Conservatives have long suspected that the Russiagate trail lead back to former President Barack Obama. He campaigned vigorously for Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election and went on TV numerous times to speak ill of then candidate Donald Trump. It was obvious he never wanted Trump to get elected.
Newly released documents show those suspicions about Obama and his administration were warranted.
Thanks to government watchdog group Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation, it is obvious that the Obama State Department helped orchestrate the targeting of Donald Trump as early as 2012.
Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on April 25, 2018, after the State Department failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests by the Daily Caller News Foundation. That suit resulted in the release of 84 pages of previously classified and heavily redacted documents including all records:
- Of communications between State Department officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and British National Christopher Steele and/or employees or contractors of Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence.
- Provided by Christopher Steele and/or his firm Orbis Business Intelligence or by others acting on Steele’s/Orbis’s behalf, to State Department officials.
- In the custody of the State Department related to the provision of documents to British national Christopher Steele and/or his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, or the receipt of documents from Steele or his firm.
- Created in 2016 by Jonathan M. Winer relating to research compiled by Christopher Steele.
Here is what can be known for certain from these newly released documents:
Obama’s State Department was at the center of an effort to target President Trump with accusations of collusion with Russia. Emails show that senior Obama State Department officials orchestrated the advancement of the Russian collusion hoax previous to the 2016 presidential election.
One September 2016 email exchange between Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland concerned a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.” This communication is of special note because Winer is a close associate to Russia dossier author Christopher Steele.
He has also been implicated in coordinating with Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal and Steele to circulate the anti-Trump dossier.
Winer wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post, also on September 2016 in which he stated, “Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the dossier … I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material.”
One month later, Christopher Steele visited the State Department on October 2016. During that meeting, he briefed officials about his work in his infamous dossier.
Steele began investigating President Donald Trump in June 2016 under a contract with Fusion GPS which was funded by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Then-Assistant Secretary of State Nuland claims to have first seen the “first of Steele’s memos” (the dossier) on June 20, 2016, and the last in mid-July 2016. She told Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, “I was first shown excerpts from the dossier; I believe in mid-July of 2016. It wasn’t the complete thing, which I didn’t see until it was published in the U.S. press.”
Nuland told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on February 4, 2018, that the FBI should investigate if “one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation.” She would later claim she “was not aware of [the Steele/State Department briefing] until afterwards.”
Another unrelated, yet still terrifying shocker these documents showed was that the intelligence community under President Obama’s was continuing their unlawful spying on American citizens.
The documents noted that 85% of all use/extraction of the NSA database was unlawful; and they were searching many of the same Americans (“identifier”) repeatedly, over different dates. This means specific Americans were being targeted, tracked and monitored.
James S. Robbins, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, wrote in April that when Democrats call for transparency, they should be careful what they wish for.
Democrats and Obama certainly weren’t counting on this!
