Durham And Horowitz Find No Evidence Of Conspiracy Against Trump

The twin reports from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and US Attorney John Durham have been eagerly awaited by both sides in the debate over whether members of the Trump campaign were baited by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in an effort to establish a probable cause to begin an investigation. A few weeks ago, we reported that Horowitz’s report would not contain bombshells about Deep State conspiracies that had been unearthed and now it seems that Durham will not give conspiracy theorists any Christmas gifts either.

The Washington Post reports that  Horowitz had submitted a number of questions to Durham, who was handpicked by Attorney General Barr to investigate and prosecute misconduct in the DOJ relating to the Russia investigation. Among the questions was whether Durham had evidence that Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor, was a government asset who was used to entrap members of the Trump campaign. The Post’s sources, who have seen a draft copy of the Horowitz report, say that Durham has no evidence to contradict government denials that Mifsud was an asset.

The inspector general’s office, the Durham investigation, and the DOJ all declined to comment on the report.

Sources indicate that the Horowitz report will find that there was adequate cause for the FBI to initiate the Russia investigation but will also find fault with FBI handling of the case. In particular, Horowitz will criticize later renewals of the FISA application for Carter Page, which failed to convey that information from Christopher Steele was not as reliable as previously believed. Nevertheless, the report will apparently not conclude that the omissions were significant enough to have compromised the integrity of the entire renewal.

Horowitz will also find fault with Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who altered an email that related to the FISA application against Page. Clinesmith was forced out of the FBI after his deception was discovered and may be indicted by Durham. Again, Horowitz will say that the action did not compromise the integrity of the investigation.

Clinesmith, who spoke with the Post, also sent emails and text messages with anti-Trump comments. Clinesmith said that such messages were jokes and that his political views did not affect his work.

The Horowitz report will also address the origin of the Russia investigation. As was commonly believed, the investigation was based upon comments made by Trump advisor George Papadopoulos to the Australian ambassador in May 2016. Even though the DNC hack was not public knowledge until July, Papadopoulos told Greek and Australian diplomats in May that Russia was in possession of stolen emails relating to Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos got his information from Mifsud, who he now claims was an agent for some western intelligence agency.

The full IG report has not yet been released to the public, but Barr, who has seen drafts of the report, has disputed Horowitz’s conclusions that there was no conspiracy of DOJ officials who were biased against President Trump and worked to undermine his presidency. The Washington Post reported recently that Barr has praised Horowitz’s work but believes privately that the IG does not have access to enough information to draw firm conclusions. With the DOJ exonerated, Barr has indicated that he believes the key to the conspiracy may lie with other agencies such as the CIA or with foreign governments.  

Without being specific, Barr told CBS News last May, “I assumed I’d get answers when I went in and I have not gotten answers that are well satisfactory, and in fact probably have more questions… Some of the facts that … I’ve learned don’t hang together with the official explanations of what happened.”

It is not known whether Horowitz has contacted the CIA and other intelligence agencies to look into possible ties to Mifsud, but Barr and Durham have reportedly reached out to foreign governments. Horowitz’s questions to Durham involved whether he might have found additional information that the IG was not privy to and that would change his conclusions. Durham’s answer seems to have been negative.

At this point, it seems that the Horowitz and Durham investigations will undercut years of conspiratorial talking points from the Trump Administration and Republican pundits. However, don’t expect the sunlight of facts to dispel the myth that moles within the government were out to get Donald Trump. A characteristic of conspiracy theories is that layers can be added to the conspiracy to deny information that contradicts the narrative. Years of breathless-but-wrong revelations of DOJ wrongdoing won’t be easily overcome.

To paraphrase a favorite Ronald Reagan aphorism, it isn’t that the Deep State believers are ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Don’t Hold Your Breath For Deep State Bombshells In IG Report On FBI

The DOJ inspector general report on allegations of corruption in the investigations into members of the Trump campaign in 2016 is due out on December 9. The report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been eagerly anticipated by both sides in the debate over the origins of the Russia investigation, but the early signs indicate that proponents of the Deep State conspiracy theory may be disappointed.

Over the weekend, CNN reported the IG found evidence that an FBI employee altered a document connected with the surveillance warrant application for Carter Page, a former Trump campaign advisor. The CNN report did not detail what changes were made to the document and it is not known what role the document played in obtaining the warrant, but the alterations were reportedly significant enough to change the meaning of the document. The Washington Post cited US officials who said that the employee falsely claimed he had supporting evidence to back up the changes.

On the surface, the report seemed damning for the FBI, but, reading beyond the headline, the incident is much less sinister than it first appeared. The employee in question was a low-level attorney rather than an FBI agent or manager and, after the deception was discovered, the employee was forced out of the bureau. The incident became public as Horowitz turned over evidence of the alteration to federal prosecutor John Durham.

The Post reported that Horowitz found that the incident did not undermine the legal and factual basis of the federal investigation into Carter Page. The finding that the incident did not compromise the probable cause for the investigation undermines Republican claims that the counterintelligence investigations into members of the Trump campaign were begun in bad faith. Sources with knowledge of the report say that Horowitz found the FBI’s work to be sloppy but not indicative of a Deep State conspiracy against Trump.

