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Commenting on the corruption at the Justice Department and the FBI in 2016, former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova said that then-President Barack Obama "knew all about" the FBI's spying on the Trump campaign and "was more than happy" to violate Americans' civil rights "so he could get Donald Trump."

DiGenova added that the two leaders of the coup to oust Trump are former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.

People do not have the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan played in this," said diGenova during a Dec. 31 interview with the One America News Network."He is a monstrously important person and I underscore monstrously important person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Its equal to what James Comey has done to the FBI."

When asked whether people responsible for the spying on the Trump campaign shouldgo to jail, diGenova, a former Special Counsel, said,People should go to jail for the Carter Page stuff, for lying on the FISA warrants, on misleading the FISA courts, submitting false documents to the FISA courts. Those are all felonious acts."

"For me, what matters is accountability at this point," said diGenova. "You have two institutions that are vital to American freedom the FBI and the Justice Department. They were completely corrupted under two attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch with the authority and knowledge of the then-president of the United States, Barack Obama."

DiGenova then noted that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice had written an email on Jan. 20 -- the day of Trump's inauguration -- "memorializing that there had been a meeting on Jan. 5 with the president of the United States and all senior law enforcement and intelligence officials" where Obama had claimed that the spying on Trump was done by the book and justified.

President Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan. (Getty Images)

"I want to thank Susan Rice for being so stupid and so arrogant to write that email on Jan. 20," said diGenova, "because that is Exhibit A that Barack Obama knew all about this from start to finish, and was more than happy to have the civil rights of massive numbers of Americans violated so he could get Donald Trump.

This was not hard," to understand, he said."If youre a good prosecutor, you look at the facts in the Trump case, and the Page case, the Flynn case theres only one conclusion you can come to. None of this makes any sense. None of these people were evil, none of them. They were framed and the whole process was playing out."

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"You knew it on July 5, 2016 when James Comey announced, usurping the functions of the attorney general, that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Hillary Clinton," said diGenova, who prosecuted Jonathan Pollard for spying for Israel.

"That was ludicrous," he said."She destroyed 33,000 emails that were under subpoena. If you or I did that we would be in prison today. She got a break because she was Hillary Clinton and James Comey was trying to kiss her fanny because he wanted something from her when she became president of the United States."

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All of these people who watched that news conference and didnt think that was a disgrace for the FBI, and then subsequently watch all this stuff involving Trump and Page and Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn and couldnt see that the corrupt investigative process of the FBI and the DOJ was being used to basically conduct a coup detat --I mean, you have to be an idiot," said diGenova.

Any first-year assistant U.S. attorney would look at all these facts and say theres a coup underway, theres a conspiracy," he said."But for those of us who thought that, The Washington Post, The New York Times [suggested] we were conspiracy theorists. You know what?Pretty damn good theory it appears today.

The One America News Network then asked diGenova about the actions taken by John Brennan, who was the CIA director under Obama.

DiGenova said, "Theres no doubt that John Brennan was the primogenitor of the entire counterintelligence investigation. It was John Brennan who went to James Comey and basically pummeled him into starting a counterintelligence investigation against Trump."

"Brennans at the heart of this," he said.

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People do not have the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan played in this," added diGenova."He is a monstrously important person and I underscore monstrously important person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Its equal to what James Comey has done to the FBI.

Its pretty clear that James Comey will go down in history as the single worst FBI director in history," said diGenova. "He and John Brennan are the coup leaders.

DiGenova is a founding partner of the law firm diGenova & Toensing, LLP. He is aa former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, former Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Rules Committee, former Independent Counsel, and former Special Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives.

h/t OAN Network

See original here:
DiGenova: Comey and Brennan 'Are The Coup Leaders' and 'Obama Knew All About This' - CNSNews.com

President Trump is waging a war against the free press, according to presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, and on the other hand, former Attorney General Eric Holder was its champion.

