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Well I guess we can't speak russian on the board LOL

Good.

Oh look, another blatant lie by Trump

Trump alleges wire tapping by Obama during campaign

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-alleges-wire-tapping-obama-during-campaign-130507502.html

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday accused former president Barack Obama of wire tapping him in October during the late stages of the presidential election campaign, but offered no evidence to support the allegation.

"How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!," Trump said in a series of Tweets on his Twitter account early on Saturday.

In one of the tweets, Trump said the alleged wire tapping took place in his Trump Tower, but there was "nothing found".

Trump's administration has come under pressure from FBI and congressional investigations into contacts between some members of his campaign team and Russian officials during his campaign.

Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and ordered Russian diplomats to leave the U.S. in December over the country's involvement in hacking political groups in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.

Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned in February after revelations that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office.

Flynn had promised Vice President Mike Pence he had not discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russians, but transcripts of intercepted communications, described by U.S. officials, showed that the subject had come up in conversations between him and the Russian ambassador.

Trump has often used his Twitter account to attack rivals and for years led a campaign alleging that Obama was not born in the U.S. He later retracted the allegation.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Shuttle Election Diplomacy? Dmitry Rybolovlev’s Plane, Moscow and Trump


02/17/2017 05:49 pm ET

Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev primarily lives in Monaco, but also owns a penthouse in New York City about 10 minutes from Trump Tower. He bought a Palm Beach estate from Trump, although he apparently never lived there and is selling it in pieces.

Louise Mensch (Wikpedia) and others noticed that his private A319 M-KATE visited Las Vegas, NV and Concord, NC airports concurrent with Trump election rallies, stopping for 1-2 hours en route elsewhere. This past weekend, it visited Miami(MIA) during Trump’s Mar-a-Lago weekend. As seen by searching Twitter for M-KATE and MKATE, people are actively tracking its motions and speculating of communications. Of course, we do not know who else might have been on flights, nor is there any proof of communications between Trump’s people and Rybolovlev’s.

However, a much clearer picture emerges by combining Trump’s List of campaign rallies, his Thanksgiving schedule at Mar-a-Lago, and especially the last 12 months of known M-KATE flights (via Business login), reformatted and annotated in Table 2. Each day’s sequence of flights is summarized in Table 1.

During the last 12 months, M-KATE made at least 7 visits to New York City (EWR), spending several days or more on each visit, usually overlapping with Trump presence there, given his habit of flying back most nights during the campaign. M-KATE made two 1-2-day trips to Miami when Trump was at Mar-a-Lago, the first at Thanksgiving. M-KATE spent weeks in Burbank(BUR) on 3 visits, although the connection was unclear, as was a week spent at Westhampton Beach(FOK) on Long Island.

M-KATE also made 7 visits to Moscow (VOK), the last yesterday. On January 19, it started in Moscow, flew to Berlin, and returned to Moscow. These visits often closely preceded or followed visits to New York or Miami.

This could be coincidence, but the 12-month record shows clear patterns beyond a few simultaneous airport visits, easily able to support shuttle diplomacy.
link

There are graphs and information showing flight information of Dmitry Rybolovlev's plane travel in relationship to Trump events. It does raise some questions...what the hell is this Russian doing following Trump?

I hope the American intelligence took notice and might be able to clear this up.

Let us know when you actually have something substantive.

Would you consider 46 snitching on himself substantiative? This wire-tapping thing...he inadvertently ratted himself out.

Obama denies claims of wire-tapping

First some commentary from a solider, and jazz musician. Verified account, and an important individual.



Twitter Link #1

Followed by damning commentary from a national security attorney.



Twitter Link
--------------------

FISA requests aren't handed out like candy, Haus. Probable cause, using existing unreleased evidence, must get presented to a federal judge. The same fderal judge then grants the request.

46 never watched The Wire, obviously.

