Greenfield: The Obama Government’s Secret Societies

The Obama Government’s Secret Societies Exposing the anti-Trump conspiracy within the DOJ. January 24, 2018 Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

A week after the election, groups inside and outside the government, some calling themselves Obama Anonymous, had begun meeting to plan the “resistance” to Trump. Unlike the angry protesters in the streets, this resistance wasn’t a new organization. It consisted of Washington D.C. government lifers.

At the CFPB, there was a group calling itself Dumbledore’s Army. Within the FBI and the DOJ, there was a nameless “secret society”. Its details are being derived from text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok, a disgraced member of Mueller’s team, and his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked for FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Previous Strzok texts had spoken of taking out “insurance” against a Trump win. This was all the more significant since Strzok had investigated Hillary and interviewed Flynn. He was a crucial figure in both the investigations of Hillary Clinton and President Trump.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy revealed that the day after Trump won the election, texts between Strzok and Page suggested, “Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society.”

Like the CFPB’s Dumbldore’s Army, the reference may have been meant to make the conspiracy seem more lighthearted, but joking names for secret organizations within the government don’t make their dangerously subversive nature a laughing matter. Meanwhile many of the text messages from Strzok and Page have fallen victim to the same technical glitch that claimed Lois Lerner’s emails, Hillary’s emails and the video where Obama’s State Department spokeswoman admitted lying to the media about Iran.

The missing text messages from members of the FBI’s secret society cover the five months where President Trump took office and the Mueller investigation to remove him from that office began.

The DOJ and FBI secret society, Dumbledore’s Army and Obama Anonymous are all holdovers from a radical administration that was obsessed with protecting its secrets and destroying its enemies.

In the summer of ’07, Obama promised that his would be the most transparent administration in history. "The real business of our democracy isn't done in town halls or public meetings or even in the open halls of Congress," he had complained. "Decisions are made in closed-door meetings, or with the silent stroke of the President's pen."

Then he went on to preside over a regime where the “stroke of the President’s pen” outweighed Congress. The real decisions weren’t even made in cabinet meetings, but with a close circle of advisers, like Ben Rhodes, whose proceedings weren’t revealed to the public.

Top administration figures like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the IRS’ Lois Lerner used secret email accounts to avoid transparency leading to major scandals. It was no coincidence that they were also at the center of some of the administration’s worst abuses.

"We've used openness to promote accountability," Cass Sunstein, Obama's regulatory chief, bragged. But when Sunstein communicated with the EPA's Lisa Jackson, he emailed her Richard Windsor alias.

“This is the most transparent administration in history,” Obama declared in ’13.

Shortly thereafter, he was using the NSA to spy on members of Congress opposed to his deal with Iran. Three years later, he was caught secretly smuggling a fortune in foreign currency on unmarked cargo planes to Iran. That same year, his close associate, Ben Rhodes, bragged to the New York Times about their control of the media. “We created an echo chamber.” The “echo chamber” was its own secret society of media people who would be coordinated together to push White House narratives.

Paranoia and secrecy had always been Obama’s primal instincts. The administration had obsessively pursued leakers and whistleblowers. It ushered in a record number of prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act. “The greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation,” was how the New York Times’ James Risen described the administration after spending seven years battling government subpoenas.

Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson claimed that her computer had been hacked into. FOX News reporter James Rosen had his telephone records collected. The IRS was used to target political opponents. And then the NSA was deployed against Obama’s domestic political opponents.

The abuses came to a head with the rise of Trump. The “real business of our democracy” had become a threat to the secret societies inside and outside the government that had mushroomed under Obama. The endless czars of the bureaucracy, the apparatchiks brought in to dismantle and transform the government across each agency, were not about to let the voters overturn eight years of hard work.

The DOJ and the FBI had always been major priorities for Obama Inc. Under Holder and then Lynch, the Justice Department was transformed from a tool for fighting crime and terrorism into a vehicle for radical social change. This more obvious social agenda, which cost thousands of American lives from the spiraling homicide rates of Baltimore to the Pulse massacre in Orlando, hid a darker political agenda.

The hijacking of the DOJ wasn’t just about destroying policing and counterterrorism. Holder and Lynch became notorious for covering up Barack Obama’s and then Hillary Clinton’s scandals. Holder was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents in the Fast and Furious scandal. Lynch’s claim that her extended tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton during the investigation of his wife was a chat about their grandchildren took political cynicism to a new low. Lynch’s emails about the meeting were sent using the alias “Elizabeth Carlisle” in the most transparent administration in history.

But Obama’s DOJ didn’t just play defense. It also went after political opponents. Especially Trump.

We don’t know what, if any, tactics were deployed against the Romney campaign. That is one of the things that a comprehensive investigation of the Obama years should look into. The collapse of Romney’s ORCA application at a crucial moment may have helped throw the election to Obama. But we already know some of the measures that Obama Inc. took against the Trump campaign.

The Hillary campaign had funded the creation of the Steele dossier. The discredited document was injected into the DOJ and FBI through Fusion GPS, a secretive organization which bridged the gap between opposition research, the media and the government. The dossier was used to justify a FISA warrant for eavesdropping on Trump officials and then the Mueller investigation.

But the Steele dossier was only a product. Handling it required special interest groups within the DOJ and the FBI. We’re learning the names of some of those people. There was Bruce Ohr, the former associate deputy attorney general, whose wife had been hired by Fusion GPS to conduct anti-Trump research and who had contacted the author of the Steele dossier. There were Strzok and Page.

The FISA warrants, the NSA eavesdropping, the Clinton and Trump investigations and all the other abuses of Obama Inc. required numerous allies within the Department of Justice. Some of these allies might have spoken seriously or facetiously about operating within a secret society. But all of them did.

