One of Judge Napolitano's British spying sources

The source of a Fox News commentator's claim that then-President Barack Obama enlisted British intelligence to spy on Donald Trump during the recent election campaign is reportedly the same man who propagated the baseless claim that Michelle Obama used a racial slur against white people. Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA intelligence officer, told Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano that Obama used the GCHQ, Britain's high-tech global listening post that monitors communications around the world, to spy on Trump, according to The New York Times. Johnson called the Times at Napolitano's behest. He confirmed to the newspaper that he was one of the sources for the judge's claims - which were then repeated by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday.

Donald Trump's press secretary repeated a claim first made on Fox News by legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano that UK spies helped Obama surveil Trump One of Napolitano's sources is Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst who also invented false claim that Michelle Obama made a taped slur about whites White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer repeated Napolitano's claim, prompting a furious GCHQ to issue a rare denial Spicer denies reports he apologized to Britain for repeating claim that its spies were used by Obama to get material on Trump Spicer said he was just 'passing on news reports' when he used his press briefing to repeat a claim by Napolitano

I listened to the Judge make the comments about CGHQ a few days ago and out of curiosity, I decided to go his website to see if had any update comments. A link on his homepage leads to this article which was written a few days ago. http://www.judgenap.com/post/did-obama-spy-on-trump The first hint that this isn't all that rock solid is that the title for the article ends in a question mark. Near the bottom of the article is this clip: Sources have told Fox News that the British foreign surveillance service, the Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, most likely provided Obama with transcripts of Trump's calls. The NSA has given GCHQ full 24/7 access to its computers, so GCHQ -- a foreign intelligence agency that, like the NSA, operates outside our constitutional norms -- has the digital versions of all electronic communications made in America in 2016, including Trump's. So by bypassing all American intelligence services, Obama would have had access to what he wanted with no Obama administration fingerprints.

This statement sounds much less definite than what I heard from the Judge when his statement was live on Fox and Friends….. ‘Sources have told Fox News’ (he doesn’t say they told him personally), ‘most likely provided’ (that sure doesn’t sound definite), ‘NSA has given GCHQ full 24/7 access’ (ok….. so they have the capability), ‘….Obama would have had access to what he wanted’ (fine but there is no comment as far as executing that access).

What the Judge wrote in this article is far more waffling than his live statement. All one can hope is that if surveilance really happened as the Judge has suggested, the sources better be pristine enough that the Judge didn’t need to leave the wiggle room that he obviously has now created for himself.

* Larry C. Johnson, “The Declining Terrorist Threat” The New York Times 10 July 2001: A19.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/10/opinion/the-declining-terrorist-threat.html

* “Former CIA Official Larry Johnson Delivers Democratic Radio Address,” transcript posted on official Democratic National Committee’s website for The Democratic Party, July 23, 2005, accessed November 21, 2006.
http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/07/former_cia_offi.php

The whole VIPS group he ties in with is involved with Dan Ellsberg, the guy who helped write/fabricate, then stole, the Pentagon Papers.
Others involved with that were Leslie Gelb and Morton Halperin.

Larry has poor taste in bedfellows- there’s a lot of South Vietnamese boat people who’d like to take a crack at these vipers.

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