----------------------

To sum up this week:

1. Sessions Russian ties get exposed
2. 46 claims support in Session.
3. Sessions then recuses himself.
4. Kushner and Carter Page linked to same Russian Ambassador.
5. 46 gets irate with Bannon and Priebus; takes them off the Air Force One Manifest for Florida weekend retreat.
6. 46 leaks story to Breitbart.
7. 46 then claims Obama wire-taped him without legal cause.
8. Intelligence community says "46, a federal judge had to authorize it".

Since the election, other outlets such as The Guardian, BBC and McClatchy have reported the existence of an ongoing counterintelligence investigation into potential financial improprieties between Russian financial institutions and Trump associates. According to the BBC and McClatchy, a FISA warrant was allegedly issued on Oct. 15, 2016, although they indicated the warrant does not pertain to any specific U.S. citizens but rather only access to financial records.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed in the aftermath of the Nixon-era surveillance scandals, established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The FISC, composed of federal judges, hears classified applications from the DOJ and FBI seeking the collection of foreign intelligence information inside the United States. When securing a FISA warrant for surveillance, the government is required to demonstrate that there is probable cause to conclude the target of surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. The FISC must also approve so-called minimization procedures for information that falls within the dragnet of data collected that pertains to U.S. citizens.


If the Heat Street article's claims are accurate, the government sufficiently demonstrated to the FISC's satisfaction that four U.S. citizens (and Trump associates) were somehow agents of a foreign power. While it is impossible to know for certain how that was accomplished without access to the underlying classified information, it stands to reason the government theoretically could have argued the Trump associates were unwitting agents of a foreign power due to their connections to and interactions with various Russian officials.


The president's remarks alleging his phones were "tapped" are simply preposterous and reflect his complete ignorance of how the various surveillance authorities retained by the government over which he now presides actually work. The president cannot, on his own, authorize surveillance of a U.S. citizen. Whether for domestic criminal purposes or foreign intelligence purposes, a court order is required, either through a standard Article III court or the FISC. www.politico.com

In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press this morning, Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that there wasn't evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump up to the time he recently left office. None.

He said The Russians must toasting with vodka glasses over all the disruption they have caused in the West.

Rocket, it is obvious that you have spent a great deal of time on this Russia thing. You have made several lengthy posts on the matter.

Since you appear to be so knowledgeable on the topic, I have to ask you, what is the single worst thing that Trump or one of his close associates has done that relates to Russia?

Let's stick to things that have actually been proven.

As far as the possibility that Obama used intelligence gathering for political purposes there is this...

The Wall Street Journal reported in late 2015 President Obama was reading intercepts of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's conversations with members of the House and Senate over what to do about his trying to thwart Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. That is about as political a use of intelligence as I can think so there is some reason to be suspicious here.

-Former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton

Yep! Every damned time Breibart posts a baseless article with no evidence Trump is going to try to spend millions in tax money chasing the wind.

What a clown.

It is high time Republicans align themselves with Democrats and do a full investigation of Government wrongdoing!

-Who from the Trump campaign did wrong?
-Did Obama abuse his powers as President over 8 years?
-What were the reasons behind the Obama administrations sale of US Uranium to the Russians?
-What contacts and dealings did the DNC or Hillary Clintons campaign have with Russia involving the Clinton Foundation?
-What were the connections between Congressmen and Senators with the Russians?

America demands answers!
-

By the way, Senator Coons is on FOX News right now doing the squirmy worm dance backing off of this statement of his.

When asked directly by Chris Wallace if he has seen any evidence, in all this time, of collusion between the Trump campaign or Trump himself and the Russians, Coons said, "Well no, I have seen no evidence of it."

J\C
BREAKING NEWS : New evidence discovered by CNN accusing PRES. TRUMP of using Russian dressing during his campaign . LOL

Shh ... I'm not sure they know that Sessions had a White Russian a few years ago ... shh ...

I love how Republicans want to stick to "things that have been actually proven" when they've linked a failing comic writer's blog post about HRC had dementia or some sort.

I've noticed that Republicans only want "proven facts" when it deals with them, but have no problem polluting the forums with their accusations.

