In a stunning confluence of events, on the very day the Senate approved the “Section 702” provision that allows the FISA court to expand its authority to spy (apparently on Americans), we now have evidence that puts us very close to concluding that during the Obama administration, in a flagrant abuse of power, the unverified, Hillary-financed “Trump/Russia dossier” was indeed used by the FBI to get a warrant to listen in on Carter Page and, by extension, the Trump campaign. In other words, when Trump said his campaign had been “wiretapped,” he wasn’t just being paranoid, because you’re not paranoid if it’s really happening.
After Dianne Feinstein took it upon herself to release a transcript of Glenn Simpson’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Intelligence Committee decided to go ahead and release his testimony before them, too, and voted unanimously to release all 165 pages. According to Simpson, Fusion GPS was being paid $50,000 a month, plus expenses, to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. He said he wasn’t the one who passed the Christopher Steele dossier to Buzzfeed and in fact had been very concerned about putting “raw information” out there. He asserted that Putin went on a “witch hunt” to track down U.S. intelligence sources and said he even believed people were killed, in “a bit of an old-fashioned purge.”
When asked if the information in the dossier was true, he replied, “I didn’t say that. What I said was it was credible at the time it came in.” So, Fusion GPS couldn’t say it was true, but they passed it to government officials, anyway.
Speaking of that, remember Bruce Ohr, the now-demoted Justice Department official who, amazingly, happens to be married to an employee of Fusion GPS? Simpson testified that Ohr asked him to give “some” of the Fusion GPS information to the Justice Department. That testimony may explain a lot, because this would have put the DOJ in the perfect position to use that information --- paid for, you’ll recall, by the DNC and the Clinton campaign –- to get FISA warrants to eavesdrop on Trump's campaign headquarters. If that’s what happened, it’s like the Watergate break-in, only with modern surveillance technology and fueled by the power of entrenched government bureaucracy.
As deep as all this is getting, it barely scratches the surface. Very specific classified information just reviewed by Republican members of Congress has convinced them that the fix definitely was in when it came to the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton. Now it’s a matter of making all of it public as soon as possible. To do this, the committee can ask Speaker Paul Ryan for a vote, making the case that the release of this information, even though it’s classified, is of vital importance to the public. Naturally, Democrats would vote against doing this (Not surprisingly, Dems on the committee already have, though they haven’t even looked at it!), but Republicans have majority vote, both in committee and on the floor.
Now that “702” has been reauthorized, Sen. Rand Paul says he hopes to convince President Trump to veto it. Trump has called for changes but says he supports the FISA law overall. Today’s revelations have given the senator some high-caliber ammunition that just might convince Trump to wield his veto pen, especially since FISA was misused to attack him personally. It appears to have been used to try to keep him from getting elected, and then, when that didn’t happen, to spark the Mueller investigation and find some way to take him down.
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