Nobody’s Safe From The PATRIOT Act

Fox pulls Napolitano from air after Trump report

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News Channel has pulled legal analyst Andrew Napolitano from the air after disavowing his on-air claim that British intelligence officials had helped former President Barack Obama spy on Donald Trump.

A person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a personnel matter said Napolitano has been benched and won’t be appearing on the air in the near future. Fox had no immediate comment Monday.

Napolitano’s report last week on “Fox & Friends,” saying he had three intelligence sources who said Obama went “outside the chain of command” to watch Trump, provoked an international incident. Britain dismissed the report as “nonsense” after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer quoted it in a briefing, part of the administration’s continued defense of Trump’s unproven contention that Obama had wiretapped him at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Read more at ASSOCIATED PRESS

Photo credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew

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It’s Showtime. Trump vs. Obama (VIDEO)

By: The Voice of Reason |

The cards are down, and it’s only a matter of time before we see who has the better hand. After days of mentioning the wiretapping of his phones by the Obama administration on Twitter, President Trump has ordered a probe into whether Obama abused his executive powers in 2016. We hope that after that he’ll look at 2009 to 2015 as well, because that’s sure to uncover even more dirty laundry. To no one’s surprise, the dishonest media has been trying to marginalize President Trump over the wiretapping allegations by using the mantra of “fake news,” even though they themselves reported everything President Trump is saying.

In the following video, Right Wing News looks at how Obama and various insiders from within the “deep state” have been openly and seditiously sabotaging the Trump administration with the intent of forcing his resignation or impeachment, and how this time they may have pushed President Trump too far. Now President Trump has struck back and ordered an official probe, starting off a chain of events that may very well be the largest political scandal in US history. President Trump has laid his cards on the table, and in the open; the only question is – can Obama handle being forced into the light?

Breitbart reports:

The White House statement on “DeepStateGate” — President Donald Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama ordered surveillance on him during his 2016 presidential campaign — has the feel of cards and chips thumping down on the table:

The White House is placing a substantial bet on what Congress will uncover. Don’t expect those cards to be dealt swiftly because such investigations take time. The Obama administration was highly adept at stalling investigations until the Democratic media could pronounce them “old news” and ignore the outcome.

The Trump administration can distinguish itself by cooperating energetically with this one and helping it move forward quickly. Rest assured that no matter how long it takes, the media will never consider it “old news” as long as there remains any chance for anyone connected with the Trump 2016 campaign to get in trouble over contacts with the Russians.

It’s possible one reason Trump issued his explosive tweets on surveillance was to make everyone put up or shut up. That might already be working, as some of the more aggressive dealers in unsubstantiated innuendo are suddenly admitting they don’t have any actual evidence. There can’t be any hard evidence if Trump is super-duper wrong about Obama administration surveillance:

Until now, Democrats and their media have been pleased to create the impression that all kinds of wiretapping operations were conducted against the Trump campaign, uncovering many scandalous, possibly illegal connections. Only by reading those articles carefully does one discover the sources are highly speculative and the evidence is thin at best.

THIN AT BEST?

Here, via C-SPAN, is the transcript:

Franken: CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week, that included information that “Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” These documents also allegedly say “there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.” Again, I’m telling you this as it’s coming out, so you know. But if it’s true, it’s obviously extremely serious, and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?

Sessions: Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.

Franken: Very well.

The much-discussed New York Times piece from January 19 is a perfect example of this. It begins by matter-of-factly confirming the existence of the wiretaps everyone in Obamaworld is now swearing are a figment of Donald Trump’s imagination. Mountains of innuendo about connections between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence have been spun out of what these abruptly non-existent intercepts contained, according to the anonymous leakers who currently drive almost 100 percent of mainstream media coverage.

But if you read that New York Times article carefully, it admits the communications intercepts may not exist, and if they do, no one can confirm what they actually say (emphasis added):

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.

