It is now almost five months since the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States. The stunned Democrats, who thought their candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was a shoo-in, have never gotten over it.
Instead of facing the reality that Clinton was the worst possible candidate they could have selected in 2016, the excuses have been flowing like wine. It was the Russians who defeated Hillary or voter fraud. It was the stupidity of the American people, many of whom Clinton herself described as “deplorable.”
A source told Fox News on Friday that “Numerous private citizens” connected with President Donald Trump’s campaign team were “unmasked” in intelligence information swept up in “incidental collection” that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes secretly viewed last week.
The Hillary-supportive media that has been looking everywhere for the redemption their stumbling candidate never deserved. It would be ill-conceived to expect most members of the Fourth Estate to report the factual truth of what truly is developing in Washington.
The names of the “private citizens” were exposed by an individual who is not in the FBI, but is “very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world.” That brought an immediate response from President Trump on Saturday.
Nunes, a California Republican, has been under intense scrutiny by the media for viewing the information but not sharing it with his committee. He is apparently knowledgeable of who the individual in question is. The spreading of these names for political purposes has nothing to do with national security or an investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.
The Foreign Surveillance Act only allows individuals to be revealed in data collected incidentally when it is critical to the intelligence. That would be information collected on U.S. residents who communicate with foreign targets. But the names of private citizens connected to the Trump campaign were revealed and it was not out of national security concerns. That is the core of this uproar.
One intelligence source told Fox News, “Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political purposes, specifically of Trump transition team members, is highly suspect and questionable. Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by one.”
There will be little, if any of this information reported in the mainstream media of The New York Times, The Washington Post or CNN. It does not fit with their agenda of destroying the Trump presidency starting from day one.
Clearly the collection of information began before Trump became the Republican presidential nominee at last summer’s national convention last July. Nunes has known since January about outing of private citizens long before Trump transcribed his March 4 tweets alleging that former President Barack Obama had ordered wiretaps on his telephones in New York during the campaign last year.
It took until last week for Nunes to review the information after being stonewalled. There was only one location that would not compromise the identities of the sources: the Old Executive Office Building on the White House grounds. “Conspiracy” was the outcry of the partisan media. It was far from that in reality. But that goes against the grain of what the left wants reported.
Nevertheless, the location has a secured area where classified or similar information can be viewed, according to the report. The White House were not “co-conspirators.” Rather they did not tell Nunes that the reports existed, only helping him get access to them, the sources told Fox.
Nunes told reporters on March 22 that information had indeed been “incidentally collected” on Trump’s transition team by U.S. spy agencies. Those names were included in various intelligence reports. Enter Vice Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, the mouthpiece of the left. His mission is to tie Trump to the Russians no matter what.
The data had no connection to Russia or its investigation of Moscow’s role in the election, period. Meanwhile, Schiff was expected to view the information in a classified setting at the White House on Friday the 31st. It will be interesting what the partisan member of the committee spins from factual documents.
