Obamagate Smashes Media Myth Of A ‘Scandal-Free’ Administration

 

By I&I Editorial
IssuesInsights.com

President Obama's "scandal-free" administration has fallen as recent revelations show a massive White House political spying campaign. Source: Obama Presidential Library

Despite its many policy failures and foreign affairs disasters, the Obama administration always escaped serious criticism in the media because, we were told, there were no serious scandals during his two terms in office. As just-released documents show, President Barack Obama himself was neck-deep in the silent coup attempt by top U.S. officials at the FBI, Justice Department and CIA.

Another media myth, generated by left-leaning journalists to prop up their favorite politician, bites the dust. How do we know? #ObamaGate is now trending on Twitter, a sure sign of spreading interest in the scandal.

The latest document dump from the trove of secrets that the DOJ and FBI withheld from the public shows that the plot to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency by entrapping his National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn went all the way to the top.

Among the documents is one from the Mueller investigation regarding alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russian officials.

In it, according to the Washington Examiner, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates “told special counsel Robert Mueller’s team (in August of 2017) that she first learned the FBI possessed and was investigating recordings of Flynn’s late 2016 conversations with a Russian envoy following a Jan. 5, 2017, national security meeting at the White House. It wasn’t Comey who told her, but former President Barack Obama.

“Yates, who was briefly the acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump administration before getting fired, also laid out how in the ensuing days, Comey kept the FBI’s actions cloaked in secrecy and repeatedly rebuffed her suggestions that the incoming Trump team be made aware of the Flynn recordings.”

Let that sink in. Comey was investigating a key member of the incoming presidential administration, but didn’t inform the White House about the investigation, apparently at the behest of Obama.

Also attending that meeting, in addition to Yates and Comey, were Vice President Joe Biden, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and others.

Yates says Obama and Comey pulled her aside after the meeting ended to tell her what they were doing, and to keep it quiet.

It helps explain why Obama shrilly complained about the Justice Department’s fully justified decision to drop the phony charges against Flynn. Not publicly, of course, but by leaking a recent phone call with former members of his administration, in which he warned “our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk” and characterized Trump’s pandemic efforts as “an absolute chaotic disaster.”

The truth: Obama trampled the rule of law for eight years as president by weaponizing the National Security Agency, CIA, FBI, Justice Department and even the FISA court system to spy on Trump, possibly as early as 2015.

Now it’s all tumbling out, and Obama’s getting very nervous. But this is only the beginning of a deluge of devastating revelations about the Obama administration and how it used U.S. intelligence assets to spy on political opponents.

The investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham is ongoing, with most of these new revelations coming from that effort.

On Monday, interim Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, ordered a list of Obama officials involved in “unmasking” Trump campaign officials and aides who had conversations with Flynn and others who were investigated.

In essence, that practice allowed the Obama White House to tap all electronic communications of those who spoke or communicated with Flynn and others, and discover their identities, beginning from February 2016, when he first signed on as a Trump adviser.

The list is a long one. As Fox News reported, “The list revealed that then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power made unmasking requests seven times between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 11, 2017. The list revealed that (Director of National Intelligence James R.) Clapper made three requests from Dec. 2, 2016 through Jan. 7, 2017; and that Brennan made two requests, one on Dec. 14 and one on Dec. 15, 2016. Comey also made a request on Dec. 15, 2016. On Jan. 5, 2017, (Obama Chief of Staff Denis) McDonough made one request, and on Jan. 12, 2017, Biden made one request.”

This amounts to an illegal domestic political spy ring, looking for dirt in the National Security Agency’s database on Trump’s incoming administration for ultimate use by Deep State insiders, such as disgraced former FBI chief Comey, CIA head Brennan, Clapper and, of course, Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice, among more than a dozen other high-level Obama officials who had access.

They also granted access to NSA data to certain privileged “outside contractors.” That presumably includes both Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the now-infamous Trump Dossier containing salacious allegations that were never verified. The Hillary Clinton campaign paid for that research, which was shared with the FBI, serving as justification for more FISA wiretaps on the Trump campaign.

Of Rice, one of Obama’s closest advisers, ABC News reported back in 2017 that she “was involved in examining intelligence related to individuals affiliated with Trump’s campaign and transition team, and her actions are being heavily scrutinized.”

That means Obama knew what was going on, and likely was behind it.

After all, he hired Flynn as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in July 2012, but forced him out in August 2014, as Flynn’s criticisms of Obama’s bungled policies toward Syria and Iran became increasingly strident.

Did Obama’s animus against Flynn put him in the spy agencies’ crosshairs? The longtime narrative pushed by the media is that the FBI became alarmed about a late December 2016 conversation that Flynn, as the incoming national security adviser, had with then-Russian envoy to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

The truth is, thanks to Obama and his allies at the FBI, CIA and DOJ, starting in February 2016, when Flynn first joined the Trump campaign, everyone who had contact with him was fair game. They were in effect spied upon. Some believe evidence will emerge showing Obama spying on Flynn all the way back to 2014, when he was let go.

Or as The American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson wrote, “In other words, a vast spy operation on the campaign of a political enemy — dwarfing Watergate in scale and importance — apparently was underway.”

Whatever this scandal gets named, it’s a massive one, contrary to the media’s ongoing assertions of Obama’s scandal-free tenure in office. And contrary to Obama’s recent remarks, it was he who undermined the rule of law by using the U.S. intelligence community to spy on a political opponent. By any reading of the law, that is a crime, the biggest scandal of all.