The continuing counterintelligence investigation means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him. As president, Mr. Trump will oversee those agencies and have the authority to redirect or stop at least some of these efforts.

It is not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or Mr. Trump himself. It is also unclear whether the inquiry has anything to do with an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and other attempts to disrupt the elections in November. The American government has concluded that the Russian government was responsible for a broad computer hacking campaign, including the operation against the D.N.C.

Whatever President Trump’s intentions were in using Twitter to touch off this firestorm, one of the immediate effects has been letting the gas out of all those speculative Trump stories. The Democratic media is now furiously working to prove all of its own previous coverage of the Trump-Russia allegations was little more than idle speculation, every bit as lacking in hard evidence as Trump’s accusation that Obama was tapping his phones.

After months of unfounded allegations and badly sourced speculation intended to cripple his administration, maybe Trump wanted to prove that only one side of the partisan divide is permitted to make “wild allegations.” Obama’s plants in the Deep State can leak whatever they please, law and truth be damned. They can get an avalanche of hostile coverage moving with a few phone calls or emails. The media feels no contrition when the story turns out to be exaggerated or completely false, eagerly turning to the same Obama holdovers as sources for the next big phony scoop.

No one on Trump’s team, including the president himself, is allowed to reciprocate in kind. We are meant to feel bottomless outrage that Trump would level unsubstantiated allegations against Obama, but apparently, Obama’s minions can launch a constant barrage of unsubstantiated allegations against Trump.

Intentionally or accidentally, Trump just forced the press to admit how weak the bulk of those allegations were. The wiretapping timeline that has drawn so much attention since Saturday night was largely based on mainstream media reporting. The media is effectively saying, “Hey, wait, we were just blowing smoke. We didn’t think anyone would take those reports seriously and build a case that Obama was wiretapping Trump. We just wanted to make Trump look bad by pumping up vague rumors that he and his campaign might have been under observation!”

Amazingly, the same media that just went through 48 hours of convulsions over a bogus “perjury” charge against Attorney General Jeff Sessions is happy to cite an actual, admitted perjurer, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as an unimpeachable source on the exact issue he lied about to Congress. They also expect the American people to trust former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, who openly bragged of his ability to mislead credulous reporters and construct phony narratives to sell the Iran nuclear deal.

The Obama administration’s enthusiasm for surveillance and using government power against its political enemies is a matter of shameful record. The no-holds-barred “Resistance” mindset among Democrats is painfully obvious. If they are running a “silent coup” against Trump, it’s the loudest silent coup in history. You can scarcely sleep at night over the racket this silent coup makes.

Sorry, DNC Media, no sale. In the absence of hard evidence one way or the other, Team Obama is not going to win a credibility shootout with Team Trump.

One of the best and most even-handed observers of the wiretapping drama is Andy McCarthy, who writes for the decidedly non-Trumpian National Review. McCarthy’s Sunday post on the matter is well worth reading in full. His key point is that some highly unusual FISA requests for surveillance on the Trump campaign were made and were denied by the court, as very few such requests are. The Obama administration was persistent and eventually obtained the authorization it wanted, but there is reason to suspect it was not entirely candid with the FISA court on its final, successful request.

McCarthy points out that if Obama believed half of what the Democrats tout as sacred truth about the Russians working with Trump’s campaign, he would have been negligent not to authorize the kind of surveillance Trump is angry about, and there is “a less than zero chance” surveillance could have been imposed “without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House.”

Robert Barnes at LawNewz also explores the idea of the FISA court approving a warrant that was submitted without Trump’s name but “which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump.” He suggests the most serious legal jeopardy that might be facing the people involved in such an effort would be perjury for lying to the FISA court and the dissemination of collected intelligence that should have been kept tightly classified. Instead, he cites reports that Obama acted to reduce the restrictions on sharing this information and to preserve material that should have been destroyed.

