President Barack Obama with John Brennan, then-nominee to be director of the CIA, on January 7, 2013
by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, February 13, 2024
http://tinyurl.com/44xr985b
United States Intelligence Community targeted 26 Trump advisors for foreign spy agencies to “reverse target” and “bump”
Last year, John Durham, a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ), concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have opened its investigation of alleged collusion by then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Russia in late July of 2016.
Now, multiple credible sources tell Public and Racket that the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.
The new information fills many gaps in our understanding of the Russia collusion hoax and is supported by testimony already in the public record.
Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In truth, the US IC asked the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
After Public and Racket had been told that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target, a source confirmed that the IC had “identified [them] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate. They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.”
Unknown details about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and raw intelligence related to the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign are in a 10-inch binder that Trump ordered to be declassified at the very end of his term, sources told Public and Racket.
If the top-secret documents exist proving these charges, they are potentially proof that multiple US intelligence officials broke laws against spying and election interference.
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Jesse Watters posted on X this segment of his show in which he gives a little history lesson in the origins and evolution of the CIA, leading into an interview with Matt Taibbi. (Transcript below)
Bombshell new report says the US government is hiding documents that incriminate the deep state for spying on Trump and election interference, sources tell @mtaibbi and @shellenberger pic.twitter.com/qKBMNcDiei
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) February 15, 2024
Taibbi: Same People That Cooked Intel Report Russia Interfered With Election Also Surveilled Trump Aides In 2016
by Ian Schwartz, February 14, 2024, realclearpolitics.com
http://tinyurl.com/yc6r99fm
Jesse Watters: The point remains that the Obama-Biden White House, their CIA and FBI director launched an illegal preemptive war against democracy, got caught, and have been covering it up for eight years. Shellenberger and Taibbi also said redacted FOIA documents suggested that Biden has been conspiring against Donald Trump with the intelligence committee to prosecute the former president in federal court. Which would be an impeachable offense. Matt Taibbi is the Racket News editor-in-chief and “Griftopia” author. So this is great reporting. It’s hard to verify because we were told that this special counsel, Durham, was going to get to the bottom of it. Are you saying he missed this?
Matt Taibbi: We were told that the scope of the Durham investigation was limited to a few areas and that he wasn’t looking at this particular direction. The information that we have, the investigation that was conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, what they found was a broad political espionage campaign and there were two main conclusions that are at the center of our reports.
One is that at least 26 Trump aides and associates were improperly and without predication placed under surveillance in election year of 2016. And the other one is that these same folks cooked the intelligence for the January 6, 2017 intelligence community assessment saying that Russia interfered, I’m sorry, conducted an influence campaign to help Donald Trump. It is a WMD-style story. They suppressed dissenting opinions and created a false narrative.
Watters: There is a lot of debate over this binder. Is there a binder? What’s in the binder? Is it redacted? Who has it and where is it? Is that why they conducted the [Mar-a-Lago] raid? What is going on with these materials?
Taibbi: Well, it’s a difficult story because we heard multiple versions of what the binder is, how many binders there are. We heard there are as many as three. But we do know a couple of concrete things. We know that only a share of the investigation only got out. People are aware of the Nunes memo which led to the investigation of FISA. We also know that there was a report done into the origins of that intelligence community assessment which supposedly never left a vault on the grounds of Langley. That is like a 17- or 20-page report that was confirmed by multiple sources.
Apart from that we were told there were numerous other investigative materials that may or may not be these binders that stories are referring to. But we know there is a lot of stuff that didn’t get out. That there were thousands of hours of investigation and their conclusions have not yet been declassified.
Watters: This would just be another reason why they want to do everything they can to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House because he will blow the lid off of that. He tried to and wasn’t able to at the end. I am interested in your reporting that there heavily redacted FOIA documents that suggest that Joe Biden has been collaborating with the intelligence committee to prosecute these federal cases against Donald Trump. We will see how that shakes out. Matt, great reporting to you and [Michael] Shellenberger. I suggest everybody go to her website, your Substack, and read it for yourself. Thanks again.