Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Exactly How Many Presidential Candidates Did President Obama Spy On?
Because of its implications, this is an uncomfortable question; let me first briefly outline the framework against which the question is asked.
The following are facts that do not appear to be in dispute by anyone who isn’t a card-carrying member of Team Obama:
- President Obama weaponized for political purposes the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus of the federal government, including the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency.
- President Obama spied on Congress.
- President Obama spied on journalists.
The following assertions are open for debate but are backed by significant evidence and quickly moving to the indisputable fact column:
- President Obama used the weaponized intelligence apparatus to spy on the campaign of Donald Trump in order to benefit President Obama’s chosen successor, Hillary Clinton.
- President Obama began spying on the Trump campaign while the Republican primaries were still competitive and before Donald Trump was the presumptive nominee.
Against this background it seems reasonable, albeit uncomfortable, to ask: In addition to spying on the Trump campaign, did President Obama spy on the campaigns of other Republican presidential candidates? After all, if he was willing to spy on one rival campaign why wouldn’t he go ahead and spy on others?
This is a serious question with serious implications if the answer is affirmative. A few weeks or even perhaps a few days ago this would have been a fringe question. Not long ago Senator Rand Paul wondered aloud whether his presidential campaign had been spied on by the Obama team. For the most part, Paul was ridiculed for even bringing up the possibility. However, based on everything we know now about the way President Obama used the DOJ, FBI, CIA and various other agencies for political purposes, this is not only a legitimate but a necessary question.
We need to know the full width and breadth of the political corruption of these agencies. Trust in our institutions is crumbling, largely due to the unaccountable, untrustworthy, and in many cases unlawful and unconstitutional, actions of senior leaders of those institutions. It is absurd that we have arrived at a place where it is not absurd to publicly inquire whether the President of The United States in 2016 used the FBI and CIA to spy on multiple rival presidential campaigns. For public trust to be restored, these institutions and their leaders past and present must be exposed to the cleansing light of day and must be held fully accountable.
As an aside, I will note that I debated whether in my statements above to say “The Obama Administration” rather than name the former president directly. I decided to lay the blame directly at the feet of President Obama because to the extent that James Clapper, James Brennan, James Comey, and a host of other Jameses, Andrews, Peters, Lisas, Lorettas, Sallys, etc., acted in a politically corrupt manner while occupying senior offices of government they did so at the behest of their boss, one President Barack Obama.
Published in General
Jill Stein dined with Vlad Putin, but I don’t think she was spied on. Hillary’s husband cashed a half-million payoff from Vlad Putin, but I don’t think she was spied on. Clearly, direct interaction with Vlad Putin is not a criteria for spying. Maybe it is a gender based thing??
I can see Ted Cruz’s campaign being spied on after several of the other Republican candidates dropped out. He was the last true Trump alternative.
Nixon/Watergate was about his RE-election campaign.
Obama doesn’t even the excuse for 2016 that he was seeking his own re-election.
One sense therefore in which this scandal is worse than Watergate is that the incumbent president, holding what is arguably the most powerful office in the world, was secretly manipulating clandestine levers of power in order to determine who would be his successor.
This sort of thing used to be tinfoil hat stuff, but no more.
Thanks, Obama.
Yes, I think if there was spying on other campaigns, Cruz’s would be the most likely target.
I think you are letting undeniably disturbing facts subtly blur into unsupported innuendo in this piece. No one would be happier than I to see the Obama administration remembered in the same light as the Nixon administration for its corruption. And clearly there are some well documented, if contained, fires (most notably the IRS/Tea Party harassment), as well as a good bit of smoke of uncertain origin. But the claim that all these agencies were “weaponized” by “team Obama” for “political purposes” is as yet unproven.
Was the IRS harassment a political order? Or the overzealous partisanship of an agency hack?
Was the Trump campaign spied on for political purposes? Or did an investigation of illicit Russian behavior lead to some folks on the periphery of the Trump campaign?
We don’t know the answers to these questions and others like them. I hope we find out. I think there’s enough there to be worth looking, and filling in the narrative with facts. But it’s too soon to jump to the end of the story.
Yes, this spying scandal is orders of magnitude worse than Watergate even if it turns out that Trump’s was the only campaign surveilled.
The weaponization of the executive agencies for political purposes doesn’t depend on whether the Trump campaign was surveilled, although I believe it clearly was. The weaponization had already happened well before that. Spying on Congress was a big deal and overtly political – it was done to help the administration lock down the Iran deal. Think of how the EPA was turned loose to, in the words of one regional administrator, crucify a few people here and there to make examples of them. The EPA was used to make an end run around Congress on cap and trade. Selective prosecutions by the DOJ (immunity for all of Hillary’s pals but throw the book at Dinesh D’Sousa comes to mind) were certainly for political purposes. And, yes, the IRS was weaponized against conservative nonprofits. It seems clear that was more than just one bureaucrat gone rogue.
