Posted on 10/26/2020 7:32:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
60 Minutes and Lesley Stahl falsely reported it is 'unverified' that the Obama-Biden administration spied on Trumps campaign in 2016.
Last week, President Trumps team released 38 minutes of unedited video capturing his contentious sit-down with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes. Sunday evening, CBS broadcast clips of the interview and amazingly let air proof of Trumps charge that the media is fake news: 60 Minutes and Stahl falsely reported that it is unverified that the Obama-Biden administration spied on Trumps campaign in 2016.
Trump and not Stahl raised this scandal, as the unedited video showed, after he reversed roles with his interviewer and pushed her to say whether she thought it was okay for Hunter Biden to give the big guy a 10 percent cut of money raised by Democratic presidential contender Joe Bidens son in China, and whether it was okay for China to give the Biden family one and a half billion dollars to manage and for Joe to then negotiate with China on behalf of Americans.
60 Minutes edited out those details of the Biden scandal, but let the television audience hear Trump say of it, Its the biggest scan before correcting himself, the second biggest scandal. The biggest scandal was when they spied on my campaign.
The next minutes continued with what would be a comic routine of did not, did too, did not, if the subject wasnt truly the biggest scandal in American political history.
They spied on my campaign, Trump repeated.
But theres no evide real evidence of that, Leslie countered.
Trump: Of course there is.
Stahl: No.
Trump: Its all over the place, Leslie.
Stahl: Sir.
Trump: They spied on my campaign and they got caught.
Stahl then changed up the refrain slightly: Can I just say something? You know this is 60 Minutes and we cant put on things we cant verify.
You wont put it on because its bad for Biden, Trump retorted, and then the final rally (of this round) began.
Stahl: We cant put on things we cant verify.
Trump: Leslie, they spied on my campaign.
Stahl: But we cant verify it.
Trump: Its been totally verified.
Stahl: No.
Trump: Its been. Just go down and get the papers. They spied on my campaign and they got caught.
Stahl: No.
Trump continued by noting, Then they went much further than that and they got caught. And you will see that, Leslie. And you know that. But you just dont want to put it on the air.
Stahl then denied any such knowledge: No. And as a matter of fact, I dont know that.
At this point, Trump told Stahl to get back to the interview.
In the unedited interview, Trump raised the Obama-Biden administrations spying again when Stahl asked Trump if he wanted Obama locked up. No, I dont want to lock him up, but he spied on my campaign, Trump responded. Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. Do you know what that is? Do you know what they did? Do you know how horrible it is what they did? Trump asked.
But its never been verified, Stahl said again. Its been totally verified, Trump repeated. Stahl persisted: No, but so did Trump: Youll find out. Its been totally verified.
I wish you would interview Joe Biden like you interview me, President Trump says to Lesley Stahl. https://t.co/ZM8BR1sn39 pic.twitter.com/mSfVFqZuOm
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 26, 2020
It is flabbergasting that as of last week Stahl did not know that the Department of Justices Office of Inspector General verified that the Obama-Biden administration spied on the Trump campaign. And it is beyond inexcusable that Stahl did not conduct even a cursory investigation into the question after last week Tuesdays interviewor if she did, she buried the results.
Nearly a year ago, the 478-page report issued by Inspector General Michael Horowitz verified spying on the Trump campaign. Horowitzs report exposed substantial abuse in the targeting of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page with the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications submitted to a secret court to obtain a court order to surveil Page. Most significantly, the report established what conservatives had been explaining since Rep. Devin Nunes released his memorandum on the FISA abuse: that surveilling Page was surveilling the Trump campaign.
While Page was no longer working with the Trump campaign at the time the Obama-Biden administration obtained the first FISA surveillance order, that order authorized the FBI to access prior communications between Page and members of the campaign something the IG report noted the Crossfire Hurricane team recognized as a possibility, namely that the FISA collection would include sensitive political campaign-related information.
As one Crossfire Hurricane case agent explained, the FBIs belief was that Page was involved in the platform change [concerning Ukraine] and the team was hoping to find evidence of that in their review of the FISA collections of Pages email accounts.
The IG report went further, and verified that the FBI actually accessed campaign communications. For instance, the IG report stated that Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, the chief of the Office of Intelligences Operations Section, explained that the evidence collected during the first FISA application time period demonstrated that Carter Page had access to individuals in Russia and he was communicating with people in the Trump campaign. Horowitzs report then explicitly stated that his team identified a few emails between Page and members of the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign concerning campaign-related matters.