What McCarthy and Barnes are describing is plausible and consistent with the behavior of the Obama administration over many years. That doesn’t mean it’s automatically true, but it should be investigated, every bit as thoroughly as Russian activity in the 2016 election cycle. Trump’s weekend tweets may have finally put an end to speculative reporting, strategic leaking, and innuendo. Perhaps the only way to end that game was for Trump to deal himself in.

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THE VOICE OF REASON is the pen name of Michael DePinto, a graduate of Capital University Law School, and an attorney in Florida. Having worked in the World Trade Center, along with other family and friends, Michael was baptized by fire into the world of politics on September 11, 2001. Michael’s political journey began with tuning in religiously to whatever the talking heads on television had to say, then Michael became a “Tea-Bagging” activist as his liberal friends on the Left would say, volunteering within the Jacksonville local Tea Party, and most recently Michael was sworn in as an attorney. Today, Michael is a major contributor to www.BeforeItsNews.com, he owns and operates www.thelastgreatstand.com, where Michael provides what is often very ‘colorful’ political commentary, ripe with sarcasm, no doubt the result of Michael’s frustration as he feels we are witnessing the end of the American Empire. The topics Michael most often weighs in on are: Martial Law, FEMA Camps, Jade Helm, Economic Issues, Government Corruption, and Government Conspiracy.

Fmr Secret Service Agent Turns On Obama to Blow Wiretapping Conspiracy Wide Open

President Obama’s former bodyguard, Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino, is breaking his silence about his former Commander-in-Chief. Bongino is promising to tell everything he knows about the Obama wire-tapping, which Trump tweeted took place, an allegation for which the mainstream media is actively mocking the current president. One example of possible mainstream media bias surrounding the wiretap claim comes from CNN, which ran a story titled “Donald Trump’s baseless wiretap claim.”

Regardless of how one feels about the current president and the tyrannical moves that he’s made, the following information exposes a massive propaganda campaign that affects all Americans.

Bongino (AKA The Renegade Republican) tweeted, “The NY Times on January 19, 2017: The WH knows about wiretaps. The NY Times today: The wiretaps are conservative conspiracy theories.”

The NY Times on January 19, 2017: The WH knows about wiretaps.
The NY Times today: The wiretaps are conservative conspiracy theories. pic.twitter.com/mtE7LkIl8q

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) March 6, 2017

He pointed to the Times article, quoting it as having reported that “intelligence reports” of “wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.”

Trump was inaugurated on the 20th, so the wiretapping report would have been provided to the Obama White House, who presumably would have evaluated the wiretapping transcripts. The former executive bodyguard seems perplexed at the mainstream media’s attempt to characterize Trump as some sort of raving madman, when the Times originally ran the story suggesting the Obama administration was, indeed, in the business of listening in on private conversations.

In a video broadcast on Facebook, Obama’s former security detail accused the mainstream media of trying to have their cake and eat it, too. He said of the Obama administration, “These people are totally not credible on foreign security. And the people they have out there now on Twitter… trying to defend Barack Obama…are totally not credible.” He added, “trust me what I’m telling you is true.” He said the NY Times “be-clowned” itself today. Bongino stated the mainstream media wanted to push the narrative that Trump should be discredited because of his cozy relationship with Russia. “If you’re talking about a wiretap in Trump Tower, you’re a conservative cook and a conspiracy theorist. That’s their line now,” he said, stating the narrative has now changed in an attempt to make Trump look unstable. He says the mainstream media cannot have it both ways. They cannot run a story during the Obama administration which states Obama had transcripts of wiretaps, and then mock the current sitting president when he claims to have been wiretapped. Bongino says, “This is what the slimes want you to believe.”

READ MORE:  Yes, Trump is Dangerous, But the Unelected Deep State Trying to Overthrow Him Is Far Worse

“You understand why no one trusts these sleeze balls at the New York Times?” he asks. “If the New York Slimes [Times] admits it’s own January 19th story is accurate, and that their sourcing is correct, that the phones were in fact wiretapped. They said it themselves in their own piece, and that the White House knew about it, then Trump is right,” he said. “But if they then go to bash Trump and say all you people… are conspiracy theorists, including Trump and his tweet is wrong, then their reporter is an idiot, and the story is a lie and they’re going to have to retract it,” he emphatically concluded categorically denying the mainstream media’s implied narrative Trump is somehow making it all up.