Several Republicans have raised expectations for the IG report in recent weeks. President Trump, who said that he is “waiting for the report like everybody else,” told Fox News several weeks ago, “I predict you will see things that you don’t even believe, the level of corruption — whether it’s [James] Comey; whether it’s [Peter] Strzok and his lover [Lisa] Page; whether it’s so many other people — [Andrew] McCabe; whether it’s President Obama himself. Let’s see whether or not it’s President Obama. Let’s see whether or not they put that in.”

Likewise, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) said, “It doesn’t take 500 pages to tell the inspector general that everything was done properly. The IG report is going to find that there were problems.”

The question is how big the problems were and whether there was intentional abuse. Some of the problems are discussed in an assessment by the IG released last week that found "numerous issues" with FBI handling of secret sources The Washington Times reported that that the issues including failing to vet sources in a timely manner and insufficiently clear guidance from FBI headquarters. The assessment made 16 recommendations which were reportedly being implemented by the FBI.

"Ineffective management and oversight of confidential sources can result in jeopardizing FBI operations and placing FBI agents, sources, subjects of investigation, and the public in harm's way," Horowitz said in a two-minute video accompanying release of the assessment.

In the wake of the assessment and revelation about the FBI lawyer, Carter Page is among those trying to tamp down expectations. In an interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish over the weekend, Page said, “The keyword that you just said is sloppiness, right? And unfortunately, the way that this inspector general report has been assembled and completed over the last couple of years and particularly over the last few months, is completely sloppy. It’s only one side’s perspective.”

Indeed, the fact that the draft report was submitted to Attorney General Barr in September but the only hint of a prosecution is the unnamed former FBI lawyer is a strong indication that there was little unethical or criminal activity for Horowitz to find. The lack of criminal referrals to Durham or leaks trumpeting Obama-era FBI corruption is a strong hint that the conspiracy claims are duds.

While the report has not yet been released to the public, insiders say that the report paints an objective picture that is critical of the FBI but does not support the claim that there was a high-level conspiracy to undermine the Trump campaign. However, because the report does criticize the FBI, sources within the government say that it will give ammunition to both sides.

“You can see how the warring factions will seize on the various parts of this to advance their respective narratives,” a person familiar with the report told the Washington Post.

That will be particularly true for those who rely on cherry-picked passages cited by pundits without looking at the entire report.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Why It Doesn't Matter That There Were No Hearings For Carter Page's FISA Warrant

Judicial Watch raised the hackles of Republicans this weekend when it announced that the Justice Department had said that no hearings were held prior to issuing the FISA warrant for former Trump advisor Carter Page. Many Republicans took this to mean that something nefarious was afoot with the investigation of Page, President Trump’s former campaign advisor, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

“It is disturbing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts rubber-stamped the Carter Page spy warrants and held not one hearing on these extraordinary requests to spy on the Trump team,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in the press release. “Perhaps the court can now hold hearings on how justice was corrupted by material omissions that Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, a conflicted Bruce Ohr, a compromised Christopher Steele, and anti-Trumper Peter Strzok were all behind the ‘intelligence’ used to persuade the courts to approve the FISA warrants that targeted the Trump team.”

The Judicial Watch press release fails to tell the whole story, however.

Aside from mischaracterizing surveillance of someone that the first paragraph of the release refers to as “a former Trump campaign part-time advisor” as “spy[ing] on the Trump team,” the obvious question to ask is how many hearings are normally held on FISA applications. The answer is not many, but that is not proof of any wrongdoing on the part of the FBI or the FISA court.

The fact is that search warrants of all sorts are almost always issued by judges without hearings because the law does not require a hearing. If you have ever watched a television cop show, you’ve seen the process. The police gather preliminary evidence to show probable cause and then take this to the judge to get the warrant. The search warrant is then served, or, in the case of a FISA warrant, surveillance is conducted. The search and/or surveillance are then used to gather more evidence to determine whether an indictment, arrest and prosecution are warranted.

Logically, it makes sense that the law would not require a hearing before a warrant for a search or surveillance is issued. Who would take the opposing side in the hearing? If the suspect were invited to defend himself in a hearing to consider whether his property should be searched or he should be monitored, law enforcement would lose the element of surprise. It would be an extremely dense suspect who did not take the warning and clean out any incriminating items or break off contact with people who could implicate him in a crime.

So, who acts on the behalf of the suspect to prevent law enforcement agencies from abusing their power to search and surveil innocent Americans? The answer is that both the Justice Department and the judge act on their behalf.

In Just Security, former FBI agent Asha Rangapappa described the process of obtaining a FISA warrant in a 2017 article titled, “It Ain’t Easy Getting a FISA Warrant: I Was An FBI Agent and Should Know.” To get a FISA warrant, the FBI first must conduct a threat assessment to determine that there is a national security reason for the warrant. Second, the FBI would have to gather evidence to show probable cause that the target of the warrant was knowingly working on behalf of a foreign entity. Mere fraternization with agents of a foreign power would not be sufficient to meet this requirement. Finally, the warrant application is submitted to Justice Department attorneys who verify the claims made by the applicant and determine whether the evidence is sufficient to present to a judge. The application can be returned to the investigator multiple times until the evidence is both strong enough to meet the legal standard and able to be corroborated.