As I wrote at the time, Dont let the few emails mislead: The FISA surveillance didnt just accidentally sweep in a few random campaign communications. Rather, the few campaign communications the IG identified came from its limited review of the Woods file and select FBI communications. The IG report made this point clear in a footnote, stating it did not review the entirety of the FISA-intercepted communicationsonly those pertinent to the IGs review of FISA abuse.
The spying went beyond electronic surveillance and included the tasking of confidential human source Stefan Halper to question members of the Trump campaign, including Page before he resigned. In questioning Page, Halper quizzed the foreign policy advisor on the Trump campaigns likely October Surprise.
From his acquaintance with Page, Halper moved on to questioning Sam Clovis, the 2016 national co-chair of Trumps campaign, under the guise of potentially helping the Trump team. Halper met with Clovis just two months before the election, and in a recorded conversation, Halper queried Clovis about what could only be called sensitive campaign strategies. Was the Trump campaign was planning an October Surprise? Halper asked, and from Clovis he learned Trumps focus was to give people a reason to vote for him, not just vote against Hillary.
We also know Clovis shared Trumps desire not to do a traditional campaign, and Clovis also provided additional comments about the internal structure, organization, and functioning of the Trump campaign. Additionally, in the recorded conversation, Halper and Clovis discussed an internal campaign debate about Trumps immigration strategy, efforts to reach out to minority groups and the impact of those efforts, and the campaigns strategies for responding to questions about Trumps decision not to release his tax returns.
Halper was also tasked to question a third Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos, who found Halper suspicious, didnt say much to the confidential human source, but did impart his belief that Michael Flynn, then another campaign advisor, want[s] to cooperate with the Russians and the Russians are willing to embrace adult issues.
The verified spying on the Trump campaign went even further, with the IG report revealing that on August 17, 2016, the FBI dispatched a supervisor of the Crossfire Hurricane team, known broadly to be FBI Agent Joe Pientka, to a private security briefing for then-candidate Trump and Flynn. The reason? [T]o assess Flynn in anticipation of a subject interview, and to overhear, whatever it was.
Pientka later input into the FBIs case management system questions posed by Trump and Flynn during the spying briefing, as well as comments made by Trump and Flynn, according to the IG report.
All of this is documented. Verified. Confirmed. Yet Stahl knows nothing about it, or pretends she doesnt, and instead literally rolled her eyes when the president criticized fake news.
Trump is right. What the Obama-Biden administration did to him was horrible. But what Stahl and the rest of corporate media have done since then is pretty despicable too: Lying to Americans; ignoring the targeting of the Trump campaign and then the Trump administration; telling the public that there was no spying or that it cant be verified, which is now also their excuse for ignoring what could prove to be the second biggest scandal in this countrys history.
Amazingly, Joe Biden features heavily in both.
What is the point of an interview if one side will not acknowledge facts? Something must be done concerning the corporate media in the US.
Newsflash, Trump is doing something.
It takes time to turn these things around.
Newsflash, Trump is doing something.
It takes time to turn these things around.
Stahl will pay no price whatever for denying there was no verified evidence when there certainly was. She is a guttersnipe in a guttersnipe’s business.
I hope once Trump is re-elected, he’ll be able to look around and say, “Now I have a better idea of whom to trust.” And then do a round of firing that will look like a Top Ten Apprentice Moments compilation.
So if I were to go back over the past 4 years, I would not be able to find any examples of a 60 Minutes story on the Trump-Russia collusion hoax then, right? Please.
bump
If you haven’t seen the full unedited interview released by Trump I highly recommend you do. A lot of fun watching Stahl getting discombobulated.
It is a first class example on how to treat the enemedia. Trump went sfter Stahl and her ilk with a vengeance exposing their incredible bias.
IOW - he treated them like the enemies they are and not some unbiased, fair minded reporter doing her job.
Other Republicans and conservatives could use that as a lesson on how to deal with the media.
Hit them again, harder, harder!
NONE are so blind as those who do NOT wish to see.
Is Leslie denying that FISA warrants were approved to surveil members of the Trump campaign? This is indisputable fact! The only argument the left can attempt to make is that it was justified (which it was most certainly not). In either case the surveillance (ie spying ) DID take place!
And this is why President Donald J. Trump MUST be re-elected.
I believe she knows the truth and she is willfully lying about it to the world.
And, people believe her and her lies and those people need her lies to be true.
Which is exactly why President Trump must be re-elected.
If Biden wins, her blatant lies will be our mandated truth ... again.
That future is darkness itself.
You know this is 60 Minutes and we cant put on things we cant verify.
Talk about “lies.” Too bad he didn’t ask her what they reported about Benghazi and Susan Rice’s Sunday morning performances after that.
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