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.
The Ministry of Propaganda has to keep up the narrative lest people catch on that they have been lying to them daily for decades.
Stahl is just another democrat surrogate pretending to be a journalist. They will take any gossip printed in the NYT as gospel but verifiable facts are instantly debunked.
The MSM would never report on anything they can’t verify. Meanwhile, Trump doesn’t pay taxes, cavorts with prostitutes in Moscow, and colludes with Putin to steal US elections.
Stahl torpedoed John Tower’s Defense Department nomination by reporting that he danced naked on a piano with a Russian ballerina. This was told by a lunatic that nobody believed. Woodward did the same with a story from a discharged Air Force lunatic.
What is it with PBS and the alphabet news shows that they must bury us with these femtards?
Oh and Leslie, get a new dress, you aint a 18 year old honey pot, but thanks for not Beavesplainin.
just like the democrats can’t help from from lying, because lying comes natural, neither can the Ministry of Propaganda.
Just more ‘gas lighting’ by the old media.
If only we knew who controlled the ‘old media’...?
Stahl could also be a gerbilist.
She needs to be interrogated.
I hope this is sarcasms or did you turn into a Never Trumper? If so Shame on you.
What does Barbara Wa Wa and Christiane Amanpour think?
What’s with the goofy Covid mask on the table? Cooties?
Lesley Stahl is ugly and stupid.
Trump is handsome and brilliant.
Lesley Stahl is wretched and ignorant.
Trump is joyful and wise.
Lesley Stahl is a withered Communist liar.
Trump is a robust Patriot speaking Truth to Power.
LOL!
These old lying journalists think they deserve respect, they deserve contempt.
The pathetic thing is is that she knows that what she is saying is wrong ... and that she knows it’s incorrect yet she says it anyway makes her a damn liar ... for all to see.
Rush is right when he says Trump needs to explain things better because he thinks everyone knows as much about spygate as we do.
To many people “spying on a campaign” is so what? Sounds like what happens when the rats volunteer one of their people into GOP HQ to report back and vice versa.
What Trump should say is that they used the FISA court to spy on his campaign. That is far more significant.
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