In Part 1 a lot of different items were covered with regard to the biggest political scandal in the history of our country. There were intentional deceptions that may have put national security at risk. There were undercover operations that were designed to “dirty up” Trump campaign advisors. There were entrapment schemes to silence/control people who may have known something about what was going on. There was the Steele Dossier. There were FISA warrants issued based on unverified information. There is the Mueller report which intentionally misleads the public regarding the extent of Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 election as well as who the Russians would have preferred to see as President. And as time goes on and more malfeasance is exposed, we will see even more corruption from inside the Obama administration.
However, none of this exposes the origins of the corruption inside the Obama administration. In fact, much of this serves as a smokescreen to divert the public’s attention. So, just where and when was the germination point for the beginnings of the corrupt activities?
To get a better overview, it is always important to remember that Obama is a product of Chicago politics. Chicago politics is a term used to describe a specific style of politics. It is reward-your-friends and punish-your-enemies, tough-guy politics.
Chicago politics has been riddled with scandals over the years. This has included politicians from both sides of the aisle. When the Republicans were in power in the early part of the 20thcentury, they were the practitioners. Later on when the Democrats came into power in Chicago, it was their turn. It was widely rumored that a certain Chicago mayor tipped the 1960 presidential election to JFK by “delivering” enough votes from the city of Chicago to tip Illinois into JFK’s electoral column.
Then there is the fact that Obama was a devotee of a hard Left, Progressive community organizer named Saul Alinsky. Following his ideas the Democrats under Obama’s leadership became a party that believed they were on a messianic mission from God to transform the country.
The Democrats parroted the idea that America was a cruel and exploitative country, one of the worst on the planet. This led them to believing that the country was one big injustice factory. To correct these supposed injustices, destroying history, smashing statues and ignoring laws was okay if it advanced the mission. It is not a big step to move from there to believing that anything is okay including violating the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
As mentioned before, an angry outburst from Hillary Clinton after she had to handle some “tough” questions from Matt Lauer during the Commander in Chief forum in 2016 is a good place to start.
HRC ranted,
“If that bastard wins, we’re all gonna hang!”
Why was she so upset, so angry? What did HRC know that she did not want the American public to know? Just what caused her panicky outburst? While she may have been hyperventilating a bit, clearly she had some concerns that the Democrats were involved in some serious wrongdoing. If she lost, this could be exposed.
A 99 page memorandum written by Judge Collyer, presiding judge of the FISA court, is the key to understanding this. There is other information that needs to be overlaid on this memo. But, it is the key that unlocks the conspiracy and points us to the origins of the Spygate scandal.
BACKGROUND
Admiral Mike Rogers became NSA director in April 2014.
Sometime in early March 2016 Admiral Rogers was notified by his compliance officer of a significant uptick in “About” queries, also known as 702(17) queries.
“About” queries are done against the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication. The amount of information about a person that can be gained from querying these records is significant.
For example, if you put a date and a phone number, the user will get everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a period of time.
These kinds of queries can be done against IP addresses, email addresses, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc.
It is illegal to query a US person’s data (4thAmendment). The exception to this would be if such querying would likely result in the acquisition of foreign intelligence data.
Admiral Rogers ordered a full compliance audit extending from November 1, 2015 through May 1, 2016. This order was given on or about March 9, 2016.
While the audit was underway, cursory reviews of the results being returned indicated extremely high levels of what are known as “errors.” These are accesses of US person’s data that are not permitted. Errors sometimes occur due to mis-keying of names and other human mistakes. The error rate was so high that Admiral Rogers stopped everyone from using the 702(17) “About” query option. He also blocked all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016.
On October 20, 2016, Rogers was briefed on the audit’s results. He notified the DOJ and then briefed the full FISA court of his findings on October 26, 2016.
The American public owe Admiral Rogers a big thank you for not ignoring the unlawful activity that he uncovered. Rogers is a true American hero.
The result of this activity is the 99-page memorandum from Judge Collyer. It is scathing in its rebuke of the government.
What’s in it? These kinds of documents can be difficult to peruse due to the numerous redactions that are in place. There is also much technical jargon which can cloud the issue. However, the more eyes that are on the document, the more info that can be teased out.
The first section that warrants inspection in the scandal is this one below. This is on page 69 of the report.
This section indicates that xx number of contract users had access to NSA data that they were not supposed to have access to. It also indicates that some/all of these users had sent data they acquired out of the system (“exported”). It is not known publicly who or what these entities that received the exports were. They could have been contract agencies, contract persons, a combination of both or something else entirely.
The results of the audit by Admiral Rogers were included in the memo (page 82).