I happen to love how the Democrats can make any accusation they want, without proof, and the Press runs with it.

Now they cry bitter tears because they think Trump has done exactly the same thing about Obama!

Yeah, because Trump has never had any crazy conspiracies about Obama before this...

And you all cried and cried when he did it!
But nary a tear as the Democrats do it time after time after time!

Not really. I think at this point Democrats just accept that Republicans live off fake news and have stopped caring.

Fake News that the Democrats continue to create!

Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and MICHAEL D. SHEARMARCH 5, 2017

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.

Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.

Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.

The White House showed no indication that it would back down from Mr. Trump’s claims. On Sunday, the president demanded a congressional inquiry into whether Mr. Obama had abused the power of federal law enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election. In a statement from his spokesman, Mr. Trump called “reports” about the wiretapping “very troubling” and said that Congress should examine them as part of its investigations into Russia’s meddling in the election.

Along with concerns about potential attacks on the bureau’s credibility, senior F.B.I. officials are said to be worried that the notion of a court-approved wiretap will raise the public’s expectations that the federal authorities have significant evidence implicating the Trump campaign in colluding with Russia’s efforts to disrupt the presidential election.

One problem Mr. Comey has faced is that there are few senior politically appointed officials at the Justice Department who can make the decision to release a statement, the officials said. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself on Thursday from all matters related to the federal investigation into connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering is certain to invite contrasts to his actions last year, when he spoke publicly about the Hillary Clinton email case and disregarded Justice Department entreaties not to.

It is not clear why Mr. Comey did not issue the statement himself. He is the most senior law enforcement official who was kept on the job as the Obama administration gave way to the Trump administration. And while the Justice Department applies for intelligence-gathering warrants, the F.B.I. keeps its own set of records and is in position to know whether Mr. Trump’s claims are true. While intelligence officials do not normally discuss the existence or nonexistence of surveillance warrants, no law prevents Mr. Comey from issuing the statement.

In his demand for a congressional inquiry, the president, through his press secretary, Sean Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said, “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.”

Mr. Spicer, who repeated the entire statement in a series of Twitter messages, added that “neither the White House nor the president will comment further until such oversight is conducted.”

A spokesman for Mr. Obama and his former aides have called the accusation by Mr. Trump completely false, saying that Mr. Obama never ordered any wiretapping of a United States citizen.

“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, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, said in a statement on Saturday.

Mr. Trump’s demand for a congressional investigation appears to be based, at least in part, on unproved claims by Breitbart News and conservative talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing the tapping of the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides at Trump Tower in New York.

In a series of Twitter messages on Saturday, the president seemed to be convinced that those claims were true. In one post, Mr. Trump said, “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”

On Sunday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, said the president was determined to find out what had really happened, calling it potentially the “greatest abuse of power” that the country has ever seen.

“Look, I think he’s going off of information that he’s seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential,” Ms. Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “And if it is, this is the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power that I think we have ever seen and a huge attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to know if this took place.”

The claims about wiretapping appear similar in some ways to the unfounded voter fraud charges that Mr. Trump made during his first days in the Oval Office. Just after Inauguration Day, he reiterated in a series of Twitter posts his belief that millions of voters had cast ballots illegally — claims that also appeared to be based on conspiracy theories from right-wing websites.

As with his demand for a wiretapping inquiry, Mr. Trump also called for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, saying on Twitter that “depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” No investigation has been started.

Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama administration have said there were no secret intelligence warrants regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant existed, James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, “Not to my knowledge, no.”

“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Mr. Clapper added.

Mr. Trump’s demands for a congressional investigation were initially met with skepticism by lawmakers, including Republicans. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said he was “not sure what it is that he is talking about.”

“I’m not sure what the genesis of that statement was,” Mr. Rubio said.