Nathanael, an interesting read that seems to back up your thesis:
Part 1 FISA grants the Authority not the Ability…
by Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse AKA The Last Refuge:
“There is a meeting scheduled tomorrow between key congressional oversight committee heads (Nunes, Gowdy etc.) and leadership of the FBI (Director Wray), DOJ (Edward O’Callaghan) and ODNI (Dan Coats). The meeting was set up by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and the purpose of the meeting is to come to some agreement on access to documents being withheld by the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI.”
“However, amid the ongoing debate over spies and informants used by the CIA and FBI to conduct political surveillance, there’s an aspect of the ongoing investigation that seems to be entirely overlooked.”
“On January 7th, 2016 the Inspector General of the National Security Agency, George Ellard, submitted a mandatory compliance report outlining the status of the NSA’s ability to monitor the access of users within the NSA database.”
“For those who don’t read it, a quick summary would be: We don’t actually have control over how this massive amount of meta-data is being used, searched, queried, and how the information within it is being filtered, minimized or extracted.”
“The NSA is essentially admitting to being overwhelmed with the scale of the data being collected, and they are similarly overwhelmed by the number of people who have access to this data.”
More from Sundance at Conservative Treehouse:
“There’s a saying: “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness, than permission.”
As you think of that phrase, consider the April 2017 declassified FISA Court ruling we often reference, along with the admissions made to the FISA court by the DOJ, FBI and NSA in October of 2016. Approximately 85% of all FISA-702(17) “about” queries were unlawful violations.
What was the DOJ, FBI and NSA asking the FISA Court for: ‘forgiveness’, or ‘permission‘?”
“It wasn’t until NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down contractor access to the system in April 2016 that political exploitation of the FBI and NSA databases was impeded. Not stopped entirely, simply impeded.”
“I would suggest to everyone following this deeply complex spying and surveillance story, that it was AFTER Mike Rogers initially began blocking use of the databases for unauthorized searches (March 2016), that those political operatives (outside contractors) shifted their spying and surveillance activity.
Following this timeline it was after March 2016 when the use of human assets, CIA and FBI agents, became more of a necessary function within the process.
After March and April of 2016 is where George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Stefan Halper become needed by the intelligence apparatus. It was in April 2016 when Fusion-GPS, Nellie Ohr and Chris Steele became more important.”
If it ever came out that St. Marco of the Sunny Disposition has been a subject of surveillance, I do believe that some of the scoffers would change their tune. It would make more sense to target creditable candidates and not the star of some third-rate reality TV program.
Why target Trump for all this and ignore the other candidates?
I don’t want the organs of the state turned into the plaything of those in power, no matter who “those in power” might be.
There is much fog but I’m sure I remember a bit from some comedian in the late 1980s (The Half Hour Comedy Hour?) in which he told of his practice of lying to every girl on the first date in preparation for that point down the road when she would catch him in some egregious falsehood with a heartbreaking “You lied to me!” To which he would somewhat dismissively reply, ” But, I have always lied to you.”
It is time to stop acting surprised that the actions of Team Obama in 2016 point toward corruption. Given the known-knowns of today, much of which you outline above, it is simply not rational to not recognize that everything they touched since 2009 (or before) must be examined with at least the suspicion of corruption. They have been (more or less) corrupt since the first date.
How about the 2012 election. Mitt seemed to throw in the towel in that last debate. Did Obama have dirt from spying?
I was glad to see the first sentence and would have preferred the “Obama Administration.” For that reason, I would also dispute “President Obama weaponized . . .” (#1, above), and can assure you that I’m not a member of his “team.” If one is going to say someone acted at the “behest” of their boss, one needs more that “created a climate of” or “did something similar (surveilling James Rosen).
One of the notable facets of the federal bureaucracy is that it’s staffed by those who lean left (and in some cases, lean hard left). It isn’t necessary to, for better or for worse, give directions to anyone on controversial issues because the likes of, say, Andrew McCabe will do it anyway. Obama’s role, as I see it, was more passive, and terms like “weaponized” and “at the behest of” go too far.
With much respect, I could not disagree more.
I don’t know if they do, but I don’t see enough evidence to prove that they don’t to a high degree of confidence.
Thanks, and I don’t know about the respect part. But IMO going further with that requires at least some concrete innuendo (oxymoron?). If there’s more than “It’s Obama, he did this in other situations”, I’m unaware of it. Is there something beyond mere suspicion?
I wish I knew more about you, but I know enough from posts to know your resume is impressive. But I don’t know if you’ve ever “been there.”
If by “there” you mean in the federal government, then no – other than a year spent clerking for a federal appellate judge in California. On legal questions I’m probably better versed than the average commenter, but otherwise, I’m watching the same show you are.
