For more than a year, the FBI and liberal defenders have denied that the Obama administration-era bureau “spied” on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
But as a Department of Justice Inspector General’s report is about to drop, and likely in an effort to minimize damage from that report, FBI leakers just basically confirmed the spying rumors were true.
According to Breitbart, the confirmation came by way of numerous anonymous “current and former officials” within the FBI and DOJ who essentially admitted in an article by The New York Times that the bureau utilized government informants, secret subpeonas and potentially even wiretaps to spy on the Trump campaign.
One passage in that article read, “The FBI obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters — a secret type of subpoena — officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with (Carter) Page and (George) Papadopoulos.”
That “one government informant” has yet to be named, but is believed to be a U.S. citizen living in London and was the subject of recent wrangling over access to originating documents between the House Intelligence Committee and the DOJ.
The admission also confirms recent reporting from The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and others about a “source” implanted in the campaign.
The Journal’s Kimberly Strassel, who has been near the forefront of uncovering the FBI’s investigation of Trump, noted that this “non-FBI” person on the bureau payroll was secretly tasked to “interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign.”
“This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting,” she wrote in a recent piece.
The NYT article also seemed to undercut the shifting media narrative of what actually prompted the opening of the investigation, whether it was drunken ramblings by Papadopoulos to an Australian diplomat in London, information in the anti-Trump dossier or information obtained from the “informant” embedded in the campaign.
The story also attempted to downplay the obvious anti-Trump bias among key officials involved in the investigation, as had been revealed in the released text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
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Buried deep within the article was the admission that no evidence of “collusion” had ever been found: “A year and a half later, no public evidence has surfaced connecting Mr. Trump’s advisers to the hacking or linking Mr. Trump himself to the Russian government’s disruptive efforts.”
This NYT article citing FBI leakers was little more than a poor effort to get out in front of the incoming DOJ-IG report that is expected to reveal just how biased and politicized the bureau became during the Obama administration.