Wiretap others? That's not who we are!

Andrew C. McCarthy:  The Obama Camp’s Disingenuous Denials on FISA Surveillance of Trump "President Trump’s early Saturday morning tweeting has exploded to the forefront an uncovered scandal I’ve been talking about since early January (including in this weekend’s column): The fact that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI investigated associates of Donald Trump, and likely Trump himself, in the heat of the presidential campaign." . . .
. . . "Moreover, it cannot be glossed over that, at the very time it appears the Obama Justice Department was seeking to surveil Trump and/or his associates on the pretext that they were Russian agents, the Obama Justice Department was also actively undermining and ultimately closing without charges the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton despite significant evidence of felony misconduct that threatened national security.
"This appears to be extraordinary, politically motivated abuse of presidential power." 

More Than a Dozen Proven Victims of Obama’s Many Wiretaps  "It is not unfounded that former President Obama would wire tap President Trump during the election process.  This is because he has done this before.  Here is a list of individuals who were wire tapped by the Obama Administration.
"WikiLeaks released the following list on February 23rd (see link here) of Obama Administration wire taps:
Quoting: * The US National Security Agency bugged a private climate change strategy meeting; between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin;
* Obama bugged Chief of Staff of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for long term interception targetting his Swiss phone;
* Obama singled out the Director of the Rules Division of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Johann Human, and targetted his Swiss phone for long term interception;
. . .
* Obama stole sensitive Italian diplomatic cables detailing how Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to help patch up his relationship with US President Barack Obama, who was refusing to talk to Netanyahu;

In addition to the above list we also know now that Obama wire tapped various individuals in the US media that were reporting information not flattering to the Obama Administration.  It is widely known that Obama’s Justice Department targeted journalists with wiretaps in 2013: In 2013 the liberal Washington Post expressed outrage after the revelation that the Justice Department had investigated the newsgathering activities of a Fox News reporter as a potential crime in a probe of classified leaks.  The reporter, Fox News’ James Rosen and his family, were part of an investigation into government officials anonymously leaking information to journalists. Rosen was not charged but his movements and actions were tracked.
* Also in 2013, members of the Associated Press were also a target of the surveillance.  The ultra liberal New Yorker even noted that “In moderate and liberal circles, at least, the phone-records scandal, partly because it involves the dear old A.P. and partly because it raises anew the specter of Big Brother, may well present the most serious threat to Obama’s reputation.”
* Reporter Sharyl Attkisson said in 2014 that her personal computer and CBS laptop were hacked after she began filing stories about Benghazi that were unflattering to the Obama administration.  A source who checked her laptop said the hacker used spyware “proprietary to a government agency,” according to an article in the New York Post." . . .
Via The Gateway Pundit

Pelosi punts on Democrat’s joke about Kellyanne Conway looking ‘familiar’ kneeling on White House couch

“Has anyone seen the controversy around Kellyanne Conway and the couch in the Oval Office?” Scott said. “Come on, people. You remember the '90s. That couch has had a whole lot of worse things.”

WaPo

"Four days ago, a Democratic congressman made what seemed to be a pretty blatantly tasteless joke about how top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway “really looked kind of familiar” kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office.

"But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that she hadn't heard about it. And she also suggested that such crude jokes were fair game at the dinner where Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) said it.

"CNN host Jake Tapper played Pelosi a clip of the joke — “And you can just explain to me that circumstance, because she really looked kind of familiar there in that position there,” Richmond said — and called it a “sexist” and “disgusting” joke. He asked Pelosi whether Richmond should apologize to Conway.

“ 'I wasn't at the dinner. I'm just finding out about this,” Pelosi said. The Washington Post asked her office for comment Thursday and received no response." . . .

The Smearing of Jeff Sessions

"Other than hyper-partisans, no one cares about his insubstantial meetings with the Russian ambassador."

The Spectator  "Craven Republicans, looking for a pat on the head from the mainstream media, can always be counted on to echo its idiotic demands. The phony controversy over the Trump campaign’s imaginary ties to Putin is the latest pitiful example of this phenomenon.

Instead of exposing the hyper-partisanship behind this media obsession, these Republicans are humoring it. We hear from them craven calls for a “special prosecutor” to investigate and demands that attorney general Jeff Sessions submit to one because he had, in his capacity as a senator, a grand total of two unimportant encounters with the Russia ambassador. How shocking. Who knew that senators and ambassadors from major countries with whom we have diplomatic relations interact? Extraordinary.

To the hyperventilating twits on Morning Joe, Ted Cruz made the obvious point: “What we are seeing is a lot of political theater. This morning, everyone is in high dudgeon about the meeting. The underlying meeting is a nothing burger. It’s what senators do every day. Meeting with foreign ambassadors, that’s part of the job. I think everyone is getting all worked up because it’s a chance to beat up the attorney general and to beat up the president.” . . .

Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim

NY Times

. . . "Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.

"Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

"A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.

"Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness." . . .

