The Clapper / Obama Wiretapping Scenario Is a Possibility

When we consider the Trump wiretapping charges, one question should be first in our minds : If you were the head of the FBI, CIA, NSA, or former President Obama, and the new President accused you of tapping his phones, would you willingly say 'Oh, yes, we did that' ??? Of course not. And that means that any comments or denials coming from these sources are suspiciously self-serving, at best. • And, the wiretap plot is definitely thickening. • Late Sunday evening Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, a good friend of President Trump, said he talked to the President several times last weekend : “I spoke with the President twice yesterday about the wiretap story. I haven’t seen him this pissed off in a long time. When I mentioned Obama ‘denials’ about the wiretaps, he shot back: ‘This will be investigated, it will all come out. I will be proven right.’ ” • • • COMEY SAYS THERE WAS NO WIRETAP. The FBI doesn't agree with Trump. Director Jim Comey reportedly asked the Justice Department to publicly reject Trump's claim that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election. The New York Times quoted some of its notorious unnamed "senior American officials" who told the NYT that Comey has said the President's wiretapping allegations are not true and asked the Justice Department on Saturday to publicly correct the record. This past weekend, both the FBI and the DOJ declined to comment to the Times. Comey wants the DOJ to deny Trump’s claim because there is no evidence to support it, the NYT reported, and it insinuates that Comey's FBI broke the law, the officials told the paper. • But, conservative radio host and constitutional lawyer Mark Levin slammed the Obama administration for its politicized overreach and "police-state tactics." Levin said Sunday morning that evidence supporting President Trump's claims Obama spied on him using wiretaps "is overwhelming." Levin told Fox & Friends Sunday : "This is not about President Trump's tweeting. This is about the Obama administration spying. And the question is not whether they spied -- we know they went to court twice. Who they did spy? Trump transition, Trump surrogates." And, Levin dropped a small bombshell, so far ignored by the media, when he told Fox : "Two separate sources with links to the counter intelligence community have confirmed that the FBI sought and was granted a foreign intelligence surveillance act court [order]. This is spying. Donald Trump is the victim. His campaign is the victim. His transition team is the victim. His surrogates are the victim. These are police-state tactics." • • • THE WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT. White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Sunday called the reports about "potentially politically motivated investigations" before the 2016 presidential election "very troubling." Spicer released a formal statement under his lettterhead officially requesting an investigation into the alleged wiretapping : “Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016. Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted.” • Representative Devin Nunes, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the committee will investigate any potential surveillance of political parties as part of the investigation into Russia’s cyber activities. • • • THE POSSIBLE SCENARIOS. The Federalist Papers published an article on March 5 written by Robert Gehl, alleging that Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer was wrong when he told Meet The Press that there were only two scenarios that could play out based on Trump’s accusations : One -- that any wiretapping of Trump’s offices was done legally via the secret FISA court and that a judge must have found reasonable cause to sign off on the warrant, or Two -- that Trump is lying and that his accusations amount to one of the most disgusting and baseless acts a President can commit -- accusing another President of a crime. • But, Gehl says Senator Schumer overlooked a third option : "Shortly after Schumer appeared, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on the show and said that he knows of no wiretap activity against Donald Trump : “There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign.” Clapper added that he would “absolutely” be informed if the FBI sought or received such a warrant or wiretap -- so it didn’t happen. “I can deny it,” he said. So, the third option is that : "Either President Donald Trump is lying -- he is making scurrilous accusations against a former President for political gain; Or -- President Obama ordered the wiretapping of the Trump campaign headquarters without the knowledge of the nation’s intelligence community. If either scenario is true, one of our Presidents has a lot to answer for. And one of them might be answering before a court." • • • WAS IT THE DOJ, NOT OBAMA. That was what former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told ABC on Sunday. Mukasey said : "The President is correct that there was surveillance on Trump Tower immediately before the election for intelligence purposes." This contradicts what another intelligence official, James Clapper, claimed on Sunday -- that there was no wiretapping of Trump Tower. But, Mukasey cautioned, any wiretapping was not the doing of Barack Obama : “I think he’s [Trump] right