Sunday, March 05, 2017

WEAPONIZED GOVERNMENT: The Only Obama Legacy

By Lawrence Sellin

Want to drain the swamp? Expose Barack Obama, who he really is and the damage he has done.

Let's start with President Trump's allegation that the Obama Administration wiretapped the Trump Tower in October of 2016.

Here is what we know:

In June 2016, the Obama Administration, using flimsy evidence of Russian connections to the Trump campaign, made an initial request for electronic surveillance of Trump and his associates under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and its approval body the FISA court.

It should be noted that approval requires a very low standard of evidence. Since its inception, the FISA court has permitted 99.7% of requests. The fact that the initial request was denied, means that the basis upon which the request was made must have been extraordinarily weak or excessively broad or both.

According to a Heat Street article, the "FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October [2016], giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons' in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia."

In that regard, Breitbart stated: "No evidence is found - but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services."

On January 12, 2017, the New York Times reported:

"In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government's 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections."

"The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws."

"The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data."

In other words, the Obama Administration intentionally increased, by orders of magnitude, the possibility of leaks of classified information about private U.S. citizens gathered under a FISA warrant.

The Obama Administration has an extensive history of using federal agencies to attack political opponents; the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups (why is John Koskinen still IRS Commissioner?) and the Department of Justice spying on Fox News reporter James Rosen, to name only two instances.

For Obama, the FISA warrant and the leaks it produced has been a gift that keeps on giving. It perpetuates the false narrative of a substantive Trump-Russian connection. It led to the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. It forced Attorney General Jeff Session to recuse himself from the Trump-Russian investigation opening the way for a Special Prosecutor.

President Trump has a window of opportunity to challenge the Deep State, expose the depth of corruption in our political-media culture and pave the way for reform.

The Deep State or permanent political establishment consists of the mutually-supportive Democrat and Republican leadership, the left-wing media outlets, the financiers of both, and an over-populated and over-paid federal bureaucracy - all dedicated to maintaining the corrupt status quo.

The survival of the Deep State is now inextricably linked to the legacy of Barack Obama because it facilitated his rise to power and uncritically and shamelessly protected him in office.

Obama and his acolytes have declared war on the Trump Administration, which demands a full-scale counteroffensive directed at Obama himself.

It is certainly true that Obama maliciously abused the power of the Presidency, deliberately weakened national security, undermined our social fabric, debilitated the economy, dramatically expanded government oppression and dangerously increased the national debt.

The issue, however, is not just his performance in office, but that he was in office at all, given the lack of clarity involving his personal history.

The truth would expose the rampant corruption of our political and media elite, reveal their complicity in Obama's violations of Constitution, uncover their willful ignorance of his alleged felonies and confirm their participation in the greatest election fraud and Constitutional crisis in American history.

It is the consolidation of power of the Deep State that engenders corruption, but it is indifference that sustains it.


Read more at Family Security Matters.
 

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