“It’s true that since its inception in 1978, the FISC has approved the vast majority of the over 25,000 FISA applications it has reviewed – some estimates put the number at over 99 percent,” says Rangapappa. He adds, “But that’s not surprising given the extensive process described above.”

This is confirmed by a 2013 letter to Congress from Reggie Walton, the presiding judge of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, in which the process for approving FISA warrants was discussed. The letter does state that in some cases where there is “special legal or factual concern,” the Court may request face-to-face meetings with law enforcement. The “frequency of hearings varies depending on the nature and complexity of matters pending before the Court at a given time, and also, to some extent, based on the individual preferences of different judges,” the letter says. In many cases, problems or questions about applications are resolved with telephone calls or informal contacts.

“FISA does not provide a mechanism for the Court to invite the views of nongovernmental parties,” Judge Walton wrote. “In fact, the Court's proceedings are ex parte [i.e., without a response from the opposing side] as required by the statute… and in keeping with the procedures followed by other courts in applications for search warrants and wiretap orders.”

The 99 percent approval rate for applications, the letter notes, is based only on “final applications submitted to and acted on by the Court.” About a quarter of applications have “substantive changes” before they are approved. The judge noted that the approval rate for wiretap applications in domestic criminal cases is higher than that of FISA warrant applications.

Andrew McCarthy, a writer for National Review and a former federal prosecutor, agrees that hearings are not a part of the process for getting warrants. On Twitter, McCarthy said, “There generally are no hearings on warrants, and you don’t want there to be because the four corners of the warrant application must state the probable cause. If they don’t, the judge should reject the application, not hold a hearing.”

“In nearly 20 years as a prosecutor, and hundreds of warrants, I never had a hearing to get a warrant,” McCarthy continued in a second tweet. “I had judges tell me ‘no,’ or tell me I needed to beef up this or that allegation with more solid evidence. But never a hearing.”

So, it’s true when Judicial Watch says that there was no FISA hearing before the warrant to surveil Carter Page was granted. It’s also true that it is not a big deal that there was no hearing. The law does not require a hearing and hearings are conducted only in rare circumstances. By making a mountain out of a nonexistent molehill, Judicial Watch has done a disservice to people who trust the organization to expose wrongdoing in the justice system. The press release is an overtly partisan attempt to smear the Justice Department and undermine an ongoing investigation.

Originally published on The Resurgent

FBI Releases Carter Page FISA Warrant

On Saturday, the FBI released a heavily redacted version of the FISA warrant application for Donald Trump's former campaign advisor, Carter Page. President Trump and other Republicans had charged the FBI with illicit spying on members of the Trump campaign.

The document (available here), which is 412 pages, is heavily censored with entire pages blacked out. The application was from October 2016, but even the exact date was redacted.

”The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian Government, ” the application says and then continues after a redaction, “[to] undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in violation of criminal law.”

“Page has established relationships with Russian Government officials, including Russian intelligence officers,” the application states, but the evidence supporting these claims is censored.

”Source # 1” appears to be Christopher Steele, the author of the controversial Steele dossier. Republicans had alleged that the FBI did not disclose that the dossier was commissioned by Democrats as opposition research into Donald Trump.

In contrast to these claims, the application states, ”The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person [who hired Steele] was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate # 1’s [Trump's] campaign.”

”Notwithstanding Source # 1’s reason for conducting research into Candidate # 1’s ties to Russia,” the application says, based on Source # 1’s previous reporting history with the FBI, whereby Source # 1 provided reliable information to the FBI, the FBI believes Source # 1’s reporting herein to be credible.”

The uncensored parts of the application detail the allegations from Steele that Page had been told by the Russian government there was ”kompromat” on Candidate # 2, Hillary Clinton. The application says that the kompromat could possibly be released to the Trump campaign.

The application also contains background material on Page’s prior connections to Russia and cites several media reports that detailed alleged meetings between Page and representatives of Vladimir Putin's government. There is a reference to a letter written by Page to then-FBI Director James Comey. In the letter, Page, who was fired from the Trump campaign in September 2016, denied wrongdoing and called the allegations against him ”completely false media reports.”

Nevertheless, the FBI said that there was ”probable cause to believe that Page [redacted] knowingly engage in clandestine intelligence activities (other than intelligence gathering activities)” for a foreign power.

The redacted application strikes a blow at Republican claims that the FBI did not disclose the political nature of the information from Christopher Steele to the FISA court judge who issued the warrant. Less clear is how much evidence the FBI already had against Page before the warrant was issued. The Steele dossier and news reports were previously known, but a large part of the application is still classified.

Carter Page has not yet been indicted by the Mueller investigation even though he was questioned extensively in June 2017. This raises the possibility that either the surveillance did not uncover any criminal acts by Page or that he has been cooperating with investigators.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Nunes Admits That FBI Disclosed Political Bias On FISA Application

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) admitted yesterday that a central claim of his controversial memo was not true. In the memo detailing the FISA surveillance warrants obtained for former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, Nunes had claimed that the FBI did not acknowledge the political nature of the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele at the behest of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Yesterday, Nunes admitted that the FBI had in fact done so in a footnote.