Obama’s Intelligence Director Strongly Denies Any Secret Warrants Against Trump Or Campaign

Daily Caller  "In a surprisingly candid interview on Sunday, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence under President Obama, directly denied that a secret federal warrant was ever issued against President Trump or his campaign.


"Clapper, who was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” also said that he saw no evidence while in office of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government to influence the election.


“ 'I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Clapper told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd.


"Clapper also told Todd that he would “absolutely” be in a position to know whether a warrant was ever issued to wiretap Trump’s phones under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA" . . .

On President Trump's wiretapping claims

I have a bad feeling about this. Remember the job Obama's writers did on Trump over his birther claims?

Breitbart was said to be Trump's source on the wiretapping  Two words: Steve Bannon
"Donald Trump relied on conservative media sources to make his explosive claim that former President Barack Obama had the then-candidate’s phones tapped during the 2016 election campaign, according to a person familiar with the situation.
"A spokesman for Obama said Trump’s claims were “simply false,” and lawmakers urged Trump, if he had evidence of a wiretap, to make it public or at least disclose it to Congress."
. . .

“If it was with a legal FISA court order, then an application for surveillance exists that the court found credible,” Sasse said in a statement. “The president should ask that this full application regarding surveillance of foreign operatives be made available.”


Did Obama authorize wiretapping of Trump?  "President Trump accused Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower before the election.


"The Washington Post dismissed the charge:

Trump offered no citations nor did he point to any credible news report to back up his accusation, but he may have been referring to commentary on Breitbart and conservative talk radio suggesting that Obama and his administration used "police state" tactics last fall to monitor the Trump team.

"The Washington Post, a member of the Opposition Party, does not believe that Breitbart is credible.  Breitbart reported that the Obama administration sought a FISA warrant in June 2016, which was denied, but did obtain a FISA warrant in October 2016." . . .Read more.

The fact that WaPo is an Obama supporter does not necessarily mean they are wrong about this. TD

President Trump's Obama Wire Tapping Claims Backed By Top Intelligence Officer
"Retired Lt. Col Tony Schaffer states President Trump was probably given sufficient evidence to make his claims."  (Probably?)


Obama DENIES Trump's sensational 'Nixon/Watergate' phone tap accusation:

. . . " 'As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.' 

However, the statement did not deny that another federal agency may have sought authorization to listen in on Trump Towers and received it. 

Lewis' statement comes shortly after Trump fired off a flurry of tweets early Saturday morning claiming that the former president had been spying on him in October, a month before his election victory.  

'" Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!' the president wrote on Twitter." . . .

Yes, There Could Be Serious Legal Problems if Obama Admin Involved in Illegal Surveillance  . . . "If the stories are correct, Obama or his officials might even face prosecution. But, we are still early in all of this and there are a lot of rumors flying around so the key is if the reports are accurate. We just don’t know at this time." LawNuze

The AP defends Obama

Sad Irony: Women’s History Month Ushered In At Liberal College With Assault Of Female Professor Trying To Flee Violent Mob

Patterico's Pontifications  "On Thursday, noted author Charles Murray was scheduled to speak at Vermont’s Middlebury College. Things went as you would expect when a guest speaker at an institution of higher learning seeks to challenge the views of college-aged individuals with left-left wing authoritarian issues. Unable to even listen to a different viewpoint and engage in rational debate with those who don’t toe the liberal line, they silence the speaker. Unfortunately, this shutting down of speech is usually followed by violence. And in this case, the mob violence led to a female professor ending up in the emergency room:" . . .

. . . "And from the NYT:

The left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center describes Mr. Murray as a “white nationalist” who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor.”

"This is the same Southern Poverty Law Center that labeled Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an anti-Muslim extremist, and included Dr. Ben Carson in their Extremist File (since removed after protests). This a group that even the FBI has rejected as an authority on hate groups. " . . .

Love Trumps Hate

Mike Ramirez

Vindictive Obama, we'd love to miss you, but how can we?

Did the Obama Administration Try Stacking the Deck Against Trump at the Justice Department?  . . . "It looks like the Obama administration was hoping that the reins of power here would unknowingly default to someone unfriendly to Trump in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself—or even resign, as so many Democrats breathlessly demanded Thursday." . . .

Is Trump right about Obama wiretapping his office?  If Trump is wrong, the mockery will get a big burst of energy.  More here,and here

Too weird to check: Valerie Jarrett moves in with the Obamas to plot Trump’s downfall  . . . "Resignation is negligibly more plausible: There may be enough Obama loyalists in the guts of the federal bureaucracy to dig up a truly devastating leak about Trump, but even then it’s hard to imagine something so bad that Trump would capitulate to his critics rather than try to fight them off. The guy didn’t drop out after the “Access Hollywood” tape. Unless there’s video of him personally accepting a fat envelope from Vladimir Putin himself, he’s going to hang in there. Whatever it might mean for his party." . . .