Yes, Klobuchar seriously suggested during Thursday's Democratic primary debate that Holder did more to preserve the rights of the press than Trump a ridiculous statement to anyone who remembers U.S. politics before 2016.

Trump is certainly no friend to the media, but the comparison is ridiculous, considering Holder was the head of a Justice Department that secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors that worked at the Associated Press news agency.

There is an argument to be made that Trump has done a disservice to the press in both rhetoric and action. He has regularly decried the media as the enemy of the people and did away with the daily White House press briefings. But to claim he is worse than Holder, who seized private, home phone information from more than 20 individual reporters, is absurd.

When confronted about this violation, Holder insisted the DOJ had done nothing wrong. Spying on journalists was necessary, he said, considering there was a prominent national security leak that needed investigating. But Holder never offered specifics and instead left this as an open-ended, unconvincing excuse.

Trump is disparaging journalists, but Holder did much worse. Even the Left admitted as much when the news about Holders subpoena broke. To suggest otherwise now is negligent at best and dishonest at worst, and Klobuchar should know better.

Here is the original post:
Amy Klobuchar is wrong: Eric Holder was no friend to the media - Washington Examiner

The alarming revelation that Rep. Adam Schiffs House Intelligence Committee obtained and released telephone records of a journalist, another House member and President Trump's lawyers is just the latest in an escalating pattern of abuse by Democrats.

Democratic attempts to weaponize government power against their adversaries have largely gone unpunished, leading to ever more brazen offenses.

Having once held the power to write congressional subpoenas myself, I am familiar with the restrictions on Congress. For instance, the courts have not allowed Congress to compel documents from private entities unless the information informs legislation.

NUNES TELLS SCHIFF HE NEEDS 'REHABILITATION' AFTER IG REPORT: 'ADMIT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM'

There is no legislation under consideration that requires Congress to view call records of the president's lawyers or the media.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff, D-Calif., has weaponized the subpoena power of Congress to collect data to which he is not entitled.

There was no justification for Schiff to use his subpoena power to obtain and publish the records of telephone calls by the ranking member of his committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. Nor was there adequate reason to spy on a journalist or legal counsel for the president.

Though this is uncharted territory for the House, partisans in Congress and the media have bent over backward to defend Democrats' spying.

Schiff's abuse of power follows a much more audacious violation by a politicized FBI, as revealed by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. His recent report detailed numerous egregious abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by Obama administration bureaucrats.

In one example from the FISA report, we learned that the FBI in 2016 sent an informant to ask whether the Trump election campaign was planning an October surprise. That is information that wouldn't be particularly relevant to a criminal investigation, but would certainly be relevant to political espionage.

Though this flagrant perversion of the FBI and the FISA process may yet be prosecuted, thus far Democrats have gotten exactly what they wanted from their Deep State allies a thin pretext upon which to derail the Trump presidency with years of negative stories in the media.

Where did the Democrats get the idea they could get away with such overreach? Perhaps from the success of past attempts to spy on adversaries and weaponize agencies.

Democrats have certainly not had to worry about prosecution by their allies in the bureaucracy. Hillary Clinton famously destroyed her smartphone with a hammer and wiped her hard drive with Bleach Bit despite congressional subpoenas to prevent investigators from legally accessing evidence of wrongdoing. She got away with it. Why would anybody expect to be prosecuted?

But the spying even candidate Trump and the Clinton email investigation. In 2013, we learned the Obama Justice Department had spied on journalist James Rosen, accessing his emails, tracking his movements and collecting his phone records.

The spying on Rosen was revealed just weeks after reports surfaced that Associated Press reporters had been spied on when phone records of more than 20 lines were secretly obtained.

Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder made a show in 2014 of signing new rules to assure journalists the Justice Department would abide by written guidelines. But no one was fired or disciplined by Holder.

Just two years later, the Obama Justice Department would change tactics, this time using the FISA Court process to spy on political adversaries,

Concurrent to the Justice Department spying on the media, the Internal Revenue Service was targeting conservative nonprofits for unprecedented scrutiny, requiring them to submit answers to detailed questionnaires about their donors.