Politico reports that Republican leaders have now acknowledged that the FBI included references to the dossier’s political origins in a footnote on the original application for a FISA surveillance warrant. Democrats accused Republicans of committing the very sin that they had accused the FBI of, namely cherry-picking information for political reasons.

Nunes responded to the revelation about the footnote on “Fox and Friends,” saying, “A footnote saying something may be political is a far cry from letting the American people know that the Democrats and the Hillary campaign paid for dirt that the FBI then used to get a warrant on an American citizen to spy on another campaign.”

However, Nunes’ claim that the FBI’s admission of political bias in the dossier was too vague is itself a far cry from the claim in the original memo that the FBI did not disclose the political nature of the documents at all. “Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials,” the memo stated.

There are other inconsistencies in the Nunes memo as well. For instance, despite Nunes’ claim, there is no evidence that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. The FISA warrant was applied for in October 2016, a month after Page left his role as a Trump campaign advisor.

The memo also misquotes former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony about the dossier. The memo refers to Comey’s alleged statement that the dossier was “salacious and unverified.” Politifact points out that the comment referred to “some personally sensitive aspects of the information” contained in the dossier’s memos rather than the full dossier.

Further, the Nunes memo acknowledges that the FISA warrant for Page was renewed three times and that “each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause.” However, the memo does not describe other evidence against Page that was used in the original application or the subsequent renewals.

The inconsistency between the original claim that the FBI did not disclose the political bias of the evidence against Page and the later claim that the FBI followed the proper procedure but was not clear enough in its disclosure is a major blow to the credibility of Nunes and his memo. The claim that the FBI did not follow the law in obtaining the warrant against Page was a central argument in Republican attacks on the FBI.

There will be further revelations. The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously this morning to release an 11-page Democrat rebuttal to the Nunes memo. The Democrat memo must follow the same process of declassification by the president that the Nunes memo went through.

The central question is whether the FBI followed the letter of the law in the application for the FISA warrants. The only way to resolve that issue is for President Trump to declassify the unedited versions of the applications and let Americans see the truth for themselves.

Originally posted on The Resurgent

Claims Of Obama-Era Domestic Spying Are Overblown

As a conservative, it pains me to be perceived as defending Barack Obama. I was a strong and consistent opponent of Obama during his eight years in the White House and rarely, if ever, agreed with him on anything. Yet at times, the criticism and attacks on Obama went too far and I feel obliged to speak up. Such was the case when conservatives charged, against all evidence, that Obama was actually a native Kenyan and that he planned to declare martial law in Texas. It’s the case now with charges of rampant spying on political opponents by the Obama Administration. Objectively speaking, the evidence to support these claims is simply not there.

Such is the case with the recent op-ed by Sharyl Attkisson in The Hill. As with many on the right, Attkisson assumes recent revelations of the surveillance of Paul Manafort are really an attempt to spy on Donald Trump. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Like the others, Attkisson fails to mention that the surveillance started two years before Trump tapped Manafort to be his campaign manager. Attkisson also overlooks the fact that there were many valid reasons for Manafort to be under scrutiny after he closely worked with the party of Ukrainian dictator and Putin figurehead, Viktor Yanukovych.

If the CNN report on the monitoring of Manafort is to be believed, and Attkisson seems to think it does, Manafort was apparently not under surveillance while he was Trump’s campaign manager. The report states that the two FISA warrants that covered Manafort were active from 2014 through “some point” in 2016 and again through fall of 2016 to early 2017. This seems to exclude the period from March through August 2016 when Manafort worked for the Trump campaign and possibly the entire time that Trump has been president.

Other examples of surveillance of by Attkisson are similarly overblown and misinterpreted. She cites comments by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates that “they, too, reviewed communications of political figures, secretly collected under President Obama.” When examined, the testimony in question deals primarily with Michael Flynn, the national security advisor who was fired for lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Flynn’s case falls under incidental surveillance in which the Russian diplomat, not Flynn himself, was the person under surveillance. Spying on foreign diplomats is a legitimate role of the intelligence community.

Likewise, Attkisson’s claim that the Obama Administration spied on Congress is misleading. The Wall Street Journal article on which her claim is based makes clear that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the surveillance target, not members of Congress. The article makes clear that the NSA did not intentionally monitor the congressmen, saying that the incidental collection of their conversations with the Netanyahu government led to an “Oh-s— moment” and very valid concerns that the Obama Administration was intentionally monitoring the legislative branch.

Attkisson also cites the example of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). In the 2012 article linked by Attkisson on Counterpunch.org, Harman was allegedly the subject of two NSA wiretaps in 2006 and 2009. Obama can obviously not be blamed for the first wiretap since George W. Bush was president in 2006. In any case, once again we see that the target of the surveillance was not Rep. Harman, but a suspected Israeli agent.

Attkisson’s example of Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is another example of a congressman being snared by contact from suspected foreign agents. In Kucinich’s case, the government recorded a call made to his congressional office by Saif el-Islam Qaddafi, at the time a high-ranking official in Libya’s government and a son of the country’s ruler, Moammar Qaddafi.

