Joe DiGenova blows the lid off the real scandal: the Russia hoax was a cover-up effort for Obama’s political spying since 2012 - Thomas Lifson

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by Thomas Lifson

Here we go!

Hold onto your hats. At last, we are on the verge of getting to the bottom of the weaponization of the nation’s top law enforcement and spy agencies to spy on political opponents, and it is far bigger than obtaining bogus FISA Court warrants to spy on Carter Page. Barack Obama’s minions have been spying on his political opponents since before his 2012 re-election, and the entire Russiagate hoax was an effort to cover-up that ongoing spying.

As I have stated before, the best sources for understanding the unfolding of the biggest political scandal in American history are DC super-lawyers Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, who have an unmatched track record in explaining the events we see in the media and predicting the forthcoming revelations. I am not in communication with them, but it does appear they have superb sources – which would not be surprising given their long history as key conservative players at the highest level of the DC legal and political circles.

Yesterday, Joe DiGenova made his customary Monday morning guest appearance on WMAL radio’s “Mornings on the Mall” radio show (WMAL is the premier conservative talk station in DC) and the 15-minute segment is jam-packed with must-listen insights. In addition to his revelations about the true nature of the Russiagate hoax, there is another quiet bombshell he dropped -see the end of this blog for the tantalizing perspective he revealed. You can listen on the YouTube version here.



The basic story is that Admiral Mike Rogers, who was head of the NSA in the spring of 2016, discovered that the NSA’s comprehensive database collecting all electronic communications in the United States was being searched by unauthorized FBI “contractors” and moved to cut-off that access. He also visited Donald Trump, after which Trump moved his campaign HQ out of Trump Tower. Trump’s much-derided claim that his campaign was “wiretapped” likely also were the result of gaining this insight from Admiral Rogers

The subsequent launch of Crossfire Hurricane and the effort to obtain FISA warrants were not to initiate spying on the Trump campaign, but rather to provide legal grounding for the spying efforts on political opponents that had been underway for years.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse picked up on the DiGenova interview and in his inimitable fashion lays out the background story from evidence already on the public record here, complete with many hyperlinks to sources. It is a long and complex post, but some of the key conclusions.

Tens of thousands of searches [of the NSA database] over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (snip)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests”
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“: (snip)

Summary of this aspect: The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access; who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information; and shared it with an unknown number of entities.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying, surveillance, and file-building operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for. (snip)
There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition. Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place. (snip)
Everything after March 9th, 2016, was done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [Explained Here] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began. (snip)
Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that. (snip)
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database. (snip)
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, are so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier contains the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation. (snip)
Fusion GPS was not hired to research Trump, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier is so important; without it, the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse….

Joe DiGenova dropped one other bombshell that remains to be explored: that he believes that the NSA database contains the 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her server, and that the two US attorneys tasked with investigating the scandals will access those emails in the course of their investigations. Recall that US Attorney for Utah John Huber is investigating the handling of the dropped prosecution of her violations of national security law with her home brew server and possible crimes related to the Clinton Foundation, including presumably, the Uranium One acquisition of US uranium reserves by Russian interests and the massive donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/joe_digenova_blows_the_lid_off_the_emrealem_scandal_the_russia_hoax_was_a_coverup_effort_for_obamas_political_spying_since_2012.html

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