During the Presidential campaign, “Mafia Don” was able to turn criticism of his staff’s use of “Alternative Facts” into the catchphrase “Fake News”. That label has stuck in an “I’m rubber, you’re glue” fashion and worked in Trump’s favor.
Now, with increased pressure on Trump’s crime family, carnival barker-in-chief Trump has turned scrutiny of Russian involvement with his campaign into his new catchphrase “Spygate”.
“Mein Trumpf” has threatened the Justice Department over revelations an FBI informant reported on Trump’s staff in the early days of a counterintelligence investigation. This was not done to pry on one political party by it’s rival, it was a goddamned counterintelligence operation that likely began with Useful Idiot Carter Page.
The FBI informant was a professor named Halper, who had a long history that went back to spying on the Carter campaign. Here’s some background on Halper from Glen Greenwald:
“The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election”
(Excerpt)
“To begin with, it’s obviously notable that the person the FBI used to monitor the Trump campaign is the same person who worked as a CIA operative running that 1980 Presidential election spying campaign.
It was not until several years after Reagan’s victory over Carter did this scandal emerge. It was leaked by right-wing officials inside the Reagan administration who wanted to undermine officials they regarded as too moderate, including then White House Chief of Staff James Baker, who was a Bush loyalist.
The NYT in 1983 said the Reagan campaign spying operation “involved a number of retired Central Intelligence Agency officials and was highly secretive.” The article, by then-NYT reporter Leslie Gelb, added that its “sources identified Stefan A. Halper, a campaign aide involved in providing 24-hour news updates and policy ideas to the traveling Reagan party, as the person in charge.” Halper, now 73, had also worked with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Alexander Haig as part of the Nixon administration.
When the scandal first broke in 1983, the UPI suggested that Halper’s handler for this operation was Reagan’s Vice Presidential candidate, George H.W. Bush, who had been the CIA Director and worked there with Halper’s father-in-law, former CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, who worked on Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign before Bush ultimately became Reagan’s Vice President. It quoted a former Reagan campaign official as blaming the leak on “conservatives [who] are trying to manipulate the Jimmy Carter papers controversy to force the ouster of White House Chief of Staff James Baker.”
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Please take note: Halper connects to the axis of evil (Cheney and Rumsfeld), the real Watergate “Deep Throat” Al Haig, Stealing secrets from the Jimmy Carter campaign in 1980, the “October Surprise” meetings that started Iran-Contra, and Iran-Contra itself through his father-in-law Ray Cline. His reported handler was former CIA chief George Bush senior.
I mean, this guy has serious baggage.
But fast forward to Trump and his lackey Carter Page. Look at how these Russian agents are toying with him:
They call him an idiot. They say he is grubbing for money.
“you promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents and tell him to go fuck himself”.
Now that sounds like legitimate reason for a counterintelligence investigation.
As described in this Washington Post article, here is the Page/Halper timeline:
There is no evidence for ‘Spygate’ — but there is a reason Trump invented it
“The argument that Halper was a spy planted in Trump’s campaign, though, early on suffers from two significant flaws.
The first, as we noted on Tuesday, is that Halper contacted Papadopoulos and Page only after they were already on the FBI’s radar. The FBI had interviewed Page in March; he met Halper in July, after he’d traveled to Moscow. The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July; Halper’s outreach to Papadopoulos began in September.”
“The second, of course, is that Halper was never embedded in the campaign. Nor is there any evidence he was ever spying on the campaign. His outreach was to three specific individuals, including Clovis — whose position in the campaign meant that he was a point of contact for both Page and Papadopoulos.”
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Yes, Trump is at the wheel of the clown car. But these clowns have shit that blows up and kills living things. The media needs to seize back the narrative of “spygate” and slap the “I’m stupid” sign firmly on Trump’s back, where it belongs.