President Trump over the weekend tweeted recent comments made by Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton slamming FBI Director Christopher Wray, signaling that he may be souring on his own FBI director.
During an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” last Thursday, Fitton complained that Wray seems to be protecting members of the bureau who were part of the deep state plot to “overthrow the president through an illegal coup.”
SPYGATE CRIMES: Nadler abuse targeting AG Barr and @RealDonaldTrump designed to distract from the fact that the DNC/Dem Party apparatus has been caught using donor dollars to collude w/Russian intelligence to attack a domestic political opponent. @LouDobbs @JudicialWatch pic.twitter.com/5oFf6d1ud5
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) May 10, 2019
Trump quoted Fitton in a series of tweets on Sunday:
“Even Director James Clapper admits that the FBI actions against the Trump Presidential Campaign do in fact meet the definition of spying, perhaps FBI Director Christopher Wray will be the next to do so.” @LouDobbs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2019
“Just another abuse of power in a long series of abuses of power by the Democrats that began during the Obama Administration, continued through the Mueller FBI operation, & now the baton has been passed to Jerry Nadler to continue to abuse power to harass President Trump..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2019
….overthrow the President through an illegal coup.” (Recommended by previous DOJ) @TomFitton @JudicialWatch
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2019
Fitton’s comments came at the end of a busy week for Democrats.
House Dems last week ramped up their probes into Trump, his family and his administration in the wake of the anti-climatic Mueller report. They also worked feverishly to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress for not turning over unredacted information from the report that he is required by law to keep classified.
According to Fox News, “the swipe at Wray suggests Trump views his FBI director with caution as Barr pursues his own review into the origins of the Russia investigation.”
Some of the distrust may come from the FBI director’s recent hedging on the definition of the word “spy.”
Barr, last month, had no problem using the word to describe the FBI’s surveillance activities during the 2016 campaign.
“I think spying did occur,” Barr said at a Senate Judiciary hearing a couple of weeks ago. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated. …Spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”
Barr, however, hedged a little, saying he wasn’t claiming that improper surveillance definitely occurred. “I’m saying that I am concerned about it and looking into it, that’s all,” he later said.
When asked last week if FBI agents engage in spying, Wray, on the other hand, waffled somewhat: “That’s not the term I would use, he said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
“Lots of people have different colloquial phrases,” he continued. “I believe that the FBI is engaged in investigative activity, and part of investigative activity includes surveillance activity of different shapes and sizes, and to me the key question is making sure that it’s done by the book, consistent with our lawful authorities.”
And yet, President Trump has on numerous occasions indignantly characterized the FBI’s election-year activities as spying on his campaign.
“It was illegal spying,” Trump said last month, for instance. “Unprecedented spying.
In 2016, both before and after the launch of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russian links to the Trump campaign, the FBI deployed multiple “informants” to surreptitiously eavesdrop on and dangle “Clinton dirt” to various Trump associates. Additionally, multiple FISA warrants were obtained to spy on minor Trump adviser Carter Page beginning in October of 2016.
Through that surveillance warrant, the FBI could capture phone calls, texts, emails and bank records from all of Page’s direct contacts, as well as everybody who contacted those people or even visited their Facebook pages or websites, Full Measure’s Sharyl Attkisson pointed out earlier this year.
And in the final months of the Trump campaign, members of the Obama administration were identifying information about Americans caught up in incidental surveillance (unmasking) at a freakishly rapid rate right. The activity continued right up to President Trump’s inauguration.
Here is the dictionary definition of the word spy:
noun, plural spies.
a person employed by a government to obtain secret information or intelligence about another, usually hostile, country, especially with reference to military or naval affairs.
a person who keeps close and secret watch on the actions and words of another or others.
verb (used without object), spied, spy·ing.
to observe secretively or furtively with hostile intent (often followed by on or upon ).
to act as a spy; engage in espionage.
While the U.S. government’s spy tools are usually meant to go after hostile foreign entities, the Obama administration appears to have used its powers to spy on an opposing political campaign — with hostile intent.
Deep state apologists can try to muddy the waters by using various euphemisms for “spy,” but there is no longer any doubt that this is what was going on in 2016.
Republicans are convinced that Democrats are attacking Barr out of panic because he has vowed to get to the bottom of the FBI, CIA, Obama White House, DNC and Clinton Campaign’s election year shenanigans.
They have every reason to be worried.
(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)