My belief is that the White House was using information from the NSA from the beginning of the 2016 campaign, and began to use it more actively when Trump became the front-runner.
The Democrats never believed that Trump would win, so they were just a little sloppy in compliance. They were able to run this whole operation almost unfettered because they were certain their tracks were covered. I think the reason they went about using surveillance, live assets, and the Steele dossier is that it has been standard practice to restrict and hide just about everything that has anything to do with sources and methods. They knew they could work under cover, and never have to reveal anything through FOIA. The group inside the FBI and CIA thought all they had to worry about was media groups like Judicial Watch, and they have no way of getting past the National Security firewall.
And I believe the main objective of this entire operation was to ruin Trump in the final days of the campaign, and ultimately keep him out of politics for good. The public rollout of the dossier was sort of clumsy, as media outlets were hesitant to report explosive allegations that had almost no verification. Only Mother Jones published it before the election, but it didn't have the impact they had hoped. Probably because Comey had dropped his Hillary letter just a couple days before.
This is still going to be a tough one to sort through. Brennan has been around a long time, and he knows the tricks needed to hide things. The only positive aspect is their arrogance made them careless.
There is a lot to unpack as this unfolds and more information is known.
There are also a few things I am interested in that have received very little or no mention -
Why were contractors allowed unfettered access to the private communications of private citizens? This is astounding to me.
What other candidates and other elected representatives were spied on in this fashion by the previous administration? This is critical in my opinion. I don’t think this started with Trump and it may in fact have been conducted in the previous election as well.
A warrant that is required to listen in on a citizens communications is the most difficult warrant to obtain and it requires ironclad probable cause and justification. However, it sounds like this was circumvented by allowing “contractors” to access the raw data from the NSA. This is a massive violation of civil rights under our laws.
Why did the Obama administration change the rules for sharing of raw data as they were approaching the end of their administration and was it retroactive to cover what already occurred? What was the justification for this policy and was the FISC and congress informed of the scope, scale, and justification for this massive change or does the NSA have blanket permission to conduct such activities?
Did we work out a deal with our 5-eye partners that we spy for them and they spy for us?
There needs to be a criminal inquiry into the unmasking ordered by Obama officials starting with Rice. Same questions as above and again, I think this is a violation of civil rights. What was the justification for unmasking and who received the communications?
Trump needs to frame these questions in public. He needs to ask the question “Do we want to live in a police state?” and ask “Why are the courts allowing this?” Why did the safeguards against this fail?
I personally would like for him to appoint a special bi-partisan (I know - that is a joke) commission and I would like for it to include two people for certain - Sen. Rand Paul and at least one of the following Reps - Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, or John Ratcliffe. They weaponized our raw intelligence data collection and targeted people for political reasons - not national security.
Trump needs to call a cabinet meeting and tell his appointees that it is time to rip the band-aid off and they should make every effort to fully disclose and be transparent about what their agencies did. Have an amnesty for non-supervisory employees to report any suspicious/targeted conduct to their own OIG by executive order. Failure to do so in the amnesty period will expose any employee “just following orders” to disciplinary action, criminal referral, and/or prosecution.
This needs to happen to restore trust in our own government. There are laws, policies, and procedures in place throughout the government to prevent such actions - Why were they not followed by our bureaucrats who are supposed to know the rules?