As I argued in my weekend column, it is hard to imagine a more idle question than whether the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign.
It has been credibly reported that Halper, a longtime source for the CIA and British intelligence, was tasked by the FBI in the Trump-Russia investigation to make contact with and get information from at least three Trump campaign officials.
The question of what amounts to egregious misconduct in the context of Russia cannot be answered in a Trump vacuum.
Apologists for the Trump-Russia investigation have posited only reasonable suspicions of Russia sympathies, harbored by a handful of Trump campaign figures and implied by some of Trump's campaign rhetoric.
This is not a new position for me - I argued it throughout the Bush and Obama presidencies, well before Trump came along.
In the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney portrayed Russia as our principal geopolitical foe, Obama and Democrats mocked him.
In the 2016 campaign, Trump's Russia rhetoric was an echo - in Trumpian bluntness - of the Democrats' position.
The point is that after 30 years of embracing and empowering Moscow, it is not credible - particularly for an administration that was among the worst offenders - to say, "We had to use spies and FISA surveillance against the Trump campaign due to suspicion that Trump might embrace and empower Moscow."
Of course, there were also Russia hawks among Trump's supporters, and it is not surprising that Trump has been tougher on the Kremlin than Obama was - a low bar, to be sure.
Instead, the Obama administration decided to use its counterintelligence powers to spy on the Trump campaign, using at least one covert informant, electronic monitoring of communications, and other intelligence-gathering tactics.
It ignored the norm against deploying such tactics against political opponents, not based on evidence of a Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, but on speculation about the Trump campaign's Russia contacts and Russia sympathies.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/trump-russia-investigation-obama-administration-spying-hypocritical/
It has been credibly reported that Halper, a longtime source for the CIA and British intelligence, was tasked by the FBI in the Trump-Russia investigation to make contact with and get information from at least three Trump campaign officials.
The question of what amounts to egregious misconduct in the context of Russia cannot be answered in a Trump vacuum.
Apologists for the Trump-Russia investigation have posited only reasonable suspicions of Russia sympathies, harbored by a handful of Trump campaign figures and implied by some of Trump's campaign rhetoric.
This is not a new position for me - I argued it throughout the Bush and Obama presidencies, well before Trump came along.
In the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney portrayed Russia as our principal geopolitical foe, Obama and Democrats mocked him.
In the 2016 campaign, Trump's Russia rhetoric was an echo - in Trumpian bluntness - of the Democrats' position.
The point is that after 30 years of embracing and empowering Moscow, it is not credible - particularly for an administration that was among the worst offenders - to say, "We had to use spies and FISA surveillance against the Trump campaign due to suspicion that Trump might embrace and empower Moscow."
Of course, there were also Russia hawks among Trump's supporters, and it is not surprising that Trump has been tougher on the Kremlin than Obama was - a low bar, to be sure.
Instead, the Obama administration decided to use its counterintelligence powers to spy on the Trump campaign, using at least one covert informant, electronic monitoring of communications, and other intelligence-gathering tactics.
It ignored the norm against deploying such tactics against political opponents, not based on evidence of a Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, but on speculation about the Trump campaign's Russia contacts and Russia sympathies.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/trump-russia-investigation-obama-administration-spying-hypocritical/
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