Thursday, March 23, 2017

Obama spying - hows extensive was it?


Nunes claims some Trump transition messages were intercepted

The move gave cover to the White House but was rebuked by top Democrats.

By AUSTIN WRIGHT

03/22/17 01:19 PM EDT


House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes declared Wednesday that members of Donald Trump’s transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under inadvertent surveillance following November’s presidential election.

The White House and Trump’s allies immediately seized on the statement as vindication of the president’s much-maligned claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower phones — even though Nunes himself said that’s not what his new information shows.

Democrats, meanwhile, cried foul.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, cast doubt on Nunes’ claims in a fiery statement and blasted the chairman for not first sharing the information with him or other committee members.

Schiff also slammed Nunes for briefing the White House on Wednesday afternoon given that the Intelligence Committee is in the middle of an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, including possible collusion with the Trump team.



Schiff: There is now 'more than circumstantial evidence' of Trump-Russia collusion

By MADELINE CONWAY

“The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both,” Schiff said at a news conference Wednesday.

“And unfortunately,” he added, “I think the actions of today throw great doubt into the ability of both the chairman and the committee to conduct the investigation the way it ought to be conducted.”

Nunes set off the firestorm with a news conference earlier in the day in which he described the surveillance of Trump aides through what’s called “incidental collection,” something he noted was routine and legal. Such collection can occur when a person inside the United State communicates with a foreign target of U.S. surveillance. In such cases, the identities of U.S. citizens are supposed to be shielded — but can be “unmasked” by intelligence officials under certain circumstances.

Nunes, himself a Trump transition member, said a “source” had shown him evidence that members of the Trump transition team had been unmasked — and that their identities had been revealed in U.S. intelligence reports. Nunes had previously raised questions about the unmasking of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whose communications with Russia’s ambassador were intercepted by the U.S. government and whose identity was leaked to the news media.

Nunes suggested this unmasking might have been done for political reasons, saying the evidence he had seen had been widely disseminated across the intelligence community and had "little or no apparent intelligence value." He added that he was trying to get more information by Friday from the FBI, CIA and NSA.

“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the president-elect and his team were, I guess, at least monitored,” the California Republican told reporters. “It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the president-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.” He said the information he had seen was not related to the FBI’s Russia investigation.




2 comments:

  1. Anonymous3/23/2017

    And how much of the democrats chicanery into spying, leaking and double standards are the democrats going to disclose? Obama's second term was nothing more than a side-step of the constitutional system of checks and balances. The back and forth emailing between the president and Hillary's personal server, the false narrative sent out to news outlets following the Bengazi massacre, the shenanigans of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. All the while these democrats wheezing about transparency in government. And yet the media did nothing to expose the biggest scandals of the last several decades. Independent researchers that disclosed the money laundering schemes of the Clinton Foundation and the pardons issued by both Clinton and Obama on their last days in office. Its ridiculous to watch these hypocrites get in front of the cameras with their feigned indignation over unethical behavior. In light of these goings on, its improbable that any democrat will get a vote from our household.

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    1. Anonymous3/24/2017

      But our local sheeple still think "our guys" are "OK". They are not. They have added to the problem. Now they want that ugly old Irish dufus Kennedy with the ugly pasty skin and yellow teeth. What will he propose? More of the left wing socialist garbage that has been destroying this city, state, and til Trump the country. Pro homosexual LGBTQLMNOP, pro abortion, anti police morons. I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me. It cares nothing for me or my concerns.

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