When leaks are propaganda...

John Solomon, of The Hill, has two pieces of supposedly breaking news about Spygate. The only thing actually new in his breaking news is the justifications and excuses his sources are offering to try to spin the story.

The first is that the FBI began spying on the Trump campaign before the investigation had an official predicate:

PJMedia[T]he FBI began spying on members of the Trump campaign to gather the intelligence that ultimately justified the collusion investigation, weeks or even months before the FBI had a formal predicate.

"That's very important. The rules say you can't use sources until you have a predicated investigation. The predication is July 31, 2016," Solomon told Fox host Sean Hannity. The investigative reporter said he had sources and documents backing up his claim that he would be making public in his report in The Hill on Friday.

He stressed that informants were making contacts with the Trump officials and providing information to the FBI "much, much earlier than July 31."

That's not so much a scoop as an admission. We've known that the investigation, including the actions by the spy Halper, took place earlier than July, and that the investigation supposedly started in July. There have been efforts to try to push the date backwards, but those have now failed; Solomon's sources appear to be admitting the approaches by Halper started before the official investigation was opened, and that that was a violation of the the rules.

But it's also there to conceal the big admission: the Obama White House was involved.

PJMediaThe second part of his bombshell report, Solomon explained, deals with internal FBI communications between former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, his mistress Lisa Page, and others discussing how the Obama White House was trying to take over the investigation.

"The words 'the White House is running this' are clear in the text message," Solomon told Hannity, adding that "the FBI agents who opened this case feared that Barack Obama was weak on national security and wouldn't do what they needed for Russia."

He said, "The political elements of the administration were trying to intrude on the FBI investigation."

Those words (bolded above) were redacted in the original release, if I remember correctly. And the spin is where Solomon says the White House was trying to take over the investigation. That's not what the message says. The White House is running this. Not trying to, and being rebuffed by loyal nonpartisan FBI agents. Is Running.

And it's not just two FBI agents speculating. We have Rice's self-justifying "by the book" memo to herself.

In other words, we have documentary evidence (and likely testimony from Page and Strzok as cooperating witnesses, at a minimum) that the political spying on Trump was run from the White House, and Rice's email to herself demonstrates that it was run right from the top -- Obama himself. Mind you, Rice was trying to cover for him by saying Obama told them to do it all "by the book". But the evidence is that the FBI, CIA, NSA, and others did not do it "by the book". The evidence makes Rice's email a transparently self-serving cover story. It also exposes as a lie Ben Rhodes' claim in his book that Obama did not know about the investigation until he left office. Oops; in their hurry to cover their own ass they forget to coordinate their stories.

Unless Obama left a paper trail of secret pardons on his way out the door, people will be going to jail for this.

This entry was published Fri Jun 01 10:43:32 CDT 2018 by TriggerFinger and last updated 2018-06-01 10:28:41.0. [Tweet]

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