Pressed to elaborate on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Rubio said, “I’m not going to be a part of a witch hunt, but I’m also not going to be a part of a cover-up.” link

I have linked to that highly successful comic writer's blog many times on here. I don't believe he has ever said that Clinton had dementia. He has said that she generally looked unwell, and she responded by going on a five minute coughing fit and passing out weeks later at the 9/11 memorial. But anyway.

Is it fair to say there is no hard proof linking Trump to Russia in any damning way? I am not talking about Trump or his 'associates' talking to the Russian government or citizens in their normal course of business or Senate duties. That is obviously fine.

It's just that I see Rocket and others make these lengthy posts that detail all these 'links' to the 'Russians', they've had months to build their case and it is lacking. Probably the worst they have exposed is that a couple members of the administration have had some inconsistencies when questioned about events that happened months earlier.

What I see is people who have read too much fan fiction, are so sure that something sinister is going on that confirmation bias goes into overdrive, and they see any circumstantial meeting as part of this grand conspiracy.

Ain't he the same guy who said Hillary was innocent, no guilty, no innocent?

I don't know what's going on behind the scene. But what Trump is doing is just a distraction.

CNN) — The FBI asked the Justice Department on Saturday to refute President Donald Trump's assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump's phones last year, two sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

The FBI made the request because such wiretapping would be illegal, since the President cannot just order the eavesdropping of a U.S. citizen's phones, the sources said. The sources would not say who was involved in the conversations between the FBI and DOJ.

So far, the Justice Department has not said anything in reaction to Trump's tweets on Saturday, in which he made the wiretapping allegations.


Asked about the FBI request, a Justice Department spokesman said he had no comment. The FBI refused comment as well.

The New York Times first reported that the FBI asked the Justice Department to refute Trump's wiretapping claim.

Trump's aides asked Congress on Sunday to look into whether the Obama administration abused its investigative powers during the 2016 election. The move comes a day after Trump posted a series of tweets alleging, without presenting any evidence, that Obama wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower in the weeks leading up to the November election.

"Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in the statement Sunday morning, which he also posted on Twitter. "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," Spicer added. He did not provide any further details on the President's request to Congress.


While Spicer said "reports" prompted the call for a congressional investigation, the White House still has not provided any evidence to back up the President's accusations. There are no publicly known credible reports to back up Trump's claim that Obama ordered Trump's phones be monitored.

Frustrated that the Russia stories have overshadowed a widely praised performance in his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump angrily raised the wiretapping issue unprompted in conversations with friends and acquaintances at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, two people who have spoken with him at his Palm Beach resort said on Sunday. The President didn't specify what information he was basing his accusations upon, but told them he expected an investigation to prove him right.

Multiple former senior US officials have dismissed Trump's allegations, however, calling them "nonsense" and "false." Obama, through a spokesman, also rejected the claim that he ordered Trump's phones tapped.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a career intelligence official who had oversight of the US intelligence community in that role, said Sunday that Trump was not wiretapped by intelligence agencies nor did the FBI obtain a court order through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor Trump's phones.

"For the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign," Clapper said Sunday morning on NBC's "Meet the Press."

I would like to hear what James Comey himself has to say about this. I'm far less interested in what anonymous sources told the New York Times about what James Comey thinks.

I have 9 sources that told me the Russians made him say what he said.

Well of course he did. I mean have you ever seen a black Russian, or a Latino Russian, or an Asian Russian.

I've never seen one but Breitbart told me they exist so they must!

Well damnit why didn't I get a chance to sleep with them yet

I love every single time James Clapper says anything in an interview and expects people to believe him. This isn't even related to this per say. He lied under oath about the NSA collecting mass information from Americans and essentially has no credibility. Whatever that guy says, I hope people remember he lied.

CIA, DOJ sued over leaks of classified info about former NSA Flynn

The CIA and Departments of Justice and Treasury are being sued by a prominent legal organization for their role in leaking highly classified material as part of an effort to undermine the credibility of former Trump administration National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, according to an announcement.

Judicial Watch, known for its role in exposing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, announced on Monday that it has sued several federal agencies for information related to Flynn's discussions with Russian officials before he officially entered the White House.