Earlier in the day, on the Renegade Republican’s podcast, Bongino said the mainstream media’s coverage of Trump’s claim the Obama administration had his towers tapped, “media malpractice at it’s worst” and says it has gone way beyond media bias. “The White House (under Obama) had to know about this. There is no way the White House didn’t know about this. No way that a presidential campaign was being investigated, for criminal activity…,” he distinctly stated, revealing the level of knowledge to which the Obama administration was privy.

The former Secret Service agent, who’d served two administrations prior to the Obama administration, said Obama and his cabinet treated their executive position as a kid does with a new cap gun, who pulls the trigger and gets scared. He said their newfound power actually “got in their heads” and they became inebriated with the “near absolute power to do things and get a message out there.”

READ MORE:  Joint Chiefs of Staff Official - US Military Gave Intel to Assad, While CIA Funded & Armed ISIS

He also said the press are “not ethical people either” and they behave quite unethically, pointing to their behavior while traveling on Air Force One. Bongino, biting his tongue, in an apparent attempt to maintain secrecy he may still be held to, simply stated both the press and the administration behaved badly. “People are still loyal to Barack Obama, and not loyal to the USA, see Barack Obama as some president in exile and Trump is some kind of a fraudster who’s evil and has to be taken down,” he said pointing to his reasoning as to why the mainstream media is attacking Trump so fiercely.

#ObamaGate is going to blow wide-open this week

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) March 5, 2017

“Believe me, there are staffers listening to this who know exactly what I’m talking about,” he said. “There’s information out there about what Barack Obama did…that’s going to make them look bad…they figured that information would be buried…now that they lost, they’re in panic mode…that information is going to creep out (about what Obama did)…they have to get Trump out of there before this information comes out,” he said rather cryptically implying the big bombshells of scandal are yet to be uncovered.

“The real Russia scandal is the Democrats involvement with the Russians,” Bongino stated pointing to John Podesta’s involvement with Uranium One…and how Lanny Davis was working for a Russian oligarch and taking money associated with the Russian government. “In the end, this is going to be a devastating downfall for Barack Obama,” he concluded even implying his administration was actively involved in illegal activities.

READ MORE:  Putin Lays Down the Gauntlet to Obama Over Hacking Claims: "Show Proof or Shut Up"

As our readers are well aware, The Free Thought Project is apolitical, neither left-leaning, nor right-leaning, but rather, truth-leaning. It seems the facts in the story are starting to line up with Trump’s claims. Late-breaking news, as reported by The Hill, reveals the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security says Trump possesses credible evidence the former president ordered the wire-tapping of his campaign headquarters.

Trump Tapped? President Accuses Obama Of Spying On His Campaign

President Trump’s Saturday Tweet-storm accusing former President Obama of tapping his phones at Trump Tower has Washington in a frenzy. Are we on the verge of a Watergate-level crisis, or are Trump’s Tweets just more bluster?

DeepStateGate: Trump Ends the Wiretapping Innuendo Game by Dealing Himself In

by John Hayward 5 Mar 2017

The White House statement on “DeepStateGate” — President Donald Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama ordered surveillance on him during his 2016 presidential campaign — has the feel of cards and chips thumping down on the table:

The White House is placing a substantial bet on what Congress will uncover. Don’t expect those cards to be dealt swiftly because such investigations take time. The Obama administration was highly adept at stalling investigations until the Democratic media could pronounce them “old news” and ignore the outcome.

The Trump administration can distinguish itself by cooperating energetically with this one and helping it move forward quickly. Rest assured that no matter how long it takes, the media will never consider it “old news” as long as there remains any chance for anyone connected with the Trump 2016 campaign to get in trouble over contacts with the Russians.