During the six-month period in question, 85% of the queries were non-compliant. In other words, they were unlawful. Typical error rates are from 1% to 4%. The same identifier (name, email address, etc.) was being used over and over. The people entering the queries were not doing legitimate work for the FBI. They were mining the NSA feeds using US persons’ identifiers. Most probably this was for political reasons to find whatever they could use. Even more interesting is the last sentence. Judge Collyer indicates that she feels that the error rate was not out of the ordinary.
The number of queries is redacted. But the width of the field indicates that it is between 1,000 and 9,999. If we take the middle between these two numbers (5,500), what we find is that well more than 4,000 queries were unlawful during this time period. Since it is likely to have been going on since 2012, this implies that tens of thousands of queries were done. This also means that tens of thousands of unlawful queries were done.
Keep in mind that most of the queries being done were by FBI “contractors.”
Who were they? Crowdstrike, Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr? They have not been publicly identified. They need to be in order to understand fully what was going on. Whom did these “contractors” share their information with? This is another question that begs for an answer.
The judge clearly has major doubts that any lawful purpose was present for the FISA data access abuse she was reviewing (“apparent disregard,” “beyond what was necessary”).
Judge Rosemary Collyer reinforces this idea that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
Also uncovered in this footnote is the fact that the FBI entered into a secret memorandum of understanding with another government agency (redacted) that allowed access to FBI systems. The Court was not notified of this until 2016. It seems reasonable to suppose that it may have been the CIA. The first letter appears to be curved. It is also probably true that the date redacted was most likely sometime in 2012.
Summary:
Admiral Rogers uncovered massive abuse of the FBI’s access to FISA data by “contractors.” He took away all access to the 702(17) query. The judge’s memo shows the abuse and clearly opines that the actions were deliberate. The only intellectually honest reason behind such actions was research into political opponents in violation of the 4thAmendment. It appears to have been ongoing since some time in 2012. Exactly who was targeted is not publicly known. Who was involved on the “contractors” side is redacted.
This is Spygate. This is the weaponization of federal agencies against political opponents. But, it is Spygate 2.0. This was the more sophisticated operation with a tighter circle of control than the initial attempt.
What was Spygate 1.0? It was the weaponization of the IRS against Tea Party groups. It was the handing over of more than 1.25 million tax records of conservative organizations from the IRS to the DOJ. It was the stonewalling of requests for tax exempt status for conservative groups.
Recently the government has been issuing settlement checks to more than 100 groups who were targeted for their political beliefs during the tax exempt scandal. Whereas liberal tax exempt groups had their applications processed within 30 days, conservative ones, particularly any group with “Tea” in their name often waited years to receive such status and were subjected to illegal requests for information about their donors and religious beliefs.
During Obama’s first term Lerner, who at the time was the director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the IRS, ordered the transfer of the tax returns to the DOJ. The returns were mostly from nonprofits and contained confidential information about the taxpayers. This was widely acknowledged to be the targeting of political groups by the IRS for their political views. Precisely what the information in the returns was used for remains largely unknown to the public. The Obama DOJ declined prosecution.
The transfer of the records to the DOJ was without a predicate reason. This was an early attempt to mine data for political purposes using the powers of the federal government.
Criminals rarely begin their careers with a major crime. Lesser crimes typically get bigger and more serious during the perp’s career. The same is true for government crimes. Specifically, the perp does not know how far he can go before he is noticed and reacted to. Perps learn from their mistakes if they don’t get caught or if they can get a pass.
That’s what happened with the IRS scandals. The Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database inside an organization big enough to have some good people who might blow the whistle. They got a pass and then tightened up their operation. They then expanded what they were doing. It would be very enlightening to find out how many and who were targeted.
This was Spygate 2.0. It was a smaller circle of people and tighter control. All of this appears to have started some time in 2012.
This operation was not restricted to one agency. It included most of the upper echelon of the Intelligence Community. Someone had to coordinate this effort. The fact that it was coordinated across agencies suggests that someone at or near the top directed it.
And what was the trigger for all of this activity? November 2, 2010. That was the date of the mid-term elections during Obama’s first term. This is the germination point. The Democrats suffered catastrophic losses in the House (63 seats) and 7 seats in the Senate. This portended problems for 2012. It appears that the Democrats tried to “influence” their chances in 2012 with Spygate. They then expanded their operations during Obama’s second term.
This is where it all began. Activities occurring after March, 2016 have been done to conceal these origins. After all, some people might consider this to be treason.
Did Maxine Waters (D-CA) almost give it all away in February, 2013?
“That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before…”