Flynn was forced to resign from the White House for apparently misleading President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence about the substance of these conversations.

However, the Washington Free Beacon and multiple other news outlets have reported on a campaign by former Obama administration officials and loyalists to spread highly classified information in a bid to handicap the Trump administration.

In addition to Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House adviser Sebastian Gorka have been the subject of multiple leaks aimed at jeopardizing their positions in the administration.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/...-nsa-flynn.html

why sue? i thought leaks were all good!!!!

oh, only when it happens to the dems? gotcha

Hmm ... I must of missed when Flynn gave his password out ... you'd think he was smarter than that .. guess not ...

Trump just keeps stoking this fire! lol

This is going to end very badly for this administration. SAD.

While You Weren’t Looking, the Democrat–Media Election-Hacking Narrative Just Collapsed

That supposed FBI investigation of collusion with the Russians? Never mind . . . They’re in retreat now. You may have missed it amid President Trump’s startling Saturday tweet storm, the recriminations over president-on-candidate spying, and the Jeff Sessions recusal — a whirlwind weekend. But while you weren’t looking, an elaborate narrative died.

For months, the media-Democrat complex has peddled a storyline that the Putin regime in Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election. There is, of course, no evidence that the election was hacked in the sense that the actual voting process was compromised. Rather, there is evidence that e-mail accounts of prominent Democrats were hacked months before the election, and thousands of those e-mails were published by WikiLeaks in the months leading up to the election.

Into this misleading “Russia hacked the election” narrative, the press and the Dems injected a second explosive allegation — or at least an explosive suspicion that they’ve wanted us to perceive as a credible allegation meriting a serious investigation. The suspicion/allegation is: Not only did Russia hack the election, but there are also enough ties between people in the Trump orbit and operatives of the Putin regime that there are grounds to believe that the Trump campaign was complicit in Russia’s hacking of the election.

Transparently, the aim is to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election victory.

Finally, the third prong, without the support of which the stool would collapse: the impression that the FBI has been feverishly investigating what is said to be the Trump campaign’s collusion in what is said to be the Russian hacking of the election. This reporting is designed to get you saying to yourself: “Why would there be such a zealous investigation by FBI agents — in addition to several other intelligence and law-enforcement agents — unless there really were grave reasons to believe the shocking election-hacking conspiracy narrative?”

Thus, details about investigative activity have been leaked to the media. The press and the Democrats then exploit the leaks to spin the “Trump complicity in Russian election-hacking” story. It seems not to matter how objectively ill-conceived the Russian election-hacking claim is, or how woefully insufficient the purported Trump–Russia ties are to support an inference of campaign collusion in the hacking. The specter of an investigation — breathless media reports of FISA-court applications, wiretaps, surveillance of agents of a foreign power, and mysterious servers; painstaking analysis of shady financial transactions involving Russian banks and funding streams — seems to make the outlandish conspiracy impossible to dismiss out of hand.

A New York Times report perfectly illustrates the three-prong scheme. On January 19, under the alarming headline “Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry into Trump Associates,” the paper began its report as follows:

WASHINGTON — American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.
The continuing counterintelligence investigation means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him. As president, Mr. Trump will oversee those agencies and have the authority to redirect or stop at least some of these efforts.

Could what’s going on be more obvious? The Times would have you believe that the Russians “worked to help elect” Trump because the intelligence agencies have said so. With this ballyhooed conclusion as the premise, law-enforcement and intelligence agencies are conducting a “counterintelligence investigation” — meaning that there may be crimes involved, as well as activities of a foreign power in the United States — to determine the nature of links between Russian officials (who, remember, helped elect Trump) and Trump associates connected to the Trump campaign. The probe, we’re further told, is “broad” and includes “intercepted communications” — which, to any informed person, strongly suggests that the FBI went to a federal court and laid out probable cause of improprieties, which prompted one or more judges to authorize wiretaps and potentially other forms of electronic surveillance (e.g., e-mail intercepts).

