by George Ralsey
Democrats and their allies in the Leftwing media went nuts after Attorney General William Barr testified that the government did indeed spy on the Trump campaign.
“I think spying did occur,” Barr said during an explosive hearing before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated. …Spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”
Barr later clarified in the hearing: “I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred; I’m saying that I am concerned about it and looking into it, that’s all,” reported Gregg Re and Brooke Singman of Fox News.
These reactions, cited by James S. Robbins in an opinion column for USA Today, are exemplary of the Democrats’ panicked effort to quash any investigation by the Attorney General: Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, took immediate issue with Barr’s word choice, saying “the word ‘spying’ could cause everybody in the cable news ecosystem to freak out.” NBC News’ Chuck Todd said this was a “conspiracy theory” for which there was “zero factual basis.” Furious Democrats on Capitol Hill denounced Barr for even raising the issue. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), tweeted that Barr should “retract his statement immediately or produce specific evidence to back it up.”
That the participants in Trump campaign were spied upon, surveilled, had their communications intercepted or otherwise had their activities secretly or surreptitiously observed by the government is an irrefutable fact.
So, why did the Democrats and their Leftwing media do-boys go nuts about it?
Because the most important thing Mr. Barr said was that he intended to investigate whether the surveillance was “was adequately predicated.” (Click here for a legal definition of predicate.)
And if Barr does that it will reveal the Democrat-generated falsehoods behind the closed-loop system that set-up and perpetuated the fake predicate of the entire Trump – Russia investigation.
Let’s start with George Papadopoulos, the young energy policy expert and volunteer Trump advisor who was set-up by the Obama administration to give them a pretext to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos was arguably the most ill-used of all the figures in the Mueller investigation.
A neophyte in presidential politics Papadopoulos was lured to London and set-up by Obama administration consultant Stephan Halper to pass along the bait that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Australian Ambassador, Alexander Downer.
Why and how the Ambassador found his way into contact with a junior figure like George Papadopoulos has never been explained, nor has the path of transmission of the information from Papadopoulos to Downer to the Obama intelligence apparatus ever been disclosed.
What is clear, based on what has been disclosed, is that the basis for the surveillance and interrogation of Papadopoulos was a closed loop system of false information being generated by Obama and Clinton connected operatives who then fed the information to Papadopoulos through Halper and then back through Downer to the Obama intelligence apparatus.
After being threatened and swamped with legal bills, Papadopoulos pled guilty to the process crime of making false statements to FBI agents relating to contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign. The guilty plea was part of a plea bargain reflecting his cooperation with the Mueller investigation.
However, after Papadopoulos pled guilty and served 12 days in prison, no other indictments or convictions have ever been attributed to Papadopoulos’ cooperation with the Mueller investigation.
Any investigation into whether the Trump – Russia investigation spying (I mean surveillance) was adequately predicated must investigate and reveal that closed-loop system.
Likewise, Attorney General Barr should look into why an FBI informant approached Michael Caputo, who served in the Army, worked for conservative luminaries such as Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, and advised numerous Republican political candidates before signing-on to the Trump campaign.
After being approached by the FBI informant, Caputo was dragged through hell by the Mueller investigation and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence merely because he had lived in Ukraine and Russia and done public relations and campaign work in those countries… and worked for Donald Trump.
Caputo was forced to liquidate his children’s college fund to pay his legal expenses for the “crime” of being associated with Donald Trump.
The same goes for the investigation and surveillance of Carter Page, another minor figure in the Trump campaign who was set-up, spied upon and never indicted.
In each of these cases the government was the mover of the predicate. There was no action on the part of any of these individuals that justified an investigation until the government acted, under false pretenses, to generate a predicate.
Without even getting into the tangled web of the Steele Dossier, Caputo, Papadopoulos and Page are just three of the most obvious cases where the government falsely generated a predicate to justify an investigation.
We urge Attorney General Barr to exhaustively plumb the depths of this outrage to determine who authorized the intelligence operations to set-up these individuals and who fed that information back to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigators.
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Photo “William Barr Testimony” by CSPAN.
