— by Odysseus
We at The Cassandra Times have been quite curious as to why former President Barack Hussein Obama’s minions, including their favorite lapdog journalists, have been so desperate to somehow fabricate a link between Russia and President Donald Trump’s inner circle. After all, Russia has not subscribed to an ideology hostile to the the United States or its allies for more than 26 years now.
It is true that Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin may not running his government with the fully open and forthright manner that Americans prefer and we may not agree with all of his policies. However, he does not have an ideology or a government that is committed to the overthrow of the United States, capitalism, or the American way of life. As a potential ally, Russia is far more reasonable, stable, and predictable than many Latin American, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African countries with which the United States has been allied with during the 20th century.
Never before the mainstream media’s breathless coverage of the current administration has it ever been considered scandalous for presidential candidates to meet with foreign leaders or representatives. It was not considered a scandal when then presidential candidate Donald Trump met with the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto or with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Likewise, there was no scandal when then candidate Barack Obama went to Germany in 2008 and met with members of the German government.
Far more suspect is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2006 meeting with the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. More suspicions should attach to the backdoor contacts that the Obama administration had with representatives of the nuclear apocalypse-seeking mullahs of Iran and the friendly relationship with Raul Castro of Cuba, two regimes that remain actively and openly opposed to the United States.
This reality has always begged the question why the minions and surrogates of Obama and Hillary Clinton have been so desperate to peddle in the mainstream media the story of some nefarious Russian connection to Donald Trump and his circle. On Friday, we learned exactly why. What Obama and Clinton are loudly proclaiming is their primary defense to a potential criminal proceeding against them and against their closest associates. Concocting a Russia connection is their way of staying out of federal jail.
Obama and Clinton need to raise a national security issue as their legal justification for misusing United States law enforcement agencies and intelligence assets to spy on the Trump presidential campaign during the 2016 election season. The similarities evoke former President Richard Nixon’s illegal wiretap of his Democratic opponents at the Watergate Hotel, which led to his resignation from office. At least, President Nixon used hired help to perform the third-rate spy craft, instead of spies with actual government badges which the Obama’s administration sicced on the Trump campaign.
Sadly, we know that members of the Obama administration have a long history of abusing their offices and official organs of government for their own partisan political purposes. They used the Internal Revenue Service through Lois Lerner to circumvent the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case to target, abuse, and harass “Tea Party” organizers and to suppress their political free speech prior to the 2012 election.
We know that Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder used the Justice Department to target journalists for wiretaps in 2013. Even the Washington Post expressed outrage that the Justice Department had targeted FOX News reporter James Rosen and his family, when he was working on a story about anonymous government leaks to other journalists. Although Rosen was not charged, his communications and even his movements were tracked.
Also, in 2013, it became known that reporters with the Associated Press were the targets of the Obama administration’s surveillance. Even The New Yorker, normally a reliable Obama cheerleader, raised anew the specter of George Orwell’s book “1984” and its Big Brother’s ubiquitous surveillance society.
In 2014, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson revealed that her personal computer and her company laptop were hacked after she began writing stories about Hillary Clinton’s fiasco in Benghazi, Libya, where United States Ambassador Christopher Stephens and several other government employees were killed by Islamists on eve of the 2012 election. This hack was shown to have been done with software that was proprietary to a United States government agency, according to the New York Post.
Just this morning, Wikileaks revealed that Magistrate John F. Anderson of the Northern District of California granted the Obama administration a warrant in March of 2012. The warrant forced Google to give to the government access to Google’s records on selected journalists.
These activities all prove that Obama and his inner circle were frequent abusers of government institutions and their vast powers to pursue their political agenda. They actively suppressed any dissenting point of view or narrative that differed from their own.
Now, Donald Trump, as the President of the United States and its Commander in Chief has gained access to any still-preserved records of the activities of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities. Since every single one of President Trump’s previous tweets has eventually been proven to be accurate — even after several weeks of “scorched earth” tactics and hysterical derision by the shameless infotainment organs — we know that his accusations against his predecessor are both precise and accurate. His tweets are, no doubt, based upon information he has learned and briefings that are not yet publicly available, but which will come to light in any investigation. His outrage at being spied on seems genuine and the public should be outraged as well.
The only possible defense that Obama’s inner circle can raise to being prosecuted for abuse of power and for misusing law enforcement and intelligence assets for domestic political spying purposes is to somehow claim that they had a reasonable suspicion that Trump or people close to him were Russian spies. While this defense is as absurd as claiming that Trump’s people were British or French or Canadian or German or Spanish or Mexican spies, it is a technical legal defense against the specific charges that they face.
By wrapping themselves in the American flag and feigning that they were engaged in a matter of national security, they can attempt to pretend that their actions were committed within the limits of their lawful mandate. Any other excuse, other than that of “foreign involvement”, puts them in completely illegal territory. While laughable, this is their only possible defense in court.
The above reasoning also reveals why the Deep State is in such terror and is desperately trying to undermine the Trump administration. Its operatives hope to avoid their prosecution by removing people close to Trump and replacing them with their fellow Deep State operatives who will cover for them.
Under existing law, each and every one government employee, including spies, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court judges, and contractors, knows well that it is illegal for them to obey the illegal orders of their superiors. The American people can be sure that not one of them was forced to spy on Trump against his or her will. The surveillance jobs were directed to and were carried out by people within the various intelligence agencies, who just so happened to be dedicated Obama loyalists, just like Lois Lerner at the Internal Revenue Service. Thus, when it will be proven that they were conducting illegal surveillance operations against a United States presidential campaign, under color of law, they will find no legal protection.
We can see whole swaths of the intelligence and law enforcement community charged as co-conspirators and actors in an illegal abuse of power scheme, being run by a corrupt and out of control politicized administration. The operatives know their careers and lives can be utterly ruined by scandals of this magnitude. Judges who granted unlawful warrants for political reasons can be impeached and removed from office. Every one of the people involved at all levels of government have been running scared since the election results came in. They know what they have done and they know that they will be held accountable.
The sad state of affairs demonstrates clearly why the bureaucrats within the agencies must remain non-partisan and not allow themselves to be politicized and used for improper purposes, no matter how much they love the political leadership or their cause. A “historic” black president like Barack Obama is not above the law, and the rules must not be thrown to the wind in order to protect him or his political agenda. He is a politician and a fallible man, who is as susceptible to corruption, hubris, ignorance, folly, and error as any other politician.
Many of our country’s institutions, from the press to the courts to Congress to the functionaries within the bureaucracies, have been damaged — possibly irretrievably — by their contortions to protect the cause, reputation, and legacy of “America’s First Black President”. The fallout from this catastrophic damage and the ensuing public crises of confidence in our institutions may very well be Obama’s most lasting legacy.