It’s possible one reason Trump issued his explosive tweets on surveillance was to make everyone put up or shut up. That might already be working, as some of the more aggressive dealers in unsubstantiated innuendo are suddenly admitting they don’t have any actual evidence. There can’t be any hard evidence if Trump is super-duper wrong about Obama administration surveillance:

Until now, Democrats and their media have been pleased to create the impression that all kinds of wiretapping operations were conducted against the Trump campaign, uncovering many scandalous, possibly illegal connections. Only by reading those articles carefully does one discover the sources are highly speculative and the evidence is thin at best.

The much-discussed New York Times piece from January 19 is a perfect example of this. It begins by matter-of-factly confirming the existence of the wiretaps everyone in Obamaworld is now swearing are a figment of Donald Trump’s imagination. Mountains of innuendo about connections between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence have been spun out of what these abruptly non-existent intercepts contained, according to the anonymous leakers who currently drive almost 100 percent of mainstream media coverage.

But if you read that New York Times article carefully, it admits the communications intercepts may not exist, and if they do, no one can confirm what they actually say (emphasis added):

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.

The continuing counterintelligence investigation means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him. As president, Mr. Trump will oversee those agencies and have the authority to redirect or stop at least some of these efforts.

It is not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or Mr. Trump himself. It is also unclear whether the inquiry has anything to do with an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and other attempts to disrupt the elections in November. The American government has concluded that the Russian government was responsible for a broad computer hacking campaign, including the operation against the D.N.C.

Whatever President Trump’s intentions were in using Twitter to touch off this firestorm, one of the immediate effects has been letting the gas out of all those speculative Trump stories. The Democratic media is now furiously working to prove all of its own previous coverage of the Trump-Russia allegations was little more than idle speculation, every bit as lacking in hard evidence as Trump’s accusation that Obama was tapping his phones.

After months of unfounded allegations and badly sourced speculation intended to cripple his administration, maybe Trump wanted to prove that only one side of the partisan divide is permitted to make “wild allegations.” Obama’s plants in the Deep State can leak whatever they please, law and truth be damned. They can get an avalanche of hostile coverage moving with a few phone calls or emails. The media feels no contrition when the story turns out to be exaggerated or completely false, eagerly turning to the same Obama holdovers as sources for the next big phony scoop.

No one on Trump’s team, including the president himself, is allowed to reciprocate in kind. We are meant to feel bottomless outrage that Trump would level unsubstantiated allegations against Obama, but apparently, Obama’s minions can launch a constant barrage of unsubstantiated allegations against Trump.

Intentionally or accidentally, Trump just forced the press to admit how weak the bulk of those allegations were. The wiretapping timeline that has drawn so much attention since Saturday night was largely based on mainstream media reporting. The media is effectively saying, “Hey, wait, we were just blowing smoke. We didn’t think anyone would take those reports seriously and build a case that Obama was wiretapping Trump. We just wanted to make Trump look bad by pumping up vague rumors that he and his campaign might have been under observation!”

Amazingly, the same media that just went through 48 hours of convulsions over a bogus “perjury” charge against Attorney General Jeff Sessions is happy to cite an actual, admitted perjurer, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as an unimpeachable source on the exact issue he lied about to Congress. They also expect the American people to trust former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, who openly bragged of his ability to mislead credulous reporters and construct phony narratives to sell the Iran nuclear deal.

The Obama administration’s enthusiasm for surveillance and using government power against its political enemies is a matter of shameful record. The no-holds-barred “Resistance” mindset among Democrats is painfully obvious. If they are running a “silent coup” against Trump, it’s the loudest silent coup in history. You can scarcely sleep at night over the racket this silent coup makes.

Sorry, DNC Media, no sale. In the absence of hard evidence one way or the other, Team Obama is not going to win a credibility shootout with Team Trump.

Read more at BREITBART

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