The secret society they were part of was the one created by Obama in his eight years in office.

The society had no name, but it had an agenda. It operated within the government. And it existed to advance leftist causes, protect political allies and destroy political enemies. Some call it the Deep State or the Shadow Government. But it is most clearly and blatantly, the left. It lurks within the government. It is the swamp. And if we don’t drain it, we’ll drown in it the way the Russians and the Chinese did.

THE OBAMA YEARS---UNRELENTING SCANDAL (excerpt)
By Ari Lieberman

<><>Solyndra Scandal – The Obama administration provided ths failing solar company with a $535 million stimulus-funded loan, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Taxpayer money kept pouring in despite the fact that the Office of Management and Budget warned that Solyndra was not a profitable or viable company. But it gets worse. The family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser, was one of Solyndra's main investors. Can you say quid pro quo?

<><> Veterans Affairs Scandal - Over 40 veterans needlessly died while waiting to be seen by doctors at a Phoenix VA facility. Another 1,700 veterans were forced to wait for months before being seen by medical personnel. An audit of the VA confirmed that VA officials systematically altered records and appointment schedules in a deliberate and methodical VA scheme to manipulate data to meet fabricated goals.

<><> Operation Chokepoint Scandal – The Obama DOJ utilized the power of big government to pressure banks to cease doing business with industries with which the administration had ideological differences. Gun manufacturers and gun stores were prime targets even though they had not violated any laws. Eventually, the FDIC admitted to misconduct, bowed to pressure and significantly curtailed the discriminatory regulations after affected businesses threatened legal action.

<><> Gibson Guitar Scandal – Armed federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., seizing guitars, electronic files and other inventory including wood that was purchased in India and Madagascar. The DOJ alleged that Gibson’s had violated an obscure law known as the Lacey Act which made it a crime to violate the environmental laws of another country. Gibson produced an affidavit from government officials in Madagascar stating that Gibson had violated none of that nation’s laws. Gibson also alleged that the DOJ was misinterpreting Indian law. Gibson’s CEO was a major donor to the GOP but his competitors, who purchased the same materials and were not GOP donors, were untouched by Obama’s DOJ. As part of a settlement to drop criminal charges, Gibson was required to pay a $250,000 fine and was required to donate $50,000 to an environmental group. Gibson was eventually able to retrieve its inventory from the clutches of the DOJ.

<><> Fast & Furious Scandal – A scheme concocted by the Obama administration that went horribly wrong. The administration lost track of some 1,400 guns that made their way into the stream of criminal enterprises including those of the Mexican drug cartels. Two of the guns were found at the scene of the shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Attorney General Eric Holder was cited for contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents relating to the scandal. It was the first time Congress had taken such an action against a sitting Cabinet official. Seventeen Democrats joined Republicans in voting in favor of the criminal contempt resolution.

<><> Eric Holder's DOJ-James Rosen Scandal – FOX News journalist, James Rosen became the target of Obama’s DOJ in yet another example of extreme government overreaching. Believing that Rosen was responsible for a leak concerning a policy decision on North Korea, AG Eric Holder sought a subpoena for Rosen’s emails claiming that Rosen had broken the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” The government’s affidavit also accused Rosen of possibly violating the Espionage Act. It appeared that the DOJ was acting like the East German Stasi in chasing fictitious enemies of the state. In a rare instance of bipartisanship, Holder was roundly criticized from all sides of the political spectrum and Holder himself was later forced to acknowledge that he regretted the episode.

<><>Gruber-Obamacare Scandal – To establish Obamacare’s validity, Obama hired economist and academic Jonathan Gruber to give the plan his seal of approval. Gruber was later caught on video and audio making several disparaging remarks about Americans, stating that Obamacare’s passage rested on the “stupidity of the American voter.” Democrats later tried to distance themselves from him and tried to minimize his role in formulating Obamacare but there was no debating that he was one of Obamacare’s chief architects and was paid nearly $400,000 for his services. Gruber confirmed what most of us already knew; that Obamacare passed as a result of a concerted effort by the administration to deceive the American people.

<><> Skolkovo Scandal – While serving as secretary of state, Clinton oversaw a program meant to “reset” relations with Moscow and improve ties. The program centered around the Russian city of Skolkovo near Moscow with the stated aim of “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the American and Russian people.”

Hillary's State Dept program transformed Skolkovo into a technology hub akin to a Silicon Valley. Sensitive American technology was transferred to the Russians, substantially enhancing their military and cyber capabilities. The US Army and the FBI concluded that Russia had exploited the program for military applications. The FBI warned American technology companies doing business in Skolkovo that the Skolkovo project was a means by which the Russians would acquire dual use technologies and apply them for military ends. According to investigative author Peter Schweizer, Russian and American companies and individuals involved in the Skolkovo fiasco “had major financial ties to the Clintons.”

Moreover, during the Russian reset period, those entities provided the Clintons with “tens of millions of dollars” in the form of “contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies with deep Clinton ties.”

Benghazi Scandal - U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed during an attack on the American consulate office. The Obama administration initially denied that the attack was terror related and instead peddled the now false and discredited narrative that it was triggered by a reaction to an anti-Muslim film. However, emails later confirmed that administration officials were well aware that it was a well-orchestrated, premeditated attack planned by Islamist terrorists and had nothing to do with an internet film. In addition, a congressional committee found that the delay in deploying military assets to the theater, which it attributed to needless bureaucratic bungling, almost certainly cost those men their lives. (hat tip frontpagemagazine.com)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.