This information was not required of left-leaning nonprofits. Like the spying at the Justice Department, this process produced information that was more useful for political than for regulatory use, and it deprived the applicants of their First Amendment rights.

Though my Republican colleagues and I pushed hard for consequences, including the impeachment of the IRS commissioner, the Obama administration held firm against holding anyone accountable. The Justice Department would later pay out millions of dollars to settle claims by the nonprofits.

I even had my own personal brush with Deep State spying when more than 40 members of the Secret Service unlawfully accessed my personnel records. In an effort to intimidate and embarrass me during an investigation of their agency, some leaked my personal information to the media in violation of department policy.

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In this case, the agency did ultimately mete out soft consequences, but nobody was prosecuted and nobody was fired. Little did I know then that this was just part of a pattern of abusing surveillance.

These are just some of the corruptive acts we know about. What else is out there?

If we don't take action now and prosecute, the pattern will only continue to escalate because federal officials wrongly using their powers will continue to know there are no serious consequences.

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In the long run, that's an outcome that will be bad for Republicans, bad for Democrats and bad for all Americans.

Attorney General William Barr should be applauded for taking this threat seriously and assigning U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing committed during the 2016 election campaign. But thus far, the Democrats have not been held accountable for their brazen spying on their political opponents.

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Original post:
Jason Chaffetz: Democrats are working to weaponize government power against their adversaries It must stop - Fox News

With the full House of Representatives expected to vote on impeachment Wednesday, it seems appropriate to point outagainhow if Democrats public sentiments about impeachment were sincere, and not purely partisan, theyd have impeached Obama for the very same things many, many, many times.

In addition to abuse of power, Democrats have charged President Trump with obstruction of Congress over the refusal of the White House to simply allow individuals to testify. The Trump White House, like his predecessors, is very much aware of the separation of powers, and hasn't given Democrats open season to call any witness they want to be grilled for hours without some pushback. This is technically how the system is supposed to work. Congress can subpoena witnesses and documents from the executive branch, but the executive branch can fight those in the courts. Democrats, not wanting to prolong impeachment and risk severe public blowback, have essentially argued that such refusals to comply with the first request merit obstruction of Congress.

So, lets take a look at just a few examples of their golden boy Obama doing the exact same thing, and then we can ask ourselves Why didnt Congress impeach Obama over this? If the same standard theyre applying to Trump today were applied to Obama, the latter would have been kicked to the curb.

In 2009, two party-crashers got past the Secret Service during a state dinner, and managed to meet and shake hands with Barack Obama. How does such a breach in security happen? Congress wanted to know and opened up an investigation. For some reason, though, the White House wasnt equally interested in investigating the breach, and when White House Social Secretary Desire Rogers was asked to testify before Congress, the White House refused to let her, citing separation of powers as the reason. There wasnt anything partisan about this investigation. In fact, Democrats were the ones running it. The refusal to comply with the investigation was bizarre, and legal scholars found the separation of powers excuse in this particular case to be rather dubious.

What was the Obama White House really trying to hide? Who knows? But, despite obstructing Congress, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives didnt launch an impeachment inquiry.

Elana Kagan served as solicitor general for the Obama administration before being nominated and confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. During her time as solicitor general, she was heavily involved in crafting a legal defense for Obamacare. This was significant as issues involving Obamacare were coming before the Supreme Court and federal law dictates that Supreme Court justices must recuse themselves when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned, such as with Elana Kagan and Obamacare.

Under 28 U.S.C. 455(b)(3), a Supreme Court justice has a legal duty to recuse him- or herself from a proceeding if they have served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.

Of course, with a closely divided Supreme Court, Obama couldnt afford to have Kagan recuse herself from Obamacare-related cases. So, when the House Judiciary Committee requested documents and interviews to get a clear understanding of her role relating to Obamacare while she was solicitor general, the Obama/Holder Justice Department refused to comply.

