British intelligence, not Obama, spied on Trump

The past forty-eight hours have seen some explosive confirmations of something Donald J. Trump always suspected. Which is, that someone was spying on him and his campaign, at least since 2016. Trump erred only in identifying the culprit – he blamed his predecessor, Barack H. Obama. New and updated evidence suggests that the true culprits were British intelligence, with help from sympathetic elements in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Furthermore, any notion that Vladimir Putin, effective head of the Russian Federation, sought to influence U.S. voters to vote for Trump is the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that Donald J. Trump is his own man, and Russian, Brit and American Deep-Stater alike fear him. That’s reason enough to vote in his favor, apart from the now-proved justice of his claims.

British intelligence involvement in early spying on the Trump campaign

Larry Johnson of The Gateway Pundit posted this update to a post he’d made two years ago. The occasion of this update is this post by Matt Taibbi on his Racket Substack. Taibbi substantiates Trump’s long-standing claims that someone spied on him. He also revealed that Russian feelings toward Trump were opposite to those Hillary Clinton and others claimed. This prompted Johnson to revisit evidence he first gathered and presented two years ago.

On March 4, 2017, President Trump flatly accused the Obama White House of tapping his telephones, in these posts:

For what it’s worth, Obama adviser Ben Rhodes shot back:

Lay aside this variation on the Loaded Question logical fallacy, to say nothing of his throwing-off on Trump. Trump, as Larry Johnson said to Russia Today two days later, was only half correct in his accusations. Specifically he called the what right, but not the who.

Role of the General Communications Headquarters

Mr. Johnson told RT that the orders came, not from the Obama White House, but from British intelligence! Specifically the order came from the General Communications Headquarters unit, or GCHQ. They shared their “take” with James Clapper and John Brennan (then Director of Central Intelligence, or DCI). Those two men wanted to derail the Trump campaign and support Hillary Clinton. Why did Trump post something that didn’t nail the real culprits? According to Johnson, Trump sought to put the real culprits on notice that he had their number. Johnson also lamented that several “holdover” intelligence types were still on the job, and still undermining Trump.

Media response to Johnson’s remarks consisted of: crickets. Even President Trump and his people ignored that – perhaps more evidence of Trump’s lack of imagination and situational awareness.

Two weeks later, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano alleged on the air that Obama had asked GCHQ to spy on Trump. Obama did this, according to Napolitano, to keep “American fingerprints” off the spy operation. That claim got Napolitano suspended. Johnson again denied that Obama gave any such order. The initiative came from the highest echelons of British intelligence. Not to say that Obama wouldn’t have been a willing participant – he and the Deep State are allied. But the order didn’t start with him. This was a British operation, with coordination with American Deep State “spooks” outside of the White House.

Johnson also appeared on Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources program on CNN to make, and clarify, his case:

Motive for British intelligence

Johnson provided a YouTube link to that interview, from an account calling itself “Very Dicey.” Sadly, Google erased the Very Dicey account – and furthermore, Very Dicey suffered de-hosting and deplatforming from “Old Twitter.” But the Wayback Machine has links to the first capture of the video, the Very Dicey site, and his Twitter account as they stood on March 19, 2017.

Johnson also provided a link to a “hit piece” in The New York Times. Incredibly, they credited GCHQ with warning people about Russian hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. In this regard, Johnson almost laughs at British intelligence for leaving such a hole in their story:

Here’s another one–if the Brits knew that the Russians were hacking the DNC emails then how did they completely miss the Russians passing that info to one Julian Assange, who happens to be holed up in London in the Ecuadorian Embassy? To this date the Brits have not provided one shred of evidence to prove that Assange got the DNC emails from the Russians.

Why would British intelligence do this? Larry Johnson speculates that Trump, wanting to get out of endless wars, “direct[ly] threat[ened] British interests.” Recall that Trump insisted that NATO needed to pay some of the price America had been paying since NATO’s founding. Trump even questioned NATO’s very reason for existing.

Finally, said Johnson, all this effort by British intelligence turned up – nothing. If they had, we would be having a far different conversation. If you spy on someone and produce actionable intelligence, the conversation turns to that intelligence, not to how you got it – even if your spies have to come in from the cold. But if you find nothing, then you’re always trying to deny looking for it to begin with. Which is what Obama and Hillary Clinton did, and British intelligence continues to do.

Russia wants anybody but Trump

But the more salient revelation from Messrs. Taibbi, Shellenberger and Gutentag is that Vladimir Putin never wanted Trump as President. In fact he still doesn’t. Reuters quotes him on that, saying Joe Biden is more predictable. This of course gives the lie to Fiona Hill’s accusation to The Guardian that Putin sees Trump as an asset.

How can we know that’s a lie? Because the Racket Substack piece tells us that American intelligence told that same lie on another January 6. On January 6, 2017, James Clapper published this Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) saying Vladimir Putin had ordered an “influence campaign” against Hillary Clinton in the Election of 2016. That’s another lie. According to the Racket piece’ sources, Putin supported Hillary Clinton, not Trump. He considered Trump “mercurial,” meaning all over the place – and Hillary “manageable and reflecting continuity.”

That we have from the House Intelligence Committee – or rather three anonymous tipsters close to that Committee and its investigation. This was back when then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) ran that Committee. In February of 2018, then-Chairman Nunes released a damning memo excoriating the FBI for malfeasance and cover-up in their obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on Trump campaign figures in 2016.

Efforts to suppress the story

NBC also published a timeline, going clear back to 2015, of events leading up to that memo. That timeline shows that the FBI spying began at least on October 21, 2016. It further shows that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), then the Ranking Member, undermined Nunes every chance he got. Despite specious House Ethics Committee complaints, Devin Nunes doggedly continued his investigation. Democrats and their tame editors denounced the Nunes Memo on its release. But Inspector General Michael Horowitz vindicated it a year later.

But the Racket team relies on more than the Nunes Memo. They cite several sources as saying the ICA had no evidence to substantiate it. They also cite John Brennan’s brazen boast, in his book Undaunted, that he personally overruled dissenting opinion about the ICA. Indeed, a few days before the election, the FBI backed off the Trump-Russia allegation, according to The New York Times. In December, the FBI and CIA both briefed the Senate. According to The Washington Post, theyevidently couldn’t keep their stories straight. A week later, again from the Post, both agencies were toeing the same line.

But when former FBI Director James Comey testified to the House in 2020, he nearly gave the game away.

Analysis

In short, the three-letter agencies allegedly behind the ICA didn’t get their stories straight until halfway through December. The single best “internal control” that tells us how Vladimir Putin really felt, is this week’s Reuters piece. If Vladimir Putin today would rather have Joe Biden than Donald Trump, then we can believe he wanted Hillary Clinton and not Trump.

More tellingly, British intelligence has its fingerprints all over the Trump-Russia Hoax. Christopher Steele, author of the infamous eponymous Dossier, was an MI6 agent. We can now regard that association as typical and integral, not a one-off.

Today the British repeatedly insist on more support for Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine War. Joe Biden will sign new authorizations of military and financial aid to that money laundry almost as fast as he’ll sign “writs of assistance” over the January 6 Event. British intelligence knows this, and what they did in 2016, they’ll do again.

James Madison, framer of the Bill of Rights (and especially Amendments II, III, and IV), could have told the American people not to trust the British. America learned that lesson during the War of 1812.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it’s enemy action. Ian Fleming

With all due respect to Mr. Fleming’s memory, Americans must now wonder whether James Bond, had he existed, would have gotten orders to come to America on a mission inimical to, not protective of, human liberty.