Vindictive down to the wire  "These actions by Mr. Obama, who has just a short time left before Mr. Trump takes office, show him to be vindictive, petty and a sore loser."

How can we miss you, Barry when you won't go away?

Now we know Barack Obama’s foreign policy wasn’t principled, it was malicious.

"Obama might possibly have escaped into the history books only as a man who meant well feebly in foreign affairs. Not any more."

National Post

A warm handshake for our faithful ally, Israel.

. . . "His foreign policy has been a disaster almost from the outset in ways that contributed to the frustration and rage that poisoned the 2016 election. In part, Obama simply seemed languid, unable to stir himself in the face of threats or even look up from his putt. But there were always those who suggested that behind the indolence and prissy Wilsonian pose of being “too proud to fight” lurked something more sinister.

"Obama, they claimed, was viscerally hostile to the United States and the West. When he took office he had the bust of Churchill removed from the Oval Office. His relations with Israel were always prickly. He snubbed Canada in spiking Keystone XL. Yet he did not react with alarm or even visible discomfort to threats to NATO such as Russian moves to destabilize and partially dismember Ukraine, despite a firm American security guarantee when it gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1994." . . .

It speaks poorly of liberals that this man's behavior does not disgust them. TD

Denisha Merriweather’s Witness / She talks about the real-life consequences of school choice.

At a pro-school-choice rally in 2010, she noticed Matthews marching at the very front with parents and students. “That’s when it hit me that this is a civil-rights issue,” she remarks. “This issue affects low-income minority people. Even within public schools, low-income kids are not able to attend school on a wealthy side of the neighborhood. Red tape keeps these poor kids all in one area. It’s segregation.”

Alexandra DeSanctis  "I went to about four or five different schools before sixth grade, but as far as I can remember I never did great in school. Whenever I walked into a classroom, teachers would sigh. I got into fights a lot as a student. I failed out of third grade twice,” Denisha Merriweather tells me, explaining her early experience in public school on the east side of Jacksonville, Fla.

"But that very same girl received a standing ovation on the floor of the House of Representatives during President Donald Trump’s joint address on Tuesday, as the president lauded Denisha for becoming the first in her family to graduate from high school and college. And this spring, she will graduate from the University of South Florida with a master’s degree in social work.

"Her experience of Florida’s education system began with several years of struggling through East Jacksonville’s public schools. “My teachers knew the Merriweather name, and they didn’t really expect a lot from me because that’s who I was,” Denisha explains. “My home life was really in shambles, and so I’d lash out. . . . I didn’t feel like there was a reason to try.”

"She has come to believe that the structure of too many public schools makes it exceedingly difficult for children who have grown up in poverty — like all of the students with whom she attended grade school — to escape their situation. “I don’t fault the public schools, and I don’t fault the teachers there,” she notes. “This is the system we’ve made, where all the kids from one really poor neighborhood go to one school together. And that’s a lot of strain on the system, for teachers and administrators to have to figure out how to help all of these different kids, who are dealing with all of this crap at home.' ” . . .

Trey Gowdy: ‘Did You Ever Hear The Media Call For Special Counsel For President Obama?’

The Daily Caller   "Rep. Trey Gowdy talked at length about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal during a Friday interview on “The Mike Gallagher Show.”

"The South Carolina Republican agreed that the attorney general’s decision was the correct one before launching an assault against Democrats and the media for making a mountain out of a molehill.

“ 'The reality is Jeff Sessions is not going to be in the courtroom prosecuting this case,” he stated. “If it was good enough for the media for Holder and Lynch, look — it exposes their hypocrisy all of the sudden about Sessions, but did you ever hear the media call for special counsel for President Obama?”

“ 'I feel like I’m watching ‘The Notebook.’ They’ve fallen in love with the special counsel regulation they didn’t know existed a few months ago.”

Hat tip to M Fumie Craig

Andrew C. McCarthy asks: A Special Prosecutor . . . For What?
. . . "Yes, yes, Sessions is a good and decent man. He is a scrupulous lawyer who cares about his reputation. Thus, in stark contrast to Obama administration attorneys general, he strictly applied — I’d say he hyper-applied — the ethical standard that calls on a lawyer to recuse himself from a matter in which his participation as counsel would create the mere appearance of impropriety. The standard is eminently sensible because the legitimacy of our judicial system depends not only on its actually being on the up and up but on its being perceived as such.
"If it looks like you’re conflicted, you step aside, period. Simple, right? Well . . ." . . .

Wait'll Rep. Gowdy hears about this:

Obama appointee takes over Russia investigations
"Sessions handed over the reins for that investigation to Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, who will oversee all aspects of the ongoing investigation.
. . .
"Deputy Attorney General Boente, appointed by Obama and promoted to U.S. Attorney in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2015, would eventually vacate that position once U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, a Republican, is confirmed. That hearing is scheduled for Tuesday."

I'm sure the Democrats will move that confirmation process along as fast as they can.