axios broke the story that McMaster, the NCS's master of disaster, had written a letter protecting Susan Rice's access to classified information ... Why does Susan Rice, who is alleged to have participated in the Obama eavesdropping on Trump people, need access to classified information? What national security purpose is served by it? The answer given in Carter's article is that it's an effort to provide cover for Susan Rice over the unmasking allegations. In a June tweet, Trump called the revelation that Rice and other Obama senior officials were unmasking members of his team the “big...

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...

The National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation violated specific civil liberty protections during the Obama years by improperly searching and disseminating raw intelligence on Americans or failing to promptly delete unauthorized intercepts, according to newly declassified memos that provide some of the richest detail to date on the spy agencies’ ability to obey their own rules. The memos reviewed by The Hill were publicly released on July 11 through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union.

<p>The Obama administration's illegal spying may have been worse than Watergate.</p> <p>In 1972, some employees of President Nixon’s re-election committee were caught when they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to plant a bug. This led to Nixon’s resignation and probably would have led to his felony prosecution had he not been pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.</p>

House Republicans call for answers; Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen reports from Washington: JAMES ROSEN: [House Democratic Leader] Pelosi confessed ignorance of this week's disclosure that the National Security Agency for at least five years under the Obama administration systematically violated Americans' Fourth Amendment rights... Civil liberties groups said the disclosures should factor into lawmakers' decision at year's end about whether to reauthorize the NSA collection program that witnessed the abuses...

Intelligence agencies violated the constitutional rights of American citizens through illegal surveillance during the Obama administration, recently declassified documents from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) show. The secretive court also notes a change for the better under President Trump’s team. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes two courts to provide judicial review for U.S. intelligence agencies when their activities require them to monitor people on U.S. soil. One is FISC, and the other is the court that hears appeals from FISC decisions, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR). The benches of FISC are comprised of...

The Department of Justice needs to get to the bottom of Obama’s abuse of the intelligence agencies and the FBI. That abuse was criminally compounded when Obama administration officials leaked classified information to the Washington Post and the New York Times in order to damage political opponents. We know for certain that felonies have been committed, so someone should go to jail. Attorney General Jeff Sessions needs to ask: What did President Obama know, and when did he know it? Who else in his administration was responsible for the scandal? Where criminal prosecution is warranted, it is up to Justice...

JW Seeks Docs on Obama White House Spying Scandal Mueller Helped Purge Anti-Terrorism Training Material Offensive to Muslims The Seth Rich Controversy Honoring the Fallen Warriors on Memorial Day JW Seeks Docs on Obama White House Spying Scandal With the news this week of the unprecedented spying on Americans by the National Security Agency under President Obama’s direction, it has become even more critical that we get to the truth about any Obama administration surveillance of Donald Trump and his campaign and the subsequent illegal leaking of classified information in an effort to undermine the Trump administration. We filed...