[bagster]

AG Bill Barr says CIA did NOT 'spy' on Donald Trump's campaign, slapping down president's claims - and says John Durham's probe is focusing on a 'small group' at the FBI

(excerpt)

Attorney general Barr is reflecting on the calls he made that benefitted President Trump and a few that didn't in his final days in office – as he said the CIA didn't stray beyond its international spy brief in 2016.

Barr told the Wall Street Journal he was suspicious that CIA agents – who are barred from spying on Americans – had spied on President Trump's campaign. The president repeatedly alleged publicly he was spied on.

But according to Barr, it didn't happen. 'The CIA stayed in its lane,' he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.

Hmmmmmmm.....

[CheshireTheCat]

Well, if he is going to be spending more time with the family starting five days from now, why would he be saying anything about what the CIA did as opposed to just letting the next guy worry about it.

And there is a bit of nuance between some CIA agents doing something and the CIA as an agency spying, if one wants to get all nuanced about it.

[Grimmy]

But according to Barr, it didn’t happen. ‘The CIA stayed in its lane,’ he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.

**************

Two things here.

1. The CIA didn’t do the spying. The FBI did. The CIA managed the spying through cutouts. Those cutouts being the other FiveEye agencies did the spying for the CIA so the CIA could claim it didn’t do domestic spying. Chief among the FiveEyes doing the spying on American citizens in America on behalf of the CIA was the GCHQ of the UK.

So, the CIA did spy, just by one step’s distance.

but the primary culprit was and is the FBI.

2. The “Barr said” is all filtered through the MSM. How often to they even try to play it legit and/or accurate?

[mbrfl]

I don’t know. Maybe he’s splitting hairs here. Maybe technically it was the FBI that did the spying (submitted the FISA requests). But it’s disingenuous to make such a claim. The CIA was up to their eyeballs in this, setting up Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

[RitaOK]

I never heard POTUS say it was the CIA who spied upon him.

Admiral Rodgers was the one credited with all that information, but we never heard CIA was behind it.

I assumed we all thought the Trump Tower spies were FBI.

Barr is too fat, now, to remember what the question was.

[ransomnote]

AG Bill Barr says CIA did NOT 'spy' on Donald Trump's campaign, slapping down president's claims - and says John Durham's probe is focusing on a 'small group' at the FBI

(excerpt)

Attorney general Barr is reflecting on the calls he made that benefitted President Trump and a few that didn't in his final days in office – as he said the CIA didn't stray beyond its international spy brief in 2016.

Barr told the Wall Street Journal he was suspicious that CIA agents – who are barred from spying on Americans – had spied on President Trump's campaign. The president repeatedly alleged publicly he was spied on.

But according to Barr, it didn't happen. 'The CIA stayed in its lane,' he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.

Hmmmmmmm.....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt:

" He reminds me why he took the job in the first place: “The Department of Justice was being used as a political weapon” by a “willful if small group of people,” who used the claim of collusion with Russia in an attempt to “topple an administration,” he says. “Someone had to make sure that the power of the department stopped being abused and that there was accountability for what had happened.” Mr. Barr largely succeeded, in the process filling a vacuum of political oversight, reimposing norms, and resisting partisan critics on both sides."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/william-barr-one-standard-of-justice-11608318832

Barr would be expected to say why, if there was evidence the CIA was spying on Trump's campaign, the DOJ did "nothing" about it for 4 years.

If Barr admitted the CIA spied, he would have to say something to address why we didn't see perp walks. Barr would have to say something like, "I couldn't move against the pervasive infiltration while America was still asleep; 70% of the gov was bought out by enemies; we had no borders; we had two "private" sovereign Chinese ports; Chinese/UN/other enemies on north and south borders; our military was gutted in terms of morale, infiltration, obsolete hardware and made with intentionally inferior steel ...from China. We would fail to defend ourselves when the Cabal made it's move if we didn't wait to restore America's defenses and erode the battle readiness of our enemies.

Barr says "yes" they spied = Barr either has to lay down all cards or say that the rule of law didn't matter to anyone, including the DOJ.

But note that Barr says the Russia hoax was politicized - he can say that because he publicly ended it.

The NYT is working hard to frame Barr so that he has to choose between "CIA did no wrong", which will be easily refuted later with Durham et. al., or "CIA spied and rule of law is not functioning now, unless it's to protect certain people"."

[grey_whiskers]

Notice, if you please, bagster, who Barr is pointedly NOT talking about, in the spygate / FISA criminality:
The Friggin’ Bunch of Incompetents.

[SERKIT]

The C_A could indeed have “stayed in its lane” when colluding with British intelligence while overseas, doing Brennan’s dirty work in cahoots with the F_I. All plausible deniability. Strzok-Stroke-Struck worked for Clowns and FIBbers, didn’t he?

[Farcesensitive]

“AG Bill Barr says CIA did NOT ‘spy’ on Donald Trump’s campaign, slapping down president’s claims - and says John Durham’s probe is focusing on a ‘small group’ at the FBI”

---

Will Barr be the first arrest?