in that there was surveillance and that it was conducted at the behest of the Attorney General -- at the Justice Department.” Mukasey went on to tell ABC if there was a wiretap on Trump Tower it would mean that someone in the intelligence community suspected someone was acting as a Russian agent : “It means there was some basis to believe that somebody in Trump Tower may have been acting as an agent of the Russians for whatever purpose. Not necessarily the election, but for some purpose.” • • • WHO'S ON FIRST? Can we sort this out?? Clapper says there was no FISA wiretap because he would have been told : “There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-Elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign." Clapper added that he would “absolutely” be informed if the FBI sought or received such a warrant or wiretap -- so it didn’t happen. “I can deny it,” he said. • The FBI's Comey says the FBI didn't do it. BUT, Mukasey says there was a wiretap -- offering the wriggle room that maybe it was a DOJ tap about a Russian agent who had nothing to do with Trump or the Trump campaign. • But, Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis also denied any such surveillance [i.e., a request for a FISA warrant] was ordered by the White House : “A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” Kevin Lewis said in a statement. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen.” • Who do we believe? Maybe most of these people volunteerig information don't know what really happened, or are inventing scenarios to cover up the truth that they do not want to reveal. • • • THE CLAPPER / OBAMA SCENARIO. It’s beginning to look like there actually was a wiretap on Trump Tower. And, Director of National Intelligence Clapper, known for lying to Congress under oath and refusing to correct his lie when given the chance by Congress, may not be the most credible source to explain what happened. Perhaps Clapper is playing with the timing -- he actually said : “There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-Elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign." That leaves out all the period after November 8, 2016, and fully 10 days before Clapper suddenly resigned early as DNI. Since he says the FBI never requested a FISA wiretap warrant, "never" would mean "never during the campaign before November 8" -- and thus he could tell the media last weekend that the FBI "never" asked for a FISA warrant, omitting to add the key words "prior to November 8." • But, it is also possible Clapper alone asked for a FISA warrant AFTER the election, independently of the FBI/DOJ and never told them. The other, more likely, possibility is that as Director of National Intelligence, he wiretapped Trump Tower by ignoring the 2015 limits placed on his Patriot Act broad metadata powers. That would have meant he didn't need a FISA warrant or a normal criminal investigation probable cause warrant. And, importantly, Clapper would not have needed to tell anybody that the tap was in place. In that case, it could well have been President Obama alone who ordered Clapper to place the wiretap in Trump Tower, or who knew Clapper was illegally tapping Trump as the Director of National Intelligence and did not stop him. • That makes a lot of sense. In such a Clapper scenario, Obama's spokesman could easily say that Obama "White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice." There was no need to interfere because Clapper did the job for Obama secretly, and only Obama knew it was happening. • John Sobieski wrote in American Thinker on March 6 : "Clapper defended and lied about an intelligence agency unconstitutionally spying on the American people. Shouldn't we be skeptical about his conclusions on Russian hacking? Consider that Clapper was also reportedly involved in the cooking of intelligence reports by US Central Command analysts. As Business Insider reported, reports were changed for political reasons to make ISIS look weaker and our campaign against it look stronger than the facts actually suggested : The top intelligence official in the US reportedly was aware that assessments of the fight against the terrorist group ISIS were skewed to give a more positive view of the conflict, according to a new report from The Daily Beast. Analysts at US Central Command, the Pentagon agency covering security interests in nations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, reportedly complained to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who downplayed the report of intelligence tampering for political reasons but he in fact may have been involved : ...there's evidence to suggest that some of President Barack Obama's inner circle, including Clapper, may have been involved. The Guardian reported in September that Clapper was in 'frequent and unusual contact' with the military officer who is suspected of allowing the reports on ISIS to be altered." • Sobieski went on to review other Obama intelligence illegalities : "Clapper forgets as well how the NSA and the Obama administration spied on world leaders, starting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel : President Barack Obama knew of the organization’s spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- and approved of the efforts, a National Security Agency official has reportedly told a German newspaper. The Economic Times writes the 'high-ranking' NSA official spoke to Bild am Sonntag on the condition of anonymity, saying the President, 'not only did not stop the operation, but he also ordered it to continue.' The Economic Times also reports the official told Bild am Sonntag that Obama did not trust Merkel, wanted to know everything about her, and thus ordered the NSA to prepare a dossier on the politician. The Obama administration spied on many world leaders and, speaking of interfering in elections, interfered in the Israeli election in an attempt to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu. The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday. Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign -- all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report." • Sobieski's conclusion is chilling : "Of course, the Obama administration was not above surveillance of the press and treating respected reporters as criminals. Take the case of Fox News reporter James Rosen, named by the Obama administration as a criminal co-conspirator in a case involving violations of the Espionage Act : The Justice Department named Fox News's chief Washington correspondent James Rosen 'at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator' in a 2010 espionage case against State Department security advisor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. The accusation appears in a court affidavit first reported by the Washington Post. Kim is charged with handing over a classified government report in June 2009 that said North Korea would probably test a nuclear weapon in response to a UN resolution condemning previous tests. Rosen reported the analysis on 11 June under the headline 'North Korea Intends to Match UN Resolution With New Nuclear Test'. The FBI sought and obtained a warrant to seize all of Rosen's correspondence with Kim, and an additional two days' worth of Rosen's personal email, the Post reported. The bureau also obtained Rosen's phone records and used security badge records to track his movements to and from the State Department." • And, we now know the reporting of Rosen was factual. • • • DEAR READERS, as John Sobieski wrote, the record of James Clapper and the Obama administration on truthfulness is suspect. The Obama administration spied on world leaders and American citizens and the press. Trump has provided no proof of Obama administration surveillance -- hard to do in the space allowed for a tweet -- but others have provided proof of the Clapper / Obama spying illegalities for years. And nobody has done anything about it. There is not even a Clapper contempt of Congress citation because of his perjured testimony to Congress. Wiretapping and a strategy based on illegal surveillance meant to destroy President Trump is the most horrifying political act by any President in American history. It far surpasses Watergate. In fact, the Obama tactics, if proven, would be similar to acts of despots of the 20th century. And, the mainstream media has played its own complicit role. For the past forty years, the media has been virtually unquestioning in their dealings with Democrats while vilifying Republicans at every turn. The media became propagandists for the Democrat Party, allowing its members to get away with virtually anything. The latest example is the mainstream media’s willfully choosing to ignore the wiretapping reports already in the alternative and foreign media. Perhaps there is a reason for both the media's and congressional silence on these Obama administration treacheries. Larry Klayman is the conservative legal activist who founded Judicial Watch and won the first federal court ruling against the legality of the now-discontinued call record dragnet -- in the first judicial review of the NSA cellphone spying program, US District Court Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee sitting in Washington, DC, ruled that the scheme of asking a secret judge on a secret court for a general warrant to spy on all American cellphone users without providing evidence of probable cause of criminal behavior against any of them is unconstitutional because it directly violates the Fourth Amendment. It took Edward Snowden's theft of NSA documents to reveal the massive NSA spying on Americans. But -- here is the key -- Klayman says he doubts the Trump administration would prosecute the former intelligence chief, offering what skeptics might call a conspiratorial view of government surveillance efforts. Why? “Clapper knows a lot about people that could start leaking out the door,” he says. “I don’t think they will because he had access to a lot of information.” • And everything we know about James Clapper leads us to distrust him. Consider the possibility, noted above, that as Director of National Intelligence, he wiretapped Trump Tower by ignoring the 2015 limits placed on his Patriot Act broad metadata powers. That would have meant he didn't need a FISA warrant or a normal criminal investigation probable cause warrant. And, importantly, Clapper would not have needed to tell anybody that the tap was in place. In that case, it could well have been President Obama alone who ordered Clapper to place the wiretap in Trump Tower, or who knew Clapper was illegally tapping Trump as Director of National Intelligence and did not stop him. • That, dear readers, would be terrorist dictatorship and it has no place -- no place -- in America.