by WorldTribune Staff, May 22, 2018
Crossfire Hurricane has unleashed a Trump tornado.
A dogged pursuit of the facts behind the “Russian collusion” narrative and the origins of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has switched the focus back onto the elite layers of the U.S. intelligence community under President Barack Obama that has been forced to admit it spied on an opposition party candidate.
Leading the charge have been the House Intelligence Committee and a small group of stand-alone journalists including Sean Hannity of Fox News, Sara Carter, Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times, talk show giant Rush Limbaugh and Internet Mogul Matt Drudge.
It has now been established that the FBI surveilled Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. “Only the motive and who gave the orders remains a mystery, but it won’t remain for long,” James S. Robbins, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, wrote in a May 21 op-ed for USA Today.
The president and his allies have gone on the offensive and, Robbins wrote, as the truth emerges, “we see the abuses of power laid bare, and entertain the prospect that the principle actors behind this wretched excess may be held criminally responsible.”
On May 20, Trump tweeted that he will instruct the Department of Justice to investigate whether the FBI/DOJ “infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign for political purposes.” The last three words are key, Robbins noted.
The revelation that Cambridge professor Stefan Halper was the informant who spied on Trump’s campaign for the FBI has also spotlighted British intelligence’s ties to the Trump investigations, Rowan Scarborough reported for The Washington Times.
Halper “is a partner in Cambridge Security Initiative, a London consulting firm,” Scarborough wrote. “His partner is Sir Richard Dearlove, who directed Britain’s foreign spying operation known as MI6, the country’s CIA, from 1999 to 2004.”
Halper “chose British soil to introduce himself in early July 2016 to Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, who became the target of an FBI wiretap the following October.”
Page told The Washington Times that the July meeting was his first of several encounters with Halper.
In London, Halper also engaged another Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, according to the Daily Caller, which first reported on Halper and his outreach this spring.
Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo said on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” on May 21 that he was approached by a second government informant during his time on Trump’s team.
“Let me tell you something that I know for a fact,” Caputo told host Laura Ingraham. “This informant, this person [who] they tried to plant into the campaign … he’s not the only person who came at the campaign. And the FBI is not the only Obama agency who came at the campaign.”
“I know because they came at me. And I’m looking for clearance from my attorney to reveal this to the public. This is just the beginning.”
Meanwhile, the attorney for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has asked a federal judge to allow an investigation into whether special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann illegally leaked confidential grand jury testimony to the press, Scarborough wrote in a separate report.
Attorney Kevin Downing asked District Court Judge T.S. Ellis in Virginia to compel special counsel Robert Mueller to disclose what Weissmann said to The Associated Press before it wrote negative stories about the former Trump campaign manager and his business ties to a Russian oligarch, the report said.
Weissmann has asked the judge not to permit Downing to interrogate Mueller’s attorneys, meaning himself as well, the report said.
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