In court filings last week the Department of Justice deployed what could be the nuclear option in its latest effort to prevent President Trump from declassifying information regarding FISA warrants used to spy on his campaign aide Carter Page: It is claiming that such a move would interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

This is the first time the DOJ has explicitly made this argument implying personal peril for the president, since interference could open Trump to charges of obstruction of justice. Until now, the department has argued that declassifying the documents threatened national security.

In the 178-page court document, DOJ officials said they had “determined that disclosure of redacted information in the Carter Page FISA documents could reasonably be expected to interfere with the pending investigation into Russian election interference.”

That rationale has heightened suspicions among congressional investigators that the special counsel is being used to prevent the disclosure of possible FBI abuses and crimes committed during the Russia probe.

“The obstruction trap was built into the special counsel,” a congressional investigator told RCI, speaking, like the two other sources in this article, only on condition of anonymity.  “If Trump fires Mueller, or Rosenstein, or declassifies documents [embarrassing to the FBI] it’s likely to bring an obstruction charge.”

And that would mean double jeopardy for Trump. “Obstruction is the instrument the Democrats are likely to use to impeach Trump if they win the House,” said the congressional source.
— Real Clear Investigation, 10/26/18

Now you can understand why the 2018 midterm elections are so important, especially to the left.

A lot of people feel the way you do, Senator, that words matter. Why don’t a group of you all get together and just confront him and say, you know, “Mr. President, this is not helping. You’ve got to stop it”? So many people come on this program and say what you’re saying, “This is wrong, this is bad. What are we going to do?” It’s very tit for tat. But I know there are people that feel, a lot of people that feel the way you do in very powerful positions. Why don’t a group of you just confront him and just say stop it?
— CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King to Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), 10/26/18

It looks like the message has been sent again because President Trump hasn’t gone away, despite earlier warnings.

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.

“They have six ways from Sunday to get back” at the President of the United States… wow.

So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he is being really dumb to do this.
— Senator Chuck Schumer, Rachel Maddow Show, 1/3/17

It’s not about who the people want to represent them but about saving those within the federal government from the peril they created for themselves and a media so willing to collude with them to remove a president they didn’t authorize.

Something of the magnitude of spying on an incoming administration isn’t done without at least the knowledge of higher-ups. How high still remains to be seen but Congresswoman Waters at least appears to have confirmed in 2013 that a “powerful” data-gathering infrastructure of some kind was being created for future use and it was going to be so all-encompassing that will ensnare “every individual”, including those who may “go down” with information acquired.

Statement of Purpose: Organizing for Action (OFA) is a non-partisan, issue advocacy organization committed to growing the grassroots movement by training, educating, and activating civically engaged community members across the country. As a grassroots driven organization, OFA is dedicated to empowering action takers with the skills and tools needed to tip the scales of power back to the American people and away from the special interests in Washington, D.C. In carrying out its work, OFA will operate as a “social welfare” organization within the meaning of section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

And think about it: a database created in the name of a sitting president is created with the intention of transferring that data to a private political entity for future use. This sounds highly illegal.

While being dismissed because it can’t be confirmed nor denied, the media is claiming this is a Trump Administration attempt to deflect from the whole Attorney General Jeff Sessions debacle.

Without offering any evidence or providing the source of his information, Mr. Trump fired off a series of Twitter messages claiming that Mr. Obama “had my ‘wires tapped.’” He likened the supposed tapping to “Watergate/Nixon” and “McCarthyism.”

Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to Mr. Obama, said in a Twitter message directed at Mr. Trump on Saturday that “no president can order a wiretap” and added, “Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you.”

Mr. Trump was said to be frustrated about the decision by Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, to recuse himself from participating in any investigations of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mr. Trump has said there were no such connections.
— New York Times, 3/4/17

Okay, “no president can order a wiretap” but it stretches credibility that one month before a presidential election, such an action would be taken by an agency without the knowledge of the president and no career government employee would make such a call without it being discouraged from high up the chain.

What IS clear is President Trump is now privy to what’s been going on in the “swamp” and that appears to have made a lot of people on the Hill very nervous.

The media is not outright dismissing President Trump’s claim because it appears an attempt to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) warrant to tap his campaign was attempted, at least two times.

Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.

Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.
— HeatStreet, 11/7/16

The carefully-worded response from the Obama camp is telling.

In a statement, Kevin Lewis, a spokesperson for Obama, rejected Trump’s assertion.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” he said. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false,” he added.
— CNBC, 3/4/17

The FBI is NOT a “White House official” and President Obama didn’t have to order surveillance; just be aware and nix the whole thing if he saw it unnecessary.

Chances are, IF such a warrant WAS granted, if there was any nefarious activity gathered we would have heard about it by now. As President Trump has access to much more information than he did as a private citizen, he must have been told and was waiting for the best possible opportunity to send the disruptors loyal to Barack Obama a very clear message.

Let’s hope we don’t soon find that the FISA logs from 2016 have suddenly disappeared or have been deemed “classified”.

3/5/17 UPDATE

t looks like President Trump’s tree-shaking is worrying some in Obama’s inner circle.

Former Director of Intelligence James Clapper has left a window open of “plausible deniability”, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been commenting on other things while both Lt. Col. Tony Schaffer and Mark Levin have verified our speculation that Obama HAD to have been briefed on the wiretaps.

Things must be getting a bit thick amongst those within Obama’s tight circle.

What’s laughable is the media’s unison response with the former administration that there’s “no evidence” that President Barack Obama had any knowledge of a Donald Trump wiretap while spending the last few months declaring Russian influence in the presidential election while many in the know have repeatedly said there’s “no evidence” such ever happened.