Anonymous wrote:So in other words, Jeff doesn't like Mensch so all is just fine. No there there at all. There's no warrants for wiretapping, no nothing. Nope. Nothing to see here:

Sentences like this give me pause:

To be clear, Levin and Limbaugh and Pollak didn't publish any original reporting. They merely claimed to have connected some dots.[i]

Yet Levin said this:

[i]"It was investigating the campaign of a presidential candidate of an opposing party during the course of the campaign. Its use of FISA, loosening of NSA distribution requirements, husbanding and protecting information at the behest of White House staff on the way out the door, and recent leaks of confidential and perhaps classified information is extraordinary," he wrote.

"Everything I just said is based on media reports, including and especially the New York Times," he added. "It's time to get to the bottom of the extent of what took place in the Obama administration and who was involved. If Obama had no idea about any of this, then he must not have read the newspapers during his presidency, since some of it was public while he was president."

Anonymous wrote:For those who want to know where Levin got his info, etc, here's his open letter to Brian Stelter, in response to his article in CNN today:

"Did you listen to my show on Thursday, before President Trump tweeted? Did you watch my appearance on Fox and Friends Sunday morning? I know you are ticked I did not appear on your show, despite your numerous requests. Your ad hominem attacks about “right wing” radio host and conspiracy theory stuff … incredible.

I simply put together the stories that YOUR profession reported, on the public record. Do you deny there were two FISA applications? Do you deny the first was turned down? Do you deny the second was approved? It’s called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It is about surveillance. The fact that we cannot discern all the details because of the secrecy, except for what the media have revealed and selective leaks by the government, should cause you to want to know more, not to trash those who point it out.

And yes, we can make several logical implications based on events and experience. A FISA application is a big deal. One, or two in this case, that involve campaign surrogates, or a server or computer related to a candidate or campaign, etc., is a big deal. President Obama’s statement is not a definitive statement of anything, other than he, personally, did not order a wiretap, which I never claimed. But that does not mean he was unaware of surveillance activity by several of his departments, even through routine reports to the president, such as the Daily Intel Briefing or information conveyed to him or his staff via the Justice Department re the FBI counter-intelligence activities. As for Clapper, despite his past dissembling before Congress, he may not have been aware of what was taking place since the FBI counter-intel operation reportedly sought the warrant. The Daily Intel Briefing might provide useful information in that regard as well.

Of course, the release of the FISA applications would also shed a lot of light on events, assuming YOU believe reports that they were filed.

Furthermore, Clapper has said, as recently as yesterday, that no connections between the Russians and the Trump campaign have been found. I am extremely critical of Russia, Putin, and the efforts to influence our election, although I do not believe they succeeded. That said, how would Clapper know of no connections if he, as former Director of National Intelligence, didn’t look? On what is that based?

Your lack of curiosity and dishonesty about such matters and in dealing with me demean you and your profession. You are free to circulate this communication to whomever you wish, as I am making it public.

This is the article that Stelter wrote:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/06/media/mark-levin-joel-pollak-breitbart-trump-obama/index.html

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the last paragraph in that column.

Changes nothing at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:House Intelligence Committee chair, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the allegations will become part of his panel's investigation. The committee 'will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party's campaign officials or surrogates,' Nunes' statement read.

While on the Senate side, Intelligence Committee member, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said 'I’m sure that this matter will be a part of that inquiry,' during a discussion on Fox News Sunday.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4283584/White-House-asks-Congress-look-wire-tapping-claims.html#ixzz4aU6umnHM

Things are not looking good for Barack Obama.

Things are not looking good for someone, that's for sure. Can you guess who?

The question is not whether the wiretaps were legal. The question is whether or not they continued to tape even when they found nothing. What's damning is Obama relaxing the rules on how the information can be viewed and used two weeks before he left office.

Dems are walking back their statements to keep themselves from being caught in the web. Interesting times.

I listened to Clapper on MTP yesterday and what I heard him saying was that the rules were relaxed so that intelligence already gathered could be shared in investigation. The concern was that if only one entity had the intelligence, it could easily disappear after Trump was sworn in. The word he used when talking about relaxing the rules on collected intelligence was preserve.

I also heard him say that evidence of collusion was not included in his report to Obama and Trump in January. I'll have to go back and listen to it again, but I could swear he said it twice: not included in his report. That doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist.

