Tag Archives: Obama administration

More willful blindness by the media on spying by Obama administration, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on July 27, 2020 | 1 comment

Jonathan Turley finds it astonishing that the media are ignoring massive criminality by Obama administration figures who attempted to depose President Trump. He shouldn’t; the media always take a pass for Democrats. From Jonathan Turley at thehill.com:

The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring the facts, following the release of yet another declassified document which directly refutes prior statements about the investigation into Russia collusion. The document shows that FBI officials used a national security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and his top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.

It is astonishing that the media refuses to see what is one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media covered Obama administration officials ridiculing the suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign and of improper conduct with the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.

The new document shows that, in summer 2016, FBI agent Joe Pientka briefed Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn and Chris Christie over national security issues, standard practice ahead of the election. It had a discussion of Russian interference. But this was different. The document detailing the questions asked by Trump and his aides and their reactions was filed several days after that meeting under Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, the FBI investigation of Flynn. The two FBI officials listed who approved the report are Kevin Clinesmith and Peter Strzok.

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Media, Politics, Uncategorized

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Yet Another Case Of Fake News Spin – Obama Separated Immigrant Families At The Border, Too, by Duane Norman

Posted on June 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

As the above headline becomes public knowledge, the outrage machine seems to be powering down. From Jon Hall at fmshooter.com:

In May, an image of immigrant children placed in holding cells went viral and was shared heavily, not only by a former Obama administration official but also by leftist activists – who used it as an opportunity to blast Trump for the heartless nature of his immigration policies. The only problem, the infamous image was from 2014 – under Obama.

Once again, we find liberals criticizing policies supposedly enacted by Trump, all whilst ignoring that these practices have been ongoing for almost the entire duration of Obama administration. 

The mainstream media and Democrats have denounced families being ripped apart at the border under the Trump administration, with the children of illegals being placed in detention centers and their parents put in jail for trying to enter the country illegally. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden even went so far as to compare this practice to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.  Somehow, we doubt that his illegal spying has uncovered millions of illegal immigrants being murdered in their detention centers by ICE officials.  

However, even ignoring Hayden’s hyperbole, the outrage and furor concerning these families torn asunder is completely ignorant of any context. No one decided to care or go against this same practice when it was happening under the Obama administration – unlike Trump, the mainstream media all but ignored the story while Obama was president. Even Hillary Clinton was right on cue with her lambasting of Trump’s “devastating” policy, saying:

It is now the official policy of the US government – a nation of immigrants – to separate children from their families. That is an absolute disgrace. There is no more important test of our country than the way we treat the most vulnerable among us, especially children. We cannot turn away from what’s happening on our watch – we have to act.

Notice Clinton’s wording… “a nation of immigrants”, she’s truly cherry-picking and suiting this idea to her own ends. Yes, America is a nation of immigrants – not illegal ones, but those who choose to come legally. Hillary is solely riding on an appeal to emotions whilst ignoring facts and reality.

As Obama’s Secretary of State, Clinton knows that this same policy she’s deriding Trump for was also SOP under the Obama admin; but to admit that would only make her side look bad. Instead, she willfully misinforms the public – just like the mainstream media is shamelessly doing in regards to this faulty narrative. It is yet another instance of the liberal media keeping their mouths shut when it comes to any negatives being exposed regarding Obama yet belittling Trump for following the same practice.

To continue reading: Yet Another Case Of Fake News Spin – Obama Separated Immigrant Families At The Border, Too

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Senate Probe Exposes Obama’s Secret Iran Deal To Sidestep US Sanctions, by Tyler Durden

Posted on June 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

The Obama administration may have lied about enforcing financial sanctions on Iran after the Iranian Nuclear Agreement, which wouldn’t be surprising. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Seemingly not satisfied with airlifting billions in US taxpayer cash on pallets to Tehran, AP reports that the Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran access to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so.

An investigation by Senate Republicans released Wednesday that exposes the Obama administration’s politically-motivated actions to secretly offer help to Iran while withholding the truth from the American taxpayers about the extent of Washington’s handouts to Tehran. As AP reports,

The report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations revealed that under President Barack Obama, the Treasury Department issued a license in February 2016, never previously disclosed, that would have allowed Iran to convert $5.7 billion it held at a bank in Oman from Omani rials into euros by exchanging them first into U.S. dollars. If the Omani bank had allowed the exchange without such a license, it would have violated sanctions that bar Iran from transactions that touch the U.S. financial system.

While issuing the license was not illegal, AP reports that it still went above and beyond what the Obama administration was required to do under the terms of the nuclear agreement.

Under that deal, the U.S. and world powers gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. Last month, President Donald Trump declared the U.S. was pulling out of what he described as a “disastrous deal.”

The license issued to Bank Muscat stood in stark contrast to repeated public statements from the Obama White House, the Treasury and the State Department, all of which denied that the administration was contemplating allowing Iran access to the U.S. financial system.

To continue reading: Senate Probe Exposes Obama’s Secret Iran Deal To Sidestep US Sanctions

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FBI Informant Stefan Halper Paid Over $1 Million By Obama Admin; Spied On Trump Aide After Election, by Tyler Durden

Posted on May 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

This sure looks like the FBI inserted a well-connected political and intelligence operative into the Trump campaign to gather what dirt he could. He apparently didn’t come up with much. It also appears the Obama administration knew about it. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Less than a week after Stefan Halper was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign, public records reveal that the 73-year-old Oxford University professor and former U.S. government official was paid handsomely by the Obama administration starting in 2012 for various research projects.

A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election. Meanwhile, a search of public records reveals that between 2012 and 2018, Halper received a total of $1,058,161 from the Department of Defense.

