Saturday, May 30, 2020

Someone finally brings clarity to the Obamagate narrative - Andrea Widburg


by Andrea Widburg

[W]hen someone sits down and writes an article that explains with marvelous clarity what happened and why it's evil, anybody who is interested in truth and justice should read that article.


One of the problems with Obamagate is that it's incredibly complicated. It began under the Obama administration and involved the alphabet agencies (the CIA, the FBI, and the DOJ), as well as President Obama, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, the FISA court, and overseas intelligence agencies.

The wrongdoing included false affidavits; spying on innocent people, including the president-elect; unmasking; and set-ups, such as perjury traps and spies inveigling people into ambiguous statements that could be used against them. It then escalated to an attempt to overthrow the Trump presidency through a two-year-long investigation that destroyed several people's lives, even though the special counsel's office knew from Day One that neither Trump nor his team had done anything wrong.

What I stated above is just the super-simple, short version. Meanwhile, on the other side, for three years, all that the left had to do was holler "Russia! Russia! Russia! Collusion! Ukraine! Putin!," and everyone fell in line.

The problem for the forces of justice is that it's tough to get people excited about wrongdoing that they can't understand. Watergate was simple: a bumbling break-in followed by a foul-mouthed president who tried to cover it up. With Obamagate, though, within a few minutes of reciting multiple dates, dozens of names, three different continents, myriad documents, endless lies and cover-ups...well, people's eyes glaze over, and they start thinking, "This really does sound like some sort of crazy conspiracy theory. There are too many moving parts."

That's why when someone sits down and writes an article that explains with marvelous clarity what happened and why it's evil, anybody who is interested in truth and justice should read that article. I've been following Obamagate since the end of 2016. I've read books on the subject, stayed abreast of the articles, and listened to the podcasts, and I'm still confused. Today, though, I read Charles Lipson's essay at Real Clear Politics, "What the 'Obamagate' Scandals Mean and Why They Matter," which is the most streamlined, organized, and persuasive explanation about Obamagate I've seen to date. 

The article is divided into three sections, which helps break out the scandal's separate phases:

Scandal No. 1: Massive, illegal surveillance of American citizens, using the database of the National Security Agency
[snip]
Scandal No. 2: Spying on the Trump campaign
[snip]
Scandal No. 3: Covering up this spying, continuing it during the new administration, charging that Trump was not legitimately elected, and impeding his presidency with major investigations, based on false charges
Within each section, Lipson's lucid prose provides an easy-to-comprehend overview of truly heinous conduct, the likes of which have never before occurred in America. For example, for "spying on the Trump campaign," which is normally a mess of confusing details, Lipson has this to say:

When NSA surveillance was halted, the Obama administration lost its secret eyes on domestic political activity and especially on the rising Trump campaign. To regain that vision, the CIA and FBI launched new surveillance efforts. Three elements stand out. First, the executive branch, then controlled by Democrats, was determined to spy on the opposition party. Second, much of the spying was conducted by agencies that are limited, by law, to foreign operations. Since their goal was actually domestic surveillance and since that was illegal, they apparently outsourced some of it to friendly foreign governments, who relayed the information back to Washington. Third, since the FBI wanted to spy on Trump aides who were not actually suspected of crimes, they couldn't get regular warrants. To work around that, the FBI (under James Comey) and Department of Justice (under Loretta Lynch) falsely claimed the targets were foreign spies, making them eligible for FISA warrants. They also tried to entrap them (with help from CIA assets abroad), hoping they would commit illegal acts or say their colleagues had done so.
If you've been struggling to explain to people what Obamagate is and why it matters, only to have them shrug and walk away because it's just too complicated, send them a copy of Lipson's article. If they're not outraged by what they read in it, either they hate Trump so much that nothing will bring them to reason or they really shouldn't even vote because they care so little about politics, the Constitution, and the rule of law in America.

Andrea Widburg

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/someone_finally_brings_clarity_to_the_obamagate_narrative.html

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