While the Obama Administration did spy on Fox News journalist, James Rosen, it appears that it did so legally. The Department of Justice obtained a warrant to search Rosen’s emails in connection with an investigation into leaked classified information, says the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Likewise, the cyber spying on the Associated Press was “legal, as far as I can tell,” CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said at the time. “The administration isn't violating the First Amendment. But they are certainly doing more than has ever been done before in pursuing the private information of journalists. And we'll see if there's any political check on them, because there doesn't appear to be any legal check on what they're doing.”

Attkisson’s claim that the Obama Administration spied on her is also unverified. The CBS News article describing the breach that Attkisson links to contains a disclaimer: “To be clear, the federal government has not been accused in the intrusion of Attkisson's computer; CBS News is continuing to work to identify the responsible party.”

Attkisson sued the Obama Administration over the hacking in 2015. The suit is ongoing and she says that the Trump Administration is continuing to defend the case in court. She fails to explain why the Trump Administration would defend illegal actions by the Obama Administration, especially if Donald Trump was also a victim of Obama’s illicit surveillance.

In her closing argument, Attkisson cites alarming statistics about the increase in surveillance under Obama. Nevertheless she fails to point out that, per her source, in 2016, when Obama had supposedly increased surveillance at an alarming pace, only 336 US citizens were targeted by FISA warrants. Likewise, the same memo that Attkisson cites as evidence that the “intelligence community secretly expanded its authority in 2011 so it can monitor innocent U.S. citizens like you and me” actually says that the NSA realized that “its compliance and oversight infrastructure… had not kept pace” and “undertook significant steps to address these issues….”

Additionally, the alarmists fail to acknowledge that the first request for a FISA warrant on Trump campaign staffers was rejected in June 2016. This rejection seems to indicate that at least some intelligence officials under Obama took domestic surveillance protections seriously.

Likewise ignored is a statement in The New York Times from April 2017. Citing an unnamed official, the Times reported with respect to surveillance of Carter Page, another Trump campaign official, “The Justice Department considered direct surveillance of anyone tied to a political campaign as a line it did not want to cross.” This may explain the break in surveillance of Paul Manafort as well.

While there is a lack of evidence of systemic abuse of surveillance by the Obama Administration, there are legitimate concerns. For example, how did the recording of Kucinich’s phone conversation find its way into the hands of reporters four years later? The leaks of Michael Flynn’s conversations to the media were illegal, the lies Flynn told about them to Vice President Pence notwithstanding. The leakers have never been publicly identified or punished.

The unmasking of American subjects of incidental surveillance by Obama Administration officials is also problematic. Susan Rice appears to have been cleared of wrongdoing by House investigators, but Samantha Power still needs to explain her actions.

Finally, the revelations that the CIA inappropriately accessed Senate computers in 2014 shows the need for strict third-party oversight. Nevertheless, the fact that the breach was disclosed at all is encouraging. A subsequent review found that the incident was the result of an error and not intelligence officers acting in bad faith. More protections for journalists from surveillance would be an appropriate reform as well.

The claims of rampant Obama-era spying reflect many of the hallmarks of a classic conspiracy theory. For instance, the dots must be connected between many disparate events and rational explanations have to be ignored. A conspiracy by the Obama Administration to spy on political opponents would mean that virtually everyone in a leadership role in the intelligence community would be complicit, yet few have been fired by President Trump. When he did fire James Comey, illicit spying on Americans was not one of the reasons given.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Occam’s Razor holds that the simplest explanation is most often correct. In the case of Obama’s domestic surveillance, the simplest explanation is that there was probable cause for monitoring in most cases. That includes the cases of Paul Manafort and Carter Page. In other cases, some Americans were caught up in incidental surveillance of legitimate surveillance targets. Michael Flynn fell into this category. Donald Trump may have as well. 

What the Surveillance of Paul Manafort Means

The big story these days is the breaking news that Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was under FBI surveillance. This has brought forth a flurry of claims that Trump was right about his charges of wiretapping, that the FBI only tracked Manafort to find out what Trump was doing and that Manafort was only guilty of talking to Russian diplomats.

The real story is that this news isn’t breaking news at all. The story broke during the campaign that there was an active FISA warrant for surveillance of members of the Trump campaign staff. A November 2016 article by Heat Street (which has since been acquired by MarketWatch) reported that a broad FISA warrant request in June 2016 included Donald Trump as a target. This request was denied, but a subsequent, more narrow request was granted in October.

This was confirmed by the BBC in a January 2017 article which described how the warrant was issued to investigate two Russian banks. The investigation stemmed from intelligence passed to the US by an unnamed Baltic nation in April 2016. The intelligence allegedly included a recorded conversation “about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.” The BBC article mentioned, but did not name, “three of Mr. Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry.”

One of the three was Michael Flynn. Flynn was Trump’s first national security advisor. Flynn was fired early in the Trump Administration after it was revealed through leaked surveillance information that he had lied about conversations with the Russian ambassador. Flynn’s contacts with the Russians were apparently uncovered as an incidental target as the intelligence community monitored Russian diplomats. Flynn is still under investigation by both the Pentagon and Mueller’s task force.

