Back To The Trump Wiretap

BREAKING – EXPOSING THE CIA: “So the agencies kind of, like, all got together and said, we’re not gonna tell Trump…Director of the CIA would keep [information from Trump]…” A project manager working in Cyber Operations for the @CIA and an @NSAGov contractor with top-secret… pic.twitter.com/TXq8ZjJEBq

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) May 1, 2024

In a story even the alt media has either ignored or quickly passed over, James O'Keefe released undercover video of a CIA contractor saying agency bigwigs withheld information from Trump and spied on him. The video showed Amjad Fseisi, a project manager working in Cyber Operations for the CIA with top-secret clearance:

Amjad reveals to OMG’s Undercover American Swiper that intel agencies not only kept intelligence information from a sitting United States President and Commander-In-Chief, they also used FISA to spy on President Trump and his team and are still monitoring President Trump according to Amjad who says, “We monitor everything.” Amjad adds “we also have people that monitor his ex-wife. He likes to use burner phones” – information only an insider with access to highly sensitive information would state.

“We steal it [information]” and “We hack other countries just like that,” Amjad, who states he currently works on the CIA’s China Mission Center, explains how intel agencies obtain information. He also describes a broken intelligence system where “We don’t share information across agencies” because the CIA is “very reluctant” to share information with the “careless” NSA.

I would note, as someone who's had top secret clearance in some jobs, that the clearance itself means very little -- basically, anyone who works in a facility where material at any level of classification is handled gets "top secret" clearance in case they inadvertently see something. But even with the clearance, you still have to have further clearance for any specific project, so it's not as though you have a license to just snoop around, and it certainly doesn't mean Fseisi got any privileged information just because he had the general clearance.

It appears that Fseisi's contract with the CIA was immediately terminated when the video was released. Watching it, it's plain that the guy is listening to himself talk and doing all he can to impress the female undercover reporter, so we should factor this in -- but what interests me nevertheless is that this story seems consistent with previous allegations that the deep state had been spying on Trump. The Gateway Pundit quotes O'Keefe at the link:

O’Keefe Media Group’s bombshell undercover footage supports earlier reports by investigative journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag that revealed how the American intelligence community illegally ran a spy operation against then-candidate Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and illegally acquired intelligence that was later used to justify the Federal Bureau of Investigation (@FBI) official probe, “Crossfire Hurricane,” which in turn led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that ultimately did not find evidence of Russia collusion by the 2016 Trump campaign.

This in turn takes me back to the allegation that the intelligence community "wiretapped" Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. There's even a Wikipedia entry for this episode:

On March 4, 2017, Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that falsely accused former President Barack Obama's administration of wiretapping his "wires" at Trump Tower late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and the Trump administration cited news reports to defend these accusations. His initial claims appeared to have been based on a Breitbart News article he had been given which repeated speculations made by conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch or on a Bret Baier interview, both of which occurred the day prior to his Tweets. By June 2020, no evidence had surfaced to support Trump's claim, which had been refuted by the Justice Department (DOJ).

The original story, which appears to have been assiduously scrubbed, was that National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers met with Trump after the election to inform him that Trump Tower wasn't secure, and as a consequence, Trump moved his transition headquarters to his Bedminster, NJ golf club. The record does reflect that a meeting between Trump and Rogers did take place in mid November, 2016:

And a lot of people have been paying Donald Trump a visit at Trump Tower in New York City, mostly people being considered for jobs in the new administration. But one meeting stands out. Navy Admiral Mike Rogers sat down with Trump. He is head of the National Security Agency. He's in the military chain of command. And it appears he never told the current commander in chief he was doing this.

And Trump did in fact move his transition headquarters from Trump Tower to Bedminster on November 16:

President-elect Donald Trump is moving the transition meetings Friday from Trump Tower in New York to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, said transition team officials.

The transition team did not provide details of who Mr. Trump will meet with at the exclusive private golf club about 35 miles west of Manhattan.

There was no mention in any of the reports about what Rogers discussed with Trump in the meeting, nor why the move to Bedminster took place. Exactly what kind of surveillance was involved, on whom, and who ordered it has never been clear, but the Wikipedia entry linked above is full of weasel wording:

On September 18, 2017, CNN reported that the FBI wiretapped Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, from as early as 2014 through an unspecified time before the 2016 election, and also after the election through early 2017, pursuant to two separate FISA court orders. It has not been confirmed whether Trump's conversations with Manafort were intercepted as part of this surveillance. CNN acknowledged that prior to this disclosure, "speculation has run rampant about whether Manafort or others associated with Trump were under surveillance". The CNN report noted that it was unclear if Manafort was under FBI surveillance while he resided in Trump Tower.

. . . David A. Graham of The Atlantic responded to claims that the Manafort wiretap report vindicated Trump's March 2017 tweets: "This is not true—Trump claimed he had been the subject of Obama-ordered, politically motivated surveillance, for which there remains no evidence." While acknowledging that "it does make for a more complicated picture than previously known"[.]

Wikipedia concludes,

Trump's wiretap claim dominated TV news coverage in March 2017 for several weeks, overshadowing every other discussion about Trump's policy agenda. Late night talk show hosts Trevor Noah, James Corden and Stephen Colbert all made fun of President Trump for his wiretap accusations.

. . .The "wiretap" tweets are included on multiple lists of Trump's most controversial tweets. In 2020, commentator Eli Lake called it the "most consequential tweet of his presidency".

As with many other things Trump, this is looking better for the orange guy in retrospect. What we have with the Amjad Fseisi undercover video is a contractor for the deep state talking big about how the deep state spies on Trump on its own initiative, without the need for any authority to approve it. This would deflect from statements made in 2017 that Obama or his staff knew nothing about it, or that at least there wasn't evidence that they did -- the deep state would have been doing this on its own.

I suspect this matter will be on Trump's agenda in a second term.