TWITTER: A good timeline and summary of Wiretapgate

TWITTER ^ | 3-4-17 | Wolfgang Faust

[RightGeek]

Thanks for posting

[Bobalu]

Interesting!

[doug from upland]

:)

[bigbob]

Good.

I’m a little unsure about the wording of #2. Clearly in the first request they asked for authorization to wiretap Trump and were denied. That’s only happened 12 times in the history of FISA so the reason had to be really weak.

Then in Oct. a second request was approved. Logically if they re-submitted the same request, it would have been denied again. So it is reasonable to think that something was changed in the second request...what?

For instance, did the second request specifially target Trump? If they submitted affadavits that omitted material facts, that is perjury and they could be charged with felonies.

All this should be forthcoming because unlike the crap they’ve been throwing at Trump, there is paper trail.

What really intrigues me is “Why?” Why would they do this admittedly risky thing if they felt sure Hillary was going to win?

The logical answer is they knew all along she was in trouble and pulled this stunt in hopes of finding an October Surprise that would cause Trump to leave the race or lose so much momentum he would lose the election.

[stylin19a]

Rogers is still in office ...NSA should have everything, no ?
Rogers should be a help to Trump, unless Clapper kept him out of the loop.

[RockyTx]

thanks for posting

[doug from upland]

Yes, I guess Rogers is still there.

[Major Matt Mason]

What really intrigues me is “Why?” Why would they do this admittedly risky thing if they felt sure Hillary was going to win?

Probably because they weren't truly certain that Hillary was a shoo-in. Look how much trouble she had against old, socialist Bernie, and how small (and few) her campaign appearances were. Not to mention her health issues and general unlikeability.

[doug from upland]

My initial understanding is that they narrowed the wiretap. They were looking at two Russian banks and I understand that they found nothing inappropriate.

[doug from upland]

To them it wasn’t risky. They believed themselves to be bulletproof. And Obama could have pardoned everyone. Perhaps they never envisioned how Trump could turn this around on them.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks Doug.

[doug from upland]

The recusal of Sessions was very important to the traitors. They obviously want an independent counsel appointed who will go through absolutely everything and paralyze the Trump presidency.

[gaijin]

This is huge.

This is an earthquake.

[doug from upland]

My pleasure, Ron. Before he left, Obama changed the line of succession in the Justice Dept so that the next in line if Sessions was incapacitated was one of his stooges. Trump got good advice from someone and quietly changed that when he took office.

Did the Obama Administration Try Stacking the Deck Against Trump at the Justice Department?
12:28 PM, MAR 03, 2017 | By MARK HEMINGWAY

Amid Thursday’s over-hyped brouhaha about Jeff Sessions meeting with the Russian ambassador, a curious detail emerged. In Sessions’s recusal memo, it was explained who at the Justice Department would be handling any investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. “Consistent with the succession order for the Department of Justice, Acting Deputy Attorney General and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente shall act as and perform the functions of the Attorney General with respect to any matters from which I have recused myself to the extent they exist,” reads Sessions’s official statement on the matter.

Except that if the Obama administration had its way, Dana Boente wasn’t supposed be the U.S. attorney to handle these matters in the event that Sessions recused himself. On February 10, USA Today reported the following:

Seven days before he left office, President Obama changed the order of succession without explanation to remove Boente from the list. Obama’s order had listed U.S. attorneys in the District of Columbia, the Northern District of Illinois and the Central District of California.

That seems like awfully suspicious behavior. In fact the USA Today story noted this is pegged to the news that Trump quietly signed an executive order restoring Boente to the line of succession. The Obama administration chicanery was likely brought to White House’s attention after Obama holdover and acting Attorney General Sally Yates tried to usurp the powers of the president and countermand his immigration executive order, actions for which she was summarily fired.

Why would the Obama administration make this eleventh-hour change to the line of succession at the Justice Department? “At the time, I was told it was done in consultation with Trump transition,” Gregory Korte, the USA Today reporter who wrote the story quoted above, told me Thursday. “Looking back, that’s clearly not the case.”

In fact, it seems like it was quite obviously not the case. The man Obama placed at the head of the line of succession is D.C.’s U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips, who is quite cozy with President Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder. He is a former senior adviser to Holder, and he stayed on to work under Obama’s next AG Loretta Lynch before Obama appointed Phillips D.C.’s U.S. attorney in 2015. But Phillips goes way back with Holder—Holder first hired Philips in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1994. It’s also safe to say that the AG offices in the Northern District of Illinois and the Central District of California are not hotbeds of Trump supporters.

It looks like the Obama administration was hoping that the reins of power here would unknowingly default to someone unfriendly to Trump in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself—or even resign, as so many Democrats breathlessly demanded Thursday. (It’s worth noting that Sessions’s claims that he was already considering recusing himself from the Russia investigations because of his role on the campaign seem pretty sincere. Reuters reported last Sunday that the White House was considering the need for Sessions’s recusal long before the teacup tempest about Sessions failing to disclose minor encounters with the Russian ambassador.)

This might seem far-fetched, except to say that the leak-coordinated campaign by former Obama officials to undermine Trump seems to be very real, per the reporting of Lee Smith. Indeed, the New York Times reported Thursday, “In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government.”

It’s not inconceivable that the pandemonium of an incoming Trump administration might have meant they would overlook a little-noticed change. Sessions could have recused himself thinking the old line of succession was intact, only to have Phillips appoint a rabid special prosecutor to go after the Trump administration on Russia the next day before the Trump administration could undo things. As soon as it was evident Boentes was going to be handling any Russian investigations, Schumer called on him to appoint a special prosecutor.

[doug from upland]

See #15, my FRiend. They were going to force Sessions to recuse himself and then their lackey in the line of succession at Justice would immediately appoint a special prosecutor -— what they wanted all along. Fortunately, someone in the Trump team recognized the plot and Trump quietly changed back the line of succession.

[LucyT]

Ping to article and # 15.

Thanks, Doug from Upland.

[V K Lee]

With over half the investigative reporters still chasing their tails, the intricate time line on this thread has shown we’ve a new breed of ‘who done it’ replacements ready and more than able to step in the empty shoes.

Thanks to all for turning on the light switch.

[Alberta's Child]

The recusal of Sessions was very important to the traitors. They obviously want an independent counsel appointed who will go through absolutely everything and paralyze the Trump presidency.

I think it's the other way around. Sessions' recusal makes more sense to me now than it did two days ago. He didn't recuse himself because he did anything wrong, or even over concerns about a conflict of interest since he worked for Trump's campaign in 2016.

He recused himself because there's a damn good chance his phone calls and/or e-mails were intercepted in an illegal surveillance operation conducted by the Obama administration -- and he may very well end up testifying for the prosecution before a grand jury.

[House Atreides]

Very nice -— thanks for posting. There are many Obama henchmen/henchwomen that will need to be investigated for their corruption of governmental processes.