I get it. I would offer only that I’ve not always been a watcher and that the degree of institutionalized leftward tilt should not be undersold.
If Trump was spied on in March 2016, then probably Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz where also spied on.
JStreet also claimed they where spied on during the debate over the Iran Nuclear deal.
Marshals to the front.
An interesting option for Trump and Kelly would be to have the AG task his direct report, the U.S. Marshal Service with special security and enforcement services, i.e. secure data and enforce its procurement from other, uncooperative agencies within the DOJ. The DAG must not be involved or reported to in this matter given the obvious conflict of interest.
As a move it circumvents procedural matters, focuses the public and the organisations, brings the right, enforcement capable and oldest and rather trusted federal law enforcement agency to the forefront and ensures swift and relentless action. Notably, the investigative capacity of the USMS should not be underestimated. If any of the related agencies resist the Marshals can always use their SOG teams.
The service of Wyatt Earp and deputies against the Obama regime holdovers and the legacy of Comey, Clapper, Brennan. My money is on Earp.
Remember that Obama’s primary election strategy has always been to gather dirt on his opponent and take him out before the election (Jack Ryan, etc.)
I had thought that the only election he won fair and square was his re-election in 2012. Now I’m not so sure.
And he couldn’t have done all this by himself – he’s not that smart. His Illinois political victories and his Senatorial victory had to be managed by others; why is it a stretch that they didn’t all simply sleeze their way into the White House with him and start corrupting the big agencies the same way? Maybe this goes a lot deeper than just DJT.
Probably, and the intelligence agencies including the FBI should be taken down and reinvented in miniature and some folks need to go to jail or suffer financial ruin defending themselves, but not from a special prosecutor. That practice should end here. Obama is a true believer but was mostly the public face. It’s deep state all the way down, including deep left wing pockets, special interests built up around Federal moneys, and the economies of scale that work toward centralization. What we’re seeing are features of the administrative state not aberrations. We can endure 50 corrupt inept State Governments. I’m not sure the Republic can survive a full blown administrative state and we may have been given a reprieve. Let’s hope we don’t blow it.
You could say that for pretty much every federal agency, except the ones that shouldn’t be reinvented at all.
I have this image of Obama asking “will no one rid me of these troublesome: Tea Party Activists, objective & critical reporters, 2nd Amendment Advocates, uncooperative legislators and corporate heads?”…and about 85% of federal employee/media & judicial hands go up.
I thought a lot about that when I was going back and forth on word choice. In the end I concluded that the expert research and analysis performed by folks like Andrew C. McCarthy, Sharyl Attkisson, Sarah A. Carter, Byron York, and a couple other notables who have produced excellent work on the subject justifies laying the blame for the political weaponization of executive agencies including FBI, CIA, and DOJ with President Obama personally.
This brings up another relevant question which perhaps deserves its own post. What would it take to restore public trust and confidence in the federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies?
Oh-uh! The smoking gun has been found in the DOJ emails :
“Strzok: And hi. Went well, best we could have expected. Other than [REDACTED] quote: “the White House is running this.” My answer, “well, maybe for you they are.” And of course, I was planning on telling this guy, thanks for coming, we’ve got an hour, but with Bill [Priestap] there, I’ve got no control….
Page: Yeah, whatever (re the WH comment). We’ve got the emails that say otherwise.”
Buraq Hussein Obama has now been directly implicated with this evidence as the mastermind behind the grossly criminal spying on the Trump Campaign. Ain’t bout time for a public little sit down under oath with our hallowed past President and the Senate and House Judiciary Committees bout how our glorious past President performed his duties?
Once an organization is throughly corrupt, bureaucratic with interests that run well outside its official mission, and that’s probably all that have been around a while, it’s beyond fixing. It’s not public trust we need, its for the public to realize none of these kinds of non accountable Washington organizations can be trusted. They have to be eliminated and, if necessary replaced even if many of the same people are picked to staff much smaller replacements. This happens constantly in the private sector, even old companies, unless they can capture Washington have to constantly renew themselves or they die or get taken over. Government simply can’t do this so we have to do it for them and not by adding layers or breaking them into different pieces or pulling them together. This may seem unrealistic, but it’s political interests and cowardice that make it so difficult and lack of imagination and understanding that keep us from trying? What’s really unrealistic is to think that remote non accountable, overfunded organizations run by political interests that possess no self correcting mechanisms and no information system to give it feedback can function beyond it’s initial mandate with the original people pulled in to accomplish its specific objective.
Exactly. The GOP-led House of Representatives held hearings on this. Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote was particularly convincing.
And John Eastman of the National Organization for Marriage had proof that their donors names were leaked publicly by the IRS to their enemies.
This was indeed “weaponization” and the GOP congress did nothing. Nothing.