While many will be foolish enough to buy the dishonesty of the mainstream media, a much larger percentage of the population is waking up to the new reality that we live in…
If someone handed me a dollar today for every time I heard the strawman argument that President Donald Trump “presented no evidence” to backup his Twitter accusations that the Obama Administration wiretapped him during the election, I’d have just as many dollars as I’d have if I collected one for every time I heard James Clapper lie about the NSA spying on the American people during his tenure as the Director of National Intelligence. Either way, I’d be rich.
Then, something funny happened to Clapper in the mainstream media. As soon as Wikileaks proved that the NSA did spy on American citizens, all of my imaginary dollars went away. I couldn’t find footage of Clapper lying to the American people anywhere in the main stream! Flash forward to the present, where MSNBC’s Chuck Todd had Clapper come on his “news” show to say there was no FISA order to investigate the Trump campaign. It might as well be ‘case closed,’ right?
In these confusing times, it sure is nice to have people like Chuck Todd looking out for us. You see, Donald Trump was wrong. People like Todd are not the “enemy of the people”, they are friends of the people who want to shield them from the truth. Although it is impossible to tune in to cable news without running into those who want to shield you from the truth, at least you could still see Mark Levin lay out the evidence on Fox and Friends that Trump didn’t have enough room to do in 140 characters or less.
The beauty in what Levin does is how he keeps the left wing outlets on the hook for reports they published when the news was convenient for them. Now, as the left tries to demonize the President for his claims, we can look back on a paper trail of the very same stone-throwers setting the table for the destruction of their own glass house. By laying out seven “exhibits”, Levin proves that the MSM already reported on exactly what they are denying exists now. In doing so, Levin asserts that it is not a matter of whether there was spying going on, but a matter of exactly who was doing it, exactly who the target was, and to exactly what extent the spying was being done. So let’s get into it.
Exhibit One: Evidence from the center-right, libertarian sect FBI granted FISA warrant
Heat Street confirms from two separate sources with links to the counterintelligence community that there was a succession of two Foreign Intelligence Act Court requests made by the FBI in June and October of 2016. The first FISA request, which named Trump personally, was denied by the court for insufficient probable cause. The second was granted four months later to allow the FBI to examine and investigate members of “US persons in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia”, after evidence of a server possibly related to the Trump campaign and two banks was presented. With the target being a server, does it matter whether or not Trump was wiretapped, as he stated, or if the spying was done by infiltrating the server to look into emails and documents? Spying is spying.
Exhibit Two: Evidence from the far left – FBI asked for warrant to monitor Trump aids
In January, Mother Jones, along with the UK’s most popular left wing news agency, The Guardian, reported that “the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (FISA) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials.”
All I can ask is this: to what extent is it okay for the sitting President’s political party and FBI to investigate a presidential candidate from the opposing party during a presidential election? Is it okay at all? Although “Special Prosecutors” are reserved for the investigation of government officials while in office, rules should be changed to allow them to be used in the investigation of prospective government officials running for office as the obvious conflict of interest applies to both. Either way, both the left and right reported the FISA requests that James Clapper now denies. But there is so much more.
Exhibit Three: Evidence from the center – 6 agencies investigating Trump-Russia ties confirmed
McClatchy reported in January that the FBI and five other Obama Administration agencies were “collaborating for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided Presidential Elect Donald Trump…”
McClatchy confirms that the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, The Department of Justice (DOJ), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the National Security Agency (NSA) were the six agencies investigating then presidential candidate Donald Trump. Can anyone argue that Obama’s DOJ moved in lockstep with his agenda for eight years? If Barack Obama didn’t know what was going on as six of his agencies engaged in espionage of the most famous man on the planet, the ineptitude of his presidency is truly legendary. Which one is it? By the way, that made it a clean sweep of press for the left, right, and center all confirming a FISA request was made and approved to investigate the President during his campaign by January.
Exhibit Four: Evidence from the left on intercepted Russian communications
Considered the standard bearer in reporting by many on the left but a shrinking number of those in the center, the New York Times confirmed what everyone else along the political spectrum was reporting in regards to spying on a presidential candidate taking place. This fourth exhibit is actually my personal favorite. In this piece, the NYT reported that “one official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.“ So according to the Trump-bashing narrative of the MSM, The New York Times can report that Trump spies reported to the White House, but Trump can’t report to the American people that he was spied on by the White House.
Exhibit Five: More from the New York Times, NSA gets more latitude
The Times reported on the fact that the Obama Administration expanded the NSA’s power to collect satellite transmissions, phone calls, and emails by allowing them to share their information with 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections. Is it just a coincidence that Obama and Co. made spying more efficient for their intelligence agencies, while concurrently spying on the Trump campaign, during their final days in office?
Exhibit Six: Even More from the New York Times, Obama admin rushed to preserve evidence
Here, the New York Times reports that during the administration’s final days, “some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election and about possible contacts between associates of President Elect Donald Trump and Russians across the government.” How could this take place if White House officials had nothing to do with said investigations?
Exhibit Seven: New York Times reports Flynn is said to have talked to Russians
Everyone already knows how the General Flynn story played out. But how did the proof of Flynn talking to Russian officials during the campaign surface in the first place? The Obama Administration can claim that FISA courts are always monitoring the Russian ambassador anyway, but why does their word carry water at this point?
Exhibit Eight: More left-wing foot shooting – Jeff Sessions has a big problem
In the final exhibit of Levin’s opus, he points out how the Washington Post reported that an investigation of Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, had been going on since the spring of 2016.
So, what does all of this evidence mean? For one, it means that the mainstream media made its own bed months ago when they unwittingly provided us all with the very evidence that destroys their current narrative. More importantly, though, it means that McCarthyism is back with a vengeance in 2017. President Trump is not only the victim of it, but is being victim-shamed by a mainstream media for defending himself with their own words.
While many will be foolish enough to buy the dishonesty, more are waking up to the police state tactics being used here. I’ll look forward to the continued self-destruction of deceptive press organizations as this story unfolds.
T.B. Lefever is an OpsLens Contributor and active police officer in the Metro-Atlanta area. Throughout his career, Lefever has served as a SWAT Hostage Negotiator, a member of the Crime Suppression Unit, a School Resource Officer, and a Uniformed Patrol Officer. He has a BA in Criminal Justice and Sociology from Rutgers University.
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