FARRELL: Spygate Could Make Watergate Look Like A Third-Rate Burglary

From Chris Farrell’s op-ed on The Daily Caller:

The Spygate scandal is shaping up to be the most significant political abuse of government power in history. And it may be even larger than people expect.

The investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham into the origins of the FBI’s Russian collusion investigation – or as President Trump prefers to call it, the witch hunt – continues to expand. Durham reportedly opened criminal investigations last fall. And unlike the narrow Justice Department Inspector General’s review of the abuse of the FISA process, Durham is looking into the questionable activities of other government agencies, in particular the CIA and its former director John Brennan.

The widening scope involves not only the agencies being investigated, but who was being targeted and why. Earlier last week Sharyl Attkisson reported that, based on her sources in the intelligence and law enforcement communities, the authorizations to spy on Trump functionaries such as Carter Page or former campaign manager Paul Manafort were actually pretexts for a much more expansive web of surveillance that could include anyone in contact with Page, or even anyone twice removed from the ostensible target. Hence, thousands of people could have been unknowingly caught up in the Spygate web and are still unaware that their privacy had been violated under the severely compromised FISA process.

This ties into the whirlwind of “unmaskings” during the 2016-17 transition period. Names of people inadvertently caught up in this expansive web, which ordinarily would be classified and their privacy interests protected, were revealed and information sent to Democratic allies in Capitol Hill for “safe keeping.” Judicial Watch has chronicled how Obama’s United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, among others, colluded in this effort to bolster the “insurance policy” to hobble the Trump presidency.

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