In April 2017, the New York Times named a second target of the investigation. The report stated explicitly that Carter Page had been the target of a FISA warrant after he left the Trump campaign. “The Justice Department considered direct surveillance of anyone tied to a political campaign as a line it did not want to cross,” the report said, citing an unnamed official.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was the third target of the investigation. Manafort had long had ties to the Putin government. He had worked as a consultant for the pro-Russian political party that controlled the Ukraine until it was toppled by a revolution in 2014. Manafort’s name was listed in the so-called “Black Ledger” that detailed secret payments by the Ukrainian ruling party. The ledger, which was discovered after the revolution, showed that Manafort received at least $1.2 million from the pro-Putin ruler of Ukraine per AP reports. Manafort was fired by Trump in August 2016 after the story of the Ukrainian payments broke.

The new story by CNN detailing Manafort’s surveillance says that Manafort was the subject of two FISA warrants. The first, centered on his work in the Ukraine, began in 2014 and “was discontinued at some point last year [2016] for lack of evidence, according to one of the sources.”

The dates for the second warrant are not known but it apparently began after “FBI interest deepened last fall because of intercepted communications between Manafort and suspected Russian operatives, and among the Russians themselves.” The warrant reportedly continued until early 2017. The dates suggest that Manafort was not monitored while he was an official part of the Trump campaign, although they do cover a period when he had discussions with President Trump. “It's unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance,” CNN notes.

Another report by the New York Times says that federal agents raided Manafort’s home in July 2017. Again, this was after his official role as a member of Donald Trump’s campaign staff was long over.

So was Donald Trump right when he claimed that Obama was “tapping” his phones? So far there is still no evidence of this. Surveillance of Trump’s associates is not the same as surveillance of Trump himself. This is especially true if the surveillance did not occur during the period when Trump’s associates were working on his campaign. This would also indicate that the surveillance was not to find out what the Trump campaign was up to.

Further, the surveillance of Paul Manafort was not the result of business-as-usual contacts with Russian diplomats. A FISA warrant was issued for Manafort because he was communicating with Russian agents. A FISA warrant is not proof of guilt, but it does require probable cause. The denial of the June 2016 warrant request is proof that warrants are not issued on a frivolous basis.

The investigation into Paul Manafort and the Russian interference in the 2016 campaign is not yet complete. In the weeks and months to come, we may learn exactly why Manafort was talking to the Russians and what was said. At this point, there is no smoking gun, but there are indications, such as the decision to threaten Manafort with indictment, that Special Counsel Mueller is building a strong case. Part of that case may be on incriminating evidence that resulted from surveillance under the FISA warrant.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Claims 'Vindication' For Something Comey Never Said

In the days since the Senate testimony by former FBI Director James Comey, the Trump camp has claimed that the testimony vindicated the president. Beginning with a tweet by the president the following day, Trump supporters claim “total and complete vindication” from Comey’s statements under oath. However, the claim focuses on only one part of Comey’s testimony and the claim of vindication is for something that Comey never said.

The focus of the Trump Administration since last Thursday when Comey testified was Comey’s statement under oath that President Trump was not under investigation by the FBI. The problem with this claim is that Comey had never claimed that the president was personally under investigation.

It is likely that many people may have assumed after Comey’s Senate testimony in March that President Trump was being investigated, but a look back shows that Comey never made that claim. Comey’s testimony a month before he was fired contained the bombshell revelation that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for its links to Russia, but he never said that the president was under direct scrutiny.

Here is a look back at what then-FBI Director James Comey said before Congress on March 20, 2017 (video available here):

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment as to whether any crimes were committed.

Comey told Congress that the FBI was investigating “individuals associated with the Trump campaign,” not the president. The individuals were left unnamed, but FBI inquiries about Mike Flynn, Carter Page, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort had been known for months. Carter Page was the target of a FISA warrant obtained by the FBI prior to the election last year.

At some point after the March testimony, President Trump apparently became obsessed with the idea of proving that he was not under investigation. Comey testified that he privately assured the president that he was not under investigation on several occasions. Comey also said that the president asked him to publicly announce that he was not under investigation, a request Comey resisted because “because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.” In his letter firing Comey, Trump awkwardly thanks Comey for “informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”

Trump supporters seem to believe that, since the president was not under investigation, that Comey’s firing could not be an obstruction of justice. To the contrary, Trump was alleged to have interfered with the investigation of Michael Flynn, not an investigation into his own ties with Russia. Even though the FBI probe was targeted at Flynn, Page and the others instead of Trump, firing the FBI director to interfere with the investigation could still represent obstruction of justice.

A second trope by Trump supporters is that since Trump was not under investigation, the inquiries by the Congress and the Special Counsel should be halted. This represents a misunderstanding of what the investigations are about. These investigations were also not targeting Trump personally. The purpose of the congressional investigations is to determine exactly what Russia did to interfere in the 2016 elections. The investigation by Special Counsel Bob Mueller focuses on whether any members of the Trump campaign worked with Russian operatives and whether any crimes were committed.

