The Obama Administration’s Hypocritical Pretext for Spying on the Trump Campaign By Andrew C. McCarthy May 29, 2018 Where was its concern about Russia during its eight years in power? As I argued in my weekend column, it is hard to imagine a more idle question than whether the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign. Of course it did. If you want to argue the point, imagine what the professors, pundits, and pols would have said had the Bush administration run an informant against three Obama 2008 campaign officials, including the campaign co-chairman; any hair-splitting about whether that technically constituted “spying” would be met by ostracism from polite society. There is, in addition, more evidence — at least, more public, verified evidence — that Stefan Halper was a spy for the FBI than that Carter Page was one for Russia. This is not a small point. Spy vs. ‘Spy’ It has been credibly reported that Halper, a longtime source for the CIA and British intelligence, was tasked by the FBI in the Trump-Russia investigation to make contact with and get information from at least three Trump campaign officials. He even sought a role in the campaign from co-chairman Sam Clovis. Page, on the other hand, was the target of four FISA court surveillance warrants, which enabled the Justice Department and FBI to monitor him for a year, starting at the height of the 2016 campaign. To obtain such a warrant under FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 197, the FBI and Justice Department must convince a judge that there is probable cause to believe the target is an agent of a foreign power — in Page’s case, of Russia. As we’ve previously outlined (here, last section), because Page is an American citizen, the Obama administration had to have told the court that he was either: (a) “knowingly engage[d] in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of [Russia], which activities involve[d] or may [have] involve[d]” federal crimes; or (b) “knowingly engaged in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of [Russia], that were undertaken “pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of [Russia],” and that “involve[d] or [were] about to involve” federal crimes. Snip~ Instead, the Obama administration decided to use its counterintelligence powers to spy on the Trump campaign, using at least one covert informant, electronic monitoring of communications, and other intelligence-gathering tactics. It ignored the norm against deploying such tactics against political opponents, not based on evidence of a Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, but on speculation about the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts and Russia sympathies. Speculation by a government, an administration, and a Democratic-party nominee with their own abysmal histories of Russia contacts and Russia sympathies. Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018...ion-obama-administration-spying-hypocritical/ ~~~~~~ The issue is not Trump's fitness for office. Trump won the election by the votes of the American people and the electoral process created by the founders of this country. The issue is the illegal use of Dept of Justice and intelligence Agency assets to spy on a political campaign opponent, and the ridiculous bases for those actions. The issue is entirely about overturning an election whose result the Progressive Marxist Socialist Left can't accept. Criticisms of Trump, even strong ones may have merit. That's what elections are all about But the cost of undoing an election without compelling evidence of wrongdoing would be enormous. Elections would no longer confer clear legitimacy to exercise power. Doing so would relegate the U.S. to a banana republic like Nicaragua and Venezuela. Obama's emphasized this when he criticized Republicans for fighting him so vigorously: "You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don't break it. Don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country's about."I seldom have agreed with Obama often, but I do here. The opposition Obama was facing when he said this was minor compared to the "Resistance" Trump faces, at this time, much less the all out war of some to remove him any way they can and by any means. In Obama's words, they are "breaking" our political institutions and "not being faithful to what this country's about." Trump won largely because many people viewed Hillary Clinton as less fit than he. Certainly her secret private server crimes, including the cover up of those crimes the fraudulent takeover of the DNC, involvement in the dossier would warrant a special counsel and potentially impeachment. But how would democrats have responded to such calls? She would have buried the evidence with no special counsel. I do know if Left continues "Resist" by using these investigations to "Get" the opposition, it will be a disaster for our country.
You have to question how is attempting to put words into someone's mouth the same as intelligence gathering? Stefan Halper as agent provocateur is a better fit as a spy than confidential informant as the left would like for him to be known. Pestering the man who they may have considered the most easily manipulated or malleable into stating Trump's campaign had inside knowledge of the DNC hack probably isn't really spying, but here we are playing at semantics. I wonder about an intelligence operation's competence when they spend so much time and effort trying to get Papadopoulos to conflate the emails deleted from the illegal server with those hacked from the DNC.