Is there an innocent interpretation of all this? Of course there is. After all, the underlying allegation of an election-hacking conspiracy between the Putin regime and the Trump campaign is nonsense, so there must necessarily be an innocent interpretation. And, lo and behold, the Times itself provides it — further down in the story, after all the sensational conspiracy mongering:

It is not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or Mr. Trump himself. It is also unclear whether the inquiry has anything to do with an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and other attempts to disrupt the elections in November.

See? It is entirely possible that the FBI and other investigative agencies are not pursuing, and have never pursued, a Trump-campaign angle on the hacking. It is entirely possible (though I have doubts about this) that there are no FISA national-security wiretaps directed at Trump associates — maybe the “intercepted communications” touted by the Times came from surveillance targeting Russian operatives whom Trump associates, perhaps unwittingly, happened to run into while doing business that had nothing to do with the campaign. I think, based on all the reporting we’ve seen (some of which, as the Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes observes, is thinly supported), it is more likely that the feds got FISA surveillance authorization for some associates of Trump (the names of Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Carter Page are mentioned). But maybe the probable cause for any such surveillance involved those associates’ own business dealings with Russia — having nothing to do with Trump or the Trump campaign.

But the innocent interpretation, the more likely interpretation, is not what the media and Democrats have wanted us to believe.

For months, they have titillated their audience with the election-hacking conspiracy fantasy. When they cover their behinds by mentioning the possibility of innocence, it is in the fine print.

But still, the media and Democrats have always had a serious vulnerability here — one they’ve never acknowledged because they’ve been too swept away by the political success of the fantasy narrative. It is this: At a certain point, if compelling evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the election did not materialize, the much more interesting question becomes “How did the government obtain all this information that has been leaked to the media to prop up the story?”

The most plausible answer to that question: The Obama administration, through the Justice Department and the FBI, was investigating the associates of the opposition party’s presidential nominee, and perhaps even the nominee himself, during the campaign. Otherwise, what explanation can there be for all of the investigative information — much of it classified, and thus illegal to disclose — that has been funneled to the press?

In short, the media and Democrats have been playing with fire for months. The use of law-enforcement and national-security assets to investigate one’s political opponents during a heated election campaign has always been a potentially explosive story. Let’s not kid ourselves: If the roles were reversed, and a Republican administration had investigated officials tied to the campaign of the Democrats’ nominee, we would be drowning in a sea of Watergate 2.0 coverage.

Well, this weekend, the potentially explosive story detonated. It happened in the now familiar way: jaw-dropping tweets by President Trump.

Given the abundance of indications that the Obama Justice Department scrutinized his campaign, or at least his [censored] mess that appears insupportable — viz., that President Obama had had candidate Trump wiretapped. To my knowledge, no such suggestion has ever been publicly reported. At most, it has been reported (but not proved) that there was a FISA application in June that “named Trump” – but, as I’ve pointed out, saying someone was named in an application does not mean that person was targeted for eavesdropping. And, in any event, the reporting tells us that if there was such an application, the FISA court denied it. Thus, I know of no basis to believe that Trump himself was wiretapped; and if the president’s objective was to sensationalize the story, it would surely have been enough to tweet out a colorable fear that surveillance of him — as a Russian agent — had been proposed.

But was the overstatement slyly intentional? Was Trump trying to make a point? Maybe not. It is certainly possible that the president was angry and the tweets result from a fit of pique. On the other hand, though, how much crazier is it for Trump to contend that Obama ordered spying on Trump than for the media and Democrats to have contended, for month upon month, that Trump’s campaign conspired with the Putin regime to steal the American presidential election and turn the Oval Office into occupied Kremlin territory?

It is probable that both allegations are ludicrous. There is a good case, though, that there’s more support for the former than the latter.