Despite the Trump Administration spin, James Comey’s testimony did not clear the president. In fact, the most damaging part of Comey’s June 8 testimony may be a statement that has scarcely been mentioned. When asked why he thought Trump fired him, Comey answered, “Again, I take the president's words. I know I was fired because of something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was in some way putting pressure on him, in some way irritating him, and he decided to fire me because of that.”

The investigations will continue and President Trump is not in the clear. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Why Does Russia Keep Popping Up in the Trump Administration?

There is an old saying that says where there is smoke, there is fire. These days, if Russia was smoke, the Trump Administration would be a four-alarm blaze. The question is why Russia is a recurring subject within the Trump Administration.

The rumors of Russian influence within the Trump Administration go back as far as Trump’s announcement of his candidacy. Rumors surfaced quickly about Trump’s longstanding business ties to Russia and The Hill noted that the Kremlin had funded nationalist opposition groups in several countries, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, which recently came close to winning the presidency.

Several of Trump’s former advisors were linked to Russia and Vladimir Putin. First to go was Paul Manafort, Trump’s first campaign manager. Manafort was a political consultant for Ukrainian dictator and Putin ally, Viktor Yanukovych, for 10 years until he was toppled by a revolution in 2014. Trump fired Manafort in August 2016.

Carter Page was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. Page was forced to take a leave of absence from the Trump campaign after allegations that he met with Russian officials on a trip to Moscow. Page was apparently the target of FBI surveillance for his links to Russia.

Roger Stone, another Trump campaign aide, claimed to have communicated with WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and may have had foreknowledge of the WikiLeaks dump of Podesta emails in October 2016. WikiLeaks is widely believed to be a Russian front organization. Stone claims that he resigned from the Trump campaign, while Trump says he was fired.

Michael Flynn survived the campaign to become National Security Advisor. Unfortunately, shortly after Trump took office, Flynn was forced to resign for lying about contacts that he had with the Russian ambassador.

Amid the rumors of Trump campaign officials’ links to Russia, candidate Trump called upon Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Hillary Clinton’s server. When Trump made the statement, it was common knowledge that Russian fingerprints were all over the first hack of the Democratic National Committee a month earlier. The hack of John Podesta’s email account has also been traced to Russia.

After the election, when briefed on the evidence for Russian interference in the election, President-elect Trump finally admitted that “Russian entities” were responsible for the hacking in January, a conclusion that most other observers had long since reached. Even then, he denied that the interference was aimed at helping his campaign.  

While there is so far no smoking gun that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians on the hacking and election tampering, Lawfare Blog notes that “cooperation [between the Trump campaign and Russian hackers] was an open and public feature of the campaign. It included open encouragement of the Russians to hack Democratic targets; denial that they had done so; encouragement of WikiLeaks, which was publicly known to be effectively a publishing arm of the Russian operation, in publishing the fruits of the hacks; and publicly trumpeting the contents of stolen emails.”

Writing for Just Security, Julian Sanchez argues that secret contacts between the campaign and the Putin government were not needed. “Russia’s efforts on Trump’s behalf were, for the most part, pretty open, even if Trump affected not to notice them,” he says. “Trump’s praise of Vladimir Putin—grounded in an affection that long predates his political career—was public, as was his gleeful exploitation of the fruits of hacks against his opponents and encouragement of more of the same, as was his attempt to exculpate Russia long after the intelligence community had reached consensus about their responsibility, as was his use on the campaign trail of stories pushed out by Russian state media.  Trump could see they were helping him, they could see he appreciated it and was reciprocating. What, exactly, would have been the marginal benefit of some further secret communication making this happy symbiosis a matter of explicit agreement?  Collusion would have been redundant.”

At this point, it is Trump himself keeping the Russia scandal alive. After the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt, “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won'.” This shocking statement confirmed charges by the critics that the firing was at least partly due to Comey’s handling of the investigation of Russia’s election interference and contacts with the Trump campaign.

When President Trump defended rather than denied his sharing of classified material with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister, it was simply the latest in a long line of contacts between the two organizations. Like many of the other contacts, Trump’s sharing of classified material was probably legal, but ethically questionable and almost certainly unwise.

Why does Russia keep popping up in the Trump Administration? Because Donald Trump encouraged the Russian interference in the campaign and – knowingly or unknowingly – hired a plethora of pro-Putin advisors. The president’s clumsy attempts to deflect the investigation into the campaign’s Russia ties and ensure that the subject won’t go away anytime soon.

Originally published on The Resurgent

New developments on Trump campaign surveillance

There are two new developments in the story of the alleged “wiretapping” of the Trump team during the campaign. The name of the Trump associate that was the subject of a previously known FISA warrant was named and several congressmen are disputing Rep. Nunes’s claim that the intelligence community inappropriately unmasked subjects of surveillance within the Trump campaign.

The Washington Post reports that the FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant to investigate Carter Page as early as last July. The investigation was part of the counterintelligence effort opposing Russian interference in the election. The government claimed that there was probable cause to believe that Page was acting as the agent of a foreign power.