Kagan ultimately never recused herself from Obamacare-related cases. Imagine if the tables were turned.

In 2014, Democratic operatives were concerned that the Obama White House wasnt doing enough to help in the forthcoming midterms. So, Obama launched the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach to do more for their candidates. Of course, this raised legitimate concerns that Obama had just created a White House office specifically for political activity.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee launched an investigation in order to make sure the White House was complying with civil services laws that were designed to prevent executive branch employees from engaging in political activity. They subpoenaed David Simas, the director of the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, but the Obama White House refused to allow him testify, and actually claimed Simas was immune from congressional compulsion to testify on matters relating to his official duties and thus would not appear before the committee.

The Iran Nuclear Deal was so bad Obama didnt even try to get Senate ratification for it, and much of the negotiations were done without Congress being informed. When congressional Republicans wanted to get answers after Ben Rhodes (the failed novelist turned Obama speechwriter turned top foreign policy adviser to Obama) let it spill to the New York Times that the administration relied on a false narrative to sell the Iran deal to the public, the White House wouldnt let him testify, using the separation of powers excuse. Specifically, the appearance of a senior presidential adviser before Congress threatens the independence and autonomy of the president, as well as his ability to receive candid advice and counsel in the discharge of his constitutional duties, explained White House counsel Neil Eggleston. This was after the White House previously claimed they wouldnt hide behind executive privilege.

The investigation of the botched Fast & Furious investigation is perhaps the most significant example of the Obama administration using executive privilege to justify their refusal to cooperate with a congressional investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama's wingman, refused to provide subpoenaed documents to the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The blatant attempts by the administration to resist cooperating with the investigation ultimately led to a historic vote to hold Attorney General Holder in criminal contempt.

_____

Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis

Excerpt from:
Five Times Golden Boy Obama Obstructed Congress and Democrats Didnt Impeach | News and Politics - PJ Media

Representative Bradley Byrne (R-AL) wants to point out the double standard President Donald Trump is facing with impeachment to his Democrat congressional colleagues and the public.

On Tuesday during deliberations of how the House of Representatives should proceed with impeachment before the bodys Rules Committee, Byrne put forth an amendment stating that former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder should have been impeached for the Obama administrations response to congressional into the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal.

In an interview with Huntsville, AL radios WVNN, Byrne, who is also running for the U.S. Senate seat up in Alabama in 2020, laid out his approach and his justification for the amendment.

One of the articles is on abuse of Congress, which is something Ive never heard of before, he said on Tuesdays The Jeff Poor Show. But it is based on Donald Trumps not just willy-nilly and allowing people that work for him to show up for some of these hearings and also not just produce documents willy-nilly. What I do is I take most of that out, and I put in its place a relation of the facts of this Fast and Furious investigation when President Obama was president. We sent a bunch of guns down into Mexico, and some of those guns came back into this country and were used to kill some of our law enforcement agents.

The Obama administration tried to hide it, Byrne continued. They tried to keep documents from Congress. And Congress actually voted to hold them in contempt Eric Holder, the attorney general, and the President. All of these Democrats that are so high and mighty about impeaching President Trump actually voted against holding Eric Holder and President Obama in contempt. Now they are speaking out of both sides of their mouth. The purpose of my mind amendment is to show hypocrisy.

Byrne explained the primary purpose of the amendment was not just to point out hypocrisy to his Democrat colleagues, but for the public as well.

Maybe we shouldnt have held them in contempt maybe we should have voted to impeach them, now that they have got a new standard for impeachment, Byrne added. Part of the message Im sending them today is, Wait a minute, guys. Youre not always going to have a president you dont like in office. You may have a president you do like in office. We may take your precedent and use it against a president that you like. Were cheapening impeachment. Thats my point here. I hope they get his message, and more importantly, I hope the public receives this message.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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Byrne Offers Amendment to Trump Impeachment Rules: Obama, Holder Should Have Been Impeached - Breitbart