Radio host Mark Levin used his Thursday
evening show to outline the known steps taken by President Barack Obama’s
administration in its last months to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential
campaign and, later, his new administration.
Levin called Obama’s effort “police
state” tactics, and suggested that Obama’s actions, rather than conspiracy
theories about alleged Russian interference in the presidential election to
help Trump, should be the target of congressional investigation.
Drawing
on sources including the New York Times and the Washington Post, Levin described the case
against Obama so far, based on what is already publicly known. The following is
an expanded version of that case, including events that Levin did not mention
specifically but are important to the overall timeline.
1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and
several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.
2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the
Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference,
Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails
that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and
the media that Trump invited further hacking.
3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the
emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day
until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames
Trump and the Russians.
4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now
focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian
banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for
national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an
opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the
federal intelligence services.
5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and
CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a
foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between
Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have
compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified
and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been
aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.
6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports,
the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National
Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the
government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy
protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it
easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.
7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies
— the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are
monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties.
Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group
to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear
how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret
and involved classified information.
8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that
the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security
Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was part of routine spying on the ambassador,
not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the
two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier
denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as
acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation.
In the end, Flynn resigns over
having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the
content of the conversation.
9. February: Times claims
extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in
reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian
intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of
coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some
congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence
leaks.
10. March: the Washington Post
targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Postreports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact
twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage
Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict
Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with
the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a
campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of
ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House
“rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the
Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”:
officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a
clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media
as well.
In summary: the Obama
administration sought, and eventually obtained, authorization to eavesdrop on
the Trump campaign; continue
d monitoring the Trump team even when no evidence
of wrongdoing was found; then relaxed the NSA rules to allow evidence to be
shared widely within the government, virtually ensuring that the information,
including the conversations of private citizens, would be leaked to the media.
Levin called the
effort a “silent coup” by the Obama administration and demanded that it be
investigated.
In addition, Levin
castigated Republicans in Congress for focusing their attention
on Trump and Attorney General Sessions rather than Obama.
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