Here’s the most interesting part: Now that they’ve been called on it, the media and Democrats are gradually retreating from the investigation they’ve been touting for months as the glue for their conspiracy theory. It’s actually quite amusing to watch: How dare you suggest President Obama would ever order surveillance! Who said anything about FISA orders? What evidence do you lunatic conservatives have — uh, other than what we media professionals been reporting — that there was any investigation of the Trump campaign?

You will hear more righteous indignation in the coming days, no doubt. The first brushback pitches came this weekend: the claim that if President Trump dares to demand that the FBI and Justice Department show him the supposed FISA applications, he will be engaged in unprecedented political interference in the independence of law enforcement. It’s a silly assertion; as I explained over the weekend, FISA surveillance is not law enforcement, it is national security. A chief executive who demanded to review FISA information (obtained by exercise of the executive’s power) would be doing his main job — to protect the country — not interfering in a judicial proceeding.

But have you noticed? While all this head-spinning legal jibber-jabber goes back and forth, the foundation of the false narrative we’ve been hearing since November 8 has vanished. Now that we’re supposed to believe there was no real investigation of Trump and his campaign, what else can we conclude but that there was no real evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia . . . which makes sense, since Russia did not actually hack the election, so the purported objective of the collusion never existed.

Trick or tweet?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/44...-trump-campaign

What's a national review?

It's actually one of the better conservative news sites. That's even where I get some of my news.

Former Trump aide Flynn says lobbying may have helped Turkey

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/forme...--politics.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who was fired from his prominent White House job last month, has registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department for $530,000 worth of lobbying work that may have aided the Turkish government.



A lawyer for the former U.S. Army lieutenant general and intelligence chief said in paperwork filed Tuesday with the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit that Flynn was voluntarily registering for lobbying that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey."



Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, U.S. citizens who lobby on behalf of foreign government or political entities must disclose their work to the Justice Department. Willfully failing to register is a felony, though the Justice Department rarely files criminal charges in such cases. They routinely work with lobbying firms to get back in compliance with the law by registering and disclosing their work.



Flynn's attorney did not respond to questions about whether the Justice Department or FBI had contacted Flynn about his lobbying activities.



Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., had previously disclosed to Congress that it worked for Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by a Turkish businessman. But neither Flynn nor his company had previously filed paperwork with the Justice Department, which requires more extensive transparency about work that benefits foreign governments and political interests.



In the filings with the Justice Department, Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner, noted they served as a termination of the registration, saying the firm had ceased operations in November, the same month the lobbying contract ended.



Under a Trump administration ethics pledge that post-dated his company's work, Flynn agreed not to lobby for five years after leaving government service and never to represent foreign governments.



Calls to phone numbers associated with Flynn and his firm weren't answered. Kelner, his attorney, declined to comment through a spokesman for his law firm, Covington & Burling.



Reached Wednesday afternoon, an official at the Turkish embassy in Washington said he would refer the questions to the embassy spokesman. The spokesman did not immediately respond.



The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon.



Trump fired Flynn last month for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.



As a key member of Trump's transition team last December, Flynn spoke by phone several times with Kislyak during the period when former President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and levied new sanctions in response to Russian election-related hacking.



According to the new paperwork, Flynn's firm took on the Turkish-related lobbying work last August while he was a top Trump campaign surrogate. Flynn's consulting firm said its lobbying work ended in November, when the company ceased operations.



Flynn Intel disclosed in its filing that the company was invited by its Turkish client, Ekim Alptekin, to meet with Turkish officials in New York in mid-September. Among those officials, the documents said, were Turkey's ministers of foreign affairs and energy. Flynn's company did not name the officials but reported the two worked for Turkey's government "to the best of Flynn Intel Group's current understanding."



In late October and early November, Flynn wrote an op-ed promoting Turkey's political and business affairs that was later published in The Hill, a Washington-based political newspaper. In the new filing, Flynn disclosed that in writing the op-ed, he relied on research conducted as part of the Inovo BV contract.



But Flynn's filing emphasized that neither Inovo BV nor the Turkish government directed him to write the article. He also said he was not paid for the op-ed.