The FBI Spied On Fox News, Recorded Phone Call Between Fox Exec And George Papadopoulos, New Texts Show

The Federalist ^ | 12/18/2020 | Tristan Justice

[SeekAndFind]

New text messages released Thursday show FBI officials spied on a Fox News executive over the course of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that targeted President Donald Trump as a secret Russian agent who illegally stole the election from Hillary Clinton in 2016. The FBI surveilled and recorded a phone call between former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos and an unnamed vice president at Fox News, according to a text message sent to fired former FBI official Peter Strzok just weeks before Trump was inaugurated as president in 2017.

Agents were targeting former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos, who later pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents during the Russian collusion investigation. The FBI used the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, as a legal pretext to investigate and spy on Papadopoulos, as well as former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former Trump affiliate Carter Page.

“I know you’re not point on this anymore, but [George Papadopoulos] got a call from the VP at Fox News yesterday, who advised that the government was conducting ‘checks’ on him a few months back,” an unidentified individual whose name is redacted in the report texted to Strzok on January 12, 2017. “I haven’t listed to the exact audio, but I’m guess[ing] that’s the FARA checks that we did with DOJ on our 4 main guys; especially given the article that you pushed yesterday.”

Neither the individual who sent the message to Strzok nor the Fox News executive was named in any of the text messages released on Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc. Strzok was fired from the FBI in 2018 after text messages surfaced showing that he used the Russia collusion investigations as an “insurance policy” to get rid of Trump in the event he became president. The FBI named its investigation of Papadopoulos “Crossfire Typhoon.”

Because the Obama DOJ never received a warrant to spy on Papadopoulos, it is likely that the FBI used a so-called National Security Letter to spy on Papadopoulos and Fox News. By using a National Security Letter, a demand sent to telecommunications firms to provide communications information about a specific federal target, Obama’s DOJ and FBI were able to avoid legal requirements to receive a court-approved warrant to secretly spy on an American citizen.

Papadopoulos did not respond to The Federalist’s request for details about the phone call.

The Obama administration previously targeted former Fox News Washington Correspondent James Rosen in 2010, falsely claiming the Fox reporter was a potential terrorist co-conspirator in order to track Rosen’s movements, telephone records, and personal e-mails. According to Fox News, the Obama White House even seized records containing the phone numbers of Rosen’s parents over the course of the federal inquisition into Rosen. The Obama DOJ falsely accused Rosen of violating the Espionage Act, suggesting that he was a traitor to the United States in order to get access to his phone calls and e-mails.

Although members of the corporate media repeatedly claimed that Trump’s criticism of journalists on Twitter constituted a violent attack on the First Amendment and the free press, no corporate media outlets have criticized the Obama administration for secretly recording phone calls with a cable news network executive without even bothering to seek a warrant.

[kelly4c]

Bkmk

[thinden]

If Trump,was more like Obama he’d have been spying on Biden already.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

FISA works both ways

[Grampa Dave]

Reality: How does a POTUS try, convict & sentence someone, without any assistance from his own DoJ?

Thanks

[showme_the_Glory]

Yep, we’re under siege by our own government.

[Grampa Dave]

“Our government is out of control, and there is zero concern and accountability on the part of the GOP in the Senate who have the power to do something, and our DOJ, and our FBI.”

The ZIP Codes That Rule America!:
BY: MICHAEL LIND, DECEMBER 16, 2020

The real divide isn’t between red states and blue states or cities and rural areas.

It’s between mega-rich political donors and everyone else.

In theory senators represent the citizens of their states and members of the House represent the people of their congressional districts. In practice they represent individual and corporate donors and political allies and future employers, who may live anywhere in the United States—or in some cases abroad. Joe Biden was the senator from the credit card industry, based in Delaware.

The donors to American politicians in all 50 states are concentrated in a few ZIP codes. According to Open Secrets, of the ZIP codes that delivered the most campaign funding for the Democrats in 2020, not counting dark money or soft money for liberal groups, four of the top five were in New York City (10024, 10023, 10022, 10011), followed by Chevy Chase, Maryland (20815), a suburb of Washington, D.C. Other top Democratic ZIPs this year were Silicon Valley (94301 and 94022) and Cambridge, Massachusetts (02138). New York City was also overrepresented among donors to the Republican Party, whose donor base is more geographically diverse, with a lot of money coming from Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Palm Beach, Florida.

Most politicians follow the preferences of their donors, not their voters, when there is a conflict. “Who buys my bread, his song I sing,” as the old saying goes. Or, if you prefer another proverb: “The Golden Rule is whoever has the gold rules.”

“When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

But to the extent our influence is limited to voting, most of us are just renters in American politics. The donors, wherever they happen to live, own it.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-zip-codes-that-rule-america

[JudgemAll]

Crickets about journalists being under attack for their views and work....

The media is like a prostitute complaining her butt is endangered by christianity while it is being destroyed by satan. The level of hubristic hysteria and blackmail is unbelievable.

[1Old Pro]

The only way to clean up the massive corruption is to actually enforce laws and hold people accountable. Make sure the laws are clearly written, so when someone like Hillary has illegal offsite emails, she actually gets a jail sentence. When the FBI gets caught issuing illegal FISA warrants, the head of the FBI is liable as well as those directly involved.

The reason people do this stuff is that they get away with it, like Hunter, failing to file a 400,000 income, a fin isn’t enough, jail would deter this.

[pas]

Penalty for government not following the law? A sternly written memo.

[Vaduz]

More Obama foot prints found sloppy democrats never learn.

[windsorknot]

The FBI is rotten to the core. There might be a few “good apples”.

[jpp113]

Why were rogue appointed officials in the DOJ and FBI not fired and replaced with people that would actually do their jobs, which would include arresting and prosecuting rogue appointed officials?

[jpp113]

And whose fault is that? He has a horrible track record of appointed AG’s and the latest was so bad, that he completely ignored the performance of the DOJ for fear of tacitly agreeing that another pick was botched.

I believe his own ego was used against him by the deep state, and that was a major factor in allowing the DOJ to continue operating rogue.