The latest filing by Special Counsel John Durham vindicates reporting in 2017 by conservative radio host Mark Levin — citing mainstream media reports — and Breitbart News about attempts to spy on newly-installed President Donald Trump.
The Durham filing alleges a different “track” of spying — this time, involving a private effort by a lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign — who says he was not acting on the campaign’s behalf, contrary to Durham’s allegations — to exploit government cell phone data, including at the White House, to suggest a connection between Trump and Russia.
The 2017 reporting concerned evidence that law enforcement authorities had used surveillance on Trump campaign aides as they investigated claims of Russia “collusion” — claims that, we later learned, came from the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Nevertheless, subsequent evidence has confirmed that the Trump campaign was indeed under surveillance; and now, it is alleged that the surveillance continued into the presidency itself, creating a scenario that is “worse than Watergate.”
Already, in September 2017, CNN had to admit that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had been wiretapped during the campaign.
In 2018, it emerged that Trump campaign aide Carter Page had been under FBI surveillance.
Page was targeted partly due to the so-called “Russia dossier,” a fraudulent Clinton-funded opposition research document that the FBI continued to use as the basis for applying to a judge for warrants even after it knew the dossier was false.
In 2020, it emerged that the FBI had taken extraordinary measures to target National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, including using a meeting with him at the White House to probe for information that could be used to target Trump.
Now, the establishment media is belatedly reporting the Durham filing, which appeared during the prosecution of former Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann. But the media coverage is focusing on attempting to debunk conservative “narratives.”
Sussmann’s attorneys are pushing back, but they admit that their client gave cell phone data to the FBI. Their claim is that researchers who gave him the data did so “in good faith,” that the data were not “manipulated,” and that Sussmann did not know the claims were untrue.
Sussmann also claims that he is innocent of the crime of lying to the FBI, which is the basis for his prosecution.
The fact remains that both the government and the Clinton campaign’s operatives targeted Trump, monitoring communications in an effort to investigate allegations of Russia “collusion” and bring down a president.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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