Trump sets out to unmask Democrats’ spying in 2016 elections

President Trump has delivered on his threat to order the declassification of the contents of four Verified Applications made to the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the FBI in October 2016 and January, April and June 2017. These Applications resulted in four warrants being issued by four different judges enabling the FBI to spy on an American citizen—Carter Page- who had been a member of President Trump’s 2016 election campaign committee. It has been alleged that the warrants obtained to spy on Carter Page relied mainly on unverified and unsubstantiated research prepared by former British Secret Service Agent Christopher Steele and paid for by the Democratic Party and Hilary Clinton.

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These allegations —if substantiated by an investigation authorized by Attorney General William Barr—could result in the uncovering of a scandal for the Democrats far worse than the Watergate break-in proved to be for the Republicans. The four Applications have already been released in heavily redacted form. Trump’s decision to further declassify them is clearly in the public and national interest. The New York Times announced Trump’s latest decision to declassify the four Applications under an article headlined “Trump Gives Attorney General Sweeping Power in Review of 2016 Campaign Inquiry”. The Democrats have been sent a clear signal that the anti-Trump mainstream media will be following the story very closely and engaging in their own efforts to uncover what happened between October 2016 and September 2017 Trump has clearly appointed Barr to be the arbiter of what is to be declassified with this following Tweet:

“Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States, President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 Presidential election. The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information. Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions.”

Barr has already indicated spying by the FBI occurred. His concern is whether there was sufficient evidence to justify the FBI applying to spy on an American citizen who happened to be on Trump’s election committee.

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The spying was conducted on President Obama’s watch—and the possible involvement of the White House remains an open question. In a two-pronged assault—former head of the US House Intelligence Committee 2015-2019—Devin Nunes—offered his own opinion in finding out what occurred:

“The easiest way to clean this up, and the quickest way, would be for the FISA court itself, for the FISC, the secret court, to come out and take action against all of these top level people at the Department of Justice and the FBI who fraudulently produced information to the court… … And look, at the end of the day, it's not going to be believable that we should have a secret court in this country if they can't take action to enforce people that deliberately lie to them”

The four judges who heard the Applications should indeed be calling all FBI and Department of Justice lawyers who appeared before them to affirm that they made full and honest disclosure to the Court and did not seek to conceal exculpatory evidence which they as officers of the court have an overriding and primary duty to present. The Democrats are skating on thin ice which threatens to sink them.

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