So what's damning is Trump's concern about surveillance of his Tower of Sauron. Clapper stated it plainly several times: there was no FISA warrant. If Trump heard the report that there was Russian interference, but no evidence of his campaign's involvement, why would he be so worried as to make an unfounded claim that his offices had been under surveillance?

You know Clapper denied the existence of FISA warrants, right?

Yes. Go back and read the bolded in my post. Chuck Todd asked him more than once and he said it emphatically. No FISA warrant while he was in charge.

He also said his report included no evidence of Trump's campaign colluding with Russians. So why would Trump be worried that there was surveillance - legal or otherwise?

Clasper said that he hoped he would be aware of any such warrant or order and that to the best of his knowledge there was no warrant or order.

That is not the same as definitively stating that no warrant or order existed. Period.

So, either Clapper was lying on national television (unlikely) or there was no FISA warrant.

The question remains: why would Trump be concerned that his offices were under surveillance?

Are you serious? James Clapper is a proven liar. He lied to congress about the very same subject - wiretapping.

It is entirely possible that the Obama administration didn't even seek a warrant. That would be even more damaging.

Anonymous wrote:Read the last paragraph in that column.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mark Levin's (very clear) timeline on this scandal:

1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.

3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.

4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.

6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.

7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information.

8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was part of routine spying on the ambassador, not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation. In the end, Flynn resigns over having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the content of the conversation.

9. February: Times claims extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence leaks.

10. March: the Washington Post targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.

The bolded above is where the problem lies.

Are you serious? James Clapper is a proven liar. He lied to congress about the very same subject - wiretapping.

It is entirely possible that the Obama administration didn't even seek a warrant. That would be even more damaging.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:House Intelligence Committee chair, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the allegations will become part of his panel's investigation. The committee 'will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party's campaign officials or surrogates,' Nunes' statement read.

While on the Senate side, Intelligence Committee member, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said 'I’m sure that this matter will be a part of that inquiry,' during a discussion on Fox News Sunday.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4283584/White-House-asks-Congress-look-wire-tapping-claims.html#ixzz4aU6umnHM

Things are not looking good for Barack Obama.

Things are not looking good for someone, that's for sure. Can you guess who?

The question is not whether the wiretaps were legal. The question is whether or not they continued to tape even when they found nothing. What's damning is Obama relaxing the rules on how the information can be viewed and used two weeks before he left office.

Dems are walking back their statements to keep themselves from being caught in the web. Interesting times.

I listened to Clapper on MTP yesterday and what I heard him saying was that the rules were relaxed so that intelligence already gathered could be shared in investigation. The concern was that if only one entity had the intelligence, it could easily disappear after Trump was sworn in. The word he used when talking about relaxing the rules on collected intelligence was preserve.

I also heard him say that evidence of collusion was not included in his report to Obama and Trump in January. I'll have to go back and listen to it again, but I could swear he said it twice: not included in his report. That doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist.

So what's damning is Trump's concern about surveillance of his Tower of Sauron. Clapper stated it plainly several times: there was no FISA warrant. If Trump heard the report that there was Russian interference, but no evidence of his campaign's involvement, why would he be so worried as to make an unfounded claim that his offices had been under surveillance?

You know Clapper denied the existence of FISA warrants, right?

Yes. Go back and read the bolded in my post. Chuck Todd asked him more than once and he said it emphatically. No FISA warrant while he was in charge.

He also said his report included no evidence of Trump's campaign colluding with Russians. So why would Trump be worried that there was surveillance - legal or otherwise?

Clasper said that he hoped he would be aware of any such warrant or order and that to the best of his knowledge there was no warrant or order.

That is not the same as definitively stating that no warrant or order existed. Period.

So, either Clapper was lying on national television (unlikely) or there was no FISA warrant.

The question remains: why would Trump be concerned that his offices were under surveillance?

Anonymous wrote:Mark Levin's (very clear) timeline on this scandal:

1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.

3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.

4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.

6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.

7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information.

8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was part of routine spying on the ambassador, not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation. In the end, Flynn resigns over having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the content of the conversation.

9. February: Times claims extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence leaks.

10. March: the Washington Post targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.

Anonymous wrote:Mark Levin's (very clear) timeline on this scandal:

1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.

3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.

4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.

6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.

7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information.

8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was part of routine spying on the ambassador, not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation. In the end, Flynn resigns over having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the content of the conversation.

9. February: Times claims extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence leaks.

10. March: the Washington Post targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.