Halper’s contracts were funded through four annual awards paid directly out of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Established as the DoD’s “internal think tank” in 1973 by Richard Nixon (whose administration Halper worked for), the ONA was run by foreign policy strategist Andrew Marshall from its inception until his 2015 retirement at the age of 93, after which he was succeeded by current director James H. Baker.

One of the four DoD awards Halper received

Halper’s most recent award was noted recently by Trump supporter Jacob Wohl, which piqued the interest of internet researchers who continued the analysis.

Award ID Recipient Name Start Date End Date Amount Awarding Agency
HQ003416P0148 HALPER, STEFAN 9/26/2016 3/29/2018 $411,575 Department of Defense
HQ003415C0100 HALPER, STEFAN 9/24/2015 9/27/2016 $244,960 Department of Defense
HQ003414C0076 HALPER, STEFAN 7/29/2014 7/31/2015 $204,000 Department of Defense
HQ003412C0039 HALPER, STEFAN 5/30/2012 5/29/2013 $197,626 Department of Defense

(h/t ProHeat)

According to the Website USASPENDING.gov, the payments to Halper are for “RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (2012),” “RESEARCH AND STUDIES – THE YEAR 2030, (2014)”, “RUSSIA-CHINA RELATIONSHIP STUDY. (2015),” and “INDIA AND CHINA ECON STUDY (2016).”

The most recent award to Halper for $411,575 was made in two payments, and had a start date of September 26, 2016 – three days after a September 23 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by “pissgate” dossier creator Christopher Steele. The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the unverified “pissgate” dossier as supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page.

To continue reading: FBI Informant Stefan Halper Paid Over $1 Million By Obama Admin; Spied On Trump Aide After Election

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From The Archives: Obama Administration Confirms “No Problem” With Flynn Contacting Foreign Officials, by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

Michael Flynn has agreed to plead guilty to lying twice to the FBI because he did not disclose to the FBI  two things he told the Russian ambassador that the NSA overheard. There was nothing illegal about what he told the Russian ambassador, and now it appears that the Obama administration okayed the contacts, which happened after the election but before Trump’s inauguration. If Flynn had just said he didn’t remember the conversations—bad memory being a particularly virulent plague in Washington DC—he probably would have been home free. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

As we detailed yesterday, ABC was forced to retract an epic mistake in their reporting that claimed contact between Trump staff (Flynn) and Russian officials ‘druing the campaign’ – correcting it to point out that it was in fact ‘during the transition’.

President Trump tweeted his perspective, confirming the new ‘facts’ from ABC…

 I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

CNN were quick to mock the White House for saying that the Obama administration approved Flynn’s contacts (and found someone all too eager to go on TV and attack their claims)… (via The Hill)

 The White House said on Friday that it was the Obama administration that authorized former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during President Trump’s transition, according to CNN.

Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak in the month before Trump took office, the first current or former Trump White House official brought down by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling.

James Clapper, who served as the Director of National Intelligence under Obama, said that the claim that the Obama administration authorized Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak was “absurd,” adding that the administration was concerned by the communications at the time.

“That’s absurd. That’s absolutely absurd,” Clapper said on CNN.

To continue reading: From The Archives: Obama Administration Confirms “No Problem” With Flynn Contacting Foreign Officials

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Holding the “Scandal-Free” Obama Administration Accountable, by Jon Hall

Posted on October 23, 2017 | Leave a comment

Here is a helpful compendium of the Obama scandals, and it’s extensive. From Jon Hall at fmshooter.com:

Throughout Obama’s two terms, the subservient and corporate Mainstream Media voraciously praised the “transparent” and “scandal-free” administration at every turn they could muster. CNN, MSNBC, and the usual ilk of cable news mocked and belittled conservative personalities and opinion; shaming Republicans and any right-leaning citizens into a corner. Don’t believe me? In 2010, The Telegraph called Obama out for labeling voters on the other side of the aisle – conservatives – as stupid:

Boiled down, the new Obama message to Americans is: you’re too stupid to overcome your fears… This year, Democrats have embraced with gusto the notion that Republicans, and by extension anyone thinking of voting for them, are dimwits.

For Obama’s eight years, the American public was misled and distracted from a sprawling, historic saga of corruption streaming from the White House.

Is it any wonder the entirely bought-out Mainstream Media attempted to tout the Obama admin as pristine and accountable when Obama’s own efforts to control the media were the “most aggressive” since Richard Nixon? Exposed during the 2016 elections, a number of mainstream journalists were found to have colluded with the Clinton campaign; a morally-devoid action that originated and was made the norm under Obama. Now that the dust has settled and President Trump is whittling away at erasing Obama’s legacy from history, it’s easy to take an impartial and fact-based look at the “scandal-free” Obama administration…

Let’s begin with the better, well-known ones, shall we?

Benghazi

With how absurdly negligent (or willfully malicious) the Obama admin’s actions during the immediate aftermath of Benghazi was, it’s hard to believe this scandal was allowed to quietly fade away.

In spite of eyewitness accounts, Obama’s State Department – run by none other than Hillary Clinton – blamed the infamous Benghazi attack against two U.S. government facilities on an anti-Muslim video… but Clinton said differently in private to the Egyptian prime minister in a phone call:

We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.

No matter how badly the Mainstream Media and Obama administration tried to craft the narrative; years later, only the facts remain. The administration told a different story publicly than they did privately; Clinton’s State Department even ignored pleas for additional security in Benghazi. Four Americans died in “a planned attack” and the response of the administration was to cover it up and lie to save face during election season.

Being among the biggest scandal of the Obama administration, the lives lost in Benghazi vividly showcases the careless and reprehensible behavior top Democrats Obama and Clinton had in regard to human life in order to win the Presidency.

To continue reading: Holding the “Scandal-Free” Obama Administration Accountable 

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