Tag Archives: Susan Rice

The plot clarifies: the Russiagate investigation was a cover to spy on Trump and his transition team. Wonder if anyone goes to the hoosegow for this. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

Confirmed: Obama administration spied on Trump team

It’s the Boomerang Effect – an investigation that exposes the investigators. That’s what we’re witnessing as the “Russia-gate” probe reveals that the real evildoers at the heart of this ginned-up brouhaha are those who accused President Trump of “treason.”

Now we know the real treason — to the Constitution — is that committed by members of the Obama administration, starting with former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who, as the Daily Caller reports:

“[O]rdered U.S. spy agencies to produce ‘detailed spreadsheets’ of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president, according to former US Attorney Joseph diGenova.

“’What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals… The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,’ diGenova said. ‘In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.’”

The Susan Rice connection was first reported by Trump supporter Mike Cernovich, but his article received little notice. However, when Bloomberg reporter Eli Lake wrote about it, Fox News followed up and the story began to break all over the media map. Lake reported that:

“White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of US persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to US officials familiar with the matter.”

Monitored conversations had nothing to do with Trump’s alleged ties to Russian officials, but instead, according to numerous reports, involved detailed information about the Trump campaign. As Lake put it:

“The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations – primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One US official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.”

To continue reading: Boomerang: ‘Russia-gate’ Turns Into ‘Spy-gate’

One good thing that’s coming out of the Obama administration’s surveillance of Trump and his transition team is scrutiny of the laws that allow such surveillance. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.

From the 2013 post, Martin Luther King: “Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was Legal”

The fact that most of the debate surrounding the unmasking of Trump personnel revolves around whether it was legal or not highlights just how superficial and ethically deranged our culture has become. If what she did was indeed legal, this is an enormous problem in the first place, one that privacy advocates and opponents of Big Brother surveillance have been warning about constantly since the gulag spying panopticon was put in place following 9/11. For the purposes of this post, let’s assume that what Susan Rice did was legal.

If her actions were indeed totally by the books, we need to use this incident as a rallying call to reform the laws immediately. Likewise, Donald Trump should be pushing such reform tirelessly from his bully pulpit, but given his authoritarian nature I doubt he will. Fortunately, Rand Paul is heeding the call.

As reported by The Hill:

U.S. citizens who are caught up incidentally in foreign intelligence surveillance are typically subject to minimization rules to conceal their identities, though there are some exceptions.

But individuals can be exempt from the minimization rules if their identities are necessary to understand the value of the foreign intelligence.

Paul used Monday’s development to renew his push for reform of a controversial provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows the U.S. intelligence community to target non-Americans outside the United States without a warrant. The provision, Section 702, is up for renewal later this year.

Paul also signaled that he sees Nunes — who has long been an advocate for the foreign intelligence law — as a potential ally for reform.

To continue reading: If What Susan Rice Did Wasn’t Illegal, It Should Be