Page was listed as a foreign policy advisor by the Trump campaign in March 2016. In August 2016, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks called him an “informal advisor,” the Post notes. By September, when the investigation of Page’s Russia ties was known, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said that Page “has made no contribution to the campaign” and Kellyanne Conway claimed that he was “certainly not part of the campaign that I'm running.” In January, Sean Spicer described Page as “an individual who the president-elect does not know and was put on notice months ago by the campaign.”

In a February interview with the Los Angeles Times, President Trump apparently described his relationship with Page, saying, “I don't think I've ever spoken to him. I don't think I've ever met him. And he actually said he was a very low-level member of I think a committee for a short period of time. I don't think I ever met him. Now, it's possible that I walked into a room and he was sitting there, but I don't think I ever met him. I didn't talk to him ever. And he thought it was a joke.”

Carter Page denied the allegations against him in an interview on Tuesday. “This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” he said. “I have nothing to hide.” No charges have been filed.

No charges have been filed against Susan Rice either. Rice was alleged to have improperly handled surveillance by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Nunes claimed in March that intelligence on Trump staffers appeared to have been legally collected, but was concerned that the identities of campaign team members unmasked and details that had no intelligence value were widely disseminated.

Now CNN reports that Nunes’s claims are being refuted by both Democrats and Republicans who have reviewed the same intelligence documents cited by Nunes. The unnamed congressmen said that the requests made by Rice were “normal and appropriate” for a National Security Advisor and that there was “absolutely” no smoking gun in the reports.

Rice has also denied any wrongdoing. “There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a US person was referred to -- name not provided, just a US person -- and sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out, or request the information as to who the US official was,” Rice said. “The notion that some people are trying to suggest, is that by asking for the identity of a person is leaking it, is unequivocally false. There is no connection between unmasking and leaking.”

President Trump told the New York Times last week that he believes that Rice broke the law, but has thus far failed to provide evidence or have the Justice Department file charges against her. The president claimed that he would provide the evidence “at the right time.”

There have many conflicting claims and counterclaims in the surveillance scandal. The revelations that Trump aides were under investigation for their ties to Russia is an established fact that was known before the election. The identification of Carter Page as a target of the investigation is likely accurate as well. It is also possible that the investigation was not limited to Page.

The jury is still out on the matter of Nunes’s claim of impropriety on the part of the intelligence community. If there is evidence that Rice or other intelligence officers broke the law, then they should be prosecuted and a sanitized version of the evidence should be made public to support the extraordinary claims of Trump and Nunes.

So far there is no indication that any surveillance was conducted illegally or for purely political purposes. Even Nunes acknowledged that the intercepts of Trump campaign communications appeared to be an “incidental collection” that could result from communication with foreign nationals who are under surveillance. If this is how the intercepts resulted, then the FBI was doing its job.

The one person who has the power to clear up the entire mess is President Trump. The president has access to all the intelligence information available and the power to have relevant portions declassified and released to the public. So far, however, it appears that Mr. Trump is not inclined to clear up the situation. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Spies Don’t Trust Trump with Intelligence

In what may be an unprecedented move, America’s intelligence community is reportedly keeping the country’s most sensitive intelligence information from its president. A Wall Street Journal report cited both current and former intelligence officials who said that concerns that the information might be leaked or compromised had prompted the agencies to withhold certain information.

Even before the forced resignation of Gen. Flynn due to his lack of forthrightness about his contacts with Russia, the Trump Administration was at odds with the intelligence community. President Trump was one of the few to deny the findings of the FBI and the CIA that Russia interfered in the presidential election. In January, Trump hinted at a restructuring of the intelligence community in what some thought was retribution for the investigation into Russia’s role in the election. Also in January, Russia was rumored to have compromising information on Donald Trump himself.

Flynn was also not the only member of the Trump camp to have suspicious ties to Russia. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was fired during the campaign for his connections to Russia. CNN reported that “high-level advisors” to the Trump camp were in “constant communication during the election with Russians known to US intelligence” according to “multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement and administration officials.” Manafort was named by CNN in the article, but it may also refer to Carter Page, Roger Stone and others.

Manafort denied the accusation. “I have knowingly never talked to any intelligence official or anyone in Russia regarding anything of what's under investigation," he said. "I have never had any connection to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin or the Russian government before, during or after the campaign.”

According to the Journal, intelligence information is sometimes sanitized to protect sources before it is given to government officials, but there is no known precedent for restricting the president’s access due to fears about “trustworthiness and discretion.” The report said that there was no known instance in which vital information relating to security threats or plots had been restricted.

The Journal’s sources cited two specific reasons for restricting Mr. Trump’s access. The first is the general statements of admiration that Trump made for Vladimir Putin at numerous times. The second is the specific request that Mr. Trump made for Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.

Officially, the intelligence community denies the Journal report. ““Any suggestion that the U.S. intelligence community is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true,” said a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Likewise, the White House also disputes the account. “There is nothing that leads us to believe that this is an accurate account of what is actually happening.”

Regardless of whether information is being withheld, there is clearly a strained relationship between the Trump Administration and the intelligence community. “It’s probably unprecedented to have this difficult a relationship between a president and the intelligence agencies,” said Mark Lowenthal, a retired senior intelligence official. “I can’t recall ever seeing this level of friction. And it’s just not good for the country.”

Originally published on The Resurgent